Prima Secundae
111. Aquinas on Anger, Part 1: Is Anger a Special Passion, and Is Its Object Good or Bad? (Articles 1–2, with side topics on 'simply' versus 'in some way', the natural desire to see God, and the art of logic)
Class of 2013-03-21
https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/11-prima-secundae/111-aquinas-on-anger-part-1-is-anger-a-special-passion-and-is/

[0:00] In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Thank you, God. Thank you, guardian angels. Thank you, Thomas Aquinas. Deo gratias. God, our enlightenment, guardian angels, to be the lights of our minds, or the lunar images, arouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor. Pray for us. Help us to understand what you've written. Name of the Father, the Son, Holy Spirit.

[0:31] Amen. You missed the account of the the death of Fernando the Saint, right? Yeah, yeah. With the angels singing, right? Yeah. Deo gratias. Is that on the last class Yeah, we read it. the account from. the beginning of the last. Irving has one of the one of the works is the Chronicles of Fernando the Saint, right? It's a beautiful account of his death, you know. And even after you know he's dying, of course the angels are singing, right?

[0:59] And then when they bury the body, you know, in Bosley, you know, the thing was heard, you know, around Spain, singing angels, so it's beautiful. Beautiful.

[1:12] Bonjour. We missed our prayer, but we can go back to the proemium here, of the ira on anger. Then we're not to consider about anger, and first about anger by itself.

[1:29] Secondly, about the cause that makes for anger, and its remedy, right? I'm sure you get help from Aristotle, right? Because anger is an important emotion in rhetoric, right? In the courtroom, right? And that you can get people being angry, and you have to convict them and punish them more severely, right? But, on the other hand, if you're trying to defend the guy, you've got to know how to soften the anger.

[2:02] And third, about its effect, right? So there you have that same kind of distinction or division that you had of of love, right? And it's a beautiful thing to understand, right? Considered by itself, and then it's it's cause, and then its effects, right? Now about the first eight things are asked.

[2:28] don't you know all these things were asked? First, whether anger is a special what passion or emotion? Because some people speak of anger as if it's what combining a couple will see.

[2:46] Secondly, whether the object of anger is something good or something bad. Well, it arises something bad, right? You're stepping on my toes, right? But to avenge something good, huh? Getting even, settling the score. We'll see what he says, huh? I don't get angry; I just get even. Yeah. Third, whether anger is in the concupiscible. Now that's strange that should arise at this point, huh? All I can think of there is, you know, the way that temperance and mildness are considered together there, right?

[3:26] In the secunda secundae, you know, he considers the three theological virtues and then the four cardinal virtues, and then he attaches other virtues to one or another of the cardinal virtues because they share the mode, right? So temperance is moderating my desire for food and drink and and sexual pleasure and so on, and mildness is moderating my anger, right? Huh? So they're similar, right? Huh? And I always quote the words of Shakespeare there, you know, where in *As You Like It* he says they're in the very wrath of love, right?

[4:01] Clubs do not part them, right? So you sort of, you know, that's a metaphor from species to species, right? So it's interesting that you can compare that too, you know, similarity. So maybe there's something to do with this. Well, we'll see what what Thomas does, but just no mind here. There sees these things. Where their anger is with what reason? Huh?

[4:28] Now, when I was young, I had some texts of Thomas where he was saying that the irascible appetite is in a way closer to reason than concupiscible appetite. Because this for the sake of that, and so on? It's more like reason, and that's why Mozart wrote those piano concertos, right? Because it's more irascible than them right. My first suggestion to my old teacher Casiraghi. Five, whether it is more natural than concupiscence.

[4:57] That's very strange, huh? What could be more natural than hunger and thirst, desire to reproduce, and so on, huh? Six, whether anger is more grievous than what hate, huh? I think it's got to be the reverse, right? Because anger what seizes more or less when you succeed in in punishing the person, right? Huh? And person's anger is the other person with a bloody nose and that's kind of satisfaction, you know.

[5:27] But hate, you know, you almost up to what destroy the person, huh? And whether anger is only towards those to whom there is what justice, huh? And four, eight on the species of anger, huh? I don't know what you mean by species. Now

[5:53] sometimes it's hard to tell. You come to a what? What is called a lowest species, right? I used to talk about lowest species in in logic. It's pretty easy to see what a lowest species is. Let's say a number, right? Or in figure, right? Some square, right? Different kinds of squares, right? They're all the same shape, right? But when you get to say something like, "Is dog a lowest species, or are there different species of dog, right?"

[6:24] That's a little more obscure, right? And other species of anger, right? Let the master illuminate us, son. To the first, then, one goes forward. Thus, it seems that anger is not a special passion.

[6:43] For from anger is denominated the irascible power. But of this power, there is not only one passion, but many, right? Therefore, anger is not one special passion, right? That's question partly how it's named from anger. This, right? Just like concupiscible is named from concupiscence right? It's only one of the six passions, right?

[7:15] Moreover, to each special passion there is something contrary, as is clear in Peri Hermeneias inducing to singular, right? So for love there is hate, right? For desire there is aversion, for pleasure there is pain, right? For hope there is despair, for fear there is what boldness, right? Well, it seems you know by contradiction that every one has contrary. Well, what's the contrary of anger?

