Aquinas on Desire (ST I, Q.80, A.1–2): Why the Soul Has a Power to Desire, and Why Sense Desire and Will Might Be the Same Power

Orientation #

He says the custom is one article, a break, then the second; today “we’re just concerned with the first” of the four topics Thomas lists, i.e. q. 80 with its two articles. He looks ahead to “the next question” for the concupiscible/irascible division and to “free judgment” (“we’ll see that when we get there”). The previous class finished q. 79 (conscience); the next continues q. 80 a. 2.

The class, in order #

1. Why the power is named from desire (“things in motion sooner catch the eye”) #

Point: the whole power (love, desire, enjoyment, hope, despair, fear…) is named “appetite,” i.e. from desire, because desire is the act most like motion, and motion is what we notice first.

1. Ulysses in Troilus and Cressida: “things in motion sooner catch the eye than what not stirs” — he uses it to open philosophy of nature; wave to be noticed, stay still to be unnoticed; revolutions and assassinations make the news at once.
2. Reason itself is named from reasoning, its act that is like motion, not from understanding, which is like rest; Shakespeare’s “large discourse, looking before and after” — discourse from the Latin for running.
3. Of the three fundamental acts of the heart — I love it, I want it, I enjoy it — desire is most like motion: “a motion towards a good you don’t have.”
4. Sign from names: hunger and thirst have names; the love or enjoyment of food has none; even in philosophy the love of wisdom has no name but the desire to know does (wonder). We name things as we know them, so the named is the better known. Looking ahead to the next question: the two sense-appetites, epithumia and thumos, concupiscible and irascible, are each named from one strong, outwardly manifest emotion — concupiscence (desire for what pleases the senses) out of six, anger (desire to get even, revenge) out of five. The old cat meowing at 4 a.m. until the dish is on the ground: hunger is noticeable; so is an angry animal. Shakespeare’s pun “the very wrath of love” trades on the likeness. Likeness in the virtues too: temperance restrains sense desire, mildness restrains anger — both emotions more often go wrong by excess. So appetitus names the power from the act that stands out — “directly analogous” to reason named from reasoning. In English he calls the power “the heart.”

2. The four things to be considered; free judgment (“nothing so good that we couldn’t”) #

Thomas’s proemium: (1) the desiring power in general; (2) sensuality — meaning sense desire, emotions, feelings, passions, named from the senses, not necessarily lust; (3) the will — shared with angels and God because, like universal reason, it is immaterial, whereas sense desire is shared with animals; (4) free judgment — the Latin says liberum arbitrium, “free judgment,” not “free will”: the animal’s judgment of good and bad is determined, ours is free. Why free: nothing in this world is so good that it couldn’t be considered bad in some way, since every good prevents some other good — studying prevents eating, praying prevents studying or sleeping — and vice versa; so universal reason can judge freely. Aside: in his love-and-friendship course the first great distinction is love-as-emotion vs. love-as-act-of-will; students think first only of the emotion, but the love of wisdom is not an emotion.

3. Article 1, the three objections (“the good is what all want”) #

Point: three good objections against a special desiring power.

• Obj. 1: no power should be assigned for what is common to animate and inanimate; but to want is common to both — the first definition of good (opening of the Nicomachean Ethics): the good is what all want. The nursery says the plant “wants a lot of sun”; the square peg “doesn’t want to go”; Aristotle’s strange remark that matter desires form (extended meaning: matter is ordered to form as its perfection); a student adds heavy things tending to the earth; even inanimate things resist being cut or split. Student: is a plant animate? Yes, but Thomas here takes animata as things with some knowing, at least sense — the word “animal” shows we credit animals with soul more than plants; De Anima: life is hidden in plants, and in book I the predecessors investigated life from sensation and moving about.
• Obj. 2: powers are distinguished by acts and acts by objects, so from first to last by objects; but the same thing is known and desired (De Anima: the food is both known and desired); so the desiring power is not other than the vis apprehensiva. Why the knowing power is called “grasping” and the desiring not: knowing takes the thing into the knower (the known is more in the knower); love is the reverse — “I left my heart in San Francisco,” “my heart’s not in it” — it goes out to the thing. Metaphysics VI: the good is in things, truth primarily in the mind. Truth is not found in the ground, the ocean or the air like oil or gold; it is found where falsity is, in statements, the two halves of a contradiction (“you’re sitting / you’re not sitting”), and statements are in the mind; nothing is true or false until the mind affirms or denies. Hence “grasp” — contained as in the hand; love is spoken of as giving. Losing your mind is bad; losing your heart “depends on who you lose it to”; we say “keep your cool,” not “keep your heart.” Consequence: to know something bad is not bad, to love something bad is bad. I can know health and sickness together (knowing normal blood pressure helps me know abnormal), but I cannot love both, because love goes to the thing as it is in itself, where one excludes the other: loving virtue prevents loving vice. Student: potentia vs. vis? — here more or less synonymous.
• Obj. 3: the common is not divided against the private; every power wants its own desirable, the object suitable to it (the ear wants to hear, the eye to see, the stomach to digest, the heart to pump); so no distinct power for “the desirable in general.” Aside: he has thought of giving students only the objections to stew on, then the body a day later, then the replies; he did it once with Thomas’s article on whether charity is friendship (inferred from “whether to share it to his friendship”).

