Love & Friendship
12. Does Love Make the Lover Better or Worse? Love's Effect on the Lover (Aquinas ST I-II q.28 a.5)
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/012-does-love-make-the-lover-better-or-worse-loves-effect-on/

[0:00] But now, what's the difference between them in the last two effects now? These are in the person loving. Yeah, yeah. In other words, the first four, and especially the first three, right? But the fourth one is related to that is looking towards the effect that this has in reference to the loved itself, right? Okay. Now, in the last two ones, he's saying, what's the effect upon the lover himself, right?

[0:35] Is he made better or worse by the fact that he loves? Is it better to have loved than lost. Is he made better or worse by love? And Thomas is not going to give a simple answer, right? Because it's going to depend upon what you love, right?

[0:54] So you can be made better or worse by your love, huh? I love to torture people. My love makes me worse. Okay, if I love God, my love makes me better. Okay, so it depends upon what I what love, right? If I love rock and roll, it probably makes me worse. Love Mozart, makes me a little better, right? Okay, so he's going to talk in the last articles the effect upon the lover himself, and then the sixth article on what he does, right?

[1:30] Okay, so you might divide the last two articles against the first four, right? In one case, you're looking towards the loved and the effect in comparison to loved. and now you're looking at the lover and the effect it has upon the lover himself, and then what he does. Okay, I can add a little bit of text here from myself, I guess. I don't know who else it'd be.

[2:06] A good love is a perfection of the lover, right, and perfects the lover. A bad love is a corruption of the lover and corrupts them, right?

[2:20] Now, that's kind of interesting. If you compare knowledge and love, in the beginning of the first book there about the soul, Aristotle says all knowledge is good,

[2:37] but one knowledge he says is better than another, either because he says it's about a better thing, right, or because in it you know the object better. Now, in the beginning of the parts of animals, he says the most important thing is what you know, right? Okay. So one knowledge is better than another because of what you know or how you know it, but most of all because of what you know.

[3:09] Aristotle will say later on that to know a better thing imperfectly is better than to know an imperfect thing perfectly. Okay. But notice the more general statement. He's saying all knowledge is good.

[3:25] As such, right? All ignorance and if it's very all mistake or error, as such is what bad, right? Okay. Now sometimes you say this, you know. Somebody might say, "What about the sex education? Is this good? "

[3:44] Well, no, most of it. But is the knowledge of such bad? See, no. What? How they present it. Yeah, my knowing the the combination to your safe, right? Is that as such bad? See, it's not that knowledge as such doesn't make me bad, but if I've got the kind of will or desire that I would want to take what is in mind right? Then, per accidens, you could say, right?

[4:26] My knowing that is bad, right? Okay. But the knowledge as such is not bad, is it? Um, and of course, this goes back to something we've read out before. There's the same knowledge of opposites.

[4:48] So if knowledge of a bad thing was bad, then all knowledge should be bad, because the same knowledge of health and a sickness, of virtue and a vice, right? So all knowledge as such is good.

[5:09] Even knowing how to make a bomb is good, right? But by reason of something else, if I have a desire to blow up people like and beg there someplace, then it's bad that I know how to make a bomb, right? Not because the knowledge as such is bad, but because of my what bad will towards people, right? You see that? Now, what about love? Is all love good?

[5:38] Like all knowledge is good as such? No, depends upon what you love, right? And if I love the good, then my love is good. If I love something bad. Then my love is bad.

[5:57] So there's a big difference between knowledge and love, right? All knowledge is good, as such. But all love, as such, is not good. And that's connected with the other thing, as I said. There's not the same love of opposites, but there is the same knowledge of opposites. Like Socrates points out at the end of the Symposium, Aristotle, Thomas bring out more fully, right? There is the same knowledge of opposites,

[6:33] but there isn't the same love of opposites. Do you see that? If I know what virtue is, it helps me to know what vice is, right? If I know what vice is, it helps me know what virtue is. But the love of one impedes the love of the other. Okay. That's very important to see.

[6:54] A love can be bad either because the object loved is bad, for example, murder, or because the way it is loved is bad. For example, if I love wine or food too much, or before everything else, right?

