Sadness and the Pleasure of Contemplation (A5); Is Pain Fled More Than Pleasure Is Desired? (A6)

Orientation #

He opens “Okay, now what about contemplation?” as the next article in the sequence on sadness, and at the end has to leave for a board of trustees meeting, mid-article-six replies just completed. Verified sources place the first 54 minutes probably between q. 35 a. 4 and a. 6 (i.e. a. 5, which he calls “the fifth”) and match a. 6 for the last stretch. The previous class worked through a. 4 on whether every sadness is contrary to every delight; the next continues q. 35 with exterior vs. interior pain and Damascene’s four species of sadness.

The class, in order #

1. Article 5 objections: is any sadness contrary to the pleasure of contemplation? (“sadness which is according to God”) #

Point: five objections (he remarks Thomas’s average is three) and the sed contra.

1. 2 Corinthians: the sadness according to God works penance unto salvation; but to look toward God pertains to “higher reason” (Augustine, On the Trinity XII), to which leisure and contemplation belong; so a sadness is opposed to contemplation’s pleasure. He flags it as a difficult objection: “you’ve got to know what higher reason is.”
2. Contraries have contrary effects — he notes this is the whole reasoning of Empedocles [ed.: the name is not spoken; he says “love and hate… earth, air, fire, and water come together and separate”], like magnets that click together or push apart, so there must be contrary forces. If contemplating one contrary causes pleasure (virtue), contemplating the other (vice) causes sadness.
3. Object of pleasure is good, of sadness bad; contemplation can have the aspect of bad, for Metaphysics XII says some things are unsuitable to think about.
4. Any unimpeded operation causes pleasure (Ethics VII and X); contemplation “can be in many ways impeded. That’s for darn sure” — wholly or with difficulty.
5. Affliction of the flesh causes sadness; Ecclesiastes (last chapter): frequens meditatio carnis afflictio — thinking tires you out. Sed contra: Wisdom 8:16 — the conversation of wisdom has no bitterness nor weariness, but joy. He notes Thomas uses this verse in the prologue of the Summa Contra Gentiles, where the study of wisdom is said to be most perfect, most sublime, most useful and most joyful, this verse being the one for joy.

2. Corpus: two senses of “the pleasure of contemplation” (“one contrary is the reason for knowing”) #

Point: the phrase delectatio contemplationis has two meanings, and only in the second is the pleasure without contrary.

• Sense A: contemplation is the cause of the pleasure but not its object — the pleasure is about the thing contemplated. One can contemplate something harmful just as something pleasing, so here nothing prevents a contrary sadness. (He admits the wording is “a little confusing” — the two sentences are “on the one hand… on the other hand”.)
• Sense B: contemplation is both object and cause — one delights in the very fact that he contemplates. Then, per Gregory of Nyssa (his footnote says it is really “the other Gregory”/another author [ed.: likely Nemesius (inferred)]), and Aristotle in Topics I and Ethics X, no sadness is opposed — but “speaking per se.” Argument:

1. Sadness is per se contrary to the pleasure about the contrary object (pleasure about heat vs. sadness about cold — aside: too much heat in the monasteries’ calefactory).
2. To the object of contemplation nothing is contrary — “this is the famous reason”: the reasons/definitions of contraries, as apprehended, are not contrary; one contrary is the reason for knowing the other (knowing virtue helps you know vice).
3. Hence no sadness is per se contrary to the pleasure of contemplating. Aside developed: this was used as an argument that reason is immaterial. In the body one contrary excludes the other (health/sickness, beauty/ugliness, strength/weakness); in knowing, one helps know the other. “It’s a very convincing argument… about the immateriality of the understanding.” Further: nor is any sadness even joined to it per se. Bodily pleasures are medicines against something molesting — one delights in drink because suffering thirst, and when thirst is repulsed the pleasure ceases (brother Mark: only the first sip of the first beer is good). Contemplation’s pleasure is not from excluding an annoyance but because it is by itself pleasant: not a generation as in bodily things but a perfect operation — which is why it can be found even in God.

3. Per accidens sadness mixed with contemplation (“the mind does not have a”…organ) #

Point: sadness is mixed with apprehension per accidens in two ways, neither of which is contrary to contemplation’s pleasure.

