Practical Reason, Incontinence and Self-Control; Dividing the Soul by Its Root: Emotions, Tragedy and Comedy, Choice and the Image of God

Orientation #

He does not say what was done last time or what comes next; he does say “maybe I’ll leave you that problem” of what moves, and that Aristotle “is going to start to say” what the origin of motion is from the side of the soul. He recalls a division of the virtues of reason he “could give before” (prev. lecture, not resolved by the summaries). The previous class began De Anima III.9 on which power causes locomotion, and the next continues into ch. 10 on appetite and mind together as the two sources of motion.

The class, in order #

1. Mind does not move: looking reason and practical reason (“the virtues of looking reason”) #

Point: the text says mind, even when it looks at something fearful or pleasant, does not straightaway urge fleeing or pursuing; “the heart is moved” — “a discreet way of speaking,” he notes. To explain, he recalls Thomas’s division of the virtues of reason in the Prima Secundae.

• Looking reason (intellectus speculativus): three virtues — natural understanding (nous / intellectus; e.g. a whole is more than a part), reasoned-out understanding (episteme / scientia), and wisdom, “the head of both.” There is only one natural understanding and one wisdom, but many forms of reasoned-out understanding: so those two are lowest species while science is “still a genus.”
• Practical reason: about doing, foresight (prudentia, phronesis) [ed.: prudence]; about making, art (techne). There are many arts because each matter needs different tools and working: tailor with cloth vs. carpenter with wood (scissors and needle don’t make things of wood, hammer and saw don’t make things of cloth); glassblower; metal worker who heats and bends metal, which you don’t do with wood (his father’s factory).
• Thomas in the Summa distinguishes four forms of foresight: of the individual for his own life, of the father for his family, of the general (Douglas MacArthur), of the head of the community (George Bush, the prince or king). Foresight is about the here and now: what should I do?
• Question: where do ethics and political philosophy go — are they one of these foresights? Student: they cover all, more general. So they belong among reasoned knowledge: considering what courage is is not deciding whether to go to battle tomorrow. Citadel program: “how many want to go to Iraq?” — everybody — but that is the singular; “you don’t fight battles in general.”
• Hence Aristotle’s “useless hearer of ethics”: you can hear and not act. But that is not foresight, which involves counsel and judgment “but most of all, what, command.” So even when looking reason talks about something practical, it does not do so in a fully practical way.

2. Even practical reason does not move: the incontinent man (“the man who lacks self-control”) #

Point: the sharper objection — practical reason says here and now “I should” (eat no more dessert; charge that hill, as MacArthur did), and yet one does not do it.

• Text: even when mind urges and thought says flee or pursue, one is not moved but acts according to desire — epithumia, the sense desire for what pleases the senses (Greek “kratein … epithumia”, as he gives it). Shakespeare’s sonnet: “past reason hunted,” then “past reason hated.”
• Examples of reason overridden: the professor who was a “dental coward”; the smoker (and the many smoking doctors) who tells you never to take it up; Augustine in the Confessions — repent, “but not today”; the coward “scared stiff” at the hill; the package-store customer who bought seven half-bottles in seven bags in one bag, to pace himself (uneconomical, but one big bottle he would finish); the foreman with his nips and shaving lotion to hide the smell.
• Text generalises: the one having the doctor’s art does not always doctor. So “how can you say that even practical reason is what moves us?” Conclusion he draws for the text: “now you’re left to emotions” — it must be the emotions that make us act.
• Aside: Aristotle’s doctor examples come from his father, physician at the Macedonian court, which is how Aristotle came to teach Alexander; the lost book on Homer for Alexander; Plutarch’s story of Alexander objecting to the Metaphysics being published and Aristotle replying that only those who already understand the subject will understand the book — “in a sense fits the Metaphysics.”

3. Nor is appetite lord of motion: the continent man (“neither is appetite lord of motion”) #

Point: the opposite case — the man of self-control has the struggle, desires (epithumountes, “kratountes kai epithumountes”), but does not do it and follows mind (nous).

