Aquinas on Pleasure, Part 2: Is Pleasure in Time, How Joy Differs from Pleasure, and Pleasure in the Intellect (q.31 a.2–4)

Orientation #

He refers back to the treatise on love (“if you recall when he talked about love… the first cause of love is a good”) and to “that psalm we did last week” (bonum et iucundum). He ends: “we’re up to Article Five… it’s kind of long,” and postpones it. The previous class opened q. 31 with a. 1 (pleasure as a passion); the next takes a. 5 (bodily vs spiritual pleasures).

The class, in order #

1. Article 2, objections and sed contra (“it seems that pleasure is in time”) #

The point: if pleasure is more a rest than a motion, is it in time?

• Obj. 1: pleasure is a motion (Rhetoric I), all motion is in time. Aside on the word “motion”: it is sometimes carried over to understanding; when Plato says God moves Himself, Thomas says he means God understands and loves Himself. Grammatically the verb always signifies with time and so looks back to the original meaning, but understanding is tota simul.
• Shakespeare’s “Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, so do our minutes hasten to their end”: shows the connection of motion and time. Aristotle: the before and after in the road is before the before and after in the motion, and that before the time; the three correspond. Likewise the first sense of beginning (point of a line), then beginning of motion, then of time; the first sense of before in Categories ch. 12 is before in time, the others led back to it by likeness; the first sense of end is in place, then in time. Then the senses of in: the second is part in whole, then genus/species; “many is the attempt to order those eight meanings.”
• Aside: a student reading that difficult article said he would have floundered “all by myself… I need you right now,” like the passage in Daniel where one needs a teacher to avoid mistakes.
• Obj. 2: lengthy (diuturna) or morose pleasures are said according to time. Obj. 3: passions are of one genus, some are in time.
• Sed contra: Ethics X, “according to no time does one take pleasure.” Example: conversation with someone you love, three in the morning, “where did the time go?” Counter-examples of pleasures that don’t last: Brother Mark’s “the first sip of beer tastes the best… by the seventh you don’t really care”; the second helping of dessert; “hunger makes good sauce.”

2. The body: two ways of being in time (“something can be in time in two ways”) #

The point: pleasure is in time only per accidens, if at all.

1. Time is the number of the before and after in motion (Physics IV, “Natural Hearing”), the number of successive things.
2. Per se in time: things of whose very notion succession belongs — motion (before and after), rest (lack of motion in what could be moved: “take five minutes”), locutio (it takes time to say a sentence, even a word).
3. Per accidens in time: things whose notion has no succession but are subject to it — to be a man has no succession (it is the end of the change called generation), but man’s being is subject to changing causes (you get old and die), so man is in time. Contrast: my walking home is in time as such; my existence is in time “to another,” having a beginning (generation) and end.
4. Pleasure is in the good now obtained, the term of the motion; so per se not in time. If the good obtained is subject to change, pleasure is per accidens in time; if entirely unchangeable, “neither per se nor per accidens.”

• Application (his, not Thomas’s here): seeing God face to face, no before and after, partaking of eternity — “eternal life.” Against Plato’s idea that after a while you get bored and want reincarnation: Thomas says you can never make that mistake, your mind is so enlightened. High-school friend Andrew Gorge: “after a few million years, won’t we get kind of bored?” Augustine: miserable the man who knows all things but not God; blessed who knows God even if nothing else; blessed who knows God and other things, but for knowing God alone. Thomas similarly: seeing only God would still be perfect happiness.
• Why our thinking here is subject to change: we use images, the body tires, we sleep (the fantasy of Aristotle holding a steel ball over a basin). Aristotle wonders at God because God is always in the state of understanding the best things, primarily himself, while we can be in it only sometimes, interrupted by sleep and food: “how much better he is than us… he compels our wonder.” In the beatific vision no images, so no change.

3. Reply 1: two senses of motion (“motion is said in two ways”) #

The point: pleasure is a motion only in the sense of the act of the perfect.

