Summa I, Q. 82, Art. 5: Irascible and Concupiscible in the Will, and an Introduction to Free Judgment (Liberum Arbitrium)

Orientation #

He opens “taking a little break between the first and the second article” and says “the article five now”; he closes by saying “we’re up to the liberum arbitrium” and that after that question they will get to the “more detailed question on the understanding,” “question eighty-four,” which “takes a couple sessions.” The previous class treated whether the will moves the understanding (a. 4), and the next takes up free judgment (q. 83, a. 1).

The class, in order #

1. Recap: the eleven emotions of the sense desire (“the irascible is kind of the defender of the concupiscible”) #

The point: the sense desire (following outward and inward senses) divides into concupiscible and irascible.

• Concupiscible: about what is agreeable or disagreeable to the senses. Three emotions toward the agreeable: liking/love (candy agreeable to my senses, I like it), desire (wanting the candy I lack), joy/pleasure (having it). Three toward the disagreeable: dislike/hate (salmon: “the only good fish I see is a disguised fish. You can’t disguise salmon”), aversion (turning away when it’s on the menu), sadness (forced to eat it at someone’s house, “I try to keep a cheerful face, but I am sad”).
• Irascible: arises when a difficulty stands in the way of getting the good, avoiding the bad, or getting rid of a pain. Hope (of overcoming difficulties of the good) vs. despair (if you think you can’t); fear (difficulties of avoiding the bad) vs. boldness/confidence (if you think you can); anger (someone inflicting pain on me and I think I can make him stop).
• The irascible does not arise simply from what is agreeable to the outward senses: the fight itself may be painful, yet animals, as Aristotle says, fight over food and sex. So the irascible “is kind of the defender of the concupiscible.”
• The question then: are there likewise two desiring powers in the rational part? Thomas: no; since the will extends to all good things, love and hope in the will are acts of one will, not two wills.

2. Objection 1: concupiscence of wisdom, anger against vices (“in the very wrath of love”) #

Thomas “always starts on the opposite.” The concupiscible is named from concupiscendo (sense desire), the irascible from getting angry (ira), the most manifest though not the only irascible emotion.

• Aside on naming from what stands out: Shakespeare’s “in the very wrath of love, clubs cannot part them” — wrath called love metaphorically because both are strong; you need a club to separate lovers and fighters alike. Likewise in the Secunda Secundae Thomas treats temperance (about concupiscence) and then mildness (about anger) together, because both are strong passions to be pulled back, unlike courage where you must be pushed forward.
• The objection: some concupiscence belongs only to the will, e.g. concupiscentia sapientiae, “the desire for wisdom leads to the eternal kingdom” (Wisdom, book 6). Some anger belongs only to the will, e.g. anger against vices; Jerome (on Matthew 13): we possess the hate of vices in our irascible. Therefore irascible and concupiscible should be distinguished in the intellectual desire too.

3. How the names of the emotions are carried over (“you keep just the formal aspect”) #

The point (from the end of Summa Contra Gentiles, Book I): the names of the eleven emotions are carried over to acts of the will, dropping the bodily aspect and keeping the formal aspect.

• Concupiscence in the will = desire for the good, without the bodily disturbance and excitement; likewise anger without the bodily change.
• Carried further to God’s will: none carries the bodily aspect, and for most even the formal aspect fails: no desire in God (desire is for a good you don’t have); no fear (nothing can harm him). Of the eleven, only love and joy can properly be said of God; all that concern the bad, or a good not yet had (desire, hope), cannot.
• Metaphorical carrying over (“metaphor means carry over”), by some likeness: God’s will to punish the sinner is called anger, as the angry man punishes out of anger.
• Same way of naming already seen with “undergoing”: first meaning is passion where you are acted upon destructively; carried over to the senses, whose undergoing is not destructive but still bodily (the eye perfected by receiving colors); finally to understanding, altogether immaterial undergoing. Each step drops something. This is only one way words are carried over, “but that’s an important way.”
• Hence a possibility of equivocation: the words are “equivocal by reason” [ed.: i.e. analogous, not by chance].

4. Objections 2–3 and the sed contra (“what’s divided at the lower level is unified at the higher”) #

• Obj. 2: charity is commonly said to be in the concupiscible, hope in the irascible. He unpacks: charity is a kind of love, and love first names an emotion of the concupiscible (“I don’t like this, I love it,” his daughter); hope (spes) is an irascible emotion because it involves effort against difficulty — Shakespeare, “hope is a lover’s staff”: hope supports the effort to get what you love. Carried to the will and even to the theological virtue, hope keeps “a good difficult to obtain” but drops the body. Names from both sense powers go up to the will, but there are not two powers there: what is divided below is unified above.
• Obj. 3: the book De spiritu et anima (falsely attributed to Augustine; Thomas says it has little authority, yet reads it charitably) says the soul has irascible, concupiscible and rational powers before it is joined to the body. Berquist: that is already a mistake, since the soul does not exist before; God creates it when the body has been prepared. But no sense power belongs to the soul alone, only to the body–soul union; hence they would be in the will.
• Sed contra: Gregory of Nyssa (and notes in Nemesius) divides the irrational part into the desiderative (concupiscent) and irascible; Damascene, Orthodox Faith II; Aristotle, De Anima III: the will is in reason, while in the irrational part are epithumia (concupiscentia) and thymos (ira).

