The desiring powers: sense desire, the emotions, love, and Mill on pleasure

Orientation #

He opens “as he goes on in this chapter” and points to “140 here”, continuing the reading of De Anima II with Thomas’s commentary; he refers back to having “talked a little bit about these before” (the emotions) and to having mentioned Mill and music “before”. The previous class treated the five genera of soul-powers and their reduction to three kinds of soul.

The class, in order #

1. Section 140: plants, animals, and the division of desire (“These alone are present in the plants”) #

Point: the nutritive powers alone are in plants; animals have nutritive and sensing; and “if the sensing, also the desiring”, which Aristotle now divides.

• The Greek for desire is orexis; it divides into three: epithumia, thumos, boulesis. The translator renders epithumia “desire”, which he calls “not as precise as it could be”, since desire names the appetitive whole.
• Latin: epithumia → concupiscible appetite; thumos → irascible; English: “concupiscence” or, as he prefers, “sense desire” (usable for both of the first two). Boulesis → reasonable desire, “what we could call the will”.
• Plato’s Republic: Socrates compares parts of the city to parts of the soul: rulers/reason (who direct the rest), soldiers/thumos, laborers or common people/epithumia.

2. The concupiscible emotions (“directly related to what is agreeable or disagreeable”) #

Point: the concupiscible appetite covers the emotions (“passions”, “feelings”) directly related to what is agreeable or disagreeable to the senses; hunger, thirst, the desire to reproduce fall here.

• Three toward the pleasant: liking/loving (same thing, loving the stronger word) → desire or wanting (when you lack what you like: hungry, thirsty) → joy or pleasure (when you get it: the candy bar).
• Three toward the painful: dislike/hate (salmon, liver) → aversion (turn away, eat crackers instead) → pain or sadness (forced to eat the salmon).

3. Why the irascible is needed; its five emotions (“why aren’t those enough?”) #

Point: the irascible arises when there is a difficulty in getting what you desire, in avoiding what you have aversion for, or in getting rid of something forced on you.

• Hope vs. despair: think you can overcome the difficulty / think you can’t. Two men want the last item in the department store; the bowl of popcorn right beside you needs no irascible at all. Two men want the same woman → a fight; “Aristotle says the animals fight over food and sex.”
• Fear vs. boldness: something threatens and you’re not sure you can overcome it / you think you can beat him. His cat shivering on his shoulder at a big friendly dog, up the tree, under the porch bed for a day or two, bolting back at the sight of the dog: fear. But fear “does give you a little ability to resist”, even by running: the Aesop fable, “one thing to be running for your dinner, another thing to be running for your life”; how fast people run from police.
• Anger, the fifth: if you think you can get rid of what causes pain. “You’re on my foot” — “So what?” — anger gives strength to shove him off; the bratty neighbour kid who knocks over the potted plant (mother indignant, father applauded); a neighbour using your kids for target practice; the man who fired at a car thief.
• Hence thumos characterizes the soldier, who must be bold and courageous; the common people pursue “beer and peanuts”.

4. Naming the appetites from the most known part (“naming the whole from the more known”) #

Point: the irascible is named from ira, anger, as thumos in Greek can mean anger or boldness yet covers all five (hope, despair, boldness, fear, anger); likewise the whole orexis/appetitus/“desiring powers” is named from desire.

• Desire strictly is “for a good that you like or love, but don’t have”: not the same as liking or loving, nor as joy or pleasure; the whole is named from it because it is “most known to us”.
• Anger is the most manifest irascible emotion: the tone of voice changes; an animal or a child knows you are angry without understanding the words.
• Student summary (hope from desire for the difficult, despair from inability, fear from aversion to a prospective evil hard to avoid): he confirms, restating the three sources of difficulty.

5. The irascible is higher than the concupiscible (“it seems to hear reason more”) #

Point: in the Republic and in general the irascible ranks above the concupiscible because it is less tied to the immediate outward senses.

1. Through the irascible you may pursue something actually painful to the senses, e.g. a fight.
2. Aristotle contrasts anger with sensual desire: anger “hears reason, but imperfectly” — I have a reason for being angry with you, though I may exaggerate what you did.
3. So the irascible is closer to reason, “looking before and after”.

6. Student question: how boldness relates to fear (“How does boldness relate to fear?”) #

Point: both arise about the same difficulty, and which one arises depends on how you size up the opponent.

