Amor and Dilectio, the Love of Wishing Well and the Love of Wanting

Orientation #

He continues the article on whether amor and dilectio differ, begun last time (“the characters we saw here”, “those texts that we read earlier” from Teresa of Avila) (prev. lecture), and after a break takes up “the fourth and last article in this first question on the nature and kinds of love”. He points forward to “the next meeting” for the love of wanting and to a later question on charity as friendship. Handout: “Nature and Kinds of Love”, pp. 18–24, with a brief look at “Causes of Love”, p. 1 (verified sources).

The class, in order #

1. The four names and their Greek equivalents (“four names are found in some way pertaining to the same”) #

The point: Latin amor, dilectio, caritas, amicitia answer to Greek eros, agape, philia, and only the last names a habit.

• amor = eros, sense love; dilectio = “chosen love” (his etymological rendering) — what Hamlet has for Horatio; caritas = agape; amicitia = philia. Same root in philosophia: the philosopher has philia, not eros, for wisdom. Cf. C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves.
• Friendship is a habit (Ethics VIII; VIII–IX are the books on friendship). Two reasons he draws out:
  1. You must love the friend for his own sake, not as your good; emotion cannot do that, since emotion is limited to what agrees with your senses — my good, not yours — so a habit is needed to overcome selfishness. Example: habituating a child to offer one of his birthday candies, or to let another child play with his toy: he is being trained to have concern for others.
  2. Habit is tied to choice: “we choose our friends”, but people “fall in love”, as if unchosen — the character seen last time who “suffers love” against his will (prev. lecture). Hamlet chose Horatio. Aristotle (Metaphysics): philosopher and sophist differ by their choice of life — offered being wise without seeming so, or seeming wise without being so, the sophist chooses to appear, the philosopher to be. (He says “the sophist, the lover of wisdom” — a slip for the philosopher.)

2. Act vs. habit; amor most general; what dilectio and caritas add (“amor, however, and dilectio signify more the act”) #

The point: amor and dilectio name the act or undergoing; caritas can name either act or habit; among the acts amor is widest.

• Every dilectio or caritas is amor, not the reverse.
• Dilectio adds a preceding choice, “as its name sounds”; hence not in the concupiscible (one of the two emotional powers, with the irascible) but in the will only, so found in man, angels, God.
• Caritas adds a perfection: the beloved is esteemed of great worth — carus, “dear”.

3. Sense love vs. chosen love: four differences (“the main distinction we’re interested in here”) #

The point: love following on sense or imagination and love following on reason differ in four ways.

1. One follows sensing/imagining, the other reason.
2. Emotion involves bodily change (concupiscence, anger, fear: the cat stiffening in your hands when afraid; your heart thumping); the act of the will is immaterial like reason.
3. Emotion is directly only of sensible bodily things; the will can love immaterial things (wisdom, God) and material ones too.
4. The one we share with dog and cat (we have it “a little better”), the other with angels and God.

• C. S. Lewis calls angelic love “ferocious”: the whole angel goes into his love, which is why Satan’s fall was so dramatic. We, flesh and spirit, have two loves often pulling contrary ways, so we cannot be as bad as a devil nor easily as good as an angel.

4. Aside: why love before friendship; charity a friendship (“there can be love without friendship”) #

• Love without friendship is possible (candy, wisdom, an unrequiting person); friendship requires mutual love, and (Aristotle adds) known to both. So in his love-and-friendship course this treatise precedes Aristotle on friendship.
• Aristotle’s three friendships among equals — useful, pleasant, virtuous — carry different loves: in the first two I love you as useful or pleasing to me (love of wanting); in the third for what you are. “Getting a little ahead” — next meeting.
• Thomas’s famous article that charity is a (supernatural) friendship: the objections come straight from Aristotle’s treatise; he gives students the objections on one page and leaves the facing page for their answers. Thomas “doesn’t leave open the cistern”.

