Likeness as a Cause of Love: Aquinas on Why Like Attracts Like, and Why Rivals Clash

Orientation #

He begins by recalling that “we looked at the first two preliminary readings there on likeness” last time: Portia in The Merchant of Venice reasoning backwards from friendship to likeness, and Richard thinking love impossible because he is unlike everyone (prev. lecture). He looks ahead to “the first article on the effects of love”, where Thomas will distinguish the union that is an effect of love from the union that causes it. The verified handout is “Causes of Love”, pp. 20–31. The previous class treated knowledge as a cause of love and introduced likeness; the next treats whether another passion can cause love.

The class, in order #

1. Recap of the two Shakespeare readings (“Portia was reasoning backwards”) #

Point: the two preliminary readings show likeness from opposite sides. Portia, “like Sherlock Holmes”, reasons backwards: if her husband and Antonio are such friends they must be alike, so she will like “the semblance of her soul”. Richard, by contrast, thinks love between him and others impossible because he is so unlike them.

2. Washington Irving: painters and poets (“never in collision with each other”) #

Point: the alike are sometimes not friends when they come into competition, which is accidental to the likeness.

• Two lawyers in one town with business enough for only one: the likeness drives them apart; met at a convention elsewhere they would be friends for their similar interests. The competition, not the likeness as such, gets in the way.
• Thackeray and Dickens on non-speaking terms, each trying to top the other’s novel; reconciled at the end when one turned and offered his hand.
• Irving’s text: “no friendships among men of talents more likely to be sincere than those between painters and poets”, alike enough to be friends but not competing in the same art; Goldsmith (poet) and Sir Joshua Reynolds (painter), “constantly in sympathy and never in collision”.
• Two men with the same taste in women, attracted to the same woman: competition. Both liking the same movie actors: brought together, because they are not pursuing something only one can have. He flags this as the paradox Thomas’s objections will raise and dispose of.

3. Boswell: my two friends need not be friends (“it’s not like geometry”) #

Point: friendship is not transitive like equality of quantities. I may be like one man in one way (baseball) and another in another (philosophy), and be friends with each because of that likeness, while the two have nothing in common and do not get along. He notes the common experience: bring two of your friends together and there is friction.

4. Jane Austen and Boswell: do opposites attract? (“temperaments had better be unlike”) #

Point: these readings look like objections to likeness as a cause of love.

• Austen (first passage): dispositions “so totally dissimilar as to make mutual affection incompatible”; Fanny in the same novel: “not one taste in common… we should be miserable”. He adds that sometimes the likeness is not seen at first and comes out later.
• Chesterton aside: “men and women are essentially incompatible”, said against incompatibility as a ground for divorce; yet there is still a likeness between man and woman that lets them get along.
• Austen (second passage, to Fanny): he is lively, you are serious, “so much the better”, his cheerfulness will counteract your dejection; “the temperaments had better be unlike”; some opposition is “friendly to matrimonial happiness”. Is this an objection? “We say opposites attract, right? Is that true?” Thomas will have an answer.
• Boswell on the Hebrides tour: Johnson displeased at Boswell’s bustling before the boat to Mull; “you are longer a boy than others”; Johnson had no alertness himself, so disliked it. He gives the Latin tag oderunt hilarem tristes, “gloomy people hate a merry fellow”, but notes a gloomy person may also seek out a humorous one. Aside: at the logic exam that morning he was tempted to ask a nice girl how she ended up in a logic class, and did not, “in this modern context”.

5. Emily Brontë: goodness against likeness (“he’s more myself than I am”) #

Point: Catherine is drawn to two men, Linton because of the good in him, Heathcliff because he is like her, and she expects likeness to win; this is a real danger.