• A. Act of the imperfect (De Anima III): from the definition, the act of what exists in potency as such — incomplete, successive, in time. B. Act of the perfect, of what exists in act: to understand, to sense, to will, to delight — not successive, not per se in time. Aristotle usually uses “motion” strictly for A, but in De Anima III sometimes calls B a motion too; Thomas uses motus for A and operatio for B.
• Test by tense: “When I’m walking home, have I walked home yet?” No, and once I have, I’m not walking. “When I’m seeing you, have I seen you yet?” Yes. Hearing Mozart, understanding what a square is: same. “When I’m pleased, have I been pleased yet?” So pleasure is an operation rather than a motion. Hence man’s end does not consist in motion in the first sense.
• Student: is this the Latin difference between labor (mopping the floor, Benedict’s ora et labora, manual work) and opus (opus Dei, chanting the office); like servile vs liberal arts? Berquist: words in use don’t necessarily carry that meaning, but operatio is from opus, something complete. His own case: saying the Our Father moves from petition to petition (“have I prayed yet?”), whereas when I start contemplating God I have contemplated God — the operation.
• Jokes: “the opera omnia of St. Thomas — I didn’t know he wrote an opera. Just one, called Omnia”; “trivia” in school vs trivium and quadrivium.

4. Replies 2 and 3 (“according as it is per accidens in time”) #

• Reply 2: a pleasure is called diuturna or morosa insofar as it is per accidens in time.
• Reply 3: the other passions do not have the good obtained for object, so they have more the notion of imperfect motion than pleasure; not being in time belongs more to pleasure than to them.

5. Digression: the older man without envy (“he’s a whole school in himself”) #

Prompted by the Aristotle–Plato difference: the story of Plato calling Aristotle “a whole school in himself.” Three examples he admires of a superior older man not envious of a greater younger one: Albert the Great arranging a debate with Thomas, losing, and saying the “dumb ox” will bellow around the world; Haydn telling Mozart’s father “your son is the greatest composer known to me,” Mozart dedicating the six “Haydn” quartets, Haydn saying Mozart wrote Don Giovanni “for me, my friends,” and reproaching England for not hiring him; De Koninck telling Warren Murray and his own wife (whom Mary Shane lived with) that Dionne was “the greatest mind up here” — he recalls walking past quietly as Dionne paced outside De Koninck’s house. Contrast: modern philosophers, each trying to excel the one before; and Thomas’s respect for Aristotle and Augustine. John Paul II’s letter on Augustine; Augustine most quoted in the Catechism; Augustine lacked Thomas’s advantage of knowing Aristotle.

• Aside: a forthcoming Augustine movie (October), likely with liberties; Augustine dying while the Vandals besieged the city, staying with his flock.
• Aside: the Psalms are prayers, and prayer is tied most of all to hope; David’s serious sins (Bathsheba’s husband) are given us for hope, as Augustine’s dissolute life, Thomas’s doubting “for our faith,” Peter’s fall for humility. Break.

