Love & Friendship
13. Is Love the Cause of All That the Lover Does? Love as the Root of All Passions
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/6-love-friendship/013-is-love-the-cause-of-all-that-the-lover-does-love-as-the/

[0:00] Okay. What time do you want to go to? By the way. We used to do four thirty or something like that. Okay, whatever. Okay, we'll look at the sixth effect of love for them. Okay.

[0:15] Now this is the effect of love, not upon the lover, like the last article, but the effect of love upon what he does, right? Okay.

[0:29] Now I said about Cleopatra here. Her passions are made of nothing but the finest part of pure love, huh? It's interesting, huh? Because he's speaking as if love is that out of which your other feelings are made, right? And of course, strictly speaking, love is not a cause in the sense of matter out of which something is made. It's a cause in the sense more of a what?

[0:58] Of a mover, right? Producer, huh? But you go back to the most known cause, just matter, right? Okay. So it's like my my fear for my children is made out of my love for my children, right? My hatred of those who oppose the things I love is made out of my love for these things, huh? Okay.

[1:22] Now look at these words here, Romeo. You know the beginning of the play there. You know where the houses of Capulet and the Montague are feuding and you know getting some blood and so on, right? Oh me, what fray was here? What fight was here? Right? Yet tell me not, for I've heard it all. Right? It's the old story again. Here is much to do with hate, right? Because they're fighting each other, because they hate each other, the adherents of the House of Montague and the House of Capulet.

[1:53] Here's much to do with hate, but more with love. Why does he say that? Because it's the cause of the hate. Yeah, yeah. Because I love the House of Capulet. I want the House of Capulet to be the supreme household in in Verona, right? Then I hate the pretensions of the House of Montague, right? So the cause of the cause is more the cause, right? And what he says that here's much to do with hate, but more with what love.

[2:22] Why then, O brawling love, huh? See, imagine the objection that Thomas had, and the you know, with his zeal and so on, and fighting even, right, is an effect of love. That's the effect of hate, not of love. Yeah, but more with love, right? So he says brawling love. The adjective again is, in some sense, the effect of the cause, which is signified by the noun, right?

[2:48] Okay. But now in the next phrase here, O loving hate, see, which is the cause, which is the effect. The hate is the effect. Yeah. Loving is the cause. And now he's got what? And the cause is the adjective, grammatically speaking. And the effect is the noun, right? You see Shakespeare will say sometimes, you know, proud contempt or proud scorn, right? Where proud is is grammatically speaking the adjective, and scorn or contempt is the what noun, right?

[3:31] But in terms of cause and effect, is the adjective the cause or the effect? Yeah. I guess other people speak the way sometimes too, but how Shakespeare does it very consistently, right? So I think what's interesting here is in this last line here, why then, O brawling love or loving hate, it's just reversed, right? In brawling love, the noun is the cause, and the adjective is the what effect.

[4:02] But O loving hate, the cause is the adjective, and the effect is is grammatically the noun, right? But the line before that really kind of explains why this is so, right?

[4:18] It's much to do with hate, but more with love. But as far as cause and effect is, if you look before and after, in the sense of cause and effect, well, love is the cause of hate, and the hate is maybe the immediate cause of the brawling or the the fighting, right, huh? You see that?

[4:39] But Romeo realizes that love is really the original cause. But they can't both be that, huh? They're building Juliet's house down there in case you want to see it, you know. When you're in Verona, my wife and I, you know you see the house of Juliet and it's kind of nice. The statue there of her and so on. But go to the place where she was supposed to be buried and so on.

[5:12] But I told you that my dad was with us, so I said, "Maria, get up in the balcony there." And Rose and I, her mother and I, we'll take a picture of you, you know. But then she, nobody goes 'cause on balconies. My dad was on the balcony, and the Italian guys down there, we love you.

[5:30] That's kind of funny. I was like, I just took a picture, you know, on the balcony there, red roses. The effect of love. Now, Troilus and Cressida. Cressida here now is carried away with her romantic passion and love of Troilus, but she's kind of a loose woman as you found in the play. I will not, Uncle. You know how this story. Cressy does in what

[6:13] Troy there, right? And her father's over in the Greek camp, and he wants to get her back, right? It's going to be separated from her what lover, right? I will not, Uncle. I have forgot my father, right? I know no touch Touch of concranzini consanguinity, no kin, no love, no blood, no soul so near me as the sweet Troilus. Oh you gods divine, make Cressid's name the very crown of falsehood. If ever she leave Troilus, huh?

