Prima Secundae
79. Aquinas on Pleasure, Part 1: Is Pleasure a Passion? (Summa I-II q.31 a.1)
Class of 2012-09-27
https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/11-prima-secundae/079-aquinas-on-pleasure-part-1-is-pleasure-a-passion-summa-i/

[0:00] The Father, the Son, Holy Spirit, Amen. God, our enlightenment, guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, to illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor, pray for us and help us to understand all that you have written. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Amen.

[0:27] So now we're up to pleasure, right? Huh? Pleasant topic. Then we're now to consider about delectatio huh? Pleasure and tristitia, sadness, right? Huh? Now about pleasure, four things ought to be what considered. I didn't know that there were four things to be considered, but see what those are. First, about pleasure itself, by itself, right?

[1:04] Secondly, about the causes of pleasure, right? Third, about its what effects. Up to this point, does this remind you of something else? Street is love. Yeah, yeah. It's a very beautiful way, huh? What is love, and what are the causes of love, and what are the effects of love, right? It's beautiful. And then fourth, though, about the goodness and badness of it, huh? Can pleasure be bad?

[1:37] Desired for its own sake, how can it be bad? You know. But notice, if you look at Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, you know he talks about pleasure when he talks about temperance, of course, in the third book. But he talks about pleasure again. He talks about continence and so on in the seventh book. But he even comes back in the tenth book, and he's going to talk about what, but finally, what happiness is, right?

[2:01] And he's got to clear up about pleasure. Got to put that somewhat aside, and then happiness really consists in. So it's a very important topic. So about the first eight things are asked. I didn't know that either. Eight things were asked about this. This case is, you know, interesting case. Just making nothing go wrong.

[2:30] Just sign with how little we thought about these things, right? Did we not ask these eight things? First, with your pleasure is a passio, right? Now, could translate passio as passion in English, or those kinds of connotations you don't want to necessarily limit to, but you can say emotion, right? Or sometimes even one meaning of the word feeling, right? Huh? But passio is the one they use there.

[2:57] That's related to the word emotion, right? Because passio means undergoing. Now, it's kind of a surprise. Whether it is in what time? This touches upon the disagreement there between the two greatest philosophers, Plato and Aristotle.

[3:18] Third, whether it differs from joy. When you speak of what pleasure and joy and pain and sadness, right? Joy and sadness are a little more spiritual, it seems, right? And pleasure and pain are more what bodily thing, right? Huh? So we speak of pleasure and pain, especially regard to the sense of touch. But joy and sadness are a little more what spiritual, yeah.

[3:54] So is envy a kind of pain, or is it more a kind of sadness? Chiefly, it's sadness, I think. Yeah, yeah. And is pity more a kind of pain or a kind of sadness over the misfortune of another?

[4:14] Yeah, yeah. And melancholy, right? Huh? It's a kind of what sadness, right? It's a little more spiritual cause, right? Okay. Yeah, we want to we want to be eternally happy. We don't necessarily want to have eternal pleasure. Yeah. What does it say? There's more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents right? Yeah. Yeah. it doesn't seem more pleasure.

[4:45] Another round of beer. In the prayer after communion, it isn't Thomas Aquinas, Gaudium, right? Fourth, whether it's found in the intellectual desiring part, right? Whether it's found in the will, right?

[5:13] Fifth, are the comparisons of the pleasures of the higher appetite and the pleasure of the lower one, huh? Six are the comparison of sense pleasures to each other.

[5:32] Seven, whether there is some pleasure that's not natural. And eight, whether one pleasure can be contrary to another pleasure, huh? So I can go from philosophy to Mozart, but not some other pleasures. Okay, so whether delectatio is a passio now, right? To the first, then one goes forward. Thus, it seems that pleasure is not a what passion, emotion. For Damascene, in the second book, huh? It is called second book.

[6:22] It's the famous book of Damascene, right, huh? Orthodox faith, right? It's always been quoted, eh? He distinguishes, what operation from what passion, saying that operation is a motion which is according to what nature. Passion, however, is the emotion against nature. This is kind of unusual use of these words. But pleasure is an operation, as the philosopher says in the seventh and tenth book of the Ethics, right?

