Motion, Hope and Memory, Sadness, and the Actions of Others as Causes of Pleasure (ST I-II q.32 aa.2–5)

Orientation #

The article’s “as has been said” refers to the previous class on a. 1, that a good possessed in the now (operation) is the cause of pleasure (prev. lecture). He closes with “I guess we gotta knock off now — parting is such sweet sorrow,” saying nothing about next time. The previous class treated appropriation of Christ’s names and then q. 32 a. 1; the next continues with aa. 6 and 8.

The class, in order #

1. Play, and motion as imperfect act (“what about this thing called motion”) #

Opening asides before the article: Shakespeare’s works are called plays, and we “play” music in many languages — a sign of what they are for. Thomas, on a scripture line “run into your house and play there with your thoughts,” asks why play: because play is to some extent for its own sake and pleasant in itself; Wisdom “playing before him” at creation (he gives Wisdom/Proverbs, no locus). “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport” (Shakespeare, King Lear, inferred). Motion is an imperfect act: his example is cooking — while the roast is being cooked, it is not yet cooked; the trouble is knowing when it is done.

2. Article 2, objections and sed contra (“motion is not a cause of pleasure”) #

Point: three reasons why change should not please, and Augustine against them.

1. A good possessed in the now causes pleasure (Ethics VII: pleasure is compared not to generation but to the operation of something already existing); what is moved does not yet have its term but is “on the road,” and every motion involves generation and corruption (Physics). So motion is not a cause.
2. Motion brings labour and weariness; laborious operations are afflictive, not delightful. Example he adds: Christ tired from walking, sitting at the well in Samaria (John’s Gospel). Counter-instance he raises himself: enjoying baseball and football as a boy, wearing yourself out running.
3. Motion implies novelty, opposed to custom; customary things are pleasant (Rhetoric I) — different nations delight in different foods (fish in Venice). Custom is a second nature, so it makes things connatural and thus pleasant, as pleasure was said to be of the connatural. Sed contra, Augustine Confessions VIII: God is eternal and joy, and things that always rejoice in him; but “this part of things,” alternating between defect and progress, offence and reconciliation, rejoices in alternation. Aside: people fear heaven will be boring (“just looking at God”); the most read thing today is the newspaper, the paper with new things. “Variety is the spice of life.”

• Aside on Shakespeare’s “dead and drowsy fire” (Midsummer Night’s Dream) as a beautiful metaphor for a fire slowing down.

3. Article 2, response (“three things are required”) #

Point: motion is pleasant on all three counts that pleasure requires.

1. Pleasure needs (a) the one delighting, (b) the delightful good joined to him — these two make the conjunction — and (c) knowledge of the conjunction; motion is pleasant according to each (Ethics VII, Rhetoric I).
2. On our side: our nature is changeable, so what suits us now will not later — warming at the fire suits in winter, not summer.
3. On the side of the good joined: continual action of an agent increases its effect (standing longer at the fire, one gets more heated and dried out); natural condition consists in a measure, so continual presence exceeding the measure removes the delightful — eat too much of something and it no longer tastes good.
4. On the side of knowledge: man desires to know something whole and perfect — he notes Thomas’s two words, since Aristotle in Physics III says “whole” and “perfect” mean nearly the same; what cannot be grasped tota simul one delights to have in change, one part passing and another taking its place. Augustine Confessions IV: you do not want the syllable to stand but to pass so that you hear the whole. All things in which one thing is constituted from many that are not all at once delight more all together than singly.
5. Hence a nature that is unchangeable, admits no excess of disposition, and whose whole is delightful at once, takes no delight in change — God; and the closer pleasures come to this, the more they can be continued. Examples: a piece of music (the stuck record or CD repeating one passage is annoying); appetizer, main course, dessert; one aria after another at the opera — you would not want the same aria over and over. “I’m a changeable person because of my body.” Tota simul is the definition of eternity. Student: since we are made to God’s image, better self-knowledge should mean taking pleasure in things that change less — he accepts it in terms of “know thyself.”

