Prima Secundae
Lecture 104: Sadness and Its Causes: Loss of Good vs. Presence of Evil

Transcript
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I know you matter. You have the most expressive meows. Now, it's interesting that Thomas kind of explains these four that these guys give, but does he try to argue that this is an exhaustive division? Because, you know, what about, I should talk about these things, because especially when I was looking on the definition of comedy and so on, right? And in my definition of comedy, I said that purges melancholy, right? Why, tragedy, as Aristotle says, purges pity, right? Okay, purifies your pity, right? And, you know, you've probably seen the parents sometimes, you know, being annoyed at the kid, you know, whining about nothing, right? I'll give you something to cry about, they say, you know. But sometimes we feel sad, you know, in a way, for ourselves, even for others, that it shouldn't be, you know, huh? You know? But when you see the tragedy, right, you see, you know, the horrible things that happen to them, the tragic character, right? It was the king, right, huh? Then your pity is purged of its superficiality, right, huh? And it's inappropriate, huh? So it's a way to pity somebody for, you know? For a fellow, you know, thinks it's like he's been unfaithful, and then discovers that he's been deceived, and about this, and all that. So, so how do you distinguish between, you know, pity and melancholy, right, huh? You know? And sometimes people talking about tragedy, we use the word melancholy, but that's, I think, a mistake, huh? Melancholy should not be the effect of what? Tragedy, right, huh? It shouldn't move us to melancholy, right, huh? And comedy should, what, purge or drive away melancholy, right? You can see this in the English comic poets. They realize that's what it's for, right, huh? That's part of it, right? Part of what it does, right, huh? It's to purify it to our merriment, too. So you get thinking of different kinds of sadness, right, huh? You see? Now, melancholy is not mentioned, is it, in these ones here, right? And the other kind of sadness that's, I think, very important to know about is loneliness, right, huh? Okay. And, you know, in terms of human affairs, you know, somebody's lonely, or, you know, try to... You need the loneliness, right? But loneliness, to me, seems to be the sadness or the lack of a friend, or the absence of a friend, right? You don't have a friend, or you, what? Or, yeah, or your friend is away or something, right, huh? Are you separated by distance, whatever it is? So, Mary Stiles says, no man wants to live without a friend, or friends, right? And so, this is not one of the things you mentioned here, is it? And in melancholy, right, you know, melancholy, I think, is a kind of sadness over one's own misfortune, right? Or the miserable state of the world, which one is a part, right? Yeah, okay. You know, so people get melancholy being the daily newspaper or something, right? You know? Because there's always, you know, bad news coming out, you know? And so, but you say melancholy could be about your own miserable situation, right, huh? See, but pity is about sadness over the misery of another person, right? So it's a misery courtier, right? It kind of comes from being miserable at heart, right? Yeah. But because of the misery of somebody else, right? But melancholy is more about your own misery, right? Or the collapse of the country, you know, with the election of Obama. So I think melancholy is an important kind of sadness, right? And loneliness. It's very important to talk about these, right? So Thomas didn't try to say that these are the only species in a qualified sense, you know? At least he's saying it, do you? Yeah. And it sounds like he's defending them. Yeah, he's kind of expressing what they are, right, huh? And that they're not, it doesn't seem in the body of the article to say that he's the only kind, right? It seems to be melancholy and loneliness are common enough to, well, in Shakespeare's time, it's fashionable to be melancholic, you know? The side of the gentleman who is melancholic. The whole tradition there, you know, people writing about melancholy and so on, right? And comic poets all talk about, you know, that they're trying to drive out melancholy, right? And I remember, you know, kind of, you know, talking about this a little bit, where he said, you know, there's many of these moderns, you know, who think that the computer, whatever it is, has really got a mind, right? And they can't quite see the difference between these. And these things are pretty serious about this, right? And they're interviewing one of these computer experts, what he is, on TV that one time I saw, Charlie, Charlie, yeah, what's his name, Charlie Rose, you know? He's kind of a famous guy for interviewing people. And he's on, you know, every week, you know, on educational TV and so on. He was important people, heads of government and everything, you know, so you get kind of a nice, you know, computer experts, you know? The guy was talking about, you know, that computer would eventually overtake the human mind, right? And he even had kind of a date, you know, Charlie, you know? You know, like, in these movies, you know, computers would take over the world, you know, all of a sudden, you know? So, but, anyway, the comic was reading some of these authors, you know, who think that there was no difference between, you