• Her words: no more business to marry Linton than to be in heaven; she loves Heathcliff “not because he’s handsome… but because he’s more myself than I am”; his soul and hers the same, Linton’s “as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire”; love for Linton like foliage, for Heathcliff like the eternal rocks; “I am Heathcliff”.
• Aristotle on self-love and the friend as “another self”: the love one has for oneself is carried over to the one seen as another self.
• Monsignor Dion’s remark: a student attaches to the professor who is like him rather than the one who knows more, “a danger in the life of the mind”.
• Looking ahead: in the article on union as an effect of love Thomas will expand this; if I love you because you are like me, I love myself more, since I am not like myself, I am myself, so self-love is more stable.
• The theological application: God is infinitely better, the neighbour more like you; if likeness wins, you love neighbour (or yourself) more than God, “which would be disorder”. Augustine’s amor sui usque ad contemptum Dei makes the city of man, amor Dei usque ad contemptum sui the city of God. Christ: whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; those relatives are more like us. “You’re fighting against something that’s very, very, very rooted in you.”
• His mother’s advice: choose a doctor for medical competence, not a personality like yours; voters choosing a candidate like themselves rather than the best qualified, “terrible consequences”. The supreme case is loving neighbour or self more than God.
• The fourth council (he corrects “Vatican” to the fourth council [ed.: Lateran IV]): no likeness between God and creature without a greater unlikeness.
• On the other side, 1 John 3:2: “when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is”; seeing God we shall be more like him and love him more, so likeness is there a cause of love. Teresa of Avila: God is altogether simple, and the closer one gets, the simpler one becomes.
• Austen again (Elizabeth on Bingley and Jane): his expectations rationally founded on Jane’s excellent understanding and disposition (goodness) and “a general similarity of feeling and taste” (likeness): the two causes of love together.

6. Thomas’s objections and sed contra (“contrary effects have contrary causes”) #

Point: four objections that likeness is not a cause of love, and the authority against.

1. The same is not the cause of contraries; love and hate are contraries; but likeness causes hate (Proverbs 13:10, “always disputes between the proud”; Aristotle, Ethics VIII, “potters quarrel with each other”). He explains the principle from philosophy of nature: butter hard and soft, contrary effects, expect contrary causes, cold and hot. Hotspur and the Prince: “England cannot stand two Henrys”. Two potters, one buyer: “I hate you because you’re interfering with my business”; two men equally wanting to be president, “at each other’s throats”. He already asks: is that per se or per accidens?
2. Augustine, Confessions IV: a man loves an actor without wishing to be one; so he does not love what he himself wishes to have. His example: a masculine man does not want the woman masculine, nor a feminine woman the man effeminate.
3. Each loves what he needs though he lacks it, the sick health, the poor wealth; but lacking is unlikeness. So unlikeness too causes love.
4. Aristotle, Rhetoric II: all love those who did them good in money and safety, and those who keep friendship toward the dead; but not all are such. We all love the brave and the generous, though some of us are cowards or stingy. Sed contra: Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) 13:19, every animal loves what is like itself. He notes Plato has a dialogue on whether likeness or opposition, referred to by Aristotle at the start of his books on friendship.

7. The body: two kinds of likeness, two kinds of love (“act is an ability itself”) #

Point: likeness properly causes love, but likeness is twofold and each kind causes a different love.

• A vs. B: both have the same in act (two whites are alike) vs. one has it in ability and inclination, the other in act. Thomas’s examples: a heavy body outside its place is like one in its place; ability is like act, “for act is an ability itself in some way”.
• If you actually know something and I am able to know it, we are alike, though less than if we both actually knew it. Mozart’s father recognizing the gift that needed developing; a good player recognizing a natural athlete’s ability; an acorn is like an oak “in ability”, a more distant likeness.
• The first likeness causes the love of friendship or well-wishing: two alike as having one form are in some way one in it (two men in human nature, two whites in whiteness), so the affection of one tends to the other as to something one with itself and wills its good as its own. Greek proverb: a friend is another self.
• The second causes the love of wanting, the friendship of the useful or pleasant: what is in ability desires its act and delights in reaching it; you who actually know are useful to me in developing my knowledge. “It’s beautiful he does that”: the two likenesses tie into the two loves distinguished before.
• Then: in the love of wanting the lover properly loves himself; one loves himself more than another, being one in substance with himself, but with another only in the likeness of a form. Hence if another sharing the form impedes him from the good he loves, the other becomes hateful, not as alike but as impeding: potters impede each other’s profit, the proud each other’s excellence. His example: professors always wrangling, everyone wanting to excel.