4. Article 2, replies (“motion itself has something of pleasure”) #

• To 1: what is moved begins to have something of its term, so motion has something of pleasure but falls short of its perfection; the more perfect pleasures are in imperishable things, “lest you perish with them” (Augustine). Motion is also delightful insofar as through it something becomes suitable that was not, or ceases to be.
• To 2: motion brings weariness as it exceeds the natural disposition — so far not delightful; as it removes what is contrary to the natural disposition, delightful. Example: a physician exhausted by patients and hours of data entry relaxes by working in the garden; hence the scruple about Sunday labour misunderstands what kind of rest is meant.
• To 3: the customary is delightful as made natural; motion is delightful not as customary but as it impedes the corruption of the natural disposition that intensity of one operation would bring. So custom and motion are delightful from the same cause, connaturality. Aside: custom is dangerous in the life of the mind — as Thomas notes, God’s existence seems per se known to people only because they are accustomed from childhood to call on him. Custom vs. fashion: the one draws strength from the old, the other from the new; both attract. Lebanese immigrants generations later still want kibbeh, hummus, the hafle and the debka — the old customs comfort.

5. Article 3: memory and hope (“memory and hope are not causes”) #

Point: hope and memory cause pleasure by a presence secundum quid, and are ranked. Objections: (1) pleasure is of a present good (Damascene); memory is of the past, hope of the future (“absence makes the heart grow fonder” — or “wander”). (2) The same is not cause of contraries, and hope afflicts: Proverbs 13, “hope deferred afflicts the soul” (aside: saints given the choice to go now or suffer more; Catherine of Siena choosing the crown of thorns over the golden crown). (3) Desire and love also concur with the good, so hope should not be assigned as cause more than concupiscence or love — though concupiscence, unlike hope, does not imply possibility: desiring a steak dinner that will not be on the table. Sed contra: Romans, spe gaudentes (he recalls a Paul VI encyclical of that name); Psalm 76, memor fui Dei et delectatus sum. Response:

1. Pleasure is caused by the presence of a suitable good as perceived in any way whatever (qualitercumque).
2. A thing is present in two ways: by knowledge (the known in the knower by likeness) or secundum rem (really joined, in act or in potency).
3. Real conjunction is greater than conjunction by likeness, and conjunction in act greater than in potency.
4. So three grades: pleasure of sense (presence of the sensible) first; hope second, which has apprehension plus the faculty of obtaining; memory third, apprehension only. He stresses the ordering: hope ahead of memory, “before and after,” like the old man who has only his memories; man “looks before and after,” i.e. uses reason (Shakespeare, Hamlet, inferred); “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” — present possession.

• To 1: hope and memory are simpliciter absentia but secundum quid praesentia, by apprehension alone or with the (at least estimated) power of obtaining — he has no hope of the Heisman Trophy, though in pure potency he could win it.
• To 2 (digression on causes): Empedocles, needing contrary causes for the coming together and separation of earth, air, fire and water, posits love and hate (the LOVE/HATE knuckle tattoo). Aristotle’s four causes yield three corollaries he draws: (i) many per se causes of one thing — Michelangelo and the marble of the Pietà; (ii) two things causes of each other in different ways — making dinner and dinner, learning and knowing, reproduction and the baby; (iii) the same thing cause of contraries by presence and absence — the ship’s captain, responsible by negligence for wreck and by attendance for safety. Thomas’s reply: nothing prevents the same thing secundum diversa causing contraries; hope as present estimation of a possible future good causes pleasure, as lacking its presence causes affliction — the sailor separated from wife and family.
• To 3: love and concupiscence also cause pleasure — the loved is pleasant to the lover (no love of wisdom, wine or salmon, no pleasure in getting them), love being a union or conformity of lover to loved; the desired is pleasant to the desirer, desire being especially for pleasure. But hope implies certitude of the real presence of the good, so it is magis, more, assigned as cause — he notes Thomas does not deny the others — and more than memory, which is of what has passed. Shakespeare’s sonnet lamenting feasts gone by; the family beer stein, Schön ist die Jugend, sie kommt nicht mehr.

