The Good as Cause of Love: Shakespeare and Aquinas ST I-II q.27 a.1, and Knowledge as Cause of Love in Shakespeare

Orientation #

He opens by saying this is “the first part of the cause of love” and reads from a handout of Shakespeare passages before turning to Thomas, question 27 article 1. He refers back to “what we saw before” (prev. lecture): that love pertains to the desiring ability and that love is the agreement of the heart with its object. At the end he says “before we take our break, we’ll continue a little bit” and begins the second cause, knowledge. Verified sources: handout “Causes of Love” pp. 1–9 (read from for most of the class); DHB Vol III, pp. 1133–1141.

The class, in order #

1. Shakespeare on the good as cause of love (“In Belmont is a lady richly left”) #

Point: the handout readings show the good causing love, some directly, some through those who lack (or think they lack) lovable goodness.

• Much Ado: Benedick resists marriage — one woman is fair, another wise, another virtuous, “yet I am well”; each is a good but not enough to move his heart until all graces are in one woman, and “rich she shall be.” He notes the joke touches all the goods.
• Merchant of Venice: Bassanio to Antonio on Portia — “richly left” (exterior goods), “fair” (good of the body), “fairer than that word, of wondrous virtues” (good of the soul). This is the Greek threefold division of man’s goods: soul, body, exterior; the nursery rhyme “healthy, wealthy, and wise” gives the same three (health chief good of the body, wealth excellence of exterior goods, wisdom the great good of the soul). Order in Bassanio runs lower to higher, “very well said”; virtue matters most.
• “Fair speechless messages” from her eyes: true love is silent; the eyes are windows of the soul; aside that Augustine says another’s love for you tends to cause love in you.
• “Nor is the wide world ignorant of her worth” already touches the second cause, knowledge; the two causes go together. Golden fleece / many Jasons: renowned suitors from every coast.
• Portia compared to Cato’s daughter, Brutus’s Portia of Julius Caesar. Not that one must have all three goods to be loved; it shows “how complete Shakespeare is.”

2. King John: lusty, zealous, ambitious love (“If lusty love should go in quest of beauty”) #

Point: the same three goods, matched to three kinds of love, in the proposal of Lady Blanche to the Dauphin.

• “Lusty love” seeking beauty — good of the body; “lusty” in Shakespeare means vigorous, not the bad sense.
• “Zealous love” seeking virtue — good of the soul; zeal is one of the effects of love; Latin has one word for zeal and jealousy, but they are different things.
• “Love ambitious” seeking birth — almost the exterior good, position.
• “He is the half part of a blessed man … she a fair divided excellence”: why we call a spouse “your better part.”

3. Kindness, pity, sweetness (“Kindness in woman, not their beauteous look”) #

Point: goods of the soul, not only beauty, cause love.

• Taming of the Shrew: the frustrated suitor now seeks kindness (good of the soul) over beauteous looks (good of the body).
• Othello: “she loved me for the dangers I had passed, and I loved her that she did pity them” — pity, a good of the soul; “Mother of Mercy.”
• Jane Austen: sweetness so essential to a woman’s worth that a man, though he sometimes loves where it is not, can never believe it absent. “Hail Holy Queen … our sweetness.”
• Thomas gives “the best explanation” of the metaphor of sweetness in his commentary on the Psalms (“taste and see how sweet is the Lord”). A metaphor is based on a likeness: the sweet is pleasing, refreshing, restful — candy quiets children in the car; one goes to the machine for “a refreshment.” Hence “sweet form” for a beautiful form; the beautiful is what pleases when seen, and we call a beautiful sight restful, “a sight for sore eyes.” Aside: the painting in his college reading room that rested his eyes.

4. Ferdinand and Miranda; God’s goodness and perfection (“so perfect and so peerless”) #

Point: Ferdinand loves Miranda because she is “created of every creature’s best” — every other woman had some defect quarrelling with her noblest grace; “admired Miranda” plays on wonder.

