Coffee and True Happiness

With the sweet memory of last night’s serenade still lingering in their souls, the students of the California High School Summer Program today resumed their efforts toward understanding The Consolation of Philosophy, followed by an opportunity to analyze texts by Jean Henri Fabre and St. Thomas Aquinas. 

Preceding class, St. Patrick’s Coffee Shop was open for morning beverages, which included coffee, teas, and matcha. The programmers sipped their drinks and chatted about how their first reading of Boethius ties into the second. When it was time for class, they finished their games of ping-pong and cards, meditating on the day’s reading as they walked to the classroom buildings. 

Once in class, students laid out Lady Philosophy’s arguments for why no earthly good, such as wealth or social status, can give man true happiness. Lady Philosophy guides Boethius to comprehend that only a participation in the Highest Good can give man a true, transcending joy. “True happiness has its dwelling in the most-high God,” explains Lady Philosophy.

The sections also worked through Boethius’s initial response to the “problem of evil,” the question at the heart of The Consolation of Philosophy. Boethius insists on the irreducible role of reason in solving the problem, in contrast to both Kierkegaard and Pascal. The latter authors opt for a “leap of faith” in the face of life’s paradoxes, but Boethius resorts to reason — even in his prison cell awaiting execution. 

Attending the mid-day Mass and taking a lunch of chicken sandwiches, fries, and coleslaw, students switched gears from talking about the problem of evil to inquiring about how God’s existence can be proved through reason. 

Back in the classroom for the afternoon, students were introduced to St. Thomas Aquinas's rational proofs for God’s existence. St. Thomas disagrees with Pascal by claiming that, though God’s true nature is unfathomable to human reason, man can know that God exists through reason. St. Thomas offers a proof for God’s existence from the intelligible order of Creation and the way that even irrational beings seem to act toward their ends in rational ways. 

Coupled with St. Thomas’s argument, the students read J. Henri Fabre’s work of natural science, The Bees, which gives an account of how bees, though having no reason, work in a strikingly intelligent way to construct the cells in their hives. Students considered Aquinas’s proof for an intelligent creator in light of this phenomenon and discussed the objections that he raises his to own argument. 

Up next on the Summer Program: Students will get to ask Fr. Sebastian questions at tonight’s Chaplain on Tap program. Visit the Summer Program Blog tomorrow for an update on this event plus many others!