Tertia Pars
49. Christ's Sense Desire (ST III, q.18 a.2): The Emotions, Reason, Mozart and the Arts
Class of 2009-09-17
https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/049-christs-sense-desire-st-iii-q-18-a-2-the-emotions-reason/

[0:00] Two here in question eighteen. To the second one goes forward thus: It seems that in Christ there was not another will of sensuality. Sensuality doesn't have the sense of a badness like it does in English, right? Okay. Sometimes I'll translate sensuality by sense desire, right? Oh sure. Desire that follows upon the sense qualities, but apart from the will of what reason, right? I kind of usually use the word voluntas for what follows upon sense, but

[0:45] for the philosopher says in the third book about the soul, right, that the will is in reason, right? And Thomas takes that as being in the what rational part of the soul, right, the rational part of the soul material part of the soul.

[1:04] But in the sensitive part, in the sensitive appetite, there's the irascible and the what concupiscible, right? Now Thomas, to me, is the is the one author that

[1:27] unfolds the emotions of the irascible and concupiscible, right, most fully. You have the in Greek, you have this distinction in Plato, right, in Aristotle, right, but kind of breaking down the emotions. And the concupiscible emotions are the emotions that follow upon what is agreeable or disagreeable to the senses. And so there's three emotions about what is agreeable to the senses, and three emotions about what is disagreeable to senses.

[2:04] You like or love it, or you what dislike or hate it. Now, if you like or love it, then you want some, and you don't have it. When you have it, you have what pleasure or joy. And if you hate or dislike something, you what try to avoid it. And if you can't avoid it, there's sadness or pain. Okay, so you have those six emotions in the what concupiscible.

[2:45] Then the irascible emotions are ones that arise when there's some difficulty about getting or avoiding what you like or dislike, them. And so, if there's some good that you want, but it's difficult to get, right? Then there's two emotions can arise. One, the hope that you can overcome the difficulties. And what? Despair that you think you can overcome the difficulties.

[3:21] And then, if there's something bad that's difficult to avoid, the emotion it would be fear, right? Or if you think you can overcome it, boldness, right? Okay.

[3:38] But now there's a fifth emotion in the irascible, and that is when the bad is inflicted upon you, you're suffering or irritated by it or pain by it, right? And you think you can do something about it, then there arises what anger, right? Okay. So the concupiscible then has six emotions: love, desire, pleasure or joy, hate, aversion, and sadness or pain. And the irascible has five. Okay.

[4:17] Now, if you listen to Mozart's music, you know it's very much a representation of the emotions. And Mozart, you know, unlike Haydn, Haydn will go from key to key just you know for variety's sake of. But for Mozart, it's always what significant, right? Huh? And sometimes he goes from hope to despair, and he'll go from the major key to the minor key, right? You know, tend to use certain keys, you know.

[4:48] For the irascible, he used more D major, let's say, or C major, right? Right. For the concupiscible, more G major or B flat or something. But it also depends upon the rhythm and so on the construction, melody, but.

[5:03] You aren't aware of it, right? We have the famous letter from Mozart to his father, where he's describing the what? Anger of Osmin and the abduction from the Seraglio, and how he's representing the anger in the music. And he says, you know, just as a man when he gets angry this way loses control himself, so Osmin has to be represented as losing control himself, right? He says, not in a way that becomes displeasing to the ear.

[5:32] In other words, cease to music. But now, an understanding of those emotions is fundamental for at least three or four arts of sciences, Because when Aristotle talks, example, about the poetic art, and he talks about tragedy. And you talked about comedy, though we lost that part. Well, tragedy and comedy move us to different emotions,

[6:06] and if they're written well, they're going to move these emotions in a way that kind of purifies them. And so, when Aristotle defines tragedy, it's a likeness of an action that is serious, you know, of some magnitude, right? In sweetened language, he says, right? Moving us to what pity and fear, right? So as to purge these, right? So it moves us to pity, which is a form of sadness and fear, and

[6:36] what comedy moves us more to mirth, which is a form of joy, right? And hope. So it's important for understanding fiction. Of course, there's some forms of fiction that are actually tied with anger. You know, the ones where someone's trying to revenge. A something's happened, right? And the whole thing is built upon the idea of revenge, right? You have a little bit of that, even the Odyssey of Homer, right?

[7:05] Where Homer's Odysseus is coming home and got all these people eating his food and courting his wife, and you know, and they close the doors and

[7:17] and you have you know Electra, you know, getting the the wife who's killed her father, right, and so on. He's a lover, and so on.