• On the side of the organ, directly in the sensitive apprehensive powers, which have a bodily organ: either from a sensible object contrary to the organ’s complexion (bitter taste, fetid smell), or from the continuity of a suitable object, which by prolongation exceeds the natural habitude, so what was pleasant becomes tedious. Neither has place in the contemplation of the mind, because the mind has no organ. Aside: mens is related to mensura — the mind measures, both quantitatively and in the higher sense in which Plato says God is the measure of all things. So the authority (Wisdom) says contemplation has neither bitterness nor weariness (lassitudo, which belongs to the senses, or tedium from prolongation).
• Indirectly: because the human mind uses the sensitive powers in contemplating, and their acts have lassitudo, some affliction is mixed with contemplation. Examples: the special reading room at the College of St. Thomas with copies of famous paintings — tired of the black-and-white page, you sit back and look at a painting; his bachelor room in Worcester, desk before the big windows, then moved to face a blank wall because the view distracted.
• But neither sadness is contrary to the pleasure: sadness about the impediment of contemplation has affinity with it (as said above); sadness of bodily weariness is of a wholly different genus, disparate. Conclusion: to the pleasure about contemplation itself no sadness is contrary, nor joined except per accidens. “That should encourage you to study more” — Thomas’s advice: if you want to be wise, enter your cell and close the door.

4. Replies to article 5 (with digressions) (“it’s the same one about virtue and vice”) #

• Ad 1: the sadness secundum Deum (the fathers warn of bad sadnesses, but this one is good) is not about the mind’s contemplation but about something contemplated — sin, which the mind considers contrary to the love of God. One should be sad about one’s sins, not rejoice in them like Aaron in Titus Andronicus, mad that he cannot see the evil he did.
• Ad 2: things contrary in rerum natura have no contrariety as they are in the mind; thoughts of contraries do not exclude one another, and so there is one knowledge of contraries — which Plato and Aristotle insist upon all the time. Not one ethics of virtue and another of vice; logic is about correct and incorrect reasoning. The St. Mary’s student who said ethics should not be taught because you learn how to be bad (“a darn good argument”). Q. to a priest-student: can you teach good without teaching bad? — “I don’t think it’s possible.” Student: wasn’t that what the “Arabians” [ASR; from his answer, the fallen angels (inferred)] wanted — to know without knowing the bad? His answer: they wanted to know future contingents so as to direct themselves without direction from God — a very intellectual sin of pride, since they lack sense appetites. Digression: we often cannot foresee the results of our acts (the soldier going this way or that). Tragedy and comedy are about mistakes and arise because man has fallen: in tragedy the mistake is worthy of pity (Oedipus trying to help; Creon thinking he does good; Othello killing his wife then discovering Iago’s deceit); in comedy it is laughable and does no permanent harm (late English comedy where a plain girl is substituted under the veil — “a little purgatory”; Malvolio and the forged letter). He does not know what humour would be like unfallen.
• Ad 3: contemplation as such never has the notion of bad; Aristotle at the beginning of the De Anima says all knowledge as such is good (Thomas’s commentary needed for the Metaphysics XII passage on God’s knowledge). His kidding of schoolchildren: which is better, knowledge or love? The girls said love; but all knowledge as such is good, while love is sometimes bad, and love is good when directed by knowledge, so knowledge is better. Contemplation is the consideration of the true, the good of the understanding; per accidens it is bad only insofar as contemplation of the vile impedes contemplation of the better (hours slouched before TV — “you could at least be reading Shakespeare”; in college you choose lesser or higher studies, time-wise), or insofar as the appetite is disorderly affected toward the thing contemplated.
• Ad 4: sadness about the impediment has affinity with the pleasure — his own sadness at not fully understanding a text makes him want to study more (“maybe next time I’ll understand more”). Student remark: your students were sad, so they studied more to refute you. Anecdote: the oldest California student who came each day with an objection, went quiet after the answer; most objections are already in the text. De Koninck at Marxist talks, supplying what Marx said better than the speaker and then saying why it is wrong — giving him authority.
• Ad 5: the affliction of the flesh is per accidens and indirect. [Kasurik, as heard]: after lecturing, reward your tongue, your slave, with a meal and wine; in philosophy the imagination is the slave of reason, and being a bodily organ it tires, so refresh it with a scene or two of Shakespeare or Homer — especially the curses in Richard III (Olivier’s film).

5. Article 6 objections: is pain more to be fled than pleasure desired? (“no big hero there resisting the chocolate cake”) #

Point: three objections that flight from pain is stronger, then the sed contra.

