Sadness and Pain: How They Differ, Why Pain Is Contrary to Pleasure, and Whether Every Sadness Opposes Every Pleasure

Orientation #

He does not say anything about last time or next time; the recording begins mid-article (“the second one goes forward”). The previous class had begun the question on pain, and the next continues with q. 35 a. 4 on contrariety of sadness and pleasure. Verified sources: q. 35 a. 2 (c. 20 min), a. 3 (c. 10 min), a. 4 (c. 10 min), with digressions between.

The class, in order #

1. Article 2, objections and sed contra (“sadness differs altogether from what pain”) #

Point: three reasons why sadness might not be pain, then Paul used as the counter-authority.

• Obj. 1 (Augustine, City of God XIV): pain is said to be in bodies, sadness in the soul. He notes our daily speech reflects this: a shot is painful, sadness is “more spiritual”.
• Obj. 2: pain is only about a present evil; sadness can be about the past (penance) and the future (anxiety).
• Obj. 3: pain follows only the sense of touch; sadness can follow from all the senses.
• Sed contra: Paul, Romans 9, “tristitia est mihi magna” and continual pain in my heart; Paul uses sadness and pain “as if synonyms almost”.
• Aside: “the apostle” is Paul by antonomasia; he was married on the feast of Peter and Paul.

2. Article 2, body: two kinds of apprehension (“a twofold what apprehension or grasping”) #

Point: pleasure and pain arise from either exterior sense or interior apprehension (understanding or imagination), and the inward ones get the new names joy and sadness.

1. Interior apprehension (intellect or imagination) knows objects in their absence; you form a thought or an image.
2. Whatever falls under exterior apprehension falls also under interior, not the reverse; so the inward extends to more.
3. Only pleasure from inward grasping is called joy; only pain from inward grasping is called sadness; the outward ones keep the names pleasure and pain. Conclusion: sadness is a species of pain, as joy of pleasure. Pain and pleasure are the more universal words; the bodily kind keeps the generic name.

• Digression on “idea”: English (and the empiricists) mix thought and image under one word. If the philosopher says “I have an idea” it should be a thought; “the girl says ‘don’t get ideas’”: images.
• Augustine, “beatitudo is gaudium de veritate” — joy, not delectatio; C. S. Lewis’s Surprised by Joy is “well said”: not sensual pleasure but something more spiritual.
• He asks what the student’s election-night feeling was, pain or sadness: “both”.

3. Replies 1 and 2 (“Thomas is kind of judicious there”) #

• Reply 1: Augustine speaks of the use of the word; “dolor magis usitatur”, pain is more used of bodily pains, which are more known than spiritual ones.
• Reply 2: outward sense perceives only what is present, here and now; the interior knowing power reaches past and future too. So sadness (the interior pain) can be about present, past or future; bodily pain only about the present.
• He stresses that Thomas grants what is true in the objection: “there’s something to be said for it”.

4. Reply 3: touch, and man alone (“who is an animal perfect in knowledge”) #

Point: sensibles of touch are painful not only as disproportioned to the knowing power but as contrary to nature; other senses only as disproportioned.

• Heat a man too much or cool him too much and you kill him: touch-objects are destructive of nature.
• Objects of the other senses are contrary to nature only in order to touch.
• “It’s very interesting what he says here”: man alone, perfect in knowledge among animals (not as far as the angels), delights in the objects of the other senses by themselves; other animals only as they refer to touch. Berquist rejoices in Mozart; the cat only pricks its ears at the rustle of sandwich meat, or a scratch that might be a mouse. Childhood story: no one could open the garage door quietly enough that the cat wouldn’t hear it. A student adds Lucy, waiting at the coffee pot every morning.
• So pleasures of painting and music raise us above the animals: these are the pleasures Aristotle calls properly human. He shared steak with Tabitha the cat but not Mozart; the pleasure of understanding he shares with the angels, who have it more.
• Hence about objects of the other senses one speaks not of pain (contrary to natural pleasure) but of sadness (contrary to animal joy).
• Final distinction: if “pain” means bodily pain (the customary sense), it is divided against sadness by inward vs outward apprehension (though as to objects pleasure extends further than pain); if “pain” is taken generally, it is the genus of sadness.

