The Eleven Emotions and Summa I, Q.20, Art. 1: Is There Love in God?

Orientation #

He says that “it has been shown that in God there is will” in the previous question, and that the fivefold treatment of the will is now over: “this is a little more particular and a little more pleasant to read now than the question of the will of God.” He ends: “we’re now going to go on next time with article two, whether God loves all things.” The previous class finished q. 19 (free judgment and the will of the sign) and the next takes up q. 20, aa. 2–3.

The class, in order #

1. The eleven emotions and their two groups (“basically eleven different emotions”) #

Point: before reading the article he sets out, “from the Summa Contra Gentiles” and the Prima Secundae, Thomas’s division of the emotions, which the objections and replies will presuppose.

• Two groups: Greek epithumia / Latin concupiscible appetite (named from wanting or sense desire); Greek thumos / Latin irascible appetite (named from the passion that stands out, anger).
• Basis of the distinction: the concupiscible arises from what is agreeable or disagreeable to the senses. Six emotions: liking/love is fundamental; in the absence of the loved good it gives rise to wanting/desire, in its possession to joy/pleasure (candy; his grandson’s “great day” because of the jelly beans). On the side of the bad: hate (he hates salmon), aversion/turning away (Latin word kept, “don’t we have a good concrete word in English?”), sadness (forced to eat it, gloomy at table).
• Irascible: five emotions that arise only when there is difficulty. From wanting: hope (you think you can overcome the difficulty) vs. despair (you think you cannot). From aversion: fear (may not be able to avoid) vs. boldness (think you can overcome) — stepping on an ant is no difficulty, a bully is. From sadness: anger, when you think you can, with difficulty, get rid of what causes the sadness (someone standing on his foot who says “so what?”; if you can do nothing about it, more fear than anger). Nothing in the irascible arises from joy, because in joy you are satisfied.
• Sub-kinds by object (melancholy, loneliness, envy are all kinds of sadness), but the basic distinction is these eleven.

2. Why the distinction matters (“very important for understanding music”) #

Point: the eleven emotions are needed for understanding oneself, others, animals, and four disciplines.

• Fiction: Aristotle, tragedy purges pity (a form of sadness) and fear; comedy purges joy and hope.
• Music: major keys for love, wanting, joy, hope, boldness; minor for hate, aversion, sadness, fear, despair, anger. Mozart: anger in the C minor and D minor piano concertos; hope returning to despair when the melody comes back in the minor; fear in D minor in Don Giovanni.
• Rhetoric: Aristotle on arousing and calming emotions in the courtroom — anger or hatred toward the accused makes one more apt to convict and punish more; pity and liking, to overlook or lessen the penalty.
• Ethics: virtues are about emotions — courage about fear and boldness; temperance/moderation about what pleases the senses; magnanimity about hope; mildness or meekness (“learn from me, meek and humble of heart”) about anger; patience more about sadness.

3. Carrying the names over: to the will, and to God (“only two can be carried over properly”) #

Point: in Summa Contra Gentiles I, before the love of God, Thomas does three things with the names of the emotions.

1. In an emotion distinguish a bodily aspect and a formal aspect (object, way of having the object). Carried to the will, the bodily aspect drops out (no “thump thump” of fear) and the formal aspect stays: fear of the Lord, theological hope, charity as a kind of love — not emotions, but named from them.
2. Can any of the eleven be said of God properly? Some have a bad object, and nothing bad can happen to God: hate, aversion, sadness only metaphorically. Wanting has a good object, but a good lacked; God is all good, so no wanting properly. God possesses all good, so joy (gaudium) fits; and love can be had for what one has as well as for what one lacks — which is why “lover of wisdom” is an apt name: it does not say whether you have wisdom, and as you acquire some you love it more. So of the six concupiscible names, two carry over properly. Nothing is difficult for God, so none of the irascible: fear and despair hardly even metaphorically; hope and desire concern a future good not had; anger, for many reasons, but chiefly because it arises from sadness — metaphorically only, “as Thomas says in the end.”
3. In SCG I he first shows there is joy in God and then argues from that, among other ways, to love in God. Here in the Summa Theologiae none of this is assumed: the emotions come up in the Prima Secundae with the virtues, and there is a question on the love of God but none on the joy of God.

4. Introduction to question 20 (“about the love of God, four things are sought”) #

Point: what “pertains absolutely to the will of God” and how the question is laid out.

