Summa I-II Q.22 a.3 and Q.23 a.1: Why Passion Belongs Chiefly to the Senses, and How Concupiscible and Irascible Emotions Differ (Eleven Emotions and Mozart's Keys)

Orientation #

He picks up at “article three here in question twenty-two” and, midway, moves to “question what twenty-three, the difference of the passions to each other.” He mentions a student “Wednesday night” who asked him to add a handout on “equivocal by reason,” which he has drawn up. The previous class opened the treatise on the passions with q. 22’s senses of passio; the next continues q. 23 on the contrariety of passions and why anger has no contrary.

Verified sources: the class treats ST I-II q. 22 a. 3 and q. 23 a. 1 (matched); a passage of SCG IV ch. 15 is also matched for about 10 minutes, though he never names it in the transcript.

The class, in order #

1. Opening prayer and Moses at Mass (“hold back that wrath”) #

Aside before the text: the Mass reading had Moses “standing up to God” to hold back his wrath — “he actually has a passion of anger” — appealing to Abraham, Isaac and Israel; Moses as intercessor, like the guardian angels.

2. Q. 22 a. 3, objections and sed contra (“not only learning, but also undergoing divine things”) #

Point: the objections press that passion is at least as much in the intellectual appetite as in the sense appetite.

1. Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 2: Hierotheus was taught by “not only learning, but also undergoing divine things” (passio divinorum) — “a beautiful text”; this undergoing cannot belong to the sense appetite, whose object is a sensible good.
2. The more potent the agent, the stronger the undergoing; the object of the intellectual appetite (universal good) is more potent than that of the sense appetite (particular good).
3. Joy and love are called passions, but Scripture attributes them to God and the angels, who have only intellectual appetite. His comment on all three: “this is forgetting the first meaning of passio, which involves the body.” Sed contra: Damascene (book 2), describing the animal passions: passion is a motion of the sensible appetite on the imagination of good or bad; elsewhere, a motion of the irrational soul “through the suspicion of good or bad.”

3. Handout digression: kinds of equivocation by reason (“equivocal by dropping out part of the meaning”) #

Point: how the first or fundamental meaning is fixed differs in the different kinds of equivocation by reason.

• Said by a ratio to another thing: the thing referred to is in the definition of the other. Being said of substance and quantity — quantity is “the measure or the size of substance,” so substance is first in definition.
• Said by other ratios to the same thing: being said of quantity (measure of substance) and quality (disposition of substance); again substance is first.
• By likeness of ratios (“these most interesting names”): the first meaning is the most sensible one. “Before” (Categories ch. 12): first in time or motion — Shakespeare, “things in motion sooner catch the eye than what not stirs,” and before/after is in the very definition of time. “In”: Thomas orders the meanings starting from the one Aristotle sees as first — we are in this room, teeth in my mouth — the more sensible.
• By dropping out part of the meaning: this is passio. First meaning: not merely acting on something, but changing it, and changing it for the worse; then drop “the worse” and keep “changing”; finally drop even that and it is just receiving and being perfected by what you receive. Objection (his own): if the later meanings are got by dropping out, why isn’t the more general one first — as when Thomas says communius and then magis proprium? Reply: the more concrete one is closer to the senses. That I act on you when I stick a pin or a knife into you is clearer and more sensible than that I act on you when you see me and receive my shape in your eye. So that is the first meaning and gets carried over.

4. Body of a. 3 and the three replies (“passion is properly found where there is a bodily change”) #

Point: passion is more properly in the sense appetite than in the intellectual appetite.

1. The first meaning of passio involves bodily change.
2. Bodily change is found in acts of the sense appetite: not only a spiritual change, as in the senses apprehending, but a natural change.
3. The act of the intellectual appetite requires no bodily change, because that power is not the power of an organ. Conclusion: the notion of passion is more properly in the act of the sense appetite — “as is clear through the definitions of Damascene” in the sed contra.

