Causes and Effects of Hope: Experience, Youth, Drunkenness, and How Hope Leads to Love (ST I-II q.40 a.5-7)

Orientation #

He opens by reporting what he has been reading (Thomas’s disputed question on spiritual creatures) and connects it to the passage from hope as emotion to hope as act of will and virtue, then goes on to a. 5, 6 and 7 of q. 40 in turn. He ends: “get time for one more here… I think we better stop.” The previous class treated a. 4 (despair contrary to hope) and the next concludes q. 40 with a. 8 before beginning q. 41 on fear.

The class, in order #

1. Opening: Thomas on spiritual creatures and the agent intellect (“reason in likeness to the senses”) #

Point: an aside on how Thomas reads Aristotle, offered as a model for passing from the more known (hope as emotion) to the less known (hope as act of will, and the virtue of hope).

• Aristotle takes up the senses in De Anima II and reason in III, beginning: as the senses are able to sense before they actually sense, so reason is able to understand before it actually understands — taking the more known to us to lead us along. Berquist: “I can go from hope here as an emotion… to hope as an act of the will… and even the virtue.”
• Thomas refutes Averroes (one possible understanding for all men) thoroughly; then the question whether there is one agent intellect for all. Some say the agent intellect is a power of our soul, some say a higher thing (angel or God) enlightening us. Thomas: “some truth in both” — we have a power that enlightens us, but it partakes of God’s light.
  1. First argument: ours is a participated light, “only a small part of us,” so we partake of a greater light.
  2. Second argument: everything in motion depends on something not in motion (the eight books of Physics); reason understands per modum motus — discourse, running from effect to cause, cause to effect, like to like, opposite to opposite; so our mind presupposes a mind that knows without moving.
  3. He links this to Aristotle in De Anima III: our mind is an ability before act, and what goes from ability to act does so through something already in act, so Aristotle touches on a mind entirely in act, the divine mind — the doctrine of ability and act developed most in Metaphysics IX (the ninth book).
• Order per se vs. per accidens: no two angels of one kind, so the order among angels is per se; among many individuals of one kind (men) the order is accidental — “it’s accidental that Obama’s ruling us now.” Putting one’s mind under Thomas or Euclid is something like the lower angel under the higher, but not absolute: Thomas might be mistaken about the sun, moon, stars, or the act of conception.
• Aside: the picture of Thomas sitting down to instruct a young objector while others were scandalized; Heisenberg as a student objecting to Bohr, Bohr inviting him for a walk of hours, which shaped all his later thinking — “a father-son relation.”

2. Article 5, objections and sed contra: is experience a cause of hope? (“the old men are of little hope”) #

Point: three objections that experience is not a cause of hope.

1. Experience pertains to the knowing power (Ethics II: the understanding power needs experience and time — he adds Shakespeare, “O time, thou must untangle this, not I”); hope is in the desiring power; therefore experience does not cause hope. (Berquist: in a syllogism premises and conclusion are both in the mind; here the two powers are different.)
2. Rhetoric II: the old are of little hope on account of experience, the young full of too much hope (so they make mistakes; the old can’t get anything done). The same is not the cause of opposites, so experience causes the defect of hope, not hope. Illustrations: a Russian saint, “a monk is a man slow to believe”; old hands expecting little from the Benghazi questioning of Mrs. Clinton.
3. De Caelo II: to enunciate about all things and doubt nothing is a sign of stultitia; attempting all things pertains to magnitude of hope (the magnanimous man has magnitude of hope, but is capable of it — Mozart, “the man who always arrives at his goal”); stupidity arises from inexperience; therefore inexperience is more a cause of hope. Berquist’s own case: at each stage (high school, college, graduate school, teaching) the young man hopes for something better ahead.

• Sed contra, Ethics III: some are of good hope because they have overcome many times, which pertains to experience.

3. Article 5, body: two ways experience causes hope, one way its defect (“bonum futurum arduum possibile adipisci”) #

Point: the object of hope is bonum futurum arduum possibile adipisci; he notes the precision — love and desire are for a bonum, desire for a bonum futurum, hope for a bonum futurum arduum, and hope is opposed by despair. “It’s beautiful the way he’s got to order it… sapientis is to order.”

