Philosophical Psychology II

(Study of the Philosophical Proofs for the Soul)

Class Notes
(Taken at a Pontifical University)

First Lesson:

First general definition of the soul according to St. Thomas: “The soul is the first principle of life.”

Questions 75-76 of Summa Theologica (ST); Content:

First problem: Incorporeality/immateriality of the soul seen from different points of view. Then he moves on to its
being a form and a substance.
Second problem: Simplicity of the soul. From there he goes to the incorruptibility of the soul (he is not talking about
immortality of the soul).
Third problem: Union between soul and body (human person) and the number of the souls we have.

Question 75, 1st article: “Whether the soul is a body.”

This sounds strange because you could rephrase the question as “Is the immaterial material?” and you might want to
ask first whether there is a soul in us at all. But according to St. Thomas’ definition of the soul the question makes
sense, because we don’t find anything as immateriality in his 1st definition of the soul. So Thomas needs a proof for
the immateriality or materiality of the soul. Thomas is not a materialist. He accepts material and spiritual dimensions of
reality. But his division is not exhaustive, because he admits the existence of the human person, which is partially
material and immaterial reality. This kind of reality (the human person) is due to the fact that we have a particular kind
of soul according to Thomas.
Proving the immateriality of the soul Thomas engages in a dialogue with the old philosophers, starting with the
Sophists. They claimed whatever exists is a corporeal reality, what is not a corporeal reality does not exist. In doing so
they confused two things: They confused what is a material source of the vital activities with what is the first
principle of life. There is a difference between these. As an example Thomas talks about seeing: There can be a
bodily principle of the vital activity (seeing), which is not a cause of life. In order to perform a vital act (an act, which
speaks about life) we have to use bodily organs. So parts of our bodies are material sources of our vital acts. “A body
can be seen an a material source of life.” There the ancients were right from a particular point of view, because in this
limited dimension we can say that the body is a principle of life. But nobody would say, that the eye (being a material
source or vital act) is a soul. Because the eye is only the material principle needed in order to perform an act, but it is
not the source of life. Imagine an eye separated from the living organism. It will not perform a vital act, because it is
not the first principle of life, or the root of life. So Thomas says it is clear that some principles of life are of bodily
nature, but body as such is not the soul, therefore not the first principle of life. The soul answers the question “What
makes the body capable of performing vital acts? What makes it alive?” This is not the body, because the body out of
itself does not make itself alive. Thomas concludes the argument saying that there is no soul of whatever kind
(vegetative, sensitive, rational), which can be identified with corporeal reality, which would be a body. If a soul is in
some respect corporeal, it is not in virtue of its own corporeality. “The soul is the first principle of live, of things that
can potentially perform vital acts. It is the first principle of an organized body.”
Since it is not material, it has to be a formal principle of life: The soul is a form.

Question 76, 1st article: “Whether the intellectual principle united to the body (rational soul) is the body’s form.”
Positive answer: The soul is a form!
Man is a rational animal. There is the specific difference of rationality. The genus is animal. The specifying element is
identified with a form. The “rational” has to be a formal element, because it is a specifying element in us. The soul is
out of which we act in a specific way. This element has to be identified with a formal principle. Soul: “This in virtue of
which something acts in a specific way.” Nothing acts unless it exists actually. Whatever exists actually, exists under a
specific form. Animals and plants have souls the way we do. But they do not have the soul that is spiritual in the way
the human soul is. Yet Thomas denies strongly that the souls of plants and animals are simple material realities. In
plants and animals the soul is a formal element, too. Thomas speaks of the soul in terms of incorporeality (the soul
not being a corporeal reality), not immateriality. Even in case of plants and animals the soul is not a body. There has
to be a body to perform vital acts, but this body is not the soul, the first principle. There is a formal element always
present in each being belonging to the material world. Difference between plants/animals and humans: The human
soul has the capacity to exist on its own, separated from the body. Immateriality here for Thomas is first in terms of
non-materiality or form, not in a sense like Plato (the forms, which can exist by themselves, have an act of existence
on their own). Thomas is working on Aristotelean notion of form. For Aristotle the form is the reality that cannot exist
independent from matter, the other co-principle of reality. So the form stands in opposition to the body, is immaterial.
Yet it is not immaterial in the Platonic sense. Incorporeality is the first aspect for immateriality of the soul.

Question 75, 2nd article: “Whether the human soul is something subsistent.”
Subsistence of the soul: Second aspect of the immateriality of the human soul and an aspect proper only to the
human soul.
We already have: No soul of whatever kind can be identified with something corporeal.
Human soul: This what is distinctly human activity: Rationality. So when he speaks about the human soul, Thomas
speaks about rational soul. He speaks about its immateriality not only in negative terms (being non-corporeal). He
defines immateriality of the human soul in affirmative terms: It is a subsistent reality. It has an independent existence.
It can act independently from the body and exist independently from the body. That’s the meaning of “subsistent”.
Argumentation towards subsistence of the soul: He takes up arguments from Aristotle, from the analysis of the
intellectual acts, the rational thinking. Two claims: 1) The human person by means of his intellect can know all
material things, the whole material universe. 2) The faculty that can reach the cognition of certain things cannot have
in itself those things in its nature, cannot have anything bodily in itself.
1) There is no limitation to what we can know. We are able to grasp the nature of all corporeal realities. Doesn’t mean
that we do know every particular thing but rather that no corporeal reality exists that is not potentially an object of our
intellect. We can make potential distinctions between different kinds of existence.
2) The presence of matter implied in organs gives a determined nature to an organ preventing if from knowing all
material things. Our corporeal organs are limited (sight, touch etc.). But we have the potentiality to know everything.
Therefore the principle of knowledge, intellect, cannot directly make use of a material organ. If this was the case our
intellect would be limited in our capacities of knowing as our senses are. It would be complex, but by being corporeal
it would be limited. Our mind is extrinsically dependent on the body. It depends on our bodily organs for the material
from which it can abstract the concepts and formulate judgments and begin to reason. Intellect is kind of using the
body. It is an objective dependence in regard to the corporeal element. From the subjective point of view (what the
mind is in itself, in its own act of abstracting/understanding/judgment/reasoning) the intellect is independent from
corporeal organs. According to Thomas the intellect (what we can do in virtue of having a rational soul), the highest
vital act is performed without the use of corporeal organs. From there Thomas concludes the subsistence of the soul.
He makes use of a classical principle of traditional metaphysics. Only what can exist by itself can act by itself
(capacity of operating per se). If I wasn’t able of a substantial existence I would not be able to perform my own acts.
The human soul responsible for the acts of reasoning, has to have the capacities of existing by itself, because it is
able to perform the act of thinking independent from the body.
Only what exists on its own can act on its own. The human soul does not only in-form the body but has additional
perfections. It also has the perfection of subsistence, because it neither mixed with nor dependent on matter. It is able
to exist apart from the body, which it informs. The soul is so closely united with the body that it is its form, yet it is able
to exist apart from the body. Here we are speaking about a different notion of the form, going beyond Aristotle. We
have here a meaning of the term “form” that is understood as this reality, which informs the matter making it a
specified body, but goes beyond the opinion that the form always is a co-principle without independent existence. But
because of Thomas’ discovery of another dimension of being (which is the act of being) we can make the distinction.
For Thomas the biggest difference is not matter and form, but act and potency.
The immateriality of the soul in all cases means non-corporeality (being a form) and in the second place only for
humans it means that it is a subsistent reality. Souls of animals and plants are non-corporeal but not subsistent.

Question 75, 3rd article: “Whether the souls of plants and animals are subsistence?”
Answer: Nope!
Because they do not have an act which can be performed independently from the body. All vital acts of animals and
plants are always performed mainly using the corporeal organs. These acts are made in dependence of the body.
Nothing acts by virtue on its own, therefore the souls cannot exist on their own.

Question 75, 5th article: “Whether the soul is simple?”

Is the soul composed of matter and form? Sounds weird, again. But if we know what Thomas speaks about, it
becomes clear: If we take the definition of matter not as extended and tangible, but as potential, then the question is
not out of place. The immaterial realities, which are the soul can be questioned/analyzed from the point of view of its
being composed. If something is immaterial it doesn’t mean that it is not composed. Bonaventure, someone from
Thomas’ time, claimed that the soul is immaterial but also is composed. Thomas’ question was directed at people who
had another definition/interpretation of what is the material co-principle of reality. They interpreted material principle
not as extended and tangible but as potentiality, a capacity of undergoing changes or assuming new qualities. From
this point of view it could be said that the soul has a corporeal element, because by means of the act of living beings it
is assuming new qualities (ignorance to knowledge i.e.).
According to Thomas this is not correct. Strictly speaking it is not the soul passing from ignorance to knowledge but
the human person, because the act of knowing presupposes the preparatory stages (bodily) of the sensorial
apparatus. Even if Thomas says that if someone a) assumes that the soul is a concrete entity and b) defines
materiality as potentiality, there seem to be no good reasons to deny that the soul is composed of matter and form.
But making a correct distinction of different types of potentiality, we will see that Bonaventure is not correct. There are
three different levels of contrast between actuality and potentiality:
- The substance is in potency toward accidents
- Prime matter is in potency towards substantial form
- The essence stands in potency towards an act of existence
Substance is in potentiality to take on different accidental forms. Matter is what has the potentiality towards substantial
forms, forms that change the substantial reality, make a different substantial being. The soul being a substance is
changing in the act it is performing, but it assumes only accidental forms. All the acts of knowledge are introducing
only accidental changes. If they were substantial, the soul would be changing whatever it is in every act of knowledge.
The soul cannot assume in itself another substantial form. A substantial form stands in potency towards matter.
There is a composition of matter and form not in a sense as Bonaventure thought. Potentiality means that we are
speaking about the whole of the soul. The soul in itself is potentiality towards accidental changes. There is a
composition in the soul, yes, but not like Bonaventure, because that would mean that the soul is a material reality that
all the time assumes substantial forms. In the soul we have the potentiality between/the composition of essence and
existence. The composed reality of the soul is the composition of essence and existence. Potentiality of the soul is not
equivalent to a material element, but it is towards accidental forms.

Soul is composed, but not in the way Bonaventure/Franciscans claim. It is not matter and form, it is form and the act
of being. It is not a perfectly absolute reality like God, but it is composed. Pure form and the act of being. In the soul
there is a complete lack of matter in the physical sense and in the metaphysical sense.

Next step: A thing can be said to be a simple reality when it is not composed of separable parts, from the quantitative
and the entitative point of view. Simplicity means a lack of composition. The soul is inseparable because being
immaterial it does not have one organ that is divisible by nature. This is in regards to the quantitative point of view.
From the entitative point of view we can say the following: The soul is a form. This is its nature essentially. Speaking
of the human soul, St. Thomas says there is no composition except the one of the soul itself, its essence, the form
and the act of being. But the act of being does not belong to the essence of what a soul is. The soul is not essentially
being. Being is an act given to it, an act in which it participates.

Question 75, 6th article: “Whether the soul is incorruptible?”

Incorruptible means: Can it decompose itself, can it pass away, can it cease to exist?
According to Thomas the human soul cannot decompose itself. The argument for that is the simplicity of the soul:
Certain things can cease to exist, they are corruptible, when the other things stop to exist. This refers to things that
cannot exist in themselves. When the reality they depend on stops to exist, so do they. I.E: The shape and the color of
a table stop to exist when we it is burned, they depend on the substantial reality they are inherent in. This is also the
case with the souls of animals and plants. They do not have an independent existence. They are forms in an
Aristotelean sense, co-principles without their own existence. The human soul is self-subsistent, therefore it has an
act of existence of its own. This means that for its own existence it does not depend on the other reality. Its existence
is independent from the existence of the composite. The human soul can only stop to exist when it decomposes itself.
But given the fact that it has no parts composing it, it cannot decompose itself, because it is a simple reality, as
shown. Another possibility would be if it lost its form, but being a self-subsisting form, the human soul cannot loose its
form. All this does not mean that the human person cannot die, because the human person is a composite being. The
moment of death is the separation of the material and the formal element of the human person: the body and the soul.

Suppose the soul was composed of matter and form, as according to Bonaventure, the soul still would be incapable of
decomposition, because the decomposition is transformation from one state of matter to the contrary state, an
incompatible state to the previous one. According to Thomas this is not to be found in the human soul, because our
intellect, the capacity proper to us in virtue of the particular kind of soul we have, can assume contradictory forms and
still it does not cease to exist. Oppositions like health and disease can be present in our mind at the same time. So
when these concepts assume the mental way of existing, the reality looses the contradiction, which would be able to
decompose in the material world.

