Summa I-II Q.22 aa.1-2: Is There Passion in the Soul? The Meanings of 'Passio' and Why Passion Is More in Desire Than in Knowing

Orientation #

He picks up from the prooemium begun last time (“we didn’t finish the proemium, did we?”), recalling that “as we said” the names of the emotions are carried over to acts of the will (prev. lecture). He announces that the treatment in general runs through the subject, difference, comparison and goodness/malice of the passions (he assumes qq. 22–25), with the special treatment beginning “around question twenty-six.” The previous class finished q. 21 a. 4 on merit and began the transition to the passions; the next continues q. 22–23.

The class, in order #

1. Why study the passions (“this treatise is what kind of a central thing”) #

The treatise on the passions serves several other studies.

• Ethics: to understand the virtues about the passions — fortitude/courage, temperance, magnanimity.
• Fiction: the characters represented undergo emotions, and the emotional effect of tragedy differs from that of comedy.
• Music: eighteenth-century music represents the emotions; Mozart uses keys for emotions — C major for magnanimity, D major nearer courage, B flat or G major for other emotions; major vs. minor. Aside: he and Warren once collected Mozart melodies to illustrate this to a friend.
• The will: the names of the emotions are carried over to acts of the will.
• Rhetoric: the second means of persuasion is moving the emotions; anger in a jury gets a harsher verdict, pity gets a lighter one. Aristotle says it is “like warping the ruler before you measure” — it should not be allowed, but since it is, this is how it is done. Cicero called Aristotle’s Rhetoric “a golden river.”
• Count: eleven emotions, six in the concupiscible, five in the irascible.
• Plan: in general, four things — subject, difference, comparison to each other, malice or goodness. He notes Thomas says “malice” first.

2. The word passio (“a problem here in how you translate the word”) #

Point: “passio” (Greek equivalent) has been carried over from suffering to bare undergoing, and English translation breaks the chain.

• “Passion of our Lord” = suffering. But Aristotle says understanding is a passio, and sensing is a passio — does that mean suffering? Only “in a certain sense.”
• Why the problem: reason takes a word placed on a well-known sensible thing and carries it over, changing the meaning; but in Europe we learned from Greek and Latin and the English word that translates the original was never carried over to the later meanings — “disconnect.”
• Illustration with “nature”: transliterated from Latin, root nat- = birth (prenatal, postnatal; Nativity Parish in St Paul = birthday of our Lord; “native of Worcester,” calling the Indians “natives”). Has English “birth” been carried over to what a thing is? Shakespeare’s Friar Laurence: “revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse” — there “birth” means true nature, what you are; Shakespeare has moved the word, though people may not see it.
• So with passio: the first meaning is suffering — receiving something opposed to you, painful, destructive if continued. Carried over to the senses (my ear “suffering” Mozart), the ear is acted upon by the sound but by nothing opposed — part of the meaning is dropped. English “suffering” is “stuck on the first meaning.”
• His translation: undergoing — imperfect, but it keeps something of the original; it still leans toward the bad (“under the weather,” “he’s undergone a lot”) yet is not as stuck as “suffering.” Pair: acting upon / undergoing.
• Fundamental distinction of powers by objects: does the object act on the power or the power on the object? Digestion acts on food (I don’t come to look like a carrot); sound acts on the ear. Too loud a sound harms the ear (a link with the early meaning), but basically hearing perfects the ear.
• Thomas will point out that in the emotions one undergoes “even more”: an insult acts on me and gives rise to anger; your misery strikes me and makes me sad.
• Aside: Father Boulay in a Quebec restaurant paying the musicians to stop playing.

3. Equivocal by reason, by dropping part of the meaning (“carried over, and you drop part of the meaning”) #

Point: passio is a word equivocal by reason of the kind where part of the meaning is dropped in the carry-over.

• “Road” carried over to the roads in our knowledge: keep the order (before and after — itself equivocal by reason), drop the asphalt, stones, cement.
• Creature to God (as Father Boulay always points out and Thomas shows repeatedly): drop the genus, keep the difference. Episteme is basically demonstration, a syllogism making one know the cause, that it is the cause, and that it cannot be otherwise; there is no syllogism in God, but he knows the cause as cause — keep the difference, drop the genus. Reason: genus is from matter, difference from form (Boethius, Aristotle), and God is pure act, pure form — divina substantia forma est (Boethius).
• Emotions carried over to acts of the will: drop the material (the heart pumping), keep the formal aspect.

