Aquinas on the Causes of Pleasure: Doing Good to Others, Likeness, and Wonder (ST I-II q.32, a.6–8)

Orientation #

He refers back to “the third article” (hope as a cause of pleasure) and “the first article” (unimpeded operation as cause of pleasure), both (prev. lecture). He closes with “take our little break here now”; nothing is said about next time. The previous class covered qq. on motion, hope and memory, sadness, and others’ actions as causes of pleasure; the next takes up pleasure’s effects.

The class, in order #

1. Article 6: objections — is benefiting another a cause of pleasure? (“illiberality is more connatural to men than prodigality”) #

The point: three objections that doing good to another seems rather a cause of sadness.

1. Pleasure is caused from achieving one’s own good; to benefit another is a giving-away (“sending off”) of one’s good, so it looks like a cause of sadness.
2. Aristotle, Ethics IV: illiberality is more connatural to man than prodigality; the connatural operation is delightful (Ethics VII and X); prodigality pertains to benefiting others, illiberality to desisting from it; therefore benefiting is not a cause of pleasure. “Good argument, huh?”
3. Contrary effects from contrary causes: some things that pertain to doing evil (malefacere) are naturally delightful — to overcome, to reprove/criticize (redarguere), to punish, for the angry man (Rhetoric I); so benefiting (benefacere) is rather a cause of sadness. Sed contra: Aristotle, Politics II — to give a lot and to aid friends or even strangers is most delightful.

• Why Ethics IV treats liberality right after courage and temperance (book III): those regard what preserves or destroys the body; next to that is one’s money, one’s “substance” — “take away my support,” as the Jew says in the play; joke about a large man as “a man of substance.”
• Why one vice (illiberalitas) is formed by negating the virtue’s name and the other (prodigality) is not: virtue is between two extremes but closer to one, so the further extreme gets the negated name — courage is closer to foolhardiness than cowardice; “intemperance” names the man who goes to excess, more opposed to temperance than the puritanical man. Illiberality is the vice more opposed to liberality, and more connatural, since you need money to keep yourself in existence.
• Aside: Richard III comes to mind on pleasure in doing evil; Romney’s generosity and modesty; charitable giving low in Massachusetts, “liberals in the other sense of the word.”

2. Article 6: the body — three ways benefiting another causes pleasure (“can be in three ways a cause of pleasure”) #

The point: “What a mind this guy had” — benefiting another can cause pleasure by comparison to the effect, to the end, or to a beginning.

1. By comparison to the effect, the good constituted in another: insofar as through the union of love we regard the other’s good as our own, we delight in it as in our own good, especially our friends’ (ho philos estin allos autos, the friend is another self). Examples: giving your wife a gift; parents proud when children do well (he notes Thomas’s point is rather the pleasure of doing the good to the child).
2. By comparison to the end: when one hopes, by benefiting another, to obtain some good for himself, from God or from man — hope is a cause of pleasure (third article, prev. lecture).
3. By comparison to a beginning, which is threefold:
   • the faculty or capacity of doing well: benefiting produces an imagining of an abundant good in oneself from which one can communicate to others — so men delight in their sons and their own works as things to which they have communicated their good;
   • a habit inclining us, so that benefiting becomes connatural: “second nature”; hence the liberal give delightfully — as St Paul says, they give cheerfully;
   • the motive: when one is moved by someone loved to benefit another; everything done or undergone for a friend is delightful, because love especially is a cause of pleasure. “He goes no more than three, right? Three is the first number about which you say all.”

• Aside: story of Romney closing Bain Capital and spreading the staff over New York in a pattern to find a missing daughter; “liberal in politics is liberal with other people’s money.”

3. Article 6: replies — giving, conquering, reproving, punishing (“to conquer is naturally delightful”) #

The point: the giving-away pleases insofar as it indicates one’s good; harming pleases only insofar as it pertains to one’s own good.