6. Article 3: is joy altogether the same as pleasure? (“we do not speak of joy”) #

• Obj. 1: passions differ by object; joy and pleasure have the same object, the good obtained (love is of the good simply, desire of the good not yet had, pleasure of the good obtained). Obj. 2: one motion (concupiscence) does not end in two ends. Obj. 3: otherwise laetitia, exultatio, iucunditas would be different passions too, which seems false.
• Sed contra: in brute animals we don’t speak of joy. His cats: tidbits at table, “we’re having steak tonight,” pork chops — “we both like steak,” but you’d say the cat was pleased, never joyful; perhaps sadness in a dog whose master dies.
• Body: joy is a species of pleasure (Avicenna, De Anima). As some concupiscences are natural and some follow reason (Damascene and Gregory of Nyssa: bodily vs of the soul), so with pleasures. We more speak of joy over the truth; Augustine: beatitude is gaudium de veritate, not delectatio — joy connotes the more spiritual. Pin stuck in you and removed: pleasure with pain. Pleasure is broader; joy has place only in pleasure following reason (pleased with thinking about God — also joy; favorite meat or lemon meringue pie — not joy). Everything desired by nature can also be desired by reason, not the reverse; hence about everything pleasurable there can be joy in rational beings, but not always: sometimes bodily pleasure one does not rejoice in according to reason. Pleasure is “in more” than joy.
• Students: “Did you enjoy your dinner?” — enjoyment isn’t joy; “I didn’t rejoice over the steak.” One student: euphoria the afternoon Benedict was elected was joy; a big bowl of ice cream is not. Berquist: “What’s wrong with you?”

7. Replies to Article 3 (“imposed from the effects of pleasure”) #

• Reply 1: the object of animal desire (vs the natural desire of plants for the sun) is the good apprehended, so diversity of apprehension pertains to diversity of object. Back-reference: in the treatise on love, the good is the first cause as object, knowledge the second for the same reason (on the side of the object), likeness the third on the side of the subject. So animal pleasures called gaudia differ from bodily delectationes, as with concupiscences.
• Reply 2: the same difference in concupiscences: delectatio corresponds to concupiscentia (bodily, concupere with the body), gaudium to desiderium, the more spiritual; difference of motion, difference of rest. The principle is kept, applied to the distinction: “my desire to know the truth is somewhat different from my desire to eat.”
• Reply 3: the other names are from effects. Laetitia from dilation of the heart (sadness narrows, pinches). Exultatio from outward signs, interior joy bursting out — his comedy work: mirth names the inner passion, merriment the outside (“making merry”; The Merry Wives of Windsor playing jokes on Falstaff, self-corrected from “Hamlet”). Iucunditas from special signs, unspecified. All pertain to joy, used only of rational natures. Thomas’s prayer after communion ends asking for the beatific vision with iucunditas consummata; “bonum et iucundum” from last week’s psalm.

8. Article 4: pleasure in the intellectual appetite (“God rejoices by one simple operation”) #

He reads only the sed contra and the reply to the third; the objections and body are not treated.

• Sed contra: Ethics VII, Deus una simplici operatione gaudet — “beautiful text,” Thomas often quotes it, note operatione; Dionysius, end of the Celestial Hierarchy (Albert commented on it, Thomas on the Divine Names): angels are not susceptible of our passibilities but rejoice with God “according to the joy of incorruption.”
• Aside: his mother asks more and more what heaven will be like: “think of the best thing you can think of, and it ain’t good enough.”
• Reply 3: in us there is the pleasure we share with brutes and also that in which we come together with the angels; Dionysius: holy men often partake of angelic pleasures (hence “the angelic doctor”). So pleasure is in the sense-desiring power and in the intellectual-desiring power.
• Locke: his good is limited to pleasure; objected to as a philosophy for beasts, he answered “you’re the beast, because you think we have only pleasures in common with the beasts.”
• His own threefold division (“I think it’s important that that point”): pleasures shared with beasts (eating steak), with angels (understanding), and those that fit man — the fine arts, “too high for the beasts and too low for the angels,” involving body and soul; a phrase he takes from Austen [unclear in recording; he later says “I’m influenced by Austen”]. The fine arts are a stepping stone to the pleasures of philosophy and theology. Even the beast-pleasures we have more refinedly (wine sauce, salad dressing; the cat eats the mouse raw — his father discouraging feeding the barn cat). Thomas: no man can live without pleasure, so without taste for the higher pleasures one goes to excess in the lower (obesity, drugs). Fine arts can be enjoyed longer than eating (Thanksgiving overeating, the drunk at the party — Socrates: these are tied to pains) and longer than philosophizing, where imagination and senses are slaves of reason; people read a novel for hours.
• Student: active vs passive pleasures, novel vs philosophy? The novel involves imagination more; fiction tries to please the imagination, philosophy uses it but aims to enlighten reason — pitiful that modern philosophers try to please the imagination.
• Aside: “if everything in real life were like it is on TV, what would TV be like?” — a perversion of the mind.