Thomas does not say that the soul will survive forever. He says God has the power to annihilate the soul, because it
is not absolutely simple. The act of existence is given to it and remains something external. He affirms that in the
human soul there is no potentiality to non-existence. In our soul there is no capacity for decomposition. Where is this
potentiality? It is in God. He - and only he - has the power to cease the existence of a soul.

Who is the human person? The unity of the soul and body in the human person.
The human soul survives the death of the body, continues to think and will. Thomas refuses to speak about non-
embodies souls as human persons. Thomas never admits that an individual separated soul is still a human person.
Human person is a composed reality of body and soul. After death the soul exists in an incomplete way.

Question 75, 4th article: “Whether the soul is man or is the human person composed of soul and body?”
Thomas refuses two positions present in the discussions among his contemporaries. The first is a platonic point of
view, a dualistic vision. Human person essentially is a soul, embodied/imprisoned in matter during the earthly time.
Thomas says this is not true, because all the vital acts like vegetative and sensorial acts are properly speaking human
acts. They cannot be performed on the basis of a separated soul. The soul cannot perform these acts separated from
the body. The second position Thomas refuses is the point of view from the Arab commentators of Aristotle
(Avicenna): The human person as such is equivalent to the soul, but an actual human person (the one who walks,
eats, senses) is not just a soul but also a body. But having a body is not a part of what it means to be a human
person. Having a body is due only to the fact that we are individualized. Thomas says that if you want to indicate a
species properly it is not enough to introduce a specific difference but also a genus to which it makes a difference:
“Rational and animal”. According to Thomas “human person” does not apply to the soul but body and soul together.
Having a soul and a body is what it means to be a human person

Question 76, 1st article: “The soul is a part of the human body.”
Commonly we use the word soul as one of the two elements composing the human person. Thomas also speaks
about soul and body, as if they were related to another in terms of form and matter. But once he comes to the proper
discussion about the relation between body and soul, he says that the soul is a part of the body. This means that the
human being is a body, which as any other physical body is composed of matter and form. From this point of view the
soul as the formal element is one part of the body, the matter is another part. We are speaking about the two co-
principles that together make up the human body. The soul is the substantial form that joins the prime matter and
makes of it a human body. The soul is the unifying principle, the substantial form, that gives to us the particular way of
organic existence proper to human beings. From this point of view the union of soul and body is not only natural but
also good for the soul. It is the nature of our soul to be united with the body. Here you have a strong opposition to the
dualistic vision of the human person. There are positive and negative aspects of this vision of the nature of the soul.
Thomas solution to what is the soul was very much dictated by our Christian thinking, by a dogma of immortality of the
human person, which represents a different problem than a simple immortality of the soul. If we want to prove our
belief in the resurrection of the body, the corporeal being, we have different problems. We need the soul, which is free
enough to be able to survive the moment of separation from the body. We also need on the other hand the body,
which is so intimately with the soul that it can retain the link with the soul even after the moment of death. To solve
this problem Thomas points to his vision of the soul: It is the form of a body, a co-principle of what we are as humans.
At the same time it is a subsistent reality, that can exist on its own. It is free enough from the body to exist of its own,
yet it is so associated with the body that it retains a virtual link with the non existing body. But how Thomas does that
is not answered clearly. He would say that the soul after separation from the body exists in an imperfect way. It wont
be able to perform certain acts in the same perfection as when it was united with the body. It can perform these acts
only with the help of Gods power.
For Thomas the highest activities connect to our personality are the capacities of the rational soul: thinking, creativity.
We develop our capacities in different ways, the exist in individual ways. Because of that it is said that the “I” remains
in the soul after death.

Second Lesson:

Question 76: Dedicated to the number of souls we have. “Whether we have one soul or many souls?”
Since Aristotle we have the division of soul into vegetative, sensorial and rational soul. Thomas confirms vegetative
functions in animals, which have a sensorial soul. Proper to the human soul are rational functions, rationality. Humans
have vegetative and sensorial functions, too, but rationality is the most characteristic function. So the question is: “Do
we have a vegetative and a sentient soul in addition to our rational soul?”
Some of Thomas’ contemporaries said: “We have more than one soul.”

Question 76, 2nd and 3rd article: Relation between human body and human soul. Is there a one-to-one-relationship
between body and soul (one person = one soul). Answer: Yes.
Thomas has to argue with two different points of view: “We have many souls” and “There is one soul giving live to
many different bodies”.
2nd article: Opposing the “One single intellect united to different bodies”-argument. Held by Arabic commentators of
Aristotle (Avicenna, Averroes). Thomas says that if we all had the same soul, we would all be the same person. There
wouldn’t be individuals. We would all think in the same way. This is not the case, therefore we do not have one
intellect. Thomas says that my thinking might be different from the thinking of other persons because of phantasms.
The agent intellect dematerializes and makes the potentially intelligible things intelligible in act. We only could have
one and the same agent intellect and still think differently if we had different phantasms informing the mind. But
according to Thomas the phantasms are not the things informing the mind, the passive intellect. After the things
actually became intelligible through the work of the agent intellect we have the same concepts of them, the same
universals. Here Thomas’ argument seems to lack something, because this is also the case when each of us has his
own agent intellect: The universals after abstraction are the same.
3rd article: “Whether a single human being can have more than one soul”. Upheld by some contemporaries of
Thomas. According to some philosophers we could have four souls (veg., sent., rat. and corp). Thomas says it is
impossible, because if there are other material forms existing before the intellectual soul enters the body, the
intellectual soul would only be an accidental change in the body, which is already formed. We couldn’t even say that
what forms us essentially is rationality. Also the departure of the rational soul would not mean that the human life is
finished but would only mean some insubstantial accidental change takes place. It would also change the concept of
“Who is the human person”. Thomas is defending Aristotle’s division of the soul: A co-principle of reality. The soul in
itself is immediately joined with the prime matter and therefore a part of the body. We hove only one substantial form,
which is the rational form, which informs prime matter directly. This soul gives to the human person all vital faculties
(vegetative, sentient, rational). The soul has more perfection than the others, but it can enable a being to perform the
acts of the lesser ones.
The act of being belongs directly to the soul. In plants and animals the act of being is the act of being, which partakes
to the composite (matter and form) participating in the act of existence, whereas in human beings what participates in
the act of being is the soul. The act of being proper to the human person is communicated to such a being by means
of the soul.

Question 76, 6th, 7th and 8th article: “How is the soul present in the body?”
Soul is immaterial by nature. Therefore it cannot be joined with matter in a material way, because it has no
quantitative parts, no extension. There is no dimension contact with the body. It is present everywhere. The soul in its
totality is in every part of the human body. Yet the soul does not perform all of its operations in each part of the body.
So the exercise of the powers of the soul is limited by the material organs. Therefore particular operations can be
performed only in defined parts of the body, because they are performed by certain organs.
All these are only certain characteristics of the soul. According to Thomas we cannot know what the soul really is. We
only know what it makes us do.

Question 77: The powers of the soul.

The soul confers to us a capacity to perform certain acts, vital acts. Thomas here starts to discuss the relationship
between the soul and the powers conferred to us:
1st article: “Whether the essence of the soul is its power?”
2nd article: “How many powers are in our soul?”
3rd article: “How are the powers of the soul distinguished from another?”
4th article: “How are the powers ordered?”
5th article: “In what way are the powers inherent in the soul?”
6th article: “Whether all the powers flow from the essence of the soul.”
7th article: “Do all powers remain in the soul after death?”
Faculty: A special kind of ordination of nature to perform particular kinds of acts once an appropriate object/input is
presented to a human being.
From the ontological point of view the powers are accidents, they come from the nature of the thing possessing them,
they are not a substance.
1st article: “Whether the soul is essentially its powers?” Thomas: No
Thomas always underlined the essential unity of the soul and the body. The soul as form of the body is the form of the
body. Yet he also underlined a distinction between the soul and its faculties and the faculties themselves. According
to Thomas it is impossible to admit that the power is its essence, that the soul is all of its powers. Why? This would
mean we would be equal to God, because only in God the power of acting and acting itself are identical in substance.
The soul by its very essence is an act, an actual reality. Therefore, if the very essence of the soul were its powers, the
principles of operation, whatever has a soul, as something being in act, would always be actually performing all the
vital operations. But this is only true for God. The soul in itself is in potentiality to another act. It is an actual reality, but
in potency of performing something. It is in this potentiality not according to its essence. It cannot be in its essence an
act and a potency at the same time. It is in potency not essentially but according to its powers. This means that the
soul can be called the first act, which is in potency towards a second act. It has in itself a potency, but not a passive
potency, because this would mean it would be able to be perfected by bringing it closer to its essence. It is in potency
according to its powers, not its essence. The powers can be actualized by the second act, by bringing into actuality
the capacities. Passive potency would be prime matter, as something that stands open to the substantial form. So
according to Thomas the essence of the soul is not its powers. These powers are the principles of action due to
substantial form, to the soul. This means that it is the soul (the first act/substantial form) which is the first principle of
act, but it is not the proximate principle, which would be the powers, rooted in the soul as the first principle. The soul is
essentially the form of the body, the principle of life in us. From the operational point of view it is also an ultimate
principle of our acts/operations. In each operation there are two principles involved: The reality, which acts (the
substance, the human person, the body and the soul) and the first principle by which it acts (the soul). Then we have
the proximate principles by which someone acts, the powers.
2nd article: “How many powers are in our soul?” According to Thomas there is an ontological necessity for several
powers in the human soul. Why? Because (taken from the order of the universe) we can look at the order of things:
The lowest category are the plants and the animals, because they can not acquire a perfect goodness, can not arrive
at absolute perfection, only at a certain, imperfect goodness, by few movements. The second level of living beings are
human persons. We can acquire a perfect goodness and we do it by many movements, by many vital operations.
There is a third level: Separate substances or agents, which can acquire perfect goodness by few movements. The
highest level would be proper to God, which is perfect goodness without any movement. The conclusion Thomas
draws is that plants and animals have a few determinate operations and powers. Humans can acquire universal and
perfect goodness, because we can strife for beatitude. But we are at the lowest level of the beings, which can acquire
happiness/beatitude. Among those beings that can acquire happiness there is a different degree of movements (God
= none, agents = few, humans =lots). That’s why we need to have a multiplicity of different powers. Another reason for
the necessity of having multiple powers is the fact that we are on the confines of two different worlds, corporeal and
spiritual. Therefore we have to have the operations proper to both worlds.
3rd article: “What is the principle of distinction of the powers of our soul?”
The soul in itself is unknown to us. We only know something about it by means of the accidental realities of the soul,
the powers. A power being a potentiality is directed towards an act. Therefore the nature of the power we can know
from the act to which it is directed. Consequently the nature of the power is diversified according to the nature of the
acts. The nature of the act is diversified by the nature of the objects. What a human person can do is known from
what we are doing, from the actual acting. We know what we actually do from the objective world, which sets in act
our powers, activates them. The powers are distinguished by the acts and the objects (object = something which is
thrown against a power, something to which a power reacts once it meets with it). Different powers can be activated
by one object. A fruit can activate the power of perception, memory, thinking, desiring etc. Each of these acts
responds to one material object, but also to a formal aspect of this material object. In each material object there are
different formal aspects. Such an object can cause different acts. So the formal aspect of an object is that which
distinguishes powers. The powers are distinguished by the formal object.
4th article: “Is there an order between the powers?”
According to Thomas there is only one soul with different powers. Where there is a relation between one and many,
there has to be an order. Thomas indicates two different kinds of order: an order of nature and an order of generation
or time. The order of nature means that the perfect things are by nature prior to imperfect things. The order of time
means the consideration from the point of view of coming to existence. Here the order is inverted. We go from
imperfect towards perfect. Considering the powers of the soul according to the order of nature, the intellectual/rational
powers are prior to the sensitive powers and they are able to command them, as the sensitive are prior to the
vegetative and command them. In the order of time and generation the powers of the vegetative soul are preparing
the body, so it can exist to be able to sense. Sensing on the other hand enables to think.
5th article: “In what way are the powers inherent in the soul?”
What is the substance in which the powers as accidental realities are inherent?
Subject of the operative powers is this what is able to operate. According to Thomas, this, which is able to operate
and this which operates is the same: The subject of the operation is the same as the subject of the power. The subject
of some powers not performed by the corporal organs is the soul. Other powers which have the composite as a
proper subject belong to the soul, too, but in a different way, namely in the way that the soul is the principle, but not
the subject of those powers (the soul is the principles of all powers).
6th article: “Whether all the powers flow from the essence of the soul.”
All the powers flow from the essence of the soul, they are not equivalent with the essence of the soul but are
equivalent with it.
7th article: “Whether all the powers of the soul remain in the soul after death.”
Answer differs in regards to powers. All powers belong to the soul, because it is the principle of the powers. Some
powers belong to the soul only, because the soul is their subject. Those powers remain in the soul after the
destruction of the body. All the other powers, those which are subjected to the composite (sensitive, nutritive) do not
remain in the soul, because they have their proper subject in the composite. The accidents cannot remain after the
destruction of the substance/subject. Still those powers remain in the soul in a virtual way, because the soul still is the
principle of those powers.