• Alcoholics Anonymous: the buddy who comes over, holds your hand, distracts you — so you don’t always follow your emotions. The dieter or faster has the sense desire to eat and does not follow it. “So how can you say sense desire and emotion is what moves us?”
• Student: does the Greek say kurios? He spells kuria (kappa upsilon rho iota alpha), feminine because orexis is feminine — “he orexis”; cf. the church’s curia, “a kind of rule” (left loose). Parallel: Shakespeare’s “since my dear soul was mistress of her choice” — mistress, not master, because anima is feminine.
• “Maybe I’ll leave you that problem.” Aristotle will next say what the origin of motion is from the side of the soul; the bodily parts used for moving — different in fish, bird, dog, worm — are treated later in Parts of Animals, Motion of Animals, Progression of Animals.

4. Two ways of dividing the powers of the soul (“more by their root”) #

Point: Thomas says Book II of On the Soul divides powers by their acts and acts by their objects (so ultimately by objects); but there is another division, which Aristotle himself sometimes uses, by their root in the soul.

• Root: the human soul is most immaterial, the sensing soul rises above matter less, the feeding soul least. So: understanding soul vs. sensing soul vs. feeding soul.
• Feeding soul: powers of feeding, growing, reproducing. Sensing soul: the exterior senses, “maybe some of the interior senses,” and the desiring powers that follow on sensing — epithumia and thumos, the concupiscible and irascible appetite. Aristotle does not break down the emotions between them; Thomas does explicitly in the Prima Secundae and De Veritate.

5. The six emotions of the concupiscible appetite (“I hate salmon”) #

Point: emotions concerned directly with what is agreeable or disagreeable to the senses.

• Agreeable: liking/love (“if I really like it a lot, I might say I love it”); in its absence, desire (for candy); in its presence, pleasure (licorice, chocolate).
• Disagreeable: dislike/hate (salmon); turning away/avoiding it; when it is forced on you (the hostess serving salmon), sadness or pain.
• Aside: “the only good fish is a disguised fish” — fish and chips; salmon can’t be disguised.

6. The irascible emotions, tragedy and comedy, Mozart’s keys (“the difficult good or the difficult bad”) #

Point: animals meet difficulty in getting the pleasing and avoiding the painful, so further emotions arise about the difficult good and bad.

• Difficult good: hope (if you think you can overcome) vs. despair (if not). Threatening bad: boldness (I can handle you) vs. fear (you might beat the heck out of me). Pain actually inflicted, and I think I can do something: anger (“you’re on my foot” — “so what?”).
• No irascible emotion arises from pleasure: with pleasure the animal soul is satisfied; it does not accept pain it can avert.
• Student: fear and boldness arise from aversion; could anger arise from sadness? Yes — sadness or pain, when I think I can overcome it.
• Tragedy and comedy are about the principal emotions: tragedy about pity (a form of sadness) and fear — Plato and Aristotle put them in the definition, and Shakespeare’s prologue to Romeo and Juliet names exactly those two (“fearful passage,” “piteous overthrows”): “right on the nose.” Comedy: a form of joy called mirth, and hope.
• Mozart, “most accurate” in keys: sadness, despair, fear, anger in minor; joy, hope, boldness in major. D minor for anger (the D minor concerto, turning to joy and confidence at its end; the Requiem; Don Giovanni going down to hell, Leporello’s fear); C minor for the 24th concerto’s anger; the same melody moved from major to minor for hope to despair; D major for a march/boldness, C major for hope, G or B flat for concupiscible joy. “Just a certain feel for the key.”

7. The understanding soul: reason and will, the image of God, the angels (“the will is in reason”) #

Point: as sense desire follows the senses, the will follows the “acting upon understanding” and the “undergoing understanding” [ed.: agent and possible intellect].