[7:31] So, but then it's important for the art of rhetoric, because you move people to what Like, it's an emotional thing. it is. So, Shakespeare, or, Aristotle has in the second book of the rhetoric a whole section on the different emotions that you use in rhetoric and how you arouse these emotions or how you calm them, right? So, if I'm defending you in court, I'm going to make them feel pity for you, right?

[8:00] If I want to really get you punished, I'll get you know them to feel angry towards you, you see. And if I'm in the the political assembly, I want to get some money for defense. I'm going to arouse fear if I can, you know. It's going to happen, you know, if we don't. You know, increase the army or something, or get this airplane or this rocket or whatever it is.

[8:25] So, the emotions have a different role to play there in rhetoric than they do in the poetic art, but there's some similarities. And but then when you study the what music, as I said, Mozart's music, you represent the what emotions, all of them, right? In the 20th piano chair, there was a taste

[8:52] of anger there, right? 24th, and so on. And then when you come to talk about the the moral virtues, right, ethics. Some moral virtues are about these passions, right? Like, say, temperance is about what desire and pleasure and so on, right? And then maybe courage is about what fear and boldness and so on, right? And magnanimity is about hope and so on, right? And so part of the distinction of the many of the moral virtues is by the emotions that they are about, right?

[9:33] As I say, Thomas would distinguish all eleven emotions there, and then you can sometimes bring in more accidental differences. You know, different kinds of what sadness, right? So, like, what's the difference between pity and envy and melancholy? And then, so this is important then for at least those four arts. or sciences, huh? For ethics, and even theology, right? They take up the moral virtues and that, and then for rhetoric, and for understanding the poetic art, right?

[10:17] And then, of course, in the poetic art, you have representation of characters in this or that emotion, right? But then it also has an emotional effect upon the audience on this double aspect.

[10:32] So, touching upon this, the irascible and concupiscible in the first objection, right? The name in Greek for the concupiscible is epithumia, and for irascible is what thumos, huh?

[10:57] But they're kind of named from one one virtue. The irascible is named from one emotion. The irascible is named from what anger, right? And thumos has some of that sense, right? Because that's the most manifest, you know, emotion there, right? And concupiscible is named from what sense desire, right? Because that's the most hunger, sexual desire, you know, on this sort of thing, desire to eat candy or get drunk or something, you know.

[11:26] See, and of course, when Thomas takes up, you know, the virtues in the Secunda Secundae in great detail, he takes up faith, hope, and charity, the theological virtues, and then prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance, right? But then he attaches to justice or fortitude or temperance other virtues that share the same mode, as he says, even though they're about a different matter, right? And so he attaches to to temperance, which moderates the desire for sense pleasures, huh?

[12:09] Eating, drinking, reproducing, mildness, which moderates what anger, right? See, and there's a certain similarity between those two because they what strongly move you, right? And that's why Shakespeare, you know, in As You Like It, there when the two young lovers fall in love quickly, you know, huh? These characters speak. They're in the very wrath of love, but there's no wrath there, anger, right? But it's a metaphor from what species to species, right?

[12:43] Because it has a suddenness, and he kind of plays up the very wrath of love. Clubs cannot part them, right? Well, yeah, two dogs are angry and fighting, you have to have a club, you know, and these lovers together. If you're a father, you gotta, you know your daughter's on the porch with the guy. You need a club to separate them, right? And so. But or like in the other place he says when the guy is very angry, you know, he says, "What drunk with collar?"

[13:13] You see? Well, drunk is in is in the matter of temperance, right? And collar in the matter of the virtue of mildness. But the similarity, right?

[13:25] Drunk with anger, right? Like it's irrational to manage drunk too much, you see. So you tend to name these some of the ones that stand out. You're anger and insatiable desire for sense experience. Okay. Moreover, Augustine says in the twelfth book of the Trinity that sensuality is signified by the serpent on the spiritual senses. But there's nothing serpentine in Christ,

[14:06] for it has the likeness of a what? Yeah, without poison. So Augustine says on John, just as he what? Moses raised up the serpent in the desert. Yeah. I never thought that he was a serpent-like but no poison. Yeah. Therefore, in Christ there was no will of sensuality.

[14:35] Moreover, the will follows what nature, as has been said. But in Christ there was not except what there was not there was not but one nature apart from the divine. Therefore, in Christ there would not be more than one what human will, right? Of course, he does have soul and body, right? Did that image say the one before the image about Christ was like serpent? When he's saying he's similar to a venomous animal, but without the venom, it's what because of his human nature.

