Aquinas on Anger, Part 2: Anger in the Irascible Power, Anger and Reason, and Whether Anger Is More Natural Than Concupiscence (Articles 3–5)

Orientation #

He opens directly on “whether anger is in the concupiscible” and refers back several times to what “has been said above” in Thomas (the difference between irascible and concupiscible passions; anger’s two objects; the two-sided cause of a passion), without naming the earlier class. He closes: “We just have to stop now, I guess.” The previous class treated articles 1-2 of the same question, the next takes up articles 6-8.

The class, in order #

1. Article 3, the objections: anger looks concupiscible (“it seems that anger is in the concupiscible”) #

The point: three authorities make anger a passion of the concupiscible; the sed contra answers from the name of the power.

• Obj. 1: Cicero (Tusculan Questions) calls anger a libido quaedam, a kind of desire; desire is in the concupiscible. He adds: we ourselves say anger is “the desire for revenge,” and desire seems the name of a concupiscible passion.
• Obj. 2: Augustine: anger grows into hate; Cicero (same book): hate is inveterate anger, “anger grown old”; but hate is in the concupiscible, like love. He calls this “very convincing.”
• Obj. 3: Damascene and Gregory of Nyssa: anger is put together from sadness and desire, both concupiscible.
• Sed contra: the concupiscible power differs from the irascible; if anger were in the concupiscible, the irascible would not be named from it. “That’s a good argument.”
• Aside on the mis-heard name: “Tullius, huh? I mean Cicero.”

2. Article 3, the body: two objects, both needing magnitude (“the good and the bad with a certain elevation”) #

The point: anger belongs to the irascible because both its objects involve difficulty and effort.

1. Irascible passions differ from concupiscible ones in their object: concupiscible passions regard good and bad absolutely; irascible passions regard good and bad “with a certain elevation or difficulty.” (He notes that Thomas returns to this when hope is transferred to a theological virtue: something very good, noble, elevating.)
2. Anger regards two objects: the revenge it desires, and the one on whom it seeks revenge. Example, the husband who “kills the wrong person”: he has the revenge right but the wrong somebody, showing the two objects come apart.
3. About both, anger requires a certain magnitude; no anger arises unless there be some magnitude on both sides, for things that are nothing or valde modica we think worthy of nothing (Aristotle, Rhetoric II). Example: whacking a mosquito is not revenge; you are not angry, it is nullo digna.
4. Therefore, because of this effort, anger is not in the concupiscible but in the irascible.

• Story of the cement-truck driver who found a convertible outside his house at noon, heard voices from the bedroom, and filled the car with cement: “a good revenge,” and lucky he did not get the mafia treatment (“cement shoes,” a swim in the river).

3. Article 3, the replies: desire as a genus; hate from anger by causality (“not that the same passion in number”) #

• Ad 1: Cicero names libido any desire of a future good, without discriminating whether difficult or not; so anger falls under libido as a desire for revenge. His gloss: “desire” in “anger is a desire for revenge” is common to anger and concupiscence, “not the same. It’s a genus there.” Libido is thus common to irascible and concupiscible.
• Ad 2: anger is said to grow into hate not because the same motion in number that was anger later becomes hate, but by causality: anger through length of time causes hate. Examples: holding a grudge; tribal friction in the Near East, China, the Balkans, where anger passed from generation to generation “finally turns into hate.”
• Ad 3: anger is put together from sadness and desire not as from parts but as from causes. Example: “my mother and father are parts of me”; no, ex causis rather than ex partibus; “no part of me is my mother.”
• Digression prompted by the parts/causes distinction: a Franciscan general’s book on the Eucharist saying Our Lady is mysteriously present when we receive Our Lord; a parishioner in Australia banged on the priory door objecting (“only Jesus and nobody else”). He walks the order of presence: body and blood by the words of consecration; the blood in the host not by the words but because joined to the body (so one need not receive under both species); soul and divinity likewise not by the words but because joined; Mary would be “after that,” much less. The parishioner’s own argument was “you wouldn’t say your mother and father are you”; reply, “you might say they’re in you.” Another priest’s advice: be very careful saying such things in homilies; they misunderstand. Aside on the 24-hour rosary with adoration: you adore Our Lord, you pray to Mary.

