The Intentionality of Joy
Phenomenology, offers one the chance to philosophize himself by utilizing a method of being conscious in hopes to, literally, give an account of those phenomena we experience. As Sokolowski says, the word most closely associated with this method is Intentionality.1 To intend phenomenologically is to have a conscious relationship with an object.
This consciousness is hard to describe in itself. But in the twentieth century, a development offered by the phenomenology movement, scoring the names of Edmund Husserl, Edith Stein, and Karol Wojtyla, is that consciousness is alway consciousness of an object. The epistemelogical implication of this principle is that the mind is not closed off from reality and its objects like it’s trapped in a box. This principle answers the problems posited by both the rationalist and skeptic. The object of human knowing is not the idea in the mind. Rather, it is the thing itself. The act of apprehension by the mind is not of something new, it is of the thing given to us in experience. Thus, the world is no longer something “out there,” completely cut off from the knower. Intentionality does not collapse the object of knowledge into consciousness but reveals the intrinsic openness of the intellect to being. The mind is freed from the Enlightenment cage that surrounded it and it can once again embrace reality as it is.
In light of what might come across as fuzzy or confusing in the term Intentionality, I now turn to discuss something else that is just as fuzzy and confusing to modern man: Joy. If there is a word in the tradition that is misunderstood above all else, I think it is this one. Some will say that Joy is the expression of happiness, or a spiritual emotion. We might think that to be joyful means to not have a care in the world for the world, or for our duties; that we should be dancing and skipping in the fields with the sun on our faces and singing happy songs around the campfire.
Here I would like to posit, first, what Joy is as it is described by the Angelic Doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas. Then, I will present the framework for arising this great spiritual gift via appealing to the core doctrine of Phenomenology. But first a defense of the Dumb Ox’s definition is paramount. St. Thomas Aquinas2 provides gives two defnitions of the term. Firstly, he defines the emotional sense as a passion that arises from experiencing a “present good” (STh, I-II, q. 25, a. 4). The second, and perhaps more principal hierarchically, meaning is a rational delight rooted in the possession of the highest good (STh, I-II, q. 31, a. 3). The second definition is the one I will treat presently. He writes,
“For we take delight both in those things which we desire naturally, when we get them, and in those things which we desire as a result of reason. But we do not speak of joy except when delight follows reason; and so we do not ascribe joy to irrational animals, but only delight.”
His Reply to the Third Objection3 offers us further insight as to how he understands Joy. He continues,
“for "laetitia" [gladness]4 is derived from the "dilation" of the heart, as if one were to say "latitia"; "exultation" is derived from the exterior signs of inward delight, which appear outwardly in so far as the inward joy breaks forth from its bounds; and "cheerfulness" is so called from certain special signs and effects of gladness.”
What’s important to note here is his understanding that joy manifests itself outward from it’s interior origin. Here is where our endeavor begins and we can ask some pressing questions. What is this outward expresison of the interior disposition we call joy? How does Joy “arise” in the individual? What does that look like in the day-to-day? Intentionality might give some insight as to answer these questions.
I begin by addressing the first question. As I (or Aquinas) noted, Joy:
Follows reason.
Manifests itself outwardly.
Arises within the individual as the recognition of a possessed good.
Here I follow Thomas Aquinas and posit that Joy requires the recognition of a good as both possessed and known to be good. Joy does not arise merely from contact with a good, nor merely from cognition, but from the intellect’s apprehension of a good that is actually present and possessed by the subject. We have already addressed that reason is not what the dualistic rationalist or skeptic would have us believe. The object of knowing is not a mental representation sealed within consciousness, but the thing itself as given in experience.
Thus, I reflect. When I reflect upon what I am experiencing I find myself intending—that is, being conscious of—a plurality of realities. Among these are things I possess: my body, my clothes, my computer, my notebook, my pen, my copy of Plato’s Republic. Each of these, insofar as it exists, is good; for being and goodness are convertible. Their goodness is not projected by me but discovered in their act of existing. Yet I also observe something more fundamental: my own presence is inseparable from what is present to me. I do not generate the field of givenness5 in which I find myself. I am not capable of accounting for my own presence, nor for the presence of what stands before me. Both I and what I intend are given.
Now we have previously stated that Joy is reason’s recognition of the possessed good. Here we have clarified that it is not enough for one to be joyous if the good is merely present. It is paramount that it is known as present. Finally, as I recognize that good, that it is presently possessed, and that I cannot account for having possessed it, I must assume that it is only present as a gift. Thus, I can say that when I am conscious of the present moment, stepping outside of the Cartesian Attitude and into the Phenomenological Attitude, I recognize the present possession of a good—at the very least, my own existence—and that my contingency demands it is a gift. The source of this gift is Being—subsistent, unreceived, and giving. It receives not, and gives what I can only receive.
Let us state clearly then that all instances of joy entail a silent, internal, metaphysical confession: that we possess what is good, that it is a gift, that it is sustained, and that we are not alone. This recognition that Being makes itself, or Himself, known to us in our existence and the existence of those things around us and that He informs the goodness of them can have no effect but to inform our dealings not just with those things, but with ourselves. When we see God in creation, we are able to commune with Him and as we are standing on holy ground. I need not a burning bush to see Him. He makes Himself known in and around me.
“How precious to me are your designs, O God; how vast the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the sands; when I complete them, still you are with me.”6
Much of what will follow with respect to the phenomenological analysis of joy takes from Robert Sakolowski’s Introduction to Phenomenology.
STh, I-II, q. 31, a. 3, Aquinas distinguishes between an emotional and spiritual joy. As in the case of happiness, one is temporary and the other eternal. Speaking on the principal passions, or emotions, joy relates to a present good. Speaking as to whether delight is the same as joy, Aquinas argues that joy can only be present in rational creatures, whereas delight may still be found in irrational creatures. What is important to note here is that joy is the result of a knowing act, a disposition of understanding.
Ibid, Obj. 3 “Further, if joy differs from delight, it seems that there is equal reason for distinguishing gladness, exultation, and cheerfulness from delight, so that they would all be various passions of the soul. But this seems to be untrue. Therefore joy does not differ from delight.”
I am by no means a latin scholar. But from my very limited and not so recent studies of the language, I know that when a term is left in the original language in a translation, that is usually a sign to me that the term has a fair few different meanings. Here it seems the translator understands that Aquinas is using it as referring to gladness.
“Givenness” here is understood as referring to a specific way of phenomena—or things experienced—are brought to appearence. The field of givenness is not something which I generate. Rather, it is simply present to me.
Psalm 139, 17-18