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Why did Thomas Aquinas identify the highest human happiness with the vision of God?

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St. Thomas Aquinas Enthroned Between the Doctors of the Old and New Testaments, with Personifications of the Virtues, Sciences, and Liberal Arts, fresco by Andrea da Firenze, c. 1365; in the Spanish Chapel of the Church of Santa Maria Novella, Florence. — Thomism *St. Thomas Aquinas Enthroned Between the Doctors of the Old and New Testaments, with Personifications of the Virtues, Sciences, and Liberal Arts*, fresco by Andrea da Firenze, c. 1365; in the Spanish Chapel of the Church of Santa Maria Novella, Florence.

St. Thomas Aquinas identified the highest human happiness with the vision of God by adapting Aristotle's teleological ethics to Christian doctrine.12

While Aristotle argued that the highest human good (eudaimonia) is found in the exercise of reason through philosophical contemplation, Aquinas maintained that this earthly pursuit is limited. Aquinas adopted the Aristotelian concept of an ultimate end or summum bonum toward which all human action is directed, but he transformed this goal by situating it within a theological framework.312

For Aquinas, true and complete happiness cannot be fully achieved in this life; it is found only in the beatific vision—the direct knowledge of God—which is the ultimate reward of heaven. By integrating these views, Aquinas argued that while humans can experience a limited form of happiness on earth through virtue and friendship, their ultimate fulfillment is found in the love and knowledge of God, which is granted by divine grace.14