St. Thomas Aquinas on Whether the Human Soul Can Have Passions

CONGRESSO TOMISTA INTERNAZIONALE L UMANESIMO CRISTIANO NEL III MILLENNIO: PROSPETTIVA DI TOMMASO D AQUINO ROMA, 21-25 settembre 2003 Pontificia Accademia di San Tommaso Società Internazionale Tommaso d Aquino St. Thomas Aquinas on Whether the Human Soul Can Have Passions Dr. Sister Mary Veronica Sabelli, RSM Roma (Italia) There has been much interest in recent decades in St. Thomas Aquinas account of the Passion of the human soul. Much writing on this topic, however, isolates certain statements of St. Thomas apart from their larger context and measures his account against modern philosophical or psychological theory of emotion. A contextualized analysis, however, reveals that Aquinas does not take it for granted that the soul can even have passions. His exploration of how it is that we can even speak of passions of the soul situates his theory within the larger context of his metaphysics and philosophy of nature; more specifically, within the framework of act and potency, form and matter, soul and body. It is not the soul in itself but the soul as part of the composite that has passions, not directly, but accidentally. Moreover, following from the distinction between the essence of the soul and its powers, the soul has passions accidentally in two ways: as the form of the body and as the body s mover. In recent decades, a great deal of interest has arisen in St. Thomas Aquinas s account of the passions of the human soul. There is a tendency in much of the writing on this topic, however, to isolate certain statements made by St. Thomas, mostly from the Summa Theologiae, without relating them either to the larger context of the work in which they appear, or to the sources from which they were derived and to St. Thomas s original synthesis of the source material. The tendency is rather to measure St. Thomas s account against modern and contemporary philosophical and, even more, psychological theories, theories often not of passion, but rather of emotion. For many reasons, however, viewing St. Thomas s doctrine on the passions of the human soul in this way can easily lead to misinterpretation of the very content of what he is saying, let alone its significance and implications. 1 1 Cf., for example, Mark P. Drost, Intentionality in Aquinas s Theory of Emotions, International Philosophical Quarterly 31 (December 1991): 449-460; Robert C. Roberts, Thomas Aquinas on the Morality of Emotions, History of Philosophy Quarterly, 9(July 1992): 287-305. Copyright 2003 INSTITUTO UNIVERSITARIO VIRTUAL SANTO TOMÁS Fundación Balmesiana Universitat Abat Oliba CEU

M. V. SABELLI, St. Thomas Aquinas on Whether the Human Soul Can Have Passions One example of this is the shift in terminology from passion to emotion just noted. Even etymologically, emotion indicates an outward motion proceeding from a subject, while passion indicates receptivity or undergoing a change. This difference in signification is not inconsequential. As we shall see, since the notion of passion is linked with those of potency and receptivity, it is firmly situated within Aquinas s metaphysics and philosophy of nature. This broader context is absolutely indispensable for a correct understanding of what St. Thomas is saying about the passions. That larger context, however, is rarely investigated in this connection. In this necessarily brief investigation, we will attempt to situate the passions within the notions of act and potency, form and matter, soul and body. We will see that St. Thomas does not take for granted that the human soul can have passions at all. On the contrary, the first question asked by Aquinas in the beginning of the section of the Summa Theologiae 2 that has come to be known as the Treatise on the Passions 3 is precisely whether there is passion in the soul. It is exactly this point that locates St. Thomas s doctrine on the passions within the notions of act and potency, form and matter, soul and body. Focusing our inquiry primarily on the Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 22, a. 1 and the Quaestiones disputatae de Veritate 4 q. 26, we recall first that Aquinas has already established in the Prima Pars of the Summa Theologiae that the soul is not a body 5 and that the soul is not composed of form and matter but rather is form only; it is precisely the form of the body. 6 Thus the soul itself has no matter. Rather, the soul, by its very essence is an act, 7 because it is a form, and form as such is act, and that which is purely potential cannot be part of an act, since potentiality is repugnant to actuality as being its opposite. 8 Potency, by 2 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Leonine edition, ed. Petri Carmello (Turin and Rome: Marietti, 1950); English translation: St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 5 Vols., trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benzinger Brothers, 1948; reprint, Westminster, Maryland: Christian Classics, 1981). Hereafter abbreviated as ST. 3 ST I-II, qq. 22-48. 4 St. Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae, Vol. 1, Quaestiones disputatae de Veritate, ed. Fr. Raymond Spiazzi, O.P. (Turin and Rome: Marietti, 1953). Quotations in English translation are taken from St. Thomas Aquinas, Truth, 3 Vols., trans. Robert W. Mulligan, S.J., James V. McGlynn, S.J., and Robert W. Schmidt, S.J. (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1952-1954). Hereafter abbreviated as DV. 5 Cf. ST I, q. 75, a. 1. 6 Cf. ST I, q. 75, a. 5. 7 Nam anima secundum suam essentiam est actus. ST, I, q. 77, a. 1 c. 8...quia forma, inquantum forma, est actus; id autem quod est in potentia repugnet actui, utpote contra actum divisa. ST I, q. 75, a. 5c. p. 2