[6:51] But she does eventually. But there's a famous thing of what by Chaucer, you know, on Troilus and Cressida. It's an old story, huh? Time, force, and death do to this body what extremity you can. But the strong base and building of my love is as the very centre of the earth, drawing all things to it, right? So, just as all things are drawn towards the centre of the earth, right?

[7:22] So everything she does is influenced by her love of Troilus, right? I will go in and weep, she says. Okay. So you can see what happens if you read the story, huh? This is

[7:38] Shakespeare's black satire on humanity. I put it in comedies, but the satire is not the good natured comedies. Oh yeah, He has a white satire. who loves labor's lost and then a black satire. right? He's a vicious, terrorist man. Now, Charles Dickens, huh? Probably the greatest of English novelists, and David Copperfield is usually regarded as his masterpiece, huh? Oh. And somewhat autobiographical too, I guess. So he's in love, huh?

[8:29] But no the energy it gives him. I began the next day with another dive into the Roman bath, and then started to highgate. I was not dispirited now. He's been inspired, right? He's going to be a success in life, so he can marry. this woman. what I had to do was to turn the painful discipline of my younger days to account by going to work with a resolute and steady heart.

[8:51] What I had to do was to take my woodsman axe in my hand and clear my own way through the forest difficulty, by cutting down the trees until I came to Dora. And it went on at a mighty rate as if it could be done by walking. It seemed as if a complete change had come in my whole life. But that did not discourage me. With the new life came new purpose, new intention.

[9:14] Great was the labor, priceless the reward. Dora was the reward, and Dora must be won. I got into such a transport that I felt quite sorry my coat was not a little shabby already. I wanted to be cutting at those trees in the forest of difficulty, under circumstances that should prove my strength. I had a good mind to ask an old man in wirey spectacles who was breaking stones upon the road to lend me his hammer for a little while and let me begin to beat a path to Dora out of granite.

[9:46] I stimulated myself into such heat and got so out of breath that I felt as if I had been earning I don't know how much. So he's willing to go and do things, right? But all because of this love of what? Dora, right?

[10:00] That scene when he proposes to Dora too is really very funny. I have to see it sometimes. Delightful. Using their name there, like other words, the three boys. Dora. Dora. Could be. It's not so fortunate in a marriage, Anyway. you can read this novel. Now, Augustine says something like this, but more succinctly. Where there is love, he says, right? Either no labor is felt in what you do, right, because of love, or the labor itself is loved.

[10:34] Is that all said? Okay, Thomas Aquinas. Whether love is the cause of all the lover does, huh? It seems that the lover does not do all things from love.

[11:01] For love is a certain passion. That's a love that's an emotion, right? Now, if you ever teach a love and friendship to a bunch of college kids, and you ask them the first day of class what is love, and they'll call it an emotion, right? So they think of just the love that is a what passion or emotion at first, huh?

[11:23] For love is a certain passion, as has been said above. But man does not do all things from passion or emotion, but some he does from choice,

[11:34] and some from ignorance. As is said in the fifth book of the Nicomachian Ethics of Aristotle. Therefore, a man does not do from love all things that he does. Moreover, desire is the beginning of motion and action in all animals. Desire or wanting is the other English word. As is clear in the third book on the soul. If therefore a man did from love all that he does, the other passions of the desiring part would be what superfluous, right?

[12:12] So I hit you because of anger, right? I run away because I'm afraid. So fear and anger are causes of my doing things, right? And I drink the water because I want to, you know.

[12:29] I eat because I'm hungry. Drink because I'm thirsty. Run away because I'm afraid. Hit you because I'm angry. So love is not the cause of all that I do, right?

[12:42] Moreover, nothing is caused at once from contrary causes. But some things come to be from hate. Obviously, he's never read Roman and Juliet, right? All things therefore are not from what love, right?

[13:01] So we do some things because we love love, and some things because of hate, right? These guys are blowing up people. They're in Baghdad. They're doing a lot of hate, right? Or something like that, right? Not out of love, huh?

[13:16] But maybe these guys can't. The chapter can't look before and after enough here, right? But against this is what the great Dionysius says in the fourth chapter about the divine names: that all things do whatever they do through love of the good. How can he say that?

[13:44] Thomas goes back to a very basic thing that he devotes a whole chapter to in his Summa contra Gentiles and so on. I answered that it ought to be said that every agent acts for some end. This has been said above. The end, however, is the good desired and loved by each. Whence it is clear that every agent, whatever it be, does any action from some love.

