Aquinas on Anger, Part 1: Anger vs. Hate, Who We Get Angry At, and the Kinds of Anger (Summa I-II, Q. 46, Articles 6–8)

Orientation #

He opens: “we’re up to Article Six here, Question forty-six,” recalling “that strange article about anger being in some way more natural than concupiscence” where “Thomas made a lot of distinctions” (prev. lecture). He closes by announcing a break “before we go into question forty-seven.” The previous class covered q. 46 aa. 3-5 (anger in the irascible, anger and reason, anger more natural than concupiscence); the next treats the causes and remedies of anger (q. 47).

The class, in order #

1. Article 6, objections and sed contra (“anger is more grave than hate”) #

The point: three arguments that anger is worse than hate, against Augustine.

1. Proverbs 27:4: anger has no mercy, nor fury that erupts; but hate sometimes has mercy. Aside: in Scripture “mercy” and “anger” are contrasted, “anger for justice.”
2. It is worse to suffer evil and be sorrowful over it than simply to undergo it; the hater is satisfied if the hated one suffers any evil, but the angry man wants him to know it was done to him and to sorrow (the Philosopher).
3. What comes together from many things is more stable, as a habit from many acts; anger arises from the running together of many passions (seen before), hate does not. He interjects the opposite intuition: what is more pure is stronger, “the more power is one, the more infinite.” Sed contra: Augustine in the Rule compares hate to a beam and anger to a speck; “better to get angry with your brother than to hate him.”

2. Article 6, body (“not in so far as it is evil”) #

The point: hate is much worse than anger because of the different reason (ratio) under which each wills evil.

1. The species and ratio of a passion is weighed from its object.
2. The object of anger and of hate is the same in subject: both desire evil to someone.
3. But not under the same ratio: the hater wills evil insofar as it is evil; the angry man wills the evil of the other insofar as it has the notion of good, i.e. as he estimates it just, as vengeance. Recalled from above: hate is the applying of bad to bad, anger the applying of good to bad.
4. To desire evil under the aspect of the just has less of the notion of evil than to wish someone’s evil simply; it can even belong to the virtue of justice if measured, tempered by the precept of reason. Anger fails only in this, that in taking revenge it does not obey reason’s precept. Conclusion: hate is much worse and more grave; Thomas and Augustine agree. Example: the Gospel says several times that Christ is angry (at their hardness of heart); he knows no passage saying Christ hates a person, though one should hate what is really evil, like sin. He infers from this reason that anger can be applied metaphorically to God more readily than hate.

3. Article 6, replies (“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”) #

Ad 1, a distinction: in anger and hate consider (a) the very thing desired and (b) the intensity of the desire.

• As to what is desired, anger has more mercy: hate desires evil as such and is satisfied by no measure of evil, because what is desired as such is desired without measure (Politics I; the avaricious man wants wealth without limit — Sam Walton asked what next: “I want more”; Ecclesiasticus: the enemy, if he finds the time, would not be satisfied with blood). Anger desires evil only under vindicative justice, so when the evil exceeds the measure of justice in his estimate he takes mercy (beat the kid too much and you feel sorry for him; his father: “sit in that chair and don’t move”). Rhetoric II: the angry man takes mercy if many things come together, the hater for none.
• As to intensity, anger more excludes mercy, since its motion is more impetuous on account of the inflammation of the choler (“who is able to bear the impetus of the spirit aroused”). Hence Thomas treats mildness, which moderates anger, under temperance. Shakespeare’s “the very wrath of love”: a metaphor species to species, comparing intensities. Stalin: you have to really hate your opponent to overcome him. Ad 2: the angry man wants evil as just vengeance; vengeance comes about through pain, and pain by its notion is contrary to the will, inflicted, and inferred for guilt; so he wants the other to perceive, sorrow, and know why. The hater cares nothing for this, desiring the evil as such. And it is not true that what saddens is worse: injustice and imprudence are evils, yet being voluntary they do not sadden those in whom they are (Rhetoric II). Image: the Ents in Lord of the Rings stomping orcs — not interested in their knowing, just wanting them wiped out; that is hate. Aside: Aristotle says a well-regulated court would not allow emotional appeals, but since they do, here is how. Ad 3: what is caused from many causes is more stable when they are taken as the matter of one cause, but one cause can prevail over many. Hate comes from a more permanent cause: anger from a commotion of soul at an injury seen, hate from a disposition by which one regards the other as contrary to oneself. A passion passes more quickly than a disposition or habit, so anger passes more quickly than hate, even though hate is a passion coming from a disposition; Rhetoric II: hate is more incurable. Examples: tribes hating from generation to generation; Adenauer and De Gaulle reconciling Germany and France (anger, dissipated) vs. Shiites and Sunnis (permanent hate). A student adds that John Paul II held everything boils down to culture, not economics as Marx said, and that religions differ in preaching love or hate; he replies with Christ’s “love your enemies” — “this treatise on the emotions is good for an awful lot of reasons.”