• Ad 1: passio divinorum is an affectio to divine things and a union to them through love, which comes about without bodily change — so less of the original idea of passion. His gloss: there is much in Dionysius not gone into here; you undergo more with the desiring power than the knowing power, so with the gift of wisdom tied to charity you have a knowledge of God because you undergo this love for God.
• Ad 2: the magnitude of a passion depends not only on the power of the agent but on the patient; very sensitive things suffer much even from lightly active things. So though the object of the intellectual appetite is more active (as the objection says), the sense appetite is more passive — ex possibilitate patientis.
• Ad 3: love, joy and the like attributed to God, the angels, or men according to the intellectual appetite signify a simple act of the will “with the likeness of an effect,” without passion. Augustine, City of God bk. 9: the holy angels punish without anger and help us without compassion and misery; the names of these passions are “usurped” for them by the custom of human speech, on account of a likeness of the things done, not the infirmity of the affections.

5. Aside: names said of God properly, not only by metaphor (“everything said of God is really metaphor”) #

Point: against the Fordham theologian (Elizabeth Johnson, as he recalls) criticised by the US bishops’ committee on doctrine for making all talk of God metaphor, some names are said of God properly.

• Thomas in the De Veritate (locus not given): names like good, wise are first placed upon creatures, but the thing meant is found more in God and first in God.
• Aristotle on wisdom “in the fourteen books of wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics]: the most divine knowledge, because about God and the knowledge God most of all has; the name placed first on human knowledge, the thing found first in God.
• “The Lord is my rock” vs. good or just: the meaning of “rock” is not in God at all, only a likeness (solidity, supporting) — that is metaphor; “just” or “knowing” is first imposed on creatures but what it signifies is found first and more in God. Asides: “the despair of the moderns” — nothing true to say; she complained the bishops didn’t dialogue, “she should have initiated the dialogue by asking for an interpreter.”

6. Why Thomas quotes authorities: dialectic and belief (“great minds are not afraid to learn from another”) #

Point: the quotations from Jerome, Augustine, Chrysostom, Lombard serve two purposes.

1. Dialectic reasons from probable opinions; Aristotle defines the probable as what all, or most, or the learned in an art (all or most or the most famous) think. So the famous man’s opinion is probable: Mozart (writer of the greatest operas, Don Giovanni “the opera of operas”) against Wagner — words must be “the obedient servant of the music,” not plot the male, dominant element; Einstein, three Nobel-worthy papers in 1905 (prize for the photoelectric effect, relativity “too hard to understand”), saying a scientific theory is “freely imagined.”
2. Human belief: before you know, you believe a mind better than your own. Heisenberg and Bohr — the “Bohr Festival” lectures in Germany, the young Heisenberg’s objection, Bohr’s “let’s go for a walk,” a conversation Heisenberg returns to again and again; Pauli likewise. “Great minds are not afraid to learn from another; second-rate minds try to be original.”

• Thomas: at first you receive the teacher’s thoughts as his, not yours; as you think them over they become yours. Aristotle on food: is food like or unlike the fed? Unlike at the start, like after digestion — carrots become flesh. So the master’s thought, once digested, is yours; he holds the Pythagorean theorem now because he has assimilated Proposition 47 of Book I.

7. Q. 23 a. 1: objections, sed contra, principle of the answer (“diverse powers have diverse objects”) #

Point: passions of the irascible and concupiscible differ in species.

• Objection (one read): passions and acts differ in species by objects; irascible and concupiscible have the same objects, good and bad; so the same passions.
• Sed contra: acts of diverse powers differ in species (seeing vs. hearing); irascible and concupiscible are two powers dividing the sense appetite (first part); passions are motions of the sense appetite.
• Response, conclusion given first (“the big print”): they differ in species. Since diverse powers have diverse objects — Aristotle’s principle: study objects first, then acts, then powers (seeing and hearing known through colour and sound) — passions of diverse powers refer to diverse objects; and a greater difference of objects is required to diversify powers than to diversify passions or acts within one power, so they differ “much more.” Aside: is philosophy thinking about things or thinking out things? You think about motion, time, place, then think out what they are; “thought-out” or “reasoned-out” knowledge, thinking out definitions, divisions, distinctions and finally conclusions.

8. Genus from matter, species from form (“the genus from the what matter”) #

Point: the passions of the two powers differ in genus, passions within one power in species.

