Love as the Cause of All Action, and the Start of Hate: Its Object and Its Cause in Love (ST I-II q.28 a.6; q.29 aa.1-2)

Orientation #

He refers back to “last time” only for “these distinctions of four” (the kinds of order), and ends with “I’ll stop now” in the middle of q. 29 a. 2’s replies. The previous class covered the effects of love (ecstasy, zeal, love’s bodily effects); the next continues with the ad primum on Aristotle’s senses of “before” and “together” and moves on to whether hate is stronger than love.

The class, in order #

1. Q. 28 a. 6: the objections and the sed contra (“whether love is the cause of all things”) #

The article asks whether the lover does everything from love; he reads three objections and Dionysius against them.

1. Love is a passion; but not everything a man does he does from passion — some from choice, some from ignorance.
2. The desiring power is the beginning of motion and action in animals (De Anima III); if all is from love, the other passions of the desiring part are superfluous.
3. Nothing is caused together from contrary causes; some things come to be from hate (Stalin: to overcome your enemies you must really hate them; the demons act against us from hate). So not all is from love.

• Sed contra: Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 4 — on account of love of the good all do whatever they do.
• Aside on the sed contra: Cajetan (in the Leonine) says Thomas seems to have inherited the mind of all the Fathers because he so venerated them — reading Thomas you read Aristotle, Dionysius, Augustine, Boethius in one man. Modern philosophers by contrast are like two balls that strike and go off in different directions (Locke reacting to Descartes). Aristotle says be thankful to predecessors who found part of the truth and to those who were mistaken, since arguing against them develops our powers.
• Example of profit from error: Descartes identified certitude with distinctness; seeing his mistake makes clearer that the confused is more known and more certain than the distinct — a glass of red wine (“dry red” I’m sure of; the more precise I get, the less sure), and identifying a composer on the radio (Haydn/Beethoven, Haydn/Mozart, J. C. Bach resembling Mozart — “but I know it’s not a rock and roll band”).

2. The body of a. 6 and a digression on simplicity (“every agent acts in account of some end”) #

Thomas’s three-line argument: (1) every agent acts for an end; (2) the end is the good desired and loved by each; (3) therefore every agent, whatever it be, does every action from some love — going back to Aristotle’s point that the good is primarily the end.

• Digression prompted by the brevity: Aristotle’s two kinds of dialectical argument, syllogism against dialecticians, induction with the hoi polloi; the syllogism is more forceful, induction more proportioned to us because it deals with the sensible.
• Euclid II.5 as illustration: a line cut into equal and unequal sections — the rectangle on the equal sections always exceeds that on the unequal ones, and by the square on the line between the points of section. Rigorous demonstration vs. induction: line of 12 gives 6×6 = 36 against 8×4 = 32, difference 4 = 2²; 9×3 = 27, difference 9 = 3² — “much more clear, easier to follow, but not as rigorous.”
• Corollary he draws: same perimeter, different area; the square, simplest of rectangles, holds the most area for its perimeter, even more area for less perimeter. This anticipates physics: the more universal a theory the simpler (Max Planck); God, most universal cause, is simplest. His analogy: a man’s words are to what he says as perimeter to area — Shakespeare, Aristotle, Thomas say much in few words; others talk a lot about love and say little.
• Rosie’s pro-life talks in Catholic high schools: examples are what stick; the adopted young man who resented his mother until he realised she had given him life, rather than the universal reason.
• Point returned to: Thomas’s simplicity is a virtue but can be hard for someone (his three lines).

3. Replies to a. 6: love taken generally, love the first cause (“insofar as it comprehends under itself the intellectual love”) #

1. The objection concerns love as a passion in the sense appetite; here love is taken generally (communiter), comprehending intellectual love (angels), rational love, animal love (the emotion) and natural love — as Dionysius speaks of it in DN 4. He notes the treatise keeps ending in more universal considerations of love.
2. From love are caused desire, sadness and pleasure (loved one absent → sadness), and consequently all the other passions; every action from any passion proceeds from love as from a first cause (my anger toward you is not love but proceeds from my excessive love of my own dignity). So the other passions are not superfluous: they are the proximate causes.
3. Hate too is caused from love: I hate rock and roll because I love the beautiful; I hate salmon because I love what tastes good.

