Prima Secundae
Lecture 86: Concupiscence as a Special Passion of the Concupiscible Appetite

Transcript
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Now, to the second one goes forward thus, it seems that concupiscence is not a special, what, passion of the, what, concupiscible power, right? Thomas will call the emotions, what, pasio, right? Not how we speak even English, we speak of the speaker as moving the audience, right? Or the actor is moving the audience, right? And being moved is a pasio, an undergoing. But we name it for motion, emotion, right? They're connected, right? Pasio and emotion. I'd say in the audience to say, you know, how sometimes a word is better in one language than another language, right? But apart from that, sometimes there's something in one word, in one language, that the synonym for that another language doesn't have, or vice versa. Well, now as we're reading Twelfth Night, of course, Shakespeare has the same pun, that he has in the Tujama Vrona, where they pun upon the word understand. And I don't know how funny it is, but it certainly concentrates your mind upon the fact that the word understand comes from what? Stand under it. So the guy will say, you know, I don't understand you. What do you mean? My cane understands me, you know? And then they think about it like this. And, but, there's a word in Latin that corresponds to understanding, etymologically. Substance. Substance, yeah, yeah. Now, substance in Latin, following what it had in the Greek, substance can mean what? What a thing is, the substance of a thing, what it is, or it can mean the individual substance underlying things, right? So, you could say, what does the understanding understand? Well, what something is. And it corresponds to substance in one of its meanings in Latin. Or, the senses know only what we call accidents, right? And the reason understands what stands under that, right? That's a special application to the Eucharist, huh? Because the senses don't understand what's there, what stands under the accidents, right? But, they sense the accidents, right? What does it mean to understand an effect? We speak of the underlying cause sometimes, right? So, to understand an effect means to know what? It's cause, right? And, of course, in English, the word for cause is ground, which stands under things, right? So, Shakespeare often used the word ground, right? But, you still see it in legal terms. Grounds for divorce, right? Cause for divorce. What does it mean to understand a word? In Latin, Thomas always speaks of the impositio, the placing upon of a word, right? We say in English, put a label upon something, right? As if the meaning or the thing that the word signifies is under the what? Yeah. So, to understand a word is to know what stands under it. To understand a word equivocal by reason is to know not only the meanings that stand under it, but to know also their order, right? Like the four meanings of before, right? Okay, or the eight meanings of in, which Thomas orders there in the fourth book, actually, right? It's a beautiful word, I understand, right? But apprehension is no better than grasp, right? So, we use the word grasp in English, huh? But passio and emotion are connected, right? So, the first objection. Passions are distinguished according to their objects, but the object of the concupiscible is something, what? Pleasant according to the senses, which is also the, what? Object of concupiscence, according to the philosopher in the first book of the rhetoric. Therefore, concupiscence is not a special passion in the concupiscible. Well, it seems to be saying here that, in a sense, appetite, what does good and bad mean? Agreeable to the senses? Disagreeable to the senses, huh? Salmon is bad, obviously. There's this one feast in the local church that we go to, you know, on the weekdays, Sunday, too. He's from Wisconsin, right? So, he's an old, what? Well, no, he's a cheese man, what do you call him? Deary farmer, yeah. Yeah, I mean, the, what's the name of the football team out there? Packers. Cheese man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, the other day, he was giving a sermon or kind of a talk, and he said, what's the most important thing in confession, right, huh? Or what's, somebody said, sorry for your sins, right, huh? Yeah, he says, now, he says, if you voted, if you wanted the rams or somebody to win, you know, rather than, yeah, and you haven't, you know, repented, you know, and then you don't get the solution. He's always getting some little thing in there about that, you know, it's kind of a standard joke, you know, but he gets an awful mileage out of me, it's kind of funny, you know, but he, he, he, that's, that's because he's from Wisconsin. Yeah, I know, I, I, I, I like it myself, you know, some of those things, he's doing it, overdoing it, you know, but I don't know how many references he makes to that, you know, but he looks at it some way or other, you know. So, that's penitence, right? You still want the, the, the, the, the, the team, whatever, you win. You won't be forgiven until, until, until, until, when you were here, in that first objection, I think, here's how I was thinking about good and bad refer to what? What, to the senses? The senses, they don't know good in general. They don't know good is what all desire, you know, but they know the good is what is agreeable to the senses, huh, okay? And, uh, I remember one time I had a little son there, he's a little, not a little anymore, but, um, they kind of