Question 78, 1st article: Indication of the division of the powers.

In whatever is alive we can see three different kinds of souls with different powers. In the human persons we find one
soul with the powers of all three souls. Article one starts with the indication of these three levels of life/souls.
What is the reason for the diversity in the world of life? Thomas indicates that the soul of the human person is joined
with the matter of the body. If the soul of man is so essentially related to the matter such a union is necessary to the
very being of the human person. It is no surprise that all the powers of the human soul are related to the material
objects. As the proper object the human powers have the material objects. Each power is somehow exercised in
relationship with matter. The different souls/three levels of the souls can be distinguished according to the level of
transcendence over matter, according in the way the operations of these souls transcend the corporeal matter.
Operations of the soul exceed the corporeal nature in two points of view (object and operation).
In the rational soul: Those operations are concerned with the essence of the corporeal realities, not with the
individual physical qualities and the power of the rational soul is not performed by using a corporal organ.
In the sensitive soul: The operations proper to it transcend the matter in a lesser degree, because from the operative
point of view these acts are performed through a corporeal organ. But as far as the object is concerned we have a
certain transcendence, because the act of sensorial knowledge/perception is performed by a formal aspect, a formal
element of nature is apprehended.
In the vegetative soul: The operations of that soul are performed by means of corporeal organs and by virtue of
corporeal quality. The operations consist in the transformation of corporeal elements by corporeal organs.

Four different genera of powers: The higher power a power is, the more universal is its object.
The object of the soul’s operation can be considered according to a triple order: In the soul there are certain powers,
whose object is the body united with the soul. These are the vegetative powers. They act only on the body to which
the soul is united. Another kind of powers are those which have a more universal object and have as a proper object
every kind of sensible body, not only my body, but everything else that exists in a corporeal way. The third kind of
powers are those whose object is even more universal, because they are concerned not only with sensorial qualities
but the essences of the corporal bodies.
When we speak about the relationship between an acting agent and the external world, e see that the operation goes
in both direction between those two. Whatever operates on the objects that are not the proper operation must in some
way be connected to them. Such an object can be related to the soul in two ways: It can be united to something
extrinsic according to the nature of the soul. This means the object is in virtue of a particular act finally going to find
itself in the active principle. The object - as a result of an act - find itself inside of the acting agent according to the way
in which the agent exist. These are the cognitive powers. We are relating ourselves to something extrinsic to us and
these realities are finding themselves in us. Two kinds of cognitive powers: The powers of the sensitive kind and of
the rational kind. The second kind of relationship between agent and object are the acts in which the agent has an
inclination towards an object, is trying to achieve the object according to the way of existence of the object itself.
These are the powers of appetite. Two kinds of powers: Appetite and local motion. Appetitive powers are those which
enable us to perform acts of going toward something and such a thing firstly finds itself in our cognition. We go
towards something known to us. In local motion the soul is related to something, which is the term of a physical
movement.

Four genera: Vegetative powers, cognition at the sensitive and the rational level of live, appetition at the sensitive
and the rational level of live and the power of local motion on the sensitive level of life.

We can divide powers further in a specific way: Here the principle of division of the soul in different species is
according to the formal relationship of the object towards the soul.
On the vegetative level of life there are three species of powers, because there is a triple relationship of the soul to
the body. First the body lived by a particular soul is something to be nourished, to be developed (which has to grow),
and something to be propagated, if the species is going to survive (nutrition, growth, reproduction = three vegetative
powers with their corresponding acts/the objects corresponding to it). This is seem from a formal point of view as a
body which has to be nourished, developed, reproduces.
On the sensitive level we can divide the powers into species, too: The object of the cognitive powers are certain
corporal qualities. This is the physical reality as something we can touch, smell, taste, see, hear. We have the powers
to do this, so we have the power of touch, taste, smell, hearing and sight, the external senses. There are internal
senses, too, according to Thomas: Common sense, imagination, memory and estimation. We are able not only to
see color, but to apprehend if something is in motion or in rest and what its figure is (common sense, which also
answers, why things are present to us). Once perceived, things can be imagined, even when they are not present
anymore (imagination). We can remember qualities and past events, locate them in time (memory). Apprehension of
usefulness or harmfulness of objects (estimation). Next there are two different appetitive powers: Objects of desire or
repulsion can be seen as simply desired/yucky or as something, which is a strong object of desire/repulsion. There is
a certain level of difficulty involved in getting what we want, which would be the formal object of the appetition.
Concupiscible appetites are simple. Irascible appetites do have an element of difficulty.

Third Lesson:

I. The Sensitive Powers

Sensorial Cognition: From the object to the subject, the object is material. How do we perceive the object? As a
tangible reality.
Sensorial Appetites: Towards the object. This is divided into 2 species:
Concupiscible Appetite: when there is no difficulty involved in attaining an appetite.
Irascible Appetite: If the reality towards which we're drawn to is difficult to achieve
(meaning a difficult good to possess) or avoid (meaning a difficult evil to avoid) it
requires this appetite (from S.T. Quest. 22-29).

The act of a sensitive appetite is known as passion. Although the appetites are different from any process of
cognition, its life and being are dependent on knowledge.

According to Thomas, we perform 11 acts according to the above 2 appetites:

Concupiscible = Love/hate; desire/disgust, Joy/sorrow
Irascible = Hope, despair, courage, fear, anger

Local motion: Different from sensorial appetite, the local motion is a physical transportation; whereas in the sensorial
appetites, it is an "2nd intention of the mind".

Outer behavior is the product of local motion, according to St. Thomas.

II. The Rational Powers

2 Levels of Powers
Rational Cognition: Thomas divides this into two species:
1. Agent Intellect: the specific difference is that the objects of the Agent Intellect, the
essences, are potentially understandable. The Act is Abstraction.
2. Possible Intellect: The objects of Possible Intellect are the essences of realities as
actually understood. The Act is Universality
Rational Appetites: Objects are of Universal nature. This is also known as the "Will Power", the act of volition and
deliberation and choice. The Act of the Will is about the goods potentially desirable.

The vegetative properties have as object the bodies united with the soul.

When there are many powers, there is order in them. Thomas held the Principle of Immanence: the more perfect the
power is, the more removed it is from matter, as the case with sensible power is more noble than vegetative power.

III. The Vegetative Powers

The first group of our powers: the lowest, not in the sense that it is unimportant, but just the most basic, and, in a
way, the most fundamental part.

Life means self-movement and self-organization; the living being is alive due to its organs (tools).

Question 78, 2nd article: Whether the parts of the vegetative soul are fittingly enumerated as the nutritive,
augmentative, and generative? Thomas’ physiological detail is only valid in light of the science of his time. But the
metaphysical truth of his treatment is valid.

The living being acquires due quantity, the power of growth. The body of the living things is preserved in existence,
the power of nutrition. The essential difference between them is nutrition and growth have their own effect in the being
where these powers are seated, but reproduction has its effect in another one, namely, the reproduced organism.

Nutrition means a movement. The ultimate goal is to preserve the organism and perfect it. This power serves the
power of growth, the power, which serves the power of Reproduction

The Act of Growth is an outcome of constructive metabolism. Linked to this is "development", very closely to growth,
but not the same. Development involves quantitative changes, but also obtaining a definitive organic structure,
physical maturity.

The power of reproduction has the greatest nobility. It belongs only to the one that has reached maturity.

Question 78, 3rd article:

General Comment: as a kind of preamble, he is interested in rationality and will. In Question 75, regarding the Soul,
he says that animals have more explicit and manifest vital action. Animals have some capacity for knowledge, desire,
and local movement - a significant improvement compared to the vegetative life.

What differentiates vegetative from sensitive? Vegetative possess things by destruction, as is the case in nutrition;
whereas in sensitive, it doesn't destroy the thing possessed, but only takes in the form. Here is where we can say that
there's a real possession of something.

The principle of sensitive life. Knowledge begins with the external senses, which is an organism's means of contact
with objective reality. This reality exists in what Thomas calls 1st intention, meaning existing in its natural mode, an
extramental being. This kind of existence is differentiated from 2nd intention which is an existence as a supramental
reality.

The product of sensorial knowledge is called the impressed species.

Fourth Lesson:

In cognition and sensation the thing known is reproduced in the knower/the subject. How? Act of knowledge is not a
simple possession of facts but an identification between the subject and the object. Here lies the main difference
between vegetative acts and ratio. Food is not simply possessed but converted into living organs. In cognitive acts the
object of knowledge becomes identified with us, becomes a part of us without being destroyed. It does not become us
but is identified with us. It is impossible to say that the subject of knowledge knows something if in the nature of
cognition we would have changed the nature of the object. The act of sensation has to leave the object known intact.
To know means to become something other than oneself. But the subject does not become like the object. It is the
object. They are identical. Therefore knowledge implies not a “doing something” but “being/becoming something”.
Subject and object have to be identified, but in a way that is different from the way in which the object I come to know
exists. We do not become identified with a stone in the way a stone exists. Still we are becoming identical. This
means that whatever is known to us through sensation is in the subject according to the way of the existence of the
human person, not according to the way of existence of the object. The eye does not become red when you see a red
flower.

The knowing subject can receive into its proper being something else as something else, without converting it into
parts proper to the organism, destroying it. The subject remains what it is but assumes another reality. What are the
ways of existence of the subject? What are the kinds of change? According to Thomas, the nature of the change
involved in the act of sensation is obscure. He tries to clarify by introducing distinctions.
“A sense is a passive power, a power to undergo a change, only when it is affected by external stimuli.” What is that
change that a sense undergoes? Thomas introduces the distinction between natural/physical and psycho-spiritual
change. Natural is when the form of an object, which as an agent provokes a change in me, is received in a subject
according to its natural way of existence and undergoes an substantial change. It is a substantial change, a change
proper to vegetative acts. The spiritual change is an accidental one. It is the kind of change when the form of the
source of change, the form of the object causing a change in me, is received according to a new way of existence.
The form is received as a kind of spiritual existence, an existence that it does not have in nature. The spiritual kind of
change is what happens when a stimulus has an impact on the sense organs. Senses can only operate when there is
a spiritual change. Feeling heat is something else than becoming hot. When the sun shines on a stone the stone
becomes hot, absorbs the heat, but it does not sense the heat. The natural change happens to the stone. Spiritual
does not mean something ghostly. It is a contrast to a natural physical change. It does not mean immaterial. The
powers of the senses do not go beyond the world of matter, they can only operate under the appropriate physical
condition. The change in sensation is not immaterial, properly speaking, it is between purely physical and beyond
matter. It is not altogether physical, because it does not pertain only to the body. It consists in a disengagement of the
form from the matter. The act of sensation receives the form without the matter. On the other hand it is not an act that
solely belongs to the soul, therefore it is not completely spiritual. It is a kind of change proper to a material organ,
whose source of life is also a source of consciousness. It is conjoined with immaterial principle. In the spiritual change
material and form are only intentionally separated, not on the level of nature. It is an intentional separation.

Sensation is change, two forms of change, natural (authentic real separation of form and matter), spiritual (accidental
change consisting in intentional separation between form and matter in the knowing object). The capacity on
intentionally separation form and matter implies different forms of existence.

To know implies the capacity of one being entering into another. We have to speak about two different orders/ways of
existence in regards to the object of our knowledge/sensation: The object has a natural existence, as it exists in itself,
and an intentional existence, as it exists in the knowing subject. The capacity of giving an additional intentional
existence to the physical object distinguishes beings with cognitive powers from the ones who only have vegetative
powers.

[Cognition = The object tends toward the subject, Appetition = the other way. Cognition is when as a result of such an
act the object finds itself in the subject but according to another way of existence. In appetitive acts we tend towards
an object as it exists in itself, according to its own way of existence. In cognition the object has an impact on the
cognitive power of our soul, but with appetitive power we ourselves are able to reach out to the objects.
For the object it is enough to exist. It is in our nature, to be acted upon by the object or reach out to it.
A feeling of hunger is a non-intentional act. I have no object connected with it. Cognitive or appetitive acts are
intentional acts. As far as cognition is concerned, it is based on the fact on the fact that we are able to relate ourselves
to the object in a spiritual way, so that we can operate on it an intentional act of separation. I can look into it, into what
it is. It becomes my intention, it is in front of me, I am operating on it as it is, I am able to perform the division between
form and matter. I can consider its color, smell etc.
In the act of appetition, such a intentionality is present. Because the appetites awake on the basis of cognition.
Cogitative acts are presupposed for appetitive acts. Appetition presupposes cognition.]

