Symposium: What Happiness?

This article is in response to “Has the Sexual Revolution Been Good for Women?” by Mary Eberstadt and is part of the symposium, “Sex and the Polis: Perspectives on Marriage, Family, and Sexual Ethics.”

Greek philosophers, Church fathers and even post-modern Christian theologians equate the moral life with happiness. Aristotle calls happiness the ultimate goal in life and “the perfect practice of virtue.” St. Augustine concludes that happiness is “joy in the truth”. Likewise, St. Gregory of Nyssa equates the moral life with happiness directly; “Happiness is possession of all things considered good. One who lives virtuously will become happy.” Beyond the virtuous life, Aquinas says, “communion with God is happiness itself.” According to this tradition, happiness is impossible apart from virtue, truth, and God.

In ISI’s most recent symposium article, and in her book, Adam and Eve after the Pill, Mary Eberstadt explores how strange our sexual culture has become, using sociological studies to trace empirical connections between reproductive technologies such as contraception to nose-diving rates of female happiness today.

Though critics may leap to criticize her for quantifying “some imponderable thing,” the correlation of the moral life with happiness is an age old notion we not dare not forget.

The sexual revolution and its forefather, Alfred Kinsey, claim that women’s happiness depends upon freedom from outdated social constructs, such as marriage, a husband, and a houseful of children. But there is more to the story. Eberstadt affirms the prophetic words of Pope Paul VI concerning contraception. Though he is already vindicated by a longstanding tradition of Christian thinkers (even Luther and Calvin called contraception an “unforgivable crime”), Eberstadt’s compilation of sociological evidence and John Paul II’s ‘Theology of the Body’ shed light on the warnings of Humanae Vitae regarding the dangerous effects of a culture saturated by “safe sex” made possible by the pill. Its prophesies include: a general lowering of moral standards throughout society; a rise in infidelity; a lessening of respect for women by men; and the coercive use of reproductive technologies by governments. In the span of 45 years, this ubiquitously mocked moral teaching has become a post-revolutionary empirical fact.

G.K. Chesterton wrote, “The unpopular parts of Christianity turn out when examined to be the very props of the people.” These “parts” which seem like nothing but moral rigidity to modern secularists, paradoxically make possible the freedom and happiness proponents of the sexual revolution claim to desire.