6. Article 4: sadness (“sadness is a cause of pleasure”) #

Point: sadness, in act and in memory, causes pleasure per accidens. “This crazy Article Four” — perhaps in tragedy, he first guesses. Objections he finds “convincing”: (1) a contrary does not cause its contrary — like pain causing pleasure, “ridiculous.” (2) Contraries have contrary effects (hot softens butter, cold hardens it); delightful things remembered cause pleasure, so sad things remembered cause pain. (3) As sadness to pleasure, so hate to love; hate does not cause love. Sed contra: Psalm 41, “my tears were my bread day and night”; bread signifies the refreshment of pleasure. Response: sadness taken as in act or as in memory — he expected “one yes, one no,” but Thomas says both cause pleasure.

• In act: it makes one remember the loved thing whose absence saddens, and about that apprehension one delights. Romeo and Juliet, “parting is such sweet sorrow”: the sadness of parting shows you love each other, and knowing that is pleasant, though mixed, “not unalloyed joy.” His small daughter fighting back tears at his leaving for a trip (“a hard act to follow,” Rosie said); a student’s father, red-faced, walking his sister down the aisle. Remembering a dead friend gives a certain pleasure; Shakespeare’s sonnet asking not to be wept for after death.
• In memory: pleasant on account of the subsequent escape — grasping oneself to have evaded some painful thing gives matter for joy. Augustine, City of God XXII (remembering past sadness without pain, and so rejoicing and giving thanks) and Confessions VIII (the more danger in the battle, the more joy in the triumph). A student adds Bonaventure: the saints in heaven think about hell, what they deserved and the mercy that spared them, which increases their joy — “next time somebody says it’s inappropriate to talk about hell.”
• To 1: a contrary is sometimes per accidens cause of its contrary, as cold of heat (Physics VIII) — “that’s a very important distinction.” Fire as such warms; only per accidens does it make you cold [example unclear in recording]. Sadness per accidens causes pleasure as through it something pleasant is known.
• To 2: sad things remembered, as sad, do not cause pleasure, but as one is freed from them; likewise delightful things remembered, as lost, cause sadness — the old man watching the young enjoy what he no longer can.
• To 3: hate per accidens causes love, as people love each other in hating the same thing: “anybody here hate salmon? now I feel close to you”; Red Sox and Phillies fans united against the Yankees; he first bonded with Warren Murray in high school over dislike of Roosevelt; anyone who can’t stand Obama “has sense.”

7. Article 5: the actions of others (“the actions of others are to us”) #

Point: another’s action pleases in three ways, matched to three ways of being joined. Aside: in heaven one rejoices in the saints’ good deeds without envy. Objections: (1) pleasure’s cause is one’s own good joined; others’ operations are not joined to us. (2) Operation pleases as one’s own good; if others’ operations please, so would all their goods — clearly false (being pleased that you won the lottery, unless disinterested). (3) Operation pleases as proceeding from a habit in us — Ethics II, the sign of an acquired virtue is taking pleasure in its act (no delight in eating moderately, no temperance yet; courage is the usual puzzle, left aside); others’ operations proceed from their habits, not ours. Sed contra: John’s epistle (he thinks 2 John), gavisus sum valde, “I have found my sons walking in the truth” — parents and parishioners rejoice when their children keep the faith. Response: two things required — attaining one’s own good, and knowledge of it. Three ways another’s doing causes pleasure:

1. Through it we attain some good: to be well treated by another is pleasant — the lotto winner gives me a piece of the pie.
2. It gives us knowledge or estimate of our own good: so men delight in praise and honour — “less noble, more selfish”; more from the testimony of the good and wise (Monsignor Dian agreeing with him; the Pope’s honour vs. Obama’s; the rumour, from his quoting Heisenberg, that “Berquist has a Ph.D. in physics”); the flatterer is an apparent praiser, hence flattery delights (“flattery gets you everywhere”). Since love is of a good and wonder of something great, to be loved and admired delights as giving an estimate of one’s goodness or magnitude — the crowds going “bonkers” at Obama’s inauguration motorcade, seen on the hospital TV while his father lay dying.
3. Others’ good doings are estimated as one’s own good through love, which makes a friend “another self”; hate makes another’s good seem contrary to oneself, so the enemy’s bad doing is pleasurable — 1 Corinthians 13, charity does not rejoice over iniquity but with the truth; Obama’s poor debate and the polls turning to Romney “give me a little joy.”