There must be something common in object and subject when the object can become identified with the subject.
Which element constitutes the point of identification? Form!
The part of an object, which can be assimilated by a knowing subject is the form. When the knowing subject becomes
the object, this means that it becomes the form of the object, which is known. When the act of sensation is completed
a new entity is brought into existence, which is made up of subject and object. The moment of unification is the form,
which is the form of the object, but created in the subject according to its own way of existence. Thomas speaks about
cognitive species. He means the form of the physical particular objective reality outside of us but in its intentional
form, as it exists in a spiritual way. In its intentional way of existence the form is (only) an instrument of knowledge
(important difference between classic and modern philosophy). The form as it exists in the subject as a cognitive
species is only an instrument of knowledge or an intermediary enabling the subject to become an object, without
seizing what it is, without destroying the object. Cognitive species at different levels are the objects themselves under
a new way of existence. Form has on form of being in this sense and another one in the sensible object. In the
sensible object it has natural being. Thomas says that this ability to create a new spiritual existence (a subjective one)
is the main difference between the beings with vegetative and sensual faculties.

The intentional forms (of which the highest creation is the concept) are the means by which subject and object are
united. The act of existence brings into existence this little reality. Intentional forms are (on one side) the means of this
unification. At the same time in reality the form exists in the real world. But the object of our knowledge is the reality
itself. That’s why intentional forms are only the means of knowing, the act of knowledge is grasping the reality, but it is
not the form existing outside my mind that I have in my knowledge. This is the newly created species, the intentional
form. Still the object of our knowledge is reality.

According to Thomas, the sense faculties in operation are identical with the object in action. Our senses in act are
identical with the object acting upon them because the act of sensation exists in unification. When I see, my organ of
sight is identical with the object working on it, by means of intentional species. Undergoing a change is a creation of
the intentional species.

Fifth Lesson:

The internal powers: Thomas deals with the internal senses in questions 78, article 4 and in “De Anima”, 3rd part,
lectio 3, 4, and 5.

Question 78, 4th article: The powers we are sharing with the animals. Our knowledge is not limited to what we can
grasp by means of our senses. We make separate experiences with our senses (smell, sound, sight) but we can unify
the sensations into totalities. We can remember things, we can see them as bad or good. Therefore Thomas says that
we have more senses than animals. He calls these internal senses: Common sense, memory, imagination,
estimation or cogitation (vis estimativa, vis cogitativa). The word sense as such is properly assigned only to
external senses. Still Thomas calls the internal powers senses because he wants to underline the fact that their
operation still belong to the sensitive level of live. They do not involve reason. Thomas fixes four internal senses? The
answer comes from experience and the different aspects of consideration of an object before us. When we have a
distinguished consciousness of something it means that there is a new formality to it, which is a principle that allows
us to introduce a new power. The four powers are:
If we do some analysis of how we know reality, if we know the impressions of the things present to us (Common
sense).
When the things are present to us while they are absent (Imagination).
When the things are past (Memory).
When things are useful and harmful to us (Estimation or cogitation).

Common sense: What is the nature of common sense? It does not have to do anything with good judgment.
Common sense it what the name brings out: A sense, a sensorial power, which has something in common with the
other, the external senses. It receives the impressions of all the external senses and is the sense, which is a root for
the external senses, a life giving foundation from which the external senses derive the proper activity. Sensation is an
act proper to external senses. Sensations do not exist except as a part of a broader process, which is a process of
making experiences, a perception. Sensation happens in direct link with a perception. The external senses are
functionless as isolated powers, they are rooted in common sense. External senses work only in conjunction with the
internal power of common sense. This is the sense on which the external senses depend. Common sense is
important, because it is the unifying principle of the external sensations. It is the power from which all the external
derive and are rooted in . It also is the power to which all impressions are related. What the external senses gather
from reality is send or returned to the common sense. All the functions of the external senses are unified in the
common sense. What is the object of the common sense? There are different aspects of material objects. One
material object can appear to different external senses. In order for an object to be known it requires many senses.
The impressions coming from external senses are therefore dissociated. Every reality of the physical reality is located
in space and time. According to Thomas the specific aspects proper to the common sense are those characterizing
the things because they are located in space and time. What are these aspects? First of all, the aspects, which are
linked with figure and movement. Figure and movement are common sensibles, not proper ones. One kind of objects
proper to the common sense are the qualities of the things that are linked to space and time. They are not the proper
objects of the common sense, because we know movement by means of proper sensibles, by means of these
characteristics, which are the proper objects of apprehension of our external senses. I know something is moving,
because I can see or hear it moving. Everything has a shape, everything is able to move/change. All these things are
objects of common sense, although they are perceived by means of the proper sensibles. The difference between the
external senses and the common sense is the modality in which the qualities of sensible objects affect the external
senses and the common sense. In the case of external senses the physical reality can affect the sense only by means
of the proper objects. Each external sense can be affected only by its proper sensibles. In case of common sense the
modality is double, because the common sense can be affected by the quality of things proper to one sense or by the
qualities, which are so-called common sensibles. So we do not only perceive movement or change with the common
sense, but also color, taste, smell etc.
According to Thomas the first important act of the common sense is the fact that it is some kind of a consciousness of
the sensations we have of reality. Without the common sense external senses would have no significance for the
higher process of knowledge, because through the common sense the external senses receive some kind of
consciousness. The outer senses are conscious of the proper sensibles because they are rooted in common sense.
The perception of sensation is one of the first acts of common sense. It is the capacity of knowing that we see, or
hear, or smell something. An eye senses only several colors, but common sense allows us to have the consciousness
of an act of sensation. Common sense is the perception of an act of seeing or hearing. The second important act of
common sense is the act of unification and then the act of distinction. Sensations give us the materials, which are
dissociated. When we look at the orange or catch it we get information, but on the level of sensation they are
disunited. Common sense makes out of all the data a totality. This is a capacity or synthesis of different, dissociated
data into one unit, into a totality. The next important act proper to common sense is an act of distinction. It is a
discriminatory power, which allows us to make a distinction between white and sweet, a distinction between the
different groups of the characteristics of external senses. Sight can distinguish between white and black, but not
between white and sweet. So it analyses and synthesizes the material coming in from the external senses. The act of
the common sense consists mainly in conjoining different sensations into a whole. Sensations do not give an
experience of a unified being, but only dissociated characteristics of this being. Perception is of a totality of a being,
therefore perceptions are different from sensations from this point of view. We sense color, smell, taste, but we
perceive an apple. Perception is a process in which the elements given in sensation are taken together and fashioned
into a being. Common sense can be defined as the power of perceiving the things, which are here and now affecting
ourselves, our organisms, making expressions on our external senses. Can we make errors on the level of
perception? Important question, because it comes back in the discussion of truth. At the level of common sense the
point of major interest is to define how a mistake in a sensorial perception gives rise to mistakes on the level of the
intellect. The senses as such cannot judge the true or false of the impact made on them, because they don’t have the
capacity of judgment. Only the mind can do that. Thomas says on the level of common sense things happen that can
lead to mistakes. Like a mind, the common sense perceives by dividing and composing. It is unifying different
elements or divides them. When the common sense divides and unifies in a proper way, as it is in reality, it is acting
like a mind if it judges correctly. Sometimes common sense might separate things that are united in nature or vice
versa and then it acts like the mind when it judges in a wrong way. There is a likeness in action between common
sense and mind. Yet the knowledge we get by means of the common sense is the material out of which our ideas are
derived. If something goes wrong with the perception in the beginning, it will lead to wrong thinking, wrong judgments.
Our external senses now and then can present to us data of things different from how they appear in nature. If I see a
movement where there is rest, than what has failed me is not so much the external sense, but the common sense,
which has given me a wrong message. The effect can be due to the weakness of the external senses on which the
common sense depends. Or it might have been an effect of disordered fantasy. Or it might have been an effect of an
unusual apprehension to things. If we emerge a stick in water, it looks like it is crooked. Common sense can make
mistakes. Are we sure that the mind is ever sure in its judgments? Thomas says that the senses are the witnesses of
reality. We can rely on them. There is always a margin of error, but it is small and of such a nature that the mind
always has a way of managing those exceptions.

Sixth Lesson:

Imagination: We notice that our experience tells us that we are able to relive what happened before, even when the
objects are not present to our senses anymore. According to Thomas certain things in our life would mean nothing or
not that much to us, if they always had to be experienced at a moment. If we were not able to relief ourselves from the
shackles of the “here and now” our lives would be poor and certain things wouldn’t have the same meaning for us.
The power of external senses and common sense are linked to the present. But what if we were not able to think
about past experiences or think of the summer coming. Without imagination we couldn’t make a lot of projects come
true. If our capacities stopped in the present we would be very limited. In order to function the external senses and the
common sense require the presence of the object, which has to make an impact on the organs of the external senses.
We must not think, however, that those senses only work when the objects are present. The same impact of the
external objects that move us to perceive also moves us to form the images. Imagination liberates us from the here
and now, from the present moment and helps us to go beyond. Imagination requires the contact between the external
world and the senses and it is operative while the common sense and external senses are functioning. Imagination
cooperates with external senses and common sense. If is differentiated from the other senses, because even in the
absence of the sensorial objects, imagination is able to recall the images formed during the actual experience. This
capacity is a formal aspect of imagination. The object proper to the common sense is something present as present.
The proper object of imagination is something absent. The sensation presents the objects, imagination represents
them. In order to be able to exercise of the power of imagination we have to be able to recall its content from our
external senses and the common sense. The power of imagination is therefore limited to the power of our external
senses. We cannot recall something we have never experienced before. Imagination is provoked, comes from the
acts of presentative senses (external and common), which are drawn into cooperation by the sensorial characteristics
of the physical world. In the human person we have at least two imaginations: A simple reproductive act of
imagination and creative acts of imagination, which are more complicated.
Reproductive imagination pictures the objects and events just as they happened. It gives us back faithful copies of
our previous actual experience in mental images. This procedure does not require special skills or willpower.
According to Thomas, this act of imagination is an act, which we share with the animals. In this sense imagination is
called a “storehouse” of the things it has received from the senses. What is the first product in the chain of knowledge
is what we call impressed sensorial species, a percept, the fruit of the common working of external senses and the
common sense. Expressed sensorial species, an image/phantasm, are the products of the first product,
imagination and memory, because through the first product there is an impression made on us, the expression
happens at the level of the next internal senses. For Thomas the first impressed species is the product of imagination.
While reality makes an impression on us, imagination makes a “picture” and stores it away. Thomas talks about
material powers when he talks about the internal senses, because he sees them located in the brain. The act proper
to the imagination consists not only in representation of the things past but also consists in retention of the images. It
is a capacity of making a picture of reality (the picture is made at the time when the external senses are creating the
impress sensible species) and creating of the express sensorial species and later representing them to us, when
needed. Common sense has as a function the reception the images from the external world, while imaginations task
is the retention of what was received.
The second act of imagination if a creative, productive act of imagination. This is an act proper only to humans not
to animals. It consists in elaborating the picture that have never been actually experiences in reality, have never been
the objects of our senses. It is the capacity to imagine the world and the events different than it is. By will and reason
we can guide the acts of our imagination and when it is so we can arrive at certain purposes (“What happens if”/”What
would have happened, if”). From this point of view this power is more than the recalling of percepts we have already
experienced.
Imagination is a power that is both of power and soul. It presupposes three functions.
The first is, that there must be an original impression made on the organ of our external senses that has to be
forwarded to the common sense.
The second is an act of retention that happens on an unconscious level. When we look at something the express
species are formed without our knowledge of it.
The third is a conscious revival of what has been experienced. This consists in taking awareness of the forms stored
in our mind. It consists in bringing to ourselves or creating the images out of previously stored pictures.
This storehouse of images is often called memory, but it is not! Retaining the images of the things is not memory.
Memory is also based on this act, but it is not the same.
Thomas often uses the term “phantasm”. e is not speaking about ghostly realities. It is a technical term he uses in
order to indicate one of the three products of the representative senses. Products of memory and cogitative powers
are often called “phantasms”, the products of representative senses. The products of presentative senses (external
and common) are “percepts”. Phantasms as such are express species, while the precept is an impress species.
What is the image between an image and percept? What is the difference between the difference between expressed
and impressed sensitive species? They are the final products of different powers. Each has its own specific
characteristics. One has to do with the objects present, the other with the objects that are absent. The fact that
percepts deal with the objects while they are present, while images do not, introduces a significant difference in those
realities.