know? Basically, it's the same thing as our mind, right? So, our mind is just kind of a computer, right? And the computers, you know, that went on a machine that used to be, when I got one of my computers, you know, that had the checkers game and so on, you know, the chess team, the checker game. And the machine was beating me, so the heck, I just, I raised it. Like, I got to figure out what this stuff does. So, if the computer can beat me in checkers or something, right, can it beat me in other things, do you? No! So, anyway, so he's telling Charlie, Charlie, Charlie, um, Charlie Rose, I guess, um, uh, you know, I don't know, about 20 years, I guess, was, you know, it actually surpassed my mind. I mean, it's like, so, anyway, so the comic was being a little melancholic because people were not seeing the difference between the computer and the mind, you know? And then, uh, I guess, uh, we saw in, uh, Punch, you know, the, the journey, you know, humorous magazine, you know, the English, right, the Punch magazine, right? He had a picture of these two scientists in front of a big computer, right? And, uh, the, it had printed out a message, right? And one guy was reading it, and, okay, what does it say? It says, I think, therefore I am. You know, this joke kind of, you know, purged him of his, what, melancholy, right, huh, you know? So, so you do this, right, huh, you know? And, uh, sometimes, you know, when a friend is down or something, you know, and you forget the right joke, you know, you kind of relieve him of his melancholy, right, huh? So, I mean, these are things where, I think people do get, you know, melancholy for various reasons, right, huh? And, um, I know as you go to a mixer there, you know, to go dancing in a mixer, you know, in the old days, you know, and, and there's some girl that nobody's asking, you know, other girls are, everybody's all standing dancing, you know? My friend, Jim, he'd always. I imagine if you go to a dance like that and nobody asks you to dance if you're a girl, you can't go and ask somebody to dance. It might be some melancholy to do something, you know? I wonder who he wants, but it's sad, you know? I think melancholy and loneliness are very important to talk about in human life, right? And you've got to talk about envy, you've got to talk about... The ultimates are important to mention here, right? But I don't see that this is a universal distinction, right? I think including this and melancholy are as important to talk about as these ones. Shakespeare has some very interesting things to say about melancholy, right? But the kind of connection between melancholy and despair too is very important, you know, because it's dangerous and disrespect, right? People, you know, commit suicide and all kinds of things. So it's really important to talk about those things, you know? So, what's the big deal about Gregory Nemesius, where he is, and Damascene, right? Maybe, you know, the way it says here, I mean, you know, it seems that Damascene unsuitably assigns four species. Maybe he doesn't say more than that he assigns four species, you know? He's not saying he assigns these species, I don't know, you know? But let's see what he says here in regards to his objections, right? Because of the interesting things, you know? The first objection here is interesting, and that is, why are there species assigned for sadness, whichever they are, and not so much for what? Yeah, yeah. Though I suppose you could in some way do that, right? Yeah. But, you don't seem to have names, right? You might say, you get a pleasure of knowing a theorem here, or a pleasure of wine, or a pleasure of Shakespeare, you know what I mean, you know? But, you don't seem to have names, right? You know, if they're not as... Yeah, yeah. It says, to the first therefore it should be said. This is the famous thing, that pleasure is caused from the good, which happens in what? One way. One way. One way. And therefore, of pleasure, they're not assigned to so many species as a sadness, which is caused from the bad, which happens in many ways, as Dionysius says, huh? Okay. Well, you know, how many species are there of good health? It seems like, you know, there's one thing, right? If you're in good health, right? That's, you know? Yeah. You know? But, you know, you could have a heart problem, you could have a cancer, you know, all kinds of cancers, you know? They all have names, right? And there's other things that wasn't going to be wrong with you besides heart trouble and cancer, but you have all these names of diseases, right? You know? You know? And you don't have species of good health, right? Because good health seems to happen in one way, right? Everything's got to be good. Okay, right? Right. Right? Well, that's why, in a sense, there aren't these names, right? That's kind of interesting, right? These are nice little things that Thomas is saying, and you reflect upon them, you see. Instead, he had these things, right? Mm-hmm. This monk, you know? Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. Friar. In 36, then we have to consider about the causes of sadness, and about this four things are asked. First, whether the cause of sadness or pain is the good missed or lost, or more, the evil joined to one, right? Second, whether concupiscence, desire, I suppose, wanting, is the cause of sadness. Third, whether the desire for unity is the cause of sadness. That's a strange one. And fourth, whether power to which one cannot resist is the cause of sadness. Reminds me of Aristotle saying, one of the things to be feared is to be in the power of another man. For as it really says, men do evil whenever they can. Not too optimistic a view of mankind. So to the first one goes forward thus, it seems that the good lost is more the cause of, what, pain than the good, what, than the bad joint, right? For Augustine says in the book on the, what, eight questions of somebody or other, do a cheat see us? I think I'm a proper person. That really is. Crazy back to the introduction to 35. That there's sadness about the loss of temporal goods. So the stock market crashed here in 1929. They're jumping out of the windows, they said. It's really terrible, right? For the same reason, therefore, any sorrow happens from the loss of somewhat good. Okay. Back to have loved and lost. I don't know. It's that thing that Truman said he liked the best. Yeah. Yeah. That's what he thought was. Moreover, above it has been said that sadness, which is contrary to pleasure, is about the same about which pleasure is. But pleasure is about the good. Therefore, sadness is chiefly about the loss of the good, right? So what's contrary to good? Is it the loss of the good or is it the bad? Yeah, but is the loss of the good also something bad? Am I sad about my sickness or my loss of health? Are they the same? Moreover, according to Augustine in the 14th book of the City of God, love is the cause of what? Even of sadness, right? Just as of other affections of the soul. But the object of love is the good, right? And therefore, sadness, pain or sadness, more regards the good loss than the good joint. So I have to love something before I'm going to be sad about what is, it takes that away or is opposed to it, right? Both of these seem to be opposed in some way, right? The loss of the good and the, yeah, yeah. So if I love virtue, then I'm sad in the loss of virtue, or I'm sad by what? Vice. But I do not have to say anything exactly, are they? What? Because the absence of virtue is not necessarily... The vice, no, no. But again, this is what Damascene says in the second book, that the evil expected constitutes what? Fear, right? But the present one, sadness, right? I answer it should be said, that if in this way, privations or lacks, right, have themselves in the grasp of the soul, just as they have themselves in things, this question would be of no, what, moment, huh? Would seem to be of no moment, huh? Of no importance. Now, the bad, as is had in the first book, is the, what? Lack of the good, right? Good, yeah. Okay? Now, lack in verum natura, that's the expression, in reality, we'd say reality today, you know, but in Thomas is saying verum natura, right? In things, huh? In reality. Well, not naturally in a narrow sense, right? And, you know, naturally in a particular, right? But in reality, we'd say, you know, in the nature of things, right? Right, huh? So, reading the whole thing here. The bad, as is had in the first thing, is the lack of the good. But lack in verum natura is nothing other than the lacking of the opposite thing that could be had, right? And according to this, therefore, it would be the same thing to be sad about the good, what? What? Lost, and about the bad, what? Had, right, huh? But sadness is a motion of the desiring power, following, what? Upon apprehension or something, right? Now, in grasping or knowing, the privation has the notion of a certain, what? Being, right, huh? Whence is said to be a being of, what? Reason, right? Okay? So, in my old professor there, because he said, you know, philosophy is the only subject where you can get paid for talking about nothing. You say, when you say, nothing is nothing, right? Is that true? What does is mean there, right, huh? Is nothing something? Well, in reason, it's taken to be, what? As something, right, huh? Right. He has a kind of being, it's a kind of being of reason, right, huh? Right. So, when you talk about nothing, are you talking about something or not? Something in the mind. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it seems at first sight to be a contradiction, huh? To say that when you're talking about nothing, you're talking about something, right, huh? But maybe nothing, in reality, is nothing, right? But it's something in, what? Reason, right, huh? It's kind of an unusual thing, this kind of being, right, huh? Now, when Aristotle distinguishes the senses of being there in the fifth book of wisdom, right, huh? One sense of being is this being in affirmation, negation, right? Which includes, then, beings that have being only in the mind, right, huh? That's an unusual thing, right? But Aristotle sees that, right? Okay. So, he says, in apprehension, in knowing, the privation itself has the notion, or the aspect, or the ratio, of a certain being, whence it is called a being of reason, right, huh? You could also say that it's something, right? But something of reason. And thus, the bad, since it is a privation, or a lack, you know, privation is kind of Latin, right, but I think this word is lack, right, huh? Right. It has itself by way of, what? Of being kind of like a conifer, right, huh? It's in similarity, right? Right. And therefore, as regards the repetitive motion, it differs whether it regards chiefly the evil, what, joined, or the good, what, lost, right? Now, tell us a way of approaching this. And because the motion of the appetite, the animal appetite, in this way has itself