8. Reply to the first objection: per se and per accidens (“potters quarrel with each other”) #

Point: likeness as such brings together; conflict arises when, because of the likeness, both pursue one thing both cannot have.

• Truth is not like that: my knowing the Pythagorean theorem does not prevent yours. But two cannot both be president, marry the same woman, hold the same chair; two philosophers competing for one post are at odds, while the philosopher may befriend the political scientist, still per accidens.
• A student asks whether likeness in vices other than pride also produces conflict: “I don’t know if there’s an answer to that”; left open, restated as: whenever likeness leads to pursuing what both cannot have.
• Discovery: both can know the same thing, but only one can have the honour of first discovering it; scientists and nations quarrelling, Leibniz or Newton over the calculus.

9. Replies two to four: proportional likeness and ability to act (“likeness according to proportionality”) #

Point: the remaining objections concern more distant likenesses, not seen at first.

• Reply 2: in loving in another what one does not love in oneself there is likeness by proportionality: as the other is to what is loved in him, so the man is to what he loves in himself; a good singer loving a good writer, Irving’s painter and poet. Masculinity is to the man what femininity is to the woman; for her to be feminine is like his being masculine. Mozart is to music as Shakespeare to drama; Sophocles to tragedy as Homer to epic (“Sophocles is Homer writing tragedy”). A pair of shoes fitting my foot and one fitting yours: alike proportionally.
• Contrast of objections: the first rests on likeness in the very same thing, so the puzzle is why they quarrel (two collectors wanting one rare book; two women in Filene’s Basement fighting over the last dress); the second rests on a likeness you do not see at first.
• Reply 3: he who loves what he lacks is like it as ability to act, even more distant than proportion. I am attracted to the man who knows not because I am ignorant (if ignorance were inseparable from me I would not be his friend at all) but because I am able to know and he can make me know. Applied to God: we are able to have something of what God actually has, eternal life, seeing him face to face with his help, “a very distant likeness”.
• Reply 4: by the same ability-to-act likeness the non-generous loves the generous insofar as he expects something he wants, a friendship of usefulness on both sides. The ancient tag: philosophers at the doors of the rich, not the reverse, because the philosophers know what they need. Or (second solution): all have the virtues not in complete habit but in the “seed-like things of reason”, so the coward respects the brave man as conformed to his natural reason; the man who cannot control anger likes the mild man because he sees that is how a man should be.
• Summary gradation: first objection, likeness seen and conflict per accidens; then likeness of ratios; then ability to act, furthest away, so one cannot say “these people aren’t alike”, only alike more remotely. Shakespeare’s exhortation to use reason calls reason God-like: a very distant likeness to God. Aside: a student mentions a married couple, composer and artist (Russians); he says “that’s a different example”.

10. The words: lovable, lovely, like and love (“I like you because you are like me”) #

Point: English marks the causes of love in its vocabulary.