• Aside: de gustibus non est disputandum (someone modified it for salmon); the salmon-pink house passed on the way to Mass that “makes me sick to my stomach”. Break.

4. The plan of q. 29 on hate (“the cause and object of hate is what”) #

Six articles instead of the several questions on love; he surveys them and invites guesses.

• A. 1 cause and object of hate = the bad, corresponding to q. 26 a. 1 on love; cause and object go together (utrum causa et objectum) because the object moves the power — what I fear (terrorist with a gun) is the cause of my fear.
• No question on the nature or kinds of hate: known from the opposite.
• A. 2 whether hate is caused from love: different from love, which is fundamental but can be caused by another passion with another object; both a. 1 and a. 2 are about the cause of hate.
• A. 3 whether hate is stronger than love — “a strange article”, a comparison; one would expect effects contrary to love’s. Students propose: against union, mutual exclusion/revulsion; against ecstasy, drawing into oneself, introversion (“if he was on fire I wouldn’t cross the street to spit on him”).
• A. 4 whether one can hate oneself (he knows how Thomas answers elsewhere: as love is of the good as known, you might hate yourself without really knowing yourself). A. 5 whether one can hate the truth (if you like being deceived). A. 6 whether something can be hated universally — Aristotle: we hate all thieves, but are not angry at every man, anger having a more particular cause.
• Aside: arrests for trying to blow up a bridge in Cleveland; anarchists.

5. Q. 29 a. 1: objections and sed contra (“everything that is, as such, is good”) #

1. Everything that is, as such, is good (Augustine: sin is nothing; the sinner becomes nothing); so if hate’s object is the bad, nothing is hated but only a defect — clearly false.
2. Hating the bad is praiseworthy (2 Maccabees: the laws well kept on account of the piety of the high priest Onias, and they had bad things in hate); so if only the bad is hated, all hate would be praiseworthy. His gloss: whether hate is good or bad depends on what you hate; Aristotle in the prooemium of the De Anima says all knowledge as such is good — not all love, and not all hate is bad.
3. The same thing is not at once good and bad, yet the same thing is lovable to one and hateable to another (you love salmon, I hate it); so hate is not only of the bad but also of the good.

• Sed contra: hate is contrary to love, whose object is the good. A student raises hope and despair as opposites; he says that is a different kind of thing.

6. Body of a. 1: harmony and dissonance (“has a certain dissonance”) #

Point: hate’s object is the bad, shown from natural appetite and from contrariety with love.

1. Natural desire follows an apprehension not joined to it (the tree wants sunshine without knowing it; someone else knows), so the account of inclination is the same for natural and animal desire, the latter following an apprehension joined to the animal.
2. In natural desire each thing has a natural aptitude to what suits it (natural love) and a natural dissonance to what is repugnant and corruptive (natural hate) — the stone does not want to go up.
3. So in animal and intellectual appetite love is a harmony of appetite to what is apprehended as suitable, hate a dissonance to what is apprehended as repugnant or harmful.
4. Everything suitable as such has the notion of good, everything repugnant as such the notion of bad; therefore as good is love’s object, bad is hate’s.

• He flags the two sources of the argument: partly from hate as the contrary of love, partly from the likeness to natural love and hate.
• Example: vines love rough, poor soil and hate rich soil — Bacchus amat colles.

7. Replies to a. 1 (“Fair is foul, and foul is fair”) #

1. Being as being has no repugnance but suitability, since all things agree in being; being as a determinate being is repugnant to some other determinate being, and so one being is hateable to another and bad for it — not in itself but in comparison. Fire: bad for me at the stake, good for the hot dog and marshmallows, good for the water heated for tea.
2. As something is apprehended as good that is not truly good, so something is apprehended as bad that is not truly bad; hence neither hate of the bad nor love of the good is always good. Macbeth’s witches: two errors (fair is foul = good taken as bad; foul is fair = bad taken as good) and two causes — the fog the mind is in, the filth of the appetite. Applied: abortion called good, abstinence bad; “should be the slogan of Planned Parenthood.”
3. The same thing is lovable and hateable to diverse ones: by natural appetite because suitable to one nature and repugnant to another (heat belongs to fire, is repugnant to water); by animal appetite because grasped by one under the notion of good, by another of bad — “that’s salmon between us.”

