The Desire for Unity, Greater Power, and Sadness's Effects on Learning and the Soul (Q.36, Arts. 3-4; Q.37, Arts. 1-2)

Orientation #

He opens mid-thought (“it’s hard to get rid of hunger and thirst”) and goes straight into the third article on the causes of sadness; he says the question on causes is followed by one on effects, “as he had with love and with pleasure”. At the end: “we have to stop now” — the remaining articles of q. 37 are for next time. Verified sources place this class in I-II q. 36 aa. 3-4 and q. 37 aa. 1-2, with a handout page (“Note for Sixth Book of Wisdom, Reading 4”, p. 14) read during the truth-and-equality digression. Last time was q. 36 on the causes of sorrow; next time takes q. 37 aa. 3-4 and the remedies of sorrow.

The class, in order #

1. Q. 36 a. 3, objections and sed contra (“the desire of unity is not a cause of pain”) #

Point: reading the “strange” article on whether the desire of unity causes pain.

• Obj. 1: Aristotle, Ethics X — the opinion that repletion (filling up) causes pleasure and incision (cutting) causes sadness comes from pleasures and pains about food and drink; but not all pleasure and pain is of that sort; repletion pertains to unity, incision to multitude; so desire of unity is not the universal cause of pain.
• Obj. 2: every separation is opposed to unity; if pain came from desire of unity no separation would be pleasant; but separation from every evil is pleasant — “so St Francis, right? Happy.”
• Obj. 3: we desire the union of the good and the removal of the bad for the same reason; separation is contrary to unity; so desire of unity is no more a cause of pain than desire of separation.
• Sed contra: Augustine, On Free Choice III — from the pain the beasts sense it appears that their souls, in ruling and ensouling their bodies, desire unity; “what else is pain except a certain sense of division or corruption?” (he pauses over translating impatientia: “a feeling of impatience in division or corruption”).
• “Who is this Augustine? He’s quoting all the time” — Augustine is responsible for these strange articles.

2. Respondeo: good consists in unity; truth as equality (“the good of each thing consists in a certain unity”) #

Point: as desire of the good causes pain, so does love or desire of unity, because the good of a thing consists in a certain unity.

1. Unity and goodness are among the transcendentals; some connection between them.
2. Digression to illustrate: Thomas on God as ipsa veritas starts from truth in our mind, “the equality of the mind and things”.
   • Aristotle in “the tenth book of wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics X] takes equality as the negation of more and less.
   • Shakespeare’s Falstaff: those who say more or less than the truth are villains and sons of darkness — so truth is neither more nor less.
   • Truth = saying what is is and what is not is not. Saying “what is not, is” adds to the truth; saying “what is, is not” subtracts from it.
   • Court oath: “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” is not saying the same thing three times. If Joe and Tom were in the bar and I say only Joe: less than the truth (not the whole truth). If I add Bill to protect my friends: more than the truth (not nothing but the truth).
   • Then Thomas: the cause of equality is unity — which is why likeness, equality and identity are studied under oneness, quality, quantity. In God the knower, the known, and the knowing are one and the same; so God is most true. Truth is thus a kind of unity, approached through equality.
3. Platonists and Boethius take unity and goodness as basically the same; Thomas: the good of each thing consists in a certain unity, insofar as it has united in itself the things from which its perfection consists; hence the Platonists lay down the One as principle, just as the Good. (Cf. the treatise on the substance of God, where “altogether one” and “perfect and good” are among the five attributes.)
4. Conclusion: each thing naturally desires unity as it desires goodness; so love or desire of unity causes pain, as love or desire of the good does. “So why do people want to get divorced?”

