So next up ch.17. Here it is short and sweet:
Supreme happiness requires that if there is at least one divine person, there are at least two divine persons. Suppose, in divinity, there is only one person. Then (1) this person gives supreme love to no one and receives supreme love from no one. (2) Such a person lacks the pleasure of love that one draws from another. (3) But nothing is better than such pleasure. So such a person, who lacks such supreme pleasure, isn’t supremely happy. (4) But any divine person, being perfect, is supremely happy. Therefore, supreme happiness requires that if there is at least one divine person, there are at least two divine persons.
A few comments:
Re (1): This assumes again that with a divine person supreme love is only between divine persons, who are equally perfect.
Re (2): This assumes again that the pleasure of love requires love.
Re (3) and (4): I wonder what exactly Richard means by happiness. My guess is that he means something like Aristotle’s eudamonia where someone is happy only if overall they are a success in life. Richard seems to think that supreme happiness includes supreme pleasure so that someone who has supreme happiness couldn’t have more pleasure. Is that right? I believe that God has pleasure: just because many of his desires are satisfied. But I’m also inclined to think that God suffers, not in the sense that he is affected by things contrary to his will. But rather God suffers in the sense that some of his desires are frustrated, e.g. because we freely do things or things occur as a result of such, that God desires we didn’t do or that didn’t occur. Now just because God suffers doesn’t mean he doesn’t have supreme pleasure. But I can’t help wondering whether if things had gone differently with some of our choices and their results, God might have had more pleausure than he actually does. But I’m also pretty sure that Richard needn’t base the claim that God has the pleasure love brings on the claim that God has supreme pleasure. Couldn’t he get that from the claims that God is supremely good and that the pleasure love brings is a supreme good that God needn’t forego for some contrary good that is equally good?
That’s it. After this, ch.18. Notice again we are building our way up to three divine persons. In ch.16 we had an argument about one divine person. In ch.17 we have an argument for at least two divine persons (if God exists). And in chs.18-19 we will have an argument for at least three divine persons (if God exists).
“I’m inclined to think there’s a maximal level to God’s goodness, though as I said I’m not sure about God’s pleasure.” – agreed. The former might be understood along the lines of my comment on your post on his ch. 15.
“maximal pleasure doesn’t seem necessary to maximal goodness” – agreed. But isn’t he instead thinking that maximal pleasure is necessary for maximal happiness or well-being?
If happiness comes in degrees, and it does, then it doesn’t follow that there’s a maximal level to it. Richard owes us an argument that there’s a maximum, I think, because depending on what you think happiness requires or supervenes on, these things will often not have a maximal level, at least for God.
I think you’ll agree to all that. But in my comment I went further: If “X is happy” means something like “X has *enough* well-being”, then is it not incoherent to suppose happiness has a maximal level?
I’m glad you pressed me on this, Joseph – I think I was assuming that if it had a vague lower lower level, it must have a vague upper level too. Compare with the description: “stocky” – it implies that you’re not skinny, but also that you’re not huge. But I don’t see happiness as an in-between sort of concept, so it can’t be the “maximally happy” is logically contradictory. Yet, if happiness levels supervene on just one possibly infinite factor, then they’ll be no possible world with a maximally happy being.
1. I agree entirely that Richard is using the ancient idea of happiness here.
2. I’m inclined to think there’s a maximal level to God’s goodness, though as I said I’m not sure about God’s pleasure. Besides maximal pleasure doesn’t seem necessary to maximal goodness. I don’t think he needs the pleasure arguments. They seem an unnecessary add-on for his case. But does he need the assumption that God has a maximal level of pleasure here. What if there’s a certain kind of pleasure that is good for a person to have and so God being good will bring this pleasure about unless he has good reason not to do so. And arguably the pleasure that love brings is a pleasure of just that kind.
3. By the claim that well-being has a vague threshold, do you mean it’s vague what the minimum amount of goodness in your life you need to have well-being is? If so and granted well-being comes in degrees, I don’t see how it follows from this alone that there can’t be a highest possible level of well-being. Goodness comes in degrees and plausibly it’s vague what the minimum is to be a good person. But it doesn’t follow from this that there isn’t a highest possible level here: a good person such that it couldn’t be some person is better–a perfect person.
Good post, Joseph, as always.
I suggest that he’s using the ancient concept of happiness, a rough idea common to all the oldsters – just being objectively well off. Yes, Aristotle’s flourishing is a version of this. Maybe I’ll post a short paper of mine on this…
I get into something like this in my paper, which I’m going to serialize here as I try to finish it – it strikes me that Richard is doing perfect being theology in a naive way. Here, he’s assuming that there’s a maximal level to God’s pleasure, and to his well being. Thus, any divine person must have one, no two homies, because if he lacked them, he’d be below that maximal level, lacking some very valuable kinds of pleasure.
But it’s not clear that there are maximum levels to either God’s pleasure, or to his well-being…
It also seems to me that well-being / happiness has sort of a vague threshold built in, like the concepts of health and sanity. If this is so, that you can’t talk about the highest possible levels of such things. They come in degrees, of course…
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