• In the desiring part of the soul are found both the passions (gaudium, amor et huiusmodi — he names joy and love perhaps because he is thinking of God) and the habits of the moral virtues (iustitia, fortitudo et huiusmodi). Aristotle: fortitude is about fear and boldness, not in God, so said of God at most metaphorically; justice is in the will and about its acts, so said properly. SCG is more expansive, going through the virtues of the Nicomachean Ethics.
• Here Thomas emphasizes justice and misericordia. Misericordia is Latin for pity, originally a kind of sadness (Greek Kyrie eleison goes back to the Greek word for pity); in God it is not an emotion but an act of will: willing to relieve our misery. So q. 20 is the love of God, q. 21 justice and mercy.
• Four articles: whether there is love in God; whether God loves all things; whether one thing more than another; whether He loves more the better things. He notes the word chosen is amor, taken more from the emotion, rather than the more intellectual dilectio (from choice; he translates it “chosen love”).
• Aside: Thomas “always starts on the wrong side” — his old teacher Kasurik’s joke about recognizing souls before the resurrection by their habits of thought. The Summa is an abbreviation of the quaestiones disputatae (ten or fifteen objections each way there; here about three plus a brief sed contra from authority): “sort of for beginners, a little dialectic,” the method Plato taught in the Meno and the dialogues and Aristotle in logic.

5. The three objections and the sed contra (“It seems that love is not in God”) #

• Obj. 1: no passion (emotion, undergoing, feeling — “maybe emotion is the best word”) is in God; love is a passion; therefore love is not in God. He stresses why Thomas gives this: the first meaning of amor names an emotion, because we name things as we know them and our knowledge begins with the senses (“I feel sad, I feel angry” — the feelings are tied to the senses). We fall back on the earlier meaning before reaching the one we want; the objection “straightens us out.” His Polish philosophy teacher: “Mr. Berquist, do you have an emotional attachment to the syllogism?” — “I might to a girl, but not to the syllogism”: the will is attached to the syllogism because it understands its perfection. Love of wisdom is an act of will; love of the girl would be an emotion first.
• Obj. 2: love, anger, sadness and the like are divided against each other; sadness and anger are said of God only metaphorically; therefore neither is love.
• Obj. 3: Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 4: love is a power that unites; this has no place in God, who is simple. Aside: in Thomas’s commentary the Divine Names is the book on names said properly of God, while Dionysius’ Symbolic Theology is on names said metaphorically.
• Sed contra: 1 John, God is agape — one of the Greeks’ many words for love.
• His Symposium exercise: Socrates argues the philosopher is not wise — the lover wants, the wanter lacks. He would put it to a seminarian: then God, if He loves, wants, and lacks? Socrates reasons with probability: nearly everything we love we want, because we do not fully have it; but it is not necessary that the lover wants — if he already has what he loves, he has joy, not wanting. “That’s the way God is.”

6. Corpus (i): love the first motion, because good before bad (“the first motion of the will”) #

Point: it is necessary to place love in God; “this is the key thing” — and Thomas defines primum by looking at before and after.

1. Every act of will or of any desiring power tends to good or bad as its object.
2. Good is the object chiefly and through itself; bad only secondarily and through another, as opposed to good.
3. So acts regarding the good are naturally before those regarding the bad: joy before sadness, love before hate (the Churchill photograph: the photographer took his cigar away; if I love my cigar I am sad or angry when it is taken).
4. The axiom used: semper quod est per se prius est eo quod est per aliud — and the per se is also a beginning and cause of the per aliud. Sugar is sweet through itself, the coffee through the sugar; sugar can be sweet without the coffee but not vice versa, and it causes the coffee’s sweetness.

• Applied to knowing: the per se nota are before what is known through another and cause our knowing it. If A were known through B, B through C, and nothing through itself, nothing would be known. Dictionary: some words are known through other words, but not all, or looking-up would go on forever and one would never learn. His firstborn Paul learning “cookie” in the high chair, by association with the thing, not through words. Foreign language: associate la main with the hand, not with “hand” (Kate learning “elbow” in Henry V).
• Applied to the unmoved mover: a moved mover (the book moving the briefcase) is a mover per aliud; so before it there must be a mover per se, an unmoved mover.

7. Corpus (ii): love the first, because general before particular (“love regards the good in general”) #

1. What is more common is naturally before (from the beginning of natural philosophy: the general before the particular); the understanding has an order first to common truths, then particular.
2. Some acts regard the good under a special condition: joy and pleasure, the good present and had; desire and hope, the good not yet achieved. Love regards the good in general, had or not had.
3. Therefore love is naturally the first act of will and desire. Candy: wanting requires not having it, pleasure requires having it, liking is either way; if I did not like candy I would neither want it nor rejoice in getting it (the Italian liqueur chocolates his brother sent: not worth bringing to Monsignor Dion, who had no sweet tooth).
4. Hence all other acts of the desiring power presuppose love as first root: no one desires but a good loved; no one rejoices but in a good loved and had; hate is only of what is contrary to a loved good (if I did not love truth I would not hate falsehood); sadness likewise.
5. Remove the first and you remove the rest; in whatever there is will or desire there is love; there is will in God (shown before); therefore love must be placed in God.

