Are emotions good or bad?
Many tend to think bad.
Are we not blinded by hatred?
Don't we get carried away by love?
Wouldn't it be nice after all to be a bit less impassioned?
But before we get carried away with this thought, imagine someone who had no emotion to speak
of, who lacked even the enthusiasm to push watch next episode.
Would that not represent a failed humanity?
In the history of philosophy, the Stoics are famous for their opinion of the
passions which they judged to be perturbationes animae, disturbances of the soul.
The ideal state for the Stoic is one of apathy. Against this position though, philosophers
like Aristotle and Saint Thomas have taught that the passions, while passionate, still
play a role in human perfection.
Let's start with an image.
Picture a powerful river that moves an incredible quantity of water.
It's also quite impetuous.
It meanders this way and that.
It floods unexpectedly and causes great destruction.
But let's say that it's also important for transportation.
It supports industry in the region, and it makes the land fertile for many miles on either side.
The passions are like this river.
They can be super beneficial and also super destructive.
The trick with the passions is to incorporate them into an integral human existence.
Let's return to the image.
What if we were to dam the river at a strategic point?
With a dam in place, you can manage the flow, control the flooding, and enjoy even further
benefits like hydroelectric power, a big reservoir, or perhaps even a national recreation area.
The virtues are like the dam.
The virtues help realize the passions' full potential by channeling their energy into
a life of true flourishing.
As a way of drawing attention to the place of reason and virtue.
St. Thomas highlights the difference between antecedent and consequent passions.
Antecedent passions are those emotional responses that get out ahead of us and cloud our judgment.
These, he says, diminish the goodness of an act.
Consequent passions by contrast overflow from a virtuous response or are actually commanded
by a virtue to carry out its work more promptly and perfectly.
These, he says, increase the goodness of an act.
Passions in the second sense are part of a perfect engagement with life and
with God.
Ultimately, we should be moved to the good, not only in our higher faculties, but also
in our lower faculties as well.
As the Psalmist sings, "My heart and my flesh rejoice in the living God."
So with this in mind, let's cover a couple more details.
We've been using passions and emotions interchangeably.
Passions is just the terminology that St. Thomas uses to describe something like what
we would call emotions.
So basically, as St. Thomas understands it, a passion is an embodied response to stimuli
or sense cognition.
Something out there impinges upon me, and the change in my bodily life we just call
a passion.
The passions originate in the sense appetite, which is divided into the concupiscible
power and the irascible power.
We distinguish these powers since they engage different features of reality.
The concupiscible power engages with the sensible good or evil, simply apprehended as such,
causing either pleasure or pain.
Basically, when I perceive something that pleases or displeases me in a basic way, it
gives rise to the passions of the concupiscible power.
So if I see a chocolate chip cookie on the kitchen table, that engages the concupiscible power.
Delicious.
The object of the irascible power is that same good or evil, but inasmuch
as it is difficult to achieve or to avoid.
So now that same delicious chocolate chip cookie is inside a castle on the other side
of a raised drawbridge and a lowered portcullis, defended by archers with flaming arrows.
I still desire it, but it requires a more involved emotional response to achieve.
So love, desire, pleasure, hatred, aversion, and sorrow pertain to the concupiscible power,
whereas hope, despair, daring, fear, and anger pertain to the irascible power.
St. Thomas goes on to describe that love is the root of the passions.
Love in St. Thomas's estimation is just the recognition that something else is fitting
for me.
The fact that we are this type of thing suits us to certain goods, and when we encounter
those goods, they cause us a kind of complacence or just a sense of fittingness.
You can also say that those things register as natural or connatural to us.
When the object is not yet present, love begets desire.
When it is present, it breaks forth into delight or pleasure.
So love causes union in two ways.
On the one hand, love unites us to the good affectively.
It tethers us to those things in reality that build up our bodily and spiritual lives.
And on the other hand, it inspires a further real union by moving us to realize the good
itself.
St. Thomas likes to quote Pseudo- Dionysius on this point.
Love, he says, is a unitive power, a vis unitiva.
In every love, St. Thomas discerns a two-fold movement.
On the one hand, we are drawn to the good with the love of concupiscence.
We love the good as somehow fitting.
But here's the thing.
Our love of the good doesn't rest there.
A man doesn't love wine for its own sake.
He loves it as good for himself and for his friends.
So beyond the good, there is a person for whom it is loved.
This latter dynamic we call love of friendship.
This is not to say that love of concupiscence is bad and love of friendship
is good.
The distinction here isn't between egoism and altruism.
In fact, both movements are present in every act of love.
Rather, what we are saying is that the love of the good is for the person.
In love, one wills the good of the beloved.
Love simply speaking is between and among persons.
It is a communion of the good.
So rather than disturbances of the soul, the passions are the building blocks of love and
the raw energy which motivates human flourishing.
The question is not whether they are good or bad, but rather whether they are formed
well or ill.
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