5. Replies 1–4 (“Dionysius speaks of love and chosen love as they are in the reasonable ability to desire”) #

• Ad 1: Dionysius takes amor in the broad sense, in the “reasonable ability to desire” (his rendering of appetitus rationalis, i.e. the will), where amor = dilectio. We name the emotion first; St Paul’s charity is now often translated “love” because “charity” has degraded into “works of mercy”.
• Ad 2: the object of love is more common than that of chosen love, since the name reaches further. On Main Street “love” means the emotion, probably eros — publishers send him sex books for his Love and Friendship course. But “lover of wisdom”, “I love Shakespeare, Mozart, candy” is not eros. Plato (Symposium): “lover” for the romantic lover is giving the name of the whole to the part, as “poet” (= maker) went to Homer, the maker of the Iliad, greatest of makers. Broad sense: love is of the good; narrow: of the good the senses know.
• Ad 3: amor and dilectio don’t differ as bad and good; Augustine: a rectified willing is good love, a perverse willing bad love. Because the concupiscible passion inclines many to the bad (sexual desire, anger, fury in battle), some drew the difference there. Likewise “he loves himself” sounds bad, but self-love can be good or bad — God loves himself.
• Ad 4: (sed contra) Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 4: to some saints amor seems more divine than dilectio — because amor implies passion, being moved, while dilectio presupposes reason’s judgment. St John of the Cross writes in the manner of the Song of Songs; Teresa of Avila and Teresa de Jesus receive an increase of love “under the likeness of being wounded”, even physically (prev. lecture texts); Francis’s stigmata, Padre Pio. God is more responsible for that love than they are.

(Break.)

6. Article 4 stated; the objections and sed contra (“the love of friendship and the love of wanting”) #

The point: amor amicitiae / amor concupiscentiae are the received names, but “love of wishing well” and “love of wanting” would be more precise — “love of friendship” means the love one should have in true friendship, not the habit of friendship.

• Obj. 1: love is a passion, friendship a habit (Ethics VIII); a habit cannot divide a passion. (He notes Aristotle there distinguishes act and habit of friendship; the objection misreads “love of friendship”.)
• Obj. 2: nothing is divided by what is numbered with it (man isn’t numbered with animal); wanting/desire is another passion from love, as said before.
• Obj. 3: friendship is threefold — useful, pleasant, honourable/virtuous — and the first two involve wanting; Aristotle calls only the third friendship in the full sense, Cicero denies the others the name.
• Sed contra: we love wine for the sweetness we want in it (Topics II) — no candy then, so a sweet tooth went to sweet wine; Thomas’s drunkard wants sweetness, not drunkenness — but we have no friendship for wine (Ethics VIII).

7. The body: two objects of love; the three cases (“to love is to wish good to someone”) #

The point: since to love is to wish good to someone (Rhetoric II — Thomas “the most humble student of Aristotle”), love tends to two objects: the good wished (love of wanting) and the one for whom it is wished (love of friendship).

• His standard scheme: for wine or candy only the love of wanting; for oneself only the love of wishing well; for another person either — and you are often unaware which you have.
• Bernard of Clairvaux, On the love of God, four stages: (1) man loves only himself; (2) in trouble turns to God — love of wanting, “need love”; (3) coming to know God, loves him for his own sake; (4) loves himself for God’s sake, hardly reached in this life. Passage from wanting to wishing well, seeking God’s glory.
• Student: does Thomas take up Bernard’s four divisions? — He takes much from Bernard (e.g. the stages of humility); not sure he takes these formally, but he does treat the two loves for God.
• Romantic love: at the dance the beautiful girl is the good you want for yourself, not someone you think of being good for; a beautiful girl may get only love of wanting from men and look for something better; it can begin there and pass to the other love, “even with a cat maybe”.
• Student: can both come together? — Yes, but they remain two kinds. Mother away a week: husband and children miss what she does for them — love of wanting, and she is a little offended. His own mother, bathing children: “what would happen to us if something happened to you?” — reassured that Aunt Margaret and Aunt Helen would come, the children were so relieved she felt a little let down.