[7:48] Why doesn't it? Now it's kind of a strange passion. Every other one has got a contrary, right? Why doesn't anger have one? Huh? Maybe it ain't either special passion, right?

[7:59] Maybe it isn't. Moreover, one special passion does not include another, but anger includes many passions. For it is with sadness, right? Causing me sadness, I get angry, right? And with delight, how when I get revenge, huh? And with hope, right? When I think I can punish you, you know, for what you've done. As is clear through the philosopher, the second book of the rhetoric, right? Therefore, anger is not a special what passion, right?

[8:39] Those are good objections, huh? But against this is what Damascene used to quote Damascene in a number of places, right? He lays down anger to be a what special passion, and likewise Tullius, right, or Cicero, right, in the fourth book of the Tusculans, questions, huh?

[9:08] I answer. It should be said that something is said to be general in two ways. So if Thomas looks before and after, he must look for distinctions, right? And he's always seeing distinctions that other people don't see.

[9:31] Talking about the students last night, there, you know, the first two fallacies outside of speech are the fallacy of the accident, huh, and the fallacy of simply and not simply, right? Now, say how to correspond to these two very famous kinds of distinctions, right? That you'll meet over and over again in philosophy, huh? And Michael Brother out of TAC there

[9:59] was saying. That you know, there is a disagreement amongst them as to whether we desire to see God as He is by a natural desire or whether it's a desire that arises because of the faith in us, right? I guess the other had some speaker on campus too who had said that that there is no natural desire to see God, right? And so I was thinking a little bit about this question that the friend there, that there are two sides over this, and in of course my favorite book, Summa Contra Gentiles, Thomas in one place will argue that there is what desire because he says when we know that something exists, right, we naturally want to know what it is.

[10:46] When we know that God exists, therefore we naturally want to know what God is. So we must have some natural desire to see God as He is, right? Or he says when we know an effect, we naturally want to know its cause. Well, we know this effect called being in general, right? Which is what the wise man studies, right? Well, therefore he naturally wants to know the cause of this.

[11:09] That's God, right? So it's a natural desire, right? Okay. But then there are other texts in Thomas where he seems to say, you know, that you need what faith, right? And you could say to somebody,

[11:27] do we know what God is? No. If you don't know what God is, you don't know what it is to see God, do you?

[11:39] And if you don't know what it is to see God, how can you want it? Right. This may be like the people are looking for the cure for cancer. Yeah. I say, well,

[11:53] simply, right, or perfectly, right? Because simply means perfectly or completely, right? We don't know naturally or philosophically, perfectly or completely what it would be to know God, right? Huh? But in some way, we know it some imperfect way, right? Huh? So maybe that distinction you could give to show these texts of Thomas are in harmony, right? Huh? And therefore you don't have to choose one over the other, right?

[12:28] That's kind of strikes me, right? Yeah. Um. Or another thing was, you know, Thomas was in Summa Contra Gentiles. He's showing you know that man's happiness, the natural desires, he doesn't really have his happiness right in this life. That he's going to have to find his happiness after this life. Huh? What about his master Aristotle, right? Who in the Nicomachean Ethics, right, takes up what happiness is, right?

[12:59] And first of all, he defines it in the first book, right? And then more fully, he develops what it is in the tenth book, huh? And and Thomas says, of course, Aristotle is facing these these objections from the poets and from Solon, you know, call no man happy until he be dead, right? You never know until they can happen, right? But it's something you want happiness, you want it forever, right?

[13:25] And so on, so you can see reasons to say that we don't have happiness in this life, huh? And and you might get Alzheimer's or something, right? And you know, I wouldn't know what this this is in front of me here, you know, you know, you know, with Reagan there, he had Alzheimer's. They play, you know, not great. He didn't know what the heck that was all about.

[13:46] He put the foot in front of the euro, but he left some cajetillas in front of me. I don't know what that is. You know, if I'm going to remember my my Latin, so on. So, but Aristotle, you know, seems to reject, you know, that as an argument, right? But then he says finally, you know, that what they will be happy as men, he says.

[14:08] What does that say? Is that speaking? Is that simpliciter Or is it secundum quid? Secundum quid? Yeah, happy as men, right? So you have that uncertainty, right? And at least you're going to die too, you know. And so

[14:27] you can be happy in this life as men can be happy, right? But that's not happiness in the perfect sense, right? So he's not opposing Aristotle, right? He's saying what Aristotle is is teaching there, right? This is the way to be happy as a man to be happy in this life, right? Could you join with that what Aristotle says elsewhere, which I'm hearing you say about we should not live merely as men; we should live like God.

[14:58] Yeah, and even there, even there he's talking. You know, in the tenth book, he distinguishes two kinds of happiness, right? The one's a kind of human happiness, right? Which, according to what foresight, the virtue that perfects the practical reason, right? And especially the foresight of of the leader of the city, right? And so when Churchill got to be you know prime minister, he felt happy, right? Now he arrived, you know, and he could lead the country in this great war and so on.

[15:28] And but then Aristotle spoke another happiness, right? Which is more divine, right? And that's happiness that you have in possessing what wisdom, right? But the wisdom we can get by natural reason makes us what nevertheless happy as men and not perfectly happy, right? So maybe it's not a contradiction between you know because Aristotle is silent about at least in the text we have, you know, about happiness after life, right?