4. Sed contra (“distinguishes the genera of powers”) #

“The Philosopher” = Aristotle by antonomasia (as “Christ,” “the Bible,” “the White House” — the figure is common though its name is not). De Anima II distinguishes five genera of powers, the desiring power one of them; and Damascene, De Fide Orthodoxa II — a kind of summa, less complete than Thomas’s; great fighter against the iconoclasts — distinguishes the desiring powers from the knowing. Vires is the plural of vis.

5. The body: inclination follows form; knowers have forms in a higher way (“the soul of man is in some way all things”) #

The argument, two statements to a third, “like adding or multiplying, two numbers to get a third”:

1. Some inclination follows any form. Reason: form is more “nature” than matter (philosophy of nature) because by matter a thing is natural only in ability, by form in act; so what a thing does follows on what it is — fire from its form goes up and generates another fire.
2. Knowers have forms in a higher way. Things lacking knowledge have only the form determining them to their own private being, and on it follows a natural inclination, “natural desire” — the plant growing toward the sun or down toward water. Knowers have that too, but also receive the forms of other things: the green book has only green, but his brown eye receives the black of your clothing and the red of the fire extinguisher; the glass has only its shape, but he receives the shape of the desk, chair, statue, cross, clock; the ear receives trumpet, violin, voice, brakes; the understanding receives the natures of all things (the definition of triangle is the nature of triangle in the head; the stone has only the nature of stone). De Anima III: the soul is in some way all things. Digression on this: knowers thereby approach a likeness to God, in whom all things pre-exist simply (Dionysius, “Pseudo-Areopagite, whatever he is”); Scripture’s “follow me and I will show you every good” — Thomas: “I will show you myself.” “That’s really kind of an amazing thing to see”: knowers are more like God not only because they know but because by knowing they are in some way all things; and seeing your superiority to non-knowers shows a fortiori God’s.
3. Conclusion: so a higher inclination, above natural desire, must be in them — the desiring power, by which the animal desires what it grasps and not only what its natural form inclines it to. This also grounds a. 2: desire following sensing (sensuality) vs. desire following understanding (will).

6. The replies (“suitable simply to the animal as a whole”) #

• Ad 1 falls directly from the body: desire is in knowers in a way above the common way found in all things through natural form; hence a power for that act.
• Ad 2: some powers are easy to tell apart because their objects are in no way the same (colour vs. sound); but the same thing can be object of two powers, not in the same way — the shape of the glass top known by touch with eyes shut, or through its colour; the table’s shape through its brown or through its hardness. So truth is object of the mind as such, and as a good is object of desire. “Kind of subtle there” — especially with the universal powers, the will and the two intellects (one active, one passive, to the same thing). Student: what power goes with the natural inclination? — none apart; it just follows on the natural form (the growing power, in the plant); “desire” of the heavy body for the earth is the word used equivocally, “but equivocal by reason.” Not a separate power beyond each power’s own inclination.
• Ad 3, set up: if you yell in my ear I tend to hear; wave and I tend to see; food in the stomach is digested — every power tends to its own act. Why a further power? That would be like adding “animal” to dog, cat, horse; “odd, even, and number”; “men, women, and human beings”; or “the ability to sense” alongside seeing, hearing, smelling. Thomas’s reply: each power is itself a form or nature and so has a natural inclination to its own object (the eye tends to see a snapped finger, not to hear it); but beyond this is animal desire (from anima, what the animal has that the plant lacks), following apprehension, for what is suitable not to this or that power but to the animal as a whole — suitable for me to eat, not just for my stomach to digest. The old textbooks called it elicited appetite: not following simply on what you are, but on some knowledge, sensation or reason. Student confusion, worked out: smelling bacon from bed — tending to smell it is the nose’s own act; then “all of a sudden I desire bacon” — that is the new desire following knowing, different from the tendency to digest bacon once in the stomach. Hunger is desire for food (object of the digestive power) following a sensation of it. Plant roots going to water vs. stopping at the tavern on a hot day. Asides: spastic stomach — released from the Lenten fast in the old days; the friend with hot dog and buttered popcorn; the missionary seminary with flies in the bread; the man sent back from South America with recurring fever.