• In natural things diversity of genus follows diversity in the potency of the matter (Boethius/Porphyry/Aristotle: difference from form, genus from matter); diversity of species follows diversity of form in the same matter.
• Imitative arts differ by what they imitate, in what, and how; the first distinction is “in what” (the matter): sadness can be imitated in a melody, in a painted expression, in a character’s words — quite different arts. Carpenter’s wooden chair and table vs. the metalworker’s: the arts are divided by material, not by chair vs. table. Then species: sad vs. joyful music, tragedy vs. comedy.
• So acts of diverse powers of the soul differ in genus; acts or passions regarding diverse special objects under one common object of one power distinguish the species of that genus. Hence to know which passions are irascible and which concupiscible one must take up the object of each power.

9. The two objects: the sensible good simply, and the arduous (“some difficulty or pugna, some fight”) #

Point: concupiscible vs. irascible are divided by their objects.

• Concupiscible: the sensible good or bad simply taken, delightful or painful; pleasing to the senses you like it, displeasing you dislike it (his running joke: salmon — “I hope he hated sin more”; a verse about salmon for his tombstone).
• Irascible: because the soul must sometimes suffer difficulty or a fight (pugna) in obtaining such a good or fleeing such a bad, beyond the animal’s easy power. Boston blackout, a restaurant’s steaks given to the zoo cats — you would not take that steak from the cat; one bone and two dogs; Aristotle: animals fight over food and sex. Contrast: a bowl of candy beside you, no difficulty, “just kill this appetite.” Athletes’ fistfights, the injured quarterback, the pitcher who hits the same batter twice and the dugout empties.
• Conclusion: good or bad under the ratio of the arduous or difficult is the object of the irascible.
• Note: the theological virtue of hope is named from the passion of hope, concerned with the difficult — which tells you something about hope as a virtue in the will.
• “Emotions” is probably the better English word than “passion” (which tends to mean excess); emotion from motion, being moved — so you would not call an act of the will an emotion.

10. Sorting the passions by object (“under the ratio of difficulty”) #

• Concupiscible (absolute good or bad): gaudium / tristitia, amor / odium, and two more, desire and aversion (“turning away from”).
• Irascible: audacia and timor concern a bad avoidable only with difficulty — if you think you might not avoid it, fear; if you can, boldness. Bar stories: the pipsqueak, his wife’s big brother’s two words (“beat it”), his Lebanese-war friends opening their coats full of weapons at a martial-arts show-off, the man who left three Marines on the floor. Goliath approached David with audacia; David presumably had a little timor.
• Hope and despair concern a difficult good: if you think you can obtain it, hope; if not, despair.

11. Mozart’s keys as representation of the passions (“the major key and the minor key”) #

Point: Mozart uses keys in a determined way to represent the emotions.

• Sadness in the minor; when Mozart moves from hope to despair the singers keep the melody and it turns minor. Joy, love, hope, boldness: major; hate, sadness, anger, despair, fear: minor (other things equal, since rhythm also affects it).
• Finer: C major more for hope, D major for courage/boldness (key of the march), E-flat between; concupiscible joy in G major or B-flat. Haydn modulates for variety; when Mozart changes key there is a reason. Mozart’s letter to his father on representing anger (the husband in the Abduction from the Seraglio).
• Question put: which is closer to reason, the concupiscible or the irascible emotions? [class answer assents; he does not spell it out]. This helps understand the last five symphonies: the C-major 36 (Linz) and 41 (Jupiter) represent magnanimity, the virtue that does what is great in all the virtues, i.e. hope; 38 and 40 represent courage, whose two acts are approaching dangers (38) and putting up with what is forced on you (40). The piano concertos: “dominance of reason.” Early operas: Zaide, unheard by most, “gorgeous”; Warren Murray’s astonishment.