• The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (he corrects himself from “Rip Van Winkle”): Brom Bones, top athlete, is bold toward any rival for Katrina and drives Ichabod Crane out of town; Ichabod, who could out-talk or out-sing him, is fearful of a physical contest. The difficulty: many want Katrina, lovely and a rich farmer’s daughter; if only one man wanted her and she him, no difficulty.
• Cats over the food dish: Tabitha, “queen of the Bumblebee Circle”, charged intruding cats “like a mad woman” and bit anyone who carried her to the basement; Moppet is not that bold. A much bigger rival → you run, scared. So “fear or boldness, either one could arise.”
• Soldiers: the same army is bold when confident of victory, fearful at other times, sometimes panics; feigned panic used as strategy — the front line shoots, falls back between the lines behind, which attack.
• The Greeks admired courage most; the very life of the city depends on it. The irascible is “the defender and fighter for what the epithumia wants”.
• Corollary he stresses: no irascible emotion arises from pleasure, only from pain — there is no difficulty in enjoying the steak once you have it, unless something takes it away.

7. Digression: major and minor keys represent the emotions (“major keys, right, and the minor keys”) #

Point: classical music represents these emotions; the great distinction is major vs. minor.

• Mozart’s letter to his father on representing anger in the Abduction from the Seraglio.
• Major represents joy, minor sadness: the “heavenly twins” K. 515 (C major, joyful) and K. 516 (G minor, sad). Irascible: hope and boldness → major; anger and fear → minor. In the piano concertos a melody returns in a different key, dropping from major to minor “as it goes from faint hope to despair”; the two minor concertos (the 24th in C minor, and the D minor) are representations of anger. Don Giovanni going down to hell: fearful, minor.
• Finer tendencies: D major and to some extent C major for boldness/hope; B flat and G major for concupiscible joy; A major and E flat in between; “can’t be too precise”; rhythm is involved too.
• Minor is also more serious: some masses, the Great Mass in C minor.
• Aside: his old teacher Kasurik [name uncertain in recording] disliked certain things in Mozart, “all in D minor”.

8. Epithumia, orexis, concupiscence (“Concupiscence, what does that mean?”) #

Point (student: does epithumia also name one particular concupiscible emotion?): yes; concupiscence means a desire for what is pleasing to the senses, especially touch, and epithumia has the same sense, while orexis is the broader word. English lacks the precise names, so we borrow the Latin.

9. Boulesis, dilectio, and “chosen love” (“Desire that grows out of counsel”) #

Point: boulesis comes from boule, counsel, so it is well named as a desire following on the use of reason; the corresponding love is dilectio, from electio, choice.

• Thomas’s treatise on love: amor corresponds to Greek eros; dilectio names the love in the will, which he translates “chosen love” (or “deliberate love”), against “sense love”.
• Greek has four words (C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves): eros (sensual, “erotic”, Latin amor), storge (natural love of parents for children, not sensual), philia (friendship), agape (charity). English “love” is used for all and is therefore equivocal.
• English “council”/“counsel”: basically the same word, a body that advises and deliberates.
• Choice in the strict sense involves deliberation of reason, so a newborn baby has no choice.
• Hamlet, before the play within the play (the ghost’s story of poison in the ear; Horatio to watch the king): “Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice and could have been distinguished [ed.: usually “could of men distinguish”], her election hath sealed thee for herself”; “give me that man that is not passion’s slave”; “in my heart of hearts”. Reading: the soul was mistress of her choice when reason could distinguish among men and see that the man who is not passion’s slave is better; before that there is only emotional feeling; friendship in the strict sense involves choice.
• Love of God: as a child in church he thought of the love of a girl; but love of God is not an emotion but a love in the will. Greek agape (St. Paul) → Latin caritas, which has since been narrowed to exterior works of charity, so translators just say “love”.
• Aristotle, Metaphysics: philosopher and sophist “differ by their choice of life” — the philosopher would rather be wise than appear wise, the sophist the reverse. So the love of wisdom is a chosen love, possible only once reason can distinguish wisdom from other knowledge and see its excellence; philosophia is from philia, not eros. Since sense love is more known, “lover” today suggests romantic love, not the philosopher.
• Student: did the Greeks use agape before Paul? Not particularly in Aristotle, who distinguishes eros and philia.

10. The text’s triad and why sensing entails desiring (“appetite is desire and anger and will”) #

Point: the translation’s “desire and anger and will” renders epithumia (sense desire), thumos (not just anger — anger is a desire for revenge, to get even), and boulesis; then Aristotle gives the reason animals with sense also desire.

1. All animals have at least one sense, touch.
2. Whatever has touch has pleasure and pain.
3. With pleasure and pain comes desire for the pleasant and aversion to the painful — here the word is epithumia, “appetite for the pleasant”, after which the text returns to orexis.