[7:09] Hence, for a love to be good, both the object loved and the way it is loved must be what? Good, right? Further, one love is better than another either because the object loved is better. For example, the love of wisdom is better than the love of candy.

[7:31] So I don't think my love of candy made me a better person. Probably made me a worse person. But the love of wisdom probably makes me a better person, right? Okay.

[7:46] Or because the way it is loved is better. It's better to love someone by the love of wishing. well, than by the love of what? Wanting. Okay. Okay. Now the two gentlemen of Verona, Proteus.

[8:05] He's one of the two gentlemen of Verona, and his friend, the other gentleman of Verona, Valentine, his old friend, has gone to the court for his finishing of his education, right? So he's going to. More prestigious than having been to court. He after honor hunts. I after love, right? He's in love with Julia. He leaves his friends to dignify them more. The guy going off to school, right?

[8:32] Going to leave his friends for a while, but going to dignify them more, right? Coming back educated and so on. I leave myself, my friends, and all for love. Okay. There's that effect of love, ecstasy, right? I leave myself, right? He's gone out of himself in some way. He's so much in love with this Julia. Thou, Julia, thou hast metamorphosed me. And also, we said love was it was a what?

[9:00] Transformation of the heart, conformity of the heart with its object, right? Metamorphosis means a change of what? Form, right? So Julia, thou hast metamorphosed me. Huh? Very well said. But now, as the effect of this intense romantic love, has been good upon him, right? Made me neglect my studies.

[9:27] Lose my time. War with good counsel, huh? Set the world at naught. Made wit with musing weak. Heart sick with thought. Okay. What's made wit with musing weak? Well his mind is weak now, huh? His mind. Made wit. Yeah. The essence of wisdom of the mind. Oh, with musing, Of course, it's a musing. Okay. Made wit weak with musing. Now let's see the effect of this upon Romeo.

[10:01] If you know the beginning of the play, there Romeo is in love with what Rosalind, right? And she won't give him the time of day, right? And he wanders around at night time, and then the day comes, he goes to his room and he closes the shutters and it stays out in the dark and so on. And his father is concerned about his son, right? And so he asks the friend of Romeo, Benvolio, see if he can find out what's bothering Romeo, right?

[10:26] Now Benvolio is well named. Benvolio means what? Goodwill. Yeah. One who wishes well, right? In Twelfth Night, you have another character called Malvolio. So Benvolio says, "Good morrow, cousin." Romeo says, "Is the day so young?" Keep them shutters closed, and you know what time of day it is. But new struck nine. Amy, sad hours seem long. Was that my father that went hence so fast? It was, says Benvolio.

[11:03] But sadness lengthens Romeo's hours. Oh, said, huh? Sadness lengthens one's hours. In love, and Benvolio says, out. And Benvolio of love, out of her favor. Why am I in love? Alas, that love so gentle in his view, should be so tyrannous and rough in proof, right? And notice, there, metaphorically, Benvolio is speaking of some love, the love that Romeo has at this time, as being tyrannous, right?

[11:44] As being a tyrant, huh? Now, tyrant is someone that rules, not for the good of those he rules, right? But for his own good, right? So, if love is tyrannous, if one is being ruled by love, and this love is a tyrant, then is one benefiting from the love? No, no more than the city benefits from being ruled by a Stalin or some other tyrant, huh? You see the idea?

[12:22] That's a good metaphor, right? Based on proportion, it is, huh? He's saying this love is to Romeo like a tyrant is to the what? City, huh? You have that all the way back to Plato, and not before. A particular proportion, huh? Because when he compares the Republic, the three parts of the soul to the three parts of the city, right? And then he tries to know one by the other, right?

[12:57] So when you're ruled by your emotions, you're ruled by a tyrant, in a sense. Whether it be love or anger or some other emotion?

[13:09] So these passages indicate that love makes you worse sometimes. Now the next passage here is dealing with the second thing I was pointing out that the love, what

[13:26] to be good has to be not only have a good object, but also to be what measured by reason, right? Or by reason. So Julia was very much in love with Proteus. The son is trying to moderate it, and Julia says, "Did thou but know the inward touch of love, the inward touch of love, thou wouldst as soon go kindle fire with snow as seek to quench the fire of love with words."