1. Something causes hope either (a) by making something possible for a man, or (b) by making him estimate that something is possible.
2. In way (a), everything that increases a man’s power causes hope: wealth, fortitude, and experience, because through experience a man acquires facility of doing easily, from which follows hope. Vegetius on the military: no one fears to do what he is confident he has done well. Examples: cooking the same meal many times, going into the kitchen with hope; a student’s Friday biscuits, “never any leftovers.”
3. In way (b), whatever makes someone estimate that something is possible causes hope — teaching (doctrina) and persuasion — and so experience, insofar as it brings the estimate that something once thought impossible is possible. Example: Aristotle would have said going to the moon is stupid; after the experience of it, “I’ll probably go to Mars someday.”
4. But in way (b) experience also causes the lack of hope: e converso, one comes to guess that something is not possible which one had thought possible. Examples: reforming politics in Washington; Belloc thinking he could change Parliament and despairing of it, the corruption too deep; hurricane relief money mostly “pork” — “everybody goes to the trough.”

• Conclusion: experience causes hope in two ways and its defect in one, so it is more said to cause hope; “he’s not denying the truth on the other side” — the old man’s wisdom and caution; running for office many times before realizing you won’t win.

4. Article 5, replies (“no one fears to do that which”) #

• Ad 1: experience in things to be done causes not only knowledge but a habit through custom, making the operation easy; the intellectual virtue too shows something possible and so causes hope. Example: the plumber who had to go far down the drain, routine for him, impossible for Berquist; Einstein saying he’d be a plumber if he had it to do over.
• Ad 2: in the old (“like Berquist, seventy-seven”) there is a defect of hope from experience insofar as it makes them estimate something impossible; and as years are added many things turn out bad and deteriorate. Kennedy surprised that orders got lost going down the bureaucracy.
• Ad 3: stupidity and inexperience cause hope per accidens, by removing the knowledge by which one would estimate a thing not possible. Examples: Fr. Anthony Kramer as a child digging to China; Berquist digging at the lake in sandy soil until told to fill the hole; in New England soil (this field, where a $25,000 drill broke on a rock) you’d be discouraged sooner. So inexperience causes hope for the same reason experience causes its defect — Thomas “distinguishing something on both sides.”

5. Article 6, objections and sed contra: youth and drunkenness (“hope is compared to an anchor”) #

1. Hope implies certitude and firmness (Hebrews 6: hope compared to an anchor); the young and the drunk lack firmness, having a soul easily moveable. Aside: the man at the airport wearing an anchor — “is that the anchor of hope?” — and the brothers of hope who visit.
2. What increases power most causes hope; youth and drunkenness have weakness joined to them.
3. Experience causes hope; in the young experience is lacking.

• Sed contra: Ethics III, the inebriated are of good hope (oinōmenoi euelpides); Rhetoric II, the youth are of good hope, contrasted with the old. The man in the prime of life has neither defect; Aristotle speaks of young, old and prime, not “middle age.” The intellect is best at forty-nine.
• Digression on numbers: Thomas says a square has the symbolism of its root, so 49 as 7, a symbol of wisdom; Bonaventure’s prologue on the gifts of the Holy Spirit going through seven sevens (septenarii); Thomas on the apostles rowing twenty-five or thirty furlongs — 25 as 5 (the five books of the law, those adhering to the law helped by Christ), 30 as the law times the perfect number six (the New Testament). “You got to study Euclid before you have the proper appreciation of numbers.”

6. Article 6, body and replies: three reasons (“the youth have much of the future”) #

Point: youth causes hope for three reasons (Rhetoric II — “the Philosopher,” which he always capitalizes), taken from the three conditions of hope’s object: future, arduous, possible.

1. Future: the young have much future and little past; the old man talks of what he has done, not what he will do — memory of the past, hope of the future. His mother: “children outgrow their parents, but parents don’t outgrow their children.”
2. Arduous: from the hotness of their nature the young have many spirits, so the heart expands, and from amplitude of heart one tends to difficult things; the young are animosi. “That’s why the army wants you when you’re young.” Stories: MacArthur in Mexico with bullet holes through his hat, unhit; Washington finding the sound of bullets “wonderful”; the Korean War officer, “I’m married with three children — stick your head up and see who’s shooting”; his uncle falsifying his age to enter WWI.
3. Possible: those who have not suffered repulse nor experienced impediments easily regard things as possible.

