Happiness from Augustine and Ibn Sina's Point of View: A Comparitive Study

Ibn Sina the great rationalist Muslim philosopher considers man’s happiness the same as his attainment to a perfection of rational faculty and his unity with world of non – material intellects. For him, happiness has different degrees and its mosl complete and highest degree is intellectual happiness. Likewise, he states that complete happiness and wretchedness is only attainable in the hereafter. Against this view point of Ibn Sina which has been formed in the context of rationality based on revelation, the Christian fideist philosopher St. Augustine too regards happiness an knowledge of God and closeness to Him. He also does not consider this kind of happiness attainable in this earthly world and he defers true stability and comfort to the next world. For Augustine, although all human beings are seeking happiness, but true happiness is possible only through Christianity. The study of opposite and conforming position of these two viewpoints shows that each of these two philosophers with their own particular intellectual principles which has mainly been shaped in the religious context of man have emphasised on knowledge as a condition for true happiness.