[15:54] And Plato, when he talks about happiness in the next life, he stops the dialogue, gives the muthos, he says in the text, right. So Socrates, in a couple of the dialogues, he stops his usual way of proceeding, right? The dialogue, which is reasoning, you know, and he tells the muthoi about this condition, or what happens to the soul after what? Yeah. Yeah. So why does he tell Muthas, right?

[16:20] Well, because what happens to the soul after death, in any complete way, escapes natural reason, right? And so he's kind of indicating that by telling muthoi, and not trying to proceed as he does in the dialogues, right, which in argumentative way. But Aristotle, what we have is just silence as to it, even though he knew that the soul was what going to survive death, right? Because I was saying to him last night, Aristotle seems to have died, you know, by overwork, right, at the academy.

[16:57] So he's still trying to learn, you know, even so he wasn't completely satisfied, obviously, right? He's still trying to learn about the sun, the moon, and the stars, and animals and plants and so on, right, and knows what else.

[17:12] So it's important to see a distinction there, right, between happiness simply, right, happiness in some diminished or imperfect way, right. Okay. And in some imperfect way, we can be happy in this life, right? Okay. Unless you Oedipus or something and you fall into these things, right? Okay. You know Shakespeare, you know, in this terrible play, or Titus Andronicus, right, which in first complete edition Shakespeare plays I had, a little introduction said began with this disgusting play.

[17:51] It's got all these horrible things of Greek tragedy, you know, eating your your son, you know, and so on, and so on. All these horrible things, people have tongues cut off, all kinds of horrible things. But it begins, you know, with them coming back from the battle, right? And of course Titus is saying, you know, that those who have died glorious in battle, they're assured of their happiness, right?

[18:12] But those of us who have survived the battle, right, we never know, right? Of course, he reads a piece of play. It's like what happens to Oedipus, or you know, or to Creon, or something in Sophocles' great tragedies and so on. So Shakespeare was aware of that. Did no Aristotle was aware of that. But we can still be happy as men, right? If we can avoid the misfortunes of Oedipus or Crayon.

[18:42] the answer should be said that something is said to be general in two ways. Now here is a distinction coming up. In one way, by being said of, right? Predication in Latin. Just as animal is general respect to what? All animals. Yeah. In another way, by what? Cause.

[19:08] As long as you see this distinction stated in Latin, the universale in predicando, right, which is general in the first way per praedicationem And then the universale in causando right.

[19:26] Ron MacArthur, the former president of TAC, there, he tells about being trapped with another guy from Laval, you know, and they're driving along, and the sun comes up, and it's a gorgeous sun, you know. The other guy says, "Look at that universale in causando, you know, Just throwing the whole sky, you know, magnificent cause, you know, only a man who knew these distinctions would speak that way of a beautiful sun, right?

[19:55] Another way by cause, as the sun is the general Cause of all things which are generated in these what lower things right according to Dionysius huh and when do we use the word general in this second sense

[20:15] like the army yeah so Douglas MacArthur general the army right huh but in the other sense a general would be what soldier right soldier is said of everybody in the army right and MacArthur is not said of everybody in the army right but he's the what universal causando right he's moving the whole army directing the army commanding the army right so those are the two senses of general right student I mean soldier and general yeah teaching us he's universal causando right you're looking at universal causando here say but student is general in another sense right okay

[21:02] just as the sun is the general cause of all things which are generated in these lower things right according to Dionysius in the fourth chapter divine names right huh now for Dionysius speaks you know the sun is being kind of a metaphor for God right okay because it's kind of beautiful when they develop that metaphor huh because the sun enlightens the world before it what warms it yeah and so God enlightens our minds by faith before he warms them by what charity right that's why in that beautiful Radiant Germandi right they quote Augustine at the end right that by believing we might come to hope and by hope to come to what love right huh

[21:50] now points out something else about this for just as the genus contains many differences in what power yeah now that's in the what passive sense of power right huh now Aristotle distinguishes um in the Greek word of course is dunamis right but you have the passive sense of power right which is the kind of ability that matter has right and then the what more active yeah the power of the maker right the mover right huh and Aristotle says you know the first sense is the active power okay now you see when you translate to dunamis or potencia in Latin by power in English power is stuck on the first meaning okay so myself when I would teach that book there I would use the term

[22:51] ability right because With ability, although we think first of all, as we should, that it's active, right? You know, I say the pianist playing the piano. Who's got ability, the piano or the pianist? You think of the pianist, right? But the what? Piano is play a ball, right? Okay. Or I say if you put Perkis in the ring with a crash of clay or something, right? And Perkis gets beat around.

[23:21] you see, he's got no ability there, right? But he's beatable. He's breakable, right? So use the word able there, right? But by what sense of ability is Perkis beatable or breakable, right?

[23:35] Yeah. The ability to undergo something, right? Huh? The ability to be acted upon, right? Huh? Now the genus is more like that ability, right? And that's why we see the genus is to the species a bit like matter is to what form, right? So just as the matter can be formed in different ways, right? So the genus can be what formed in sense by different differences, right?

[24:05] To different what species, huh? But he's making a beautiful comparison. Just as the genus contains many different potestate, right? Now I say if you translate power, you got a problem in English, right? Because it's kind of stuck there at first. According to the likeness of matter, which is pointed out by Aristotle and pointed out by in the Isagoge, right? By Porphyry, right?