[6:59] Rather than it's emotion in time, right? Therefore, pleasure is not a passion, huh? Not really. I'm mixed up, aren't you? Yeah, especially when you compare two different authors who might be using the words there. Yeah. yeah. Moreover, pati est moveri, huh? To undergo, right? To suffer is to be moved, right? Then.

[7:25] So in the third book of the Physics of Natural Hearing, Aristotle takes up what motion is, right? Then he takes up acting upon and undergoing, actio and passio in Latin. poiein and paschein in there, right? The two categories. That's when Thomas does a little nice digression there. He explains the ten categories, huh?

[7:50] And divides them better than. Albert the Great does. I was kind of preparing them, you know, for talking about the book and its implications He said, "What is the human condition as far as error is concerned? And what does Aristotle, you know, think about this human condition, right? And Thomas, you know, and and what passage? book Of course he's not aware of it, but it's in the commentary in the third book on the soul, right?

[8:21] And Aristotle is talking about the early Greeks, and he says they gave this as the cause of knowledge, right? But they gave an explanation of why there's deception and error, and that seemed to be more proper to animals than to know, right? And

[8:40] he says we see that people from themselves are what deceived and so on, and they need a teacher to get them out of their errors and so on. And as a teacher, you realize how easily the students, you know, make mistakes and so on. And how long it takes to sometimes see through some of these mistakes or errors. And he says, and we spend more time, pluri tempore, right, in error than in the knowledge of truth.

[9:07] Huh? Only after a long, difficult. So it's a pretty, pretty sad situation for. I know. One time, I took a sabbatical there. I was working on error, you know, and so on. And I couldn't help but remember this guy who had gone got a medical degree, but didn't get into psychiatry, right? You know, and of course, course to him it seemed like everybody's about ready to crack up, you know.

[9:33] We're about that far away from that yet, all, all around. Well, I was going to, you know, we're that far away from our next mistake, you know. It's so hard to avoid that.

[9:48] Okay. So pati huh? To undergo is to be moved, right? It's like we get the word emotion, right, from being moved. But pleasure does not consist in being moved, and but in what having been moved. That's interesting, he says that. For is caused pleasure from the good now attained, right? Therefore, pleasure is not passion, right? And so we speak of the beautiful scenery as being what how restful, how restful this is.

[10:25] Mozart's music is restful. That's the stuff you hear, which is what did CS Lewis say? Hell is a kingdom of noise. Yeah. I learned a saying from Francis. Somebody told me in French. Says le bruit ne fait pas de bien Le bruit ne fait pas de bruit the noise doesn't do any good, and the good doesn't make any noise. Yeah. Something like that. So very music in heaven, right?

[11:01] Very beautiful music in heaven. Thomas talks about that. And in hell there'd be noise, huh? Remember a guy being in the army and saying they're trying to sleep at night during that kind of dorm, and they'd all play these little pocket radios, you know, hearing the same crazy stuff all night long. I know my cousin; he was in the navy. You know, he would sleep in the in the shop because.

[11:22] Get away from the the noise. Yeah. He says, when you hear these, the other guy was saying, you hear this the same crazy song being played all night long. It goes through your head all day. You know, it just doesn't. That's why we're all this close to cracking up. Don't use this this kind of rock music to to soften up these guys. They're trying to, you know, interrogate you and get the answers out of you.

[11:48] You go out of your mind after a while. Previously. Moreover, pleasure consists in a certain perfection of the what one delighted, right? For as Aristotle says in the tenth book of the *Nicomachean Ethics*, it perfects what operation, right?

[12:17] So when I'm pleased hearing the music of Mozart, I listen more what intensely, right? Huh? So I'm pleased with the words of Shakespeare, and I meditate on those words. Huh? Wisely and slow, they stumble; they run fast, and so on. And similarly, if you enjoy thinking about God, right, then you think more intensely about God, huh? This knowledge of future contingents and so on.