• Ad 1: emission is pleasant insofar as it indicates one’s own good, saddening insofar as it takes it away, as when immoderate (“gave too much, now I have a need”). Prodigality is immoderate emission and repugnant to nature; liberality is not. That is the sense in which illiberality is more connatural: the illiberal man at least takes care of himself.
• Ad 3: to overcome, reprove, punish is delightful not as resulting in another’s evil but as pertaining to one’s own good — one loves one’s own good more than one hates another’s evil.
  • To conquer: naturally delightful because in conquering a man estimates his own excellence; hence all games (ludi) in which there is struggle (concertatio) and possible victory are most delightful, and universally all struggles (concertationes) insofar as there is hope of victory. Student translates concertationes as “struggles”; note on “concert” from instruments competing.
  • To reprove: delightful in two ways — as giving a man the imagination of his own wisdom and excellence (correcting belongs to the wiser and greater; the sophist wants you to fear contradicting yourself), or as benefiting the one corrected — fraternal correction (“do you rejoice in fraternal correction, you guys?” — “We try”; “if a just man strikes or reproves me,” somewhere in scripture).
  • To punish, for the angry man: removes the apparent lessening of himself resulting from the preceding injury; he desires to be freed from that lessening by paying back the injury (“snowball fights… we’re gonna get those guys”).
• Closing distinction: to benefit another is per se delightful; to harm another is not, except insofar as it pertains to one’s own good.
• Asides: the “dumb ox” story — Albert the Great arranged a debate, Thomas won, “his bellow will be heard around the world”; Pat Riley on Lombardi, “winning is everything,” and St Paul’s “run so as to win”; Patriots losing 24–23 on a last long pass; Army–Navy games won by last-second field goals, the West Point kicker who made it twice after a penalty; “if they can’t win a football game, how can they win a war?”

4. Article 7: is likeness a cause of pleasure? — objections and body (“likeness is a certain unity”) #

The point: the like is delightful insofar as it is one, unless it corrupts one’s own good. Objections: (1) to rule over and stand before implies dissimilitude, yet is naturally delightful (Rhetoric I); (2) nothing is more unlike pleasure than sadness, yet the saddened most seek pleasures (Ethics VII); (3) those filled with something pleasant grow tired of it — as with food (“Thanksgiving time… get comfortable, walk”). Sed contra: likeness is a cause of love, love a cause of pleasure — “a cause of a cause.” Body:

1. Likeness is a certain unity; the like, insofar as one, is delightful, as it is lovable.
2. If the like does not corrupt one’s own good but increases it, it is simply (simpliciter) delightful — man to man, youth to youth.
3. If it corrupts one’s good, it is per accidens wearisome or saddening — not as like and one, but as corrupting what is “more one.” “Kind of subtle.”
4. The like corrupts one’s good in two ways: (a) by excess corrupting the measure of a good — bodily good like health consists in commensuration, so excessive food or bodily pleasures produce nausea (“get pretty tired of turkey”); (b) by direct contrariety — potters against potters (Aristotle’s famous example), not as potters but as losing their own excellence or gain (lucrum) which they desire as their good.

• Examples: Dickens and Thackeray as rivals, the late handshake on the steps; Washington Irving on friendships between painters and poets, alike enough to be drawn together but not in competition.
• Aside: the radio man — you can’t be on radio unless you like it; politicians should admit they want the power, not just to help people.

5. Article 7: replies — ruling, sadness, satiety (“as conferring or contributing to their own good”) #

The point: each objection is resolved by finding the likeness and the reference to one’s own good.

• Ad 1: there is a coming-together of commander and subject, a likeness, though with excellence; ruling pertains to the excellence of one’s own good since it belongs to the wise and better to rule (sapientis est ordinare); hence the imaginatio of one’s own goodness — he notes the choice of imaginatio, not understanding, “how you imagine yourself to be”; also, by ruling one benefits others (back to a. 6).
• Ad 2: what delights, though unlike sadness, is like the saddened man, since sadness is contrary to his good; so the sad desire pleasure as contributing to their good, as medicine. Hence bodily pleasures, which have contrary sadnesses, are more desired than intellectual pleasures, which lack that contrariety — “a very interesting thing”; it convinced him he was on the right path in his vocation. Hence all animals naturally desire pleasure, since the animal always labours through sense and motion; the young most of all, from the many changes in growth (“their body’s all in turmoil”); and the melancholic vehemently, to expel sadness, their body corroded by a bad humour (Ethics VII) — the literal sense of vinum laetificat cor hominis, and Proverbs on wine against sadness; Paul’s wine “for your stomach” is medicinal rather than remedial.
• Ad 3: bodily goods consist in a measure, so excess of similar things corrupts one’s good and becomes wearisome.
• Aside on Parts of Animals proemium: in Metaphysics I one knowledge is better than another for being about a better thing or more certain, without saying which criterion matters more; in the proemium to Parts of Animals even imperfect knowledge of a better thing is more delightful than leisurely knowledge of a lesser — a glimpse of someone you love vs. a leisurely view of the boss; his college natural theology course (the Summa up to but not including the Trinity) was his favourite, more delightful than leisurely knowledge of the stock market.

6. Article 8: is wonder a cause of pleasure? — objections and sed contra (“wonder is not the cause of pleasure but more impedes pleasure”) #

The point: three objections that seem strong but go against experience.