5. The body of the article: common object vs. special object (“a thing is singular when sensed, universal when understood”) #

1. A power ordered to its object under a very common notion is not diversified by special differences contained under it. Example: sight regards the visible as colored, so there are not several seeing powers for the species of colors; if there were a power of white as white, it would differ from a power of black as black — but the eye sees white, black, green, blue all as color.
2. The sense power does not regard the common notion of good, since sense grasps only the singular (Boethius: singular when sensed, universal when understood). So the parts of the sense desire are diversified by diverse notions of particular goods:
   • Concupiscible: the good as pleasing/delectable/agreeable to sense and suitable to nature. He remarks the senses “don’t really know the good” except as agreeable; if you lived by that, adultery, fornication, sleeping in on Sunday would all be fine — hence the conflict set up in man.
   • Irascible: another notion of the good — as repulsing or attacking what would infer harm. He checks himself against a student and confirms the translation. “A little bit of a higher power,” the defender of the concupiscible.
3. The will regards good under the common definition of good, so no distinct powers in it. Parallel with knowing: many senses (color, sound, taste) but one understanding that talks of painting, sound, taste alike; likewise two sense desires, one will. Reason: universality, immateriality.

• Examples for the irascible as defender: Plato’s Republic, where rulers/army/common people picture reason/irascible/concupiscible, the irascible keeping the common people in line; St. Benedict tempted by a loose woman jumping into the briars (“not very pleasant to the senses, but I’m sure he got his mind off the woman”); Thomas driving off the woman his family sent with a poker and marking a cross over the door — “a little bit of anger on top.” Two dogs fighting over meat: the meat is pleasant, the fight is not — a different reason, the other seen as enemy. The small animal fleeing the wolf: not because the wolf’s color hurts its senses like a hot surface hurts the paw, but because the estimative power tells it this is to be fled.
• Aside: bodily change always accompanies emotion — the Normandy veteran’s “two kinds of guys.”

6. Reply to obj. 1: love as passion vs. love as simple affection (“love to me meant… candy or something”) #

Love, concupiscence, desire are taken two ways: (a) as passions, with disturbance of the soul (concitatio), which is how they are commonly taken because more known to us; (b) as simple affection without passion — acts of the will, attributed also to angels and God, and belonging to one power, the will.

• His love-and-friendship class answers “what is love?” with “an emotion” — but anger and fear are emotions too; the answer is only the first-known meaning. As a schoolboy hearing sermons on the love of God he couldn’t make it fit, since love meant a girl or candy.
• The love of God is essentially in the will, though it can overflow into the emotions (Teresa of Avila dancing out of her cell), and it can remain when the emotions are down; likewise joy at discovering a truth can make the body feel better. The will influences the emotions but is not the same thing.
• Anger and fear in the devil: visions show him as a little angry man; there is something like anger (frustration) and fear (“come before the time”) in his will, without bodily disturbance.
• We name things as we know them; knowledge starts from the senses, so emotions are named before acts of the will. Same in the history of thought: most people cannot distinguish reason from imagination; Locke and Berkeley confuse image with thought. Arab philosophers say “thinking is imagining to the intellect” — a carried-over word, since image is a likeness of the singular, thought a likeness of the universal; alike but not the same. It takes an Aristotle or a Thomas to see it.
• Marriage: people marry on the emotion of love and lack the love in the will they need; the priest declares them married because they choose each other, not because of feelings. Story of the priest who refused to marry the couple where the man denied marriage is till death and denied fidelity, then offered to “sign whatever you want.” Good will means willing the other’s good; the senses know only my private good, so love of neighbor must be an act of the will.
• Devotion to the Sacred Heart ascends in four steps: physical heart, love as emotion, love in Christ’s human will, love in his divine will — the order from the sensible to what cannot be sensed.
• Student: Aristotle speaks of God’s joy? Yes, a simple, pure joy, in Nicomachean Ethics VIII — “amazing to see that he sees that.” Student: the Eudemian Ethics is different? Yes; some books are common to both, some things are in one and not the other; Thomas commented on all ten books of the Nicomachean, none on the Eudemian though he cites it.