1. Augustine (83 Questions): no one fails to flee pain more than he desires pleasure; what all agree on seems natural (TV ads: more remedies for pain than pleasures).
2. Contrary action makes for swiftness and intensity — hot water freezes faster (Meteorology; “I don’t know what kind of science that is”); flight from sadness is from contrariety, desire of pleasure from agreement.
3. Resisting a stronger passion is more praiseworthy, since virtue is about the difficult and the good (Thomas: a special difficulty requires a special virtue). Courage, which resists the emotion fleeing pain, is more honoured than temperance (Rhetoric II: fortes et justi maxime honorantur). Digression: to whom does the distinction of the emotions belong? Distinction of powers of the soul — De Anima; of virtues and vices — ethics; the emotions — a student says rhetoric, and indeed Thomas often quotes the Rhetoric here; the De Anima says only a little on epithumia and thumos. When he first studied it (Summa, De Veritate) he saw it useful for ethics (virtues about emotions), rhetoric (moving and sedating emotions as a means of persuasion) and poetics (tragedy moves pity and fear; comedy mirth and hope) — a universal foundation; Thomas has it more completely than the texts that came down from Aristotle. Examples for obj. 3: a medal of honour for one glorious afternoon but none for lifelong justice or temperance; Coriolanus (reread “to purge me from the election”) praised for courage as the greatest virtue; courage the first virtue Aristotle treats in the Ethics; the word virtue (and its Greek counterpart) originally tied to courage. Sed contra (“against all this nonsense”): the good is stronger than the bad, because the bad has power only through the good — some part good or a resemblance of good; if you want something bad it appears good (Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 4). Pleasure is desirable on account of the good, flight from sadness on account of the bad; so desire of pleasure is stronger. Aside on Dionysius: Divine Names (Thomas’s commentary) and Celestial Hierarchy (Albert the Great’s commentary; today is Albert’s feast); thought to be Paul’s Athenian convert, hence “pseudo” once doubted; he suspects a Syriac monk; Thomas thinks himself far inferior to him.

6. Corpus of article 6: per se the desire of pleasure is stronger (“what is per se is stronger”) #

Preliminary digression: Thomas sees before and after, hence distinctions; the two most universal in Aristotle’s fourteen books of wisdom are per se / per accidens and simply / not simply. Per accidens being: a “philosophical grandfather” — philosopher and grandfather happen to the same man; a “Christian geometer” — there is a way to become a Christian (baptism) and a geometer (Euclid), but no way to become a Christian geometer and nothing by which one is such; the geometer is the same whether Christian or Muslim. Plato was not far off: science about being, dialectic about becoming, sophistry about non-being — the sophist’s chief fallacy is the accident, and the accident is almost nothing. Yet Aristotle keeps one sense of being for accidental being: a Christian academy can still hire a Christian geometer. He is suspicious of the moderns because he never sees this distinction in them (asks Joshua); De Koninck’s letter to [Kasurik] about feeling like jumping off the bridge after reading them; Homer taught the Greeks who got far, the English had Shakespeare and got nowhere — “a scandal.” Argument, per se loquendo:

1. The cause of pleasure is a suitable good; the cause of sadness a repugnant bad.
2. A good can be suitable without any dissonance, but nothing can be totally bad without some agreement/goodness.
3. So pleasure can be whole and perfect (Aristotle: whole and perfect nearly the same), sadness always secundum partem; hence the desire of pleasure is naturally greater. Aside: people horrified by clerical child abuse yet favouring abortion — “abortion is the ultimate child abuse.” Second reason:
4. The good, object of pleasure, is desired on account of itself; the bad is fled insofar as it is lack of the good.
5. What is per se is stronger than what is per aliud (not quite the same distinction as per se/per accidens): salt saltier than French fries, sugar sweeter than candy or sweetened coffee, since the coffee is sweet only through the sugar. “Almost like an axiom”: premises known per se are known more than conclusions known through them.
6. Sign in natural motions: every natural motion is more intense at the end, approaching its suitable term, than at the beginning receding from the unsuitable (the falling stone speeds up) — nature tends more to the suitable than it flees the unsuitable. Applications he raises: does the mind seek truth more than it flees error? He thinks so (student: to flee error you need to seek truth); one picks up Thomas to learn, not primarily to escape errors; he listens to Mozart because it is beautiful, not to escape noise (aside: mistaking “Grateful Dead” for a sick slogan — “that’s modern philosophy”); at a dance one seeks a beautiful girl more than flees an ugly one; Einstein on fleeing boredom — but boredom is a sadness from lack of an object worthy of consideration, so knowledge is what one mainly seeks. Per accidens one may flee sadness more, for three reasons: (1) on the side of apprehension — Augustine (Trinity X): love is more sensed when need produces it; sadness arises from lack of the loved good or incoming of a contrary evil, pleasure rests in the good achieved; so sadness makes the love felt more; (2) on the side of the cause — what inflicts pain is more repugnant to the loved good than what delights agrees with it: we love the natural consistency of the body more than food, so for fear of whips we dismiss pleasures of food (you keep a dog off better with a whip than a piece of meat); (3) on the side of the effect — sadness impedes not one pleasure but all (“if your body’s in pain you can’t enjoy anything”).

