Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Acknowledgments
- A note on the texts
- Introduction
- Part 1 THE PASSIONS IN GENERAL
- Part 2 PARTICULAR PASSIONS: THE CONCUPISCIBLE PASSIONS
- Part 3 PARTICULAR PASSIONS: THE IRASCIBLE PASSIONS
- 9 Hope and despair
- 10 Fear
- 11 Daring
- 12 Anger
- Epilogue: The passions, the virtues, and happiness
- Bibliography
- Index
9 - Hope and despair
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Acknowledgments
- A note on the texts
- Introduction
- Part 1 THE PASSIONS IN GENERAL
- Part 2 PARTICULAR PASSIONS: THE CONCUPISCIBLE PASSIONS
- Part 3 PARTICULAR PASSIONS: THE IRASCIBLE PASSIONS
- 9 Hope and despair
- 10 Fear
- 11 Daring
- 12 Anger
- Epilogue: The passions, the virtues, and happiness
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Aquinas begins the consideration of the irascible passions by treating hope and despair in a single Question. Aquinas is not treating the theological virtue of hope, or the sin of despair, but the passions that take the same names (§9.1). The causes of hope are multiple. Attending to concrete experience, as he does throughout the Treatise, Aquinas identifies both experience and inexperience as causes of hope, along with alcoholic intoxication (§9.2). Since hope's object is the possible but difficult future good, a person can never be certain that she will attain what she hopes for. This fact, however, has no tendency for Aquinas to undermine the important distinction between “false hope” and hope that is rational (§9.3). Aquinas concludes Question 40 by treating the effects of hope, identifying “love” as the principal interior effect and “activity” (operatio) as the principal exterior effect (§9.4). Though hope and despair, considered as passions, are distinct from the corresponding virtue and sin, the two are related, since the virtues are habits that perfect the powers of the soul, including the powers whose acts are the passions (§9.5).
HOPE AND DESPAIR AS PASSIONS
Aquinas devotes only one Question to the passion of hope. Strictly speaking, he does not give hope a full Question. The topic of Question 40 is not spes, but spes et desperatio. Why the lack of detailed treatment? Three possibilities suggest themselves. First, the treatments of love and desire already contain much of what can be said about the common object of hope.
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- Thomas Aquinas on the PassionsA Study of Summa Theologiae, 1a2ae 22–48, pp. 215 - 230Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009