From some point of view percept seems to be more perfect than the image, that the product of the lower senses is
more perfect than one of the higher senses. The first difference between those reality is strength. When we look at
something our perception is vivid and clear, while the image of it often is obscure or weak and less vivid. It also
depends on the attention given to the original image. The second difference is that percepts are stable while our
images are not. As long as we continue to look at something we have a clear perception of it. We can look at it as
long as we want. Close your eyes and try to picture it. In the first moment the picture is clear, but becomes less clear
later, becomes more general, until it becomes very weak. A third difference is in the completeness of the picture. A
percept is complete and exact. The images lack completeness, they are more vague and can become more and more
unreal. From this point of view the percept is more perfect than the image. We can never be sure that what we
imagine corresponds totally with the original percept.
From another point of view image is more perfect than precept. This is the abstraction of the image from matter.
Imagination does not require the presence of the material object to perform its act. Imagination does work when the
objects are present to us, but it can work in the absence of those objects as well. For Thomas imagination is the basis
of intellectual operations.

Percept and image have some important common characteristics. The percept is a result of the synthetic act of the
common sense. The same goes for the act of imagination. The image has a value for the mind. With the organized
data of our imagination we have a starting point in the elaboration of ideas. The role of imagination and its product,
the image, is important for our rational life. Because of the synthetic and whole-making process the image has a value
for the mind. The image is only a representation. They are different, because the object of the percept is always
present, while the object of the image is absent. Imagination takes directly from the common sense, but in it the
influence of reason is stronger and manifests itself in the acts of creative imagination.

Imagination has an important effect on our activities. A simple image of something can make us sweat or afraid. We
can experience psychosomatic effects. Imagination has an effect on our psyche and on our body. If you have a
nightmare, you wake up sweating, panting.
Imagination is one step in the chain of reaching ideas and making judgments. Imagination does not present the object
to us, as the common sense does, but represents it. It is a fundamental element, which makes us able to say that
imagination is subdued to errors. But the ides of falsity has to be understood in relationship to imagination. Images are
neither true nor false. A formal error only occurs when we judge that particular image that comes back to us. Diseases
only lead to falsity: Illusions and hallucinations. An illusion is an image evoked by the sensation, present at the
moment. But the image created is more alive than the sensation itself and more precise. The person/subject of the
illusion and perception believes to see what in reality is nothing else but imagination. The perception of the reality and
the image do not correspond, but there is a perception of reality it just is weaker than the image created out of it.
Hallucination is having a precise image without a corresponding object. If you see someone walking in the garden but
there is no-one, it is an hallucination. If there is no corresponding perception of any object in your imagination, it is an
hallucination. In both cases the pictures stored in our mind do not correspond to reality. That’s it for imagination.

Memory: The proper object of imagination is something absent, it recalls things from the past. But it does not
recognize those things under the aspect of “pastness”, just as not present. We are able to identify things not only as
absent but also as past. This function belongs to memory. Similarity between imagination and memory, because from
the point of view of knowledge memory requires the same presuppositions as imagination: Original percepts made by
external senses and common sense, production and retention of the images, ability to reproduce the images of what
has been experienced previously. Imagination supplies the basis for the acts of memory, because imagination in itself
is the one to which belongs the act or production and retention of an image. Up to here there is no formal particular
difference between imagination and memory. There is a fourth characteristic, which will separate them. This is a
difference in the formal object, because memory always recognizes the images it produce as past events. It is able to
trace them back to the origin of the images. It is not only reproducing and bringing back the pictures but also traces
them down to their own origin. Imagination does not do that. In our images there is no temporal or historical content
involved. Memory is the power to locate our images in the proper historical and temporal setting. What is pictured is
linked to a particular time in the past. For St. Thomas the ability to date things is a new formal characteristic and
suffices to justify the supposition of a new power different from imagination. Memory recalls past events and identifies
the past as past. Memory is more excellent than imagination, not only because one presupposes the other but also
because the acts of memory are more difficult. Memory is a psychosomatic power, which still operates on the level of
the soul, its first root, but also by means of a specific organ, the brain. It is a power, which we share with animals,
because it cannot work on its own but is connected with the sensorial organ. It belongs to a composite nature. Our
memory is different than animals memory, because we have rational capacities and will. We can both remember,
know the past as past and learn from that, but only we can try to remember things or make an effort to recall things to
the mind. Thomas uses two different words in order to indicate the two acts: Simply remembering things is called
memory. Acts proper to human memory are called reminiscence. From this point of view the first act is natural and
spontaneous while the second one is a process controlled by reason and will. Memory gains advantages from the fact
that it is controlled and guided by reason. It can perform acts similar to inference, because it has similarity to the
procedure of the mind to from what is unknown to what is already known. Reminiscence is not only about recognizing
past events but also about the control of the memorial procedures in a way that memory proceeds in syllogistic way.
Reminiscence presupposes thinking.
Seventh Lesson:

Our memory does not work by chance in performing memory and reminiscence. Even in the ordinary and simple
forms of recall (without help of will and reason) memory functions in virtue of certain connections, those which exist
between our images. The act of remembering is guided by how these images were installed in our mind. There is
always a connection between the images and according to these connections things are brought back to our
consciousness. We have a natural tendency on the level of our images to reproduce the representation of the things
in the order as they have occurred. Imagination produces images when perception takes place, the images are stored
according to temporal order. It is normal for us to perceive several objects in one experience. We have different
perceptions in an experience. Each object makes an impression on its proper sense. All these perceptions are stored
away in forms of images that are linked together in us in the way of the objects of the origin of these phantasms.
When a part of a previous experience is recalled, it tends to bring back the whole of the experience. The process of
remembering in particular (but also a simple memory) happens mainly on the basis of the temporal connection
between different events. If we want to remember something consciously (reminiscence) we usually start with the
most recent impression linked to the experience. If you think about yourself, you might wonder how you arrived at
thinking about a cow, for instance. Well, I was thinking about holidays in Switzerland, about a chalet in the Alps with
green meadows and BINGO: There’s a cow! This actually is not reminiscence but it is similar. You want to remember
something from the past. And you can use the same process if you want to remember a particular event. You use the
inferential process to locate the things in time.

There are three kinds of relationships in which images are linked. Those are so-called laws of association. They
are:
1.) The law of similarity: One thing can bring back another because they are related (Socrates can bring back Plato).
2.) The law of contrast: One image can bring back another because it is its opposite (Black can make you think of
white).
3.) The law of proximity: One thing can bring back another because it is close to another. But this closeness can be
of different: Proximity in time, proximity in place, or relationship.
Our memory works according to these laws of association: Like produces like. Similar produces dissimilar. Something
produces something else which is near to it.
The laws of association are properly speaking the laws of reminiscence, the laws of syllogistic recalling.

Images produced by acts of memory have the whole-making role as the images produced by imagination. Each is a
germ of ides of concept. Phantasms from imagination and memory are a picture of concrete data from our
experiences from which we can abstract what will become a concept. Without those images there would not be
understanding at all. They are the condition without which knowledge and reason would not take pace. Phantasms
and images are related to the reason as the sensible objects are related to our external senses. Without these objects
or senses would remain inactive. Without the phantasms and the images our reason would remain inactive. From this
point of view imagination and memory have the same importance.
Memory is more significant for the mind than imagination. In the first place the acts of memory are not as casual as
the acts of imagination. Imagination does not need to speak about reality. We can produce images not corresponding
to reality. Memory does not do that. It is not so far removed from the world of reality as imagination sometimes is. The
main task of memory is to bring back events of the past not in a capricious way but just as they happened in fact and
in truth. Memory speaks about the actual aspects of reality as located in the past. Thomas takes up Aristotle here and
says: Beings, which have more experience have more science and knowledge.

Thomas is interested in training of the memory. So he gives us some rules for a good memory. In question 49, 1st
article of the Summa he gives four rules:
1.) If we want to remember well (learning, i.e.), we must launch into the task of learning of learning with a real will to
learn. Here the role of will power in the cognitive acts of memory is underlined.
2.) We must reconsider and set in order the things we want to remember, because or memory works according to the
laws of association. So if we have a good order in the things we want to remember we can bring them back to our
memory easier later.
3.) It is always good to search for a good illustration of what we want to remember. This again is based on the laws of
association. Associate something you want to remember with something strange.
4.) Rehearse often!

Estimation or cogitation (vis estimativa, vis cogitativa):

Given the fact that nature never fails us in matters, which are urgent, we have another inner sense which is concerned
with our biological welfare, our survival. If an animal is to survive it has to avoid certain things beside those, which are
simply pleasant or unpleasant. There is a difference between something unpleasant and something bad. When for
instance a sheep escapes from a wolf it does not because the wolf does not look pretty or nice, but because the wolf
is dangerous for the sheep. It shows that the animals have some kind of awareness of danger and the awareness of
utility. Animals are able to apprehend things, which are not perceivable with the senses.

The estimative sense deals with insensate qualities of the objects. This means it deals with the aspects of usefulness
and harmfulness. It does not mean that you can not sense the quality. It can be sensed but they cannot be sensed by
any other power except the power of estimation. The eye of a gazelle can see the lion, its ear can hear the lion and
the nose can pick up the scent. But there is nothing in the perception of the outer senses giving a signal of danger.
The power of estimation is therefore different from imagination and memory because the estimative power is a power
of forming images, of bringing to the surface of the consciousness the images that are already in the animal from its
birth. So the innate images that are not coming from experiences are brought forth. Memory can conserve the actual
experiences of the situations when the life of the animal was at stake and can therefore collaborate with the power of
estimation. But the basis of the judgment of the estimative power does not come from memory originally. The power
of estimation recognizes the elements in the experience that no other sense can be aware of it is a special power,
because it recognizes aspects of reality that no other power recognizes.
There is a difference between the power of estimation and cogitation. In regard to all the other powers considered up
to now. Thomas makes no difference between the humans and the animals, especially as far as the external senses
are concerned, because we both are affected by external sensible objects in the same way. In regard to the
apprehension of things not directly transferred by the external senses, there is a difference, esp. in imagination and
memory, where the human person can perform additional acts because it has reason. In regard to the fourth internal
sense Thomas says that animals perceive things like utility, hostility etc. by natural instinct, something that is based in
the idea and knowledge inborn in animals. Human persons can also grasp the good and bad, dangers and friendly
aspect by means of making comparisons. Humans can associate certain previous experiences and go by trial and
error. That’s why in animals it is called the power of estimation and in humans it is called the power of cogitation. In
the human person it is more than just instinct, because reason is at work here, too. It can supply us with knowledge
and the sense of estimation therefore does not mean the same for us as for animals. Cogitare = brings with itself a
meaning of “making judgments”. It indicates the act of reasoning, except that the reasoning here is a particular one. It
does not deal with universal judgments. When Thomas tries to explain the existence of the estimative/cogitative
power, he cannot explain it in other terms but by making reference to God. The power can only be explained when
you se it as a plan of the creator, giving it to the animals as a necessary tool for it’s survival. The instinctive
movements are never the matter of indifference, they are linked with the survival. Where do the creatures get the
information of the vis estimativa? Not from experience or reflection or knowledge passed on to them. It seems to be
present from birth. Thomas defines vis estimativa: The power of sensing, without previous experience or training, the
things useful or harmful to the organisms. The power to insensate qualities in reality.

Eighth Lesson:

More on Estimation/Cogitation: It’s aspect (sensing the things which are harm- or useful without previous experience
or training) cannot be explained by the other senses.

There is a difference in the estimative and cogitative power between man and animal.
The animals make use of estimation. They apprehend signs of danger that the senses cannot pick up. Humans rely
on cogitation with a kind of trial-and-error in which memory becomes highly responsible for the task.

There is a necessity of estimation, because without it we would direct our actions only on the basis of pleasure and
pain. This is not the case, because we can do painful things that are good (dentist) or pleasant things that are bad
(smoking).

The debate about the purpose of estimation is a long and delicate one. According to St. Thomas it seems to point
towards some kind of higher intellect. Instincts seem to be a sign for an intelligence working in non-intelligent beings.
The animal does not understand the goals of its actions. Without intelligence the instinct is unintelligible. It evokes an
intelligence that animals don’t have.

There are three realities of judgment: Some things act without judgment of any sort (inanimate beings  no judgment),
some act with a judgment that is not free, that is not based on any deliberation or choice (animals  natural
judgment), some judge with intelligence and reasoning, using will (humans  free judgment).

Most striking for St. Thomas: Animals are unaware of the purpose for which they act. Animals always act in the same
way without having learned it. So there must be a guiding hand. The existence of instincts points towards the
existence of God.

Components of instinctive behavior:

1.) Knowledge of what is use-/harmful
This comes natural and is the role and power of estimation.
2.) A kind of emotion resulting from that knowledge
This is important because if you see something that is evidently dangerous but don’t start to fear it, you will not
engage in the proper action. So the knowledge has to be accompanied by desire or fear. The power of estimation is
not enough to explain instinctive behavior.
3.) Local movement actualized by the knowledge and the emotion
If you know the danger and fear it but do not run away there will be no complete instinctive behavior but rather
something like stupidity.

