Summa Theologica

Aquinas considers circumstances of human acts, those conditions (accidents) which underlie them. The most crucial of such questions are why and what: To what end was this action done, and what precisely was done? These circumstances must be taken into consideration, especially by theologians, when judging human actions. 

The will, properly speaking, is aimed only at good. When the soul chooses evil, it does so because of some good that it mistakenly sees in it. The will aims both at the end and the means to achieve the end, but by different acts. Thus, by willing to accomplish a particular goal, we do not by the very same act will the things that will help us achieve that goal. They are separate acts of the will. 

Aquinas argues against the notion that our wills are controlled by the stars and heavenly bodies. The intellect or the sensitive appetite moves the will toward its object. But the will moves itself as regards the actual exercise of its act. Ultimately, the will is moved by God, since he alone is the cause of the will’s nature and is the universal good. 

The will is necessarily moved by the universal and absolute good; it cannot not will it, because it is natural to it. Other particular goods it can choose or not as the case may be.

Although the will can be moved by passions (e.g., concupiscence or lust), the reason retains its freedom and function to a certain degree. The will is not a slave to concupiscence.

God does control our will, but grants it freedom of choice so far as its nature allows. 

To enjoy is to rest contented in a goal, not desiring anything further. It is “to adhere lovingly to something for its own sake” (666). It pertains to the last end. We may have an imperfect enjoyment of things that are not yet possessed but hoped for. Enjoyment resides in the appetitive (or desiring) power of the soul. Animals have enjoyment in an imperfect way, since they lack reason and true knowledge, but humans have perfect enjoyment. 

Intention is an act of the will that moves or directs things to their end. Intention can be toward the final end as well as to other, prior ends. More than one thing can be intended at the same time, provided they are ordered to one another. For example, one and the same human organ, the tongue, is intended both for taste and for speech. Intending the end and willing the means to achieve the end are part of the same movement of the will. Animals are not capable of intention properly speaking, because they lack reason and are moved by instinct. 

Aquinas now focuses on how the will chooses and makes use of means to achieve a goal.

Choice resides in the will and pertains to the means rather than the end itself. Means are particular goods which lead to the perfect good or final end. Thus, we have the freedom to choose various means; there is no necessity in our choosing. Choice can only be made among things that are possible. 

Counsel is an inquiry or deliberation about what is to be done in a situation—that is, of the means to achieve a certain end. It ends in resolution and has definite limits—it does not proceed to infinity. 

Consent is a further stage in the act of the will. It is an act of the appetitive part of the soul and pertains to the means of an end. It is an act of the higher reason and as such is found in man but not in other animals. 

Use is an act of the will that applies a thing to an operation. It pertains to the means rather than to the end. It requires reason and hence is found in man and not in irrational animals. 

By command Aquinas means the will’s control over our actions. Command is an act of the reason, bearing in mind that reason and will have bearing on each other. Reason and the sensitive appetite are both under our command, and so are the acts of the parts of the body, generally speaking. However, the acts of the vegetative soul—involving growth and nourishment—are not under our command. 

Aquinas delves into the morality of human actions, introducing a number of terminological distinctions.

Several factors make an action good or evil, including its object, its end, and the circumstances surrounding it. By the object of an act Aquinas means the thing that immediately receives the action (for example, the object of theft would be the thing stolen). By the end he means the ultimate goal of the action (thus, the person stealing a car has a particular goal in mind, namely transports).

Some actions are indifferent, lying somewhere between good and evil. It is best to judge with caution about these actions. 

Now Aquinas considers the goodness or evil of the will itself, as opposed to the goodness or evil of actions.

Reason and conscience (which Aquinas defines as the application of knowledge to action) must be obeyed, even if they happen to be mistaken. If this happens, the evil is excused.

The goodness of the will depends on the intention of the end (710). A person may perform a good action for a bad reason—e.g., give alms for the sake of showing off. Thus, the action remains good, but the person’s will is evil. Such a person has willed good for the sake of evil.

A good will is that which wills the good for the sake of the good. In order to be good, the human will must be ordered and conformed to the will of God. 

Aquinas delves into the morality of actions in greater detail than in Question 18. The reason proposes an external action to the will, thus reason causes the good in the will's action. Yet in so far as it is found in the execution of the action, it is an effect of the will.

In order for an action to be good, the will must be good in its intention and in its immediate object.

The interior act of the will and the exterior action that results from it are one single act. An exterior action may add to the preexisting goodness or evil of the will.

Consequences that follow accidentally from an action, unintended and unforeseen by the agent, do not undo the goodness or evil of the action.

The same action cannot be both good and evil. 

A human action is right or sinful by reason of its being good or evil. Aquinas distinguishes between evil and sin. Any privation of the good is an evil, but sin is a deliberate evil action. From this principle follows the principle of rewarding good and punishing evil, and of giving praise to good and blame to evil. The actions of an individual affect the community of which he is a part. Actions are worthy of praise or blame not only in the sight of human law but also in the sight of God. 

