Concupiscible and Irascible Emotions, Human Pleasures, and Natural Philosophy's Definition of Anger

Orientation #

He refers back to “last time” when they talked about “the deception” and the Gospel text on the Sadducees (prev. lecture context does not resolve this further). Looking ahead, he says the proof of the immortality of the soul in the third book will be “the border” of natural philosophy. The previous class treated paragraphs 7–9 on whether the passions are all bound up with the body, and the next opens Book Two on defining the soul.

The class, in order #

1. Naming the two groups of emotions (“sometimes I use the term sense desire”) #

Point: the appetitive powers are named from the part that stands out most to us, desire.

• Greek epithymia, Latin concupiscentia: really means sense desire; we are most aware of hunger and thirst, so the group is named for what stands out.
• Why desire stands out: enjoyment is the soul “at rest” (recalling the metaphor “sweet” from the other day: pleasant and restful), desire is the soul in pursuit; and not having what you want makes it vivid. So desire is more like motion than joy, and emotion (motion) is more known to us.
• But it is naming the whole from the part: the group is not simply desire but whatever is tied to the agreeable or disagreeable to the senses. Latin appetitus (“appetite”), used for will and for the emotions, is likewise named from desire.
• Parallel: Shakespeare’s definition of reason by discourse names the power by its act in motion; “things in motion sooner catch the eye than what not stirs” – reason in motion is more known to us than reason at rest (understanding). Anger, “very volatile,” stands out for the same reason.

2. Student question: can we conceive the separated soul’s experience? (“we can understand the formal aspect of the emotions”) #

Point: we understand the formal aspect of an emotion even now, and that is what carries over to the will.

• Student: it seems we can’t even conceive what the soul apart from body would feel like. He: we can understand something of fear or anger “in a formal way.”
• The definition of anger as “desire for revenge” he calls a dialectical definition, because it omits the bodily change; to be natural science you must bring in the body, the matter (Aristotle lacks the dynamic here because he is considering the soul in a certain separation; later the bodily changes come in, and anatomists study them).
• When the word anger is carried to acts of the will, one drops the bodily part and keeps the formal aspect. Even for the emotion, when I think of joy or sadness I am not thinking just of the bodily change but of possessing something good, or having something bad forced on you.
• As a child hearing of “the love of God” he thought of girls, yet somehow knew it was not the same – “a proto-philosopher.”
• The Polish professor into symbolic logic: “Berquist, do you have an emotional attachment to the syllogism?” No: his will is attached to the syllogism, because reason is impressed by an argument whose conclusion follows necessarily (the certitude criterion Aristotle gave in the first part). The professor “must have had an emotional affinity to the syllogism.”
• Student: is love of God after death totally different from now? He: you become much more aware of what it is; but even in this life my love of wisdom differs from my love of candy.

3. Fine arts and the three kinds of pleasure (“too high for the animals and too low for the angels”) #

Point: the pleasures of the fine arts lie between animal and angelic pleasures and are most proportioned to man.

• Osterly [ed.: spelling per recording; likely Oesterle], “Towards an Evaluation of Music”: fine-art pleasures are not the highest for man, but are “most pleasingly proportioned to man.”
• Mill (utilitarian, pleasure as criterion, but “a more reasonable defender”): answers the charge “fit for the beasts” by turning it around – man has pleasures beasts lack, and the man who has tasted both prefers the higher.
• His improvement, three not two: (a) pleasures shared with animals (eating, drinking, sleep, sex); (b) pleasures shared with angels and God (understanding); (c) human pleasures in the narrow sense, man alone has them (Mozart, Titian, Raphael, Da Vinci, Shakespeare, working the imagination). Order: animal < human < angelic.
• Cross-comparison: man has the animal pleasures in a higher, more refined way (haute cuisine, wine); the pleasures of understanding imperfectly, compared with angels or God.
• Sign that the middle ones are most proportioned: one can pursue them longer. Eating and drinking: diminishing return (brother Mark: the first sip of beer is best – “drinking more but enjoying less”); understanding tires us; but a novel, a Mozart opera, a museum, two or three hours.
• Proper education leads from excess of animal pleasures through the human pleasures to the higher. The joke of the rooms: dinner with manners and moderate wine; a closed door opens on paintings and Mozart; the next on Shakespeare, Homer, Sophocles; the next on Euclid; then philosophy, wisdom, theology. One can stop at the intermediate ones as if highest; but he has never met a good philosopher or theologian without appreciation of good music – rock and roll and theology “wouldn’t make any sense at all.”

4. Digression: the state of education, music and the Church (“nothing so changes the soul of man than music”) #

Point (student’s question): whether this order can be restored today.