• Aside: a teacher who called Brussels sprouts intrinsically evil.

8. Q. 29 a. 2: objections and sed contra (“divided as opposites, naturally are together”) #

1. Things divided as opposites are naturally together (simul), as in the Categories; love and hate are contraries, divided ex opposito; therefore together, so love is not hate’s cause. He explains: contraries are species furthest apart in the same genus — quality → habit → virtue and vice, which are hama / simul; the genus is before the species but contraries are together. But cause is before effect, the “fifth sense” of before in Categories ch. 12; ch. 13 is on hama.
2. One contrary is not the cause of the other (the beautiful does not cause the ugly); love and hate are contraries.
3. The posterior is not cause of the prior; hate seems before love, since hate implies recess from evil, love access to good. Illustrated by the act of contrition (fear of loss of heaven and pains of hell — leave your sins, then pursue the good) and the man who gets up one day and says “I hate myself” and turns from his vices. “Smart guy, that Thomas.”

• Sed contra: Augustine, City of God bk. 14 — all affections are caused from love; hate is an affection of the soul.
• Aside on words: “affection” there means any emotion, not fondness; compare “luck” and “fortunate” narrowing to the good (“down on his luck”).

9. Body of a. 2, and looking before and after (“nothing is had in hate except through this”) #

1. Love is an agreement of lover with loved, hate a repugnance or dissonance.
2. In each thing one must first consider what is suitable to it, then what is repugnant, since a thing is repugnant because it corrupts or impedes what is suitable.
3. Hence love is before hate; nothing is hated except as contrary to the suitable thing that is loved; so all hate is caused from love.

• Digression, “Thomas is always looking before and after”: Categories ch. 12 gives the senses of before, hence the kinds of order; the prooemium of Thomas’s Commentary on the Ethics gives order compared to reason — order reason only considers (natural philosophy, first philosophy), order reason makes in its own acts (logic), in the acts of the will (ethics), in exterior matter (servile and mechanical arts). So knowledge is divided by the order it considers, but by this second distinction, not by the kinds of order. A philosopher who has not considered these should read Aristotle and Thomas or he’ll be “one of those modern philosophers ricocheting.”
• Thomas on the Latin Averroists: “they speak as if wisdom began with them” — unlike Thomas learning from Aristotle, Dionysius, Augustine, Boethius, even Avicenna. His example: whether the equality of Father and Son is a real relation — no, since a thing has no real relation to itself (Socrates the same as Socrates, one of Aristotle’s relations of reason), and there is no relation of a relation (Avicenna’s kind); Thomas puts Avicenna’s two and Aristotle’s two together.
• Anecdote: Ratzinger’s cautionary exhortation to a journal’s scholars not to close in on their own discourse; asked “who are you talking about?”, he bowed: “chiefly myself.” The questioner “spoke as if wisdom started with him.”

10. Ad 1: together according to reason but not in reality (“simul secundum rationem, but not secundum rem”) #

Three cases among things divided as opposites:

• together both secundum rem and secundum rationem: two species of animal (dog, cat), two colours (green, red);
• together secundum rationem but one really before the other and its cause: species of numbers (one before two, two before three — Aristotle’s second sense of before, “Thomas is cribbing it”), figures (the triangle enters into the square and all parallelograms; the diagonal divides a parallelogram into two equal triangles), motions (locomotion causes alteration, alteration causes growth: bring the wax to the fire; the sun rising warms the earth; food must be altered before assimilated — place without quality is possible, not the reverse);
• together in neither way: substance and accident — substance really causes accident, and being is attributed to substance before accident, since to accident only as in substance. “If you didn’t know the Categories, how would you understand this text?”
• Application: love and hate are together secundum rationem (emotion divided into love and hate as equals) but not secundum rem, love being the cause. He notes a later article says hate is more sensible, “visceral.”
• His own parallel from the second case: dividing Shakespeare’s plays into four kinds — tragedy, comedy and two middle kinds (one from Greek romance, one from medieval romance; new editions call the last four plays “romances”); tragicomedy, being a mixture, is posterior to tragedy and comedy secundum rem, though as species they are ex aequo and simul secundum rationem (no play before secundum rem unless you are a Platonist).
• Second parallel: physics, chemistry, biology go back to Aristotle’s three kinds of motion in Physics V (“Natural Hearing”); the basis forgotten, atomic physics got filed with mechanics, whereas Heisenberg puts it with chemistry.
• Third: the wisdom of Aristotle is before the wisdom of God for us (secundum rationem), but secundum rem God’s wisdom is the original and ours an effect. Aside: subtleties on the Trinity in the Sentences leave you knowing you must see God to understand it.

