Summa I-II Q59 A3–4: Can the virtuous man be sad? Is every moral virtue about the passions?

Orientation #

He opens: “we’re up to Article Three, I guess, in Question Fifty-Nine,” and closes reading the last reply of Article Four, “as will be seen later on,” then “take a break.” The previous class ended in q. 59 aa. 1-2 on virtue and passion (Stoics vs. Peripatetics), and the next takes up a. 5 and the beginning of q. 60.

The class, in order #

1. Article 3, objections and sed contra (“those Stoics getting us in trouble again”) #

The point: the objections argue that virtue cannot be with sadness; the sed contra answers from Christ.

• Obj. 1: virtues are an effect of wisdom (Wisdom 8: wisdom teaches sobriety, justice, prudence, virtue; acquaintance with her has no bitterness) — he notes Thomas quotes this at the start of the Summa Contra Gentiles, “nothing is more delightful than pursuit of wisdom.” Aside: you think about God without sadness, but “think about your sins with sadness.”
• Obj. 2: sadness impedes operation (Philosopher, Ethics VII and X); what impedes good operation is repugnant to virtue.
• Obj. 3: sadness is a sickness of the soul (Tully, Tusculan Questions III); sickness is contrary to virtue, a good disposition of the soul. Aside: “I’m inclined to call a lot of people nowadays, ‘You’re sick’” — their moral position.
• Sed contra: Christ was perfect in virtue and was sad (Matthew 26, “my soul is sad usque ad mortem”); he wept for his dead friend — the shortest verse in the Gospels, “see how he loved him.”

2. Corpus: the Stoics’ three good passions and their first reason (“three good undergoings”) #

The point: Augustine (City of God XIV) reports the Stoics put three “good undergoings” [ed.: eupatheiai] in the wise man’s soul in place of three disturbances — for cupidity, will; for laetitia (inept joy), gaudium; for fear, caution — but for sadness nothing.

• Asides on the Stoic: Shakespeare’s pun stoic/“stocks”; the Greek Stoic told his son had died: “I always knew he was mortal” — “inhuman.”
• First Stoic reason, as he gives it: (1) sadness is about a bad thing already happened; (2) nothing bad can happen to the wise man, since (3) the only good of man is virtue, bodily goods no goods of man (“sounds like thinking he’s just a soul”), and only the inhonestum is an evil of man, which cannot be in the wise man.
• Student exchange on “death before dishonor” (a friend’s high-school motto): was Christ dishonored in his passion? Yes, dishonored by others; but he did no dishonor — the motto concerns not doing dishonor to save one’s life (denying the faith). Grade-school case: may the maiden jump from the building to escape rape? Some suggest yes if she is in danger of consenting; better to lose life than consent to sin.
• Thomas’s reply (“even the angelic doctor finds this unreasonable”): (1) man is put together from soul and body; (2) so what cooperates to conserve bodily life is a good of man — not his greatest good, since he can use it badly; (3) hence an evil contrary to this good can be in the wise man and bring about moderate sadness — when father, mother, brother, friend dies, “some sadness, and not excessive.”
• Second: the virtuous man can be without grave sin, but no one lives without levibus peccatis (1 John: “if we say we have no sin, we seduce ourselves” — “put that in your pipe, smoke it”). Third: though perhaps now without sin, he once had it, and sorrows laudably (2 Corinthians: sadness according to God works penance into stable salvation). Fourth: one may praiseworthily sorrow for another’s sin — the Syriac tradition names the monk “one who mourns”; Christ weeping over Jerusalem, angry at hardness of heart.
• Conclusion: as moral virtue is compatible with other passions moderated by reason, so with sadness. Gloss: bodily evil “is bad, but it’s not the worst thing”; love the soul more than the body — adultery is loving her body more than her soul.
• Asides: the reported conversation of Augustine and Thomas (“who’s going to be higher in heaven”); Padre Pio, his physical pain, “Madam, these aren’t decorations.”

3. The second Stoic reason and its reply (“sadness is about a present evil”) #

The point: the Stoics’ second reason is from the objects of the four passions; Thomas says it too is unreasonable.

• Their argument: sadness is about a present evil, fear about a future evil, pleasure about a present good, desire a future good; virtue can enjoy a good one has, desire one lacking, avoid a future evil — but for the soul to be subject to a present evil, through sadness, seems altogether contrary to reason (“can’t do anything about it”).
• Aside: a Japanese word (from Thomas Morris) with no English equivalent — the shrug after the typhoon — the Japanese as “a little bit stoic.”
• Reply: (1) some evil can be present to the virtuous man (as said); (2) reason detests it; (3) the sense-desiring power follows reason’s detesting — so it is sad, but moderately, according to reason’s judgment, since it pertains to virtue that the sense appetite be conformed to reason. Romeo and Juliet: sad at a supposed death, but “too much.”
• Ethics II: to be sad moderately in those things one ought to be sad about. His robbery examples: the girl at the hamburger place who realised the man had no gun and held the bag; the Worcester bank teller — “this is an unusual withdrawal notice, I’ll have to check” — the robber runs; the man who pocket-dialled 911 while robbing a store. The robbers are sad — is that virtuous sadness? No: he should be sad that he tried to rob. What they show: “we identify ourselves more with our reason than anything else” — students laugh at the stupidity, not the immorality. (“I’m gonna put that one in volume 2.”)
• Sadness is also useful for fleeing bad things: as goods, through pleasure, are more promptly sought, so evils, through sadness, more strongly fled.
• Thus: sadness about what fits virtue cannot be with virtue (virtue delights in its own proper acts); about whatever is repugnant to virtue, virtue is moderately sad — e.g. over people committing abortion.