• Some schools (the Trivium school for high school); the importance of homeschooling – good literature, good music, museums.
• Father Boulay’s collection from the ancients on music; Thomas on Matthew (“we played and you did not…”): nothing so changes the soul of man as music.
• Student: the Church has stopped leading people through beauty; ugly churches and liturgy. He agrees: some church music mediocre, some scandalous – “Blue Moon” at communion (“Would you like to dance?”); Gregorian chant “an uphill battle.”
• The Closing of the American Mind: true, with some modification; education is in a bad state.
• Student: something too with the will among angelic pleasures? Yes. Socrates in the Symposium: ascent from beautiful bodies to beautiful souls to the beautiful itself; Augustine in the Confessions (“too late have I come to know the ancient beauty”); popes on the beautiful in liturgy leading to God. A priest’s remark: a saint who never looked at a sunset – fine for one already higher up, but “you might need to see these beautiful things.”

5. Thumos and the irascible as nearer to reason (“anger is said to hear reason, but imperfectly”) #

Point: the irascible is closer to reason than the concupiscible.

• Thumos: anger or boldness; the usual translation “spirited” is not quite correct. The irascible is closer to reason than thumos [as recorded; sense unclear], “a kind of quid pro quo.”
• Anger vs. lust: anger hears reason imperfectly – “I punish you because you did this” (though excessively). The irascible in general is for the sake of something else: the animal fighting does something unpleasant for a further end – “almost like thinking.”
• Hence Plato’s three parts: reason, thumos, epithymia; in the Republic, rulers, soldiers, common people.
• So anger can be applied to God metaphorically, but not hunger or thirst; yet thirst is said metaphorically of our soul – the psalm “my flesh pines and my soul thirsts” – appropriate because there is a desire for God.

6. The psalm, the Sadducees, power and glory (“you are ignorant of the power of God”) #

Point: “power and glory” in the psalm can be read of resurrection of the body and vision of God.

• Last time’s text: our Lord tells the Sadducees they “err” (planōmenoi, wander) because ignorant of the power of God and the Scriptures.
• Vatican I’s two motives of credibility proportioned to everyone: miracles and fulfilled prophecy; miracles point to the power of God. Greatest of Christ’s miracles: raising the dead (Lazarus) over curing the blind; Lazarus led to conversions, so they thought of killing him.
• Psalm: “to see your power and your glory” is usually taken of the kingdom; but “my flesh pines” seeks resurrection (power, as in the reply to the Sadducees) and “my soul thirsts” seeks the vision of God (glory), as in the end of the Adoro te devote (“visu… tuae gloriae”). “Kind of interesting” – a thought new to him from last week’s text.

7. Aside: object before act before power, and the theological virtues (“God has to be an object in a somewhat different way”) #

Point: the order object–act–power applies also to the theological virtues, whose objects are God under three aspects.

• One must know the object before the act, the act before the power (as seen before); so the acts of believing and loving are more known than the virtues, and the objects before the acts.
• Thomas beginning faith in the Secunda Secundae: object is prima veritas, the first truth; cf. Adoro te devote, “Credo quidquid dixit Dei filius; nil hoc verbo veritatis verius.”
• Faith: God as first truth. Charity: God as goodness itself. Hope: students say “our help”; he adds power, love, but “very prominently” God’s mercy, which presupposes he loves us and has power to remove our wretchedness.
• Padre Pio (to be canonized this week; Capuchins’ mailing): “worry is useless… hope and pray” – hope, prayer and mercy connected; Augustine and Thomas link hope and praying.
• Bis orat qui cantat: of the five sung parts of the Mass (symmetry A B C B A), Gloria and Sanctus are praise, Credo a confession of faith; the two prayers, Kyrie (eleison) and Agnus Dei (miserere), both ask mercy.
• Thomas in one text (seen this morning) on the object puts faith and hope together against charity, though usually hope goes with charity (both in the will; faith in reason): in faith and hope we adhere to God as one from whom we get something (truth as teacher; goods like eternal life); in charity as God simply. Student: like Paul, faith and hope will end.
• Dividing three things into two-plus-one can go either way: family as parents vs. children, or head (father) vs. ruled (mother and children). Names said of many: Thomas divides at once into three (univocal, purely equivocal, analogous); usually equivocal vs. univocal, then equivocal subdivided into by chance and analogous; but one could put analogous with univocal as “said of many by reason” against “by chance” – e.g. two men named Duane, unrelated, just happen to share the name.

8. Paragraph 11: natural philosopher vs. dialectician (“a seething of the blood and heat around the heart”) #

Point: since the passions involve matter, the soul belongs to the student of nature, who defines from both matter and form.