11. Ad 2 and ad 3: contraries about contraries, intention vs. execution (“in intention, it’s the reverse”) #

• Ad 2: love and hate are contraries when about the same thing (loving and hating salmon); when about contraries they are not contraries but follow on one another (love of beauty and hate of ugliness; virtue and vice; truth and falsehood). It is of the same ratio that something be loved and its contrary hated; so love of one thing causes hate of its contrary — “a beautiful distinction.”
• Ad 3: in execution one first recedes from one term, then accedes to the other; in intention the reverse, since one recedes in order to accede. The motion of the desiring power pertains more to intention than to execution; therefore love is before hate. He stops here.

His words #

• passion / emotion: his two renderings of passio, used interchangeably.
• desiring power: the appetitive power [ed.: appetite].
• love taken generally (communiter): comprehending intellectual, rational, animal and natural love.
• first cause vs. proximate causes: love vs. the other passions in causing action.
• cause and object (utrum causa et objectum): taken together because the object moves the power.
• harmony / aptitude vs. dissonance: natural love vs. natural hate; carried to animal and intellectual appetite.
• the suitable / the repugnant: what has the notion of good / of bad.
• divided ex opposito: divided as opposites.
• simul / hama: together; as opposed to before and after.
• secundum rem / secundum rationem: really / according to reason.
• recess / access (to a term): the movements hate and love imply.
• execution vs. intention: order of terms reversed between them.
• Natural Hearing: [ed.: Physics].
• affection: any emotion, not fondness.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 28, a. 6 (whole article)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 29, a. 1 (whole article), and the prologue listing the six articles
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 29, a. 2 (objections, sed contra, body, ad 1-3) (probably; inferred)
• Shakespeare, Macbeth, the witches’ opening lines (“fair is foul…”)
• Euclid, Elements, II.5 (stated and worked with numbers)

Mentioned

• Dionysius, Divine Names, ch. 4 (sed contra and ad 1 of q. 28 a. 6)
• Aristotle, De Anima III (appetite as principle of motion); prooemium of the De Anima (all knowledge good)
• Aristotle, Categories, chs. 12 and 13 (before; together)
• Aristotle, Physics V (species of motion); Physics I (Kant’s first lectures)
• Aristotle, Topics (syllogism and induction) (inferred)
• Augustine, City of God, bk. 14 (all affections from love); Augustine on sin as nothing
• 2 Maccabees (Onias) (inferred from “Maccabees” in q. 29 a. 1 obj. 2)
• Thomas, Commentary on the Ethics, prooemium (four orders compared to reason)
• Thomas on the equality of Father and Son as relation of reason (locus not stated); Sentences on the Trinity
• Cajetan’s commentary in the Leonine edition
• Athanasian Creed

His questions #

• Does everyone act from the passion of love? No — love here is taken generally, comprising intellectual, rational, animal and natural love.
• If everything is from love, are the other passions superfluous? No; they are proximate causes, love the first cause.
• What is the opposite, for hate, of love’s effects of union, mutual inherence, ecstasy? Students: mutual exclusion or revulsion; drawing into oneself, introversion.
• Is hate good or bad? Depends on what you hate; not all hate is bad, not all love good.
• Is it good for the hot dog to be in the fire? Yes — bad only for me: a being is bad in comparison to another, not in itself.
• What are the two errors and two causes in “fair is foul, and foul is fair… fog and filthy air”? Good taken as bad and bad as good; fog of the mind and filth of the appetite.
• Is two more number than three? No; together according to reason, but really two is before three.
• Is loving virtue and hating vice a pair of contraries? No; they follow on each other — hate of vice presupposes love of virtue.
• Which is before secundum rationem, the wisdom of Aristotle or the wisdom of God? For us, Aristotle’s; secundum rem, God’s.