What Constitutes the Happiness of the Human Person: Karol Wojtyla's Reinterpretation of the Aristotelian-Thomistic View

The issues which lie at the background of this research is the perennial philosophical discourse on what constitutes a person’s ultimate end. I shall concentrate the discussion on the thought of Karol Wojtyla, who referring to contemporary research complements in this matter the views of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, the result of what is the personalistic understanding of happiness. For all of these thinkers it is important that the human person by nature desires happiness. Happiness, then, is something complete and self- sufficient, and is the end of action. The human Will tends to happiness in a necessary manner, and it is incapable of not wanting happiness. A person cannot choose between being happy and not being happy. In the colloquial sense, not every person desires happiness but a person must arrive at happiness for the reason that happiness constitutes the end of nature. However, all beings that are part of nature should arrive at fulfilment. We may ask why it is that only the rational being is capable of recognizing happiness as a value. We could respond that only a rational being is capable of cognizing whether the good which he possesses may be enough (sufficientiaboni). The discussion has a metaphysical character because it is about pointing out the ultimate reasons for happiness of human person.