in the works of the soul as natural motion in natural things, from the consideration of natural motions, the truth can be what? Taken, huh? If, therefore, we take, in natural motions, approach and, what, receding, yeah, excess or approach per se regards that which is, what, suitable to nature, right? If, therefore, by recess or withdrawal, per se regards that which is, what, contrary, just as the heavy per se receives from the, what, higher place, right? Things fall to the ground, right, maybe. But it approaches naturally to the, what, inferior place, right? But if we take the cause of both motions, right, to it, heaviness, right? I know it's, you know, that doesn't mean what we call gravity today, right, huh? That's a big extension. The heaviness before per prius inclines to the, what, place below, then it withdraws from the place above, right? What are you saying here? It, what, because it tends towards the, what, lower place, right? It withdraws from the lower place, right? So it's more tending towards the lower place. Then, what, withdrawing from that, right, huh? Okay. When the man seeks knowledge, right, he withdraws from ignorance, right, huh? But is he more withdrawing from ignorance or seeking knowledge? Yeah. That's more than what per se, right? At least it's more before, right, huh? Okay. Because I'm seeking knowledge, I'm fleeing from ignorance, huh? It's very close to me, I'm thinking of Aristotle there in the preemium of the wisdom there, you know, where he says that the first philosophers were fleeing ignorance, right? Therefore, they're seeking knowledge, huh? Interesting. Thus, therefore, since sadness in the pedative motions or among the pedative motions has itself by way of, what, flight or recess, huh? Pleasure more through, by way of pursuit or excess, right? Just as pleasure before regards the good, what, obtained, right, as its own object, so sadness regards the evil that is, what, joined, huh? But the cause both of pleasure and of, what, sadness, to wit, what, love, before regards the good, then the, what, then the bad, yeah? And thus, therefore, in that way in which the object is the cause of the passion, more properly is the cause of sadness or pain, the evil joined to one, then the good, what, yeah? Why do you say that? Because it's per modem fugae, vericestus? Because it's a, what, fleeing, yeah, and therefore it's more, what, fleeing the evil that's joined to one, then, what, yeah, or the, then it is a loss of the good, right? Come back to that, by the, take a look at the reply to the objections here, and then come back to the body article again, figure out to do that. The first one is a text from, from, no, no less a person than Augustine, right, huh? And he speaks of what sadness being about the loss of, what, temporal goods, right, huh? Or he says that there is, maybe, I may see a bit of a way of translating it in the Latin, getting me down here, that there is sadness over the loss of temporal goods, right, huh? Therefore, for the same reason, every sorrow, pain, is from the loss, or happens from the loss of, what, some good, right, huh? He says the first, therefore, it should be said that the loss of the good is grasped or apprehended under the ratio of, what, something bad, right? Just as the loss of something bad is apprehended under the ratio of something good, right? So your cancer has disappeared, right, huh? Okay. Well, that's, apprehended is to make something good, right? Okay. And therefore, Vestan says that pain or sorrow arise from the, what, yeah, of temporal goods, right? What is he saying there? That it's, it's, um, that the loss of, of goods is apprehended or grasped as something bad, right? So isn't the bad more than the object, right? In other words, that the loss of something good would not cause sadness unless it'd be grasped as being something bad. So isn't something bad more the cause of, what, sadness, right? Yeah, yeah. Or vice versa, you know, the loss of something bad, right? Like the disappearance of your cancer or something like that, um, is, causes pleasure, right? Or joy, right? Because it's apprehended as something good, right? So wouldn't the cause of, of, uh, pleasure, delight be more the good than the loss of the bad? Because the loss of the bad causes pleasure only because it's apprehended as good, as a good, right? So the good is more per se to pleasure, right? And wouldn't the loss of something good, uh, cause sadness because it's apprehended as something, what, bad, right? So the bad is what, is more the cause, right? For the second objection here. Warver, above what is said that sorrow or pain, which is contrary to pleasure, right, is about the same, about which is, what, pleasure, right? But pleasure is about the good, therefore pain is chiefly about the loss of the good, huh? What Thomas says? To the second it should be said that pleasure and pain, and the pain which is, what, yeah, and the sadness, contrary to it, right, regard the same, but under a contrary, what, definition, right? For if pleasure is about the presence of something, then sadness is about the absence of the, what, same thing, right? In one of each contrary is included the privation of the, what? The other. The other, right? As is clear in the Tenth Book of Metaphysics. That's the book on the one and the many, right? He talks about contraries. And hence it is that sadness, which is about the contrary, is in some way about the same, but under a, what, contrary reason. Is