[15:16] What does he mean by the venomous animal here, similar to the venomous animal? I think that he, because of human nature, he has this sensuality. Well, he says he's likened to a serpent in in that spiritual sense of of Moses raising up the the cross, you know, you know, kind of figure the cross. In the sense that if human nature is a serpent with with poison, and he's like the serpent but no poison, but no poison.

[15:43] Yeah. In other words, venomous animal, sensuality. But sensuality is a serpent with the poison, right? Yeah, yeah. But sometimes I suppose sensuality is like the translation of you know sensuality in English right now would tend to have the sense of something bad, right? Poisoned one. If I say somebody sensual, I mean some kind of excess, right? And but you find another word like self-love, right? That's just a bad sense, right?

[16:08] He loves himself, right? Well, he must love himself, but he loves himself too much, right? Or more than he should, you know. Okay. But against this is what Ambrose says in the second to the Ambrose says in the second to the Emperor Gratian That's what we saw before, right? Mine is the will which he calls his own, right? Because as man, he what? Yeah, under whose sadness?

[16:45] From which is given to be understood that sadness pertains to human will in Christ. But sadness pertains to sensuality. Has been had in the second part when we talked about these things. Therefore, it seems that in Christ is the will of what? Apart from the will of reason, right?

[17:15] So in a way, Thomas is in ordering the consideration of the incarnation after the second parties can use things that is understood in the second part.

[17:32] I answer: It should be said that it has been said that the Son of God took on human nature with everything that pertains to the perfection of that nature. But in human nature is included also the nature of what? An animal, as in a species is included the what? Genus.

[17:58] So animals divided into man and beast, right? What is a man if his chief glory but to sleep and feed a beast no more, right? Whence it is necessary that the Son of God,

[18:16] with this human nature, assumes also those things which pertain to the perfection of the nature of the animal. And among these is sense desire, which is called sensualitas in Latin, right? And therefore, it is necessary to say that in Christ there was sensual desire, but it'd be better to say sense desire, I think, or sensuality. Again, you have to realize Latin right there. There's no different sense or connotation in English, right?

[18:54] Now I've spoken out before how how when they talk about the senses of sacred scripture in the Latin they say sensus literalis. In the senseus, you know, spiritualis or mysticus, sometimes. Well, if you just transliterate sensus literalis, it's what literal sense, and I usually translate it sense of the letter, because you say literal sense in the way people use the word contemporarily now. They exclude the metaphorical, because that's metaphorical, not literal, right?

[19:32] But for Thomas, under sensus literalis is what the metaphor, right? Okay. So when I say the Lord is my rock, that's metaphorical, but that's the what? Yeah. That senses, yeah, yeah. Well, I think you know sensuality or sensual appetite has probably the pejorative sense, right? Something. excessive. Why sense desire doesn't have that quite that.

[20:16] Now it should be known, however, that sense desire, in so far as it is what naturally apt to obey reason, is reasonable by what, Partaking. as is clear through the philosopher in the first book of the Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle in the beginning there, the Ethics, he says that you have to know something about the soul, right, and the powers of the soul to understand ethics, huh? And so he speaks of one part as being reasonable essentially, and another part as being what reasonable by participation, right?

[21:00] A part that is where listen, right, or obey, or be led to obey reason, right? And because the will is in reason, huh? For a like reason, it can be said that sensuality is will by what? Yeah. So that's why he says, oh no, who knew he had good reason for saying that, right? The same way, you know, that Aristotle speaks of the what, the the emotions as a part that can be reasonable by participation, right?

[21:44] Can be reasonable in the sense of what obeying reason, right, huh? And so the emotions can obey the will, follow the movement of the will, right? And then they can be called what will by participation, right? Okay.

[22:11] You listen to music of Mozart. Now it's in some ways the most reasonable music ever written. And what I mean by that, well, I don't say that it's reasoning, but he's representing the emotions as moving in accordance with what reason, right?

[22:38] Aristotle has, I think, a very good thing when he speaks about this in the first book of the Ethics. Huh? He raises the question: Should reason rule the emotions as the master rules the slave, or as the father rules the son?

[23:00] And kind of the the stoic position, or the caricature at least of the stoic position, right? Is that reason should rule the emotions, like the

[23:12] master rules the slave, right? My cousin Donald, who's a philosopher too, was explaining this one time, talking to a woman psychologist, and she's saying, "Well, that's really behind the, you know, some of the some of the psychological they call it problems people, right? That their reason is what? Yeah, on the emotions, right? And it's kind of exposure, I suppose, in the person sooner or later. But Aristotle concludes that reason should rule the emotions, as a father rules his what son.