[13:59] Well, the son says, "I do not seek to quench your love's hot fire, but qualify, meaning to what? Modify, to moderate, right? But qualify the fire's extreme rage, lest it should burn above the bounds of what? Reason. Okay.

[14:22] So that's what the romantics won't admit, huh? That love should be moderated by reason, huh? And Shakespeare talks about that. you know when the character says in another play, 'Love and reason keep little company nowadays. ' They

[14:45] use some of those texts and saying, 'Well, how can the philosopher who uses reason then talk about love? See? How can you have a reasonable discussion of love? See? ' Of course, students are a class, No, you can't. You can't. It's unreasonable.

[15:00] Of course, if you're thinking of romantic love, maybe a lot of times there's something unreasonable about this, right? Something excessive or disordered about it, huh? One girl went out. and was just telling me about getting up from the top of the school building when she was in high school, you know, and to jump off because her steady boyfriend had dropped her, right? Finally, found the boyfriend to talk.

[15:25] into coming down. So, maybe that's a fun example. but... Okay. Now another thing is said about love is that love is blind, right? Common saying, huh? Must be some truth to it, huh? That is, it makes the lover blind. But it's bad to be blind, isn't it? Therefore, love makes the lover worse,

[15:55] right? Sherlock Holmes, you know, when Watson is falling in love, right? And Sherlock Holmes says that love is destructive of the logical faculty, and it's commonly said that the lover is made foolish by love. I mentioned how the English word "fond" f o n d in Shakespeare often means what foolish, right? So it's a fond thing to say. That was a foolish thing to say, you know.

[16:29] But then it came to mean what you kind of like the girl, right? You're fond of the girl, right? But the original meaning was you're acting kind of foolish about this girl, right? And that's the original meaning, huh? So that love makes you what foolish, and so often does love make you act foolishly that that seems to be what an effect of love to be foolish, huh?

[16:53] But a fool is love. That's kind of a common saying, right? Well, it's not good to be a fool, is it? No, so if it's destructive of the logical faculty, of reason, right, it makes one a fool. Man is man by his reason. How can this be a good thing, love, right?

[17:17] Now, the Merchant of Venice. You know the story. You know Portia has to marry the man who chooses the right casket. You know the story of that. It's a famous story going way back in literature, and of course Bassanio is about to make the right choice, right? She's overwhelmed, right? She wants him. Oh love be moderate? Because the love is almost too much, right? Allay the ecstasy, right?

[17:41] You can't fall outside yourself so much. In measure reign thy joy, scant the excess. I feel too much thy blessing. Make it. bless for fear I surf it

[17:59] Now the next reading here from one of the first novelists in America here, famous novel at the time that called The Spy, and one of the later editions there, the Fenimore Cooper, has an introduction where he says, "People have often asked me, was there any original for this character I had." Says the author has often been asked if there was any foundation in real life for the delineation of the principal character in this book.

[18:30] He can give no clearer answer to the question than by laying before his readers a simple statement of the facts connected with his original publication. Many years since the writer of this volume was at the residence of an illustrious man, of course we've identified that man, John Jay, one of the three authors of the Federalist Papers, right? Who did other things during the s the War of Revolution, who had been employed in various situations of high trust during the darkest days of the American Revolution.

[19:02] The discourse turned upon the effects which great political excitement produces on character, and the purifying consequences of a love of country when that sentiment is powerfully and generally awakened in a people. He who, from his years, his services, and his knowledge of men, was best qualified to take the lead in such a conversation was the principal speaker. After dwelling on the marked manner in which the great struggle of the nation during the War of seventeen seventy five had given a new and honorable direction to the thoughts and practices of multitudes whose time had formerly been engrossed by the most vulgar concerns of life, he illustrated his opinions by relating an anecdote, the truth of which he could attest as a personal witness.

[19:50] That's the man he tells about, the man who's you know is willing to sacrifice his life for his what? Country, right? Huh? So you see a man being ennobled in a way by his love of his country, right? A love of the common good, huh?

