When we define virtue as a good habit we need to know what we mean by good. Virtuous action also requires freedom and thirdly, common sense in the evaluation of the circumstances.

The section today looks at the importance of free action for personal growth. Individual actions, though small, impact on happiness because they have the power to form good habits or to undermine them.

We begin chapter four entitled: Personal fulfilment through knowledge and action. The first section looks and the role of knowledge for acquiring virtue. Knowledge is explained as occurring on three levels: the biological, the emotional and the spiritual level.

We read to the end of chapter 3. This section discusses happiness as harmony. Returning to the image of an orchestra, five aspects of the human person are identified where harmony is a good leading to fulfilment : 1. Interior harmony 2. Harmony with others 3. Harmony with creation 4. Harmony with God and 5. […]

Today we look briefly at happiness in St. Thomas Aquinas. The reading explains that the Angelic Doctor incorporated the Aristotelian perspective but goes further to state that happiness in ultimately in the afterlife.

We begin chapter three entitled: The goal of human life: True happiness. The text explains that there is a subjective element to happiness but this must be evaluated to see if it proceeds from a place of internal harmony. This is a condition for true happiness.

We cover the last section of chapter 2. The understanding of the human person as a unity of body and soul leads to a model of three levels of action or dimensions of the human person. These are: the biological dimension, the psychological or emotional dimension, and the spiritual dimension.

We begin chapter 2: Man as a unity of body and soul. This is the core concept of the entire book. In the reading today we begin to explain what body/soul means, how it follows from ordinary experience, and the danger of dualism.

This reading looks at different arguments for establishing the existence of a spiritual principle in the human person.

This episode describes the levels of being in nature according to St. Thomas Aquinas going from minerals -> plants -> animals -> humans -> purely spiritual beings -> divine.