old work on 35.7

The seventh article asks whether interior sorrow is greater than exterior sorrow.
The reasons for supposing that “outward pain” (find latin) (obj.2) would be a cuase of greater sorrow because it is sourced in a real conjunction, that it concerns a greater good - the life of the body is held to be greater than something merely cognized as bad, and the third shows that a man dies sooner from pain than from sorrow.
Aquinas in his reply defines the difference between “exterior” and “interior” sorrow - exterior sorrow is on account of a conjoined evil repugnant to the body, while interior pain results from a conjoined evil repugnant to the appetite. As such, interior pain would be greater than outward pain inasmuch as the object is opposed to the appetite itself, whereas bodily pain comes through the mediation of being repellent to the body. Furthermore, the kind of apprehension that belongs to the interior is more perfect than the apprehension that is proper to the sense of touch. While the oppression of something harmful to the body seems to be more “objective” and real in a sense, the quality of the interior apprehension, as subsuming the nature of a thing to a higher degree, makes the evil to be better known and consequently, it would appear, more painful. This is one passion at least, where, the more it becomes interior, intelligent, and apprehensive, one might perhaps also say that it is more painful. (I remember 35.1arg.2, “every passion fo the soul belongs to the appetitive faculty. But pain does not belong to the appetitive, but rather to the apprehensive part: for Augustine says that bodily pain is caused by the sense ressting a more powerful body. The reply does not discount the association with the apprehensive - not that this is nec. Significant, but still - he says ‘we speak of pain of the sense, not as though it were an act of the sensitive power, but because the senses are erquired for bodily pain, in the same way as for bodily pleasure.)
We can perhaps look for more light on this by returning to 22.2 - where it is asked whether passions are appetitive or apprehensive, and we are able to question this. First, returning to 22.1 - where passion is stated to be something under the power of the agent, and sorrow (find proper latin term) is declared to be the ‘most passionate of the passions’ because something is found to be ‘more under the power when it is prevented from following its inclination.‘ We have seen in the previous articles the tensions that may arise between the internal appetite inclining strongly towards the good, the infliction of an “object“ which happens with the use of the senses (or sensitive appetite more properly, have to check what he says) and the consequent stronger movement against the object of? sorrow - we saw according to the example that “violent movement is intense at first but fades away” - the resistance of the thing by the very nature that it experiences pain or sorrow is slowly becoming more prominent. And the first sign and means of resistance is apprehension of the thing as evil (We don‘t even have to discuss irascible passions - insistent sorrow is angry at evil in this sense). Sorrow, in this chapter which insists that interior pain is more intense, is greater as it is more perfectly apprehended - intelligence can no longer be left fully out of the equation (in English he brings in ‘reason’ and ‘imagination’) as it contributes to sorrow. The passion does not consist in the apprehension, but in order to understand greater intensities of the experience of pain, one must have more perfect knowledge of the nature of the oppressing thing.
Why the focus on apprehension? Because sorrow essentially concerns something violent - something that goes against what one is. There are many ways something can go against one’s nature, (reply ad 1, 35.8) and accordingly as one grasps how problematic it is more perfectly through interior apprehension, one is more repulsed by it. Indeed, if one were not repulsed by the object and instead became conformed to the object, there would be a greater passion insofar as one’s whole inclination and implied form was changed, but pain would disappear and pleasure would ensue - the dissentire becomes consentire (cite somewhere - he cites Augustine - check in Index). Instead of being drawn toward it irresistibly, it is “slammed up” against one, and the person
To know something is wrong requires for more perfect comprehension knowing how it is wrong, (Aquinas doesn’t quite say that, but a more ‘perfect’? apprehension would include this…) which intensifies the pain. On the other hand, one can also find in the interior appetite - on the basis of its self-interiority which can be gleaned from the fact that the apprehension is an interior one, that the intrinsic move towards the good is the more primary principle than when the passion is more defined by an exterior object as it is to the sensitive appetite, which is more immediately concerned with shaking off (?) the oppressive object than with its original motivation towards the good. So we can synthesize these two reflections perhaps and discern that it is possible for a greater pain to happen which, at the same time, need not be as “passionate” in the literal sense of being drawn against its inclination. A more interior grasp is more painful, but it is also is closer to the seat of one’s own fundamental inclination; thus it might have a stronger “resistance factor” even in being more “painfully” “aware”. It is unclear to me according to the text whether such an interior apprehension can happen purely without sensitive apprehension - in 35.6 ad 2 he states “Accidentally, insofar as the senses are requisiste for pleasure and pain, pain is shunned more than pleasure is sought.” So it could be that even in a very perfect comprehension there is going to be a corresponding passionate movement - certainly, in fact, if we read with Aquinas that it the lower appetite follows the higher (24.3 ad1, 59.5 - for the perfection) Now where we would have to be careful is that passion properly consists in the sensitive appetite, because of the bodily change. But there are intensities of bodily changes even within the sensitive appetite - we are approaching more subtle sense appetites - “the outward sense is more material than the inward sense, just as the sensitive appetite is more material than the intellective” - thus the body undergoes a greater change from movement of sensitive appetite and likewise from outward than inward pain. (By the time we get to mercy as a virtue, the verb for the evil object affecting the appetite is “displicet” - displeases)
And so distinguishing an interior sorrow that extends to the reason and the imagination.

ONE THING I AM MORE CONSICOUS OF NOW WHICH I WILL HAVE TO EXPLORE MORE ARE THESE CONSIDERATIONS:


Aquinas is able to explain the intellectual conjunction NOW after carefully veering from the language of apprehension back in 22.2. What is here is not “containing” or “grasping“ - it is “conjunction” - it a more perfect conjunction than an exterior passion.
Here we must be really careful to read this article in light of the earlier one - number 4
answer that, As stated above (Article 3), a certain delight arises from the apprehension of the reason. Now on the reason apprehending something, not only the sensitive appetite is moved, as regards its application to some particular thing, but also the intellectual appetite, which is called the will. And accordingly in the intellectual appetite or will there is that delight which is called joy, but not bodily delight.
However, there is this difference of delight in either power, that delight of the sensitive appetite is accompanied by a bodily transmutation, whereas delight of the intellectual appetite is nothing but the mere movement of the will. Hence Augustine says (De Civ. Dei xiv, 6) that "desire and joy are nothing else but a volition of consent to the things we wish."
There can be a passionate union between the intellect and its object. Aquinas does not discuss, in sorrow, whether sorrow is in the intellective appetite - he simply takes it for granted that it can be in both - it is not a major question, because the distinction is between “interior” and “exterior” and the “interior” is intentionally left so broad as to include imagination and intellect - perhaps because the two are never really dissociable for us - and yet with sorrow - Aquinas never makes the same claims which he does for “joy” as being possible to be a simple act of the will - it is beause the nature of sorrow - as being conjoined to evil - as being inextricably united to oneself - present evil is soething so contrary to a thing that if it is not presented through an exterior apprehension and a certain apprehensive bodily change, it will accompany an interior apprehension.