4. Article 4, the objections: anger without reason (“it seems that anger is not with reason”) #

The point: three objections deny that anger is with reason; the sed contra from Ethics VII affirms it aliqualiter.

• Preface: Christ is said to be angry in the Gospel (at their hard-heartedness; perhaps at the cleansing of the temple, “does it say he was angry?”); grade-school teaching that anger is a sin: “we’re into dangerous things.”
• Obj. 1: anger, being a passion, is in the sense-desiring power, which follows the grasp of sense, not of reason; “that’s why the other animals have it.”
• Obj. 2: brute animals lack reason, yet anger is found in them. Examples: the little mutt across the way; cats get angry, but dogs are “irascible by nature”; a student demurs about golden retrievers, really gentle dogs.
• Obj. 3: drunkenness binds reason but aids anger; “how many fights start because you’ve been out drinking.” His gloss: drink releases the emotion one is weak for, so the irascible man’s anger comes out; a student asks whether fear comes out with drink; answer: sometimes people drink to overcome fear, to build confidence, to go to confession.
• Sed contra: Aristotle, Ethics VII, anger follows reason aliqualiter, “in some way”; it hears reason, but imperfectly. Reason says, imperfectly, “this ought to be revenged, this ought to be resented.”
• Asides: a joke about the confessional and “Canon 516, Eastern Code”; the great angry character in Shakespeare is Coriolanus (not so much Othello), whom the tribunes of the people provoke so that he ruins his advancement and turns against Rome.

5. Article 4, the body and replies: anger implies a collatio (“the angry man syllogizes”) #

The point: anger is in some way with reason because desire for revenge involves bringing together the punishment to be inflicted and the harm received.

1. Anger is a desire for revenge.
2. This implies a collatio, a bringing together, of the punishment to be inflicted and the harm given to us; Aristotle (Ethics VII): the angry man syllogizes, “it is necessary to oppose such a thing.”
3. To confer and to syllogize belong to reason; therefore anger is in some way with reason.

• Gloss on collatio: Albert the Great always says reason is collativus et discursivus, bringing together and going forward; in reasoning you bring the two premises together. He calls collatio “a kind of a middle term here.”
• Ad 1: a motion of the desiring power can be with reason in two ways: with reason commanding, and thus the will is with reason (the rational or reasonable desire); or with reason “speaking” [ed.: denuntiante], manifesting the injury, and thus anger is with reason (Aristotle, Problems: anger is with reason not as commanding but as manifesting the injury). The sense appetite does not obey reason immediately but by means of the will. Contrast: desiring candy, reason hardly enters; desiring to avenge myself, I must make a comparison: “you deserve to be punched in the nose” for what you have done. “Thomas sees distinctions, huh? Brothers are just confused.”
• Ad 2: brute animals have a natural instinct given by the divine reason, by which they have motions within and without like the motions of reason.
• Ad 3: ira audit aliqualiter rationem, as announcing that something has injured one, sed non perfecte audit, because it does not observe the rule of reason in paying back; it may do more. Example: the daily newspaper, someone angry does “more than required.” For anger is required some act of reason, and added is an impediment of reason; hence (Problems) those who are much drunk, having nothing of the judgment of reason, are not angered; those a little drunk are angered, having the judgment of reason but impeded.
• Aside: Aristotle somewhere says a man is more embarrassed by his concupiscence than by his anger, because concupiscence has less of reason; the story of Thomas taking the flame from the fire and chasing the maiden out: anger overcoming concupiscence, “it hears reason more.”
• Asides: the fat lady with the bucket of popcorn; mega-stuff Oreos, “more is better”; the great men (Coriolanus) are represented in terms of anger, the comic character (Homer’s lost Margites, Falstaff) in terms of concupiscence; Coriolanus is a man to be feared, and many who reach the top in government or army have that anger; LBJ at St. Mary’s College’s 100th anniversary chewing out his subordinates in a side room; Napoleon “absolutely irascible.”