[23:48] Now the difference is that the master rules the slave for the good of the master, not for the good of the slave. And reason rules. I mean, the father rules the son for the good of the son, right? And another difference is that the slave has no nothing to say about what his his what he should do, right? But the son has something to say about what he should do, huh?

[24:18] And you kind of see this, you know, in families there where the sometimes where the the father might want the son to continue in his line of business or what he he hoped to accomplish, and then accomplish once the son accomplishes, and sometimes he doesn't listen to the son, right? I told you the story. My father told me of his business friend, and I tell you that we got this this son into Amherst, which is kind of prestigious college out here.

[24:45] And of course, the guy flunked out of Amherst the first year. He wasn't suited to Amherst; he wasn't suited to college at all, right? So finally, he comes back home, and father says, "What do you really want? " He wanted a filling station, a gas station. We had cars, right? So, Daddy bought him a gas station, right? You know, I think my father was telling me this that he's not going to try to force us into something that you know.

[25:08] In fact, he was a businessman, you know, but you know, he wasn't going to force us to be businessmen, you know, or you know, first and son is you know, you know, if we were if we were even finding something else that was good, you know, better, you know, and so this is the two differences between the way the father rules the son, right? And and the way the master rules the slave, right?

[25:35] So, but that difference, you know, accepting the way reason should rule it, if the emotions are led that way, right? Then they are reasonable by partaking of reason. That's why I say I say Mozart's music is perhaps the most reasonable music ever written. He represents the emotions. And years ago, I read Austerly there. I think I mentioned the essay there, the Thomist. Austerly taught at the college of St.

[26:09] Thomas there, but he wasn't there a day before I got in. But my brother Richard had him, you know. And Austerly had a little essay on towards an evaluation of music, right? That's where I first read these things. But he was talking about the superiority of the music of the 18th century to that of the Romantic period, right? Because the music of the 18th century, in general, represented the emotions as what in a reasonable state, huh?

[26:35] And why the Romantics are not accepting that reason should really rule the emotions, right? The emotions have got to be their own, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know, you can take a Tchaikovsky there, right? Tchaikovsky goes out in the middle of the river to drown himself, right? He can't finally do it, you know, huh? But then, you know, but then you go listen to music of Mozart, and say, "Oh, it's Mozart.

[27:02] That's not that's not you." So that's the you know insanity, you know, of the world, which the world which he was a part, right? He said to get back to something. So,

[27:16] so it's good that this this Benedict XVI likes to play Mozart, right? You know, that's a good sign. That's a good sign. Yeah. Do the animals have sense desire then in a way that doesn't preclude reason? Yeah, but you wouldn't speak of them as having voluntas per participata, right? Yes. Okay.

[27:36] See, see. But you know, going back to this analogy here, you can, like, in Plato does in the dialogues there. He sometimes says that reason is to the emotions like a man is to his horse, right? When you first get on the horse, it wants to throw you off, and you can give up, and the horse goes its own way, and so on. Or you can keep on getting back and tapping the horse until you finally tame the horse, and the horse begins to what obey you, right?

[28:11] Well, it's easier to see the relation between the man and the horse and who should command, who should obey, than reason and the emotions, but it's what analogous, right? And Thomas there when he's talking about temperance, you know, and he's talking about intemperance and how this is a childish vice. And he has a precise reason for saying this, not just you know throwing words out, but he says if you don't correct a child, eventually he becomes unmanageable, and you can't control him, right?

[28:43] And but the same with your reason, your emotions. If you always give in to your emotions, then eventually they come to a point that you they simply rule you, or you can't really control them, right? And you you're You're a a slave of your emotions, right? You're enslaved to your emotions. That's not good. That's why it causes childish vice, right? It becomes

[29:17] like a second nature, there, right? You become habituated to these things, huh? Okay. Yeah, you see, I think I've talked about the the division of pleasures, right?

[29:44] There's some pleasures we share with the dog and the cat, right? And we're going to have steak tonight, so I'd say to Tabitha, You know, we're going to have some steak tonight.

[29:57] She seemed to she seemed to know it, you know. Yeah, this is going to be a good meal tonight. And she come around the table there, I'm going to give you little tidbits, you know, it's spoiling you. but now the pleasures of understanding, right?

[30:16] Pleasures of understanding God, these are pleasures that we share with the angels. Pleasures of understanding geometry and so on, right? Okay. But now the pleasures of the fine arts are what? Yeah, and as Austin Farrer said, I thought he said very well, the pleasures of the fine arts, you know, that's saying music and painting and you know literature and so on. They're too high for the what beasts, and too low for the angels, right?