7. Replies to obj. 2 and 3 (“not from the impetus of passion, but from the judgment of reason”) #

• Reply 2: the will can be called irascible insofar as it fights against the bad, but from the judgment of reason not the impetus of passion; concupiscible on account of desire for the good, without the bodily aspect. Thus charity and hope are said to be in the concupiscible and irascible, i.e. in the will as ordered to such acts. Carrying the names over drops both the bodily aspect and the idea of two powers.
• Reply 3: the De spiritu et anima statement can be understood of the order of nature, not of time; but it is not necessary to give much faith to that book — like books once thought to be Aristotle’s and later found not to be.

8. Toward free judgment (liberum arbitrium) (“there’s nothing so bad that I can’t see something good in it”) #

He turns to the next question. Thomas says free judgment, not free will: unless the judgment is free, the will is not free; if judgment were determined by nature the desiring power would not be free. A student asks whether this is from Augustine; he says it is in the Latin (arbitrium means judgment), and the point Thomas makes with the Latin words is important, though English never keeps it.

• Free judgment rests on the complete universality of reason: nothing so bad that reason cannot see something good in it — getting rid of someone who annoys me, robbing a bank (a lot of money), adultery, sleeping in on Sunday.
• Quebec aside: no magazines or newspapers sold Sunday mornings until noon or one, “kind of silly.”
• Crime and Punishment: the murderer wants to show he is above the law, hence above everybody — a perverted good. Jokes about running red lights (the uncle) and the gadget that turns red lights green.
• Suicide, euthanasia: “I’m relieving them of suffering.” If I want something bad enough, my will can move my reason to find something good enough — eliminating the man between me and promotion; the many reasons a student finds for not studying. Class ends here.

His words #

• concupiscible / irascible: the two sense desiring powers; the second “the defender” of the first.
• the eleven emotions: like, want, joy; dislike, aversion, sadness; hope, despair, fear, boldness, anger.
• “carried over”: his rendering of metaphor / transfer of a name, dropping part of its meaning; “metaphor means carry over.”
• formal aspect vs. bodily aspect: what is kept vs. dropped when emotion-names are applied to the will and to God.
• undergoing [ed.: passio]: destructive in the first sense, then perfective in sense, then immaterial in understanding.
• “equivocal by reason” [ed.: analogy].
• estimative power: internal sense by which the animal sees the wolf as enemy.
• concitatio: “disturbance of the soul,” the passion sense of love etc.
• simple affection: the will-sense of love, without passion.
• ability to desire [ed.: appetite], understanding desire / intellectual ability to desire [ed.: intellectual appetite, will].
• free judgment [ed.: liberum arbitrium, usually "free will"].
• good will: really willing the other’s good, as against the senses’ “private good.”

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 82, a. 5 — objections, sed contra, body, replies (translated and commented throughout).
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 83, a. 1 (inferred) — the term liberum arbitrium, opening remarks only.

Mentioned

• Summa Contra Gentiles, Book I, end — names of the emotions carried to will and to God.
• Wisdom 6 — concupiscentia sapientiae.
• Jerome on Matthew 13; Gregory of Nyssa / Nemesius; Damascene, De Fide Orthodoxa II; Aristotle, De Anima III; Pseudo-Augustine, De spiritu et anima; Boethius (singular/universal saying).
• Secunda Secundae — temperance followed by mildness.
• Plato, Republic — parts of soul and city.
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics VIII (God’s joy); Eudemian Ethics; Thomas’s commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics.
• Shakespeare: “in the very wrath of love”; “hope is a lover’s staff.”
• Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment.
• Summa Theologiae I, q. 84 — announced for later sessions.

His questions #

• Why does Shakespeare call love “wrath” metaphorically? Because of a likeness: both are very strong; you need a club to part either.
• Why can’t the names of the emotions be carried over to God with their bodily aspect, and which survive formally? God is immaterial; only love and joy survive, since the rest concern the bad or a good not possessed.
• Is there one will by which we hope and another by which we love? No; what is divided in the sense order is unified in the will.
• Why are there not several seeing powers for the several colors? Because sight regards its object under the common notion of colored.
• Why do two dogs fight over meat when the fight is painful? A different notion of the good: the other is seen as an enemy (irascible, via the estimative power).
• What is love? (his love-and-friendship class) Students say “an emotion”; that is only the first-known sense — love is also an act of the will.
• Does Aristotle speak of joy in God? Yes, a simple pure joy, Nicomachean Ethics VIII.
• Why does Thomas say free judgment rather than free will? Unless the judgment is free, the will is not free; if judgment were determined by nature, desire would not be free.
• Is there anything so bad that reason cannot see some good in it? No; the will can move reason to find “something good enough” even for murder or suicide.