[24:32] He talks about genus and differences, so on. And of course, species probably comes from the word for form, right? So likewise, the agent cause contains many effects according to a what active power, right? And virtus is just sort of a synonym for power, right? Okay.

[24:57] So you know, you take the senses of in there in the fourth book of soul. I mean, in the nature, the physics, so called. The first three meanings of in are something actually in something. You and I are in this room right now. My teeth are in my mouth. The second sense. The genus is in the species, right? But then the fourth sense is the reverse of that.

[25:25] The species is in the genus, and then it's in that what passive ability, right? And then the fifth sense is what the form is in the matter, right? In the first ability. And then the whole is in the parts, right? And then he comes to you're in my power, right? The efficient cause, right? That's the other sense, right? But there's some likeness there, right? Huh?

[25:53] It's interesting, huh? That we move from the active to Yeah, yeah. But I mean, among the sense of ability, there you come to the sense then of the species and the genus and form and matter before you get me being in your power or something like that.

[26:15] Now it happens that some effect is produced from a coming together, right, or running together of diverse causes, right? And because every cause, in some way, remains in the effect, it can be said also in a third way that the effect produced from the bring together of many causes has a what? Kind of generality. A kind of generality, right? Insofar as it contains many causes in a way in act, right?

[26:55] Okay. So you resemble your mother and your father, maybe, maybe different ways, right? Huh? Okay. Now, in the first way, in the way that he spoke of as what genus, right? Anger is not a general passion, right? It's not the genus of passions, right? But that one objection was saying, you know, the irascible was, I mean, what's common to all these passions here? But it's divided against the other passions, as has been said above.

[27:34] Likewise, it is not in the second way he says, right? For it is not a cause of the other passions, right? Huh? But in this second way, that can be called a general passion, love, right? See, so love gives rise to desire in the absence of the object. It gives rise to what? Pleasure, right? In the presence of that, right? It gives rise, in some sense, to what?

[28:02] Fear of somebody going to. But it's kind of like universal cause, right? Later on, he says that charity, which is a kind of love, right, is the form of all the virtues, right? Huh? But it is something of itself, right? It stamps all the other ones, huh? For love, he says, as Augustine says, who is Augustine's always quoting, in the 14th book about the city of God, right?

[28:32] Love is the what? First root, huh? That's nice. Love that word. Root. Love is the first root of all the passions, as has been said above, right? Huh? So love is most general passion in what sense? Not that it's said that it is, right? Because desire is not love. Pleasure is not love, right? Fear is not love, right? But it's general in the sense of being what?

[29:00] Universal cause, right? Like the sun that makes the grass grow, but the trees grow and the bushes grow and all these different things. But in a third way, now anger can be called a general passion, in so far as it is caused from the running together of many what passions.

[29:25] Okay. So am I an individual man, or am I just my mother and father. Am I really an individual, or am I just my mother and father over again?

[29:39] Individual. Yeah, but in some sense, I am my mother, and, my father again, right? You know, sitting here with my cousin Donald after my father died, he says, "That's just like your father." I said, "I said what?" Something else, do I did? That's my my sister when I was in Chicago in December. My sister-in-law. Come and I, she was waiting for me in the car, and I had to run out the building.

[30:03] And I get in the car. She says, "You run just like your brother," which is her husband. And of course, afterwards, I thought it's because my brother runs just like my father. That's why we both run alike because we're just like

[30:19] that. Yeah, it's fine. Outside, we think being my brothership, they're also same, all the same, you know. But we're not; we're all very different, you know. Put outside, you know, we look, you know.

[30:33] Now, how's this Saul he starts to explain this. For there's there's not rise up the motion of anger except on account of somewhat sadness, huh? Provoked in you, and unless there also be the desire, right? And even the hope of getting evil, yeah.

[30:59] Because, as the philosopher says in the second book of the Rhetoric, the man who is angry has the hope of what punishing, right? But if you were too weak and you you couldn't possibly do anything, you might just fear this guy, right? Who's inflicting pain on you, right? Huh? You fear he's going to do more to you, right? And you don't even think of rising up. Okay, so that but the angry man, huh, has the hope of punishing, right?

[31:30] Again, that's a sign that hope is a more primary motion, right, than than anger. He desires what vindictum, huh? Revenge, I guess, as possible for him, right? Okay. Whence, if a very excelling person it is who bestows the harm upon you, there is not foul anger, but only sadness, as Avicenna says, right? In his book about the soul. Interesting. Does he mean? Does he mean just excelling like he's superior at strength or whatever?

[32:11] Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can't possibly think of fighting back against this guy, right? you just want to escape from him, right? If you can't, terribly afraid he's going to harm you more. You're not thinking of revenging him for what he's done, getting even with what he's done. He's going to do more to you, right? Like people with thousands of fairy tales, he couldn't do anything. They're completely off.

[32:34] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it just occurred to me maybe there's some kind of comparison you could make. It may not be what he's referring to, but I just I think of that line from the Psalms: "If a just man strikes or reproves me, his kindness. " To have that insight that a good man is punishing you, yeah, but you might just accept it. You're not going to seek revenge, yeah, but that's a different thing.