• Aside: in both Summas Thomas attaches the consideration of God’s goodness to that of his perfection.

5. Richard and Helena: the point shown by its opposite (“And am I then a man to be beloved?”) #

Point: those who think themselves unlovable show the same cause, by the knowledge of opposites.

• Richard (first appearing in the sixth place on the handout; he later becomes Richard III): love forswore him in the womb, corrupted nature to shrink his arm, mountain on his back, legs unequal — “like to a chaos,” an “unlicked bear whelp” (the dam licks the cubs into shape; he “carries no impression”). Ugly, therefore no one could love him, “oh monstrous fault to harbor such a thought.”
• “Now is the winter of our discontent”: peace under the House of York; everyone courting, but he, “rudely stamped,” “scarce half made up,” dogs barking as he halts by, “since I cannot prove a lover … I am determined to prove a villain.” Psychologically very interesting; partly based on Thomas More’s life of Richard.
• Helena (Midsummer Night’s Dream): actually good-looking, but the man loves another, so she lacks confidence and thinks herself “as ugly as a bear,” Demetrius fleeing her as a monster. That she thinks so is itself a sign that beauty or goodness causes love. “Fond chase”: “fond” originally meant foolish; “fond of the girl” meant acting foolishly over her; Shakespeare uses it apart from love.

6. Q.27 a.1, objections and sed contra (“Whether something good is the cause of love”) #

Point: the fundamental article on the cause of love; he reads the three objections and the sed contra.

1. The good causes love only as the thing loved; but the bad is loved (Ps 10:6, “who loves iniquity hates his own soul”), otherwise all love would be good. He adds the old saying that contrary causes have contrary effects: if good causes love, bad should cause hate, so how can the bad be loved?
2. Aristotle, Rhetoric II: “we love those who say something bad about themselves” — people love Socrates for saying he knows nothing; “a lot of truth to this.”
3. Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 4: not only the good but the beautiful is lovable to all. English confirms a special connection: “lovely,” a synonym for beautiful, taken from “love.”

• Sed contra: Augustine, On the Trinity VIII, “surely nothing is loved except the good.”

7. The structure of the body: a syllogism backed by two more (“It is necessary, therefore”) #

Point: the body is a main syllogism whose two premises are each shown by a further syllogism.

• Start from the ultimate conclusion: the good is the cause of love. Link: the good is the object of love; the object of love is the cause of love. Syllogism defined: speech in which, some statements laid down (usually two), another follows necessarily because of them. Sometimes one or both premises are obvious; here Thomas manifests both.
• First paragraph ends “it is necessary therefore that the object of love be properly the cause of love” — that premise is shown by what precedes; the second paragraph states the other premise (“but the proper object of love is the good”) and then its reason, so the two premises sit side by side.
• Reason for premise 1: love pertains to the desiring ability (the heart), which is acted upon by its object; hence the object is compared to it as cause of its motion. In syllogistic form: the object of love acts on the heart; what acts on the heart is the cause of love. This holds for every emotion and analogously for acts of will: a terrorist with a machine gun is both object and cause of fear; an insult is object and cause of anger; being sick is object and cause of your hate.
• Reason for premise 2: the good is what fits a thing; love (prev. lecture) is nothing other than the agreement, conformity, fitting of the heart to its object; so what fits a thing is what it loves. Common speech: “it’s not for me, doesn’t fit me”; “the shoe fits.” Student: a song line, a sound he loves that “fits me as well as a hand in a glove”; he adds that Greek harmonia carries the sense of fitting together.

8. Reply to obj. 1: the bad loved under the notion of the good (“what is so simply”) #

Point: the bad is never loved except insofar as it is in some way good and is grasped as simply good.