8. Digression: liking and loving (“I don’t like this, I love it”) #

Point: an example of the common name kept by one of the particulars while the other gets a new name.

• Liking vs. loving: a lover of wisdom likes wisdom, so “love” can include liking; but his daughter’s “I don’t like this, I love it” divides them, and a professor is safer saying he likes a student. Loving adds intensity; liking adds nothing significant, so keeps the common name.
• Same with think vs. know: I think so-and-so will be president but do not know; I know two is half of four — and also think it. Knowing gets the new name because it adds something noteworthy, certainty.
• Animal vs. man/beast: man gets the new name because he adds something noteworthy, being rational. Doing vs. making: making a chair gets a new name because of the product you can see; philosophizing, a better doing, shows nothing outside the head.
• Latin: in the Prima Secundae Thomas distinguishes amor (more the emotion) from dilectio (from choice, love in the will); here he keeps amor. Dionysius likewise applies the Greek eros, originally sensual, to God for its intensity.

9. Reply 1: passions are acts of sense desire with bodily change (“the proximate mover of the body”) #

1. The knowing power moves only through the desiring power; as universal reason moves by means of particular reason (De Anima III), so the intellectual desire, the will, moves in us through the sense desire.
2. Hence the proximate mover of the body is the sense desire, and its act is always followed by a bodily change (transmutatio), most of all around the heart, the first beginning of motion in the animal.
3. So the acts of the sense desire, the eleven, are called passions insofar as a bodily change is annexed; not so the act of the will, which like reason is immaterial.
4. Love, joy, pleasure as acts of sense desire are passions; as acts of intellectual desire they are not, and so are placed in God as acts of will, not emotions. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics VII: God rejoices by one simple operation; for the same reason He loves without feeling.

• Naming aside: appetitus is the common word for intellectual, sense, and natural appetite, though it carries the idea of desire, and the irascible is named from anger — because, as Shakespeare says, things in motion sooner catch the eye than what is not stirred; wanting is more like motion, joy like rest (the beautiful is “restful” because it delights). So we name even the divine appetitus though there is no appetite in it.
• The carrying-over illustrated by “road”: the Greeks speak of a road in our knowledge; the material (stones, asphalt) drops out, the formal before-and-after stays (Framingham before Boston). His son Paul, asked about the basic road in human knowledge: “Are cars and trucks on it?” — stuck in the first meaning, as the objection is. Likewise passio in the De Anima applied to sensing and understanding: understanding is an undergoing because acted on by its object, but the first meaning involves body and something contrary to nature (being “under the weather”), whereas the teacher acting on the mind perfects it — though the student may feel “why are you doing this to me?” Samuel Johnson on the boys no longer beaten: “they gain at one end, they lose at the other.”
• C. S. Lewis on the angels: love without feeling seems weak to us because of our way of knowing, so he calls the angels’ love ferocious; no conflict in them between sense desire and will (“the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak” is ours), the whole angel goes. John Paul II in his catechesis on the angels: the angel loves with full force, so an angel’s place in grace is proportional to its place in nature, while a human who overcomes more can rank higher.

10. Reply 2: material and formal in a passion (“as it were material… as it were formal”) #

1. In a passion there is something as it were material, the bodily change, and something as it were formal, on the side of desire: in anger (De Anima I) the kindling of blood around the heart vs. the desire for revenge.
2. Even on the formal side some designate imperfection: desire (good not had), sadness (bad had), and so anger, which presupposes sadness.
3. Some designate none: love (mere inclination to the good) and joy (good had).
4. None belong to God materially (Thomas’s first point in SCG); those formally imperfect only metaphorically, by likeness of effect; those without imperfection properly — amor and gaudium, two of the eleven, and in God without passion or bodily change.

11. Reply 3: love as a uniting power without composition (“the act of love always tends to two things”) #

1. Love tends to two things: the good one wishes to someone, and the one to whom one wishes it; to love is properly to wish good to something. Later called the love of wishing-well or friendship (for the person) and the love of wanting (for the good wished) — made explicit in the Prima Secundae.
2. In loving himself one wishes himself good and seeks to unite that good to himself; so love is a uniting power — in us, and in God, but without composition, since the good He wills Himself is not other than Himself, good by His very substance. (The crucifix to Thomas: Bene scripsisti de me, Thoma — on the statue at the College of St. Thomas — and Thomas’s reward: “nothing but you.”)
3. In loving another one wishes him good and treats him as oneself, referring the good to him as to oneself; so love is concretiva, gathering to itself — as in the commandment to love the neighbour as oneself. Thus divine love too is vis concretiva without composition, insofar as He wills good to other things.