[32:55] That's not talking about anger, yeah, or or the lack of fear, the lack of. To tell you, his husbands, you know, misbehave with their wives, you know, and he'd give them a no-huh. The son gets angry, gets angry enough to shoot the guy, but yeah. But I mean, for the most part, they might just kind of poop her, you know, and they're afraid of him again, you know.

[33:14] Yeah, yeah, yeah, and they don't think of even. That's what there was a story. A story about the children being abused by their father over and over and over and over. Finally, the son grew up and he shot his father because he was sick of it. Not just for himself, but he was watching his sister get beaten repeatedly. Yeah, yeah. He just got he had enough. He killed his father, which is awful.

[33:32] But now, in reply to the first objection, he's going to touch upon the way this power is named, right? Huh. To the first, therefore, it should be said that the irascible power is named from what Anger. anger, not because every motion of this power is an anger, right? But because to anger are terminated all the motions of this power. Okay. And also because among other motions of it, it is more what manifest, right?

[34:10] I can understand that second reason better than the first, right? We can see somewhat, huh? How hope leads to what anger, right? Huh. Okay. I think the reason why the appetitive power in general is named from what desire, right? Huh, and not from love, right? Mm-hmm. Because the appetitive appetitus means desire, right? That's what they would appetite, huh? Even carried over into English, and it goes back to what Shakespeare says: "On things in motion, sooner catch the eye than what not stirs."

[34:42] And desire is, I tell you what, a motion toward something, right? Why pleasure is more like resting in the thing, right? And love is not necessarily that motion. I am kidding about source of it, but motion is what stands up for, right? And anger is a very strong motion, right? Movement, huh? And so we name things by what's most known, huh?

[35:21] Now, to the second one about contrariety. From this, that anger is caused from contrary passions, to wit, from hope, right, which is of the good, right, and from sadness, which is of the bad, right. It includes in itself some contrariety, right, and therefore does not have a contrary outside itself, huh? Just as in the middle colors, right, there is not found contrariety, huh?

[35:56] Except which is of the simple colors like black and white or something, from which they are what caused right? Or hot and cold right? Lukewarm is kind of mixture of the contraries.

[36:13] And then the last one talked about anger, including many passions. Well, anger includes many passions, he says, in reply to the third objection. Not as a genus species, right? But more according to the containing of a cause and effect.

[36:38] I thought we said that give an example of a person can't get revenge. He's angry. He must be. He can't get revenge because he's overpowered by this person. Yeah. He's not angry with him. He's sad. Yeah. Yeah. And he fears maybe to to be if anything hurt more, right? He's afraid the guy will do more to him, right? Well, fear kind of excludes in that sense hope, right?

[37:05] I don't hope to to to revenge myself on this brute, but I fear he's going to maybe harm me more, right? You know, I hope you know. I hope he's not going to hurt me more. You know. Is sorrow sadness? What? Is sorrow sadness? Yes. Yeah. Well, it says here from the very fact that anger is caused by contrary passions, that is by hope, which is of good, and by sorrow, which is of evil.

[37:31] Yeah, I get angry because partly because you're causing me some sadness, right? You're causing me pain, right? Or you're you could be more spiritual sadness, you know, you're insulting me and so on, right? But it also arises from hope of being able to get even with you, right? Or to punish you, you know, to avenge myself for finding you, right? So it arises both from sadness, which is about something bad, the insult or the pain you're causing me, and the hope that I can avenge myself, right?

[38:05] That I can get even with you, right? Pay you back, you know. So it's kind of has something of both in it, but that doesn't mean that it is those other two, right? I have something of my father in me, right? And I have something of my mother, right? And sometimes I I see, you know, that I was influenced probably more by my father and how I think.

[38:30] I don't think I think much like my mother, but my emotions probably are influenced more by my my mother, right? You know. So you see, you're influenced in some way by your father and some way by your what mother, right? I can't really enjoy dirty jokes that my mother used to do dirty jokes, you know, huh? And not that I'm a puritan, you know, but I just I just can't I can't enjoy it.

[38:59] In certain ways, you know, people kind of, in certain ways, people have expressed themselves. I just can't, I can't relish those ways. I can't use them myself, you know, huh? Just, just doesn't. So, emotional reaction, these things, you know. But that's my mother, you know, huh?

[39:16] Has there been anything ever said about anger as it applies to political systems? It sounds like a comment coming out of left field, but if you think about yeah, Aristotle talked about that in politics, yeah, yeah. With like a democracy or a republic, yeah, you can be angry and take it out in the voting booth. Yeah. But under some sort of totalitarian regime, you are cowed into submission, so there is no hope.

[39:37] Yeah. And there is only sadness and no anger necessarily. Yeah. That's why my whole impression of communist Russia was that it was gray skies every day. Gray. That was the you know evening. Veer, remember that commercial? Everything's there's no change, and there's nothing you can do about it. Yeah. It was uh That's my emotional reaction. to. it and I taught St. Mary's. We had, you know, one of these Hungarian freedom fighters who ended up staying there, and and they were really, you know,

[40:11] close to despair. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, because what's the what's the chance of change? And the Russian was talking about after the fall of the Soviet Union. He said, well, one of the reasons for the dysfunction is there is because imagine yourself being locked in a room with somebody who's severely emotionally disturbed. By myself, you can't predict what they're going to do. You're constantly on edge, on eggshells, walking on eggshells, and then you're freed up from that.

