Stoics vs. Peripatetics, Passions That Increase Moral Goodness, and the Order of the Passions (ST I-II Q.24 a.2 – Q.25 a.1)

Orientation #

He opens with “let’s do another one here before we take our break” and closes q. 25 a. 1 with “we can bring this session to a halt now.” He says nothing else about last time or next time. The previous class had reached the transition into q. 24 on whether the passions can be morally good or bad; the next continues q. 25 on which concupiscible and irascible passions come first.

The class, in order #

1. Whether every passion is morally bad: the three objections (“Whether every passion… Is bad morally”) #

He reads q. 24 a. 2 and says the question arises “because of the confusion in the Stoics.”

• Obj. 1: Augustine, City of God IX: “some call” the passions sicknesses and disturbances of the soul; every sickness of soul is morally bad.
• Obj. 2: Damascene: an operation according to nature is a motion, a passion is apart from nature; what is apart from nature in the soul’s motions has the notion of sin, as the devil “was turned from that which is in accordance with nature to that which is outside of nature.”
• Obj. 3: what leads into sin is bad; Romans 7 calls them “passions of sin.”
• Sed contra: Augustine, City of God XIV: rectified love has all these affections rectified — they fear to sin, desire to persevere, are sad over sins, rejoice in good works.

2. Stoics against Peripatetics: a difference in words, not in the thing (“secundum vocem… secundum rem”) #

Point: the Stoics called all passions bad, the Peripatetics (followers of Aristotle) called moderated passions good, but the difference is “either nothing or small” once one sees what each meant.

1. The Stoics did not distinguish sense from understanding, hence not the sense appetite from the intellectual appetite, hence not passions from motions of the will.
2. So every rational motion of desire they called “will,” and every motion beyond the limits of reason “passion.”
3. Following this, Cicero (Tullius, Tusculan Questions III) calls all passions sicknesses; the sick are not healthy, the unhealthy are foolish, the foolish “insane” — “strong words.”
4. The Peripatetics call every motion of the sense appetite a passion: good when moderated by reason, bad when outside its moderation.
5. So Cicero “unsuitably” (inconvenienter) refutes the Peripatetics’ approval of a mean of passions by saying even a little sickness is not health — since passions are called sicknesses only when they lack the moderation of reason. He sums up: the Stoics’ error lies partly in words, partly in not understanding the distinction sense/understanding and sense desire/rational desire.

• Ad 1: Augustine writes quidam vocant, “some call” — not necessarily his own view.
• Ad 2: in every passion something is added to or taken from the natural motion of the heart, moved more intensely or more remissly (student: systolic and diastolic; he glosses contraction and dilating); this gives it the notion of a passion, but a passion need not decline from the order of reason.
• Ad 3: passions outside the order of reason incline to sin; ordered by reason they pertain to virtue. Aside, on good passions: tragedy’s catharsis of pity and fear, and pity “seems to be a good emotion”; a fiction inducing envy would be the opposite (“if Karl Marx wrote some fiction”); comedy purges melancholy — the great comic poets try to drive it away. His teacher Caserta, depressed after reading the moderns (Charlie Rose nodding as a computer expert says machines will surpass our reason), found catharsis in a Punch cartoon: the printout says “I think, therefore I am.” Pity doesn’t get too sentimental because fear that the same could happen to you balances it.

3. Whether passion always diminishes the goodness of a moral act: objections (“empty of hate, anger, friendship, mercy”) #

He reads q. 24 a. 3.