Congresso Tomista Internazionale contrast, pertains to matter as the substrate that undergoes change: potentiality is receptive of act. 9 Thus matter in its most primitive state - prime matter - is identified with pure potency, possibility, and receptivity. Form is that which is received by matter such that matter passes from possibility to actuality, and it is that which makes the composite to be what it is. The significance of the question of whether there is any passion at all in the soul thus becomes apparent: if matter, as potency and possibility, is passive and receptive to form, while form in relation to matter is identified with act and causes matter to pass from possibility to actuality, how can the soul, which is a form and is not composed of both form and matter, have passivity or passion? Can we even speak of passions of the soul? In order to understand St. Thomas s response to this question, we must first understand what the term passion meant in the time and place in which Aquinas lived and worked. The term had a very much broader range of signification in St. Thomas s time than it does in ours. A 20 th century author illustrated well the range of signification of the term:...the mediaevals...were well aware that passio derives from the verb pati, meaning to suffer not in the particular sense of bearing pain, but in the general sense of suffering, bearing, supporting, or receiving anything at all. It should not be surprising, then, to find mediaeval philosophers referring to the transcendentals, to predicates in sentences, to conclusions in a science, and to perfections in general as passions; for the one, the true, and the good are what being suffers, a subject in a sentence suffers or bears its predicate, the conclusions of a science are what the subject matter of that science suffers, and things suffer (i.e. receive, bear, support) their perfections. 10 In his response, St. Thomas distinguishes three senses in which passion or passivity can be understood. Since the third is included under the second as its subcategory, we will, for our purposes, concentrate on the first and second meanings. The first and most general meaning signifies the circumstance in which something is received while nothing else is taken away. In this sense, St. Thomas designates air being lighted up, or the human intellect attaining understanding, as passions. 11 Explaining this further, he acknowledges that, It belongs to matter to be passive in such a way as to lose something and to be transmuted: hence this happens only in those things that are composed of matter and form. But, he continues, passivity, as implying mere reception, need not be in matter, but can be in anything that is in potentiality. Now, 9 Potentia...sit receptiva actus... ST I, q. 75, a. 5, ad 1. 10 Juvenal Lalor, O.F.M., The Passions, in Summa Theologica (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947), 3:3220. 11 Cf. ST I-II, q. 22, a. 1c. p. 3

M. V. SABELLI, St. Thomas Aquinas on Whether the Human Soul Can Have Passions though the soul is not composed of matter and form, yet it has something of potentiality, in respect of which it is competent to receive or to be passive, according as the act of understanding is a kind of passion, as stated in De anima iii. 4. 12 This is consistent with what Aquinas demonstrates in the Summa Theologiae I, q. 75, that is, that the human soul, the essence of which is rational, is incorruptible 13 and subsistent. 14 St. Thomas says that when the notion of passion or passivity is used in the sense of simple reception without a corresponding loss of something else, it refers more properly to being perfected than to undergoing passion, and does not imply corruption in any way. 15 The reason for this is that change implies generation and corruption, that is, it involves losing one form and gaining a contrary form. However, as St. Thomas states, There can be no contrariety in the intellectual soul; for it is a receiving subject according to the manner of its being, and those things which it receives are without contrariety. Thus, the notions even of contraries are not themselves contrary, since contraries belong to the same science. Therefore it is impossible for the intellectual soul to be corruptible. 16 Anthony Kenny elaborates the meaning of this passage in discussing St. Thomas s doctrine of the intellect: The intellect...is incapable of decay...it is not that it is incapable of taking on a contrary form...: it can take on contrary forms simultaneously, while continuing to exist unchanged in its own nature. Health may be incompatible with sickness, but knowledge of health is compatible with knowledge of sickness, and indeed according 12...pati, secundum quod est cum abiectione et transmutatione, proprium est materiae: unde non invenitur nisi in compositis ex materia et forma. Sed pati prout importat receptionem solam, non est necessarium quod sit materiae, sed potest esse cuiuscumque existentis in potentia. Anima, autem, etsi non sit composita ex materia et forma, habet tamen aliquid potentialitatis, secundum quam convenit sibi recipere et pati, secundum quod intelligere pati est, ut dicitur in III de Anima. ST I-II, q. 22, a. 1, ad 1. 13 ST I, q. 75, a. 6. 14 ST I, q. 75, a. 2. 15 Cf. ST, I-II, q. 22, a. 1c. 16 In anima autem intellectiva non potest esse aliqua contrarietas. Recipit enim secundum modum sui esse: ea vero quae in ipsa recipiuntur, sunt absque contrarietate; quia etiam rationes contrariorum in intellectu non sunt contrariae, sed est una scientia contrariorum. Impossibile est ergo quod anima intellectiva sit corruptibilis. ST I, q. 75, a. 6c. p. 4