8. Before and after: love simply vs. love in some respect (“this division is according to before and after”) #

The point: the two are not loves equally; what is loved by wishing well is loved simply and through itself, what is loved by wanting is loved for another.

• Rich girl: “Do you love me or my money?” — “I love you for your money” — “Then you don’t love me.”
• Thomas’s parallel with being: being simply (substance) vs. being in some respect (accident). When generated I came to be, period; walking in I came to be in this room; dying I cease to be, leaving I only cease to be in the room. This is the second mistake outside speech, confusing what is so simply with what is so in a qualified sense [ed.: secundum quid]. Good, convertible with being: the good of another is good only in a limited sense; so loving something that the good be for it is loving simply, loving it as the good of another is loving in some respect.
• A student who saw her parents “really did wish well to each other” and that this held their marriage. Marrying with only the love of wanting fails when beauty fades or a wealthier offer comes. Likewise only the love of wanting for God is not charity; charity wishes well.
• Order of generation, faith–hope–charity (Augustine and others; “by believing we come to hope, by hoping to love”) — how can hope precede love if hope involves desire? The love before charity is love of wanting; the more perfect love wishes God’s honour: “hallowed be thy name” is the first petition, “thy kingdom come” also.

9. Replies 1–3 (“love is not divided by friendship and wanting”) #

• Ad 1 and 2: the division is by love of friendship and love of wanting: one to whom we wish good is properly a friend; what we wish for ourselves we want. “Of” here is not identity — though he grants “city of Worcester”, “name of Christ” show “of” sometimes does mean “which is” (“a bad example”). Love of wanting is not the wanting but the liking of candy; wanting arises when I lack it; I don’t wish well to candy, I chew it. “Love of wishing well” would be a better name but the other is consecrated in the language.
• Ad 3: in useful and pleasant friendship one does wish some good to the friend, so the definition is kept: plumber and carpenter recommending each other; doctors referring patients out of their specialty; stock tips traded. But since that good is referred back to one’s own use or pleasure, these fall short of true friendship insofar as drawn to the love of wanting. Cicero won’t call them friendship [ed.: transcript has “my sister”]; Aristotle uses “friend” in an extended sense. This is why the treatise on love precedes the treatise on friendship: the lower friendships have more the love of wanting, the highest the love of wishing well.

10. Why these two divisions; what students think love is (“the fundamental divisions of love”) #

• The second division comes after the first because it in some sense subdivides the love of the will (which can be either), while emotional love as such is only one of the kinds. Love can be extended to natural love — a plant “likes” sun, broccoli is “a big feeder” — but human love is emotion or act of will, and it is hard to tell which, or in what proportion.
• First day of his course, “What is love?” — “an emotion”; he answers so are anger, fear, hate. Students hardly have a notion of love as act of the will; so God’s love seems “cold” (“cool reason”, Shakespeare). Yet “I have loved you with a perpetual love” (Old Testament); Lewis’s “ferocious”. Psalm 77 (his numbering) on Israel in the desert: scourged, they remembered God their helper and served him with their mouth — love of wanting; the crowd followed Christ because he fed them.
• The basic truth people miss: love is the conformity/agreement of the heart with its object, the object acting on the heart through sense and imagination (candy, wine) or through reason (wisdom).

11. Digression: three kinds of pleasure and the fine arts (“too high for the animals, and too low for the angels”) #

• Pleasures shared with beasts (food, drink, sleep, ours “more refined” with wine and cooking); pleasures shared with angels and God (understanding, ours inferior); and the middle ones, “too high for the animals, too low for the angels” [attribution unclear in recording]: Mozart, a painting, Shakespeare, Homer — appealing to sense (ear, eye, imagination) and to reason, hence to the whole man, and enjoyable longer than wine or steak (satiation) or thinking (fatigue). Ambiguity remains whether Mozart appeals to ear or reason.
• Literary Converts: people moved to Christianity by fiction; a film that led someone to confess a crime; Tolkien. His cats ignore Mozart and paintings; delight in the beautiful shows we are more than beasts — the transition from beast to angel; the liturgy and church architecture should be beautiful.