Memory is complementary to estimation/cogitation, particularly to the latter.

Memory in animals is linked with the possibility of having an experience of something, which creates a memory and
prepares the animal to expect the same results when the same originating causes appear. Memory is linked with the
power of estimation. Animals can have a memory of events.
Imagination is complementary to common sense. Common sense is responsible for the reception of reality.
Imagination kames a picture of that reality and stores it away for future presentation. From that point of view it is
complementary to common sense.

Cogitation (estimation in humans) is united with the mind so closely, that it takes on the nature and the work of the
intellect, hence “cogitative sense” (or “particular reason”). This does not mean that the cogitative sense does think or
penetrate to the nature and essence of a thing on its own.
Animals are enlightened by nature through the natural instinct.
Humans make an impact on their biological situation by means of ideas, and judge about reality by making a
collection of ideas. They apprehend the abstract ideas while cogitation and particular reason are able to grasp and
judge in regard to individual realities. So here the concrete realities of the object become the content, not the
abstracts, like in the judgments of our mind.
Cogitation is a conceptual process that can assume the role of forming concepts/ideas. It creates complete
experiences.
Humans also have instinctive capacities but they are less developed and directed differently. Our instincts usually
take on a different final form than in the animals. While we do feel the instinct to eat to preserve our life, we select
what to eat and how to prepare it.
Our cognition depends very much on memory (like training in self-defense which becomes sort of a second nature
after a while, or like a child that doesn’t know that fire is hot and will have to touch it at least once for the signal of
danger to form in the memory.)

Ninth Lesson:

Cogitative powers on the level of rational powers, the third level of the powers:

Question 79 and 84-87: The ways in which we know different things

According to Thomas becoming something else by process of remotion from matter belongs to knowing. The degree
of abstraction from matter is always a sign of the perfection of the knowing subject. It depends on how much we can
abstract/remove from matter. It is important for rational cogitative powers.
Intellectual acts are the most perfect we have because they are at the highest level of abstraction from matter.
Rational cognitive powers: Intellectus = Intellect
This power depends on the senses. Our mind depends on the senses, because it is our own nature, because we are
a composite being (matter and form/body and soul). From this p.o.v. our soul (our principle of live) is in itself
designated to be united with matter. Soul always requires a body. All powers of the soul are somehow conditioned by
material structures of the world and of what we are. Our knowledge reflects this fact. The acts proper to the rational
cognition happen on the crossroads of material and spiritual world.
Our knowledge always begins with cognition on the level of our external senses. The body is a necessary instrument
of knowledge. Senses have the function of a medium. The rational soul (intellect) canot acquire knowledge without
making a return to the phantasms, the products of the internal senses. The senses have to be acted upon by the
objects, the intellect has to be activated by an impact of the phantasms. Intellectual cognitive operations and
conditions of the operations have to be distinguished (the act of intellectual cognitions and the possibilities for such an
act). The act does not take place through a material instrument, even if it requires a corporal substance for the proper
acting. Senses and intellect work together in order to produce an idea. But the dependence of the intellect on the
sense is only extrinsic or objective. This means senses and their work are the conditions of the possibility of the acts
of the intellect. From this point of view you can say that phantasms are the material cause of the acts of the intellect.
The acts of the rational powers are dependent on the senses from the extrinsic objective point of view or from the
point of view of the conditions of the possibility of exercising such an act. But the act as such does not need a
corporeal material organ to perform its proper acts.
Object of rational cogitative powers: Intellect can go beyond the restrictions of here and now, space and time.
Somehow our intellectual capacities have an infinite potential for understanding. We are able to know all realities. This
means our apprehension snot limited to particular things but extends itself to everything. Our intellect has nothing to
start with, but it is potentially the totality of the things. But our intellect never arrives at actually knowing everything,
only potentially. God alone knows everything actually.
What is an object of rational knowledge, proper to our intellect? There is a strict correlation between intellect and
being. What is real is by that very fact intelligible, can be known. Being is the object of all the intellect. What is the
object proper to human intellect? We are a composed reality. The process of knowledge is always concerned with the
separation of form from the matter. In the process the form is received without the matter in the knowing subject.
There are different grades of cognitive powers: One are the senses. The object of every sensitive power is a form as it
exists in a concrete individual reality. Sensitive knowledge is only of individuals. A kind of knowledge, which is proper
to separate substances (angles) is a knowledge of form apart from matter. Knowledge without the use of corporeal
organ with no material object is knowledge proper to God.
Our intellect occupies a middle place between those two kinds of cognition. It is not an act of an organ in itself, yet it is
the power of the soul, which is in itself a form of matter. If the senses are material powers they receive the forms of
the object in a material matter. Intellect is immaterial and receives the forms of the objects in an immaterial way. In
case of the sensitive knowledge the form is still limited by what are the concrete particular characteristics of the
material objects, while in the case of intellectual knowledge the form is purified of the limiting individual characteristics.
The object of the intellect is the universe of the material things, because the intellect depends extrinsically on the
senses, which only deal with material qualities of the things. The object of the intellect is the physical universe, the
one composed of matter and form. The object proper to our intellect is the essence of corporeal being. Proper to the
rational level is a form existing individually in the individual matter, but not as existing in the individual matter.
The object common to each intellect is always a being.
The proper direct object of the human intellect is the essence of corporeal being.
What we can think about is only a being. We can’t think about non-existing realities. We always think about
something, not about nothing.

Q 84: We can know only something, which is stable and remains equal and unchanging. The object of the intellect is
the kind of reality, which remains unchanged in the changing world.
Philosophers before Thomas: Intellect grasps things, which are unchanging. That’s why the direct object of the
intellect is the essence, or the form, or what makes all of us to be humans. Anything universal equal in each
individual. Thomas: Intellect directs itself to the permanent element in changing reality.
Heraclites (all flows): We can not know anything, because once we come to know it the reality already changed.
Plato: There is stability. The phenomenal world is changing, but the world of the ideals is unchangeable, stable. What
we know are the ideas, which enable us to know the truth.
Aristotle: Yes there is change in the physical world, but there remains an element of stability. Not the idea in a
Platonic sense, but the form inside of everything.
A concept is formed starting from the phantasm coming from the external world. From them the universal constant
element will be abstracted.

The indirect object of our intellect is the intellect itself and its content. It can know singular individual material beings
and it can know indirectly immaterial realities.
In itself: By reflection. First we know the objects giving our intellect its own content, which the intellect can reflect on,
knowing to a certain degree who it is. Also through the analysis of the proper act.
Particular things: By attributing or assigning a set of universal concepts on the particular thing. Synthesis of different
concepts
Immaterial realities: By analogy, means of material things, which are direct object of our intellect.

What are the acts of the intellect?

Thomas postulates the necessity of an active principle in the level of the sensual knowledge.
Senses are restricted to singulars. Their knowledge is always of accidental nature. Phantasms are in a sense
immaterial, they are received without the matter, but they are linked to the characteristics of matter, which are always
particular. All products of knowledge are inserted in “here and now” condition, therefore individualized. Intellect can
understand things only by intelligible forms, beings and entities abstracted from particular conditions. The proper
object of intellect is something universal. This is due to the purely spiritual nature of the intellect. Analogy between
intellect and senses from the point of view of what they receive. The act consists in receiving the forms, but they are
different. Intellect receives universal. The phantasms are potential material for the acts of our intellect, but in
themselves they are not yet intelligible, are only potentially universal. They cannot act on the intellect. The phantasms
are universal in potential, they have to become intelligible in act. An act of knowledge can take place only when a
particular object is on the power or the organs and there has to be of a correspondence between the object and the
power of cognition. There has to be an impact of the proper object on the proper power.
Phantasms cannot make an impact on the intellect, because they are inadequate to it, are still particular individual and
only potentially universal. This means that the intellect has in itself some kind of passivity (as the senses have up to a
point). In order to apprehend something, reality has to activate it. There is a need of an impact of the phantasms, but
they cannot do it the way they are. So Thomas postulates an intellect, which makes all things (agent/active intellect)
and an intellect, which becomes all things (possible/passive intellect).
Two aspects: Active and passive intellect
Twofold ability: Abstract and understand
The power that has the ability to abstract is called an agent or active intellect. The one responsible for understanding
is called possible or passive intellect. The active intellect is an efficient cause, which is missing in the gap between
possible and phantasms. Functions of the agent intellect are active and creative. It abstracts the universal nature from
the concrete realities of the phantasms. The function of the possible intellect is up to a point passive and receptive.
Passive here means it can not work out of its own and can not activate itself, not that is does not have an act of its
own. It is acting, because it responds to the impact it gets with the act of understanding, by becoming the things and
expressing the universal reality implicitly present in the phantasms. [All the powers are active potencies, they already
have a potentiality to become actual.]

The nature of the agent/active intellect: Thomas enters into polemics with Saint Augustine. Thomas often uses
Augustine to confirm his position, but here he goes against him. Augustine taught in regard to cognition that ideas
exist in the mind, which is the second person of the Trinity. We get an idea not by abstraction, but by means of
illumination. There is a light of its own species, which comes to us from the mind of God in whom all the ideas are. We
know the universals in virtue of Gods grace and light that he gives each time we need it. This theory was very
powerful in the middle ages. Thomas wants to combine Aristotle and Augustine. He says it is true that we have in us a
divine light that we need in order to know. But it does not come to us from outside but from the inside. It is the agent
intellect, the one that makes all the things. We should not deny that supernatural illumination is necessary before our
intellect can understand. All that it required in the human soul is a power of lightening the phantasms and abstracting
universal forms. Agent intellect is always in act according to its essence and has not potentiality in it. It is a limited
pure act.
What is the act proper to the agent intellect? Illumination (Augustine) or abstraction (Aristotle). Understanding requires
co-naturality of subject and object. The intellect must be made like the object, they have to share the same nature.
The object has to be understandable. The sense data has to be raised to the level of intelligibility. This could not
happen if the object would not be transformed by the agent intellect through its (the a.i.’s) own act. Separating the
intelligible species from the phantasms means considering the nature of the (expressed sensitive) species separate
from the individual qualities represented in it. The agent intellect has a liberating function, where the essence is freed
from individual elements.

Possible intellect (p.i.): The a.i. prepares the material for the final elaboration of the ideas, the effect is to produce a
species which is of such a character that it can make an impact n the possible intellect. The role of the possible
intellect: A.i. is always in act, an aspect in which it differs from p.i., because this is in potency by its very nature. It can
act only when it is informed by a proper species. To become a knowing object is the role of the possible intellect. To
know is to become the object (of our knowledge) by unification of the form and the knowing subject. A.i. is a
necessary for the p.i., it is a condition of possibility of an act of the p.i. From this point of view understanding requires
an act of abstraction. Abstraction requires an act of sensation. P.i does not only receive an impact but produces in its
own form something out of it, a form, a species of its own, to receive the impressed species and form expressed
species.

Tenth Lesson:

Acts of the Intellect

Impressed sensorial species
Expressed sensorial species
Impressed intelligible species
Expressed intelligible species
Intellectual operation works in two ways:
1.) Understanding of simple ideas (simple apprehension); it is expressed in sigle words (man, dog, house etc.) and
simple.
2.) Affirmation and negation; it is expressed in sentences (true /false) and complex.

The words used to describe these operations point towards their characteristics:
1.) conceive (capere = to seize), comprehend (prehendere), consider (sider), contemplate (templum = place of
observation)
2.) deliberate (librum = balance on a scale), cogitate (agitare = shake up and turn over), discern (circus = s/thing
marked off with a circle), reflect (reflectare = to send back), ponder (pondus = use of a weight, a balance between pro
and contra)

Apprehension: An act of apprehending something without affirming or denying something about it. Done by means of
a concept. The intellect produces a presentation of something, a concept, an expressed intelligible species. The thing
“is”. It is an apprehension of existence. Concept is the individual conscious content representing the essence of an
object. Essential characteristics of a concept: It is abstract (the essence of a thing is freed from the individual
characteristics of the object) and universal (consequence of abstraction, because the object freed of individual
characteristics can be applied to each of the other objects of the species).

Each concept has a double aspect: objective + formal concept

Objective concept (objective aspect of a concept): This is what allows us to know the thing. It is a content carried by
a concept.
Formal concept (subjective/formal aspect of a concept): Seen from the point of view of thought, being a medium that
I have in me.

From both points of view (objective and formal) the object is not what we understand, but that by means of which we
understand (only for 1st intentionality).

Expressed intelligible species are the instrument of our knowledge from the formal and objective point if view. They
are not the first or direct object.