• To 1: another’s doing is joined to me by its effect (first way), by apprehension (second), or by affection whereby he is another self (third) — his Greek reader’s proverb, ho philos estin allos autos.
• To 2: that argument holds for the third way, not the first two — where the other is another self, you rejoice in any good of his as your own.
• To 3: others’ doings, though not from habits in me, cause delight because they give an estimate of my own habit, or proceed from the habit of one who is one with me through love.

His words #

• play: “to some extent for its own sake” and pleasant in itself; hence Thomas’s use of the word for thinking.
• imperfect act: motion, illustrated by the roast still cooking [ed.: actus imperfectus].
• connatural / second nature: custom, which makes things pleasant as nature does.
• tota simul: all at once; the definition of eternity; what cannot be so grasped is enjoyed in change.
• whole and perfect: Thomas’s two words for what man wants to know; near-synonyms per Physics III.
• qualitercumque: “in some way whatsoever” perceived.
• secundum rem vs. by likeness: real conjunction vs. conjunction of knowledge.
• simpliciter absentia / secundum quid praesentia: how hoped-for and remembered goods are present.
• faculty of obtaining: what hope adds to apprehension; “at least estimated to be so.”
• secundum diversa: under different aspects, how one cause yields contraries.
• three corollaries of the four causes: many per se causes of one thing; mutual causes in different ways; one cause of contraries by presence and absence.
• per accidens cause: contrary causing contrary (cold and heat, sadness and pleasure, hate and love).
• magis: hope is “more” laid down as cause than love, desire or memory, not the only cause.
• another self / ho philos estin allos autos: the friend, through love.
• flatterer: an apparent praiser.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 32, a. 2 (whole article)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 32, a. 3 (whole article)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 32, a. 4 (whole article)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 32, a. 5 (whole article)

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics VII (pleasure vs. generation), II (sign of virtue), Rhetoric I (custom), Physics (motion and generation), III (whole and perfect), VIII (cold cause of heat); Aristotle on the four causes (no locus)
• Augustine, Confessions IV and VIII, City of God XXII
• Damascene on pleasure as of a present good
• Scripture: Proverbs 13 (hope deferred); Psalm 76 (memor fui); Psalm 41 (tears my bread); Romans (spe gaudentes); 2 (or 3) John (gavisus sum valde); 1 Corinthians 13; John’s Gospel, the well in Samaria; Wisdom/Proverbs on play at creation
• Empedocles (love and hate); Bonaventure (saints thinking of hell); Shakespeare: King Lear (inferred), Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet (inferred), sonnets (unnamed); Paul VI encyclical (as he recalls it)

His questions #

• How did I enjoy playing games as a kid if motion is wearying? Motion tires as it exceeds the natural disposition, but delights as it removes what is contrary to it (reply to 2).
• Why does the same aria over and over not please, while one after another does? Some things cannot be grasped tota simul, so we delight in one part passing and another coming; our changeable body makes us such.
• Which is the higher pleasure, hope or memory, and why? Hope, because it adds to apprehension the power of obtaining; memory has apprehension alone; sense has the thing itself.
• Can the same thing be cause of contraries? Yes, secundum diversa — hope by its present estimate causes pleasure, by the good’s absence affliction; the captain by presence and absence.
• Is parting really a sweet sorrow? Yes, per accidens: the sadness makes both perceive that they love each other, which is pleasant, though mixed.
• Why is remembering past misery pleasant? On account of the subsequent escape: the more danger in the battle, the more joy in the triumph.
• Can hate cause love? Per accidens, when people come together in hating the same thing (salmon, the Yankees, Roosevelt).
• Why do we delight more in the praise of the good and wise than of Tom, Dick or Harry? Because the estimate of one’s own good is more strongly generated from their testimony.
• If others’ operations please us, why not all their goods? Thomas grants this only for the third way, where love makes the other another self; the first two ways do not entail it.