Congresso Tomista Internazionale to a familiar Aristotelian slogan, it is the very same thing. Eadem est scientia oppositorum: to know what it is to be F is eo ipso to know what it is not to be F. 17 It is well to recall that St. Thomas s metaphysics the notion of potency is not always identified with matter. In certain contexts, form can be identified as potency. As is well known, Aquinas maintains that, beyond the composition of matter and form, there is another composition that is even more fundamental, that is, the composition of being (esse) and essence in every existing thing. This composition extends beyond things composed of matter and form to purely spiritual substances, which are form only, unmixed with matter. In such creatures, form alone constitutes the essence of the entity. Insofar as form alone constitutes the essence of such beings (entes), and essence stands as potency to the act of being (actus essendi), form here stands as potency in relation to being (esse). St. Thomas s metaphysics, then, already acknowledges a kind of potentiality in created pure forms, completely apart from matter. He states,...in intellectual substances, there is composition of actuality and potentiality, not, indeed, of matter and form, but of form and participated being. Therefore some say that they are composed of that whereby they are and that which they are; for being itself is that by which a thing is. 18 Although the human soul is ordained to be the form of a body, it is still a subsistent, intellectual form, and therefore what is stated here can be applied to the intellectual soul of man. In fact, it can be said that the human soul as form stands as potency to the act of being and as act in relation to the body (matter). The differences among the modes of receptivity of a body, a sensitive soul, and an intellectual soul can be seen in the different ways in which they are receptive of forms. When a body receives a form, it does so according to its own mode of being, that is, materially. Thus, for example, when a material thing receives the form of white, it is altered in the sense that it becomes white. Contrasting this with the mode of reception found in the external senses, which are powers of the soul that make use of a corporeal organ, we see that when for example, the sense of sight receives the form of white by means of the eye, the eye receives it according to the mode of being of the soul, that is, immaterially, but, because sight makes use of a bodily organ, what is received is still subject to matter s individuating conditions of here and now. Thus, the eye, in 17 Anthony Kenny, Aquinas on Mind (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), 142-143. 18 In substantiis vero intellectualibus est compositio ex actu et potentia: non quidem ex materia et forma, sed ex forma et esse participato. Unde a quibusdam dicuntur componi ex quo est et quod est: ipsum enim esse est quo aliquid est. ST I, q. 75, a. 5, ad 4. p. 5

M. V. SABELLI, St. Thomas Aquinas on Whether the Human Soul Can Have Passions receiving the form of white, does not itself become white (thus the form of white is received immaterially) and in this sense does not undergo a bodily alteration, but white is perceived, yet only as existing in a particular object present to the perceiver at a particular point in time. Contrasting this once again with the way that the intellect receives forms, we see that the intellect receives the form of white immaterially and absolutely for all time; thus the intellect does not become white as a material thing becomes white; nor does it perceive whiteness in some object that is before it here and now; rather it understands whiteness itself, precisely as a universal form. 19 According to St. Thomas, passion in the second sense, that is, the proper and more narrow sense, is only found where not only a new form is acquired, but also a contrary form is lost, resulting in a corporeal alteration, and this takes place only in matter. In other words, then, passion properly so called is found only where there is a corporeal transmutation. Thus it is also clear from the foregoing that passion understood in this way can be in the soul only accidentally, because the soul has no matter. It is the composite as a whole that is subject to transmutation; the soul undergoes passion only insofar as it is part of the composite. That the soul should be able to undergo passion because of its union with the body in the composite raises another question: even within the composite, how can passions, understood in the strict sense, which cannot be in the soul considered by itself, bleed so to speak from the body into the soul? One 20 th century author suggests the following: Because of this corporeal alteration which has repercussions in the activity of the faculties of the soul, one must say that the human composite as a whole undergoes passion. 20 Here we find mention of a point that is central to the problem of passivity within the rational soul, in that the corporeal alteration is said to have repercussions in the faculties of the soul. St. Thomas has established in ST I, q. 77, a. 1 that there is a real distinction between the essence of the soul and the faculties of the soul, precisely because the soul is essentially form and the first act of the body; it is not a potency to another act. The faculties of the soul, however, are precisely potencies, that is, potencies to the various operations, or 19 Cf. ST I, q. 75, a. 6c. 20 A cause de l altération corporelle qui se répercute dans l activité des facultés de l âme, on doit dire que le composé humain tout entier subit passion H.D. Noble, O.P., Les passions dans la vie morale, Vol. 1, Psychologie des passions (Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1931), 20 (the English is my translation). p. 6