3. Replies to a. 3: which unions perfect (“not every union perfects the notion of the good”) #

• Ad 1: only the union on which a thing’s perfection depends is good; not every desire of unity causes pain, “as some think” — the opinion Aristotle excludes by noting some repletions are not desirable: those stuffed with food don’t delight in food (Thanksgiving Day); such a union is more repugnant to perfect being than constitutive of it.
  • Shakespeare’s King John: the French and English besieging the city that will open to the winner; a citizen proposes the marriage of the Dauphin and the princess — each complete “except for each other”, they must be united to complete each other. The Abbot of Montale greeting Rosalie as “your better half”: a real union. Divorce: they no longer see themselves perfected by it.
  • So pain comes not from desire of any unity but of that in which the perfection of nature consists — as desire of the good causes pain only of what is due to it. The man who discovers his wife unfaithful; “takes his life, terrible.”
• Ad 2: separation can be pleasant (a) insofar as it removes what is contrary to the thing’s perfection, or (b) insofar as the separation has some union joined to it that is sensible — “I don’t know exactly what his point is on the second”; he guesses: it makes possible some other union. Illustration of (a): the father who smashed the TV his daughter told him to shut up for; “the neighbours cheered.”
• Ad 3: separation of harmful things is desired insofar as they take away the suitable unity; so the appetite of separation is not the first cause of pain, the appetite of unity is.
  • Music examples: the man in the restaurant who paid the band to stop; “let’s get out of here” from boom-boom music — not wanting to be joined to it; old folks’ homes with background music; army and navy men who slept in the shop to escape the music piped all night, then overwhelmed hearing a symphony orchestra in a city; the sailor who drilled a hole for a radio aerial below the loaded waterline; the waiter hearing the same song all day: “a union you don’t need, it’s destructive.”

4. Q. 36 a. 4: a greater power as cause of pain (“a greater power ought not to be laid down”) #

Point: pain comes from a present joined evil, and evil is joined against the appetite’s inclination only by something stronger — provided the inclination still resists.

• Objections: (1) what is in the agent’s power is future, pain is about a present evil; (2) harm can be inflicted even by a lesser power; (3) causes of appetitive motions are interior inclinations, a greater power is exterior.
• Sed contra: Augustine, On the Nature of the Good — in the soul, the will resisting a greater power makes pain; in the body, the sense resisting a more potent body makes pain.
• Respondeo:
  1. Joined evil causes pain in the way of object, as joined good causes joy — generally the object causes the emotion (the thing feared causes fear, the thing hated causes hate).
  2. So whatever causes the evil to be joined is a cause of pain.
  3. Something contrary to the appetite’s inclination is present only through a stronger agent; hence Augustine’s greater power.
  4. But if the stronger power is so strong that it changes the contrary inclination into the thing’s own, there is no more repugnance or violence — as fire corrupting a heavy body takes away its downward tendency and it now rises naturally. So no pain follows unless the appetite’s inclination remains in the contrary direction: “resisting, that’s the important thing.” If it consents instead, pleasure follows, not pain. Aside: “in the spiritual life you have to do violence to yourself” to change your inclination; and a verse “that’s to be feared, to be in the power of another man” [unclear in recording].
• Ad 1: the greater power causes pain not as able to act but as acting in act, joining the corrupting evil — loud music asserting itself against the ear; C. S. Lewis’s hell, “the kingdom of noise”.
• Ad 2: a power not simply greater may be greater quantum ad aliquid and so harm somewhat; if in no way greater it could do no harm — the mosquito.
• Ad 3: exterior agents cause emotions insofar as they cause the presence of the object. Break.

5. Q. 37 a. 1, objections and sed contra (“whether pain takes away the faculty of learning”) #

Point: the effects of sadness are four: taking away the faculty of learning, weighing down the soul, weakening every operation, harming the body more than other passions.

• Obj. 1: Isaiah 26:9 — when God judges the earth its dwellers learn justice; later, “in tribulation… your teaching”; from God’s judgments in tribulation follows sadness; so pain increases learning. “That’ll teach you”; Samuel Johnson: as the beating of schoolboys decreased, “what they gain at one end they lose at the other.” Student: the Jesuits’ reform of education reduced corporal punishment and made learning more fun; “I read that somewhere.”
• Obj. 2: Isaiah 28 — whom will he teach knowledge? those weaned from milk (lactati lacte, from the psalm), i.e. from pleasures (religious life weans one from worldly pleasures); sadness above all takes away pleasure (Ethics VII: sadness impedes every pleasure; Ecclesiasticus 11: the evil of one hour makes one forget the greatest pleasure); so pain gives the faculty of learning.
• Obj. 3: interior sadness is greater than exterior pain; but one can learn while sad; much more with bodily pain.
• Sed contra: Augustine, Soliloquies I — tortured by fierce toothache he could only turn over what he already knew, not learn anything new. “That’s why I always think about that when I have a dental thing.”