• Two of these are found in the drunk: heat and multiplication of spirits from the wine, and inconsideration of dangers and their defects (car accidents). Likewise all stulti and those not using deliberation attempt all things and are of good hope.
• Ad 1: in the young and drunk there is no firmness secundum rei veritatem, but there is according to their own estimate; “know thyself” is the corrective.
• Ad 2: they have infirmity in truth, but power in their own estimate, because they don’t know their defects.
• Ad 3: not only experience but inexperience is in some way a cause of hope.
• Aside: read Rhetoric II on the old, the young and the prime of life; one doesn’t speak to them the same way — the man recording Nixon’s speeches to see if he spoke alike to businessmen and workers; a good rhetorician speaks differently to different customs.

7. Article 7, objections: is hope a cause of love? (“looking before or after”) #

Point: aa. 5-6 looked before hope (causes), a. 7 looks after (effect); he ties this to Hamlet’s “looking before and after.” Love (or “like”) is the most basic emotion — “if I like steak, I want steak, I have joy when I get my steak” — so how can hope cause love? He recalls a text of Augustine where hope leads to something.

1. Augustine, City of God XIV: the first of all affections is love (Thomas has said this too); hope is an affection; so love precedes hope.
2. Desire precedes hope and is caused by love — “rest my case.”
3. Hope causes delight, and pleasure is only about a good loved.

• Sed contra: Matthew 1:2, “Abraham begot Isaac, Isaac begot Jacob”; the gloss: faith begot hope, hope begot charity, which is love. Aside: Benedict XVI throws up his hands at the different names in Matthew’s and Luke’s genealogies, while the Fathers find things in all the names.

8. Article 7, body and reply (“hope regards two things”) #

1. Hope regards its object, the good hoped for; but since that good is arduous and possible, sometimes it becomes possible through others, so hope also regards the one through whom it becomes possible. Examples: hoping to know the Pythagorean theorem with the help of “my friend Euclid”; hoping to know the Gospel of John through Thomas’s exposition.
2. As hope regards the good hoped for, hope is caused by love — no hope except about a good desired and loved (the truth on the objections’ side).
3. As hope regards the one through whom the good becomes possible, love is caused by hope, not the reverse: because through him we hope some good becomes possible, we are moved to him as to our good and begin to love him. Berquist: “I began to love Kasurik and De Koninck and Dionne because I had hope to learn truth”; walking up to Monléon at a party with philosophical questions, “he’s my good.”
4. Reply to all objections: from loving someone we hope from him only per accidens, insofar as we believe ourselves loved in return — being loved makes us hope in him because we think he will do good for us; but the love of him is caused by the hope we have of him. “That’s a very subtle, subtle thing.”

9. Discussion: the teacher loved through hope; Bernard’s four stages (“the teacher as useful good”) #

• Loving and desiring truth is more fundamental than hoping to achieve it; but love of the teacher follows hope. Story of his teacher Kasurik [name as transcribed]: taught philosophy so badly in the States that he gave it up, went into economics, then met De Koninck, warning him he’d walk out if taught the same way (“Fine, hope you will”); he became attached, hosting De Koninck on lecture tours (twelve children, needed the money), jumping up to fix the microphone — which came first, love of De Koninck or hope of getting philosophy?
• Berquist’s own case: his brother Richard arranged a meeting with Kasurik before college; he’d go to his office with questions, be sent to read Thomas, have more questions; he came to love him “like another father,” his death affecting him more than his natural father’s. “I didn’t have hope in him, I had hope of getting from him.”
• A professor at first a useful good, useful to get knowledge; that is not loving the man for his own sake; but as you get knowledge and hope for more you see him as good for you and begin to love him — and then “he’s not just good for you, but he’s good, period.” Charity is a love of friendship, not the useful good.
• Bernard of Clairvaux’s four stages of love: love self and not God; love God for one’s own sake because he helps you get what you want; as you get to know him, love him for his own sake. Berquist: isn’t this what Thomas is saying — I want happiness, can’t have it without God, keep returning to God for help, realize “he’s a pretty good guy” apart from what he does for me — so love in the strict sense comes from hope. Bernard says it a bit more explicitly than Thomas; the gloss on Abraham/Isaac/Jacob says the same, as does Augustine in the passage quoted in the proemium of Dei Verbum.
• Student question: do you love God as useful for your happiness before you love him for his own sake? “Probably” — one hopes in God to escape just punishment, to get what one doesn’t deserve.
• Closing asides: in the vision of God one knows all at once without discourse, unlike reading the Contra Gentiles chapter by chapter; Romeo forgets Rosalind once he sees Juliet, and one will forget Juliet and everything else on seeing God face to face; a priest’s remark that on the last day no one will pull out the Summa on the power of sin; Thomas says there will be vocal music in heaven, so Mozart “will still be active there.”

