110. Sadness as Good and Evil: Utility and Hierarchy

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Lecture Notes

Main Topics #

• Sadness as Useful Good: Whether sadness, despite being painful, can serve a beneficial purpose in the spiritual life
• Immoderate vs. Moderate Sadness: The distinction between sadness that immobilizes the soul and sadness that motivates right action
• Sin vs. Punishment: The hierarchy of evils, establishing that sin (guilt) is worse than sadness/pain (punishment)
• Sadness and Virtue: How sadness relates to virtuous action, particularly penance and moral correction
• The Irascible Passions: Introduction to hope, fear, and their distinction from concupiscible passions

Key Arguments #

On Sadness as Useful Good #

• Sadness about evil that should be fled has utility: it motivates one to avoid that evil
• From a bad thing present, two appetitive motions arise:
  1. Repugnance to the present evil (not useful, since what is present cannot be undone)
  2. Motion to flee or repel the bad thing (useful when the bad should be fled)
• Sadness about sin is useful because it motivates one to flee sin (referencing 2 Corinthians)
• Sadness about temporal goods can be useful insofar as it detaches one from excessive love of created things
• Just as pleasure about the good makes one seek the good with greater avidity, sadness about the bad makes one flee it more vehemently

On Sadness as the Greatest Evil #

• Impossibility Thesis: It is impossible for sadness or pain to be the greatest evil of man
• Reasoning: Every sadness is either about something truly bad, or about something apparently bad that is truly good
  • If truly bad: sadness about it cannot be the greatest evil because the evil itself is worse, and even worse would be not recognizing or rejecting it
  • If apparently bad but truly good: sadness about it cannot be the greatest evil because it would be worse to be altogether separated from the true good
• Hierarchy of Evils: Sin (guilt) is a greater evil than sadness (punishment); the evil of the soul is worse than the evil of the body
• Augustine’s Principle: “What is the pain which is said to be of the soul except liable things which one enjoys or hopes to enjoy? This is the whole that is said to be bad: that is sin.”

On the Irascible Passions #

• The irascible appetite differs from the concupiscible in that it concerns goods and evils with regard to difficulty (arduousness)
• Hope and fear are the primary passions of the irascible (alongside despair and boldness/audacity)
• Contrariety in the irascible is not primarily in the object (good vs. bad) but in relation to difficulty: hope when difficulty can be overcome, despair when it cannot
• The irascible seems to be closer to reason than the concupiscible, operating with a kind of deliberation about difficulties
• Both hope and despair concern the same object (a difficult good), differing only in judgment about its achievability

Important Definitions #

• Immoderate Sadness (Tristitia Immoderatus): Sadness that absorbs and immobilizes the soul, impeding virtuous action
• Penance (Poenitentia): A willful affliction imposed or undertaken, contrasted with sin as willful pleasure; includes the experience of repugnance to what one undergoes
• Useful Good (Bonum Utile): A good that serves as a means to something greater; sadness is useful insofar as it motivates flight from evil
• Irascible Appetite (Appetitus Irascibilis): The appetitive power concerned with difficult or arduous goods and evils
• Concupiscible Appetite (Appetitus Concupiscibilis): The appetitive power concerned with goods and evils absolutely, without regard to difficulty
• Despair (Desperatio): The contrary of hope; arising when one judges a good impossible to obtain
• Audacity/Boldness (Audacia): The contrary of fear in the irascible appetite

Examples & Illustrations #

• The Priest’s Public Rebuke: A priest publicly rebuked a man in church for not giving enough money; the man was angry and stayed away from church for years. Berquist questions whether public rebuke is prudent, noting other forms of correction might be more effective
• The Connecticut Shooting: Discussion of how one should properly be saddened about evils (referencing the Sandy Hook tragedy) and the inconsistency of lamenting deaths by gunfire while not lamenting far greater numbers killed in abortion clinics daily
• Penance and Sadness: The purpose of penance is to create a salutary repugnance to sin through willful affliction, so the penitent hesitates to commit the sin again; sadness about the penance itself (not liking the punishment) is different from sadness about the sin
• Guilt and the Separated Woman: A woman alienated from the Church due to family guilt about cohabitation before marriage; her lack of right judgment made her situation worse. Berquist notes that guilt itself is good (like pain warning of danger) but requires correct judgment
• Abraham and the Promised Land: Abraham was promised the land but never possessed it in life; he obtained it only as a place of mourning when he purchased a grave for his wife. Illustrates the value of mourning over worldly attachment
• The Dog Sensing Fear: A woman unable to speak or move when threatened, but her dog sensed her fear and attacked the threat, saving her life. Illustrates how excessive fear can immobilize the soul

Notable Quotes #

“Sadness in everything that should be fled is useful, because it makes one flee the evil with greater vehemence.”

“Sin is the evil; sadness about sin has some mixture of good through the will’s repugnance to the bad.”

“It is impossible for some sadness or pain to be the greatest evil of man.”

“Guilt is a greater evil than punishment.” (Summa Theologiae I-II)

“If sin is a willful pleasure, then penance is a willful affliction.” (St. Robert Bellarmine, referenced as “St. Bob Rogers” in transcript)

“It is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of living in evil; for in that one, the end of all things, a man is reminded.” (Ecclesiastes)

“Truth can never be confirmed enough, though doubts do ever sleep.” (Shakespeare, Pericles - referenced by Berquist as perfect illustration)

Questions Addressed #

Article 3: Can Sadness Be a Useful Good? #

• Objection 1: Ecclesiasticus says sadness kills many; therefore it has no utility
• Objection 2: Choice concerns what is useful, but sadness is not worthy of being chosen; one would rather have the same thing without sadness
• Objection 3: Everything is for the sake of its own operation, but sadness impedes operation
• Response: Sadness is useful insofar as it motivates one to flee evil; it produces a twofold appetitive motion—repugnance to present evil (not useful) and motion to escape future evil (useful). Sadness about sin motivates flight from sin; sadness about temporal goods detaches one from excessive attachment to them

Article 4: Is Sadness the Greatest Evil of Man? #

• Objection 1: Pleasure is the greatest good (in beatitude); therefore sadness, as its opposite, is the greatest evil
• Objection 2: Beatitude is the greatest good, consisting in having what one wants and willing nothing bad; sadness is having what one does not want; therefore sadness is the greatest evil
• Objection 3: Augustine argues that the worst evil is of the worse part (the soul), and wisdom is the greatest good of the soul; therefore pain of the body (or sadness) cannot be the greatest evil
• Response: It is impossible for sadness to be the greatest evil. Every sadness concerns either something truly bad (in which case the bad thing itself is worse) or something apparently bad that is truly good (in which case separation from true good would be worse). Sin is a greater evil than sadness; the evil of the soul (sin/guilt) is worse than the evil of the body (pain/punishment)

Connections and Transitions #

• The lecture moves from completing the treatment of sadness in the concupiscible passions to introducing the irascible passions (hope, fear, despair, boldness)
• Introduction of the four principal passions: joy, sadness, hope, and fear
• Berquist notes his investigation into Mozart’s symphonies as illustrations of irascible passions (the last five symphonies: 36th and 41st illustrate magnanimity/hope; 38th and 40th illustrate courage/fear)
• Distinguishes the irascible from the concupiscible through the element of difficulty/arduousness
• References Platonic psychology (reason, thumos/irascible, epithymia/concupiscible) as parallel to Thomistic divisions