6. Article 5, the objections: concupiscence seems more natural (“anger is not more natural than concupiscence”) #

The point: three objections for concupiscence; the sed contra from Ethics VII for anger.

• Obj. 1: a property of man is to be an animal mild by nature; mildness (mansuetudo, also the virtue moderating anger; cf. “gentleman”) is opposed to anger (Rhetoric II). Example: his maternal grandfather, so gentle he would not slap a mosquito but brushed it off. So anger seems altogether against the nature of man.
• Obj. 2: reason is divided against nature; what is done according to reason is not said to be by nature; anger is with reason, concupiscence without (Ethics VII, “that guy who calls this philosopher”); therefore concupiscence is more natural.
• Obj. 3: anger is desire for revenge; concupiscence is most of all desire for what pleases the sense of touch, food and reproduction, which are more natural to man than revenge. He agrees: “Candy’s always seemed more natural to me than revenge. It goes right in. Now you have to think about it.”
• Sed contra: Aristotle, Ethics VII, anger is more natural than concupiscence. “How could the philosopher have made such a mistake?” (ironic).

7. Article 5, the body: natural means caused by nature, then a fourfold view (“that is said to be natural; that is caused by nature”) #

The point: naturalness is judged from the cause, and the cause of a passion is taken on the side of the object or of the subject, the subject in three ways.

1. Natural is what is caused by nature (Physics II, where nature is defined). His gloss: “natural” can mean has a nature, but also “by nature” when you don’t have a nature. So whether a passion is more or less natural is considered only from its cause.
2. The cause of a passion is taken from the side of the object or from the side of the subject. Test case put to a student: “my hatred of Sam,” object or subject? Student: more on the subject, “although you may protest on the side of the object.”
3. On the side of the object: concupiscence, most of all for food and reproduction, is more natural than anger, since these are more natural than revenge. “Thank God, at least he’s seen that.”
4. On the side of the subject, in one way anger is more natural, in another concupiscence; he notes Thomas does not give the whole way to anger. The nature of man is threefold: genus, species, individual complexion.
   • Genus (man as animal): concupiscence more natural, from the common inclination to what conserves life, in the species by reproduction, in the individual by food.
   • Species (man as rational): anger more natural, since anger is with reason more than concupiscence; “I’m listening to reason more when I get angry than when I’m pursuing the candy or the popcorn ball,” and reason is peculiar to man as species. Aristotle, Ethics IV: it is more human to punish than to be meek, insofar as each naturally rises against what is contrary and harmful. Coriolanus: “Would you have me be false to myself? … I play the man I am.”
   • Individual complexion: anger more natural, because the disposition from one’s makeup to anger follows more easily than concupiscence; a man is disposed to anger by a choleric complexion, choler among the humors moving most quickly and being like fire; so the one disposed by complexion to anger is more prompt to be angry than the one disposed to concupiscence. “He’s excusing Coriolanus a bit here.”
   • Ethics VII: anger is more carried over from parents to son than concupiscence; Aristotle’s example of the son who dragged his father out, “he did that to his father, and my son will do it to me”; cf. the plays of Sophocles.

• He flags Thomas: “This is a marvelous guy, this Thomas,” against a certain confused “Harry” [unclear in recording] who cannot see these distinctions.

