Summa I-II Q.44: The Effects of Fear – Contraction, Counsel, Trembling, and the Emotions Compared with the Will and with God

Orientation #

He says “we’re up to question 44 now, the effects of fear; I guess that’s where we left off” and announces fear and audacity as what “we’re going to talk about next” (prev. lecture: the causes of fear). The previous class treated causes of fear; the next treats fear impeding operation and audacity.

The class, in order #

1. Prayer, and a warning from the logic class (“deceives even the wise”) #

Aside before the text: with the logic students he treated the fallacy of the accident, which Aristotle says deceives even the wise; knowing the kinds of fallacy does not stop you from committing them, hence the prayer that the guardian angels “arouse us to consider more correctly.”

2. Question 44 and the objections of article 1 (“fear does not make for contraction”) #

The point: q. 44 asks four things — whether fear makes contraction, whether it makes us take counsel, whether it makes tremor, whether it impedes operation (a. 4 not reached).

• Obj. 1: in contraction heat and spirits are called to the interior, but from that multitude the heart is magnified to undertake something audaciously, as in the angry; so fear does not contract.
• Obj. 2: if spirits multiplied inwardly, one would break forth in voice, as the wailing or sad do; but the fearful emit no voice, they are taciturn. Examples: his mother’s Minnesota town meeting, where a man who never spoke in public freezes on stage; a high-school girl frozen with her lines.
• He notes obj. 1-2 quote the book of Problems, attributed to Aristotle but of doubtful authenticity; “I wouldn’t worry too much about the bodily change.”
• Obj. 3, “the more interesting one”: verecundia (shame) is a species of fear; the ashamed become red (Tullius = Cicero, Tusculan Questions IV; Ethics IV); redness attests the contrary of contraction.
• Student: what is contraction? He: Thomas explains it in the replies to obj. 1-2; it is a different contraction from that in anger; Thomas uses the word elsewhere.
• Sed contra: Damascene, Orthodox Faith III — fear is a power secundum systolen, according to contraction.

3. The body of article 1: formal and material in an emotion (“that is formal, the emotion of the desiring power”) #

The point: in every passion the motion of the appetite is formal and the bodily change material, and one is proportioned to the other.

• Aristotle in the proemium of the De Anima says the emotions belong in a way to natural philosophy because they involve the body; “anger is a desire for revenge” gives only the formal aspect.
• Argument that fear implies contraction on the side of appetite: (1) fear arises from the image of an imminent evil difficult to repel; (2) “difficult to repel” arises from weakness of one’s power; (3) the weaker a power, the fewer things it extends to; therefore from the very imagination that causes fear follows a contraction in the appetite.
• Examples: the dying, in whom nature withdraws inward from weakness; cities, whose citizens when afraid withdraw from the walls and run together inward — the Plato-style comparison of soul and city.
• By likeness to this formal contraction follows, on the side of the body, contraction of heat and spirits to the interior.

4. Reply 1: anger and fear move the spirits oppositely (“not the same motion of the spirits”) #

• In the angry, heat and subtle spirits arising from desire for revenge move from lower to higher and gather about the heart: prompt and audacious to invade what pains them. In the fearful, coldness and heaviness move the spirits from higher to lower; heat withdraws from the heart; they flee rather than invade. He reads this through the four elements (anger more fire and air, fear more earth) — “very primitive science.”
• Student objection: doesn’t anger include fear, since the angry man confronts an evil? Answer: no — anger makes you go out to the thing, not withdraw; his stock example: you stand on my toes, say “so what?”, I get angry and go towards you to shove you off.
• Ordinary language confirms the direction: the angry man “heats up,” “hot under the collar”; the fearful is “chilled.” Charles I wanted a coat at his execution so his shivering would not look like fear; a kitten held while a dog is near can be felt trembling.

5. Reply 2: why the sad cry out and the fearful fall silent (“to use whatever aid he can”) #

• Anyone in sorrow, man or animal, uses whatever aid he has to repel the harmful thing: animals strike with horns or jaws. Dog asides: mailmen with spray and club; a thin little dog barking fiercely at the mailbox; brother Mark’s cyclist who got off and gave a snapping dog one whack; the grade-school girl who felt safer with the family’s big dog; criminals fear the police dog more than the police.
• The chief aid is heat and spirit, so in pain nature conserves inner heat and uses it; multiplied inwardly, it must be emitted through the voice — the pained can hardly contain themselves and cry out (“take that exclamation with a grain of salt”).
• In the fearful the heat moves from the heart downward, toward water and earth, the cold elements (Greek air is like steam, moist but hot; fire hottest; “cold” the poets’ word for death). Fear is therefore contrary to forming the voice, which needs spirits sent up through the mouth: fear makes one silent, and, as the Problems says, trembling.
• Asides: the four elements, “the longest lasting scientific theory,” still believed by Shakespeare; a student maps modern solid/liquid/gas plus energy onto them; he once used the Problems as a joke book, but Thomas takes it seriously here.