4. Replies of Article 3 (“the wise man is not sad over wisdom”) #

• Ad 1: the wise man is not sad over wisdom, but over what impedes wisdom; in the blessed, where nothing impedes wisdom, sadness has no place.
• Ad 2: sadness impedes the operation one is sad about — the student who dislikes study is sad studying, impeding learning; but it aids promptly carrying out the things by which sadness is escaped.
• Ad 3: immoderate sadness (melancholy) is a sickness of the soul; moderate sadness pertains to the good disposition of the soul “according to the status of the present life” — Christ the example.

5. Article 4, objections and sed contra (“about pleasures and what sadnesses”) #

The point: whether every moral virtue is about the passions.

• Obj. 1: the Philosopher (Ethics II) says moral virtue is about pleasures and sadnesses, two of the eleven passions. His flag: one must understand in what way — as proper matter, or as something following on its act.
• Obj. 2: what is reasonable by participation is the subject of moral virtue (Ethics I: the soul divided into rational and non-rational, part of which can partake of reason); the passions are in that part. Historical aside: Plato’s Republic (Socrates) divides the soul into three parts matching the city — reason/rulers, spirit (fortitude)/soldiers, temperance/the mob — with no separate will; justice is the order of the three, not a part. So “Plato is a little bit responsible for this objection.” Aristotle too, after moral virtue in general (book II) and choice (start of book III), takes up fortitude and temperance first, “just like Plato,” then the lesser virtues (book IV), then justice (book V) — “a good beginning, Plato,” but the further you go the more you need the will. Music as witness that emotion can partake of reason: Mozart, good baroque; Bach’s B-minor Mass (from Warren Murray: written applying for a Catholic church post, following the Roman rather than Lutheran Mass; he did not get the job); Handel on the Messiah, “the heavens opened up.”
• Obj. 3: in every moral virtue some passion is found; either all are about passions or none; but fortitude and temperance are (Ethics III). Aside: fortitude the virtue especially of the man (“a man or a mouse”), temperance the one expected of the woman; justice is not so identified.
• Sed contra: justice, a moral virtue, is not about passions (Ethics V, the book on justice).

6. Corpus: reason orders the will too (“which is not the subject of passion”) #

The point: moral virtue perfects the desiring part (appetitiva) by ordering it to the good of reason; wherever something can be ordered by reason, there can be a moral virtue; and reason orders not only the passions of the sense power but also the operations of the intellectual desiring power, the will, which is not the subject of passion. Hence some moral virtues are about passions, some about operations.

• Distinction he presses: love the emotion vs. love the act of will — “very hard for people to get.” Deny emotions in God and they say “he’s just a stone, he doesn’t feel our pain”; a student adds “we should be passionate for God.” Easier to distinguish reason from the senses (the Greeks are accused of not doing so; later people fail to distinguish reason from imagination) than the will from the emotions. Marriage: the priest does not ask “do you have wonderful feelings about this woman” but “do you choose this woman” — witnessing a choice. St Paul on love means an act of will; “love your neighbour as yourself” cannot mean “feel as good about him.” Aristotle: the will is in reason, something immaterial: emotions we share with “the purring kitten,” will with the angels.
• Latin aside: Thomas uses actio for both an act like understanding/sensing and one with an exterior effect (kicking, heating), but reserves operatio for the former; in English, doing vs. making — doing with no exterior product keeps the name doing, that with a product gets the new name making, not because it is better but because something (a product) is added. Thinking about God is doing, not making (“self-made man”; “living it up this weekend”).
• Aside: his excursion into SCG book II and De Veritate on the angels — “we can never settle Thomas.”