[20:09] Now the opposite of that, Silas Marner, right? This novel, George Eliot's that's a woman, as you know, he had clung with all the force of his nature to his work and his money, and like all objects to which a man devotes himself, they had fashioned him into correspondence with themselves. His loom, as he wrought in it without ceasing, had in its turn wrought on him and conferred more and more the monotonous craving for its monotonous response.

[20:40] His gold, as he hung over it and saw it grow, gathered his power of loving together into a hard isolation like his own. So he's being kind of narrowed and lowered by. The what, imperfection, the defect of the good that he loves, right? By the other man here, the spy, right? You know, I regret that I've got one life to give for my hunting, you know, the people like that.

[21:02] So they're they're they're they're raised up, right, by loving something. That's a nice quote from Goethe. We are shaped and fashioned by what we love, right? So if I love noble things, I'm in a way ennobled by that, right? If I love disgusting things, I am become disgusting myself, right? So one is contaminated, you might say,

[21:32] by the goodness or the badness of the thing one loves, right? If I know disgusting things, that doesn't make me disgusting, right? Because I know about them. But if I love them, that makes me disgusting. You see that? If I love wisdom, I'm already a bit wise. If I love foolishness. I'm a bit of a fool already. You see, and that's because love goes out to the thing in itself, as Aristotle says in the sixth book of the *Wisdom*.

[22:07] Good and bad are in things. Truth and falsity in the mind. So you're joined to the goodness or the badness of the thing in itself when you love it. So it's very well said by Goethe the poet. We are shaped and fashioned by what we love. Julia, thou hast metamorphosed me, he says. Right? He's been shaped, right, by his love of Julia. Much Ado About Nothing? huh One of the love and friendship plays.

[22:50] There are six love. Friendship plays of Shakespeare, right? You have the three earlier ones, which are the Merchant of Venice and the Two Gentlemen of Verona, and Midsummer Night's Dream, and then the later ones, the Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night. Twelfth Night's the last one.

[23:18] Claudio, that's as much as to say the sweet youths in love. Don Pedro, the greatest note of it is his melancholy. Yeah, it's good to be melancholic.

[23:40] No, it's kind of sad. She loves him with an enraged affection, It's past infinite of thought, It's an excess. so Thomas raised the question now: whether love is a passion harming the lover, right? That's the common opinion.

[24:01] One goes forward to the fifth. Thus, it seems. Do you want to take a little break or not? It. We had a custom before.

[24:13] Okay, break now. Take a little break and okay, come back now. Okay. So, whether love is a passion harming the lover, right, making you worse, one goes forward to the fifth. Thus, it seems that love is a harmful passion. For weakness signifies a certain harming of the one weakened, right? But love causes weakness, for it is said in the Song of Songs, chapter two, verse five. Now he's quoting scripture, right?

[24:48] The devil can quote scripture, right? Stay me up with flowers, compass me about with apples, because I faint with love, right? When we saw Proteus speaking about being made weak by his love, right? Therefore, love is a harmful passion that weakens you. Makes you soft.

[25:12] Moreover, melting is a certain what dissolution. That's a way to destroy something, right? But love is a melter, melts you down, for it is said in the Song of Songs, chapter five, verse six. My soul melted when my beloved spoke. Therefore, love dissolves. Is therefore corruptive and what harmful, right?

[25:42] Moreover, raging or boiling, right, signifies a certain excess in heat, which excess is corrupting. But raging or boiling is caused from love. For Dionysius puts in the seventh chapter the celestial hierarchy, among other properties pertaining to the love of the seraphim, hot and acute and boiling over.

[26:08] And in the Song of Songs, chapter eight, verse six, it is said about love that the lamps thereof are fire and flames. Therefore, love is a harmful and corrupting passion or emotion. And notice in those scenes where Saint Teresa of Avila, right, sees you know a great increase of love, right, but she has an example of the angel there, right, piercing her heart, right. I guess they actually, you know, found the effects of this on the physical heart, even, huh?

[26:41] See, in the same way with what Saint Teresa, you know, the wound of love that we've talked about in the earlier passages on the nature of love, being undergoing, right? But if one is wounded by love, well, it's not good to be wounded, right? Just talk to any soldier, and I couldn't be wounded. I say I always joke, you know, when the soldier marries a nurse, you know, like my my son Paul's married to a nurse.