5. Digression: the same name for genus and species; homonymia and synonyma (“why is that used for equivocal”) #

Point: a name is sometimes given to the genus and to one of its species; Aristotle’s own terms for equivocal and univocal show the same habit.

• Aristotle’s Greek for equivocal is homonymia, “having the same name”; but univocal things also have the same name (dog and cat are both “animal”, in the same sense; a man and a picture or statue of a man are “man” equivocally).
• His answer (from the Categories): equivocals have the name only, the logos tes ousias differs; so they keep the phrase “same name”, and the other member gets a new name because it has more: same meaning too.
• The word for univocal is synonyma, not “synonym” in our sense (two words, one meaning; Aristotle uses it that way in the Poetics), but “named together”. Univocals are named together: “man, man, man”, “you’re all biped”.
• Equivocals are not named together: equivocal by chance (his brother Richard and his student Richard were not named “together”) or equivocal by reason, where the name is placed on one thing first and carried over to a second by some connection, likeness or ratio, so there is an order among the names.
• Application: sometimes pain is the genus of inward and outward pain, sometimes the outward keeps “pain” and the inward gets “sadness”. Same problem his mother had with “man is an animal”: “an animal that has reason. Well, that’s better.”
• Student exchange: sorrow vs sadness; he’d say “I’m pained” of something more intense; the pain/sadness distinction is more known to us than pleasure/joy, though Thomas draws both alike.

6. Article 3, objections and sed contra (“Is this a painful treatise?”) #

Opening joke: a treatise “full of pain” but causing joy, since to know truth about pain is pleasant, though not pleasant to be caused.

• He is surprised Thomas needs an article on pain being contrary to pleasure; the objections make it interesting.
• Obj. 1: one contrary does not cause the other; but sadness causes pleasure: Matthew 5, blessed are those who mourn, they shall be consoled.
• Obj. 2: one contrary does not denominate the other; but some pain is pleasant: Augustine, Confessions III, pain in spectacles delights; Confessions IV, weeping is bitter yet sometimes delights (Peter wept bitterly; people enjoy a good cry at a tragedy).
• Obj. 3: one contrary is not the matter of the other, since contraries cannot be together (simul); but the penitent always has pain and rejoices over his sorrow (Augustine, on penance: “I rejoice that I’m sad about my sins”), and conversely the bad man is sad that he has been pleased (Ethics IX).
• Sed contra (Augustine, City of God XIV): laetitia (joy that “expands” you, makes you wide) is the will consenting to what we will; sadness the will dissenting from what we don’t want; consent and dissent are contrary.

7. Article 3, body (“contrariety is a difference secundum formam”) #

1. Metaphysics X (the book on the one and the many, with a long treatment of contrariety): contrariety is difference in form.
2. The form or species of a passion is taken from its object or end.
3. The objects of pleasure and pain, present good and present evil, are contrary (desire and aversion are about absent good and evil, “not there yet”). Conclusion: pain and pleasure are contrary because their objects are.

8. Reply 1: cause per accidens (“nothing prevents one of two contraries”) #

Point: a contrary can cause its contrary per accidens (Aristotle’s distinction of per se and per accidens cause in the chapter on cause).

• Two ways sadness causes pleasure: (a) absence of a good, or presence of its contrary, makes one seek more vehemently what he delights in, as the thirsty man seeks drink more, as a remedy against his sadness; (b) from great desire of a pleasure one does not refuse to undergo sadnesses to reach it.
• Both ways, present mourning (luctus) leads to the consolation of the future life: mourning for sins or for the delay of glory (dilatio gloriae) merits eternal consolation (“that must be what purgatory is like”), and one who does not refuse the labours needed to attain it merits it.
• Track team: eight miles in the hot sun with friends, no complaint; asked to walk a mile for bread, “you’d tell me I was torturing you”. Pleasure in the company outweighed the pain.