7. Reply 1 and the digression on the beautiful (“as about something following upon its own act”) #

• Ad 1: not every moral virtue is about pleasures and sadnesses as its proper matter, but as something following its act: everyone virtuous delights in the act of virtue (he delights in paying his debts) and is sad about the contrary (rejoices at drinking moderately, sad at too much). The Philosopher, after the quoted words, adds: if virtues are about acts and passions, and on every action and passion follows pleasure or sadness, then virtue is about pleasures and sadnesses — “to wit, about something following upon.”
• The beautiful, same structure: is it more the object of knowing or desiring? He once thought desiring (falling in love with a beautiful girl; “lovely” from “love”); the first definition, “that which pleases when seen,” seems to name the appetite; but the pleasure follows upon seeing, so it is primarily object of the seeing power, the pleasure a consequence of the excellence seen. Better word order: “that which seen pleases.” Supports: Thomas in SCG quoting Aristotle, perfect seeing is the act of a well-disposed sight toward the most beautiful of objects; Augustine’s “too late have I come to know thee, thou ancient beauty”; and — what struck him most — the appropriation of goodness to the Holy Spirit (object of love, who proceeds by way of love) but beauty/species to the Son, who proceeds by way of mind.
• Related: last verse of the Adoro Te Devote (blessed when I see your glory); the psalm “my flesh pines and my soul thirsts… to see your power and your glory” — power and glory named because something is also for the body; Christ to the Sadducees, “you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God,” the power being for getting the body back.

8. Digression: the communion of saints, Mary, and asides (“marvelous article of the faith”) #

• Saints pray for us; for themselves they want only their body back; when the number of the elect is complete there is nothing left to ask, only praise and thanks. Thomas is clear the saints know what goes on on earth, so they hear our prayers. Student: can souls in purgatory pray for each other? He has never heard anyone say so; “I think they could in some way” — left open. Fr Stanley to his mother when his father died: never stop praying, “we don’t know when anybody gets out of purgatory”; surplus prayers go to someone else (“the heavenly recycling bin”). Protestants seem to reject that the saints know or care — “kind of inhuman.”
• Thomas: “Peter’s not in heaven, but the soul of Peter’s in heaven”; hence Pius XII’s argument that Mary’s body had to be assumed for Mary to be in heaven; De Koninck on the Assumption; Dionne on Mary’s grace being of the hypostatic order (Mother of God); “I am the Immaculate Conception” — the abstract expresses universality of causality, as God is wisdom itself; mediatrix of all grace. The Hail Mary’s second half from tradition, its order matched to the first (“Holy Mary” to “the Lord is with thee,” etc.).
• Student’s Exorcist story: the demon most afflicted by “Holy Mary, Mother of God”; EWTN interview (Raymond Arroyo); Georgetown (“demons are loose”), the canonical suit, Marymount and the faculty’s “choice” between the Jesuit tradition and the Church.

9. Closing the replies (“Can we finish the replies here?”) #

He asks to finish the replies; the second reply is passed over without being read aloud (only “second one, then the third one” is heard). Ad 3: in some virtues passions are the proper matter, in some not; hence not the same reason for all, “as will be seen later on.” Break.

His words #

• good undergoings: his rendering of the Stoics’ three good passions in the wise man [ed.: eupatheiai / bonae passiones].
• laetitia / gaudium: laetitia “kind of inept joy,” gaudium its virtuous replacement.
• inhonestum: the dishonourable, the only evil the Stoics admit for man.
• levibus peccatis: light (venial) sins none lives without.
• the sense-desiring power: the appetite that follows reason’s detesting [ed.: sensitive appetite].
• appetitiva: “the desiring part of the soul.”
• understandable desiring power: the will [ed.: intellectual appetite].
• actio vs. operatio: Thomas’s Latin; operatio kept for acts with no exterior effect; in English, doing vs. making.
• that which seen pleases: his preferred order for the definition of the beautiful.
• species: what is appropriated to the Son (beauty).

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas, ST I-II q. 59 a. 3 (objections, sed contra, corpus, replies 1-3).
• Thomas, ST I-II q. 59 a. 4 (objections, sed contra, corpus, replies 1 and 3; reply 2 not read). Mentioned
• Wisdom 8; Matthew 26 (“sad unto death”); the “Jesus wept” verse; 1 John (“if we say we have no sin”); 2 Corinthians (sadness according to God); psalm “my flesh pines”; Christ to the Sadducees.
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I, II, III, IV, V, VII, X.
• Augustine, City of God XIV; Confessions (“too late”).
• Cicero, Tusculan Questions III.
• Plato, Republic (three parts of soul and city).
• Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles (prologue on wisdom; book II; perfect seeing); De Veritate on angels; Adoro Te Devote; Thomas on appropriation of beauty to the Son.
• Pius XII on the Assumption; De Koninck on the Assumption; Dionne on Mary’s grace.

His questions #

• Was Christ dishonoured in his passion? Yes by others; but he did no dishonour — “death before dishonour” means not doing dishonour to save one’s life.
• Can the maiden jump off the building to escape being raped? Some suggest yes if she is in danger of consenting; better to lose life than consent to sin.
• Was the robber’s sadness virtuous? No; he should be sad that he tried to rob.
• Is moral virtue about pleasures and sadnesses as its proper matter, or as something following its act? As something following its act (reply 1).
• Does the priest at a wedding ask about feelings or about choice? About choice — the couple witness to an act of will.
• Is the beautiful more the object of knowing or of desiring? Of knowing (seeing); the pleasure follows upon the seeing.
• Do the saints pray for themselves? Only for their body back; otherwise they pray for us.
• Can the souls in purgatory pray for each other? Left open (“I think they could in some way”).