Lander, WY – Juniors at Wyoming Catholic College have just finished with their “extremely difficult” philosophy paper on “Whether the Great Souled Man is Happy”. The answer seemed easy at first, to easy, but by the day of the deadline appeared inexplicable, impossible, and to some, even a purposeful attempt at trickery and befuddlement, with an overall effect that had two juniors actually thinking the paper prompt they received was “Russian disinformation”.
But now it’s over, the class divided over their answers to the question. Having moved on from concern and stress over how to answer the question, actual thoughts, absent the sophistical ones that having to arbitrary write a paper produces, are finally starting to flow out. And from these are coming some interesting conclusions.
Take first the premise that wisdom is the highest virtue, wisdom being defined as knowledge and contemplation of unchanging truths, and also given that such truths are common goods, better in their shared possession than in their possession alone. From here comes the conclusion necessarily that he who brings other people to possession and contemplation of the unchanging truths is the most virtuous person out there. It’s unclear for certain whether this person is the magnanimous man, but it seems likely that he’s not. What is certain, however, is that this sort of person is easy to differentiate and discern among the students at WCC.
And at WCC, such a person, such as is thus the happiest student, is the tutor, specifically the Math Tutors. They lead other people, other students to contemplate unchanging truths, the common notions, definitions, and propositions of Euclid, Apollonius, Archimedes, Galileo and even Courant, and thus must be the happiest of students as their knowledge is held in actuality and in actuality that is for the good and knowledge of others.
Therefore, the two Math tutors this year, William Albers and Olivia must then be the happiest students at Wyoming Catholic College. Where we go from there in an understanding of Ethics or an understanding of how one can become unhappy is also unclear, as not everyone can simultaneously be tutors. However since it has been proven that they are exemplars of happiness at the school, they, as on pedestals offer something that should be imitated in some respect by others. I’m just not sure exactly what that is.
Of course also the professors are obviously happier than the students as they take an even higher and more active role in leading others to possession of such truths. However, they’re also considered to be god-like and feared as such, which would in many ways make them more like what’s discussed in Book VII of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics which I/we as juniors have not yet covered.