[14:12] Now, let's stop in there for a moment. What's the first definition of good? And the first definition of end. End is is the name of one of the four kinds of causes. And how is that kind of cause defined? Does anybody know the definition of end? What the for which something else? Yeah, that the sake of which, right? Yeah,

[14:46] that for the sake of which. And maybe that, the sake of which something is, or something is done, right? Okay. So I study for the sake of knowing, right? The chair is for the sake of sitting, right? Okay. So this is the definition of that kind of cause. That, the sake of which.

[15:26] Now the good, the first definition of the good is what, all desire. Now if Plato was to write a dialogue about the good. You might have Socrates talking to a boy, right? And Socrates would say, "What is good? What is the good?" And the little boy would say, "Probably, well, candy's good, pizza's good, baseball's good, vacation's good." Okay. And Socrates would say, "Well, these are all examples of good things, but why do you call them all good?

[16:17] What do they all have in common? You can't eat the bicycle, can you?" Mm-hmm. The little boy would have a hard time to say what is common to candy, pizza, bicycle, and vacation. Mm-hmm. Maybe a dog or cat, huh? Just good too. But all these things that he wants, he calls good, right? Okay. So that's the first notion that someone has. the. Good. The good is what you want, okay?

[16:52] Now, you could have a whole discourse about that definition of the good, right? And we could imitate Socrates and the Euthyphro, where he teaches us how to ask the basic question about that, right? Where Socrates might go and ask you, well, now, is it good because you want it, or do you want it because it is good? Okay, have a whole discussion about that, right? Trying to understand a little better the good.

[17:28] Let's not get into that right now. Today, people do that these days. Aristotle, at the very beginning, that's the first sentence, almost, first paragraph there. He gives this common notion, the good, right? Because we're all one.

[17:43] Now, notice the definition of the good and the definition of end are not the same, but is there a connection between the good and the end?

[17:58] Yeah. Because if something is good, people are going to act for the sake of getting it, right? Yeah. And therefore, be like an end, right? And vice versa, if people are doing something for the sake of something, that's kind of a sign that they think that thing is what good, right? It may sometimes be an apparent good, but you know, they want something that is that is good, or at least something that seems to be good, right?

[18:22] Sometimes they're deceived, right? Okay. Now, sometimes we speak of the means as being good too, huh? It's good to study, we might say, right? But it's good to study because to know is good, right? So ultimately, at the end, it is good, huh?

[18:41] Okay. So these two are basically the same thing, huh? So, so if everyone who does something is ending at some end, right? And it may either be something apart from what he's doing, right? Like if I take aspirin, right? I don't take aspirin for its own sake. Take aspirin to get rid of my headache or something like this, right? Um. So that end I have in mind may be something other than what I'm doing, right?

[19:21] But in other cases, what I'm doing might be the end itself, right? So I might be thinking or trying to understand God, and I'm trying to understand God for some other reason. don't understand God? No. Or if I'm looking at something beautiful, right? Beautiful sunset, or listen to music of Mozart, or something. I'm not doing this to seek something beyond that, but that itself is the end in hand, right?

[19:55] Okay. So what I'm doing, I'm either doing for its own sake, which case what I'm doing is my end itself, right? Or I'm doing it for the sake of something else, and then that's my end, right? So everything I do, I do for some end. But the end is the same thing basically as the good, and love is the fundamental what?

[20:20] Emotion or the fundamental act of will. See. And you see that because take the ones that are closest to to love, take want itself, or take pleasure, right? I want something that I love or like when I don't have it, right? So I wouldn't want it unless I first liked or or loved it, right? But when I don't have what I like or love, then there arises desire or wanting, right?

[20:57] So what I do out of my desire to eat, presupposes I like to eat, okay? If joy is the reason for why I do something, but I enjoy something because I now have what I like from love, You see? So love gives rise to the desire or to the what? Joy or pleasure, but the desire in the absence of the thing liked or loved, and the joy or the pleasure in the presence of it.

[21:38] Now, the hate arises, right, with respect to something that is opposed to or. Takes away the good that I love and want, so the hate presupposes what I love, right? So because I love my body, or I love the health of my body, right? Then I hate what sickness, right? Or because I love virtue, then I what hate vice, right? So in that sense, the hate arises from from I love, right?