[30:53] So my grand angel probably said, what's he listening to Mozart for again? Or what's he reading? Simbeline? I was just reading Simbeline. I finished it up this morning. And

[31:05] but now the reason for that is that the the pleasures of the fine arts involve reason and what the emotions and the senses, right?

[31:20] I was just reading Shakespeare and listening Mozart. Um. So they involve the whole man. So they're they're the ones, as Austin Farrer said, that are most pleasingly proportioned to us, right? But the pleasures of understanding we share with the angels, but we partake of those pleasures in a way inferior to the way in which the what animals do, right? I mean, I mean the angels do. But now the pleasures that we share with the animals, we have them in a more refined way.

[31:51] So we cook our food and season it, and maybe have some wine with it. If you guys don't, but I mean, you know, and and

[32:04] we sit on our table and make them fork and so on, right? When we're civilized. So we, you know, the French involve the sauces and so on, right? And

[32:19] so you have those those three groups, right? Okay. But one thing the animals don't share is that fact that the emotions partake of what the will, yeah. Except insofar as the man trains them in some way, right?

[32:39] Well, it's kind of marvelous to see you know you know the way a dog in particular is attached to its master, and they seem to have to even fight and sacrifice themselves to the master or someone. So some praise worthy there, right? Man's best friend. It's similar with the horse too, because I know my sister. I rode horses when I was very young. My sister continued. I just rode for a short while when I was young, and she continued until she got married.

[33:13] And although I knew the pony she had for years and years, and he sort of recognized me, I guess I'd come over once a while. But I didn't used to ride him that much, and so I remember once after many years, I said, "I want to ride him today." She said, "Okay, he wouldn't do anything I wanted because he knows." And not only that, but the horse can tell if you are nervous if you are on top because they they can sense your senses.

[33:37] They can sense your muscle tone and everything else, and so they're not going to do anything that you want because they know you are not the boss. They just don't Some horses are better than others, like that.

[33:56] Okay, looking at the pliers, you know, right? So the first objection was based upon what Aristotle says that the will is in the rational part, right? He's talking about what what is a will by participation, right? I suppose that way of speaking is a little time unusual for Thomas, although it's like Aristotle's way of speaking of the part that's reasonable, right, by participation, right? But I suppose he wants to introduce that expression in talking about Christ, right?

[34:29] Because very much Christ's emotions were partaking of what the will and the reason. Um. So the first should be said that that reason proceeds from the will essentially said right, which is not except in the what understanding part, but the will participative, huh? By participation said can also be in the sensitive part in so far as it will be his reason, right?

[35:03] To the second, it should be said that sensuality is signified by the serpent, not as regards the what nature of sensuality which Christ took on, but as regards the corruption of the fomitis, right? See, Thomas calls that the lex fomitis. You know, when Saint Paul says, "I find another law in my members," right, the rebellion against it's called the lex fomitis right? And then the corruption, therefore, due to original sin.

[35:38] in Christ non fuit fomitis huh So you know when Thomas talks about the sin of Adam and Eve, he says that before they sinned, their emotions were fully obedient and under their what reason and will, right? And so the original sin. Of Adam and Eve, could not have been a sin of the flesh, right? That they ate too much or something like that. It had to be a spiritual sin, right?

[36:07] You would be like God, right? Good and evil and so on. So the angels are kind of appealing to their spiritual nature, and but then after sin, then then they they're embarrassed by their nakedness, right? And they want to cover themselves, right? And that's a sign that their emotions now are not subject to their reason, and they're embarrassed by this disorder in them, which is is a punishment, right?

[36:38] So long as their reason and will were subject to God, then what is below the reason and will is subject to them, right? But when they revolted, right, then the lower you're punished by having the lower revolt, right? A little bit like going back to analogy of the father and the son, like the reason the emotions. Well, he has his son revolt against him, huh? David, and he he suffers, right?

[37:04] When when his son is killed and everything, right? And the third thing is saying, well, the will follows nature, right? But in Christ there is not except one nature apart from the divine. Therefore, in Christ there is not except one human will. He says to the third, it should be said that where there is one on account of another, there there seems to be only what one.

[37:46] And this the reference here is to Aristotle's topics, huh? Lots of work. Um, just as surface, which is visible through color, is one visible with the what color? And likewise, because sensuality is not said to be will except because it partakes of the will of reason, just as there is one nature, human nature in Christ, so also there is placed one what human will in Christ because of their conformity, right?

[38:21] Okay, we have to stop there.