1. To wonder is of an ignorant nature (Damascene; Aristotle and Plato too); ignorance is not delightful, knowledge is.
2. Wonder is the beginning of wisdom, a road to inquiring truth (Metaphysics, beginning); but contemplating things known is more delightful than seeking the unknown (Ethics X) — “God is more delighted in knowing Himself than we have in trying to know Him; there’s no wonder there”; inquiry has difficulty and impediments, and pleasure comes from unimpeded operation (Ethics VII; first article, prev. lecture); so wonder impedes pleasure.
3. Each delights in what he is accustomed to; operations of habits acquired by custom are delightful; but customary things are not wonderful (Augustine on John); so wonder is contrary to the very cause of pleasure. He flags: these objections “obviously go against one’s experience,” and experience is a starting point in ethics; an objection against experience forces you to understand your experience better. Sed contra: “the philosopher” (Poetics) says wonder is the cause of pleasure.

• Aside on Plato: Theaetetus — Theodorus introduces his pupil as “something of a philosopher”; when Theaetetus breaks out in wonder Socrates says Theodorus guessed right, and “there is no other beginning of philosophy than wonder”; shows how much Aristotle got from Plato; Albert and Thomas call Plato and Aristotle the chief philosophers; Theaetetus was a real mathematician, so apt to be asked about episteme.
• Aside on antonomasia: “the philosopher” is Aristotle; Aristotle calls Homer “the poet”; the Federalist Papers quote “in the words of the poet, a long farewell to all my greatness” — the poet being Shakespeare; a Bible and a play or two of Shakespeare in log cabins shows his excellence.

7. Article 8: the body — wonder as desire of knowing, and two senses of wonder (“wonder is a desire of knowing”) #

The point: wonder causes pleasure insofar as joined to hope of obtaining the knowledge desired.

1. To obtain things desired is delightful; the more something is loved, the more desire grows, and the more pleasure grows in obtaining it.
2. Also in the very growth of desire there is growth of pleasure, insofar as there is hope of the thing loved (desire from hope is pleasing) — “kind of strange he’s said”; a man who wants a woman without hope gets no pleasure, but with hope he does.
3. Wonder is a desire of knowing, arising (a) from seeing the effect and being ignorant of the cause, or (b) from the cause exceeding one’s knowledge or ability — “a different kind of wonder.”
4. Therefore wonder causes pleasure insofar as it has joined to it the hope of obtaining knowledge — the first kind.
5. Hence all wonderful things are delightful: rare things; all representations, even of things not themselves pleasant, since the soul rejoices in bringing one thing together with another, the proper and connatural act of reason (Poetics — “the discourse of Shakespeare speaks”); being freed from great dangers is more delightful because more admirable (Rhetoric I). Two senses of wonder: in the Metaphysics proemium wonder begins philosophy and ends in its opposite — the geometer no longer wonders because he knows; but at the first cause in the twelfth book of wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics XII] Aristotle says God is always in the state we can only sometimes be in, and “it compels our wonder” — wonder from the excellence and beauty of the thing, not from ignorance. A really beautiful girl, his grandchildren; Augustine, “too late have I come to know” the ancient beauty. Student exchange: are the two senses (joined by vel) almost univocal? He: the first is based on what you don’t know, the second on what you know — you can’t comprehend it; yet a little desire remains, as the angels always want to contemplate God’s face because they do not comprehend him. Student: when you see the first cause exceeds your capacity, is that ignorance, the first sense? He: as a Christian one desires to see God as He is; seeing Him one never gets bored, always filled with wonder at what is excellent and never fully comprehended — not so much a desire to know as something resulting from knowing His excellence. Student summary: the first is a lack on your part, the second an excess on the other’s part.

• Words: “no wonder” in English and Latin means the cause is now known; “curiosity” is sometimes used for the first kind of wonder (careful — for Thomas curiosity names a vice), “admiration” for the second: I admire what I know about, I’m curious about what I don’t.
• Asides: Winter’s Tale’s ending as a perfect description of wonder; wonder more proper to tragedy than comedy; Zeno’s Achilles argument said “with a certain tragodia,” Thomas glossing it as magnification of words to arouse wonder, though the same as the argument about not getting out of the room; a book titled from the end of Hamlet, “War or Wonder” [ed.: usually “woe or wonder”]; a new film on Augustine praised by the Pope.

8. Article 8: replies — ignorance, contemplation, custom (“pleasure has two things”) #

The point: wonder pleases as desire and as new learning; investigations can outdelight contemplation through greater desire; custom is a second nature, yet rare things still delight.