[12:44] But to be perfected is not to undergo or to be what altered, huh? As is said in the seventh book of physics, huh? And even in learning, you know, would you say that when you learn, you are altered or changed? To be perfected is to be changed.

[13:05] You say that Michelangelo altered the marble, changed the marble, or he perfected it. Yeah. The the second book of the the second book of the De Anima So it's certainly pleasure in the perfection of the what operation, right? Huh. So whether it be the eye or the ear, right? Huh. My brother Mark was visiting his friend in Detroit there, and this guy had friends who were into art, you know, painters and so on, right?

[13:37] Huh. And they're entirely in their eyes, right? Huh. And they describe you know he'd come into the room and he'd be looking around the shades of color you know oh I've never seen quite a you know shade like that you know they're they're so taken up in their eyes huh like they say about Mozart you know the man was entirely in his ear right when he's listening to music right you see but there's an intensity of Mozart's what hearing there right?

[14:03] Huh. Um he heard the music more than anybody else right and there was more delight right because the music was beautiful right in describe Mozart there and he heard some piece of Bach you know didn't have too much of the old Bach you know around that time his music you know Mozart what is that you know you know he's he heard this you know and so it's certainly pleasure right?

[14:32] Huh. So. So it's not a an altering of the thing but a perfection of it right especially in terms of operation right my enjoyment of the music of Mozart is what kind of kind of perfects in some way my what hearing that music huh or my delight in the painting of some good painter you know

[15:08] so this is said in both the seventh book of physics or natural hearing the third second book of the De Anima so therefore pleasure is not a passion right

[15:21] but against all this is what the great Augustine says in both the ninth and in the fourteenth book about the city of God where he lays down pleasure sive gaudium right laetitia right he puts them among the other passions of the what soul right? Huh. Okay.

[15:44] Well Thomas has got to clarify the words right? Huh. Doctor, you say that you gave an example. You said you're hearing you're listening to Mozart as a perfection of what? No my my pleasure I take in listening to Mozart's music is a perfection of my hearing right? Okay. Or the pleasure I take in seeing the Virgin of the Rocks there by Da Vinci there, right? My favorite painting I was in college, right?

[16:16] Intensifies my seeing it, right? Or the pleasure I take in understanding God, right? Intensifies my understanding of God, right? Dwelling in it, huh? Keeps me awake, doesn't it? Thinking about God, okay. Yeah,

[16:42] the famous passage of Aristotle, you know, where he talks about even a little imperfect knowledge of the higher things delights us more, you know, than this leisurely knowledge. You know, if I know how many chairs there are in this room, you know, it would be kind of easy for me to know how many chairs in the room, but I have to count them. It wouldn't be too hard to count them, you know.

[17:02] But it wouldn't be any great pleasure to know the number of chairs. I don't know. I don't know the number of chairs in this room, do you? And even though we could easily know it, it wouldn't give any delight, right? I can't know God easily, but the little bit I do know about Him delights me more. He makes a beautiful comparison. He says, "Just as a glimpse of someone we love, right, delights us more than a leisure view of the boss at work or something, you know, or someone else or the bus driver, it is, you know.

[17:35] " Okay. Well, Thomas says I answer. It should be said that the emotion, right, the emotion we contain in us, right, the motion of the sensitive desiring power, right. Appetitus there doesn't refer to what the act of desire, but to the desiring power, right? We explained before why the desiring power is named from that particular passion. It's more like emotion, right? Stands out. So he says, the motion of the desire of the sense desiring power, appropriate properly, is called a what?

[18:17] Passion, as has been said above, when we started talking about these things. For any affection proceeding from the sensitive apprehensione it's the sense knowing power,

[18:33] is a motion of the sense desiring power. So we have these two desiring powers in us: the will, right, and then the sense desire, and one follows upon reason, and the other upon the senses, huh?

[18:52] And this necessarily belongs to what? Pleasure. To pleasure, right? For as the philosopher and that's again Aristotle, right, says in the first book of the rhetoric, huh? That pleasure is a certain motion of the soul, right? And a what? A constitution simul tota, huh? The second eternity, right? And sensible existing in what? Nature, huh?

