Beatitudo Imperfecta: An Anthology of the Concept in Aquinas and Renaissance Thomism (c. 1550 – c. 1650) KU Leuven
Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) famously distinguishes between perfect and imperfect happiness. Both types of happiness lie in the perfection of human nature, but perfect happiness is possible only in the afterlife through the vision of God's essence, whereas imperfect happiness is possible even in this life, be it through intellectual virtue and the contemplative life or moral virtue and the active life. This life's imperfect happiness is the focus ...