6. Reply 3: pallor vs. blushing (“the ones who are ashamed, become red”) #

• Dangers of death are contrary not only to the animal appetite but to nature; so there is contraction both in the appetite and in the bodily nature, the animal disposed by the imagination of death as when death is really imminent: blood returns to the heart, the source of life, and the fearful of death go pale (Ethics IV).
• The evil shame fears is opposed only to the animal appetite, not to nature; contraction is in the appetite alone, and the soul, contracted in itself, sends spirits and heat outward: the ashamed go red. His gloss: disgrace is an exterior thing, so “your blood goes out where the enemy is”; injury or death, and the blood goes in.
• Shakespeare’s sonnet chiding the violet, lily, marjoram and roses for stealing from his beloved: the roses “fearfully on thorns did stand, one blushing shame, another white despair” — his “red fear and white fear.”

7. Article 2, objections and sed contra (“fear does not make us take counsel”) #

• Obj. 1: to cause and to impede counsel are not the same; fear impedes it, since every passion disturbs the quiet the good use of reason needs (he refers to Physics VII: the soul becomes wise and prudent by quieting down).
• Obj. 2: counsel is an act of reason about future things; some fear strikes the thoughts and moves the mind from its place (Cicero, Tusculan Questions IV).
• Obj. 3: counsel is about avoiding evils and achieving goods alike; fear is to evils as hope to goods; so fear is no more consiliativus than hope. His example: in a political campaign you have to “run scared”; too much hope of re-election and the incumbent loses.
• Sed contra: Rhetoric II, fear makes us take counsel. He notes Thomas often cites the Rhetoric in this part of the prima secundae because Aristotle treats the emotions in more detail there, for the speaker’s use. Aside: a student and he on Obama’s sequester warnings (airports, teachers, criminals released) as campaigning by fear.

8. Body of article 2: two senses of “making us take counsel” (“something can be said to be encouraging counsel in two ways”) #

• (a) From the will or solicitude to take counsel: fear does this. We take counsel about great things in which we do not trust ourselves (Ethics III), and fearful things are not simply bad but have magnitude, are apprehended as difficult to repel, and are near; so men most of all seek counsel in fearful things (“how can we withstand the enemy?”).
• (b) From facility in counselling well: neither fear nor any passion does this, since to one affected by a passion things seem more or less than they are — what we love seems better, what we fear seems more terrible; so every passion as such impedes good counsel by a defect in rightness of judgment. Examples: the cool officer at Chosin in the Korean War who knew what to do step by step while the rest were excited; a book on how many WWII generals were removed for incompetence.
• Reply 1: Thomas grants that every passion disturbs somewhat.
• Reply 2: the stronger the passion, the more it impedes; very strong fear makes a man wish to take counsel but so disturbs his thoughts he cannot find counsel; a little fear induces the solicitude without much disturbing reason, and even helps (“he is able to conferre, to bring together”). Examples: a team that won by forty points goes in overconfident and loses by ten; in philosophy, Socrates’ fear that he might think he knows and not know; Montaigne, whose “principal passion is fear,” makes you justify every new idea — good for the mind.
• Asides: modern philosophers do not discuss fallacies with examples, so their minds are not alert; on sabbatical, working on how the mind makes mistakes, a psychiatrist told him everyone is a hair from exploding; Aristotle (he says the second book of the De Anima) faults the Greeks for explaining knowledge but not error, “more common than knowing”; since the moderns all disagree, all are wrong or all but one — “mistake is misery.”