[19:29] Now, Tom says, for the understanding of this, right? We should consider; it should be considered that just as it happens in natural things, huh? That some things what follow or attain, I guess, their natural perfections, right? So this also happens in the what animals, huh?

[19:56] And although to be moved to perfection is not All at once, for we'd say in English, right? But in Latin they say totum simul like the only definition of eternity, right? So even though to be moved to perfection is in time, right? It's not. It's a before and after. It's not all together, right?

[20:19] Categories or chapter 12 he talks about before, and then in chapter thirteen about simul or hama in Greek, right? Together, I would say. But nevertheless, to have achieved the natural perfection is totum simul, is all at once, huh?

[20:42] So one is moved to perfection in time, right? In emotion, but one is perfect all at once. Sounds kind of funny at first, right? But it took time to get there, right? Yeah. So the pietas, you know, when he's making the pietas, huh? There was motion, right? He's chipping away and so on, right? But all at once, the thing was done, right? Another example might be Arthur Rubenstein, but perfecting one of Chopin's pieces or something like that.

[21:15] He's worked on it. He's worked on it. He's finally perfected his playing. Is that the same thing? Well, of course, when he plays it, he's got to. He speaks of motion, of movements, right? Movements of the piece. So it's going to be in time. Okay. I remember. This reminds me of a short verse by Belloc After his after his wife had died, he had some affection for this woman named Juliet, somebody, and he took a kind of a comparison in words with the way we understand the Trinity, and he says, "Of three and one and one and three, my doubting mind would, my feeble mind would doubting be, until grace, grace and something and beauty met and all at once were Juliet.

[21:59] " That's not all at once. Oh, there it was. He experienced perfection, right? All at once. But you would say, you know, all at once he completes the piece, right? He completes playing it, right? In that time. Let's say it took ten minutes to finish. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, it's all at once that is finished. Okay. Yeah. Okay. It's all at once that the pie is ready, right?

[22:26] To eat it, huh? The pieta. Yeah. Okay. So although to be moved to perfection is not all at once totum simul, nevertheless to have achieved, right, the natural perfection of the thing is all at once, huh?

[22:48] Now this, however, is a difference between animals and other what natural things that are not alive. Because the other natural things, when they are constituted in that which belongs to them according to nature, they do not sense this.

[23:08] But animals sense this, right? They feel great, right? Cat starts purring after he's been fed, you know, or you're giving them a little rubbing and so on, yeah. And from this sense, is caused a certain what? Motion of the soul in the sense appetite, huh? And this motion is what? Pleasure.

[23:38] Through this, therefore, that is has been said, that pleasure is a motion of the soul. It's placed in its what? Genus, right? It doesn't mean that the soul by itself without the body, right? But because you have a soul, right? They call it emotion of the soul, right? Sometimes they call emotions their, you know, passiones animae, right? And you got to be careful about that because you might think it's in the soul by itself, right?

[24:06] But in one because of the soul, right? Through this, however, that is said constituted in its what? Existing nature, right? That is in that which exists in the nature of the thing is laid down the cause of the what? Pleasure. Because that's due to the presence of a good that is connatural, right?

[24:35] So if the water is what? Too hot, right? Or too cold, then the body is what? Doesn't fit the body, right? Huh? So it's not going to give you what? Pleasure, right? Huh? And if the music, the sound is too loud, it's going to be turn that down because it's hurting the ears, right? It's not proportionate, it's not connatural, right? Huh?

[25:03] But through this that it is called all at once, simul tota, it shows that the constitution ought not to be taken in so far as is is being constituted, right? Huh? But in so far as it is in the state of being constituted, as it were, in the term or limit or end of the what? Motion.

[25:32] For and this is the difference with Plato and Aristotle. For pleasure is not a generation, as Plato what? Laid down, huh? And they give reference there to the Philebus, right? Huh?

