Commentary on Thomas Aquinas's Treatise

on Happiness and Ultimate Purpose

Commentary on Thomas Aquinas's Treatise on Happiness and Ultimate Purpose, published in 2020 by Cambridge University Press, is a line-by-line examination, in the classical style, of the Summa Theologiae, First Part of the Second Part, Questions 1-5.  Why study happiness?  Better, why not study happiness?  Today, a lower percentage of adults call themselves very happy than ever before in the history of survey research.  Could it be that we are barking up the wrong tree?  I think so.

Endorsements:

Budziszewski's Commentary on Thomas Aquinas's Treatise on Happiness and Ultimate Purpose provides an in-depth, detailed, accessible, and comprehensive commentary on the Summa theologiae's questions on happiness.  This commentary is a gem.  It can be read with profit by philosophers, theologians, and intellectual historians, as well as by their students.  If you are interested in Aquinas, want insight about happiness, or both, this book is for you.  --  Christopher Kaczor, author of The Gospel of Happiness and Thomas Aquinas on the Cardinal Virtues

Excellent.  Students, general readers, and professionals alike are sure to find this commentary on Aquinas tremendously useful given its clarity, erudition, attention to contemporary moral and philosophical concerns, and plain enjoyableness.  --  Edward Feser, Pasadena City College

Professor Budziszewski is among the rare scholars who combine depth and erudition with a real flair for writing.  No matter how dry or formidable one imagines Thomas Aquinas to be, his words come alive through the pen of Budziszewski.  One sees with new eyes how amazingly pertinent Aquinas's questions are, how intriguing the puzzles with which he wrestles, and how sensible the answers at which he arrives regarding the meaning of life.  This book will be a godsend for classroom study.  --  Matthew Levering, James N. and Mary D. Perry Jr, Chair of Theology, Mundelein Seminary