[27:08] I say that that's the right woman for a soldier to marry. It's not good to be wounded, is it? See, see, you're wounded by love, huh? Okay.

[27:25] But against this is what Dionysius says in the fourth chapter about the divine names, that individual things love themselves in a containing way, that is, in a conserving way. Therefore, love is not a harmful passion, but more a conserving and perfecting one.

[27:46] Thomas says, I answered that it should be said as has been said above, that love. Signifies the fitting of the desiring power with some good, right? It's a conformity or agreement of the heart, the desiring power, with some good. Nothing, however, which is fitted to something which is suitable to it, is harmed from this, but rather it advances and is made what better. But what is fitted to something that is not suitable to it is harmed and made worse from this, like if your shoes don't fit you, right?

[28:25] Not good for the feet, right? Love, therefore, of a suitable good, perfects and makes better the lover. Love, however, of a good which is not suitable to the lover, harms and makes worse the lover.

[28:47] I say you could also say that in this way that I was saying that love, goes to the thing itself, right, unites you with the thing in itself. So the thing in itself is good, then you're being perfected by being united with that thing. But if the thing in itself is bad, and you're loving the bad, then you're being what contaminated in a bad way by that object.

[29:12] Whence man is most of all perfected and made better the love of God, because He's goodness itself, right? Sometimes our Lord will say, you know, God alone is good, right? Why call me good in my human nature? But He is harmed and made worse by the love of sin, according to that of the Prophet Hosea. , chapter nine, verse ten. They are made abominable, just as those things they have loved, right?

[29:46] You're not made abominable if you know what is abominable and avoid it, right? But you're made abominable if you love something that's abominable. Now the next paragraph, though Thomas is going to make a distinction, right? Because

[30:08] in the case of emotions, there's something else to be considered, right? I mean that there is a bodily change, right? Involved in emotions, and that bodily change, if excessive, can be what destructive. Yeah, yeah.

[30:31] And this has been said about love as regards what is formal in it, which is from the desiring power. But as regards what is material in the passion of love, which is some bodily change, it happens that love is harmful because of the what excess of change, and he makes a comparison, just as happens in sense. in every act of a power of the soul which is performed through some change of body organ.

[31:04] So if you get snow blindness, right? Okay. Or you get a sound that deafens the ear, right? The change is too great for the organ, huh?

[31:24] Okay. Now it comes to some things that would be necessary for answering those objections, right? To those which are objected contrarywise. I mean, in this paragraph, he's just given he's given the sense the solution, right? To them, right? Okay. To those which are objected contrarywise, it should be said that four proximate effects can be attributed to love. That's kind of interesting. He's adding some more idea about effects here: melting, enjoyment, faintness, and raging.

[32:00] Now, among which melting is first, which is opposed to hardening. Now, if you got a hard heart, a heart of stone, your heart is not apt to what love, right? Huh? And the love softens the heart, right? Because loving is a what undergoing, right? Huh? And it's the soft that undergoes, right? The hard resists.

[32:24] Among which melting is first, which is opposed to hardening. Things which are hardened are drawn together in themselves, so that they are not able to admit easily the entrance of another. So in the stone, right? But it pertains to love that the desiring power be fitted to the reception of the good loved, in so far as the loved is in the lover as has been said. Love is basically an undergoing, right? That's the first thing we learned about love.

[32:55] Whence the freezing or the hardness of the heart is a disposition which is opposed to love. So the scripture of God says sometimes I'll take away their heart of stone, right, and give them a heart of flesh, right. That's referring to this melting, this softening of the heart, so it can love.

[33:17] Whence the freezing or hardness of the heart is a disposition which is opposed to love. But melting signifies a certain softening of the heart, by which the heart shows itself as suitable for the love to enter into it.

[33:43] This is Andrew Jackson had kind of irascible nature, huh? And sometimes he really let people have it, you know. But other times he he assumed this, right? Just to be tough, right?

[33:59] What's that other guy. huh And I remember one of these accounts of General Patton, you know, after the war there in Germany. And there's some dispute with the Russians there about the use of some boat there. I don't know something like that. The Russian general came over to protest to Patton. Oh. And Patton got down he took his gown he sat on the table like that, and he's you know went into a rage, you know.