[40:38] You live your whole life that way. So how you get emotional at least in the short term? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Shakespeare's narrative poem, The Rape of Lucrece, right? Huh? Leads to the banishment at the end of what Of Tarquin right Who's committed the evil deed, right? Huh? But it's the anger that is aroused because she kills herself, right? You know, it's a famous story there in Roman history, I guess, right?

[41:14] But Shakespeare has it in there. Great narrative poem. Okay, to the second one goes forward. Thus, it seems that the object of anger is something what bad, huh? For Gregory of Nyssa, who's actually what Gregory Nyssa as, they say in my footnote. Take the word for it. So Thomas is deceived by the fallacy of the equivocation. Equivocation. Oh, Gregory. Yeah, but it's a a word

[41:51] equivocal by chance, right? He's not taking any of those words equivocal by reason. Most people fallacies are, of course. For Gregory, something other says that anger is, as it were, the what? The arm, the armor bearer, or something. Yeah,

[42:12] a concupiscence huh? A kind of soldier, right? Insofar as it fights against that which impedes concubiscence, huh? But every impediment has the notion of something what bad. Therefore, anger regards what the bad as an object, right? Huh? So Aristotle says the animals fight over food and sex, right? Huh? So some other animals, you know, preventing them from enjoying their own food or their own mate, then they get in fights, They get angry, yeah.

[42:41] So they can enjoy their mate or their food at their own leisure, right? Moreover, anger and hate come together in their effect. Because for both of them, it belongs to what? Bring harm to another. Yeah, bring harm to another. But hate obviously regards the bad as an object, right? Therefore, also what? By anger. Yeah.

[43:17] So both the man who hates somebody harms him, right? And the man who's angry harms him, right? Moreover, anger is caused from what? Sadness. Hence, the philosopher says in the seventh book of the Ethics that anger operates with sadness.

[43:39] But the object of sadness is something bad, right? Therefore, also anger, right? But against this is what Augustine says in the second book of the Confessions that anger desires revenge. That's how you define anger as the desire for revenge. Okay. But the desire for revenge is a desire for the good, huh? Because vindicta pertains to what? Justice.

[44:13] Yeah. So the guy's talking about the little boy next door comes over to his house there and there's nice plant there you know the back there on the end of the woodwork there little black and star he looks at the can he pushes it off it falls to the ground smashes it he forgot the kid him but he doesn't even a kid like that right yeah

[44:40] he deserves a little bit of punishment right he was justified he gets something right yeah yeah like a little kid that was here one Sunday he wanted a glass of milk so I poured him a glass of milk and he picks it up boom drop it on the floor and then he looked at me just nobody's perfect what'd you do what'd you do I said well let's work on being more perfect and clean up the mess we make

[45:09] my best response Father did you have with anger or not Father I think I controlled it pretty good it was a sweet child I didn't want to overwhelm him with sorrow so I said let's work on being more perfect induce him to sweetness Father Michael later had him clean the entire house now Kiko Kiko moreover

[45:34] anger is always with hope huh whence it causes what pleasure as the philosopher says the same good rhetoric because they quote the big poet you know how delicious it is to get revenge you know

[45:53] and sometimes you know some forms of fiction too represent you know somebody wanting to get revenge The whole movie or something, the whole play. I think it's about. And I don't know a real story. I saw this guy. Was when I was when I was in Chicago a year and a half ago. Saw this guy on television. He was some wicked murderer. He had murdered a bunch of people, and he took.

[46:13] He talked about somebody he murdered in prison. He met that was like a child abuser, and he talked. He talked about how how he stabbed him and how he liked it. I mean, he was like he was re enjoying it all over. He just telling. Yeah. Wow. But that's that's anyways. That's a strange kind of. Okay, so anger is always with hope, whence it causes pleasure, is a lot of sense, right?

[46:37] The same movie, right? But the object of hope and of pleasure is something good. Therefore, also anger, right? Well, what does Thomas say? He says that the motion of the desiring power, right.

[46:58] No, sometimes he uses the term potencia. Here, use the word virtutis, right? That sense. The motion, the appetitive power, follows the act of the grasping power, right? The knowing power, right? Huh? So oftentimes use the word apprehensivity, though, isn't

[47:16] it? It has that sense of what. Yeah, you contain the thing known in the knower, right? Learning is trying to get something into your head, right?

[47:29] Why love is more the reverse, right? Going out to the object. I left my heart in San Francisco, right? It wasn't a heart transplanted. But now the grasping power, huh? In two ways, grasps something, right? In one way, in the manner of something what, incomplex, huh? As when we understand what is a man, right? Okay. Now, when I was studying logic, you know, Thomas would call that simple grasping sometimes, huh?

[48:11] Understanding what something is, right? Okay. That's the first act of reason, huh? And corresponds the first part of logic, right? And the Isagoge of Porphyry and the categories of Aristotle belong to the logic of that first act of reason. In another way, in the manner of something complex, when you take two of these things that we've grasped in the first kind, and we put them together, right?

[48:42] As when you understand the man to be white, huh? White to be in a man, right? Okay. Whence, in both ways, the desiring power, since it follows upon the knowing power, right, the grasping power, can tend into something good or what bad, huh?