• Ad 1: wonder is not pleasant as having ignorance but as having a desire of learning the cause, and as the wonderer learns something new he did not estimate to be — “So I want to study angels.” Aside: “ignorance is bliss” — some in this country live that way.
• Ad 2: pleasure has two things, resting in the good and perceiving that rest. As to the first, contemplation of things known is per se more delightful than investigation of the unknown. “Nevertheless — this is important” — as to the second, investigations are sometimes more delightful as proceeding from greater desire, for desire is more excited by the perception of ignorance: opposites placed side by side stand out more; hence man delights most in what he newly finds or learns (“just didn’t expect that”).
• Ad 3: customary things are delightful as connatural — custom is a second nature (Aristotle; different nationalities delight in their foods, though sometimes others delight in food never tasted — his pineapple chicken in Quebec). Thomas’s example: some think God’s existence per se known because accustomed from childhood to call on God in prayer, so custom rather than nature makes it seem obvious — shows the tremendous force of custom. Metaphysics II: custom makes one’s method seem the way to proceed — the sociologist who supposed he was doing a word count in Thomas; student: today people approach everything as computer programming; student on Western saws and planes cutting on the push vs. Japanese on the pull; the French teacher: “don’t fight it, just accept it.”
• Nevertheless rare things can be delightful, either by reason of knowledge, insofar as wonderful, or by reason of operation, because from desire the mind is more inclined to operate intensely in something new (Ethics X), and a more perfect operation causes a more perfect pleasure.

His words #

• “the philosopher… by antonomasia”: Aristotle; likewise “the poet” for Homer (Aristotle) or Shakespeare.
• benefacere / malefacere: to do good / evil to someone.
• illiberalitas: vice named by negating the virtue’s name, being the extreme further from it.
• redarguere: to reprove, reprehend, criticize.
• ho philos estin allos autos: the friend is another self.
• concertatio / concertationes: struggle(s), as in games with hope of victory; “concert” from competing instruments.
• ludi: games.
• imaginatio: the imagining (not understanding) of one’s own goodness or excellence.
• simpliciter / per accidens: the like is simply delightful, per accidens saddening when it corrupts one’s good.
• lucrum: gain, what potters lose to potters.
• sapientis est ordinare: it belongs to the wise to rule.
• vinum laetificat cor hominis: Psalm, wine gladdens the heart of man.
• “twelfth book of wisdom”: Metaphysics XII [ed.]; “second book of wisdom”: Metaphysics II [ed.].
• proemium (“premium” in transcript): the preface, of the Metaphysics and of Parts of Animals.
• vel: “or” joining the two senses of wonder.
• curiosity vs. admiration: the two kinds of wonder in English usage; curiosity also names a vice for Thomas.
• “custom is a second nature”: his rendering of the ad 3.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 32, a. 6 (objections, sed contra, body, ad 1 and ad 3)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 32, a. 7 (whole article)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 32, a. 8 (whole article)

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Ethics III–IV (courage, temperance, liberality), VII and X (connatural operation; contemplation; melancholics; intense operation in the new)
• Aristotle, Rhetoric I; Politics II; Poetics; Metaphysics proemium, book II, and “twelfth book of wisdom”; Parts of Animals I proemium
• Plato, Theaetetus (wonder as beginning of philosophy)
• Damascene; Augustine on John; Augustine, Confessions (opening)
• Thomas on whether God’s existence is per se known (locus not stated); Thomas on Zeno’s argument (locus not stated)
• Scripture: St Paul on cheerful giving and “run so as to win”; Psalm vinum laetificat; Proverbs on wine; Paul on wine for the stomach; “if a just man strikes me”
• Shakespeare: Richard III, Winter’s Tale, Hamlet, Henry IV (Federalist quotation); Dickens, Thackeray, Washington Irving

His questions #

• Why is illiberality formed by negating the virtue’s name, and prodigality not? Because virtue is closer to one extreme; the further one, more opposed, takes the negated name.
• Why do you get pleasure out of doing good to another? In three ways: as effect (the friend’s good is your own), as end (hope of a good for yourself), and from a threefold beginning (faculty, habit, motive).
• How is punishing pleasant insofar as it pertains to one’s own good? You love your own good more than you hate another’s evil; the angry man removes the lessening he suffered.
• How can the like be saddening if likeness is a cause of pleasure? Only per accidens, when it corrupts one’s good by excess (nausea) or by direct contrariety (potter against potter).
• Why are bodily pleasures more desired than intellectual ones? They have contrary sadnesses, so are sought as medicine; intellectual pleasures lack that contrariety.
• Are the two senses of wonder almost univocal? Close, but the first is based on what you don’t know, the second on the excellence of what you know and cannot comprehend.
• Is the wonder before the first cause, which exceeds our capacity, ignorance in the first sense? Not so much a desire to know as something resulting from knowing His excellence; a little desire remains, as with the angels.
• Isn’t it more pleasant to know than to wonder? Per se yes, as rest in the good; but as perceived, inquiry can be more delightful from greater desire, and one delights most in what one newly learns.