Happiness in the Fourth Epistle of Alexander Popes An...

Alexander Popes philosophical poem An Essay on Man, published in 1732-134, may even more precisely be classified, to use a German phrase, as Weltanschauungliche Dichtung (worldviewish poetry). That it is appropriate to understand An Essay on Man as world view in verse, as a work which depicts humanitys relationship to and understanding of a perplexing and amazing world, is indicated in the statement of the poems Design in which the author avows that his goal was to examine Man in the abstract, his Nature and his State. Indeed, Pope sought to fulfill his agenda by describing in each of the works four epistles the nature and state of man with respect (1) to the universe, (2) to man himself as an individual, (3) to society, and†¦show more content†¦v). Likewise Cicero stated that those who achieve [virtue], guiding themselves by magnanimity and uprightness, are always happy (De Finibus V. xxiv. 71). Richard Hooker similarly argued that all men desire a happy life based on the u nencumbered pursuit and exercise of righteousness or virtue. In a theological vein, he wrote, Infinitely happy in himself from all Eternity, God so communicates his goodness as to show no other design in creating Mankind than their happiness (Of Oh Happiness! our beings end and aim! Good, Pleasure, Ease, Content! whateer thy name. The whole of the fourth epistle is a poetic meditation on the relation of humanity and happiness, and it serves as the culmination of An Essay on Man, on which it lies like crown (Tillotson 50).2 In terms of substance, it is an extended argument to the effect that happiness is not tied to any particular condition, state, location or possession, but is singularly related to virtue (Atkins 57), a conception which is fundamentally Stoic in origin. As Mack points out, what the fourth Epistle adds to the argument of the text is a sustained and brilliant Stoic account of the pre-eminence of virtue over externals, partly by way of theodicy, vindicating Providence for the unequal distribution of these goods, [and] partly by way of ethics, showing where true ethical objectives lie (xxxix). This same author elaborates on the Stoic framework of the entire poem, and on its Stoic conception of