• Lovable vs. lovely: both from “love”; lovable is a synonym for good (Augustine: nothing is lovable but the good), lovely for beautiful. “Good-looking” shows beauty is more particular than good: good food is “good”, not “lovely”; lovely is used for eye and ear, good for all senses. “The good is what pleases, the beautiful what pleases when seen (known)”: that is the first cause of love.
• Like: “I like you because you are like me” shows the connection between likeness and liking; not visible in Thomas’s Latin.
• Liking vs. loving: love is more intense (“I like you” to a student is safe, “I love you” is trouble; his daughter: “I don’t like this, I love it”). Liking is divided into liking and loving; the less intense keeps the common name, as Aristotle in the Categories divides disposition into disposition and habit (habit, firm and hard to lose, gets the new name; “the boss is in a bad mood” is a disposition), and as thinking is divided into thinking and knowing (I think Bush will be re-elected, I know two is half of four; knowing adds certainty, not just strength). Break follows.

His words #

• semblance of her soul: Portia’s phrase for the likeness between friends (recap).
• oderunt hilarem tristes: “gloomy people hate a merry fellow”.
• another self: Aristotle’s friend, source of the love carried over from oneself.
• amor sui usque ad contemptum Dei / amor Dei usque ad contemptum sui: Augustine’s two cities.
• ability: what one has in inclination, not yet in act [ed.: potency].
• act: what one actually has; “act is an ability itself in some way”.
• love of friendship / well-wishing vs. love of wanting: the two loves distinguished before [ed.: amor amicitiae / amor concupiscentiae].
• friendship of the useful, the pleasant: what the love of wanting produces.
• as such / by happening: his gloss on per se / per accidens.
• likeness according to proportionality: as A is to what is loved in him, so B to what he loves in himself.
• seed-like things of reason: the seeds of the virtues in natural reason [ed.: seminalia rationis].
• lovable = good; lovely = beautiful; like/liking: sign of likeness as cause; loving: intense liking that takes the new name.
• disposition / habit; thinking / knowing: parallel divisions where the lesser keeps the common name.

Texts #

Read in class

• Washington Irving, Life of Oliver Goldsmith (painters and poets; Goldsmith and Reynolds).
• James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson (“not like geometry”), and his account of the tour to Mull (handout, pp. 2–3 region).
• Jane Austen, three selections (Fanny on dissimilar dispositions; “temperaments had better be unlike”; Elizabeth on Jane) [ed.: Mansfield Park and Pride and Prejudice, inferred].
• Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (Catherine’s confession to Nelly).
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, article 3 on likeness as cause of love (I-II q.27 a.3, inferred): objections, sed contra, body, four replies. Mentioned
• Proverbs 13:10; Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) 13:19; 1 John 3:2 (he says “I think” third chapter, second verse).
• Augustine, Confessions IV; Augustine on the two cities.
• Aristotle, Ethics VIII (potters); Rhetoric II; Categories (disposition and habit); opening of the books on friendship referring to Plato’s dialogue.
• Shakespeare: Merchant of Venice, Richard (prev. lecture), Hotspur and the Prince, reason as God-like.
• Chesterton on incompatibility; Teresa of Avila on simplicity; the fourth council on likeness and greater unlikeness; Monsignor Dion on students and professors.

His questions #

• Is the fact that two lawyers in the same town are not friends because of their likeness, or because of competition? Because of competition; the likeness is accidental to the conflict.
• If you’re my friend and you’re my friend, must you two be friends? No; each may be like me in a different respect.
• Is it better that husband and wife be unlike? Is “opposites attract” true? Raised as an objection; answered later by proportional likeness.
• In Catherine’s own thinking, which will win out, goodness or likeness? Likeness, and “there’s a certain danger there”.
• Who is better, God or your neighbour, and who is more like you? God infinitely better; the neighbour more like you, hence the danger of disorder.
• Is the hatred between potters per se or per accidens? Per accidens: they pursue one good both cannot have.
• If there is a likeness in a vice other than pride, does it also produce disputes? Left open (“I don’t know if there’s an answer to that”).
• Why doesn’t a masculine man want the woman to be masculine? Her being feminine is proportionally like his being masculine.
• What is lovable? What is lovely? Lovable, the good; lovely, the beautiful.
• Are liking and loving the same or different? Both: loving is intense liking and gets the new name; liking keeps the common name.