7. Replies to article 6 (“motion which is from the inside”) #

• Ad 1: Augustine speaks per accidens, as his addition shows — even the most brutal beasts abstain from the greatest pleasures for fear of pain, which is contrary to life, most of all loved.
• Ad 2: motion from within tends more to the suitable than it recedes from the contrary (natural motion, above); motion from without is more intense at the beginning, because each thing strives to resist the contrary for its own conservation — violent motion is the reverse (a rock thrown up slows, stops, then falls faster; going up is outside its nature). The appetitive motion is from within, from soul to things, so per se pleasure is more desired; the sensitive motion is from without, things to soul (Aristotle’s contrast of knowing and desiring), so the more contrary is more sensed (a pen stuck in you vs. the air acting on you). Hence per accidens, insofar as sense is required for pleasure and sadness, sadness is more fled because more sensed.
• Ad 3: the courageous man is praised not simply for not being conquered by pain, but for what concerns dangers of death; life is more loved than food or coition, so that sadness is more fled than temperance’s pleasures are desired. The temperate man is praised more for not pursuing pleasures of touch than for not fleeing the contrary pains (Ethics III). He breaks off: board of trustees at seven in Tribune, an hour and fifty minutes’ drive.

His words #

• delectatio contemplationis: “pleasure of contemplation”, taken two ways — contemplation as cause only, or as cause and object
• higher reason: Augustine’s term for the part that looks toward God; leisure and contemplation belong to it
• per se / per accidens: the most universal distinction in Aristotle and Thomas, with simply / not simply; per accidens being “barely is”
• one knowledge of contraries: the reasons of contraries as apprehended are not contrary; one is the reason of knowing the other
• perfect operation vs. generation: why contemplation’s pleasure is by itself pleasant and found in God
• mens / mensura: the mind measures, quantitatively and in the higher sense of measure
• lassitudo: weariness belonging to the sense powers, which have organs
• sadness secundum Deum: sadness about sin considered as contrary to the love of God
• per se potius quam per aliud: what is so through itself is more so than what is so through another (“my salt is more salty than my French fries”)
• secundum partem: sadness is always partial, pleasure can be whole and perfect
• violent motion: motion outside the nature, intense at the beginning; natural motion intense at the end
• fortes et justi maxime honorantur: the courageous and the just are most honoured (Rhetoric II)
• imagination the slave of reason: why philosophy tires it and Shakespeare refreshes it

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 35, a. 5 (inferred; “to the fifth”), objections, sed contra, corpus, replies 1-5
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 35, a. 6 (“Article 6”), objections, sed contra, corpus, replies 1-3
• Wisdom 8:16 (sed contra of a. 5, quoted twice)
• Ecclesiastes, last chapter: frequens meditatio carnis afflictio Mentioned
• 2 Corinthians, sadness according to God (chapter not stated)
• Augustine, On the Trinity XII (higher reason) and X (love more sensed under need); 83 Questions
• Aristotle, Metaphysics XII; Nicomachean Ethics VII, X (unimpeded operation), III (temperance); Topics I; Rhetoric II; Meteorology; De Anima (beginning: all knowledge good; epithumia and thumos)
• Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 4; Celestial Hierarchy (Albert’s commentary)
• Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles prologue (Wisdom 8:16 among four praises of wisdom); De Veritate (on the emotions)
• Gregory of Nyssa (footnote: another author — Nemesius (inferred))
• Shakespeare: Titus Andronicus (Aaron), Othello, Twelfth Night (Malvolio), Coriolanus, Richard III; Sophocles’ Oedipus and Creon; Plato on God the measure; Euclid; Homer; Mozart; Einstein

His questions #

• Is any sadness opposed to the pleasure of contemplation? Per se none, and none even joined to it, because to the object of contemplation nothing is contrary; per accidens sadness is mixed through the sense organs and impediments.
• How is the objection from contraries having contrary effects overcome? By the one knowledge of contraries: virtue and vice are not contrary as objects in the mind.
• Can you teach someone how to be good without teaching them how to be bad? Father: “I don’t think it’s possible.”
• Which is better, knowledge or love? Knowledge: all knowledge as such is good, love only when directed by knowledge.
• To whom does the distinction of the emotions belong — De Anima, ethics, rhetoric, poetics? Student: rhetoric; he: a universal foundation useful for all of these, taken up here mainly for ethics, and more complete in Thomas than in Aristotle’s surviving texts.
• Is there any way to become a Christian geometer, or anything by which one is such? No; it is accidental being, which barely is, though Aristotle keeps it as one sense of being.
• Should pain more be fled than pleasure desired? Per se no, the desire of pleasure is stronger; per accidens yes, for three reasons.
• Does the mind seek truth more vehemently than it flees error? He thinks so; to flee error you need to seek truth.
• Which is the worse child abuse, to abuse or to kill the child? Neither is good, but abortion is the ultimate child abuse.