• The distinction (Aristotle, Sense and Sensible): what is so simply vs. what is so in some limited, qualified, imperfect way; the corresponding mistake, found everywhere, is mixing the two.
• Classroom “contradiction”: the student who doesn’t know his brother Mark yet knows what a man and a brother is — she doesn’t know him simply, knows him in some way. Reverse case: she knows her mother simply but doesn’t know her as the person knocking at the door — the sophistical syllogism “you don’t know the one knocking; it is your mother; you don’t know your mother.”
• Meno: Meno’s objection that you cannot seek what you don’t know nor recognise it if found (the gas-station attendant must know where you’re going). If good, there would be no logic, no art of counting, no cancer research. Answer: what you don’t know you know in some way — he doesn’t know how many students are present, yet directs himself to 22 by counting, since he knew he sought “the number of students”; the table’s area is reached by multiplying length by width; the researcher knows imperfectly “the cause of cancer”; asking “what is love?” one knows one seeks a definition and takes that road.
• Socrates makes the same mistake in reply: learning is recalling; the slave boy doubling the square. The boy first said double the side (giving four times). Really Socrates’s questions lead him to recall things from which he sees for the first time how to double the square. Knowing length and width without multiplying is knowing the area “in ability,” not simply; knowing both premises without joining them is not knowing the conclusion; being able to have a baby is not having one.
• Applied to life: we do bad because good in some way, and omit good because bad in some way — Mass prevents sleeping; robbing a bank increases money; murdering the annoying student removes annoyance. For man, what is good simply is the reasonable; the pleasing to sense is good in some way, but adultery is simpliciter bad. Studying is good though it prevents the pizza party.
• A second possible mistake: mixing the through-itself with the through-happening (per se / per accidens, fallacy of accident): the bad as bad is not desired — the delicious poison, the last drink that seems to prolong the good time; the bank robber: “that’s where the money is,” not because it’s unjust.
• Thomas’s text: some love is bad as tending to what is not simply a true good; man loves iniquity as attaining pleasure or money by it. His application: abortion is murder (killing the innocent in the womb), chosen for a limited good — avoiding embarrassment, staying in school. Chesterton: the man who shoots his mother-in-law at fifty paces is a good shot, not a good man. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics: choosing the bad you are always mistaken, but responsible for the mistake.

9. Replies to obj. 2 and 3: honesty; the beautiful (“differing only in definition”) #

• Obj. 2: those who say bad of themselves are loved not for the bad things but for saying them, which excludes lying or pretence — we are attracted to humility or honesty, something good.
• Obj. 3: the beautiful is almost a form of the good (“good looking” shows it); brought up rather than health or wisdom because of the special connection shown by “lovely.” Thomas: beautiful and good are the same, differing in definition. Good is what all desire (definition by effect); desire rests in it. Beautiful: desire rests in the sight or knowledge of it — the good is what pleases, the beautiful what pleases when seen or known. Sign: we say beautiful music, girl, sunset, but not “tastes beautiful” or “smells beautiful”; the most knowing senses, sight and hearing, which serve reason, regard the beautiful. So beautiful adds to good an order to a knowing power: good is what simply agrees with desire; beautiful that whose very knowledge is agreeable. Augustine’s opening of the Confessions: too late have I come to know thee, thou ancient beauty.

10. The second cause: knowledge, love at first sight (“if looking liking moves”) #

Point: the good as known is the cause of love; knowledge is on the side of the object as a kind of condition — however beautiful Juliet, unseen and unheard she moves no one.