Composition and Division:

Our intellect acquires knowledge by 1st apprehension of how things are but by the material component of our soul.
Nature of judgment: Grasp the essence of being not only to apprehend the existence but also to know what it is
(quiddity). Our intellect understands by composition and division, by comparing things. We have different kinds of
judgment because of different causes, e.g.: Evidence (lack of evidence  no judgment and vice versa) or will
(hesitation to confirm).

Reasoning (inference): Composition and division are proper to reason.

In a process in which no premises are given it is impossible to reach conclusions. You need the active relation of two
or more judgments with the end of drawing conclusions. It is not just a succession of judgments. The human being is
rational because in order to understand reality we have to reason. God is intelligent, because he does not need to
reason or know.
Q 79, article 8 + 9: The relationship between reason and intellect
Thomas: They are one and the same power. The intellect is what enables us to have an immediate grasp of
intellectual truth. Reasoning is the same faculty but it enables us to go from one understanding to another, it is a
discursive faculty. It is the same faculty that God has, only less perfect. Reason is to intellect as motion is to rest or
getting is to having.

Eleventh Lesson:

Problem of human cognition: Memory. Is it in the intellectual or sensual part of the soul? (Q79, 6)
We can know and retain knowledge. Is the retention proper only to the sensual part of the soul or also to the
intellectual part? The nature of memory presupposes the capacity of preservation of things that are not actually
present. The first question to answer is: Do we have the capacity of retention of intelligible species as we have of
sensual species? Avicenna says it is impossible to retain intelligible species. Retention happen in the sensitive part of
the soul because sensitive powers act by means of corporeal organs. The intellect does not use / is not linked to a
corporeal organ. Everything we know must be actually understood because there is nowhere to store the intelligible
species (no organ). When we cease to understand actually, the species ceases to exist. If we want to understand
again, we will have to go through the act of abstraction and illumination. Memory according to Avicenna means that
from constantly turning to the active intellect we have developed a habit in the passive intellect and that is what we
think is memory. But it is impossible to admit memory in intellectual powers.

Thomas answer: Whatever is received in something is received according to the condition of the recipient. Intellectual
powers have a more stable nature than sensitive powers, they are more immutable then corporeal realities. If
corporeal matter can preserve the species of the sensitive kind, if we have storage on sense-level, then the intellect
should be able to receive the species in an unchanging and lasting way all the more. If we take memory in improper
terms only as retaining species then there is such a capacity in the intellect. It is improper, because retention is an act
proper to imagination, which does not only bring back a picture of something while it is absent but also has the ability
to make the picture and retain it, before presenting it again. The proper formal aspect of the object of memory on the
other hand is pastness. So memory is only in the sensitive part of the soul because the intellect deals with universals
but pastness is proper only to singular individual characteristics of events. The individual condition of pastness can be
referred to in two ways: The object, which is known and the act of knowing. In the sensual part of the soul the
pastness can be applied to both, object and act, because they developed in time. In the intellectual condition the
pastness is an accident, it is not a part of the object of intellect. Pastness is not an element of the object of cognition.
Example: Father Wilder is a physical concrete individual. He has different characteristics. He can assume the
characteristic of pastness, i.e.: The moment I met him. It is not the same with the object of intellectual cognition
because here the object is an essence, due to universality. For those realities it is accidental to exist in time. Only
individuals do that. Pastness is only accidental to intellectual cognition.

Pastness can exist in the intellect, but only from the point of view of act, because act is always an individual act by an
individual being taking place in time (“I understood something yesterday”). Act is individual, even if it is immaterial. By
means of reflection our mind, understanding itself and its content, can also understand the proper acts as individual
and time-related.
Memory is part of intellect (for Thomas it is identical with possible/passive intellect). It is a habit of bringing back ideas
that are already there.

In Q80 Thomas deals with how we know different things like individual singular realities, infinite realities, contingent
realities or the future.
Individual singular things: We do not know directly the singular characteristics because the proper object of intellect
is reality deprived of matter and the singular always exists in matter. Proper to the intellect is what is abstracted of
matter. Singulars are apprehended immediately only be the senses. In order to know individual realities, the intellect
has to return to phantasms.
Infinite realities: Can we know an infinite number of things? In a way our intellect is everything. Thomas: We can
know God, which is a supreme infinite being. But we can also know an infinite series of numbers. It is obvious that
there cannot be an infinite number of bodies in one and the same place. But our mind does not use a corporeal organ,
so there can be an infinite number of ideas in one mind. In our intellect there is a potential infinity of ideas. In God
there is an actual infinity of ideas and they are present at the same time. We do not arrive at the actual knowledge of
the totality of things and the ideas present themselves one after another in our mind.
Contingent realities: Contingency here is understood in two different ways: Contingent as contingent (contingency
due to the fact that things are material. They can be or not. The are so or so) and as containing an element of
necessity (whatever exists, exists as a something. Something determined by essence/form/nature). Contingent things
as contingent are known directly by the senses, indirectly by the intellect, because they are singular. But we can know
universal necessary elements in things with the intellect.
Knowledge of the future: We can partially know the future. Future events are always individual singular events of
which we cannot have direct knowledge. But we can know the future in as far as we are aware of the present causes
and of how they influence events (I can hold a pen in my hand and predict that it is going to hit the ground in a couple
of seconds. Due to the laws of gravity I know that this will happen, if I let go of the pen and it is not supported by
anything else.)

Appetitive powers on the level of senses and the rational soul:

Our cognitive relation to reality remains incomplete because left by itself the cognition is inactive in the sense that it
does not push us to action. It needs to be complimented by other capacities. We do not only know things, we also
have the desire to go towards what we know. We are beings of cognition, but also beings of will and emotions.
Q80: Appetite (means “stretching out towards something”)
It is a tendency towards something. Tendencies can be natural and appetitive. The natural tendencies are proper to
beings that have no knowledge of any kind. A stone has a natural desire to fall if it is not supported. But the natural
tendencies are not proper only to inanimate objects without knowledge. The appetitive tendencies are a higher
species of tendencies. The imply consciousness. Beings without the capacity of knowledge only have a single form,
making them what they are. Beings with the capacity of sensorial powers can assume forms of others, can know
something (receiving the form of another as other). These beings have the capacity to associate with the forms of the
objects apprehended/known. Appetitive tendencies are not automatic in operation like natural tendencies, which
always occur under certain conditions.
Appetite is the ability to tend towards an object of our cognition/knowledge; it has cognition as a basis.
Sensitive and intellectual appetite: Sensitive appetite is what we gain by means of our senses. Intellectual appetite
presupposes rational cognition and universality. Intellectual appetite is will, sensual appetite is emotion.
Twelfth Lesson:

Knowledge is unification between the subject and the object by means of the intentional form. In appetition union
takes place, too. Knowledge is demanded as a basis and point of departure for appetition. The goals of cognition and
appetition are different. The goal of cognition is the possession of the object in the consciousness; the object is
possessed by means of intentional existence (possession of intellectual object). The goal of appetite is to possess
the object itself, the unification with the object itself in its natural mode of being (possession of real object). The
cognitive act is completed after the thing known is united with the knower. The appetitive act is completed when the
subject that desires is moved towards the desired object.

Sensitive appetite (Q80 I, Q22-48 I-II):

We use the words “feelings” or “emotions” to talk about sensitive appetites. What are the powers responsible for these
acts? St. Thomas: Feelings and emotions are the most common things in our life, but they are almost impossible to
describe in terms of quality. The presence of feeling is indubitable for us in almost every moment of conscious life;
feelings accompany each of our acts. Each act of our life can be characterized as pleasant or unpleasant. Feelings
are omnipresent and indicate how perfect our acts are. When our acts are well rounded they seem pleasing to us.
Each sense is subdued to the scale of pleasure or displeasure. In the intellect we possess this measure, too. The
more perfect the results of an act are, the more these results will be accompanied by the feeling of pleasure.

The hard-to-describe nature of feelings is certified by the search on human nature in philosophy because rational and
will-related elements have been examined but sentiments often were left aside. Philosophers were often only
concerned with intellectual appetite, the sensual appetite was admitted but left aside.

Emotions/feelings accompany us in every state of our conscious life and are a measure of perfection of our
acts.

Thomas sees the emotions as positive and pleasure as a sign of perfection. Emotion takes origin from knowledge in
appetition. No appetitive power would be inclined to act except under the influence of an agent, a stimulus, some form
of cognition. Nature of appetite follows nature of knowledge. There has to be some form, not so much intentional but
tendentious, which stimulates our power to act. This tendentious species is produced by the internal senses. Sensitive
appetite is moved by estimative/cogitative power and imagination and memory. Estimative/cogitative power
immediately puts in act the sensitive appetite because it recognizes the good and evil aspects of environment.

Thirteenth Lesson:

Sensitive appetites: The reality accompanying us in every event of our lives. Everything we do is marked by pleasure
or displeasure. The feeling of being pleasant or unpleasant are a measure of the perfection of our acts.

There are no appetites without knowledge. Knowledge is the basis of appetite. The efficient cause in case of the
appetite is constituted by the forms coming from the knowledge. The impact on the appetites is a tendentional form,
not an intentional form, a determinant for appetites. Tendentional form is constructed of the phantasms. A condition of
possibility for having the appetite is knowledge. The impulse from which the appetite originates comes from the
knowledge of phantasms. Estimation has a particular role. In all appetites the cogitative power plays an important role,
it is present in each appetite. Imagination and memory also play an important role. They taken by themselves without
estimation/cogitation would not be able to produce acts of appetite, because it is not enough to imagine or recall
something in order to originate desire. The thing has to be known as being good or bad.

In case of consupiscible (oppos. irascible) appetite, the appetite is moved to the knowledge coming from power of
imagination and indirectly from estimation, because those are simple goods or simple evils. There is nothing that has
to be overcome. Evil or good is in the second place, imagination presents an object to us in itself, without an aspect of
evaluation. Cogitation has a direct impact, is directly responsible for originating the movements of irascible appetites,
where the elements of difficulty are present.
Cogitation (always) and imagination and memory (with the presuppositon of external senses and common sense) are
the powers that drive appetite. Thomas calls sensitive appetites passions, because one of the meaning implied in this
word says that those powers are not only active, but also passive, as any created power. They have to be acted upon
in order to answer. They cannot act by themselves in the absence of the object. Sensitive powers require a
complementary element in order to be activated: The tendentional form. ”Passion” implies another meaning,
something that is common to the appetite and cognition (everything but agent intellect always has this aspect of
passivity). Acts of sensitive appetite imply a capacity for suffering. If you look at the Latin of Thomas, the passion
implies a kind of an experience which introduces an alteration in us, it indicates a physical/somatic alteration of the
organism. The act of knowledge consists in a certain change, therefore certain alteration. But it is a different alteration
in the case of the passions. These are the alteration that involve our somatic side, the function of our physical organs.
The response on the level of our appetitive powers always involves our body. The passions which are the acts of the
sensitive appetites (not the powers) are never present without the bodily changes. The acts of the sensitive appetites
are the movements resulting from sensitive knowledge, marked by changes in certain functions of our bodies. A being
composite of matter and form, bodily and spiritual, has these powers. They are rooted in the spiritual dimension of the
human person, but they also have the physiological/somatic element. Thomas underlines that the physiological
changes constitute an essential part of each emotion or of each act of the sensitive appetite. The point of the bodily
changes is that they are an essential part of every movement of appetite. There is no act of sensorial appetite without
bodily changes. Wherever we have an act of sensitive appetite there is at least on a minimal level a kind of bodily
changes. Think of sweating, acceleration of heartbeat, growing pale etc.

Thomas’ explanation on the medical explanation is wrong, because it is tied to the knowledge of his time.

The bodily changes do not constitute a formal element allowing us to differentiate between the acts, though. A beating
of heart can be due to fear or joy. They simply accompany, but do not indicate.

What, then, would be that formal element that allows us to distinguish between different passions? Thomas says that
in whatever is alive there are two basic kinds of tendencies: The first is a desire to conserve the proper being, to
conserve what is proper to the existence. This also means a tendency towards whatever is needed for a particular
being to exist. The second kind is a tendency to resist the forces of corruption, to combat what is trying to destroy our
existence (retention (simple) and resist/struggling against what is turned against us (difficult)). In relation to these
tendencies we have certain inclination. In the first case we have the inclination to possess the things that are suitable
for our existence. In the second case we have the tendency to fight for what we need in order to preserve our
existence. Consupiscible and irascible appetites (the powers of sensitive appetite): Concupiscible appetites enable us
to go towards the goods of a simple nature, those, which correspond to the first inclination, the desire to retain a
simple existence. The second level of the capacities are irascible appetites, the capacities/powers/faculties that
enable us to fight for the goods which we have to obtain or avoid through difficulties if we want to exist. Concupiscible
is pleasure for the sake of pleasure, for the sake of having it. Irascible appetites are concerned with struggle for the
sake of pleasure. This means that life is a constant battle. Thomas says that this means that the first movement which
we have to assure is the movement which will make us sure of the victory of the irascible appetite before we can
enjoy the goods of the concupiscible appetite. Sometimes we occupy ourselves with unpleasant things even against
he concupiscible appetite because the first thing to ensure is the basis for the concupiscible appetite to act. All
passions/act of irascible appetite somehow have an origin in the concupiscible appetite and determinate the acts of
concupiscible appetite. Struggle for life is in function (service) for life itself.
Concupiscible and irascible are responsible for eleven acts. Concupiscible concludes in six, irascible in five.