4. Q. 22 a. 1: the objections and sed contra (“it seems that no passion, no undergoing, is in the soul”) #

The remaining two prooemium questions: whether passio is more in the desiring (appetitiva) than the grasping (apprehensiva) part — Thomas will say the desiring part; and whether more in sense desire than in the intellectual desire, the will (voluntas). Objections as read:

1. To undergo is proper to matter (agent acts upon matter: carpenter on wood, giving form); the soul is not composed of matter and form (first part of the Summa); so no undergoing in the soul.
2. Passio is a motion (Physics III, where Aristotle defines motion and shows acting-upon and undergoing are in a way the same as the motion — pushing the glass, its being pushed, its movement); the soul is not moved (On the Soul I); so no undergoing in the soul.
3. Passio is the road to corruption; every passion made stronger leads away from the very substance (the “book of places” [ed.: Topics]); the soul is incorruptible. Student joke: then the Summa should start with the passions and go on to the soul. Sed contra: Romans 7:5 — “when we were in the flesh, the passions of sins… were at work in our members.” He checks the Greek: ta pathemata ton hamartion. Aside: the two categories actio and passio he translates “acting upon” and “undergoing” — “Berquist has his own translations… it irritates some people.”

5. Q. 22 a. 1, the answer: pati said in three ways (“pati is said tripliciter”) #

1. Communiter: every receiving is undergoing, even when nothing is taken away — the air enlightened; “more properly to be perfected than to suffer.” Ear hearing Mozart, eye seeing Titian or a beautiful sunset (Virginia sunset story; “this is suffering?”).
2. Proprie: receiving with loss, in two ways —
   • loss of what is unsuitable: the animal body healed; the doctor acts on me, expelling sickness — we still say “undergoing treatment”;
   • loss of what is suitable: becoming sick — propriissimus modus passionis.

• Order of naming: the most proper sense is named first because most manifest — you hardly notice my face acting on your eye as we talk, but you notice when I stick you with a pen; “the bad undergoing” is named first.
• Thomas’s communiter / proprie / propriissime: compare his calling being a genus communiter, though Aristotle is clear being is not a genus — anything general said of many, dropping the strict notion.
• Reason: to undergo is said from being drawn to the agent when one recedes from what is one’s own — then most of all “drawn.” Generation and Corruption I: from the more ignoble to the nobler is generation simply and corruption secundum quid; the reverse is the reverse. Aside: “is there a generation of morals in this country or corruption of morals?”
• Applied to the soul: by reception only, sensing and understanding are undergoings — he notes how “understand” fits the English “undergoing” (“beautiful, the way the words work”). Undergoing with loss is only in bodily change, so passion properly belongs to the soul only per accidens, as the composite undergoes. Within that, change for the worse is more properly passion: “sadness is more properly said to be a passion than joy… it’s interesting.”

6. Q. 22 a. 1, the replies (“did my soul move from Shrewsbury”) #

• Ad 1: undergoing with loss belongs to matter; undergoing as receiving only belongs to anything existing in potency (his “ability”). The soul, though not composed, has potentiality; understanding is an undergoing (On the Soul III). The divine understanding is not an undergoing.
• Ad 2: to undergo and be moved in the strict sense belong to the soul per accidens. My body moved from Shrewsbury by car; the soul got moved per accidens (“soul train,” “chariot of fire”).
• Ad 3: the Topics argument is about passion as change for the worse, which belongs per se to the corruptible composite, per accidens to the soul.
• Aside: Dionne early on, teaching John of St Thomas, who makes “sign” too univocal; Augustine’s definition (what strikes the senses and brings to mind something other than itself) cannot cover angels signifying to each other — “sign” is equivocal by reason; John of St Thomas got into trouble with it teaching the sacraments.