[49:05] In the manner of something simple and incomplex, when the appetite simply what follows Follows or inherits to the good or refuses the bad, and such motions are desire and what Pleasure and sadness of this sort. But in the manner of something complex, when the appetite is carried into something good or bad,

[49:38] when it's carried into something in which there's something good or bad, right? Either what because it happens about another or by tending in in this or what We flee. Just as manifestly appears in love and hate. That's a Thomas you know he talks in the treatise on love. There he says. that it has in a sense a twofold object, right? So to love somebody is to wish good to them, right?

[50:08] So in a sense there's two objects that are involved in love, right? The good that I wish to someone and the one to whom I wish it, yeah, yeah. Therefore, they sometimes distinguish, sometimes we speak of the have the love of wishing well for the one to whom I wish some good, the good, and I have the love of of wanting for the good that I wish for wish for them, yeah.

[50:37] Um. Okay. Just as manifestly appears in love and hate, for we love someone in so far as we will to him that some good be in him, right? Huh? Okay. So you got the aliquem, right? And the aliquod bonum, right? In Latin here. Um. We hate someone in so far as you wish to him to be in him something what bad, right? Huh? Okay. And likewise, he says in the case of what anger.

[51:13] For whoever is what Angry. anger seeks to revenge, seeks to be revenged on about someone or about something. And thus the motion of anger tends in two, right? Huh. To it in the revenge which it desires, right? And that it hopes as a certain good, right? Whence it delights in it, huh?

[51:44] So it tends also in that about which he seeks or about whom he seeks revenge, right? Just as in something contrary and harmful, I guess that's a person, right? That pertains to the ratio of what evil.

[52:09] So it tends towards what revenge of the one one wants to have revenge on, I guess. Okay. But a twofold difference should be noted about this, huh? In regard to anger, in regard to hate and love, right? Huh?

[52:33] Which the first is that anger always regards what Two objects. two objects. Love and hate sometimes regard one object only, as when someone is said to love what wine or something of this sort. Or to hate it Yeah. Like salmon. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Good. Good example. Example.

[52:58] Second is because what. Each of the objects That love regards is a good, right? For he wish, the one loving wishes good to someone, as it were, being what suitable to him, right?

[53:17] And both of those things that hate regards has a notion something bad, for he wishes the one hating the bad to someone, as were to someone what? Has something unsuitable to another, to that person or something. Yeah. But anger regards one object according to the notion of good, to which what revenge, which it desires, huh? Because the sign of that is that when he succeeds in revenging it, then then then he has pleasure, right?

[53:48] Yeah. More anger. Yeah. And another according to the notion of the evil, to which the the harming harmful man or harming man, right, de quo of whom or about whom he wishes to have revenge, right? And therefore it is a passion, quodammodo non simpliciter right? Otherwise it wouldn't be a special passion, right? And therefore is a passion in some way composed from what contrary passions, huh? And this takes care of all the objections Thomas says.

[54:28] One object is saying that its object is something bad, the other one saying it's something good, isn't it? The said contraries were talking about something good, right? And the others. So he's

[54:47] applying to all of them, you know. Okay. To the first two objections, there are all pointing out to something bad, there, right? And the two said contraries, one from Augustine, one from the philosopher, right? Indicate to something good, there, right? He sees an element of truth in both. So Thomas doesn't always take one side and say that's got the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and the other side it's all false.

[55:25] But sometimes he sees an element of truth on both sides, right? So if the so if these teachers out there, TAC, are in disagreement as to whether we have a natural desire to see God, right? Maybe there is an element of truth on both sides, right? Mm-hmm.

[55:50] Yeah. So you can see any more easier cases, you know, I always say to the people, "Can you know what you don't know? Well, not simply, right? Okay, you can't know it fully or completely, right? But in some imperfect way, you can what know it, right?

[56:16] Example, I've told you this before, I think. The example I used to always give in class was I come into class, I'd say I don't know how many students are in class today. I didn't know, right? I am a marvelous guy, and I know how to direct myself to what I don't know. And so I count the students. Let's say I get to twenty-three, right? Now that's pretty simple.

[56:39] But how did I direct myself to twenty-three when I didn't know I was trying to get twenty-three? You know, it was a number. Yeah. I know there was a number of students in class, and twenty-three is in fact the number, right? I didn't know twenty-three was the number of students in class. I knew it in some way because it is the number of students in class, isn't it?

[56:58] Okay. Used to take a young lady, you know, and I'd ask her, you know, this young lady's going to contradict herself. I say, "Do you know my brother Mark?" And she'd say, "No." I say, "Do you know what a man is?" She say, "Yes." Do you know what a brother is? Yeah. What's the word for the mark is? So you do know him, do don't you? But but notice, knowing what a man is, in some way, you know every man in the world, right?

[57:20] But a very imperfect and incomplete way, right? You knowing what a brother is, you know every brother in some way, right? But not simply, right? That's simply because.

[57:44] Yeah. Yes, but the second fallacy outside of language is the fallacy of what simply and not simply, right? Okay. And I pointed out in *Meno*, right? In *Meno*, Socrates says, "I don't know what virtue is." And Meno says, "I know what it is." And then they have a conversation, which is a really examination conversation. And it appears that Meno doesn't know what virtue is either, right? And Socrates says, "Let's put our heads together, right, and see if we can, you know, find out what it is, right."