• So the senses know good and bad by what is agreeable or disagreeable to them: a more limited way than reason’s.

11. Digression: Mill, the “bestial” objection, and three kinds of pleasure (“their philosophy is what? Bestial”) #

Point: for Epicureans, Utilitarians, Mill, the whole criterion of good and bad is pleasure and pain (perhaps “greater pleasure for the greater number”); Mill’s reply to the charge of bestiality is partly good but insufficient.

• Mill’s reply: turns the objection back — you are the beasts, assuming man has no pleasures beasts lack; distinguishes pleasures shared with beasts from those only humans pursue, and says those who have tasted both prefer the human ones — “just a matter of experience”, no reason given.
• His improvement, following Aristotle: three kinds — animal pleasures (shared with beasts, though ours are refined: haute cuisine, seasoning), angelic pleasures of understanding God and the soul (shared with angels and God but inferiorly, more perfectly when we see God), and between them human pleasures involving the union of body and soul, sense and reason: Mozart and Shakespeare, “too high for the animals and too low for the angels”, most proportioned to man. Mozart: “music can never be displeasing to the ear”; yet his cats ignore years of Mozart and hear him quietly getting sandwich meat through the loud music.
• Plato and Aristotle: the common man does not taste the higher pleasures, so excess in the lower ones is more excusable in him than in one who can.
• Conclusion: if pleasure is your whole criterion, your way of judging is still a beast’s; reason sees other reasons for loving — truth and justice are desirable “nothing to do with pleasure”.

His words #

• orexis / orektikon: desire, the desiring powers as a whole; Latin appetitus [ed.: appetite].
• epithumia: sense desire, the concupiscible appetite; also names the particular emotion of desire for the pleasant.
• thumos: the irascible appetite; can mean anger or boldness; covers hope, despair, boldness, fear, anger.
• boulesis: reasonable desire, the will, “desire that grows out of counsel”; from boule, counsel.
• “sense desire”: his English for concupiscible (and irascible) appetite.
• emotions / passions / feelings: his interchangeable names for acts of the sense appetites.
• desire (strict): for a good you like or love but don’t have.
• anger: desire for revenge, to get even.
• ira: anger, source of “irascible”.
• amor / dilectio: love as eros vs. love in the will, from electio, choice; “chosen love”, “deliberate love” vs. “sense love”.
• eros, storge, philia, agape: the four Greek loves; agape → caritas → charity.
• “bestial”: the objection to the pleasure criterion.
• animal / human / angelic pleasures: his threefold division against Mill’s twofold.

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, De Anima II, section 140 of Thomas’s commentary (plants have the nutritive alone; touch, pleasure and pain, desire; “desire and anger and will”).
• Shakespeare, Hamlet, Hamlet to Horatio before the play scene (quoted from memory). Mentioned
• Plato, Republic (parts of the city and of the soul; thumos of the soldiers).
• Aristotle, Metaphysics (philosopher vs. sophist differ by choice of life).
• Thomas Aquinas, treatise on love (amor / dilectio).
• C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves.
• Aesop’s fable (running for dinner vs. for life).
• Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (inferred author).
• Mozart: letter to his father on the Abduction from the Seraglio; K. 515 and 516; piano concertos in C minor (no. 24) and D minor; Don Giovanni; Great Mass in C minor.
• John Stuart Mill, the Epicureans, the Utilitarians (on pleasure as criterion).
• St. Paul (agape).

His questions #

• Why aren’t the concupiscible emotions enough for the animal? Because there is sometimes difficulty in getting what you want, avoiding what you hate, or repelling what is forced on you; the irascible is for that.
• How does boldness relate to fear? (student) Both concern a difficulty; boldness if you think you can overcome it, fear if not — the same soldiers or cats show either.
• Why is the irascible higher than the concupiscible? It is less tied to the outward senses, can pursue what is painful, and anger hears reason, though imperfectly.
• Does epithumia also name one particular concupiscible emotion? (student) Yes: like concupiscence, desire for what pleases the senses, especially touch; orexis is broader.
• When was the soul “mistress of her choice”? When reason could distinguish among men and see that one is better than another; choice requires deliberation.
• Did the Greeks use agape before St. Paul? (student) Not particularly in Aristotle, who distinguishes eros and philia; we know it mainly from Scripture.
• Why do animals with sense also have desire? All have touch; touch brings pleasure and pain; hence desire for the pleasant and aversion to the painful.
• Does Mill overcome the objection that his philosophy is bestial? Only partly: if pleasure is the whole criterion, the way of judging is still a beast’s; reason sees reasons for loving truth and justice apart from pleasure.