This chapter examines the sort of happiness Aquinas thinks we can have on earth without any special divine help, namely, natural imperfect happiness. After establishing the varieties of natural imperfect happiness Aquinas accepts, it argues that, according to Aquinas, happiness is constituted exclusively by engaging in and enjoying those genuinely good activities that are made possible through the purely natural development of one’s powers. This is the Enjoying Good Activities Reading as applied to ordinary earthly happiness. The chapter then explains the various roles that everyday goods play in happiness so understood. Because of the role those goods play, it turns out that this sort of happiness is somewhat fragile. After giving an account of just how fragile it is, the chapter ends by considering Aquinas’s understanding of degrees of natural imperfect happiness.

This chapter examines the sort of happiness Aquinas thinks we can have on earth with the help of God’s grace, namely, graced imperfect happiness. In keeping with the Enjoying Good Activities Reading, it argues that, according to Aquinas, happiness is constituted exclusively by engaging in and enjoying some suboptimal genuinely good activity, animated by God’s grace. After introducing Aquinas’s understanding of grace, the chapter works through Aquinas’s reflections on the Fruit of the Holy Spirit and the Beatitudes. From those reflections, it becomes clear both how Aquinas thinks about graced imperfect happiness generally and how he thinks about its basic varieties. The chapter closes by reflecting on graced imperfect happiness’s place between the perfect happiness of heaven and the natural imperfect happiness of those on earth living apart from God’s grace.