figured out, you know, oh, this is a good meal, this is a good dinner, if you like it, it's a good one of their senses, you know, but you serve me sandwich, this is a good meal, this is a good meal, this is an awful dinner, I find it disagreeable to my senses, though my wife likes it, Warren Murray likes salmon, you know, so I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I have a, the lonely club, yeah, that's explicit fellowship, huh, more of Augustine says in the book of the 83 questions, huh, that cupidity cupidity is a love of passing things, right, it's a love of trends and things, and thus is not distinguished from love, but all passions that are special, or particular passions, are distinguished from each other, right, therefore concupiscence is not a special passion in the concupisible, right, see, that's just always getting us in trouble, right, huh, this, Thomas has to draw them back, you know, so, you know, moreover, to any, what, passion of concupisible, is opposed another passion, special passion in the concupisible, as has been said before, right, so to love is opposed hate, right, to pleasure is opposed pain, okay, or to joy is opposed sadness, right, huh, but to concupiscence, there is not opposed some special passion in the concupisible, okay, and we have a little problem there, like in English, right, what's the name for that passion that's opposed to concupiscence, if there is, are we, you know, aversion? Yeah. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. That doesn't quite get the sense of it. For Damascene says that the what? Expected or awaited good. Yeah, constitutes cubisence. So, cubisence is for a good you don't have, right? But when it's present, you have joy, letitia. Don't they give a woman sometimes the name letitia? You heard that. So, similarly, the evil that you're expecting, fear, but the present of the evil is what? Sadness, right? From which it seems that sadness is opposed to what? Joy and what? Fear is opposed to, I mean, to cubisence, right? But fear is not in the cubisible, but in the erosible. Therefore, cubisence is not a special passion in the cubisible, right? But maybe Denison had some of the same trouble that we have, maybe the thing, right? And Aristotle's in the ethics there, and he's giving the names and the virtues and the vices, huh? And he says, it comes to sense pleasure, right? There's a name for the vices that go to excess, right? The man who pursues the pleasure of drink too much, you know, a drunken or something, right? Or the man who pursues the pleasure of eating too much, we've got a name for him, a glutton, right? But a man who doesn't pursue the pleasures of the senses enough, we don't seem to have any name for him, right? And that's, Aristotle says, because it's so rare. A man takes down the light of these things, or less than he should. So we don't run into it, we don't have any name for it, right? So sometimes things don't have a name, and we have to invent a name, right? I don't understand why he's saying fear. I would have thought fear, the theorist, can keep this as a movement to pleasure? A movement to pleasure. Why is fear, which is the opposite, would not be fear, contrary to that, would be something else? Well, of course, he's quoting the text from Damascene, right, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. And so... But I don't know if Damascene got that. Yeah, but then he's going to explain why Damascene said that maybe, right? Oh, sure. Okay? I'm afraid that the wine will run out, you know? You know, the wedding, the feast of Canada, right? Fear that the wine is going to run out? Yeah. There won't be wine for all these gifts. It's a disaster, man. Yeah. What are you going to say about the after-waste? Just make sure the blessing of others are coming. Might be some context we might have in the fear there, right? Warren Murray tells me you belong to some gourmet society, you know, right? So you decided to go to the annual gourmet dinner, right? We sat down next to a stranger there, you know, and the stranger was talking about the difficulty they had to find this in from this, and this delicacy in from that place, you know, and they almost didn't get it, you know, and so on. And he was so agitated, you know, by the whole thing. Warren quit the society, you know? It takes that because you're afraid of being in that shell, and much of it not arise from the end of the world. So you could lose the fear there, right, huh? Post-desire. But against all this is that concubiscence is caused by love, right, huh? So it's not the same thing as love, right? So I want steak because I like steak, right? I want wine because I like wine, right? Like being a weaker word for love, right? And it tends towards what? Delight, right? So you bring me the bottle, bring me the steak, ah, now I need to like it. Now I have pleasure, right? You see? So isn't concubiscence then different from its what? Cause, which is love or liking, and what it tends towards, you know, to the enjoyment of that, right? So isn't it distinct from them? And thus is distinguished from the other passions of the concubiscible as being a special what? Passion, huh? Well, Thomas is going to reply. Answer, it should be said, that as has been said before, the pleasant good, right? What is pleasant, that is to say according to the sense, right? Is in general, right? Communitaire, commonly, the object of the concubiscible, right? Whence, according to its differences, the diverse passions of the concubiscible