• Paragraph 10 (recalled): the emotions clearly involve something bodily; so consideration of the soul, all of it or of this sort, pertains to the student of nature, whose objects are defined with matter.
• Reading paragraph 11: the dialectician defines anger as an appetite for vexing in return (desire to punish); the other as a seething of the blood and heat around the heart. The second gives the matter, the first the species and the logos, the what-it-is – but if it is to be, it must be in this sort of matter. House: shelter against wind, rain and heat (species, “these for the sake of this”) vs. stones, bricks, lumber (matter).
• Aristotle’s question: which belongs to the student of nature – matter ignoring logos, logos alone, or both? Reply as he gives it: form alone is the dialectician, who defines without matter; matter alone belongs to the natural philosopher; both also belongs to him, and more perfectly.
• The remaining figures: the artist (carpenter, doctor) treats matter only so far as the art requires; the mathematician treats things not separated from matter, but not as passions of body, by abstraction; the first philosopher treats things insofar as separate. Passions of the soul are inseparable from the natural matter of animals, as courage and fear, not as line and surface.
• The border: natural philosophy considers the soul insofar as in matter; an immaterial substance would not pertain to it at all. The proof of immortality in Book III is the “Canadian border” of natural philosophy, as arrival at the immovable is the “Mexican frontier”; beyond lies metaphysics. How the soul understands apart from the body belongs to metaphysics; the De Anima treats how it understands in the body, and the motions of the senses with bodily activity belong to natural philosophy.

His words #

• sense desire: his rendering of epithymia / concupiscentia [ed.: concupiscible appetite]; naming the whole from the part.
• appetitive powers / desiring powers: Latin appetitus, named from desire.
• dialectical definition: a definition (e.g. anger as desire for revenge) that leaves out the bodily change.
• formal aspect: what remains of an emotion-name when carried to the will.
• animal / human / angelic pleasures: his three-fold division, “human” in the narrow sense.
• thumos: anger or boldness; “spirited” not quite correct [ed.: irascible].
• planōmenoi: you err, you wander (of the Sadducees).
• motives of credibility: Vatican I’s miracles and fulfilled prophecy.
• prima veritas: first truth, object of faith.
• bis orat qui cantat: he who sings prays twice.
• names said of many things by reason vs. by chance: his alternative division of equivocal/analogous/univocal.
• logos: the account, species, the what-it-is.
• “Canadian border” / “Mexican frontier”: limits of natural philosophy at immortality of the soul and at the immovable.

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, De Anima I.1, paragraph 11 (his numbering), on the natural philosopher and dialectician defining anger, the house, mathematician and first philosopher.
• Psalm “O God, you are my God, whom I seek… to see your power and your glory” (Ps 63 inferred).
• Thomas Aquinas, Adoro te devote (lines “Credo quidquid dixit Dei filius / nil hoc verbo veritatis verius” and the closing on glory). Mentioned
• Aristotle, De Anima I.1, paragraph 10; Book III (immortality of the soul).
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II, opening of the treatise on faith (object as first truth); a text on the object of the theological virtues grouping faith and hope against charity (locus not stated).
• Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Matthew (on music).
• Plato, Republic (three parts of soul and city); Symposium (ascent to the beautiful).
• Augustine, Confessions.
• Shakespeare (definition of reason by discourse; “things in motion sooner catch the eye”).
• Osterly [Oesterle?], “Towards an Evaluation of Music.”
• John Stuart Mill on utilitarianism.
• Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (author inferred).
• Gospel on the Sadducees; raising of Lazarus; First Vatican Council on motives of credibility.
• Father Boulay’s collection on music; a Padre Pio passage on prayer.

His questions #

• Any other way of saying in English the two groups, concupiscible and irascible? Sense desire for the first (naming whole from part); thumos, anger or boldness, for the second.
• Is it possible in this life to have any concept of what the separated soul would experience? We can understand the formal aspect of the emotions even now, though less known.
• Of Christ’s miracles, which are the greatest – curing the blind or raising the dead? Raising the dead.
• Which is more known to us, the theological virtues or their acts? The acts; and before them, their object.
• In what way is God the object of hope? Our help; his power and love, but especially his mercy.
• Which two prayers in the Mass are sung? Kyrie and Agnus Dei, both asking mercy.
• Which definition belongs to the student of nature – the matter, the logos alone, or both? Matter alone belongs to him; both, more perfectly; logos alone is the dialectician.
• Where does the proof of the immortality of the soul leave you? At the border of natural philosophy, the beginning of metaphysics.