Aquinas on Love: Review, and Jealousy and Zeal as an Effect of Love

Orientation #

He opens with a review of the three parts of Thomas’s treatise on love and “the first three effects,” which “we saw before” (prev. lecture), then introduces the fourth effect he had reached at the end of last time. He says he will be away for some weeks this summer. The previous class treated the second and third effects (mutual indwelling, ecstasy) and introduced zeal; the next takes up the last two articles on love’s effect on the lover.

The class, in order #

1. Review: the nature of love and its two divisions (“Thomas’s treatise on love has how many parts”) #

The point: the treatise has three parts — nature, causes, effects — and the first question defined love by reference to the heart (power of desiring) and its object.

• Love is “conformity or agreement of the heart with its object”; hence love is more basic than wanting: wanting arises from love in the absence of the loved thing (so no desire in God), joy/delight/pleasure arises from love in its presence.
• Two divisions: (a) love as emotion vs. love as act of the will; (b) love of wanting vs. love of friendship or “wishing well”.
• Candy: “I like candy” (like = a weaker word for love), so I want it when I don’t have it, and have joy when I do — “describes me as a little boy.”

2. Review: the causes of love (“the basic cause of love is what”) #

The point: the two basic causes are the good as known, and likeness (or identity).

• The good as known: known by sense (candy, love in the concupiscible appetite) or by reason (wisdom, love in the will; love of God primarily in the will).
• Likeness/identity: “I like you because you’re like me”; I more than like myself — I am myself. Richard III: “Richard loves Richard, that is, I am I.”
• Wuthering Heights: the woman drawn to one man for his good qualities, to the other because he is like her; in her own words she is more drawn to the one like her — a “danger”: attraction to the like rather than the better. So the two causes are “very basically different.”
• The fourth article (another emotion or act of will causing love) is less basic; it presupposes a prior love.
• Applied outline: why love God? because he is good and known as good, and because you are made in his image and likeness — “a different reason.” Why love wisdom? primarily its goodness, and knowing what it is.
• Aside on the Seven Wise Men of Greece: over the oracle at Delphi, “Know thyself” and “nothing too much” — but not “love thyself,” since men naturally love themselves though they don’t know themselves well; the commandment “love your neighbor as yourself” supposes self-love. A possible second subtlety: truly knowing yourself, in your individual things, may find you not too lovable and so get in the way of self-love — Richard at the end of the play; the psalm, “the man who loves iniquity hates his own soul.”

3. The six articles on effects: the first three vs. the fourth (“You can approach that more particular love”) #

The point: no treatise, even in Aristotle, is as complete and basic on love; particular loves (romantic, of wisdom, of God) are approached with this general account.

• The mind can’t hold a division into more than two or three, so it divides and subdivides or crisscrosses; he proposes: first four articles vs. last two, and within the four, the first three vs. the fourth.
• First three effects refer to the loved object: union (basic); mutual “staying within” (on the side of mind and of will); ecstasy, going out of oneself — more complete in wishing well (putting yourself in the other’s shoes), but present even in wanting (“my mouth is not sufficiently sweet, I got to put some candy in it”).
• The fourth effect deals with what gets in the way: what impedes getting or enjoying the wanted good, or what threatens harm to the one you wish well. Children threatened → zeal against the threat; country insulted → zeal. Our Lord chasing the money changers: going to the temple to be with God is the first effects; moving against what threatens the temple is the fourth.

4. Two English words for one Latin word (“in Latin and even the Greek you have somewhat the same word”) #

The point: he translates the one Latin term with “jealousy or zeal” because English has split them.

• Jealousy vs. zeal: jealousy goes with the love of wanting (a man wanting a woman and another threatening his enjoyment of her; two rivals for a presidency or promotion); zeal with wishing well. J-E-A-L and Z-E-A-L share a root; they “take on different meanings” by chance and custom.
• Parallel aside: metaphor and translation are etymologically the same (phora/latio = carry; meta/trans = over), yet translation carries over the meaning not the word, metaphor the word not the meaning: “you pig,” “you rat,” Romeo calling Juliet “honey.”

5. Student question: is wishing well the most basic love? (“is then the love of wishing well really the most basic”) #

His answer: for yourself you naturally have wishing well; for non-persons (candy, wine) simply wanting; for another person there is an ambiguity — do I want her company for what I get, or wish her well?

