If I don’t learn to control my appetites, I will end up drunk in a ditch on the side of the road.
If I don’t learn to control my appetites, I will get type two diabetes and probably die of cancer at an early age.
If I don’t learn to control my appetites, eventually my wife will leave me and I will lose my ministry and my kids will grow up damaged and dysfunctional.
All of this (and more) I believe. After all, “… the fruit of the Spirit is … self-control….” (Gal 5:22-3).
But if one wants to control her appetites, then maybe it would be a tad helpful to know what an appetite actually is. (For appetites manifestly are not controlled by “trying harder.”)
Enter Thomas Aquinas, who has some very interesting things to say about appetite and the larger issue of desire.
By the way, as an Anglican priest I’d be remiss not to mention that our Book of Common Prayer is replete with references to desire, not least the Collect for Purity: Almighty God, unto whom all hearts be open, all desires known, and from whom no secretes are hid: cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy holy spirit, that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy holy name: through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Indeed, desire is what the Christian life is all about. (John Piper gets this right with his “Christian Hedonism,” in my opinion, albeit in a truncated way which leaves much to be desired — no pun intended.)
For example Thomas insists that, though all people do not choose God, all people do nevertheless desire God.
He also teaches that if a thing exists, then it has appetite. So rocks have appetite, as do trees, earthworms, chimps, human beings, angels (what Thomas sometimes, in a more metaphysical mode, calls “intelligences”), even God himself. Appetite is the tendency that a thing has to “complete” itself, to strive for its telos.
For Thomas the appetite, like the external sense organs of eye, ear, nose, etc., are passive. They require an object if they are to be “activated.” But the object required to activate or to “ignite” the appetite is no ordinary object. It is a fusion of various “inputs,” the result of a chain of psychic steps which include sense impression, synthesis by the common sense, and “intention.”
What, you ask, is an “intention?” For Thomas an intention is a kind of psychic apprehension (performed in nonrational animals by natural instinct, and in humans by the evaluative faculty known as the vis cogatitiva) by which an object is imbued with self interest. That is, a lamb grasps by natural instinct that a lion is a threat; a human being (who happens to be an entrepreneur) grasps that a market opportunity will create wealth which will lead to creaturely comfort.
More on appetite forthcoming. For now, if you want to control your appetites, perhaps you should know what they are, and how they work.
For more, see Nicholas Lombardo, The Logic of Desire: Aquinas on Emotion, ch. 1.)
Nicholas E. Lombardo, O.P. does a great job of showing how, for Thomas, human psychology is rooted in metaphysics. To see this one need only to note that in ST I 5 the Angelic Doctor establishes that being is convertible with the good (everything that exists is good, and vice-versa), and that the good is that which is desirable, or “appetible.”
Hence all existing things, and not just animals (rational or otherwise) are characterized by desire or appetite: they all strive toward their perfection / fulfilment / telos.
As Lombardo rightly concludes: “Consequently, for Thomas, all being is ecstatic.” (Lombardo, _Logic of Desire_, 26).
Prior to reading this book, had someone asked me, “Why, for Thomas, is all being ecstatic?” I probably would not have known what to say. In fact, last semester I read deeply in John Wippel’s The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas, and while I do recall his emphasis that being is “pure act,” I don’t recall him connecting being’s activity or ecstasis specifically to desire or appetite.
From the perspective of theological anthropology, what should one make of contemporary “brain science?” That is, when you are at a conference and the scientific expert is locating various human activities (fear, abstract thinking, anger, etc.) in various specific parts of the brain, is this coherent from a theological point of view?
It is tempting for me (as a traditionalist Christian) to say, “No, because abstract thinking, for example, is not spatially located.” (You see, I am not a material reductionist; I believe in an immaterial soul, at least in human beings.)
But wait. This is where Thomas comes in. Thomas would distinguish between, say, fear on the one hand, and “universal reason” on the other. For Thomas, the former _is_ spatially localizable, since nonrational animals fear (fear is a passion, which results when the animal’s sense appetite is moved by the perception of an intention), and the (nonrational) animal psyche (and all psychic powers of the nonrational animal) is corporeal without remainder (Lombardo, _Logic of Desire_ 24).
However, for Thomas “abstract thinking,” or what he would call “universal reason” occurs only in rational animals, and is an activity which takes place in and through the immaterial intellect, which is thus not spatially localizable.
However, does it necessarily follow from this claim that “universal reason” is unrelated to local parts of the brain? I don’t think so. It may well be the case that a specific part of the brain is necessary for universal reason to take place. (After all, the same thing can be said for the external senses, which are spatially localizable.)
I am interesting in showing the modern provenance of the contemporary idea of emotion, demonstrating its innovative character as a rupture from premodern accounts of human experience rooted in Aristotle’s view of the soul and the tradition of virtue.