[25:45] But it consists more in being made, right? Huh? As is said in the seventh book of the Ethics, huh? To this Through this that is called sensible excludes the that is called sensible, excludes the what? Perfections of things without sensation, in which there is no what? Pleasure, right? So the rocks have no pleasure, right? Not even the poor trees, right?

[26:18] Thus, therefore, it is clear that since pleasure is a motion in the animal desiring power, following upon the what? The grasping of the senses, the knowing of the senses. Thomas used the word apprehension for that. I was talking last night about the words here. We have the two words error, right, and the word mistake, huh? And their etymology is not the same. Error comes from the word to wander, right?

[26:50] Which suggests that error is result of the mind's wandering, the disordered movement of the mind. But the other word mistake there kind of says you're missing and taking, right? But take is another word for almost for grasping, you know. So it's referring to the knowing power originally, right? To take, you know, and miss what you're trying to take on. Interesting. One of the few words I learned in German to perceive is a combination of true and take.

[27:20] It's kind of interesting. You were not under a misapprehension, were you? I kind of like the word misapprehension. Yeah, it's a beautiful word. Yeah,

[27:36] yeah. The same thing or mistake? Yeah. So Thomas used that. We see it a lot, huh? Consequens apprehensionem, the apprehension, the grasping of the sense, right? Because the thing known is in the what? Knower, right? huh? Why, Where your treasure is, there your heart shall be. The heart of the will is in the what? In the object more, right? Huh? I left my heart in San Francisco, right?

[28:02] So I left my mind in San Francisco. People lost their minds. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, one friend tells me the last time he was down in San Francisco, some guy wanted some drugs and more, and says, "I don't, I don't need it. I don't want it, you know." He said, "I need the money," he says. Why? He doesn't want the drugs. Supplying the money. Got to

[28:27] have the money, though. Thus, therefore, it is clear that since pleasure is a motion in the animal desiring power, right? Because animals define making sense, right? But following upon the grasping of the senses, pleasure is a what? Passion of the what? Soul, right?

[29:00] Now, what about the first thing here? The question here about Damascene, right? Let's see if Thomas can clear this up at all. To the first, therefore, it should be said that a operation that is what connatural to the thing, right, fitting to its nature, right, and when it's not impeded in some way, right, is the second perfection of the thing, right, as is had in the second book of the what soul, right.

[29:37] So the the power of seeing, or the power of hearing, or the habit if you have a habit for these things, or in the mind, that's the first perfection, right? But the operation, right, that's connatural to the thing, is its second perfection. And therefore, when a thing is constituted in its own operation, the one that is Is fitting to its nature, right? The natural, and when this is not impeded by something extrinsic, right?

[30:09] There follows what pleasure, right? Which consists in what being perfect in some way, huh? Thus, therefore, when it is said that pleasure is an operation, this is not a praedicatio per causam this before, right? But per what causam right?

[30:36] So we we met that term before, remember praedicatio per causam, right? Mm-hmm. That's like saying that um the good is what all want. Or is that by effect. Yeah, no, that's a different thing. Yeah, but like Aristotle says, sensing is an undergoing, right? Because the senses are acted upon by their what object, right? But the actual sensing is the result of the object being joined in some way, huh?

[31:08] To the sense power by acting upon it, right? So it's really a definition or a predication. It's being said of it by reason of its what cause, then by reason of what it is, huh? Yeah. Okay. Now

[31:27] we speak that way sometimes, huh? If you know the length and width of this table, then you know its area. The surface. Yeah, but is knowing the length and width of the rectangle to know the area? It's not the area. It's the cause of the area.

[31:50] You can, yeah, it's a cause of knowing the area. Yeah, yeah. But the practical man would say, you know length and width, then you know the area. You know, but it's a praedicatio per causam. It's it's it's it's not really saying what it is to know the area. The things that make. Yeah, the causes of it. So we do speak that way in daily life. We don't realize it, huh?