• Obj. 1: what impedes the judgment of reason diminishes moral goodness; Sallust (Catiline): those who consult about doubtful things should be empty of hate, anger, friendship, mercy. He adds Aristotle: letting a court speaker move the jury’s emotions is “like warping the ruler before you measure” — angry, the deed seems worse; pitying, it seems smaller.
• Obj. 2: Ephesians 5, “be imitators of God as most dear sons”; God and the holy angels punish without anger and aid without compassion of misery (Augustine, City of God IX); so better to do good works without passion — “give me a glass of water without any feeling sorry for my thirst… just water.”
• Obj. 3: moral bad, like good, is noted in order to reason; he sins less who sins from passion than from “industry” [ed.: deliberation]; so he does greater good who acts without passion.
• Sed contra: Augustine, City of God IX: the passion of pity serves reason when mercy is given so that justice is conserved, to one in need, or when one forgives the penitent; what serves reason does not diminish moral good. Asides: Shakespeare’s “stock” — a Stoic is like the wooden thing you beat and it just takes it; if they torture your wife and children and you feel nothing “because this is outside you,” that is inhuman. Brother Francis on the Japanese attitude to the earthquake and nuclear disaster: nothing to do about it, go on as if it didn’t happen — “kind of Stoic.”

4. The body of a. 3: the good of man is in reason as in a root (“consists in reason as in a root”) #

Point: whether passion diminishes goodness depends on what “passion” names.

1. The Stoics, holding every passion bad, held every passion diminishes the act’s goodness, since good mixed with bad is destroyed or lessened.
2. True if “passion” names only the disordered motions of the sense appetite, as disturbances or sicknesses.
3. But if it names all motions of the sense appetite, then it belongs to the perfection of human good that they be moderated by reason: since man’s good consists in reason “as in a root” (“that’s nicely said”), a good is more perfect the more it extends to the many things belonging to man.
4. No one doubts that the exterior members (hands, feet) should be directed by the rule of reason; since the sense appetite can obey reason, so should the emotions be regulated — “so I’ve got to continue listening to Mozart” (his teacher used to ask whether he could now control his emotions better).
5. Conclusion: as it is better to will the good and also do the exterior act, so it belongs to perfection that man be moved to good not only by will but also by the sense appetite: Psalm 83, cor meum et caro mea exult in the living God — cor the intellectual appetite, caro the sense appetite; both exulting is better than heart alone.

5. Antecedent and consequent passion; a student presses the point (“Thomas must look before and after”) #

• Ad 1, the distinction: passion related to the judgment of reason antecedently clouds judgment and diminishes goodness — more praiseworthy to do a work of charity from the judgment of reason than from the passion of mercy alone; vs. consequently, in two ways: (a) by overflow (redundancy): the higher part intensely moved, the lower follows; the passion is then a sign of the intensity of the will and indicates greater goodness; (b) by choice: one chooses to be affected by a passion so as to act more promptly, the sense appetite cooperating; then passion adds to the goodness.
• Student objection: if every antecedent passion clouds reason, isn’t the more perfect man one without antecedent passions? The kid kicks the ball off the porch — better to feel no anger, punish from reason, and let anger follow? His answers: one leads people by their emotions when they are not reasonable enough to be led by reason; and Thomas is only saying the act of reason is more perfect if not clouded, not that a man can have an act of reason in no way clouded, since emotions “might come up quickly.” A student adds Francis de Sales on the motus primo primi: some saints had a grace of dominating even the first movements; most do not; once you recognize the passion, then you are in control. He: “don’t be angry because you’re angry, don’t have a crisis because you’re in crisis”; Jefferson’s count to ten, or to a hundred; Psalm 6, “my eye is obscured because of anger.”
• Ad 2: in God and the angels there is no sense appetite nor bodily members, so their good is not noted by the ordering of passions or bodily actions as in us — “I’m put together from body and soul, I have to remember that.”
• Ad 3: a passion tending to bad that precedes the judgment of reason diminishes the sin; one following it (by overflow or choice) increases it or signifies its increase. “I choose to enjoy giving you this glass of water.” Asides: Fr. Hardon’s book on prayer — not only know and do God’s will but enjoy doing it; Thérèse of Lisieux choosing a special smile for the nun who seemed to dislike her, who later said “she must have really liked me.”

6. Whether a passion is good or bad by its species (“Those are good objections”) #

He reads q. 24 a. 4.