6. A. 1 respondeo and replies (“one soul there cannot be except one intention”) #

Argument:

1. All the soul’s powers are rooted in its one essence; when the soul’s intention is strongly drawn to one power’s operation it is withdrawn from another’s: of one soul there is only one intention. (His cousin: to appreciate Mozart you must really listen; background music gets no full attention.)
2. What draws the whole or greater part of the intention does not allow anything else requiring great attention.
3. Sensible pain most of all draws the intention, since each thing tends with its whole intention to repel the contrary, as in natural things.
4. Learning something new requires study and effort with great intention — Proverbs 2: seek wisdom like money, dig for it like treasure.
5. So intense pain impedes learning, and can be so intense that one cannot even consider what one already knows.

• Diversity according to one’s love of learning: the greater it is, the more it retains the intention against sadness. Stories of Thomas thinking about something during an operation: “doubtful, especially after this article.” (An aside about “the trick of the communist” — [unclear in recording].)
• Ad 1: moderate sadness, which excludes the wandering of the soul, can help receiving discipline — especially learning by which a man hopes to be freed from the sadness; so “in tribulation men receive the teaching of God.” His own case: sad about a girl, he read through the Summa and forgot her; people who bury themselves in work after a bereavement, partly to escape dwelling on it. A student: fear of failure making you study for exams.
• Ad 2: both pleasure and pain, drawing the intention, impede the consideration of reason (Ethics VII: impossible to understand anything in venereal pleasure); but pain draws it more — “take a pill, it’s going to get your attention”; as natural action is intensified by the contrary, water suffering cold is more congealed (“don’t know that sense”). So moderate pain helps learning per accidens, by removing superabundance of pleasure, but per se impedes, and intense pain takes it away entirely.
• Ad 3: exterior pain comes from bodily injury, so has more bodily change; interior pain is greater as to what is formal in pain (on the part of the soul). Bodily pain more impedes contemplation, which needs altogether quiet; yet intense interior sadness also stops learning — Gregory the Great, “a quite disciplined man”, interrupted his exposition of Ezekiel for sadness; Thomas too stopped, not finishing the Summa, “because he saw something good.”

7. A. 2 objections; Gregory and Nemesius (“weighing down of the soul”) #

Point: aggravatio is “weighing down” (heavy heart), not the English “aggravate”; the translators give “depression”.

• Obj. 1: 2 Corinthians — sadness according to God works solicitude and indignation; these are a raising up of the soul, opposed to weighing down. Aside: his teacher Kaserki [ed.: spelling uncertain] telling him “read very carefully” — “who taught you how to read? Good man.”
• Obj. 2: sadness is opposed to pleasure, whose effect is dilatatio; its opposite is constriction (narrowing), not weighing down.
• Obj. 3: 2 Corinthians, “lest you be absorbed by more abundant sadness”; what is absorbed is included in the absorber, what is weighed down is pressed by something outside; so weighing down is not the effect.
• Sed contra: “Gregory Nicenus” — really Nemesius, Thomas confusing two Gregorys, “maybe not him originally making the mistake” — and Damascene lay down tristitia aggravans.
  • Aside on confusion of names: Euclid of the Elements mixed for centuries with Euclid of Megara; Washington Irving’s Columbus confused with his uncle and cousin Columbo. Equivocation by chance: in philosophy equivocation is more “by reason”, in history by chance; only a mind depending on the senses is deceived by a name — “how dumb can you be, St Angel?” The Marys in Scripture, and three Marys at the cross.

8. A. 2 respondeo and replies; metaphor and emotion (“sometimes metaphorically named”) #

Argument:

1. Effects of the passions are sometimes named metaphorically by likeness to sensible bodies, since the motions of animal appetite resemble inclinations of natural bodies: fervor to love, dilation to pleasure, weighing down to sadness.
2. A man is weighed down when a weight impedes his own motion (a knight in armour knocked off his horse).
3. Sadness is from a present evil repugnant to the will’s motion; so it weighs the soul down by impeding it from enjoying what it wishes.
4. If the evil is not so strong as to remove hope of avoiding it, the motion to repel it remains; if it excludes hope, it impedes even the interior motion, so the soul, narrowed (angustia), cannot divert itself anywhere — “just give up” — and sometimes even exterior motion, so the man stays stupefied.