• His teaching example: for candy or wine you have only the love of wanting — you consume it; it is your good, not its. For yourself, only the love of wishing well. For another human being, either. “Love your neighbour as yourself” means as you wish good to yourself, not as you love wine. Men at the mixer begin with the love of wanting; it is not enough. Marriages entered with only the love of wanting may not last; a student reflected that her parents’ stable marriage rested on their really wishing each other well. He promises to return to this.

Conclusion as he leaves it: “So there is love in God, then.” Next time, article two.

His words #

• concupiscible appetite: Greek epithumia; named from wanting or sense desire; six emotions arising from what is agreeable or disagreeable to the senses.
• irascible appetite: Greek thumos; named from anger; five emotions arising when there is difficulty.
• liking or loving: the fundamental emotion, giving rise to wanting (good absent) and joy or pleasure (good possessed).
• aversion: “turning away”; the Latin word kept for want of a concrete English one.
• gaudium: joy; with amor one of the two names said of God properly.
• misericordia: Latin for pity, originally a kind of sadness; in God an act of will to relieve our misery.
• amor vs. dilectio: the former named from the emotion; the latter from choice, “a chosen love.”
• passion: “emotion, undergoing, feeling — maybe emotion is the best word”; an act of sense desire with a bodily change annexed.
• per se before per aliud: “always what is through itself is before that which is through another,” and its beginning and cause.
• per se nota: the known-through-itself, before and cause of what is known through another.
• transmutatio: the bodily change following an act of sense desire, chiefly around the heart.
• appetitus: common word for intellectual, sense and natural appetite, though it carries the idea of desire.
• antonomasia: Thomas calls Aristotle “the philosopher.”
• love of wishing well / love of friendship vs. love of wanting [ed.: amor amicitiae / amor concupiscentiae, which he also names]: for the one to whom good is wished vs. for the good wished.
• vis concretiva / uniting power: love gathers the good, or the other, to oneself; in God without composition.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 20, prologue and a. 1 (objections, sed contra, corpus, three replies).
• Dionysius, Divine Names, ch. 4 (as quoted in obj. 3).
• 1 John (God is love), as sed contra.
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics VII (God rejoices by one simple operation), as cited in reply 1.

Mentioned

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles I (names of emotions carried over; joy in God, then love in God; virtues of God).
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II (distinction and names of the emotions; treatise on love; amor/dilectio).
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 19 (will in God, prev. question); q. 21 (justice and mercy).
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III (incarnation; the “Bene scripsisti” story).
• Thomas Aquinas, commentary on the Divine Names; Dionysius, Symbolic Theology.
• Aristotle, De Anima I (anger: material and formal) and III (universal and particular reason); De Anima on passio said of sensing and understanding.
• Aristotle, Ethics (fortitude about fear and boldness; the virtues); Poetics (inferred; tragedy purges pity and fear); Rhetoric (inferred; emotions in the courtroom).
• Plato, Symposium (the philosopher not wise); Meno.
• Shakespeare, Henry V (Kate learning English); “things in motion sooner catch the eye.”
• Samuel Johnson on beating schoolboys; C. S. Lewis on the angels’ love; John Paul II, catechesis on the angels.
• Matthew (inferred): “learn from me, meek and humble of heart”; “the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak”; the second commandment of love.

His questions #

• What is the basis for the distinction between the two groups of emotions? The concupiscible arises from what is agreeable or disagreeable to the senses; the irascible when there is difficulty in getting or avoiding it.
• Anger arises from what? From sadness, when one thinks one can, with difficulty, get rid of its cause.
• Can any of the eleven names be carried over properly to God? Only love and joy; the rest at most metaphorically.
• Is it necessarily true that the one who loves something wants it (Socrates)? No; one who has what he loves has joy, not wanting — that is the way God is.
• If A were known through B and B through C and nothing through itself, would anything ever be known? No; there would be an infinity to know first.
• How did Paul learn the meaning of the word “cookie”? Not through other words, but by association with the thing.
• Is a moved mover a mover per se or per aliud? Per aliud; so before it there must be an unmoved mover.
• Why does knowing get the new name and thinking keep the common name? Knowing adds something noteworthy, certainty; thinking adds nothing.
• Why is the irascible appetite named from anger? Things in motion sooner catch the eye than what is not stirred.
• What kind of love does a man have for the girl at the mixer? The love of wanting, which is not enough; wishing well is needed — to be taken up again later.