4. Article 7, objections and sed contra (“only to those to whom there is justice”) #

The point: is anger only toward those to whom justice and injustice pertain?

1. No justice of man to irrational things, yet the writer throws the pen and the horseman strikes the horse. Class exchange: kicking the computer; a student: it is usually doing exactly what it should (“more logical than you”); the cubicle-smashing commercial and the duck told to “strike any key.”
2. No justice of man to himself or to what is his own (Ethics V, the book on justice), yet the penitent is angry with himself (“I could kick myself”; Psalm 4, “be angry and do not sin”).
3. Justice and injustice can be toward a whole genus or community (when the city injures somebody), but anger, the Philosopher says, is to a singular person — we hate the thief as a class, we get angry with an individual. Sed contra: the Philosopher in Rhetoric II. Aside: Hobbes liked Aristotle’s Rhetoric (“you can see why”), not the Ethics.

5. Article 7, body and ad 1 (“from imagination alone, announcing the hurt”) #

Body: anger desires evil under the aspect of the just, vindicating what was done; to infer revenge pertains to justice, to injure pertains to injustice; so on the side of the cause (injury inflicted by another) and of the vengeance desired, anger pertains to the same as justice and injustice. “I’m angry with you because you were unjust to me, and I desire to get even because justice is evenness.” Ad 1, the distinction he calls “a beautiful distinction”: anger, though with reason, is also in brute animals, moved through imagination by natural instinct to something like works of reason. Since man has both reason and imagination, the motion of anger (motus irae) can arise in two ways:

• from imagination alone announcing the hurt: hence some motion of anger even to irrational and inanimate things, by likeness to the motion in animals against the harmful (take the bone from the dog);
• from reason announcing the injury: and so, Rhetoric II, there is no anger toward insensible things or the dead — they do not sorrow, which the angry seek above all, and no revenge is possible since it is not theirs to make an injury. Did the pen or the frozen computer inflict an injury? “That’s your imagination, not the reason.” Coriolanus: is his anger from reason? He is injured by the democratic rabble of Rome denying him his honours because he will not show his wounds to the crowd — “read Coriolanus now with great pleasure after the treatise on anger.” Student: if it arises from imagination, is it still anger? Answer: yes, as in animals, still the passion; Thomas is saying only that anger from reason is restricted to those to whom justice belongs. Throwing the pen is “kind of punishing the pen”; “that’ll teach you” — unless you’re an animist. How does Thomas’s seeing all these distinctions show he uses reason? Looking before and after: by the axiom nothing is before or after itself, to see before and after you must see this is not that, i.e. a distinction. Aside: at Fossanova near his end Thomas said a man can’t keep this up all day. The body of the article does not touch the distinction; the reader “dies for the distinction” reflecting on anger at his tool. Student: there seems something just about kicking the car whose battery you left on; answer: pre-rational rather than irrational — “taking it out on the dog” means you are angry at something else (the wife gave you lip, you hit the dog; his father, angry with his mother, got out and kicked the car — “I’m glad he kicked the car instead of me”; the boss’s anger passed down rank by rank to the last man, who kicks a dog).