[58:16] And Meno says, "Well, how can we go looking for what we don't know?" And if that objection was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, then there'd be no art of logic, right, and no art of counting and calculating, because these two arts are arts for coming to know what you don't know. Mm-hmm. By means of what you do. know. Yeah, yeah, but there's a way to you know calculate what you don't know, right?

[58:49] Income tax time, right? Exactly. You know, I don't know what I owe or don't owe or what they owe me or what. But. There are ways to find out. Wait till after April fifteenth; you'll find out.

[59:09] Knocking on your door, I tell you. Aside from Greek logic, were there other cultures that had an approximation of logic, some form? Well, I think they had more. the Greeks had logike, which we call logic, and then logistik, which doesn't mean logistics, but it means the art of counting and calculating, right? So the those are the two main arts, general arts to find what you don't know, right?

[59:37] But if someone asked me, you know, what is a student instead of how many students there are, I would have taken the art of logic, right, They would say, well, we've got to find out what the genius is now and the differences of student and so on, right?" There is a path to, you know, come to finding it's more difficult than than number and so on, but there's an art, right?

[59:59] So in a. sense I think it's marvelous what Plato has done, right? Kind of a genius, genius. that the objection that begins the second part of the dialogue is an objection to even being logic, and so the the resolution of that objection, right, is discovering the beginning of logic, right? There's a way of directing yourself to what you don't know to what you do know, right? So where science under Christian tutelage, you could say, really developed in a in a form a more mature form than the sort of nascent form that the Greeks had.

[1:00:39] Yeah. And you compare that achievement culturally with other civilizations which didn't have it, who did not have the concept that the natural world was knowable. Yeah. And was they thought of it as being arbitrary, either because Allah was arbitrary, because the gods were arbitrary. Yeah. Now the the first person to really say we needed the art of logic, in my knowledge, is in Plato or Socrates rather, in the the Phaedo, right, where he says we need an art about arguments, right?

[1:01:12] An art that would tell us the difference between a good argument and a bad argument, right? And among good arguments, between one that is certain and one that's only what probable, right? That's basically the way Aristotle was called the father of logic, right? The art of arguments is divided into those three parts, right? So the prior and the posterior analytics are about an argument you can trust completely.

[1:01:38] The book about places, called Topics in English, is the arguments you can trust up to a point, right? And the little part about arguments and rhetoric too, but less trustworthy than the ones in dialectic. And then the one that I'm doing Wednesday nights with these students, sophistical refutations, is about arguments you can't trust at all, right? No. But Socrates makes a beautiful comparison. He says arguments are like men, right?

[1:02:07] There are few men you can trust completely. I suppose you trust Pope Francis with your daughter, right? But most men, he says, there are few men you can trust completely, but some men you can trust up to a point. Some more, some less, right? And some men you can't trust at all, right? If you can't tell these apart, you're you're very naive, right? Might tell the girls a particular.

[1:02:36] There's very few men you can trust completely. Most men you can trust up to a point. And some men you can't trust at all. Then you must know that if you got any smarts, right? Well, that's what Socrates says. You know, if we don't know arguments, we're going to trust an argument we shouldn't trust, or trust an argument more than we should, right? Okay.

[1:03:04] Or trust an argument you shouldn't trust at all, right? So that's the first thing we we need a technique. He says the Greek says "techne peri logous," an art about arguments. And that really well applies to the sources of information, historians or writers. Some you can trust greatly, totally, just about others partially, and then some you just never trust at all. Yeah, yeah. Newspapers too. But there's always an element.

[1:03:33] as St. Augustine points it out. History is something that there's various kinds of knowledge, things that we believe and later come to understand. Like when when you learn your ABCs, you just believe your teacher. Until later, you begin to understand the language and writing and all the rest. Some things you believe, among other things, he says. But there's one thing that we believe and will never understand, and that's history.

[1:03:59] Because I'll never be at the Battle of Gettysburg. I have to take somebody else's word for it, and that's always a dicey situation because if I read any historian other than an eyewitness, even an eyewitness, I can only trust so much because he only sees and knows so much. But anybody other than the eyewitnesses, it's already it's already you know a lot of conjecture. So so that's where history is a little different than this because this is something that's just based on more reason.

[1:04:23] It's very definite. History is well, you're relying on somebody's word for it, who's by a lot of a lot of other influences in there. Whether even if he's a good and honorable man, just his ignorance may play into itself. Anyway, seeing a part, most of seeing the whole. Yeah, exactly. So nobody knows that George Washington was the first president, right? Yeah. Or as Chesterton says in the beginning of his autobiography, he says he takes it on his credulous nature.

[1:04:52] He takes it on faith that he was born on such and such a day, such and such a time, because he wasn't cognizant of what happened. Well, actually, take somebody's word for it. That's what Augustine does in his book on the on the utility of belief, right? But you believe that your parents, those are your parents, right? Yeah. On the subjective aspects as well, like Tacitus and his history of Germany, Germany or whatever.

[1:05:16] He was a big fan of the Germans. He thought they were the greatest, and you can see he was kind of sour on a lot of the corruptions within Roman civilization, and so he idolized more than was real the German tribes he was familiar with. It was kind of interesting. Sees bias.

[1:05:42] So. Okay. Let's break here.