8. Article 5, the replies: temperament, dog and lion, reason on both sides (“does not have a surpassing excellence”) #

• Ad 1: in man the natural makeup is considered on the side of the body and on the side of reason. Bodily: man’s complexion is tempered, so as a species he has no excess of anger or any other passion, as the dog has according to species; this temperament is why man has the best sense of touch. Other animals, receding to some extreme complexion, are disposed as species to excess of a passion: the lion to boldness, the dog to anger, the hare [ed.: he hesitates between “hare” and “rabbit”] to fear. On the side of reason it is natural to man both to be angry and to be mild: reason causes anger insofar as it announces its cause, and calms it insofar as the man does not totally listen to reason’s command.
• Ad 2: reason itself pertains to man’s nature; so since anger is in some way with reason, it is in some way natural to man.
• Ad 3: that argument proceeds on the side of the object, where Thomas admits concupiscence is more natural. His summary: on the object and the generic nature, food is more natural than revenge; on the specific nature, anger involves reason more, though imperfectly.
• Closing exchange: a student asks about not reasoning at all, “do what feels,” the old song “Don’t think, feel”; he adds that reason can be harnessed in the service of concupiscence, like Falstaff, or Pandarus. Class stops.

His words #

• irascible vs. concupiscible: objects “with a certain elevation or difficulty” vs. “good and bad absolutely”
• libido quaedam: Cicero’s name for anger, “a kind of desire”; desire as a genus common to anger and concupiscence
• valde modica, nullo digna: very little, worthy of nothing (the mosquito)
• inveterate anger: hate as “anger grown old”
• ex causis vs. ex partibus: anger from sadness and desire as from causes, not parts
• aliqualiter: “in some way”; anger hears reason but not simpliciter perfecte
• collatio: “bringing together,” the comparison of punishment to harm; Albert: reason is collativus et discursivus
• reason “commanding” vs. reason “speaking”/manifesting the injury [ed.: praecipiente vs. denuntiante]
• ira audit aliqualiter rationem, sed non perfecte audit
• mansuetudo: mildness, gentleness; also the virtue moderating anger
• natural: “caused by nature”; “has a nature” vs. “by nature”
• complexion: bodily makeup, temperament; choleric complexion, choler like fire

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 46, a. 3 (objections, sed contra, body, three replies)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 46, a. 4 (inferred locus; he reads “to the fourth”: objections, sed contra, body, three replies)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 46, a. 5 (objections, sed contra, body, three replies)

Mentioned

• Cicero, Tusculan Questions (anger a libido; hate inveterate anger)
• Augustine, “the Rule” [unclear which work] (anger grows into hate)
• Damascene; Gregory of Nyssa (anger from sadness and desire)
• Aristotle, Rhetoric II (things very little worthy of nothing; mildness opposed to anger)
• Aristotle, Ethics VII (anger follows reason aliqualiter; the angry man syllogizes; anger more natural; anger passed from father to son)
• Aristotle, Ethics IV (more human to punish than to be meek)
• Aristotle, Problems (anger with reason as manifesting the injury; the very drunk are not angered)
• Aristotle, Physics II (definition of nature)
• Albert the Great (reason collativus et discursivus)
• Shakespeare, Coriolanus; Othello; Falstaff; Pandarus
• Homer, Margites (lost comic work); Sophocles
• Gospel passages where Christ is angry (hard-heartedness; the whip of cords)

His questions #

• Is whacking a mosquito revenge? No; it is valde modica, not worthy of anger.
• Are my mother and father parts of me? No; causes, not parts (ex causis, not ex partibus).
• Is the blood of Our Lord in the host? Yes, not by the words of consecration but because joined to the body.
• Isn’t that anger that dogs have? Yes; dogs are irascible by nature, though a student excepts golden retrievers.
• Does anger hear reason, yes or no? Aliqualiter, not perfectly.
• Who is the great angry character in Shakespeare? Coriolanus, more than Othello.
• Is my hatred of Sam on the side of the object or of the subject? More on the subject, though one may protest on the side of the object.
• How could the philosopher have made such a mistake (anger more natural)? Resolved by the object/subject and genus/species/individual distinctions.
• Why not not reason at all, “do what feels”? Left open, with the remark that reason can also serve concupiscence, as in Falstaff.