• As You Like It: Phoebe quotes the “dead shepherd” (pastoral custom of calling poets shepherds; allusion to Marlowe, killed in a fight), Hero and Leander: “whoever loved that loved not at first sight.” Students argue whether it is true (great love stories are all first sight); but all sides agree love comes at first, second or some sight — that is his point: sight, a kind of knowing, causes love.
• Tempest: Ferdinand — the very instant he saw Miranda his heart flew to her service.
• Romeo and Juliet: parents chose husbands then; the Paston letters, daughter beaten daily until she takes old moneybags — not monsters, that was “order.” “County Paris” = Count Paris. Juliet: “I’ll look to like if looking liking moves” — like is a weaker word for love; nice alliteration; looking, a kind of knowing, causes liking. Romeo: “did my heart love till now? … I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.” Friar Lawrence (“Holy Saint Francis,” a Franciscan): young men’s love lies “not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes” — the effect is said to be in the power of the cause (“I’ve got you in my power”), so this stresses knowledge as cause.
• Antony and Cleopatra: “barbered ten times more” (aside: Senator Kerry flying in his hairdresser); “for his ordinary” (an ordinary = a paid meal) “pays his heart for what his eyes eat only” — his eyes devoured her and he paid with his heart: loving because of seeing, “very clever.”

His words #

• goods of the soul / of the body / exterior goods — the Greek threefold division of man’s goods
• lusty — vigorous, not the bad sense
• zeal / jealousy — one Latin word, two different things; zeal an effect of love
• sweet — pleasing, refreshing, restful; ground of the metaphor
• beautiful — what pleases when seen or known
• lovely — beautiful, from “love”; “good looking” likewise
• fond — originally foolish
• desiring ability — the heart [ed.: appetitive power]
• object of love / cause of love — the object acts upon the heart, hence is cause
• love — agreement, conformity, fitting of the heart to its object
• simply vs. in some way (qualified, limited, imperfect) — simpliciter [ed.: secundum quid]
• through itself / through happening — per se / per accidens; fallacy of accident
• know in ability — able to know, not knowing simply
• reasonable — for man, what is good simply
• county — Count (Paris)
• ordinary — a place where you pay for your meal

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, ST I-II q.27 a.1 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Shakespeare: Much Ado About Nothing (Benedick); Merchant of Venice (Bassanio on Portia); King John (Lady Blanche); Taming of the Shrew; Othello (Desdemona’s pity); The Tempest (Ferdinand, twice); Richard III and the earlier Richard speech (love forswore me); Midsummer Night’s Dream (Helena); As You Like It (Phoebe); Romeo and Juliet (Juliet and mother; Romeo; Friar Lawrence); Antony and Cleopatra
• Jane Austen on sweetness (work not named)
• Marlowe, Hero and Leander (one line)

Mentioned

• Ps 10:6; Aristotle, Rhetoric II; Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 4; Augustine, On the Trinity VIII; Augustine, Confessions (opening); Thomas, commentary on the Psalms (sweetness); Aristotle, Sense and Sensible; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics; Plato, Meno; Thomas More on Richard III; the Paston letters; Chesterton; Shakespeare, Julius Caesar; Thomas, both Summas on God’s goodness and perfection

His questions #

• If the bad is loved, how can the good be the cause of love? The bad is never loved except under the notion of the good, grasped as simply good though good only in some way.
• What’s the logical structure of the body of the article? A main syllogism (good is object of love; object of love is cause of love), each premise backed by another syllogism.
• What is the link between object of love and cause of love? The object acts upon the heart, the desiring ability; what acts upon the heart is the cause.
• What is the connection between the good and the object of love? The good is what fits a thing; love is the fitting of the heart to its object.
• If a terrorist came in, what is the object and what the cause of your fear? Both the terrorist; likewise for anger, hate, any emotion.
• Do you know my brother Mark? / Do you know your mother? Simply no, in some way yes; simply yes, not as the one knocking — the simply / in-some-way distinction.
• How did I direct myself to 22 without knowing I sought 22? I knew in some way: I sought the number of students, so took the road of counting.
• Was the slave boy recalling how to double a square? No; he recalled things from which he came to know it for the first time.
• Why do you rob banks? “That’s where the money is” — chosen for the good in it, not because unjust.
• Is love at first sight true? Left open among the students; all agree it is at some sight, so knowledge causes love.