that going back to the fact that it, what, is apprehended as something bad, right? And therefore it causes sadness, right? Now, the third objection is taken from Augustine in the City of God, where he says that love is the cause of, what, sadness, just as it is of all the other affections of the soul, right? Well, that's good. Yeah, the object of love is good. Therefore, pain or sadness more regards the good loss than the, what? Equal. Yeah. Thomas says that when from one cause there comes to be many, what, motions, right? Right, huh? So he's saying, you know, I mean, Thomas talked about this before, he talked about love, right? It being kind of the fundamental thing, right, huh? But my fear arises from my love, right, huh? If I love my children, I fear they might get hurt, you know, or something, you know? And when I lose the things I love, I have sadness, right? He seems to give rise to all these passions, right? But he says, nevertheless, that when from one cause there come to be many motions, it is not necessary that all chiefly regard that which, what, the cause principally regards, right? But only the first of all of them, right? So love, the main cause of love is the good, right? Is the good the main cause of sadness or fear? No. For each of the others, chiefly regards that which is suitable to it according to its proper, what, definition, right, huh? Okay. So, isn't it true that sadness or fear and so on chiefly regards a, what, something bad, right, huh? It doesn't chiefly regard the good, right? And if it regards the loss of the good, it's the loss of the good under the, something bad, yeah. But it's kind of interesting, I mean, if you take those two things where you can love the loss of something bad, right? Or the going away of something bad, you know? Just that you can be sad of the loss of something good, right, huh? But for contrary reasons, in a sense, right, huh? So I love or rejoice in the loss of something, or the going away of something bad, because it's apprehended to something, what? Yeah. Something good, right? The loss of something bad. The loss of something bad. Now, let's go back over by the articles, see if the, you know, kind of things are. I answer, Thomas says, that if in this way, huh, privations had themselves in the grasp of the soul, just as they have themselves and things themselves, this question would seem to be of no, what? Momentum, right, huh? Before we learned in the first part, in the first book, huh, in the parts, that the bad is the lack of the, what? Good, right? That's kind of the fundamental meaning of the bad, that it's the lack of something, right, huh? Good. For privation or lack, in rare nature, in reality, is nothing other than the lack of the opposite habit. I mean, not to say habit in the sense of the virtue, right, but I mean the quality, but in terms of the thing had, right? And according to this, therefore, is the same thing to be, what, sad about the good lost and about the bad had, right, huh? But sadness is the emotion, but sadness is the emotion of the repetitive power fouling upon, what, some grasping, some knowing, right, huh? And in the grasping, or in knowledge, right, you can tell us the word grasping in terms of knowing, right, because in knowing, the known is in the, what? Grasp of the mind. It's in the knower, right? The knower. Okay, so that act of knowing is said to be a grasping, right, huh? So now it's first studying logic, we used to call the first act of reason, simple apprehension, you know, simplex apprehension, right? Simple grasping, right, huh? Why love is more in the thing, what? Love, yeah, I left my heart in San Francisco, right, huh? Where your treasure is there, your heart will be, what it says, right? But in apprehension, in grasping, in knowing, deprivation itself has a notion of a certain, what? Being, right? Whence it is said to be a being of, what? Reason, right, huh? And thus, the bad, since it is a deprivation, has itself in the manner of a, what? Contrary, right, huh? And therefore, as regards the appetitive motion, it differs whether it regards chiefly the, what? Bad joined, or the good lost, right? Okay, now Thomas says we've got to look here at the natural motion to understand this, because it's some way maybe more known. And because the motion of the animal animal, as opposed to the natural desire, right, huh? In this way has itself in the works of the soul, just as the natural motion in natural things. We can take, what? Truth can be taken from the consideration of natural, what? Oceans. Now, if we take, in natural motions, approach to and receding from, excess, per se regards that which is suitable to the nature. Recess, per se regards that which is, what? Contrary to nature. Just as a heavy, per se, withdraws from the superior place, the higher place, and it naturally exceeds the lower part, right? But if we take the cause of both motions, to wit, heaviness, huh? This heaviness, before inclines one to, the body to the, what? Lower place. Then it withdraws from the place above, from which it recedes that it might tend towards the, what? Place below. Thus, therefore, since sadness in the penetrative motions has itself in the manner of a flight or a recess or withdrawal, just as pleasure before regards the good obtained, right, as its proper object, so sadness regards the bad, what? Joint, huh? But the cause of both pleasure and sadness, to wit, love, before regards the good, then the bad, right? But his...