“Passion” in its proper sense means the opposite of action; it is receiving or experiencing. It is related to the idea of being “passive.” Thus, passions are what we commonly think of as emotions, such as sorrow and love and joy. Passions are located in the sensitive appetite and involve change of a bodily organ. When passions are ascribed to God or the angels, this means that they have acts of the will that resemble the human passions in their effects. 

Passions belong either to the irascible or the concupiscible part of the soul. The concupiscible part has to do with sensing pleasure and pain. The irascible part has to do with overcoming obstacles to acquiring good (pleasure) and avoiding evil (pain).

There are in all eleven passions, six in the concupiscible part and five in the irascible part. In the concupiscible part there are three pairs of contrary passions:

love, hatred

desire, aversion

joy, sadness

In the irascible part there are likewise three groupings:

hope, despair

fear, daring

anger (no contrary, except cessation of anger)

Considered in themselves, the passions are morally neutral; but in so far as they are subject to the command of the reason and will, they can be good or evil. The passions must be rightly directed and channeled. Being accompanied by a passion does not lessen the moral good of an action unless the passion obscures reason. 

There are two classes of concupiscible passions: those that incline to good or evil, and those that denote rest in good and evil. The irascible passions stand midway between the two classes of concupiscible passions, because they aim at removing obstacles to the fulfillment of the first class of concupiscible passions.

Love precedes all the passions as their cause, because it is love for a particular object that impels the concupiscible passions. Hope precedes and is the cause of all the irascible passions, since hope looks at obstacles and seeks to overcome them.

The successive order of the passions is:

1.  love/hatred

2.  desire/aversion

3.  hope/despair

4.  fear/daring

5.  anger

6.  joy/sadness

The four principal passions are joy, sadness, hope, and fear. Joy/sadness are the end result of the passions, the state in which they come to rest. 

Love is the “principle of movement” (735) toward the thing loved. It resides in the concupiscible appetite and creates a union or bond between the agent and the object loved. Love is a passion because it results from a change wrought in the appetite by a desirable thing.

Love includes such concepts as:

dilection (a choice made in love)

charity (a perfection of love directed toward a thing of great price)

friendship

Types of friendship include that based on pleasure, on goodness, and on mere usefulness.

To love someone is to wish good to him or her. Love is directed in a twofold motion: toward the person to which one wishes good, and toward the good which one wishes to the person. 

The good is the proper cause of love, since the cause of love must be the object of love. Knowledge is also a cause of love because love demands that the loved object be apprehended and known (even if not perfectly). Likeness is another cause of love, since we love things that have similar qualities to us; moreover, love consists in “a certain agreement of the lover with the thing loved” (745).

Evil is never loved except as it appears to be good. All the passions presuppose love as their source, because love of some good or perceived good impels them all. 

Love has several principal effects: Union, mutual indwelling, ecstasy, and zeal. Love also produces four proximate effects: melting, enjoyment, languor, and fervor.

Ecstasy is the feeling of going outside of oneself to meet the beloved. Mutual indwelling means that lovers have such a close union that they dwell in a sense within each other. 

Evil is the object of hatred, just as good is the object of love. Love precedes hatred as its cause, because what is hated is what hinders the enjoyment of a thing loved. We can say that “every hatred arises from some love as its cause” (746). Thus, the difference of love and hatred parallels the difference of good and evil. For this reason, love is ultimately stronger that hatred.

Properly speaking, no one can hate himself. It is possible to hate the truth because it is a hindrance to a perceived good that one loves.

Concupiscence is a desire for that which is pleasant. It consists in the desire for a thing as a good delightful to the senses. Natural concupiscence is naturally implanted in us by nature and consists in a desire for food, drink, etc., proportionate with our needs. Non-natural concupiscence, or cupidity, is a desire for things above and beyond what nature requires. This latter kind of concupiscence is potentially infinite, since it keeps desiring more and more. 

Pleasure is a passion of the soul, residing in the sensitive appetite. Joy and pleasure are similar in that they both have the good as their object; but they differ in that joy pertains to reason and is proper to human beings, while pleasure pertains to natural appetites and is shared with animals. There are also intellectual and spiritual pleasures, and these are greater and more lasting than bodily pleasures. The pleasure of touch seems to have priority, since other pleasures are ordered to it. It is possible for an individual’s nature to become corrupted so that he finds pleasure in wrong or perverse things. 

Pleasure is caused by the attainment of the desired good plus the knowledge of having attained it. Sadness may sometimes cause pleasure inasmuch as a thing may accidentally be the cause of its contrary. Doing good and giving gifts to others are sources of pleasure, and the actions of others may cause pleasure in us. Wonder, the beginning of the road to wisdom, is also a cause of pleasure. 

