Treatise on Human Acts (part 2)
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~93,700 words · 445 passages
Cite this work
- APAThomas Aquinas. (n.d.). Treatise on Human Acts (part 2). Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/thomas-aquinas/treatise-on-human-acts-part-2
- MLAThomas Aquinas. Treatise on Human Acts (part 2). Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/thomas-aquinas/treatise-on-human-acts-part-2.
- ChicagoThomas Aquinas. Treatise on Human Acts (part 2). Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/thomas-aquinas/treatise-on-human-acts-part-2.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The continuation: the passions, and how they belong inside a rational life.
Context and history
Against the notion that Aquinas distrusted feeling: he devotes more questions to it here than to anything else, and holds that a well-ordered passion **increases** the goodness of an act rather than diminishing it. A note on the edition: **this is a part of the Summa theologiae**, not an independent work. The title is the English editor's, who published the treatises separately. For citation, the Summa with its question and article number.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
On the contrary, Augustine says (De Civ. Dei ix, 4) that "the movement of the soul, which the Greeks called pathe, are styled by some of our writers, Cicero [*"Those things which the Greeks call pathe, we prefer to call disturbances rather than diseases" (Tusc. iv. 5)] for instance, disturbances; by some, affections or emotions; while others rendering the Greek more accurately, call them passions." From this it is evident that the passions of the soul are the same as affections. But affections manifestly belong to the appetitive, and not to the apprehensive part. Therefore the passions are in the appetitive rather than in the apprehensive part. I answer that, As we have already stated (A. 1) the word "passion" implies that the patient is drawn to that which belongs to the agent. Now the soul is drawn to a thing by the appetitive power rather than by the apprehensive power: because the soul has, through its appetitive power, an order to things as they are in themselves: hence the Philosopher says (Metaph. vi, 4) that "good and evil," i.e. the objects of the appetitive power, "are in things themselves." On the other hand the apprehensive power is not drawn to a thing, as it is in itself; but knows it by reason of an "intention" of the thing, which "intention" it has in itself, or receives in its own way. Hence we find it stated (Metaph. vi, 4) that "the true and the false," which pertain to knowledge, "are not in things, but in the mind." Consequently it is evident that the nature of passion is consistent with the appetitive, rather than with the apprehensive part.