are, what? Distinguished, huh? Now notice, that's the difference between the concubiscible appetite and the erascible appetite, right? Because the concubiscible appetite is concerned with what is simply pleasing or displeasing to the senses, huh? While the erascible is kind of the, what? The fighter, right, huh? The defender of what you like, right? And so when you go to a fight, it's not because it's pleasant, right? But because you're angry, you know? Or because you're bold or something, right, huh? Okay? Or you run away because you're afraid, right? Not because it's enjoyable to run away, exactly. So he says, in general, the object of the concubiscible is what is pleasing according to the senses. Whence, according to its differences, the diverse passions of the concubiscible are distinguished. Now he says, the diversity of the object can be noted either by the nature of the object itself or by the diversity in the, what? The power of acting. Power of acting. Now he says, the diversity of the active object, which is according to the nature of the thing, makes a material difference of the passions. But a diversity, which is according to the active power, makes a formal difference of the passions, by which the passions differ in, what, species in particular. Now he says, there is another reason of emotive power, of the end itself, the good, according as it is really, what, present, and according as it is, what, absent, right? So absence makes the heart grow fonder, right? There's no thing to confirm this, right? For according as it is present, it makes the thing to rest in, what, itself, right? So notice how we describe something beautiful, a beautiful painting or a beautiful, what, music of Mozart, we say it's, what, very restful, right? A beautiful scene, right, huh? You know? You say, how restful, you know? You know, I was driving through the mountains there, you know, in Pennsylvania and so on, and so on, even New York there. Not that one, New York City, but they were announcing, you know, they'd just been voted the dirtiest city in the country, New York City. I mean, there's some beautiful place up in the Hudson there, you know, that's where you're, you know, coming along the Hudson there. And the Hudson Highlands there and so on, where West Point is, you know. You see Dickens Notes, you know, in America, you know, describes how beautiful West Point is, right? Call this, because a million dollar view there, you know, huh? And then, when they give you a little tour, you know, the million dollar view, beautiful, you know? I remember a friend there is, you know, one of the viewers in the river and so on, and he had a piano there, he was a piano player, you know, and I says, I was really like, you know, you're in the finest place to be playing the piano, it's just beautiful. See, but notice we call those things very restful, though, right? It's very restful, right? You can see it kind of, you know, you're just having a house there, something like that, and seeing those beautiful mountains and so on, you know. Green, lush, green. So, according as it is present, it makes one to rest in itself. So, pleasure is kind of like resting in the thing. Beautiful. Beautiful. But according as it is absent, it causes one to, what? You have to move towards it, right? So, we said before that wanting, right, arises in the absence of what you like, right? So, it's like emotion, that's why it's more known to us, huh? So, you're more aware of the fact that... You're hungry, then that you're enjoying something. You're contented, as they say. Stay at the Comfort Inn, you know? Take a rest. Stay at the Comfort Inn, the other one stayed at the place. Comfort Inn has got the Wall Street Journal there, you know, for you. The other one just got the USA Today, you know. Lousy publication, so. And the breakfast is much better at the Comfort Inn, you know, nice. Yeah, it's a real good one at the Comfort Inn, you know, but the other one is... Cheap. Yeah. But am I aware, you see, am I aware that I was comfortable at the Comfort Inn, is that I was looking for something to eat. Looking for something to eat, right? I'm hungry, you know. Whence the desire will go right, according to the sense, insofar as it, what? This is very interesting what he says here. Insofar as it adapts the desire, right, to itself. The pleasant, in other words, conforms the, what? Desiring power to itself. You could almost say that's what love is. It's a conformity of the heart with its object, huh? It's the agreement of the heart with its, what? Object, yeah. So he says, adaptat, huh? It's act towards, right? And conforms, it causes, what? Love, huh? Isn't that so, huh? You know, he said, that fits me, huh? So, you like it, huh? It's a conformity, right? That's love, right? So, insofar as though what we love is absent, it attracts one to itself, right? And therefore, it causes concubiscence, right? Insofar as it's present, it rests in it. It causes, therefore, what? Pleasure, right? Thus, pleasure is a passion differing in species, both from love and from what? But, yeah. So love is more about the conformity of the heart to its object, right? The agreement of the heart with its object, right? And once you have that conformity to the object, that agreement with the object, then if you don't have it, you seek it by concubiscence, right? But if you get it, then you settle down, right? Okay? You know, when I was growing up, you know, they always talk about the boy gets lost from his parents, whatever it is in New York City, right? And