9. Reply 3: hope also makes us take counsel, fear more (“no one takes counsel about those things about which he despairs”) #

• Hope also makes for counsel, since no one deliberates about what he despairs of, as about impossibles (Rhetoric II); but fear more than hope, because hope is of a good we are able to achieve, fear of an evil we can hardly repel — more the aspect of difficulty, and we take counsel in difficult things where we lack confidence.
• Socrates’ last-day dialogue (inferred: Phaedo): the immortality arguments satisfy everyone until Simmias and Cebes object and all fall into despair; the teacher’s duty is to restore hope that the truth can be found; then, when Simmias is answered too easily, Socrates makes them cautious again.
• His own teachers: Kasurik encouraged; De Koninck more caution; Msgr. Dion most — Dion, asked why he spoke differently in class and office, said it is the professor’s business to encourage the student; Dion’s one question on the order of his thesis outline showed at once it had to change. A teacher sees when students need encouraging and when cautioning; fear “makes a man proceed more cautioned,” but if too unsuccessful it leads to despair.
• Christian life has the same balance: God’s mercy causes hope, his justice fear; a woman after an abortion may need the mercy of God preached; a cocky man at Padre Pio’s Mass, seeing his hands bleed at the elevation, came back changed — some need “jacking up” with fear, and nowadays people fear neither hell nor purgatory. Likewise the candidate with no hope, or no fear of losing, runs a poor campaign; state pro-life laws give the movement hope against despair.

10. Article 3: whether fear makes for tremor (“trembling happens from the cold”) #

• Obj. 1: trembling comes from cold, but fear seems to cause a drying heat — the fearful get thirsty, most in the greatest fears, as those led to death. (Student aside: “I’m getting dry.”)
• Obj. 2: emission of superfluities comes from heat (laxatives are hot), and such emissions happen frequently in fear; so fear heats.
• Obj. 3: if the recall of heat inward makes one tremble, all the exterior members should tremble alike; they do not.
• Sed contra: Cicero, Tusculan Questions IV — on terror follow trembling, pallor, chattering of teeth (dentium crepitus).
• Body: in fear there is contraction from exterior to interior (he notes this article follows straight from a. 1, though a. 2 intervenes), so the exterior parts stay cold; there trembling arises from the weakness of the power in the members, to which weakness the failure of heat contributes most, heat being the instrument by which the soul moves (De Anima II).
• Reply 1: heat recalled inward is multiplied, most toward the lower, nutritive parts; the humid is consumed, hence thirst, and sometimes loosening of the stomach, emission of urine, sometimes of seed — or these emissions come from contraction of the stomach and testicular membranes, per the Problems; reply 2 is the same. “Don’t be too concerned about this.”
• Reply 3: heat deserts the higher parts for the lower, so the heart trembles most, and the members connected to the chest: the voice (a child’s voice, even a dog’s, betrays fear), the lower lip and whole lower jaw (hence chattering teeth), arms and hands (also because more mobile), knees; Isaiah: strengthen the hands and the trembling knees. Aside: genuflecting in church now needs a pew to hold — “not fear, I guess, but something.”

11. Student: what bearing does trembling have on anything? (“the emotions are something bodily”) #

The point: the bodily change, whatever its details, shows the emotion is bodily, and that is what distinguishes it from an act of will.

• Names are carried over from the emotions to the will by dropping part of the meaning: the material aspect is dropped and the formal kept. Desire is for a good not had; “the soul thirsts for God” (he thinks three psalms of thirst) is metaphor, since thirst properly names the bodily thing, while “desire” or “wanting” is carried over with a new meaning.
• Generalised via Porphyry’s Isagoge (after Aristotle): the difference corresponds to form, the genus to matter; since God is pure act, a name taken from act can be carried to God, but a genus taken from potency or matter cannot — nor even to the act of the will.
• Summa contra Gentiles (no locus given): the names of the emotions are carried to the acts of will in us, and some of those to God, but none whose object is something bad. No fear in God; anger only metaphorically, because God’s just punishing is like the angry man’s.
• The eleven emotions as he lists them: concupiscible — liking/love, desire/wanting, pleasure/joy, and about the bad, hate/dislike, aversion, pain/sadness; irascible — from desire of a difficult good, hope or despair; from aversion with difficulty, fear or audacity (“which we’re going to talk about next”); from sadness, anger; from joy no irascible emotion, “no difficulty in being pleased.”
• Only two of the eleven are said properly of God: love (of the good, had or not) and joy (in the good present) — God takes joy in his own goodness because he loves it. Desire cannot, since God is universally perfect; nothing about the bad or difficult; fear not even metaphorically.
• Student: God’s desire for the good of creatures, “God desires the salvation of all men”? Answer: God does not lack; love is to wish good to someone; so such desire would be said metaphorically — he grants it is hard to see how. People in the pews think God has emotions; C. S. Lewis calls the angels’ love “ferocious” to convey an intensity beyond ours, divided as we are between flesh and soul.
• Student presses the point back: if the emotion has a bodily element, the definition must include it? He: yes — the bodily transformation belongs to the very essence of the emotion, and different transformations in anger and fear show a difference of nature. Hence we share emotions with the other animals, as eating and reproduction (though refined: cooking, sauce, wine), while will and understanding we share with angels and God, but imperfectly; what we share with the beasts we can have in a higher way. The fine arts — Mozart, Handel, Bach, Shakespeare — are “the most human”: an essay on music says they are “too high for the animals and too low for the angels.”
• Cat asides: he pretended the cat liked Mozart, a fiction, but she heard sandwich meat crinkle from anywhere; the childhood cat always heard the back door, and cats remind you with claws. Closing: read Dionysius on the seraphim to see the incredible, ferocious love of the angels.