9. Reply 2: pain pleasant through wonder or love (“parting is such sweet sorrow”) #

Point: pain can be pleasant insofar as (a) wonder is joined to it, as in spectacles; (b) it recalls a thing loved; (c) it makes one perceive the love of that whose absence is grieved.

• Wonder in tragedy: Aristotle links tragedy with wonder; the wonder comes from the downfall of a man in eminence, with far to fall (Othello with Desdemona; Creon in Antigone losing everything; “call no man happy till he be dead”, Oedipus “whom all men call the great”). An ordinary Joe starving by the road arouses none. We saw before that wonder gives pleasure; cf. people reading of crazy accidents in the paper (ten cars colliding in Worcester; Obama joke).
• Sweet sorrow: the sorrow of parting is a sign of the love between you, and being loved is pleasant; the sorrow is not itself pleasant but is “protracted” [unclear in recording] because of what it signifies. Since love is delectabilis, the sadnesses that follow from love are pleasant insofar as one senses love in them. His story: his daughter fighting back tears as he left for a talk; his wife: “that’s a hard act to follow”.
• So plays (spectacula) can be pleasant insofar as some love is sensed in them towards those remembered or presented.
• Student aside: Augustine on the vanity of those who weep over tragedy but ignore the poor man on the street; the tyrant weeping in the theatre yet cruel in life, like a Politburo weeping at Shakespeare. He replies that it is nevertheless good for the tyrant to feel some pity: the moral effect of great fiction. Joke: have a good cry, then purge the Politburo.

10. Reply 3: will and reason return upon their own acts (“sadness can be the matter of pleasure”) #

Point: will and reason reflect on their own acts under the notion of good and bad, so sadness can be the matter of pleasure or the reverse, not per se but per accidens (“a great distinction there”).

• One can rejoice that one is sad over the election, because it shows the will is right; or be saddened by the enemies’ rejoicing.
• Lord of the Rings: Gondor besieged, the ships come up the river, the enemy’s roar of joy at what they take to be reinforcements — “my heart sank” reading it.
• “You should be sad that you did that”; but if a person regrets, you rejoice at their repentance. The Greeks call it a joy-making sorrow.

11. Article 4, objections and sed contra (“every sadness is contrary to every pleasure”) #

• Obj. 1: white and black are contrary species of colour and universally opposed; so pleasure and sadness, contrary species of passion.
• Obj. 2: medicines work by contraries; every pleasure is a medicine against every sadness (Ethics VII; he first says “eighth”): the New York cops give the lost, crying child an ice cream cone.
• Obj. 3: contraries impede one another; every sadness impedes some pleasure (Ethics X).
• Sed contra: contraries do not have the same cause; but from one habit, charity, one rejoices with those rejoicing and weeps with those weeping (Romans 12:15).

12. Article 4, body and replies (“quite a lot of distinction”) #

Point: contrariety is difference in form; form is generic or specific; whether species of contrary genera are contrary depends on whether they are specified absolutely or by relation.

1. Contraries by generic form: virtue and vice; by specific form: justice and injustice. (Cowardice and temperance: opposed by genus, not species.)
2. Some things are specified by absolute forms (substances, qualities); others by comparison to something outside (passions and motions, from ends or objects).
3. Absolute forms: species of contrary genera need not be contrary as species, but have no affinity either. Intemperance and justice are in contrary genera, but injustice is contrary to justice and intemperance to temperance; intemperance and justice have no agreement.
4. Relational forms: species of contrary genera may not only be not contrary but agree. Approaching white and approaching black: contrary. Withdrawing from white and approaching black: alike (“to leave your vice and tend towards virtue”). Clearest in contradiction, the beginning of opposition: white vs not-white opposed; “black” and “not white” agree.
5. Sadness and pleasure, being passions, are specified by objects; contrary by genus (pursuit vs flight, related in the appetite as affirmation and negation in reason, Ethics VI). About the same thing: contrary by species. About diverse, merely disparate things: no opposition (sadness at a friend’s death vs delight in contemplation). About contrary things: agreement and affinity (rejoicing in the good and sad at evil).