[34:24] And the Russian, you know, Patton, how are you? And as soon as the Russian had left, the Patton turned to the American, you know, subordinate who was there and he says, How was that? "

[34:34] You know, I never bothered that guy again. You know, you think that's a madman, you know, what are you going to do, you know.

[34:47] That's what Jackson, was, to some extent, you know, he's kind of picked it, you know, just got the pants on, yeah, on used. Now, if then the love is present and is had, right, it causes delight or what? Enjoyment, right. So you're soft, you can receive the the thing, right? Have joy if it's good. If, however, it is absent, there follows two passions, namely sadness over the absence, right?

[35:24] Which is signified, and it's kind of metaphorical these ways of speaking, right? Which is signified by faintness or weakness, right? Whence Tully, meaning Cicero, in the third book of the Tusculan Questions, most all name sadness as a kind of what? Sickness, right? Okay. So the lover is made melancholy. That's the speaking properly, right? But made what? Faint or sick—that's kind of what metaphor, right? For the the the sadness, huh?

[36:01] But isn't that true that sadness makes a man kind of what weak, huh? You know, if you're bored with what is being said in class, huh? Then you don't apply your mind very intensely, do you? See, or if you're reading something and it's boring, you know, boredom is a kind of sadness, right? Okay. If you don't enjoy doing what you're doing, right? Then you don't do it very what intensely or strong, yeah.

[36:32] So sadness gives you kind of what weakness, huh? But this is an effect of love when you don't what have what you love, right? Okay.

[36:53] An intense desire of obtaining the love, which is signified by what raging, right? Okay. So read that description in Romeo and Juliet when Juliet's waiting for Romeo to come that night. Huh? She's raging. Okay.

[37:14] And these are effects of love taken formally according to the relation of the desiring power to its object. But in the passion of love or the emotion of love, right, the bodily love, there follow some effects proportional to these, according to the change of the what organ, right, huh? Okay.

[37:37] As I see, I was reading the life there of Henry Clay. You know, a lot of sadness in his life, right? I think he lost the presidency, election three times, right? But a lot of problems in his family, right? It's He had um 6 daughters. Five of them died fairly young, you know, cholera and other. That was a common thing in those days. And he was always losing.

[37:58] Is the one who lived to be about twenty-eight, you know, she died in childbirth. You know, they're always dying in childbirth in those days. And his daughter-in-law's sons, he was, in fact, very much died in childbirth, you know, or resulted this, you know, they don't know as much as they know now. And one of his sons, you know, was got a head injury and went mad and had to be confined in a mental asylum, you know, for most of his life.

[38:24] And another one was a drunkard and a sot, and you know, one was successful, went to West Point, was second in his class, but he got killed in the Mexican War. It's one thing after another, you know. Well, sometimes I mean, just too much, almost, you know. And he's so sad, he just but can't do anything, right? What's the kind of weakness, right?

[38:48] But you're what the absence of these people, your love, right? Because he ended up with a lot of grandchildren, because but his wife had to, you know, be taking care of the grandchildren because the mothers are gone. It's terrible, but you see that weakness there, right? Where a man just can't, you know, have to do something for some period of time, right? Just

[39:19] so you can take these these expressions more metaphorically when they're referring to the formal aspect of love, right? Because there can be sadness even in the will, right? Sadness or sadness or ascendants in the will, primarily, but then there can be something in the emotions too, and then there can be the bodily change, which would be proportional to these things. So even bodily one feels what weak.

[39:39] My my godmother, you know, one of her little boys was killed in a train accident, and I remember I was quite young at the time, but but they were, you know, out the burial there in the cemetery, and she's kind of just collapsed in her arms. You're weak, right? You know, just just

[40:10] so that that sadness makes one weak. So I know all about melting and. Okay. You know, the basic thing there is is not a simple answer. Does love make you better or worse? It depends upon what you what love. Love, yeah. Does Love of money make you good. I think so. So.

[40:54] The love of God, most of all, right? But the love of wisdom, right? Love of justice, huh? Things of this, sort.