7. Q. 22 a. 2: “grasping” for apprehensive (“the first meaning of grasp is the act of the hand”) #

Point: apprehensiva is “grasping” because what is grasped is contained in the hand, and what is known is in the knower.

• Sophistical argument with a truth in it: a square is an equilateral right-angled quadrilateral; that is the definition of square; so the square is its definition — because the thing known is in the knower in some way. “Knowing is getting something into your head.”
• Augustine and the boy putting the ocean into a hole: neither can you put the Trinity in your mind, so you cannot fully understand it. His order for the Trinity treatises: Summa Contra Gentiles (starts from Scripture, handles misreadings), then Summa Theologiae, then De Potentia; all studies converge there; full understanding waits till “face to face” (the vision in Gregory / Bernard imagery).
• Aside: “bon appetit” = good desire for supper, not “understand your supper.”

8. Q. 22 a. 2: objections and sed contra (“passion is more in the grasping part of the soul”) #

Objections:

1. What is first in a genus is most of all in that genus and cause of the rest (second book of Metaphysics — his “book of wisdom”; aside: meta ta physica is three words, a title from Andronicus of Rhodes, not Aristotle). Undergoing is first in the grasping part — Mozart must act on my ear before I can love the music; desire does not undergo unless apprehension first does. So more in the grasping part. (Don’t translate “apprehensive” — sounds like fear.)
2. The more active is less passive, action being opposed to passion; the desiring part is more active — it moves people to act (I want food, I get food; I want to hit you; I want to think about triangles). “Good argument.”
3. Both the sensitive desiring power and the sense grasping power are in a bodily organ (organon, Greek for tool). Aside: Latin word order follows logical order (vis apprehensiva sensitiva: genus, first difference, second difference), unlike English. Sed contra: Augustine, City of God IX: the motions of the soul the Greeks call pathe, Cicero calls disturbances, some call affections (affectus), some, following the Greek, passions — so passions are the affections. Sign: the prooemium said “passions of the soul” and one thinks of the emotions, not sensing or understanding.

• His own argument: Scripture says they “became abominable because of things they loved.” If you love disgusting things you are disgusting; if you know disgusting things, are you? Love is more affected by the thing loved than knowing by the thing known. “Are you more divine if you love God than if you just know God?”

9. Q. 22 a. 2, the answer (“the soul is more drawn to the thing through the desiring power”) #

1. Passion implies the one undergoing is drawn to what is of the agent.
2. The soul is more drawn to the thing through the desiring power, because appetite has an order to the things as they are in themselves — Metaphysics VI: good and bad, objects of appetite, are in the things themselves (“I left my heart in San Francisco”; “where your treasure is, there your heart shall be”). One might miss this in Aristotle without Thomas’s commentary.
3. The grasping power is not drawn to the thing as it is in itself but knows it by its intention in the mind, received in the knower’s own way (material things immaterially, singulars universally). Metaphysics VI again: true and false are not in things but in the mind, especially in the second act. “Where is truth?” — not in the ocean, the ground, the clouds, the oil fields; where falsehood is: in statements, spoken statements being signs of statements in the mind.
4. So one is “contaminated, for good or for bad” more by the thing desired than by the thing known; the notion of undergoing is found more in the desiring power.

10. Q. 22 a. 2, the replies (“in the beginning, always there is found a small”) #

• Ad 1: the opposite holds for perfections and defects. In perfections intensity is measured by nearness to a first principle (the lucid nearer the most lucid; nearer the fire, warmer). In defects intensity is by recession from the perfect; near the beginning the defect is small, multiplied as one proceeds — the man taking the wrong fork is little off at first, far off later; a telescope moved a fraction misses by “forty gazillion miles”; “no mistake in the beginning is a great one in the end” (the Mala fossi saying; a student: “Peter’s principle”). Passion pertains to defect, being of something in potency; what is nearer the first perfect thing, God, has less of potency and passion — so the prior power, apprehension, has less of it. “Put it up in your mind and chew it” — the ruminating animals of the Old Testament, acceptable for their spiritual signification.
• Ad 2: appetite is more active because more a principle of exterior action, and this from its being more passive — its order to the thing in itself, reached through exterior action (you insult me, I hit you).
• Ad 3: an organ can be changed two ways (first part of the Summa). (a) Spiritual change: receiving the intention of the thing — the eye receives color without being colored; per se the act of the sense grasping power. Knowing (Father Boulay’s definition) is receiving the form of another as other: my eye does not become rectangular seeing the rectangular painting; in the shower you turn up the heat because the water’s warmth has become your warmth and you no longer feel it — insofar as you receive it as your own you are not knowing; the frog in the pan. (b) Natural change of the organ’s disposition — heated, cooled, dried — is per accidens to apprehension and impedes it: the eye fatigued from strong looking or dissolved by a too-vehement visible; workers in his father’s factory who no longer hear the noise; kids going deaf on the side toward the band. But to the act of the sense desiring power these natural changes are ordered per se: fear brings trembling and coldness; anger is defined materially as a bubbling of the blood around the heart. Hence passion is more in the sense desiring power than in the sense grasping power, though both are acts of an organ. Class breaks off here.