[32:17] Yeah. You you couldn't make it an equation because to know the length and the width, the man could also you could also say, well, you know the perimeter now. Yeah. Perimeter's not the same thing as area. Yeah. But I know the length and the width. So for the two different things area and perimeter

[32:54] So that's where he explains, huh? Damn the see there. You take pleasure in being the operation, right? Well, it's not the operation, but it's an effect of the operation being fitting to your the power, right? And not being impeded, right?

[33:19] So Aristotle, when they talk about the beatific vision, right, for example, I was going to beatitude their pleasure, right? In seeing God, right? That's because of the perfection of the operation. So the operation is is not the pleasure, but it's the cause of it, right?

[33:42] Because I mean, say say hearing the music of Mozart is an enjoyment for me. Was it really, or is it the cause of my joy?

[34:03] It's a cause. right? So if I speak of it, right? Steak is my pleasure in life, or beer is my pleasure in life. You know, taking away my beer, taking away my pleasure, the working man might say, right? See, but is beer his pleasure in life? It's the cause. Some pleasure. You make it. It makes me go that way. Yep. You know, my wife is my pleasure in life.

[34:29] Ice cream is my. What? Ice cream. Yeah, yeah, ice cream is your pleasure, right? Okay, but it's not your pleasure, right? It's the cause of your pleasure. We speak that way, right? I know why we do it, but we do it a lot. Pretty much. Is there a distinction to be made? You said listening to Mozart is my pleasure. That's your pleasure. Yeah. But Mozart, Mozart, and listening to Mozart are two different things.

[34:57] What's the distinction there? Well, I'm saying that the listening to Mozart's music, Mozart's music is a natural to my ear, right? And if I hear it without you know any distractions, you know, outside noises or things, you know, then the result of hearing the music of Mozart, the perfection of my hearing, will be a pleasure. Okay, so hearing the music of Mozart is not the pleasure, but it's the cause of the pleasure, right?

[35:28] Okay. The same way, seeing this beautiful painting, right? Or this beautiful scenery, right? Huh? I remember driving up in Vermont, you know, in the fall, and getting this nice thing, you know. What a beautiful place, you know, just to have a house, you know. Oh, it's gorgeous, you know. They showed up there's a house there That house with that view, you know. I mean, this view, you know.

[35:49] See, so I'm getting, but I'm seeing something very beautiful that is proportioned to my. Yeah, the thing I think I notice about. I used to compare the class sometimes, you know, the fall foliage, right? And then you go down to a department store, and you got all this bright, you know, colors and these things, you know, it's not particularly pleasing to the eyes, right? You walk around a department store, you know, where they're selling clothes and other things, you know, they got all this red, and you know, see why nature, you know, moderates it, you know, there's nothing garish about the the colors of the trees, right?

[36:26] You know, when say drove up here, now you got more trees up here that are a little more north than where I am, you know, there's even more color up here, and along the highway here, you know, and so on, and it's very pleasing to the eyes, right? So seeing colors that are proportioned to my eye, and I'm not too distracted by driving because it doesn't require much mental activity,

[36:50] you know, then I have pleasure, right? Huh? Okay. So seeing the fall foliage is a pleasure for me. That's a pretty per causam, right? You know. So that's what he's explaining, huh? Our friends used to.

[37:14] To the second, huh? The second one was the objection in terms of what? Being moved or. Yeah. He says, in the animal, a twofold motion can be considered, right? One according to the intention of the what? End. End, which pertains to the appetite; the other according to the carrying out of this, which pertains to the exterior operation.

[37:50] So, although in the one who has now what achieved the good in which he takes pleasure, there ceases the motion of what? Execution, carrying out. Yeah, by which he tends to the end, huh? There is, however, a ceasing of the motion of the desiring power, which, just as before, desired something not had, so afterwards it delights in the thing had.

[38:24] So although pleasure is a certain quiet of the appetite, that's why we speak of this fall foliage as being very restful, right? Huh? Considered the presence of the what good which is delighting one, right? So essentially appetite is at rest now, right? Now resting in the beauty of this, huh? Which is satisfactory to the appetite, right? Nevertheless, there remains some what change of the desiring power from the thing desired, by reason of which.