• Thomas: error is magna pars miseriae, a great part of misery.
• Reply 1: whiteness and blackness are qualities, not specified by relation to something exterior; so not the same reason. “A distinction he saw in the text.”
• Reply 2: genus is taken from matter (Metaphysics VIII, the book on substance by its parts, matter and form); in accidents the subject stands for matter. Pleasure and pain are contrary by genus, so in any sadness the subject’s disposition is contrary to its disposition in any pleasure: in every pleasure the appetite accepts what it has, in every sadness it flees. Hence on the side of the subject every pleasure is a medicine against every sadness and every sadness impedes some pleasure, most of all when contrary by species. Hal on Falstaff, who has lost his horse and lards the lean earth: “were it not for laughing I should pity him” — laughing a kind of joy, pity a kind of sadness.
• Reply 3: solved by the above; or: though not every sadness is contrary to every pleasure secundum speciem, as to effect they are contrary, one strengthening the animal nature, the other molesting it.
• He tells them to look at the article again: “pretty heavy on a rainy day”.

His words #

• dolor / tristitia: pain (the more universal word, kept for the bodily kind) / sadness, the pain from inward grasping.
• delectatio / gaudium: pleasure (universal, kept for the outward kind) / joy, pleasure from inward grasping.
• grasping, apprehension: exterior (sense) vs interior (understanding or imagination).
• idea: in English ambiguous between thought and image.
• antonomasia: “the apostle” for Paul.
• homonymia: Aristotle’s word for equivocal, “having the same name” [ed.: homonymy].
• synonyma: Aristotle’s word for univocal, “named together” [ed.: synonymy], not our “synonym”.
• logos tes ousias: the definition of what it is.
• equivocal by chance vs equivocal by reason: no order of names vs the name placed first on one, carried over to another.
• per se / per accidens cause: Aristotle’s distinction in the chapter on cause.
• luctus: present mourning or struggle; dilatio gloriae: delay of glory.
• laetitia: joy that expands, makes wide; consent vs dissent of the will.
• spectacula: plays, spectacles.
• “joy-making sorrow”: the Greek notion of repentance.
• absolute vs relational specification: substances and qualities vs passions and motions (from objects or ends).
• error is magna pars miseriae: error a great part of misery.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, ST I-II q. 35 a. 2 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Thomas Aquinas, ST I-II q. 35 a. 3 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Thomas Aquinas, ST I-II q. 35 a. 4 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Aristotle, Categories, opening on equivocals and univocals (quoted from memory)

Mentioned

• Augustine, City of God XIV; Confessions III and IV; book on penance; “beatitudo est gaudium de veritate”
• Romans 9 and 12:15; Matthew 5
• Aristotle, Metaphysics X and VIII; Ethics VI, VII, IX, X; Poetics (on synonyms); Sophistical Refutations; chapter on cause (inferred: Physics II)
• C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy
• Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (“parting is such sweet sorrow”); Othello; Henry IV Part One (Hal on Falstaff)
• Sophocles, Antigone (Creon), Oedipus
• Tolkien, Lord of the Rings (siege of Gondor)

His questions #

• If the philosopher says “I have an idea”, is it a thought or an image? A thought; “don’t get ideas” means images.
• What did you have from the election, pain or sadness? Both.
• How can a painful treatise cause pleasure? Insofar as knowing truth about pain is pleasant.
• Univocals also have the same name; why does Aristotle keep “having the same name” for equivocals? Because equivocals have only the name in common; univocals have the meaning too, so get a new name, “named together”.
• Were his brother Richard and his student Richard named Richard together? No: equivocal by chance.
• How can a sorrow be sweet? It is a sign of the love between the parting persons, and being loved is pleasant.
• Is it good for the tyrant to weep at a tragedy? Yes, some pity is good: the moral effect of fiction.
• Are cowardice and temperance opposed by species? Perhaps only by genus, virtue and vice.
• Why is every pleasure a medicine against every sadness if not every sadness is contrary to every pleasure? On the side of the subject (genus from matter) the dispositions are contrary; and as to effect they are contrary.