Like love, pleasure is a kind of expansion going out to things and including them within oneself. Spiritual pleasures cause further thirst or desire for themselves, while bodily pleasures cause disgust after the limit of pleasure has been reached. Bodily pleasure can hinder the use of reason through distraction or by causing a change in the body. In being accompanied by pleasure, activities become more effective. 

Some pleasures are good and some evil. A pleasure is good if it is in accord with reason and God’s law. We may even say that pleasure is included within the greatest good, since man’s happiness in God includes an enjoyment which is a pleasure. Sexual intercourse is accompanied by an intense bodily pleasure, yet it is not morally evil if it is accord with reason.

Pleasure is a guide post for the goodness or evil of actions. A virtuous man will take pleasure in works of virtue, while an evil man will take pleasure in evil works. Pleasure also functions as the perfection of a virtuous action, providing an incentive for it before it is done and finishing it off with delight afterward.

Pain is the opposite of pleasure, and pain and sorrow closely parallel pleasure and joy. Thus, pain is to pleasure as sorrow is to joy. Not every pleasure has a pain directly opposed to it.

In human nature the desire for pleasure is stronger than the shunning of sorrow. Inward sorrow is more keenly felt than outward (bodily) pain, because it is felt directly in the higher faculties without being mediated through the body.

Pain consists of attaining some evil and the knowledge of having attained it.

Sorrow is caused by present evils more than by the impending loss of good. Among the other causes of sorrow are the craving for unity and the will resisting a greater power. 

Pain and sorrow have a number of harmful effects: They hinder the ability to concentrate and learn, burden the soul (depression), and weaken the ability to act. Sorrow is more harmful to the body than any other passion, because through depression it contradicts the natural vital movement of the body. 

Every pleasure has the power to assuage sorrow and pain. Among the remedies of sorrow are: the sympathy of friends; weeping (by virtue of being a fitting release), the contemplation of truth, sleep, and baths. In fact, every good disposition of the body affects the heart or inner part of man. 

In a certain sense, sorrow and pain are good. They alert us to the presence of evil and help us overcome it, or else serve as just punishment for an evil. Sorrow can also be a source of virtue and merit, and useful for helping man to avoid sin. Bodily pain is not the greatest evil that we can suffer, because the soul is the higher part of us; thus, sin, the evil of the soul, is the greater evil. 

Hope is “a certain stretching out of the appetite” towards a good that is difficult but possible to obtain (84). It presupposes desire. Its opposite is despair, which is a recoiling from a thing that is thought impossible to obtain. Non-human animals are capable of hope to a certain degree. 

Fear is the opposite of hope but is still ultimately caused by the desire for good. Hope regards future good; fear avoids a future evil perceived as more powerful than oneself.

Types of fear include:

laziness (fear of great toil)

shame (disgrace in something we have done)

shamefacedness (disgrace in a deed yet to be done)

amazement (fear of a great evil)

stupor (fear of something unaccustomed)

anxiety (fear of future misfortunes) 

The object of fear is an imminent evil which can be repelled, but with great difficulty. We only fear things that are external to us, not things that depend on our will. Sudden changes and evils without a remedy are especially feared. Fear itself can be feared. 

Love is the principal cause of fear, because we are afraid of losing something that we love. Fear has two additional causes: the material disposition of the person who fears (material cause), and the person feared (efficient cause).

Aquinas seeks to explain the physical manifestations of fear. Fear causes a contraction of heat and vital spirits from the extremities to the interior of the body, moving in a downward movement. Thus, people who are afraid feel excessive heat, tremble, experience sudden bowel movements, etc.

Aquinas maintains that fear helps rather than hinders action, because fear creates solicitude and sharpens attention. 

The daring person has hope that he can conquer some evil. Thus, daring is caused by hope, while despair is caused by fear. Daring is contrary to fear, just as hope is contrary to despair. 

Anger is the most visible passion of the irascible part of the soul. All the other irascible passions terminate in it. It is caused by hope and sorrow, and its object is the good. It is a complex passion because it looks both toward a good (vengeance or justice) and an evil (the obstacle to be eliminated). It sometimes terminates in revenge. Anger follows reason to some extent, but also can hinder reason. Hatred is “far worse and graver than anger” (816) because it wishes evil to someone absolutely, not under the aspect of justice or some other good. Moreover, anger comes from the perception of a specific wrong, while hatred is a fixed disposition. The three types of anger are:

1.  wrath (the beginning of anger)

2.  ill-will (anger continuing, dwelling on the hurt)

3.  rancor (anger waiting for an opportunity for vengeance)

Anger always arises from a perceived injury. Specifically, anger is caused by a perceived slight or undeserved contempt. 

Anger results in pleasure when the vengeance is carried out. It also causes fervor (heat in the heart and members), hinders the use of reason, and at times makes the subject taciturn by staying bottled up inside his soul.