• Obj. 1: moral good and bad are noted by reason; passions are in the sense appetite, so “according to reason” befalls them per accidens, and nothing per accidens belongs to species.
• Obj. 2: acts and passions take species from their object; then passions with a good object (love, desire, joy) would be good by species and those with a bad object (hate, fear, sadness) bad — “clearly false.”
• Obj. 3: every species of passion is found in other animals; moral good only in man.
• Sed contra: Augustine, City of God IX, misericordia pertains to virtue; Aristotle, Ethics II, verecundia (shame) is a passio laudabilis — aside: the expression “Christians have no sense of shame.”
• Body: as with acts, species can be considered in the genus of nature, where moral good and bad do not belong to the species; vs. in the genus of morals, as partaking of the voluntary and the judgment of reason, where they can, according as the object is of itself suitable to reason or dissonant from it — “in harmony or in clash.” So verecundia, the fear of the base or ugly, and invidia, sadness about the good of another, pertain to species as the exterior act does.
• Ad 1: that argument holds of the species of nature; as the sense appetite obeys reason, good and bad belong per se.
• Ad 2: passions tending to a true good, or receding from a true bad, are good; conversely those away from good or to excess toward bad are bad. He instances acedia, mistranslated as laziness: the sadness that makes you not want to get up for church, the sacraments, prayer, spiritual reading; a capital sin. Student: one can be very active and still have it — workaholism, travel, entertainment as escape from “the demand of the spiritual.”
• Ad 3: in brute animals the sense appetite does not obey reason, yet as led by a natural estimative power subject to a superior reason, the divine, there is in them a certain likeness of moral good — a dog protects you from the bad man or bad animal; horses brave in battle, others panicking. Asides on envy: Chernow’s biography of Washington shows an underlying envy of him; Brutus alone acted not from envy of Caesar; a sociologist on envy as the vice of democratic times, “the capital of envy is Washington D.C.”; envy is only between equals — a pauper doesn’t envy the king; a commentary (perhaps the Catena) on Christ driven from the synagogue cites Aristotle: “he’s no better than we are, so how can he do these things”; a woman envies a woman, a man a man — Fr. John Moore to the feminist nun: “Sister, I always wanted to be a nun.” Animal stories: his mother’s bloodhound Charlie Brown leaping at the stranger’s car; cats waking owners in a fire; Washington putting on his glasses before the mutinous officers (“lost my eyesight in service of my country”); Chernow’s other biographies (Morgan, Hamilton, Grant in progress); the cat Tabitha waiting till the last kitten had drunk; a content cat putting its paw on your hand.

7. Question 25: the order of the passions, and his definition of comedy (“in comedy, the greatest of these is hope”) #

Four questions: order of irascible to concupiscible; of concupiscible among themselves; of irascible among themselves; the four chief passions. Aside: the fourth mattered for his attempt to define comedy. He began from comedy as contrary of tragedy: if tragedy moves to pity and fear, comedy to joy (opposed to the sadness of pity) and boldness (opposed to fear). Reading this article he thought the two principal forms of fiction might concern the four principal passions — sadness, fear, joy, hope — so comedy is “more hope than boldness.” Support from the English comic muse and a Terence scholar paraphrasing Paul: “in comedy, the greatest of these is hope.” We do joke boldly (David with the slingshot), but “hope is more the effective comedy… hope and mercy, kind of joy.”