6. Article 7, ad 2 (“metaphorical justice and injustice of a man to himself”) #

Ethics V: there is a certain metaphorical justice and injustice of man to himself, insofar as reason rules the irascible and concupiscible; accordingly a man is said to be angry with himself, but properly and as such no one is angry with himself. Ordinary speech is close to justice here: “to thine own self be true,” “you’re not being just to yourself,” “you owe it to yourself” (a vacation, sleep, ice cream). A student asks whether one owes oneself penance for sin: answer, you really owe God; the penitent is a tool of God’s justice. Exchange on satisfaction vs. purgation: punishment inflicted on oneself is satisfaction; inflicted by God, as in purgatory, purgation (Bonaventure’s satispassio; Thomas uses “purging” in the Summa contra Gentiles). The metaphor has a great likeness: the ball player angry with himself for the wrong pitch. On “forgiving yourself”: a student says it is rather accepting the humiliation of one’s sin; the problem is people who won’t accept it.

7. Article 7, ad 3 (“the whole city is computed as one singular”) #

Rhetoric II gives one difference: hate can be to a genus (we hate the whole genus of thieves), anger only to a singular. Reason: hate is caused by a quality grasped as dissonant to our disposition, which can be universal or particular; anger is caused by someone injuring us by his own act, and actions are of singulars. When the whole city injures us, the city is computed as one singular — Coriolanus joining Rome’s enemies to punish Rome, turning down the citizens, cold, until his mother comes out and he collapses. Student: what of people who loathe themselves and want to harm themselves? Answer, loosely: not properly hatred or anger, maybe some hatred, maybe something like sloth; the man in the mirror who hates his looks and goes on a diet — “angry with myself for letting myself become so fat” — is the metaphorical justice of Ethics V, judging yourself like another person; “strange beings we are.”

8. Article 8, objections and sed contra (“three species to anger”) #

The point: does Damascene rightly assign three species — fel, mania, furor (translated wrath, ill will, rancor)? Class works on the words: fel is gall, bile, bitterness; mania “like madness,” “crazy”; furor intensity.

1. Species of no genus are diversified by accidents (Porphyry; red, white, blue are not species of triangle); but these differ accidentally: fel the beginning of the motion, mania anger persisting, furor anger observing its time — “wait for the right moment to strike.”
2. Tully, Tusculan Questions IV: excandescentia (he tries “burning up,” “flaming out”), in Greek thymosis (sounding like thymos, the irrational appetite), is anger just now rising and now stopping; but Damascene says thymosis is furor; so furor does not seek time but fails in time — a question of naming.
3. Gregory, Morals XXI, three grades: anger without voice, with voice, with word expressed, after Matthew 5 (angry with his brother; “Raca”; “you fool”); Damascene lays down nothing on the side of voice. “Only Thomas can clear up all this commotion with the words.” Sed contra: authority of Damascene and Gregory of Nyssa (Nemesius, “whoever he is”). He remarks someone here “is deceived by the fallacy of equivocation… even the Greek Thomas” [wording unclear in recording] — “a lesson to all of you,” the most frequent fallacy, deceit from words.

9. Article 8, body (“give to anger somewhat growth”) #

The three species are taken according to what gives anger growth, in three ways:

1. from the facility of the motion: fel, quickly kindled;
2. on the side of the sadness causing anger, which long remains in memory: mania, “from manendo” (remaining), not necessarily madness;
3. on the side of what the angry man desires, revenge: furor, which never rests until it punishes — revenge movies, Batman after those who killed his parents (“even Batman can be illuminated with the prima secundae”). Ethics IV (where the virtue about anger is treated, after money and honour, fortitude and temperance having come in book III): the acuti, quickly angry; the amari (bitter), who long retain anger; the difficiles, who never rest unless they punish.

10. Article 8, replies and the Iago question (“he never rests until he punishes”) #

Ad 1: what gives anger some perfection is not wholly accidental to it, unlike red, white, blue to triangle, so species may be assigned — “maybe not a perfect example of a species.” Ad 2: excandescentia in Tully pertains rather to the first species, perfected by swiftness, than to furor; but nothing prevents thymosis, Latin furor, from implying both swiftness to anger and firmness of purpose to punish (“I will get even”). His own case: an old schoolmate called his thesis “a back-asset way of proceeding”; he just laughed — not cito. “A certain leeway in the words.” Is Iago angry with Othello, or does he hate him? Class: passed over for Cassio, the playboy, with suspicion about his wife — not quick to anger, “a cool anger,” but about perceived injury, and he never rests until he punishes: “a much more subtle example” of anger. Ad 3: Gregory’s grades are distinguished by the effect of anger, not by the diverse perfection of the motion itself, which the body treats. Break “before we go into question forty-seven.”