His words #

• “fallacy of the accident” — the one Aristotle says deceives even the wise.
• “contraction” — systole (Damascene); withdrawal of appetite from an evil, with heat and spirits going inward.
• “formal” / “material” aspect of an emotion — motion of the desiring power vs. bodily change, one proportioned to the other.
• “spirits” — the bodily vehicle of heat in the old physiology; moved up in anger, down in fear.
• “verecundia” — shame, a species of fear; “erubescentia,” the reddening of the verecundati.
• “red fear and white fear” — blushing shame vs. pallor before death, from the sonnet’s roses.
• “consiliativus” — “encouraging counsel,” in two senses: solicitude to take counsel vs. facility to counsel well [ed.: he asks how to translate it].
• “conferre” — to bring together, what a little fear lets reason do.
• “run scared” — the candidate’s needed fear.
• “tremor” — trembling; “dentium crepitus,” chattering of teeth.
• “carrying a name over by dropping part of the meaning” — keeping the formal aspect (difference, form, act), dropping the material (genus, matter, potency).
• “the eleven emotions” — six concupiscible, five irascible, as listed in segment 11.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 44, a. 1 (whole article), a. 2 (whole article), a. 3 (whole article), read and paraphrased from the Latin.
• Shakespeare, sonnet on the flowers stealing from his beloved (Sonnet 99, inferred), read in full.

Mentioned

• (pseudo-)Aristotle, Problems — cited by Thomas in aa. 1 and 3; authenticity doubted.
• Cicero, Tusculan Questions IV — on shame, on fear striking thought, on trembling.
• Aristotle, Ethics IV (blushing, pallor); Ethics III (counsel about great things); Rhetoric II (fear and hope make us take counsel); De Anima proemium (emotions belong to natural philosophy) and book II (heat as instrument of soul; Greeks on error); Physics VII (quieting of the soul).
• Damascene, Orthodox Faith III.
• Isaiah, “strengthen the hands and the trembling knees” (no chapter given).
• Plato, comparison of soul and city; Socrates’ last dialogue with Simmias and Cebes (Phaedo, inferred).
• Porphyry, Isagoge, on difference and genus.
• Thomas, Summa contra Gentiles, on carrying names of emotions to will and God (no locus given).
• Psalms of thirst (three, he thinks; none named); C. S. Lewis on the angels’ love; Dionysius on the seraphim; an essay on the evaluation of music.

His questions #

• Isn’t the calling back of heat to the interior what takes place in anger too? No: in anger spirits and heat rise and gather at the heart, in fear they sink and leave it.
• Doesn’t anger include fear, since the angry man confronts an evil? (student) Anger goes out toward the thing; fear withdraws; they are opposite motions.
• Why do the sad cry out but the fearful fall silent? Inner heat multiplied is emitted through the voice; in fear the heat goes down, contrary to forming the voice.
• Why do the ashamed go red but those fearing death go pale? Death is contrary to nature, so blood returns to the heart; disgrace is opposed only to the animal appetite, so the soul sends blood out.
• How can fear both cause and impede counsel? It causes the solicitude to take counsel; like every passion it hinders counselling well.
• Doesn’t hope make us take counsel as much as fear? Hope does too, but fear more, since it bears on an evil hardly repelled — more difficulty.
• Why should a little fear help? It induces solicitude without much disturbing reason; strong fear leaves one unable to find counsel.
• What bearing does whether you tremble have on anything? (student) The bodily change belongs to the essence of the emotion, distinguishing it from will and showing anger and fear differ in nature.
• Which emotion names can be said properly of God? Only love and joy; desire and all bearing on the bad or difficult cannot; anger metaphorically, fear not even that.
• Is “God desires the salvation of all men” metaphorical? (student) He says yes, since God lacks nothing, while admitting it is hard to see how.