His words #

• passio / pati: “undergoing” (his usual rendering; “suffering” is its first meaning, “stuck on” in English) [ed.: passion, being acted upon]
• acting upon / undergoing: his renderings of the categories actio and passio
• equivocal by reason: a word carried over by reason from a well-known sensible thing, here by dropping part of the meaning (road; episteme in God)
• appetitiva: “the desiring part”; apprehensiva: “the grasping part” (not “apprehensive,” which sounds like fear)
• communiter / proprie / propriissime: Thomas’s three degrees of pati, general to strictest
• ability, inability: his word for potency [ed.: potentia]
• “book of places”: Topics; “second/sixth book of wisdom”: Metaphysics II / VI
• intention of the thing: what the knower receives, in its own way, rather than the thing as it is in itself
• knowing: receiving the form of another as other (Father Boulay’s formula)
• concupiscible / irascible: six and five passions respectively

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 22, prooemium (completed)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 22, a. 1 (whole article)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 22, a. 2 (whole article)
• Romans 7:5 (Greek checked: ta pathemata ton hamartion)
• Augustine, City of God IX (sed contra of a. 2)
• Shakespeare, Friar Laurence’s lines “Nor aught so good…” (Romeo and Juliet, inferred)

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Rhetoric (emotions as means of persuasion; “warping the ruler”); Cicero on it as “a golden river”
• Aristotle, Physics III (motion, acting/undergoing); On the Soul I (soul not moved) and III (understanding an undergoing); Topics (passion the road to corruption); On Generation and Corruption I; Metaphysics II (first in a genus) and VI (good/bad in things, true/false in mind), with Thomas’s commentary; Categories (actio, passio)
• Boethius, divina substantia forma est
• Summa Theologiae I (soul not composed; two changes of an organ)
• Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles and De Potentia (on the Trinity)
• Augustine’s definition of sign; John of St Thomas on sign
• Scripture: “they became abominable because of things they loved”; “where your treasure is, there your heart shall be”

His questions #

• How would you translate “passio” in “the passion of our Lord,” and does Aristotle’s “understanding is a passio” mean suffering? Suffering; only “in a certain sense” — the word has been carried over with part of its meaning dropped.
• What does “nature” mean, and what does Shakespeare mean by “revolts from true birth”? Its root is birth; Shakespeare has moved “birth” to mean what a thing is, its true nature.
• Does the object act on the power, or the power on the object? Digestion acts on food; sound acts on the ear — the senses undergo.
• Is there episteme in God? No syllogism in God, but he knows the cause as cause: keep the difference, drop the genus.
• Why is the bad undergoing (sickness) named first, propriissime? It is more manifest — you notice the pen sticking you, not my face acting on your eye.
• Did my soul move from Shrewsbury to this room? Per se the body was moved; the soul per accidens.
• If I know disgusting things, am I disgusting? If I love them? Knowing does not; loving does — one is more affected by the thing loved.
• Where do you find truth? Not in things — in statements, primarily in the mind; good and bad are in things.
• How far off is the man who takes the wrong fork? Little at first, more the further he goes — a small mistake in the beginning is great in the end.
• Why do you turn up the shower after a while? The water’s warmth has become your own, so you no longer receive it as other — you no longer know it.