12. Six concupiscible, five irascible: eleven emotions (“we have altogether eleven emotions”) #

• Concupiscible, three about the good: like/love; when you lack it, desire or wanting — “want” beautifully means both lacking and desiring (I like wine, have none, want wine); when you get it, joy. Three about the bad: dislike/hate (present or absent), aversion, and sadness when it is present (served salmon at your house: “why are you so depressed?”).
• Irascible, five: from desire of a difficult good, hope (you persist) or despair (you give up — the girl, the position); from a bad difficult to avoid, fear (above your powers) or boldness (you can take care of it; young men are bold); and anger, arising when a bad has been forced on you — you’re on my foot, “so what?” — anger helps get you off. Nothing arises from joy (no difficulty in enjoying what you have); from sadness arises anger.
• Eleven: symbol of transgressing the decalogue, of sin; Augustine on “seventy-seven” as 7 × 11 (all time, every week, forgive transgression). Aside: “table eleven” in high school.
• Student: so the passions are not a genus with species like envy and pity? Envy is sadness over another’s good fortune, pity over another’s misfortune — particular, “more individual” differences; he does not know if Thomas calls them species, “but there certainly are something like that.” Tragedy moves to pity and fear; pity is sadness at a man suffering more than he deserves (King Lear). Kyrie eleison: the same word as Aristotle’s for pity, carried over to God — no emotion in God but a similarity: God’s will to relieve our misery, called mercy.

His words #

• passio, passion / undergoing: first meaning, changing something for the worse, with bodily change; later meanings by dropping out parts.
• equivocal by reason: four kinds — by ratio to another, by other ratios to the same, by likeness of ratios, by dropping out part of the meaning.
• communius / magis proprium: the more common vs. the more proper meaning.
• sense desiring power / understanding (intellectual) desiring power [ed.: sensitive / intellectual appetite].
• spiritual change vs. natural (bodily) change.
• passio divinorum, affectio to divine things: Dionysius’s undergoing divine things.
• ex possibilitate patientis: from the receptivity of the patient.
• “with the likeness of an effect”: how love and joy are said of God and angels.
• “usurped”: names of passions borrowed for God and angels by custom of speech.
• probable opinion: what all, most, the learned, or the most famous think (Aristotle).
• thought-out / reasoned-out knowledge: philosophy as thinking out things.
• genus from matter, difference (species) from form.
• delectabile / dolorosum: delightful or painful, the concupiscible object.
• pugna: fight; arduous / difficult: the irascible object.
• emotion: better English than “passion”; from motion.
• gaudium, tristitia, amor, odium; desire, aversion; audacia, timor; hope, despair; anger.
• want: both to lack and to desire.
• pity: sadness over another’s misfortune; envy: over another’s good fortune; mercy: God’s will to relieve our misery.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 22, a. 3 (objections, sed contra, body, three replies).
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 23, a. 1 (objections, sed contra, body).
• Dionysius, Divine Names, ch. 2 (in obj. 1 and ad 1).
• Damascene, book 2 (sed contra of a. 3).
• Augustine, City of God, bk. 9 (in ad 3). Mentioned
• Thomas Aquinas, De Veritate (names first imposed on creatures but found first in God; locus not stated).
• Aristotle, Categories, ch. 12 (senses of “before”); Aristotle on the senses of “in” (as ordered by Thomas).
• Aristotle, the “fourteen books of wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics] on wisdom as most divine.
• Aristotle on food like/unlike the fed; on animals fighting over food and sex; on tragedy and pity; on imitative arts (what, in what, how).
• Euclid, Book I Prop. 47 (Pythagorean theorem).
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles IV, ch. 15 — verified-source match, not named by him.
• Shakespeare (“things in motion sooner catch the eye”); Mozart’s letter to his father on the Abduction; the bishops’ doctrine committee statement on Elizabeth Johnson’s book.

His questions #

• If the later meanings of passio are got by dropping out, why doesn’t the more general meaning come first? Because the concrete one (pin or knife) is closer to the senses than receiving a shape in the eye.
• Should we study the powers or their acts first — the acts or their objects? Objects first, then acts, then powers; the mind is discursive.
• What is philosophy — thinking about things or thinking out things? More the latter: thought-out, reasoned-out knowledge.
• Are the imitative arts first distinguished by what they imitate or in what they imitate? In what — as the matter; species (sad vs. joyful music) come after.
• Is one art for making chairs and another for tables, or one art for wood and another for metal? By material.
• If it’s displeasing to the senses, you what? Dislike it (salmon).
• If you want to represent sadness, what key do you use? Minor.
• Which is closer to reason, the concupiscible or the irascible emotions? Class assents; he does not state the answer outright (used to read the last symphonies as magnanimity and courage).
• Eleven — a symbol of what? Transgressing the decalogue, sin.
• Are envy and pity species of sadness? Left open: “I don’t know if Thomas calls them species, but there certainly are something like that.”