7. Article 2 opened: sense vs. intellectual desire (“a motion from the soul to things”) #

Appetitus here names the power, not the act; two desiring powers: sense desire (following the senses) and intellectual desire — the will, voluntas — vs. the ability for emotions or feelings.

• Obj. 1 (he once calls it “the third”): powers are not diversified by accidental differences, and it is accidental to the desirable whether grasped by sense or understanding — I may eat because I smell the food or because I know I need it to keep my strength.
• Obj. 2: understanding is of universals, sense of singulars (De Anima); but this distinction has no place on the side of desire, since desire is a motion from the soul to things, the reverse of knowing (thing into knower). Boethius’s line, “singular when sensed, universal when understood”: this glass, this chair, seen or felt, is singular; understanding what a chair is is universal — but that split happens inside the knowing powers; outside there is only the singular glass. So every desire seems to be for a singular thing; the intellectual desire should not be distinguished from the sense. “That’s interesting objection” — the class ends here, unanswered.

His words #

• appetite / the desiring power (appetitus); names the whole power (love, desire, enjoyment, hope, fear…) from desire, the act most like motion; in English “the heart”
• discourse; from Latin for running; reason’s act that is like a motion
• wonder; the name for the desire to know
• epithumia / thumos; concupiscible and irascible appetites, each named from one strong emotion
• sensuality; sense desire, emotions, feelings, passions; not necessarily lust
• free judgment; his rendering of liberum arbitrium against the usual “free will”
• animate / inanimate; Thomas here takes animate as things with some knowing
• vis apprehensiva; the grasping or taking power, because knowing takes the thing in
• potentia / vis (pl. vires); synonyms here
• antonomasia; “the Philosopher” for Aristotle
• natural desire; the inclination following the natural form
• animal desire; desire following apprehension, for what suits the animal as a whole [ed.: the old textbooks' "elicited appetite," as he notes]
• equivocal by reason; his gloss on “desire” said of the heavy body [ed.: analogy]
• will (voluntas); intellectual desire, following understanding

Texts #

Read in class:

• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 80, proemium and a. 1 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 80, a. 2, objections 1-2
• Boethius, “singular when sensed, universal when understood” (quoted, locus not given)
• Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, Ulysses’ speech on fashion (quoted line) Mentioned:
• Aristotle, De Anima I (predecessors on life), II (five genera of powers; food known and desired), III (soul in some way all things)
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, beginning (good is what all want)
• Aristotle, Metaphysics VI (“sixth book of wisdom”: good in things, truth in mind)
• Aristotle on matter desiring form; on nature as matter and form (philosophy of nature)
• John Damascene, De Fide Orthodoxa II
• Dionysius (all things pre-exist in God simply); Scripture, “I will show you every good”
• Shakespeare, “large discourse, looking before and after”; “the very wrath of love”
• Thomas on whether charity is friendship (inferred; locus not given)

His questions #

• Why do we name the heart from desire rather than from love? Because desire is most like motion, and things in motion sooner catch the eye.
• Does the love of food have a name? the enjoyment of food? No; but the desire does — hunger, thirst.
• Which is more nature, matter or form? Form, since by matter a thing is natural only in ability, by form in act.
• Why is the knowing power called the grasping power and the desiring not? Knowing takes the thing into the knower; love goes out to the thing itself.
• Where do you find truth? Where you find falsity — in statements, which are in the mind.
• Is it good to lose your mind? to lose your heart? No; “depends on who you lose it to.”
• What are the two key statements of the body? An inclination follows any form; knowers have forms in a higher way.
• What is something suitable to the animal as a whole, not to this or that power? Something suitable for me to eat, not just for the stomach to digest.
• Is the tendency of each power to its own act the desire he means here? No; that is natural inclination; animal desire follows knowledge.
• Should intellectual desire be distinguished from sense desire, if every desire is for a singular? left open (class ends on the objection).