His words #

• “more grave” (gravior): worse, as of hate vs. anger.
• ratio: the reason or aspect under which a passion’s object is desired.
• “vindicative” / vindicta: vengeance, revenge under the aspect of the just.
• “applying bad to bad” vs. “applying good to bad”: hate vs. anger.
• cholera: the choler whose inflammation makes anger impetuous.
• motus irae: the motion of anger; “we call the passions emotions.”
• ex ratione annunciante: anger arising from reason announcing the injury, vs. from imagination announcing the hurt.
• “looking before and after”: his description of reason; seeing a distinction is included in it.
• metaphorica (justice): Aristotle’s justice of a man to himself, reason ruling the irascible and concupiscible.
• satisfaction vs. purgation (satispassio, Bonaventure): self-inflicted vs. God-inflicted punishment.
• fel, mania, furor: Damascene’s three species (gall/quickly kindled; from manendo, remaining in memory; never rests until it punishes).
• excandescentia (his “excondicencia”), thymosis: Cicero’s term for anger just rising; the Greek Damascene equates with furor.
• acuti, amari, difficiles: Ethics IV’s three kinds of the angry (his “acutos… amaros”); cito, quickly.
• fallacy of equivocation: “deceit from words,” the most frequent fallacy.

Texts #

Read in class:

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 46, a. 6 (objections, sed contra, body, replies) — verified.
• Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 46, a. 7 (whole article) — verified.
• Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 46, a. 8 (whole article) — verified.
• Handout “The First Definition of Reason,” p. 58 — verified source; matches his “looking before and after” account of reason in segment 5. Mentioned:
• Aristotle, Rhetoric II (on the passions; anger takes mercy, hate incurable; no anger to the insensible or dead; hate to a genus, anger to a singular).
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics V (justice; metaphorical justice to oneself), IV (virtue about anger; acuti, amari, difficiles), III (fortitude, temperance).
• Aristotle, Politics I (things desired as such desired without measure).
• Augustine, Rule (beam and speck).
• Cicero, Tusculan Questions IV (excandescentia); Gregory, Morals XXI; Damascene; Gregory of Nyssa / Nemesius; Porphyry (on accidents and species).
• Proverbs 27:4; Ecclesiasticus (the enemy not satisfied with blood); Psalm 4; Matthew 5; Thomas, Summa contra Gentiles (purging); Bonaventure (satispassio).
• Shakespeare, Coriolanus, Othello, “the very wrath of love”; Lord of the Rings (Ents); Batman.
• Printed volume DHB Vol. III, The School of Aristotle, p. 823 — verified source.

His questions #

• Does Christ anywhere say he hates? Is anger or hate more applicable metaphorically to God? No passage found for hate of a person; anger, from Thomas’s reason here, applies more readily.
• Do you get angry at computers? Yes, usually because it is doing exactly what it should — “more logical than you.”
• Which book of Aristotle did Hobbes like? The Rhetoric.
• Is Coriolanus’s anger from reason? Yes: injured by the rabble denying him his deserved honours.
• If anger arises from imagination, is it still anger? Yes, as in animals; only anger from reason is restricted to those to whom justice belongs.
• How does Thomas’s seeing all these distinctions show he uses reason? Reason looks before and after, and seeing before/after includes seeing this is not that.
• Do you owe yourself penance, or is that justice? You really owe God; self-punishment is satisfaction, God’s is purgation.
• What is self-loathing — hatred or anger? Left open: not properly either; maybe some hatred, something like sloth, or metaphorical justice.
• Is Iago angry with Othello, or does he hate him? A cool but real anger over perceived injury: not quick, but never resting until he punishes.