[38:57] Pleasure is a certain what motion, so he's not altogether denying that this motion continues even right after you see or hear the beautiful, right?

[39:12] Now, what about this third objection? To the third should be said that although the name of passion more properly belongs to passions that what corrupt and tend to something what bad, just as are what body sicknesses and sadness and fear and so on. Nevertheless, also some passions are ordered to the good, as has been said before, like love and desire and so on. And according to this, pleasure is said to be. passionate Well, you know, there's always a question in English: How do you translate the word passion, right?

[40:08] And the first meaning you see of passion in Latin, or the Greek word that they use to translate passion, would be suffering, right? Okay.

[40:19] And the reason why this is the first one is because it's most known, right? So if I'm sticking a pin in you, right, you're very much aware of the fact I'm acting upon you, right? Okay.

[40:35] But you're acting upon me now, and I see you, right? But not in as painful ways if you were sticking me with a pin, right? So the first meaning that we name things as we know them, first meaning of passio is suffering, right?

[40:53] Well, in English, the word suffering has stuck on that first meaning of something what? Bad, right? Okay. So if you're suffering, you're undergoing something bad. But in Greek and in Latin, the word was carried over, right? By dropping out the idea of something bad, right? But keeping the idea that you are receiving something, right? Okay. So Mozart's music, when I hear it, is acting upon my ear, but not in a way that's painful, but it's pleasing to my ear, right?

[41:33] then So Aristotle says, you know, that sensing is a passio, right? But now in a new sense, right? Okay. You carried the word over, but you dropped the meaning of it being something bad and so on, right? Now, in trying to find a word that in English is carried over, I sometimes use the word undergoing, right? That's my thing. It's not a perfect, you know, correspondence exactly, but

[42:10] you sit in class, aren't you? You're undergoing something. Yup. I remember this guy first teaching in college, and this guy and looking down at the faces of the students, and I, they seem to be saying, "Why are you doing this to me?" You know, making distinctions and things that are hard to grasp, you know. And probably for the first meaning of undergo is something bad, right? So if I say, you know, that so and so has undergone a lot in life, that probably implies what?

[42:49] Bad things, right? Okay. But it's not quite as stuck on that meaning of bad as the word suffer is, right? Okay. So I went to Laval, and I went a lot from Kasurik But you know, in that sense, undergoing corresponds to acting upon, right? And so the teacher is acting upon you. Presumably, he should be acting upon you in a way that is improving you, right? So it's good to be acted upon, your ear by the music of Mozart, right?

[43:26] Or your ear by the by Monsignor Dionne or Charles De Koninck you know, even Kasurik you know, undergraduate. So in that sense, undergoing can even be what perfecting, if you're right. So with the expression, I can't give an example, but you can suffer me, suffer me to do something, suffer the children to come to me. That's not the words. okay. Suffer the children to come to me.

[43:57] That's allowing something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A little different there. So this is Thomas is touching upon here the Latin word "passio" and the the Greek word, you know, "paschein," you know, and so on. And so Aristotle, in the De Anima, he will carry the word over and give it, you know, drop out part of its meaning, right? And he'll say that he'll explain that he's using the word now in a new sense, right?

[44:25] But there's some connection. But you see, when I drove up here and I was my eyes were being acted upon by the fall foliage, I didn't even think about the fact I'm being acted upon, right? But if someone is sticking a pin in me, I'd be very much aware of the fact that he's acting upon me, right? You know, somebody's kicking me or something, you know. I know that, right?

[44:51] So it's more known, right? First one. So it's interesting, you know, that the word that its original meaning, right, involves something bad can be eventually carried over to something good, right? Okay. Not that we speak of that with the saints as undergoing, right? Something from God, right? Because God is acting upon them in a way that is perfecting them, right?

[45:22] And maybe they are perfected more by God acting upon them than by what they're trying to do of their own free will, right? I think this is what the mystics talk a little bit about, don't they? You know, they get to the higher stage of, you know, of the spiritual life. They're more being moved by God than moving themselves, right? He takes over in a way that is.

[45:51] Interesting. Now, whether pleasure is in time.