Four Levels Of Happiness | Prof. Christopher Kaczor

The Thomistic Institute

Christianity, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Thomism, Catholicism

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 14 June 2024

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This lecture was given on April 19th, 2024, at St. Albert's Priory.

For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events

About the Speaker:

Dr. Christopher Kaczor (rhymes with razor) graduated from the Honors Program of Boston College and earned a Ph.D. four years later from the University of Notre Dame. A Fulbright Scholar, Dr. Kaczor is a former Federal Chancellor Fellow at the University of Cologne and William E. Simon Visiting Fellow in the James Madison Program at Princeton University and Honorary Professor in Bishop Barron's Word on Fire Institute. His seventeen books include The Gospel of Happiness, The Seven Big Myths about Marriage, A Defense of Dignity, The Seven Big Myths about the Catholic Church, The Ethics of Abortion, O Rare Ralph McInerny: Stories and Reflections on a Legendary Notre Dame Professor, Thomas Aquinas on the Cardinal Virtues; Life Issues-Medical Choices; Thomas Aquinas on Faith, Hope, and Love; The Edge of Life, and Proportionalism and the Natural Law Tradition. Dr. Kaczor’s views have been in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, National Review, NPR, BBC, EWTN, ABC, NBC, FOX, CBS, MSNBC, TEDx, and The Today Show.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to the Tomistic Institute podcast.
0:06.8	Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition in the university, the church, and the wider public square.
0:13.1	The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Temistic Institute chapters around the world.
0:19.1	To learn more and to attend these events, visit us at to mystic institute.org.
0:24.9	The topic for today is the four levels of happiness.
0:31.1	And I want to talk about different ways people conceive of happiness.
0:35.2	And I'll talk about the hedonist, that'll be level
0:37.7	one happiness, the egoist, that'll be level two happiness, the altruist, that'll be level
0:45.6	three happiness, and the altruist of faith. That'll be level four happiness. And a quick
0:52.6	summary of these levels of happiness is maybe evident from the words I
0:57.5	just used. So the hedonist thinks of happiness as bodily pleasure. So eating food, sex,
1:05.9	drinking alcohol, etc. All those would be ways that the hedonist would conceive of happiness. And then the egoist
1:13.7	thinks of happiness in terms of power, money, fame, comparative goods. So if I'm an egoist,
1:22.2	I will be happy if I get more power, more fame, more money than you do.
1:30.5	And if I can move up the hierarchy, well, then I'm going to really be happy.
1:37.2	The altruist thinks of happiness in terms of helping other people, loving other people,
1:38.4	being a virtuous person.
1:43.2	And finally, the altruist of faith thinks of happiness as loving other people, but also and crucially, loving God
1:45.7	even more than other people. So let's talk about these levels of happiness. Now, ideally,
1:52.5	your levels of happiness could all go together. So for instance, tomorrow morning, I'm guessing
1:57.6	I'm going to eat breakfast. You're going to be hungry probably in the morning. So eat breakfast, you'll get some level one happiness.
2:02.9	And that could be geared up to level two happiness.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Thomistic Institute, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Thomistic Institute and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.