[22:17] Not a love of the same thing, right? But I love something, and what is contrary to what I love is what I I hate. Okay. If I love beauty, then I hate what ugliness, yeah. If I love wealth, then I hate poverty, right? Okay. If I love virtue, then I hate vice, huh? If I love wisdom, I hate folly, right? And then from hate arises what the opposite of desire, that turning away from the object, right?

[22:57] Or if you can't avoid it, then there is what sadness, right? Listen. But the sadness and the turning away is from something that I hate, and I hate it because it's opposed to what I love. So love is giving rise to all of those, right?

[23:15] And then hope or despair arises from what desire, right? Which arises from love, right? So if I like the girl, then I want her, but now if there's other guys who want her too, then then she's not any good, but she's a difficult good, right? If I think I can outwit those guys, then I have hope, right?

[23:44] But if I think they might beat me, then I despair of winning her, right? So hope and despair arises from what my desire, right? But when the thing I desire is difficult to get, right?

[24:06] Then likewise, if I'm turning away from something bad, but it's difficult to avoid, then I have to have fear, right? If I think I can overcome it, then I have boldness, right?

[24:20] But if it's forced upon me and I'm sad, but I think I can do something about it, right? Then I have what anger, right? huh? So you're stepping on my toes and causing me pain, and I say, hey, and my toes, and you say, so what? So from this sadness arises my anger, right? If I think you can over thumb and get you off my feet, huh?

[24:43] So all these other emotions or acts of the will by which I do something other than love can be traced back to some love. Now that's because love is the fundamental what

[25:00] emotion or the fundamental act of the will with respect to the good. I mean, good is more fundamental than the bad. The bad is opposed to that?

[25:18] Now the first objection was taking it from where the student usually is. They only think of love at first as a what emotion, right? I remember as a child sitting in a nativity church there in Stanford Avenue there in Saint Paul, Minnesota, hearing the priest talk about the love of God, right? And I was saying, I know it is to love a girl, but I don't know exactly what it is to love God, right?

[25:46] I mean, like I was kind of puzzled, you know, by what it means to speak of the love of God, because I'm stuck still with the love that is most known to us, the love which is an emotion, right?

[25:58] And you know, even I taught love and friendship, you know, in the continuing ed. Sometimes if you have adults, you know, and love is for them emotion, maybe sexual love too. I mean, they're so narrow, right, in their in their thinking, right? So Thomas begins with that objection. That's people usually are. They're kind of stuck in that first meaning of love, huh? You see that a lot in so-called spirituality.

[26:23] They speak about falling in love with God. Yeah. They present it. I remember it specifically on a retreat. Yeah. Very good priest. He was trying to preach about loving the Blessed Mother. He kept saying how we have to fall in love with the Blessed Mother Oh. And I was, as I was in college and so forth, and I was still under this confusion, yeah. this Idea. So I I was trying to think. Like I'm not there.

[26:48] I'm not there. I don't have this emotion. Why? What's wrong with me? I couldn't figure it out. Yeah, yeah. So he says to the first, therefore, it ought to be said that that objection proceeds as regards a love, which is a passion, or we could say in English, an emotion, right? Okay, a feeling, we sometimes call it. But feeling, you know, kind of implies the connection there with the senses, right?

[27:18] Existing in the sense, desiring power. We, however, are speaking now about love taken commonly, in so far as it comprehends under itself intellectual, rational, animal, which is the emotional one, and even the what natural love, right? So you know the the the nursery there they speak of the plant as liking the sun or liking a lot of water, right? Maybe that expression, right? That's what they call natural love, right?

[27:50] And then the animal love, of course, is the what emotions, the feelings, and then the rational love, the intellectual love, is what you have in man and the angels, huh?

[28:03] For thus speaks the great Dionysius about love in the fourth chapter about the divine names. I guess they thought the Dionysius was the what one that Saint Paul converted in the Areopagus. So now we don't think he is that that guy, but he had a lot of authority being being the student of Saint Paul, right? But he's very wise man, apparently. commentary on the Divine Names and Albert the Great on the celestial hierarchy, but they both know both books.

[28:29] Now the second objection is saying, hey, we do lots of things because of the other passions, right? To the second, he says, it ought to be said that from love are caused desire and sadness and pleasure and consequently all the other passions. Now we spoke about before, right? Whence every action which proceeds from any passion proceeds also from love as from a first cause. Okay. Or brawling love, or loving hate, right?