• Ad 1: the raising-up in Paul comes from the hope joined to godly sadness, of getting rid of sin.
• Ad 2: constriction and weighing down refer to the same appetitive motion under different reasons: weighed down, he can’t go out freely to outside things; constricted, he is drawn back into himself, collapsed.
• Ad 3: sadness absorbs when the evil’s power excludes all hope of evasion; so it both weighs down and absorbs — things that follow each other in metaphor would be repugnant taken properly.
• He notes it is unusual for Thomas to write an article on something said of the soul metaphorically, usually left to Scripture or poets — because these things aren’t so intelligible. Cf. the Summa’s opening on whether Scripture should use metaphors: poetry is infima doctrina, yet both use metaphor for a like reason, theology because above reason, poetry because below. So emotions may have to be expressed partly metaphorically since they cannot be fully known rationally: emotions “partake of reason” (Ethics) but are not simply reasonable. Kasurik to him about Mozart: “you think it has more meaning, Duane, than it does.” In opera the music is dominant (Mozart: words must be the obedient servants of the music), though the words set the stage. Close.

His words #

• impatientia: “a feeling of impatience in division or corruption” — he questions the rendering.
• repletion / incision: filling up / cutting, the pair from Ethics X.
• “the tenth book of wisdom”: Aristotle on equality as negation of more and less [ed.: Metaphysics X].
• ipsa veritas: God as truth itself.
• truth: the equality of the mind and things; the cause of equality is unity.
• quantum ad aliquid: greater “to some extent”, not simply.
• lactati lacte: weaned from the milk, i.e. from pleasures.
• aggravatio: weighing down (heavy heart); translators say “depression”.
• dilatatio: dilation, effect of pleasure; constriction its contrary.
• angustia: narrowing.
• infima doctrina: poetry as the lowest teaching.
• equivocal by chance: same name for different persons (Euclids, Columbos, Marys).

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 36, a. 3 (whole article) and a. 4 (whole article).
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 37, prologue, a. 1 and a. 2 (whole articles).
• Handout “Note for Sixth Book of Wisdom, Reading 4”, p. 14 (verified source; the passage on truth as equality of mind and things).

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics X (repletion) and VII (sadness impedes pleasure; venereal pleasure).
• Augustine, On Free Choice III; On the Nature of the Good; Soliloquies I.
• Isaiah 26:9 and 28; Ecclesiasticus 11; Proverbs 2; 2 Corinthians.
• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I, the treatise on the substance of God (five attributes) and the article on whether Scripture should use metaphors (inferred).
• Shakespeare, Falstaff on more or less than the truth; King John.
• Boethius, Plato, the Platonists on the One and the Good.
• Gregory the Great on Ezekiel; Nemesius / “Gregory Nicenus”; Damascene.
• Samuel Johnson on beating schoolboys; C. S. Lewis on hell as the kingdom of noise; Washington Irving’s life of Columbus; Mozart, K. 593 quintet.
• DHB Vol. III, The School of Aristotle, p. 635 (verified source).

His questions #

• Which is saying more than the truth, and which less? “What is not, is” adds; “what is, is not” subtracts.
• Is “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” saying the same thing three times? No: the whole truth excludes less, nothing but the truth excludes more.
• Why does he say love is a desire of unity? Because the good of each thing consists in a certain unity; the Platonists identify the One and the Good.
• So why do people want to get divorced? They no longer see themselves perfected by the union (not every union perfects).
• Would pain follow if the will did not resist but consented? No — pleasure, not pain.
• Can something weaker than me harm me? Yes, if greater in some respect — the mosquito.
• So you guys learn better by moderate sadness? Yes, when it removes distraction and you hope to be freed by learning.
• Why does Thomas here treat something said of the soul metaphorically? Because emotions can’t be fully expressed rationally; like theology, poetry uses metaphor, one above reason, one below.