On Spiritual Happiness. A Meditation Sitting under the Cross
Abstract
Any form of spiritual life requires a philosophically articulated comprehension of what Happiness consists in. At the same time happiness is central for wisdom and thus for the self-comprehension of philosophy itself. As part of a “protophenomenological analysis” I trace back in different languages the genuine philosophical insight on how real happiness differs from related phenomena. The Greek, Hungarian, German, English and Italian terms illuminate some essential features and pave the way for the “phenomenological analysis” (Wesensanalyse). I claim that happiness is essentially related to communio personarum. Happiness is not a mere “emotion”, nor is it an “animic state” or a “fundamental attitude” but rather it is a “form of being”. Happiness does not exclude sadness but it is opposed to despair. There is a complex and fundamental relationship between suffering and happiness that I expose by recalling the experience of laetitiaReferences
Messale Ambrosiano, della Pasque all’Avvento. Milán, 1942.
Aristóteles, Ética a Nicómaco. Madrid, Editorial Gredos.
Bernardo de Claraval. 1999. En la escuela del amor. Madrid, Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos.
Caldera, Rafael Tomás. 2010. El oficio del sabio. Madrid, Ediciones Internacionales Universitarias, D.L.
Crespo, Mariano. 2007. “Esbozo de una fenomenología de las disposiciones de ánimo” en Diálogo filosófico, n.68, Mayo/Agosto.
Foucault, Michel. 1994. Dits at érits, I-IV. Paris, Gallimard.
Giussani, Luigi. 1999. Crear huellas en la historia del mundo. Madrid, Ediciones Encuentro.
Gregorio de Niza. 2009. Dogmatic Treatises. Edinburgh, T&T Clark, under the editorial supervision of Philip Schaff, D.D., LL.D.
Grygiel, Stanislaw. 2002. Extra comunionem personarum nulla philosophia. Prolusione Dies Academicus 2001-2002, Roma, Lateran University Press.
Hadot, Pierre. 1987. Exercises spirituels et philosophie antique. Paris, Études Augustiniennes.
Hildebrand, Dietrich. 1971. Das Wesen der Liebe. Regensburg, Josef Habbel Verlag.
Husserl, Edmund. 1929. Cartesianische Meditationen und Parisier Vorträge, Husserliana I.
The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1973.
Husserl, Edmund. 1936. Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die Transzendentale Phänomenologie (Husserliana VI), The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1976.
Marcel, Gabriel. 1935. Être et avoir. Paris, Fernand Aubier, Éditions Mantaigne.
Marcel, Gabriel. 1959. Présence et immortalité. Paris, Flammarion.
Martin, L.H. et. al. 1988. Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault. London, Tavistock.
Nemesio de Emesa. 1975. De natura hominis, Leiden, Brill. Traducción de Burgundio de Pisa.
Patocka, Jan. 1996. Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History (Kacírské eseje o filosofii dêjin) (Edited by James Dodd). Chicago, Open Court. Translated by Erazim Kohák.
Pico de la Mirandola, G. 1984. De la dignidad del hombre. Madrid. Editoria Nacional.
Platón, Diálogos y cartas (varios tomos). Madrid, Editorial Gredos.
Reinach, Adolf. 1951. Was ist Phänomenologie? München, Kösel Verlag.
Seifert, Josef. 1977. Back to Things in Themselves: A Phenomenological Foundation for Classical Realism. New York, Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Stein, Edith. 2002. Essential Writings (ed. John Sullivan O.C.D.) New York, Orbis Books.
Szalay, Mátyás. 2008. “Spiritual Friendship and the Foundations of Political Community”en Joanna Nowick y Czeslaw Porebski (ed.) L’Invention de l’Autre, Paris, Sandre.
Vázquez de Prada, Andrés. 2003. The Founder of Opus Dei, The Life of Josemaría Escrivá. (Volume II:God and daring), New York.