In his The Logic of Desire: Aquinas on Emotion, Nicholas E. Lombardo, OP gives a brief account of the development of thinking about emotion in recent modernity.
A key issue in thinking about this is: what role does the body play?
William James, “What is an Emotion?” 1884 – “Our natural way of thinking about … emotions is that the mental perception of some fact excites the mental affection called the emotion, and that this latter state of mind gives rise to the bodily perception. My thesis on the contrary is that the bodily changes follow directly the PERCEPTION of the exciting fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur IS the emotion.”
So for James an emotion is the feeling of a perception-induced bodily change, not a mental affection that gives rise to a “bodily perception.”
James identification of emotion as bodily feeling has antecedents in Hume’s theory of the passions.
Although critics of James’ view (such as Walter Cannon) emerged, emotion-as-bodily-feeling was convenient to behaviorism (with its “purposeful avoidance of interior phenomena”) and logical positivism (with its “reduction of ethics to irrational emotivism”). On this view emotions are regarded as “physiological and nonrational,” and hence have little to do with philosophy.
But eventually Anglo-American philosophy began to shift toward a cognitive account of emotion, with the publication of Errol Bedford’s “Emotions” in 1957. Bedford argues that “emotions have a cognitive dimension that theories of emotion as pure feelings cannot explain.” 11
Then Anthony Kenney publishes an article in which he argues that emotions are “intentional,” that is, “directed toward definite objects.” Next: George Pitcher argues that emotions are interior sensations, contra Hume and James. After the subsequent work of Magda Arnold and the emergence of a new interest in cognition in philosophy and psychology, “cognitive accounts of emotion have since become dominant.”
This is true for Martha Nussbaum and Robert Solomon. Solomon maintains that emotions are inner judgements, while Nussbaum has developed a “neo-Stoic ‘cognitive-evaluative’ view, according to which emotions are forms of evaluative judgment that ascribe to certain things and persons outside one’s control great importance for a person’s own flourishing.” Bodily feeling, thinks Nussbaum, sometime accompanies emotion but is not essential to it.
Which of the two views: the more body-centered one of James & company, or the more cognitive one of Solomon / Nussbaum, is more Christian, more consistent with a Christian anthropology? That (among other things) is what I’m hoping to find out.
What is the relationship between metaphysics and the revealed “system” of doctrinal truth called theology?
Some – such as 20th century “manual theologian” Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange – see a relationship of extreme continuity such that the two disciplines “overlap” almost totally. Others, often working in the post-metaphysical wake of Martin Heidegger, think that any would-be metaphysical determination of God participates in “ontotheology” or the metaphysics of presence, and is thus an example of conceptual idolatry, completely failing to speak truthfully of the “God of the philosophers” (to quote Paschal, the Jansenist precursor of this movement). A prime example of this stance is postmodern Catholic philosopher Jean-Luc Marion.
I read Boethius’ De Trinitate in light of this controversial question. To that end I seek to apply the vocabulary of Augustine and Aquinas: Augustine who equates his project with that of Aristotle (and Plato), Aquinas who redefines the terms in light of the Aristotle-induced controversy of 13th century Paris.
What we find in the De Trinitate is a middle ground or a third way: in the spirit of Augustine Boethius extends of the Augustinian project of metaphysical wisdom, but in a striking way he anticipates Thomas’ distinction between theology and metaphysics.
In the end what we can say is that Boethius’s De Trinitate is a fecund exhibit of revelation’s impact upon metaphysics, and that in three ways. In light of revelation, Boethius teaches that:
1. Man – Aristotle’s stock example of an individual substance – is demoted to a status which fails to meet the minimum requirements for substantiality.
2. God – the paradigm of esse for Aristotle – is placed “beyond substance” and thus beyond being.
3. Relationality – in Aristotle’s Categories placed in the backwaters of metaphysical insubstantiality – is now elevated to the supreme category, the only one (of the ten) worthy of unqualified divine description.
In the light of this triple reconfiguration the “impact” mentioned above seems so deep as to approach impairment. In fact I suggest that what we see in this theological tractate is the “theological maiming of metaphysics.” However, in the divine economy this kind of impairment serves a redemptive purpose, as we see in the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel.
In _The Great Divorce_, Lewis’ heavenly beings – incredibly solid & blindingly bright – are called “spirits.” They stand in stark contrast to the less-than-fully-real, spectral travelers from the cosmic omnibus, newly arrived into the realm of the Real, who are called “ghosts.”
This metaphysical nomenclature is medieval, biblical, & correct, & hints at Lewis’ proper criticisms of Milton’s idea of material angels, expressed in his _Preface to Paradise Lost_.
