Flirting with Happiness: Aquinas on the Good Life – Fr. Alan O'Sullivan, O.P.
The Thomistic Institute
The Thomistic Institute
4.8 • 873 Ratings
🗓️ 27 January 2026
⏱️ 44 minutes
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Summary
Fr. Alan O’Sullivan unpacks Aquinas on the good life, explaining why wealth, power, fame, and pleasure cannot be our ultimate happiness and how true beatitude is found in virtuous activity ordered to God.
This lecture was given on October 23rd, 2025, at Trinity College Dublin.
For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.
About the Speakers:
Fr. Alan O’Sullivan, O.P. (Trinity College) is currently the chaplain of Trinity College, Dublin. He is a member of the Irish province of the Order of Preachers who studied at Blackfriars, Oxford.
Keywords: Aquinas on the Good Life, Beatitude and True Happiness, Epicureanism, Limits of Wealth Power and Fame, Pleasure and the Highest Good, Restlessness and Desire for More, Virtue and Ordered Pleasure, Worldly Goods, Ultimate Happiness
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Tomistic Institute podcast. |
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| 0:12.7 | The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Temistic Institute chapters around the world. |
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| 0:21.7 | visit us at Thomisticinstitute.org. |
| 0:25.2 | When Aristotle tackles the subject |
| 0:27.6 | in the first book of his ethics, |
| 0:31.3 | the Greek philosopher, |
| 0:33.5 | he becomes more technical, |
| 0:37.0 | more rigorous, more with a methodology in talking about happiness. |
| 0:45.6 | One of his important statements is, now we call that object which is desired for its own sake, |
| 1:01.0 | more perfect than one that is desired for some further purpose. |
| 1:13.6 | It's in the sense that I don't buy a dream house, or I'll buy a dream house in order to be happy |
| 1:15.1 | okay |
| 1:16.0 | I'll get married |
| 1:18.3 | in order to be happy |
| 1:20.6 | it doesn't happen in reverse |
| 1:23.4 | okay I'll be happy then I'll buy other things |
| 1:26.7 | I'll add things on to that. |
| 1:28.9 | It has the nature of a final end. |
| 1:33.7 | It has the nature of a fundamental desire. |
| 1:39.3 | It has a sense of ultimacy about it. |
... |
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