4.8 • 729 Ratings
🗓️ 1 August 2025
⏱️ 38 minutes
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Prof. Matthew Shea examines the classic philosophical question “Can we be happy without God?” by analyzing historical and contemporary perspectives on happiness, ultimately contrasting the limitations of atheistic views with the theistic argument for true human fulfillment in God.
This lecture was given on April 22nd, 2025, at Franciscan University of Steubenville.
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About the Speaker:
Matthew Shea is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Franciscan University of Steubenville. He specializes in moral philosophy and bioethics, with additional interests in philosophy of religion and epistemology. He did his undergraduate studies at Boston College, received a PhD in philosophy from Saint Louis University, and completed a fellowship in clinical health care ethics at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of God and Happiness (Cambridge University Press, 2024).
Keywords: Aristotelianism, Augustine, Atheism, Bertrand Russell, Boethius, Human Flourishing, Perfectionism, Plato, Schopenhauer, The Consolation of Philosophy
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0:50.3 | The question we're going to explore today is, can we be happy without God? |
0:55.0 | And I'll start out in good to mystic fashion by identifying a fact of common human experience that might seem painfully obvious, but is highly significant. |
1:05.0 | Everyone wants to be happy. This fact about human nature has been acknowledged by many of the leading thinkers throughout the ages. |
1:12.6 | Plato says, |
1:13.6 | There's no need to ask why a man desires happiness. The answer is already final. |
1:18.6 | Aristotle observes that, |
1:20.6 | verbally, there is very general agreement about the final end of life, |
1:24.6 | for both the general run of men and people of superior refinement, |
1:28.5 | say that it is happiness. St. Augustine writes, |
1:31.9 | We all certainly desire to live happily, and there is no human being who does not |
1:36.8 | assent to this statement almost before it's made. For St. Thomas Aquinas, man's last end |
1:42.6 | is happiness which all men desire. |
1:45.7 | The few that everybody desires happiness is still with us today. |
1:49.9 | Happiness talk is everywhere in our public and private discourse. |
1:53.4 | And there's a huge interest in happiness among academics, administrators, policy makers, |
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