His words #

• Natural Hearing — the Physics [ed.: Physics]; time is the number of the before and after in motion.
• tota simul — all at once, of God’s understanding and loving Himself.
• per se / secundum se / “as such” vs per accidens / “to another” — the two ways of being in time.
• act of the imperfect vs act of the perfect — the two senses of motion; act of what is “able to be, insofar as it’s able to be” [ed.: act of what is in potency insofar as in potency].
• motus vs operatio — Thomas’s words for the two.
• diuturna, morosa — lengthy, dwelling too long: per accidens in time.
• gaudium — joy, a species of pleasure, the pleasure following reason; delectatio — pleasure, the broader name.
• gaudium de veritate — Augustine’s beatitude.
• concupiscentia vs desiderium — bodily vs more spiritual desire, answering to delectatio and gaudium.
• laetitia — from dilation of the heart; exultatio — from outward signs; iucunditas — from special signs, unspecified.
• mirth vs merriment — inner passion vs outward sign.
• Deus una simplici operatione gaudet — God rejoices by one simple operation.
• congaudent Deo secundum incorruptionis laetitiam — the angels rejoice with God according to the joy of incorruption.
• opus / operatio vs labor — student’s suggestion; opus is something complete.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas, ST I-II q. 31 a. 2 (objections, sed contra, body, three replies)
• Thomas, ST I-II q. 31 a. 3 (objections, sed contra, body, three replies)
• Thomas, ST I-II q. 31 a. 4 (sed contra and reply to third only)
• Shakespeare, sonnet “Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore” (quoted)

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Rhetoric I (pleasure a motion); Physics IV (time); Categories ch. 12 (before); De Anima III (two senses of motion); Nicomachean Ethics X (no time one takes pleasure), VII (God rejoices by one simple operation)
• Aristotle on the senses of “beginning,” “end,” “in” (eight meanings) — loci not stated
• Plato: God moves Himself; boredom and reincarnation
• Avicenna, De Anima (joy a species of pleasure); Damascene and Gregory of Nyssa (bodily vs soul pleasures)
• Augustine: beatitude is gaudium de veritate; “miserable the man who knows all things but not God”
• Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy (end); Divine Names (Thomas’s commentary)
• Thomas’s prayer after communion; Daniel (needing a teacher); the Psalms and David; John Paul II’s letter on Augustine; the Catechism
• Locke on good as pleasure; Socrates on pleasures tied to pains; Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor; Mozart’s Haydn quartets and Don Giovanni; Austen (as source of the fine-arts point)

His questions #

• If pleasure is more a rest than a motion, is it in time? Not per se; per accidens if the good obtained is changeable; not at all if unchangeable.
• Is God’s understanding and loving Himself tota simul? Yes; “motion” there is carried over, not the original sense.
• Is the pleasure of seeing God face to face in time in any way? No, neither per se nor per accidens; it partakes of eternity.
• When I’m walking home, have I walked home yet? When I’m seeing you, have I seen you yet? No / yes: motion as act of the imperfect vs operation as act of the perfect.
• When I’m pleased, have I been pleased yet? Yes — pleasure is an operation, a motion only in the second sense.
• Do we speak of joy in the beasts? No; only pleasure — the cat is pleased with steak, not joyful.
• Isn’t one joyful that one’s favorite food is served tonight? No, pleased; joy has place only in pleasure following reason.
• Is enjoyment the same as joy? Not so much; “I enjoyed a good meal,” but “I didn’t rejoice over the steak.”
• Are there active and passive pleasures, novel vs philosophy? The novel involves imagination more; philosophy uses imagination but aims to enlighten reason.