[29:08] Even hate does, right? But the other causes, which are proximate causes, are not what superfluous, right? So it's not enough to to want wisdom. You've got to have the hope of what getting wisdom, right? And most people, you know, in the life of the mind, they despair of what knowing the truth, right? And so they give up, right? Okay. And Judas there despaired, right? Huh? Okay. So both Judas and what Peter

[29:44] sinned, right? But Peter was not. What to despair, Judas? Right, Judas went and hung himself. Right, so Judas despaired; he was lost. But if he'd never been born, Christ says, huh? But Peter weeps, but has hope of what being redeemed, right? This fall, huh?

[30:13] So you have to look before and after, right? See, that's what Romeo says, right? Go back to those words of Romeo. Right, here's much to do with hate, right? See, they're fighting because of hate, right? But more with love, right? See how why Shakespeare is.

[30:36] It's more with love because love is the cause of the hate. See, so you know if you're standing at the edge of the cliff there, and I take a pole and I off you go, do we punish me or the pole?

[30:52] Because I didn't touch you, the pole touched you, the pole pushed you off the cliff. See, so the pole has nothing to do with your death, right? But really, I had more to do with your death than the pole did, right?

[31:09] A pole caused death, but more caused by Berquist than the pole. Do you see that? That's what Thomas is saying, right? So it goes back to some kind of what of love, huh?

[31:23] Now that's very interesting when you come to talk about the the three theological virtues, huh? Because as you know, Abraham begot Isaac, and Isaac begot Jacob. Huh? Faith begot hope, and hope begot what? Love, huh? And in the Vatican II, there in the beginning of Dei Verbum, right? At the end of the magnificent Praemium they quote Augustine, right? So the whole world, by believing, might come to hope, and by hoping, come to what love, right?

[31:57] So is that contradictus? How can hope give rise to love? Because here he's saying love is the basic thing, not hope. What's the answer to that? How can hope come before love?

[32:16] Hoping is sort of, that's sort of knowing, and then to know you can't love what you don't know. Well, I mean that's why faith comes first, right? You have to know. But if hope comes before love, there must be some other love that comes before what hope, right? But the love that I have of God that's

[32:48] before hope, which is before the love of charity, right, is more a love of wanting, right? Yeah. And so I have to want God, right? I have to want to see God, and I have then a sense of love of wanting of that, right? That comes before my what hope of arriving, eventually, at that stage, right? But the love of charity is is is a love of friendship.

[33:23] It's a love of wishing well, right? And that love is more perfect kind of love that comes later on, right? But there must be some kind of love before hope, right? Yes. And so you're kind of forced to make those what distinctions? Distinctions, yeah. So in order to, because of the truth of what's being taught here in this article, and then you ask yourself, what is the difference between the love that is before hope and the love that is caritas, the agape, that's after it that hope gives rise to, you see.

[34:02] And because it's very beautiful there in that little treatise on love there of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, where he speaks of kind of four stages of love, right? And first, I love myself for my own sake, right? And I don't love God at all, really. And then I run into difficulties in my life, difficulties in getting what I want, difficulties in avoiding what I want to avoid, and then I turn to God, right?

[34:36] Okay. And then I begin to love God in order to satisfy my desires, just you know, okay. And then, but in turning to him in prayer, involves some kind of hope in God, right? I get to know him better, right? And then I begin to see that he's lovable, not just because for what he does for me, but apart from what he does for me, right? And then I begin to love God for His own sake.

[35:13] And now this is the love of what wishing well, really, of a friendship, right? And then he says the last stages where you don't love yourself except for the sake of God. He says it's hardly realized in this life, huh? So difficult, huh? It's kind of beautiful what he does here.

[35:31] So, in a sense, I'm loving my own happiness, right? And hating my own misery, and that's kind of getting me to what turn towards God now, right? Because I'm not self-sufficient for my own happiness and to avoid misery, huh? But then I'm kind of, in fact, more the love of wanting of God, right?

[36:02] And it happens a lot, something like that in human affairs, but certainly more known to us, right? Where I might first turn to somebody because I need them, right? I need a plumber, I need an electrician, I need a teacher, I need, you know, a cook or something like that, right?

[36:20] You're useful to me in some way, right? Okay, so you don't really have a love of wanting for you, right? But then you know, after I have contact with you for some time, then I can maybe love you for your own sake, right? And this kind of started maybe a friendship. My father used to go to the baseball games with this guy who sold him paint. I think what first brought them together was the guy wanted to sell paint.

[36:45] My father needed paint for his wagons. So on right, and they were mutually useful right. Then they got to know each other, and so apart from that, they said you know let's go out the gate. So that can happen right. Okay.

[37:08] Now