8. Are the irascible passions before the concupiscible? Both before and after (“He looks before and after”) #

• Obj. 1: order of passions follows order of objects; the irascible’s object is the arduous good, seemingly supreme among goods. “A good attempt.”
• Obj. 2: mover before moved; the irascible is given to animals to remove impediments to the concupiscible’s enjoying its object; the removens prohibens is a mover, Physics VIII — an accidental cause, “like when the pillars were pressed out and the roof fell in.”
• Obj. 3: joy and sadness (concupiscible) follow irascible passions: Ethics IV, punishment quiets the impetus of anger, making pleasure in place of sadness.
• Sed contra: concupiscible passions regard the good absolutely, irascible the good contracted, the arduous; the good simply is before the good contracted.
• Body:
  1. The concupiscible passions extend to more things: something of motion (desire) and something of rest (joy, sadness); the irascible only motion — “interesting observation” — because what is at rest has no notion of the difficult.
  2. Rest, the end of motion, is before in intention, after in execution.
  3. Compared to concupiscible passions of rest, irascible passions precede in execution: hope precedes joy and causes it, spe gaudentes (though Paul may mean the hope that is an act of will).
  4. Sadness, rest in the bad, is a middle between two irascible passions: it follows fear (the feared evil occurs) and precedes anger (from sadness one rises to revenge, ultio; payback apprehended as good, the iratus rejoices on achieving it). So every irascible passion ends in joy or sadness.
  5. Compared to concupiscible passions of motion, the concupiscible are prior, since the irascible add something (the arduous): hope adds to desire a conatus and an elevation of the soul; fear adds to flight a depression of the soul. Conclusion: the irascible are a middle between concupiscible passions of motion and of rest — they begin from and end in the concupiscible. “Thomas seems to be saying they’re both before and after… He uses his reason.”
• Ad 1: the argument takes the concupiscible’s object as opposed to the arduous; but the good absolutely is before the arduous as the common is before the particular.
• Ad 2: removens prohibens is a mover per accidens; we speak of the per se order; and the irascible removes what hinders the concupiscible’s rest, so it only follows that it precedes the passions of rest. His example: wanting to be elected comes first; realizing it is difficult, hope and effort (caucuses), anger and fear of losing follow.
• Ad 3: answered “by seeing what way the before and after.”

His words #

• Stoics vs. Peripatetics: “followers of Aristotle.”
• secundum vocem / secundum rem: difference in words vs. in the thing.
• Tullius: Cicero.
• quidam vocant: “some call” — Augustine reporting, not asserting.
• cor / caro: heart = intellectual appetite, flesh = sense appetite (Psalm 83).
• antecedently / consequently (consequenter): passion before or after the judgment of reason.
• redundancy: overflow from the higher part into the lower.
• “industry”: sinning deliberately, opposed to sinning from passion [ed.: ex industria, on purpose].
• motus primo primi (student’s term from Francis de Sales): first movements of emotion.
• verecundia: shame, fear of the base or ugly; passio laudabilis.
• invidia: envy, sadness about the good of another.
• acedia: not laziness but sadness about spiritual things.
• natural estimative power: what guides brute animals, subject to the divine reason.
• removens prohibens: remover of a hindrance, a per accidens mover.
• spe gaudentes: rejoicing in hope (Paul).
• ultio, iratus: revenge; the angry man.
• conatus: attempt, effort, added by hope to desire.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 24, aa. 2, 3, 4; q. 25, prologue and a. 1.
• Psalm 83 (cor meum et caro mea), quoted within a. 3. Mentioned
• Augustine, City of God, books IX and XIV (via Thomas).
• Damascene (via Thomas, a. 2).
• Romans 7; Ephesians 5; Romans “spe gaudentes” (inferred locus, not stated).
• Cicero, Tusculan Questions, book III.
• Sallust, Catiline; Aristotle on moving the jury (no locus given).
• Aristotle, Ethics II (shame), Ethics IV (anger), Physics VIII (removens prohibens).
• Psalm 6 (eye obscured by anger).
• Francis de Sales; Fr. Hardon, book on prayer; Thérèse of Lisieux; Ron Chernow, biography of Washington; Shakespeare (Brutus; “stock”); a book on the comedies of Terence.

His questions #

• Where does this difficulty about the passions arise? From the Stoics, who did not distinguish sense from understanding nor sense desire from rational desire.
• Is the Stoic–Peripatetic difference great? In words yes; in the thing, nothing or small.
• Is it better to give a glass of water with no pity? No: perfection is that heart and flesh both exult; passion by choice adds goodness.
• If every antecedent passion clouds reason, is the more perfect man one without them? (student) Thomas only says the act of reason is more perfect unclouded; first movements are not in our control.
• Are shame and envy good or bad by their species? Yes, in the genus of morals, by an object suitable or dissonant to reason.
• Is there moral good in brute animals? A likeness of it, through the estimative power subject to divine reason.
• Does comedy move to boldness or to hope? Hope, the principal passion; “hope and mercy, kind of joy.”
• Are the irascible passions before or after the concupiscible? Both: after the concupiscible passions of motion, before those of rest.