Concerning the passions - article 22. The objections are based on the high-quality nature of the soul as form, which seems to exclude the possibility of undergoing something. A word about the Latin “pati“ - to suffer, to undergo, to endure (also to permit and to allow, as is evidenced in earlier English, e.g. “Suffer the little children). This presupposes a metaphysics of form and matter that would be rather difficult to simplify. You can’t quite put potentiality on the side of matter, because the soul has “aliquid potentialitatis” - and neither can you put “possibility with an a” on the side of matter because this question will show that the soul suffers per accidens - but even in the movement of this article we will find out that Aquinas begins with a generic sense of “to suffer” which includes such things as the soul’s intellecting or air being lit up, which gets into the notion of “being perfected,”. It is important to start with this general conception of passion and to note that Aquinas himself does not seem to restrict passion to the most proper sense when he is talking about these passions, for at the end of the corpus he provides a scope for a gradation of passions among the passions - “sadness is more properly a passion than joy.”
And perhaps it is the case that when we get to sorrow as a passion - is this possible? Suffering anything radical can cause sorrow, because it is not yet familiar? He speaks in the grace section - 109 - one of the later articles about man under surprise going back to his preconceived end - etc. - and thus that even when he is being perfected - maybe there is something of a preconceived end that mourns - because the other end is not clearly seen (and thus Stoics would be right about sorrow - if everything was so perfect - according to the will of God - and evil did not enter in with sin - the difference is between contingency and necessity - how precisely does one think on the necessity of evil is) there is no real replacement per se but a simple stepping forward - and is this also repentance instead of something very cognitive? But repentance does not enter into his discussion - which is interesting - there is sorrow in the four kinds which Maxime mentioned in 59 - pain, present sin of oneself, past sin of oneself, sin of others. And in the same 59 - there is sorrow being virtuous - keeping the thing at arm’s length so to speak.
But okay - I jump ahead. Simply to point out the richness and the “peepness” of this vision. I kept on wondering whether the Stoics might not enter here - why it is purely at a metaphysical level - maybe the Stoics thought the soul was something that could be removed at least conceptually from the sufferings of the body. I wonder how Aquinas’ “compositum” and “deterius” and “melius” and “per accidens” would compare with them.
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What is at stake in discerning the differences of the passions (irascible and concupiscible)? The first one makes it clear that the aspect of “arduousness” is included - it complexifies - prepares for a “struggle” pugna - adipiscendem - ardui - difficultatem. This means that the passions are not simply collapsed in themselves - they involve the nature of assertive, determined, lasting, striving-toward-permanence of existence - something that doesn’t “give up easily” - but again I am making it focused on the subject when the object is what is at stake (at least conceptually at first - it may seem to be the same thing after). “For this (reason) the irascible power (vis) is given to animals, so that the impediments which prevent the concupiscible from tending to its object might be borne, or on account of the difficulty in securing goods (adipiscendi), or on account of the difficulty in overcoming evil.” And yet it is possible to be confused - as the only “ingredient” is the addition of difficulty…. Can sadness be co-current with anger? Conceptually, not just really? I think I would need to look at anger to figure this out. But this would have something to bear with zeal - which… I wonder? If it is a kind of sadness? How exactly does Aquinas place it in relation to envy?)
The objections are interesting - suffering divine things - not only being taught - but living them in a way. The second considers the strength of intelligible good which is something that is better than this tangible good thing. The third speaks of joy and love as passions which are nevertheless attributed to those who have only intellective appetite - namely God and the angels.
- At any rate “imagination”. What is interesting about this is the gradation - first we get to passion as something that is “taken” and more specifically “something convenient is taken while something inconvenient is replaced” then we remove from it the primacy of cognitive to the being drawn and the intensio of the appetite to res ipsas, then we remove from it even the intellectual appetite. Thomas is stripping passion to its raw power and energy (the appetitive power in general is more active because it is more the principle of exterior acts - related to things - whereas it is also more passive) before he will re-complexify it. See modern ways often look at emotion as following upon cognition or as simultaneous with cognition - based on judgments… and even Aquinas looks into that in the objection where he says that there would be no appetitive without apprehensive preceding it (and in ).
whether it is more in the sensitive or intellectual appetite - it is less in the will. Imagination comes in in the “sed contra” from Damascene and “suspicion” (although the Latin is also taken to read as susceptionem by Piana) of something good or evil. The word “suspicion” is very interesting, for it comes from suspicio which may mean to look up to or admire but as a noun (check bigger dictionary - also check whether Piana is considered equally legitimate as this) specifically means suspicion or mistrust.
The response insists that passion is properly where there involves a bodily change and dissociates the intellective appetite from a necessary connection with such a bodily change for the reason that the intellective appetite is not equivalent to the power of some organ (organs as powers are directed to something as tangible, visible, pungent, audible, etc.) - actually I am curious because I don’t think it is reducible to sense - so I shall have to clarify this. ACTUALLY THE ANSWER IS IN PRIMA EIGHTY ONE ONE AD ONE
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What is interesting about the answers to the objections is that a passion of divine things may be held without bodily transmutation and there is an interesting principle enunciated in ad 2 - that passion depends on the paassibility of the sufferer as well as the strength of the agent - a metaphysical principle that would be well to keep in mind particularly (and pastorally) in matters of sorrow when ways must be sought to help somebody whose body is weaker through some reason - stress- health - whatever - to bear the burden while seeking to strengthen them at the same time.
The third is also interesting insofar as one may be said to suffer by reason of a like effect - beginning with joy and love but also including in the quote from Augustine the fact that angels “come to help without the compassion of misery”. While something like that would not really be possible for men I think for Aquinas - I.e. to operate without passion - there are grades even among men of being passionate not according to some fixed standard but to the vagaries of being bodily creatures subject to changing influences within as well as without. And yet still there is always a place for virtue to exercise - and yet virtue takes time - being more of an actor - moral - is something that is slowly assumed and still somewhat precariously maintained for many I would say for Aquinas or at least for myself - but he, I think, talks about the mitigation of passion in bad acts (which also mitigate good acts)…. ANYWAY that is neither here nor there
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