so the police pick the kid up there and they're looking for the parents, right? But before they find the parents, they've got a restless kid, right? So the standard thing was to buy him an ice cream cone. And then the kid settles down, right? You know? And I mentioned we were driving across country, you know, when the kids were very little. And we know that they get restless, you know, in the car, right? So what I did was make three little bags with some candy in each one of them. We put them in a bigger bag, you know, and put them in a bigger bag. And then, you know, we can't stand anymore. I say, you know, pull one out, you know, and give each of them a little bag and they share them, you know, and they talk and they're very pleasant, you know. And then you go on for another hour or two and then I'll say, yeah, daddy has to get when he's out. We have a big bag, you know, honestly. I was very clever of me to do it, you know. But it shows you this is practical knowledge. Those were your love bombs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Launch them back in the back. Just to quiet them down, right? But he says to what? Well, desire this delightful thing or that one makes, what? Contribiscences that are diverse and what? Number, right? So the, what? Desire for steak and the desire for wine differ because steak and wine are not the same thing, huh? Even if they complement each other. Okay? So that's a sub-distinction, right? But I can like wine, I can desire wine, I can enjoy wine, right? I can like steak, I can desire steak, I can enjoy steak, right? I know when I was working on the definition of comedy there and so on and then you enter into these particular kinds of sadness, right? We were talking about tragedy and comedy and so pity is what? One kind of sadness, right? And envy is another kind of sadness, right? And pity is sort of a good kind of sadness. Envy is a bad kind, right? But how do they differ, right? By the object of the sadness, right? So envy is sadness over the good fortune of another, right? Why, pity is sadness over the misfortune of another, right? It can be said, it means more, but it's a different object there, right? But what's loneliness, huh? What's sadness over the absence of a, what, friend? And what's melancholy? What's sadness over one's miserable condition, or the miserable condition of the world, and which one is apart? Well, Bob would be elected, huh? Very melancholy, you know? Very melancholy, yeah. It might make him angry instead of sad. It makes you nervous, isn't it? See, all these different kinds of sadness, right, huh? And you have these different kinds of what can give a sense, right, huh? Now, it's kind of important for morale, morals, and so on, because Aristotle teaches in the Eighth Book of Politics. He's saying there's certain kinds of music children should listen to, and others not. And, you know, like Ashley points out, the music of the Baroque, right, and the music of Mozart and Haydn and so on, represents the emotions in a state in conformity with what? Reason, right? So if one gets to like the music of the Baroque or of Mozart, one's emotions are moved in sympathy with it, right? And that's something of a disposition, right? At least a remote disposition for moral, what, virtue, right? It's not sufficient, maybe, to listen to Mozart, huh? But did... Did the post some good? Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah. I wish he could give us a concert sometime. He's out of practice now. He's got so much to... He has one other thing to do. Maybe he had an accident at the piano, I don't know. But I think Mozart's one of his favorites, huh? To the first, therefore, it should be said that the desirable, excuse me, the pleasant good, right, is not absolute, right, all by itself, the object of concupiscence, right? But under the notion of being absent, right? So it's the delightful good, insofar as it's absent, that causes what? Desire, yeah. Wanting, yeah. Makes sense, doesn't it? Okay. Just as the sensible... He gives a comparison now to the knowing powers. Just as the sensible, under the notion of the, what? Past. Past. Is an object of memory, right? It's always hard to translate ratione in that. It used to have Latin, right? So ratione, how do you translate that in English? It's always hard to do. It's always hard to do. It's always hard to do. It's always hard to do. It's always hard to do. Unless you say, you know, it's by reason of being past, right? And that the sensible is an object of what? Memory, right? So someone says, the object of memory is the sensible. And you say, well, that's got some truth in it, but it's not precise enough, right? It's a sensible by reason of, what? Under the reason of, yeah, yeah. Okay? These books that Aristotle has that follow upon the Dianima, right? You have the de sensus and sato, as they say in Latin. The sense is sensible. Then you have the book on memory and what? Recalling, reminiscence. Then you have the books on dreams. And so by the, what, senses, you know, the present, and by memory the past. And then some people think in dreams, they have some foretelling of the future, right? You know, Aristotle is very nuanced, as to what he says about that, right? It's kind of interesting, how the present, and the past, and the, what, future, yeah. And you meet people who say, you know, they're dreamt about somebody they don't know, and the next day they meet that person, you know? And things of that sort of thing. And these particular conditions, he