His words #

• “ability” — his rendering of potency, in “ability before act” [ed.: potency]
• per modum motus — reason understands by way of motion, i.e. discourse
• per se / per accidens order — order among angels (no two of a kind) vs. among men of one kind
• bonum futurum arduum possibile adipisci — the object of hope, ordered against bonum (love), bonum futurum (desire)
• sapientis — “it is of the wise man to order”
• stultitia / stulti — stupidity; the stupid
• doctrina — “teaching,” a cause of hope by way of estimate
• e converso — the reverse way, experience causing the defect of hope
• oinōmenoi euelpides — the inebriated are of good hope (Ethics III)
• septenarii — Bonaventure’s groups of seven
• animosi — the young, “of great spirit,” of good hope
• secundum rei veritatem — “in truth,” opposed to “according to their own estimate”
• “looking before and after” — his tag for cause (aa. 5-6) and effect (a. 7)
• “useful good” — the teacher first loved as useful, before being loved for his own sake

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 40, a. 5 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 40, a. 6 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 40, a. 7 (objections, sed contra, body, reply)

Mentioned

• Thomas Aquinas, De spiritualibus creaturis, questions on the possible and agent intellect (inferred: aa. 9-10)
• Aristotle, De Anima II (senses), III (reason); Physics (eight books); Metaphysics IX (“the ninth book”)
• Aristotle, Ethics II (experience and time), III (good hope from overcoming; the inebriated); Rhetoric II (young, old, prime of life); De Caelo II (doubting nothing a sign of stupidity)
• Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (“O time, thou must untangle this”) (inferred); Hamlet (“looking before and after”); Romeo and Juliet
• Vegetius, on the military
• Hebrews 6 (anchor of hope); Matthew 1:2 with the gloss; John on the apostles rowing twenty-five or thirty furlongs (inferred)
• Augustine, City of God XIV; Augustine as quoted in the proemium of Dei Verbum
• Bonaventure, prologue to the gifts of the Holy Spirit
• Bernard of Clairvaux, on love (four stages)
• Benedict XVI on the Gospels (genealogies)
• Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles; Thomas on vocal music in heaven

His questions #

• Is the agent intellect a power of our soul, or a higher light? Both: a power of ours, but partaking of God’s unchangeable, fully actual knowing.
• How can experience cause hope when it causes its opposite in the old? It causes hope in two ways (power, estimate of possibility) and the defect in one (estimate of impossibility), so it is more said to cause hope.
• Would Aristotle say going to the moon is possible? No, he’d call it stupid; experience changed the estimate.
• Why does Thomas need three reasons for youth causing hope? From the three conditions of hope’s object: future, arduous, possible.
• In five and six was he looking before or after? And in seven? Before (causes); after (effect).
• Love is the first affection, so how can hope cause love? As to the good hoped for, love causes hope; as to the person through whom it becomes possible, hope causes love.
• Which came first, Kasurik’s loving De Koninck or his hope of getting philosophy? The hope; love of the teacher followed.
• Isn’t Bernard’s account of loving God the same as what Thomas says here? Yes: one loves God first for one’s own sake through hope, then for his own sake.
• Do you love God as useful for your happiness before you love him for his own sake? “Probably.”