• Shakespeare: choice is the act of the will, “sealed” once reason could distinguish among men; Horatio chosen as “that man that is not passion’s slave.” Reason sees the difference between the passion’s slave (coward to fear, incontinent to sense desire, irascible man to anger) and Horatio.
• Choice depends on deliberation: Disraeli (Maurois’s biography) proposing to a widow twelve years older who said “give me a year to study your character” — “marvelous,” though her friends thought he was after her money; his brother Richard’s priest, unhappy to marry couples not ready — “do you take…” asks whether you are choosing, not whether you have a wonderful feeling. George Washington also married a widow.
• Aristotle’s “the will is in reason” means the will is in the rational part. Christians call this part mens (“mind,” but fuller): the image of God is in it, so reason and will are needed to see the image of God in the soul.
• This is the more immortal part, the part like the angels, who have understanding and will but no body, senses or emotions. The sensing part is more known to us, so angels and God seem strange; C. S. Lewis calls angelic love “ferocious,” all-consuming, as Scripture says God’s love is, hence metaphorically “jealous.” Their love is more unified, so more intense; ours is divided between will and emotions. Not a loss on their part but a unity of what we have divided.
• Pleasures of the fine arts involve both sensing and understanding soul; pleasures of philosophy only the understanding soul, so we ascend from the one to philosophy and theology. Even scriptural metaphors are ordered more to reason than to pleasing the imagination. (Recording ends mid-sentence.)

His words #

• looking reason; intellectus speculativus [ed.: speculative intellect]
• natural understanding; nous, intellectus; e.g. a whole is more than a part
• reasoned-out understanding; episteme, scientia [ed.: science]; a genus with many species
• wisdom; “the head of both” kinds of understanding
• foresight; prudentia, phronesis [ed.: prudence]; counsel, judgment, “most of all command”
• art; techne; many arts because many matters and tools
• useless hearer of ethics; hears and does not act
• incontinent man; lacks self-control, acts against reason by epithumia
• continent man; man of self-control, desires but follows mind (nous)
• kuria; “lord” of motion, feminine with orexis
• dividing powers by acts and acts by objects vs. by their root in the soul
• feeding soul, sensing soul, understanding soul
• epithumia / concupiscible appetite; thumos / irascible appetite
• liking or love, desire, pleasure; dislike or hate, turning away, sadness or pain — the six concupiscible emotions
• hope, despair, boldness, fear, anger — the irascible emotions
• acting upon understanding, undergoing understanding [ed.: agent and possible intellect]
• mens; “mind,” the part bearing the image of God, including reason and will

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, On the Soul, Book III (inferred: ch. 9) — mind does not urge fleeing or pursuing; the incontinent acts by desire; the doctor does not always doctor; appetite not kuria of motion; the continent follow mind.
• Shakespeare, sonnet: “past reason hunted… past reason hated.”
• Shakespeare, “since my dear soul was mistress of her choice… that man that is not passion’s slave” (inferred: Hamlet).
• Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Prologue: “fearful passage,” “piteous overthrows.”

Mentioned

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Prima Secundae — virtues of reason; the emotions.
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae — four forms of foresight (locus not stated).
• Thomas Aquinas, De Veritate — emotions divided into concupiscible and irascible.
• Aristotle, On the Soul, Book II — division of powers by acts and objects.
• Aristotle, Ethics — the useless hearer (locus not stated).
• Aristotle, Parts of Animals, Motion of Animals, Progression of Animals; Metaphysics; lost book on Homer.
• Plutarch, Life of Alexander; Augustine, Confessions; André Maurois, Disraeli; C. S. Lewis on angelic love; Mozart, D minor and C minor (24th) piano concertos, Requiem, Don Giovanni.

His questions #

• Where would you put ethics or political philosophy — is it one of the four foresights? No: it is more general, so a form of reasoned knowledge; one can be a useless hearer of it.
• How can you say even practical reason is the cause of motion, when it says “I should” and you don’t? You are then left with the emotions as what makes us act.
• How can you say sense desire and emotion is what moves us, when the continent man desires and does not follow? Left open: “maybe I’ll leave you that problem.”
• Does the Greek actually say kurios for lord? Kuria, feminine, agreeing with orexis.
• Why does Shakespeare say “mistress” rather than “master” of her choice? Because he is close to the Latin: anima is feminine.
• Could you say anger arises from sadness? Yes, from sadness or pain, when I think I can do something about it.
• What does Aristotle mean by saying the will is in reason? That the will is in the rational part of the soul.