Congresso Tomista Internazionale second acts, of which the soul is capable. St. Thomas concludes that this principle of the second act cannot be the essence of the soul directly: for, as a form, the soul is not an act ordained to a further act; rather, it is the ultimate term of generation. Therefore, for it to be in potentiality to another act does not belong to it according to its essence as a form, but according to its power...therefore, it follows that the essence of the soul is not its power. For nothing is potentiality by reason of an act, as act. 21 The powers or faculties of the soul are the potencies to the further acts which flow from its essence. The powers of the soul have the distinction of having within them both something that is moved and something that moves. They can, that is, be moved by an object and in turn move other powers of the soul as well as the body to operation. With this understanding of the distinction of essence and power in the soul, we are in a position to deepen our understanding of the way in which the soul undergoes passion indirectly insofar as it is united to the body in the composite. We turn to De Veritate, q. 26, where St. Thomas discusses this aspect of passion in the soul in relation to the distinction between the essence and the power of the soul, the union of the soul with the body, and the possibility of motion in the soul: Now the soul is united to the body in two respects: (1) as a form, inasmuch as it gives existence to the body, vivifying it; (2) as a mover, inasmuch as it exercises its operations through the body. 22 In other words, considered in its essence, the soul is united to the body as form; considered as it executes the operation to which it is ordained, the soul considered in its powers is united to the body as its mover. St. Thomas continues, And in both respects the soul suffers indirectly but differently. For anything that is composed of matter and form suffers by reason of its matter just as it acts by reason of its form. 23 Aquinas therefore concludes that insofar as the soul is united to the body as form, the passion begins with the matter and in a ceratin sense 21 Non enim, inquantum est forma, est actus ordinatus ad ulteriorem actum, sed est ultimus terminus generationis. Unde quod sit in potentia adhuc ad alium actum, noc non competit di secundum suam essentiam, inquantum est forma; sed secundum suam potentiam...relinquitur ergo quod essentia animae non est eius potentia. Nihil enim est in potentia secundum actum, inquantum est actus. ST I, q. 77, a. 1c. 22 Unitur autem corpori dupliciter: Uno modo ut forma, in quantum dat esse corpori, vivificans ipsum; alio modo ut motor, in quantum per corpus suas operationes exercet. DV q. 26, a. 2c. 23 Et utroque modo anima patitur per accidens, sed diversimode. Nam id quod est compositum ex materia et forma, sicut agit ratione formae, ita patitur ratione materiae... Ibid. p. 7

M. V. SABELLI, St. Thomas Aquinas on Whether the Human Soul Can Have Passions indirectly belongs to the form. 24 But insofar as the soul is united with the body as its mover, the passion of the patient [in this case, the body] is derived from the agent [in this case, the soul], because passion is the effect of action. 25 From this, St. Thomas derives a twofold manner in which the soul suffers as a result of its union with the body: A passion of the body is therefore attributed to the soul indirectly in two ways: In such a way that the passion begins with the body and ends in the soul inasmuch as it is united to the body as its form;...[and] in such a way that the passion begins with the soul inasmuch as it is the mover of the body, and ends in the body... 26 In the reply to the third objection in DV, q. 26, a. 2, St. Thomas offers another, rather elegant, explanation of the union of soul and body that arises from the very act of being of the composite thing, and which also offers another possibility of resolving the difficulty of how passions can be in the soul accidentally by reason of its union with the body. The substance of the objection is that the passions, as alterations, are qualities that depend upon matter and, therefore, upon the body. But accidental forms or qualities that are in the body directly are not said to be in the soul indirectly. St. Thomas replies, Although the quality of a body by no means belongs to the soul, yet the act of being of the composite is common to soul and body, and likewise the operation. The passion of the body therefore overflows into the soul indirectly. 27 It is evident, then, that St. Thomas s account of the passions cannot be understood adequately apart from the context of his metaphysics and philosophy of nature. Of course, what Aquinas is saying must be understood before his account is set in comparison or contrast to any other theory of the passions or of human emotion. 24...passio incipit a materia, et quodammodo per accidens pertinet ad formam... Ibid. 25...passio patientis derivatur ab agente, eo quod passio est effectus actionis. Ibid. 26 Dupliciter ergo passio corporis attribuitur animae per accidens. Uno modo ita quod passio incipiat a corpore et terminetur in anima, secundum quod unitur corpori ut forma;...alio modo ita quod incipiat ab anima, in quantum est coporis motor, et terminetur in corpus... Ibid. 27...quamvis qualitas coporis animae nullo modo conveniat, tamen esse coniuncti est commune animae et corpori, et similiter operatio: unde passio corporis per accidens redundat in animam. DV q. 26, a. 2, ad 3. p. 8