• The mixer: the guy who sees a beautiful girl — honest students know it is not “I wish well to her”; she is a good he wants for himself, not that he wishes upon her himself.
• Hence “love your neighbor as yourself” commands the love of wishing well, since that is the love you have for yourself; these distinctions are “the fundamental ones” for any such discussion.
• A girl from the love-and-friendship class saw the secret of her parents’ stable marriage: they really wished each other well; entering marriage with wanting alone, one looks elsewhere when beauty goes.

6. The handout quotations on jealousy and zeal (“The fourth effect of love: jealousy or zeal”) #

The point: each illustrates jealousy as an effect, mostly of romantic (wanting) love, the last two of wishing well.

• Troilus and Cressida, “more vindicative than jealous love”: Shakespeare makes the cause the noun and the effect the adjective (also “scornful pride”), sometimes reversing it; so jealous is an effect, not a property, of love.
• Two Gentlemen of Verona (Valentine, a nobody, vs. the rich rival the duke favors): “love, thou knowest, is full of jealousy” — not filled like a glass with water, but an effect; strong love full of jealousy is “a very strong thing.”
• Charlie at the shop: a wife insanely jealous when the boss’s sister showed him something in a bedroom; “if you see me down there, don’t say hello” to the bank clerk going to the same vacation spot.
• A Shakespeare narrative poem: “where love reigns, disturbing jealousy doth call himself affection’s sentinel” — the guard so no one else gets what you want.
• Brothers Karamazov, Grushenka: “I would be offended if you were not jealous” — why? because one who is not jealous is not a lover (a scientist, not a lover); she has a fierce heart and can be jealous herself. Othello mentioned for jealousy.
• Smollett, Roderick Random, the ball: pride and triumph until the nobleman attaches himself to Narcissa — “then I began to feel the pangs of jealousy,” sickening at his discourse, pains of the damned when she smiled; competition.
• Cooper: “the keen eye of jealous love” — love’s effect, jealousy, makes the eye keen to detect Isabel Singleton’s attachment to Dunwoodie.
• Antonio and Sebastian (Twelfth Night, inferred): a love of wishing well; “not all love to see you… but jealousy what might befall your travel” — jealousy here in the sense we now call zeal, for the friend’s safety, at risk of his own life since he has enemies in the city.
• King John: killing the boy prince will “freeze up their zeal” — when love of the king cools, subjects no longer move against what threatens his throne but “cherish it.”

7. Article 4: objections, sed contra, body (“jealousy, in whatever way it is taken”) #

The point: Thomas’s basic reason — jealousy comes from the intensity of love.

• Obj. 1: jealousy is the beginning of strife (1 Cor 3:3), strife is opposed to love. Aside: Jackson’s Hermitage and Clay’s Ashland; Clay, Webster, Calhoun, “the triumvirate,” all wanting to be president — jealousy, fighting, strife.
• Obj. 2: the object of love is the good that communicates itself (Dionysius, bonum est diffusivum sui); jealousy refuses sharing (“I don’t want to share my wife… my candy”).
• Obj. 3: jealousy is not without hate (Psalm 72:3, “I was jealous over the wicked”), so no more an effect of love than of hate.
• Sed contra: Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 4, God is called jealous/zealous from his great love for existing things; Scripture speaks metaphorically of the nation as a faithless wife.
• Body, argument: (1) when a power tends more intensely toward something, it more strongly repels everything contrary; (2) love is a motion toward the loved (Augustine, Eighty-three Questions); therefore intense love seeks to exclude everything repugnant to it. Hence its place after the first three: they concern the loved itself, this concerns what opposes it.
• Second paragraph, by kind of love. Caution on “love of friendship”: friendship strictly is mutual love, but one can wish well to one who does not love back (“love your enemies”); it is so called because it is the love one should have for a friend.
  • Love of wanting: moved against whatever opposes getting or quiet enjoyment — men jealous for their wives lest sharing impede the uniqueness sought in a wife; seekers of excellence (the presidency) moved against those who seem to excel: “the jealousy of envy,” Psalm 36.
  • Love of friendship: seeks the friend’s good, so when intense moves against everything opposed to it — zeal for a friend, and zeal for God against what is against his honor or will: 3 Kings 19:14; the gloss on John 2:17, consumed with a good zeal who strives to correct evils and, if unable, tolerates and laments them. A psalm asking mercy because one is filled with contempt — contempt shown not for oneself but for the Church, God, noble things; one is moved against it because one loves what they attack.