says, diversify, what, the species of emotions or passions, right? Or even of, what, the different powers of the sensitive part, which respect particulars, right? Okay? So the distinction between the irascible power and concubiscible power is not really found in the will, right? In the will, it's one power, but in the senses, it's something more particular. Now, what about Augustine, now, in the book on 83 Questions? That cupidity is the love of passing things, huh? Clean not to perishable things, unless you perish with them. He's expressing himself so well, Augustine. Okay. Now, this is something that Thomas talks about in many places. That is a predicatio per causum, right? And not per essentium, right? When Aristotle says, you know, that sensing is an undergoing in the second book of the Dianima, right? Is that a predicatio per causum, or a predicatio per essentium? Is sensing essentially an undergoing, or is this a predication per causum? And that the senses have to be acted upon by the object, right? But once they've been acted upon, then they can see or hear it, huh? Maybe it's a predicatio per causum, yeah, yeah. So that's not just an ad hoc convention here that Thomas is doing to get Gustin out of a problem, or himself out of a problem, right? But you find this in Aristotle, and you find this in, what? In daily life, right? That we sometimes use as predicatio per causum. So it's kind of a surprising thing when you first realize, then you realize you are doing this thing. Or, auditory decendrum, another way you can get out of this problem, right? Augustine, is that Augustine takes cupidity in a, what, large sense, right? For any emotion of the appetite, which can be in regard to a, what, future good, right? Well, since you can love a future good, as well as a present good, right? But he's using it in his context towards loving a future good, right? Then he comprehends under both love and hope. So notice Thomas' respect there for Augustine, right? You know, he realizes that Augustine, he's using words carefully, but we have to understand how he's using words, right? And that brings out an important thing about love, huh? So, you know, when St. Paul says that, you know, these three remain, faith, hope, and charity, right? But the greatest of these is charity. He speaks of charity as, what, remaining, right? But when you get in the next world, faith and hope will, what, disappear, right, huh? But charity will be, what, remain, huh? It'll be maybe more perfect, the charity in heaven than it is on earth here. But why is that, you see? Well, it goes back to the nature of love, huh? That I can love what is, what, the good that is present, as well as the good that is, what, absent, yeah, yeah. So when we love God in this life, I used to some extent, what, absent, right, huh? You don't see him as he is, and so on, right? But in the next life, he will be more present, right? And the love will be, what, greater, you know? It's interesting, I was reading Thomas this morning there, in the question 12 there, and he was saying one point there, does everybody see God equally? And Thomas says, no. And he said, you all see the same thing, right? But one has more ability to see that thing, right? And they have more ability to see it, because they partake more of the light of, what, glory, right, huh? Well, why do some partake more of the light of glory than others? Well, because they love God more, right, huh? And why does love do that, right? And Thomas says, well, love gives rise to desire. And desire, in some way, disposes you for the thing you desire. Desire, well, it could be in desire in the will, right? Okay? So the desire in the will disposes you in a sense for that. It's like a student who read desires to know something, right? That kind of disposes him to learn, right? So if you really love God a lot, then you desire God a lot, and you're therefore disposed to see God more, right? Sometimes, you know, you go back to the metaphorical sense there, or the song of songs, and say, you know, would you want to unite yourself with somebody in marriage if you didn't think they loved you? I don't think so, right? So would God unite himself with somebody who didn't love him, right? See? But the more you love somebody, the more you seem to be, what, worthy of being united with them, huh? So the more you love God, the more he will unite himself with you, with your mind, and the more you will, what, see God, right, huh? Rejection here. The passion which is directly opposed to concubiscence is in nominata, unnamed, huh? Well, I had the same problem in English, right? Which adds itself thus to evil, or to the bad, just as concubiscence to the, what? Good, huh? And because there is what? And because it is of an absent good, yeah, bad, yeah, just as, what, fear, sometimes in place of that is placed, what, fear. I don't have a name for something. Just as sometimes capidity in place of, what, hope. For what is a little, what, good, or a little thing bad, is this word required as nothing, right? And therefore, for every motion of the desiring power to the good, or towards the future evil, one lays down, what, hope and fear, which regard a difficult good, bad, good, difficult to achieve, or evil, difficult to avoid, huh? It's interesting, you know, in graded selection, you know, we have hope and fear, we'd probably say, right? Rather than wanting and, you know, hope and fear, you know, we kind of alternated in these two, right? So we're going to take a little break here before we go on.