12. Closing: the crucial question; need love (“do you really wish well this woman”) #

• Fifty-year-old comic strip: “Love — that’s a pretty big word, do you know what it means?” The real question for a young man: do you wish her well, or is she the good you want for yourself? The priest at a wedding doesn’t ask about a wonderful feeling; he asks you to choose — “it’s not emotion that marries you”.
• For God: first whether the love is in the will rather than emotion, then whether it is need love, the love of wanting. The Streisand song about people who need people — “the love of wanting”, which annoyed him in supermarkets. Recording ends mid-sentence.

His words #

• amor: sense love, eros; the most general name.
• dilectio: “chosen love” (his rendering); adds a preceding choice; in the will only.
• caritas: agape; adds a perfection, the beloved held dear (carus).
• amicitia: philia; the habit (Ethics VIII).
• concupiscible / irascible: the two powers of emotion.
• “reasonable ability to desire”: his rendering of appetitus rationalis, the will [ed.: rational appetite].
• love of friendship / love of wanting: amor amicitiae / amor concupiscentiae; his preferred names “love of wishing well” and “love of wanting”; also “need love”.
• simply / in some respect: as substance vs. accident, being vs. being-in-this-room; the “second mistake outside of speech” [ed.: fallacy secundum quid].
• conformity (agreement) of the heart with its object: what love is.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas, ST I-II q.26 a.3 body and ad 1–4 (inferred); q.26 a.4 objections, sed contra, body, ad 1–3 (inferred) — handout “Nature and Kinds of Love” pp. 18–24.
• Aristotle, Rhetoric II (“to love is to wish good to someone”), quoted via Thomas.
• Aristotle, Topics II (wine loved for its sweetness), via Thomas.

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics VIII–IX (friendship a habit; act vs. habit; three friendships; no friendship for wine); Metaphysics (sophist and philosopher differ by choice of life).
• Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 4 (amor more divine).
• Augustine (rectified willing is good love; order faith–hope–charity).
• Plato, Symposium (lover / poet = maker).
• Bernard of Clairvaux, On the love of God (four stages); his stages of humility.
• C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves; angelic love “ferocious”.
• Cicero on friendship; Thomas on charity as friendship (locus not stated).
• Song of Songs; John of the Cross; Teresa of Avila; Psalm 77 (his numbering); Shakespeare (“cool reason”, Hamlet); Literary Converts; Tolkien.
• Handout “Causes of Love”, p. 1 (verified source; the “next meeting”).

His questions #

• Why does Aristotle say friendship is a habit? Loving the friend for his own sake needs habituation, since emotion is limited to my sensible good; and friends are chosen.
• Which would the sophist choose, to be wise or to appear wise? To appear wise; the philosopher to be wise — they differ by choice of life.
• What are the differences between sense love and chosen love? Follows sense vs. reason; bodily change vs. immaterial; material only vs. immaterial too; shared with beasts vs. with angels and God.
• Why must you understand love before friendship? Love can be without friendship, but friendship requires mutual (and known) love.
• What kind of love can you have for candy, for yourself, for another person? Candy: only wanting; yourself: only wishing well; another: either.
• Does Thomas take up Bernard’s four stages? (student) He takes much from Bernard; not sure he takes these formally, but he treats both loves for God.
• Can both loves for a person come together? (student) Yes, but they remain two kinds of love.
• How can hope be before charity if hope presupposes love? The prior love is the love of wanting; charity, wishing well, is the more perfect.
• Is Mozart appealing to your ear or your reason? left open — “a kind of ambiguity”.
• Do you really wish well to this woman, or is she just the good you want for yourself? That is the crucial question; marriage should be by choice, not emotion.