8. The three replies and the small-goods distinction (“there are little goods and big goods”) #

• Reply 1: the Apostle speaks of the jealousy of envy; strife is not against the loved thing but for it, against its impediments — a second object, bad because it prevents the good.
• Reply 2: the good is loved as communicable to the one loving, so whatever impedes that communication is hated. “Now, the important distinction”: from defective goodness, small goods cannot be possessed whole by many — the little glass of wine not worth sharing among all; the boy from the big family who stuffs his mouth with candy before entering the house. From love of such things comes the jealousy of envy. Goods possessable whole by many are not so: truth — the Pythagorean theorem understood by any number without preventing my understanding, “communicable to infinity of people.” But the honor of being first to discover it belongs to one only, “a very small good compared to the truth itself” — scientists’ fights over priority, “nobody remembers you’re the second guy.” So jealousy in intellectual matters comes from loving another good more. “Preoccupation with small goods makes for small minds.” Clay’s “I’d rather be right than president” and the cynical historian’s “probably a guy didn’t have a chance”; politics no worse now than in Washington’s second term; only one president, senator, winning team, gold medalist, true religion. Thomas: no one envies another the knowledge of truth “except perhaps about the excellence of such knowledge” — one who loves wisdom for the honor of being wise is a lover of honor, easily distracted.
• Reply 3: that one hates what opposes the loved proceeds from love; so jealousy is placed as an effect of love rather than hate — I hate the suave nobleman because I love the girl. He stresses how “perfectly” Thomas orders the effects: the first three involve just the love, the fourth something in addition that impedes or threatens it.

His words #

• conformity/agreement of the heart with its object: his definition of love [ed.: complacentia]
• love of wanting / love of wishing well: his renderings [ed.: amor concupiscentiae / amor amicitiae]
• heart: his word for the power of desiring [ed.: appetite]
• like: a weaker word for love, same thing basically
• staying within: the second effect [ed.: mutua inhaesio]
• ecstasy: going outside of oneself
• jealousy or zeal: two words for one Latin (and Greek) term [ed.: zelus]
• jealousy of envy: Thomas’s term for jealousy in the love of wanting over excellence
• bonum est diffusivum sui: the good communicates itself (attributed to Dionysius)
• small goods vs. big goods: goods not possessable whole by many vs. those that are (truth)

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, “the third question,” fourth article (I-II q. 28 a. 4, inferred), objections, sed contra, body, replies
• Handout “Effects of Love,” pp. 18–22: Troilus and Cressida; Two Gentlemen of Verona; a Shakespeare narrative poem (“affection’s sentinel”); The Brothers Karamazov (Grushenka); Smollett, Roderick Random (the ball); Cooper (“keen eye of jealous love”); Antonio’s speech (Twelfth Night, inferred); King John
• 1 Cor 3:3; Psalm 72:3; Psalm 36; 3 Kings 19:14; John 2:17 with gloss Mentioned
• Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 4; Augustine, Book of Eighty-three Questions
• Richard III (“Richard loves Richard”); Wuthering Heights; Othello; Romeo and Juliet (“honey”)
• Psalm: “the man who loves iniquity hates his own soul”; a psalm on being filled with contempt
• Gospel: Christ and the money changers; “love your enemies”; “love your neighbor as yourself”
• Biographies of Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay

His questions #

• Thomas’s treatise on love has how many parts? Three: nature, causes, effects.
• What is love? Conformity or agreement of the heart with its object; more basic than wanting and joy.
• The basic cause of love is what? And the third cause? The good (as known); likeness, or identity.
• Is love filled with jealousy like my glass is filled with water? No — jealousy is an effect of love, not a property.
• Why would Grushenka be offended if he were not jealous? Because one not jealous is not a lover.
• Is the love of wishing well really the most basic? (student) For yourself, yes; for non-persons only wanting; for persons, ambiguous.
• Why should metaphor carry over the word and translation the meaning? Chance and custom.
• Why is jealousy an effect of love rather than of hate? Hating what opposes the loved proceeds from love.
• Should truth be a cause of jealousy? No, it can be possessed whole by many; only the honor of being first, a small good, causes it.