The object of every appetite is an apprehended good or evil, a good or evil as it is presented to us. The moods of the
appetite are distinguished according to the ways in which an appetite allows us to respond to the stimulus coming
from the intellect. So the nature of the objects (good/bod) or the ways in which it stimulates the power to react are the
things from which a movement in case of appetite originate.

In presence of good or evil the appetite is disposed to move into different directions. Good: towards. Evil: away. There
are objects that are apprehended simply as good or bad. Therefore we have the acts of concupiscible and
repulsion.

Six movements/acts of concupiscible appetite (pos./neg.) = love/hate; desire/disgust, joy/sorrow

A feeling of co-naturality (being one with or wanting to be one with) with the object that is apprehended as good is
what Thomas calls love. The opposite passion is hatred, when something is apprehended as evil and it generates an
absolute dissociation with the object. If the good, which is loved is not yet possessed (distance), then it generates an
impulse to acquire it, which is called desire, whereas evil generates an act of aversion. The last two are not so much
movements, because they don’t consist in going towards or ways but they are the acts that appear in us while the
object of love/desire is possessed or the object of hatred/aversion instead of our efforts to avoid it is inflicting us. So a
movement has come to a rests and it concludes in the passions of joy/sorrow.

Five movements proper to irascible appetites proper to it (here it is about things hard to get and hard to avoid): Hope,
courage (pos.)/ despair , fear, anger (neg). These movements correspond to the following situations:
Difficult not yet possessed but in reach: Hope.
In front of a difficult good not yet possessed and out of reach: Despair.
In front of a difficult evil still distant but avoidable: Courage.
In front of a difficult evil still distant but unavoidable: Fear
Anger responds to a situation, in which a difficult evil, which we were trying to avoid actually comes to inflict us.

Since irascible is in function of concupiscible, joy is not counted twice, but only for concupiscible. But obtaining a
desired difficult good, of course, fills us with joy.

Appetites have an important role in the existence of the living being, because somehow they constitute a natural
breach between cognition (relation between us and the world) and action. Knowledge by itself is unable to push us
into action, to respond to the world. Even if the appetites are based on/conditioned by knowledge, they have from a
certain point if view more vital value than knowledge. Corresponding to the desires of existence and survival, the
appetites have a function for the survival of the living organism. On the basis of knowledge they allow us to see the
world as being useless or not. Roles of the appetites is the physical well-being of the organism.
Our capacities of acting (vegetative, sensorial, rational, cognitive, appetitive) are finite, as we are. That’s why there is
a proper measure for the expenditure of the energies that can be used to perform certain acts on the basis of these
capacities. If someone exceeds the measure proper to our capacities, the acts of such a person will be neither
balanced nor the source of pleasure but full of labor, fatigue, displeasure.

Clarification: When we speak about the acts of the concupiscible/irascible appetite, in our language “passions” is not
the word we want to use to indicate this reality. We use “feelings” and “emotions”. They correspond well to the two
groups of acts: The acts of the concupiscible will be “feelings” (mild kind and accompanied by a low level of bodily
changes). “Emotions” corresponds to the acts of irascible appetite (difficult and accompanied by observable somatic
changes).

Clarification: “I feel hungry” does not work, because I have a perception of the feeling of hunger, therefore I know
that “I am hungry”. I am aware of the hunger, I perceive it, it happens on the level of knowledge. This knowledge
generates a feeling, true, but not the feeling of hunger but rather the feeling of desire or despair or hope. Also: “I feel
pain” turns into “I am in pain”. It is always an awareness of something inflicting you, a reality present in your body and
also the knowledge. This might be accompanied by a feeling.

[Always talk about sensing or perceiving, when you want to say “feel” related to the senses]

Fourteenth Lesson:

RE: Intentional form - tendentional form

The difference here lies mostly in the name: The intentional sensitive expressed species (phantasms, in which
common sense and imagination are always present, accompanied by memory and/or cogitation) constitute the
tendentional form.

External senses are to the sensible world as appetitive cognition is to the expressed sensitive species, which are an
agent or efficient cause.

The relationship between passion and reason

Thomas: Ask yourself if the sensitive appetites are subject to the rational part of the soul  Yes!

3 points:
1st: The dependence of passion on the intellectual soul:
The relation between appetites and cogitation. Sensitive appetite is moved by particular reason (a cogitative power).
Particular reason is always moved by universal reason. Therefore sensitive appetite is moved by universal reason.
2nd: The dependence of appetite on will-power:
Sensitive appetite depends on intellectual appetite. It is a particular character, because the dependence is on the side
of execution. We can want something but what finally decides if we do get it or not is will-power. Once we see
particular goods and have the tendencies towards them, there is an interval between the presentation of the good and
the tendency towards it and the actual execution.
3rd: The dependence of appetite on the intellect:
A formal cause in presentation of the object. The universal reason plays an important role here. The intellectual
reason helps to moderate the movements towards or away from something. But it “rules like a king that is gentle and
enlightened”. There is no “tyranny” or “despotism” involved. Passions often are blind and need the rule of reason. That
is why we often feel a conflict between appetites and reason.

The rational/intellective appetite (will-power); Q82 + 82, I

Thomas: Volition is an act of rational appetite and a special form beyond the terms of sensitive appetite or some form
of knowledge. This points towards the existence of another power: Will. Intellect and will are the two greatest powers
of the rational soul.

Q82: The will

Q83: The freedom of the will

The intellective appetite is not divided into different species, like the sensitive appetite, which is divided into
concupiscible and irascible. The key for division in the sensitive appetite was some element of difficulty. This is due to
the fact that here we deal with particular objects, which are more or less good or evil and more or less easy or difficult
to reach or get away from. In reason and will (rational capacities of the soul) we know that reason has a universal
object (the essence of things). We know that appetites are based on knowledge as a condition of possibility. The will
is based on the universal good as an efficient cause/agent cause/tendentional form. The universalized good is not
seen as something difficult or easy. What puts the rational appetite in act is a universal good. So there is only one
kind of species in the rational appetite.

Relation between will and necessity:

There is a division between natural and appetitive tendencies. Natural tendencies are proper to inanimate beings
without knowledge (but not exclusively, but only from there upwards), while appetitive tendencies (divided into
sensitive and intellectual) pre-suppose some kind of knowledge. It would be a mistake to apply the natural tendencies
exclusively to inanimate beings, because every finite being is always attracted by its appropriate object. Every reality
has a natural tendency towards something. So the difference between natural and appetitive tendencies lies in the
condition of possibility.

If the will, being an appetitive tendency, has a kind of natural tendency as well, is it free?
Is will ever subject to necessity? Does it desire something necessary? If yes: Is the will always subject to necessity?
The nature of the appetitive tendency of will: Does it have a natural tendency? If yes, up to what point?
Thomas: The will is subject to necessity. This happens on four different levels. The different kinds of necessity follow
the four different causes (Necessity means that a thing cannot exist/be in any other way than it is).

Internal necessity (what is it made of?) relates to the constitution of a being. It is linked to the material and formal
cause of a being.
 Material  Humans necessarily need a body
Formal  The three angles of a triangle necessarily have to add up to 180°.
External necessity (where is it from and for what end is it made?) relates to the external conditions of a being. It is
linked to the efficient and final cause.
Final  If I am sick my aim is to get better and it is necessary to take the prescribed
medicine, to stay in bed, to eat some vitamins etc. If I want to go to the USA, it is
necessary that I take a plane or a boat. These are necessities directed to the final cause.
Efficient (also: originating cause)  It is a necessity that is a coercion. If someone or
something can force us to do something. It is an imposed necessity.

In external necessity the influence on the causes is as follows:

The necessity imposed by efficient cause is not compatible with free will.
The necessity imposed by final cause compatible with free will, because it is freely self-imposed, freely chosen by
the particular agent, even if it puts one under a certain necessity that might contradict the freedom of will.

In internal necessity we are entering the field of natural/absolute necessity. In the way like intellect gives the assent
to the first principle of thought (no contradiction etc.), our will in a necessary way gives the assent to the good.
Thomas goes a step further and specifies what we really want in a necessary way: Happiness. It is not a matter of
choice for us. The natural desire is not imposed on us by violence, it is not a coercion. It neither is a necessity coming
from a final cause point of view. It is a necessity of our nature to desire to be happy. It proceeds from the very nature
of what we are. Thomas accepts a limitation on our freedom by the natural necessity to desire happiness. Whatever
we do in our life (in explicit or implicit way, consciously or not) is done for the sake of happiness. The will is
necessitated, has a natural tendency. There is an element making it what it is.
The necessity imposed by material cause
The necessity imposed by formal cause

Fifteenth Lesson:

Is the will always subject to necessity?

Will from the philosophical point of view and theological point of view.
Philosophical (Q82, 2nd article): Relation between different faculties. Will as one of the faculties: always subject to
necessity?
Theological (Q83, 1st article): St. Augustine had authority, esp. in the field of human freedom and divine grace. If we
are free, is God omnipotent? And what is the relationship between God’ grace and the free person?

Philosophical: Will as one of the faculties

The acts of the intellect are taken as an example for the acts of the will. There are some objects of our thinking that
have no necessary connection with the first principles. Those judgments are so-called contingent
prepositions/judgments. The truth of those judgments can be denied without falling in any kind of contradiction with
the truth of the 1st principles, since these principles do not have necessary connection to the 1st principles. Our
intellect ascends to the truth of those principles without necessity.
There are necessary prepositions as well: They are necessarily connected with the truth of the first principles. You
cannot deny the truth of these judgments without contradicting the first principles. If the connection between particular
judgment and the truth of the first principles is obvious, we are obliged to assent to it immediately. If not, we have to
look for evidence through judgment. Whatever judgment has a connection with the truth of the first principles is a
judgment that our intellect has to give assent to in a necessary way.
On to will: There are goods that as such have no connection to happiness. We can perceive ourselves as being happy
without them. In this case there is nothing that might necessitate our will to want them. We might chose them, but not
necessarily so. There are things we do want out of necessity, but we are not necessitated to want them until the
connection between this thing and happiness is established. This link has to be made evident. Only necessary goods
constrain the will. Necessary goods are those, which are necessary on account of the final cause. There is only one
good of the kind that it has the capacity in itself of presenting a necessary link between itself and our final aim: God.
The infinite universal absolute good of god is the only one that can necessitate us in said way. We cannot achieve it in
our life, though, because it is a particular, but absolute good, presenting itself to us. The object of natural desire is so
uncertain/undefined from subjective point of view (objectively speaking it is God, but we don’t have a clear vision or
knowledge of god and desire is based on knowledge), that Thomas becomes content to describe it as good in
general. From this point of view there exists in us an appetite for this kind of a final good in general, a kind of
tendency by which we desire to be completely perfected in goodness. But in what this goodness consists is not
defined for us by nature.

Human person by nature is potentially a good being. If we end up doing wrong, it means that something went wrong in
our society or environment. Responsible for the natural tendency is God. God created us this way and if he supports
us to achieve a certain goal, that’s grace.

Happiness is a tendency towards, not a particular object. Goodness is always linked with happiness, but happiness
has more connotation.

Nothing is able to constrain us to choose it unless it is God himself, the clear vision of God, which we cant achieve in
this life.

Q83, 1st article: Free will

Theological answer to: Is the will always subject to necessity?
Some arguments for the affirmation that we are not free, but that it always God who is acting in and through us. In
scripture (St. Paul) we read: “It is not ourselves that run but God who shows hi mercy. But scripture also says: “In the
beginning God made men and left him in the hands of his own counsel.” There are clear arguments for the existence
of human freedom. If we were not free in our decisions, there would be no point in affirming the reality of things like
commandments, there would be no sense in giving rewards and punishments, there would be no meaning in advices
and encouragements.
For free action one thing is necessary. It is necessary that the one who is acting should be the cause of the action. If I
want to be free I have to be the center from which the will to do something and the actual act originate. It is not
necessary that the one acting would be the only cause of such an act, though. Self-determination is compatible with
divine determination. Ourselves being an efficient cause is compatible with some kind of determination coming from
God. What is this kind of determination? God is the one who created us. We do not come from nowhere, we are
determined, particulate, defined. What we are we are in virtue of God making us this way. God as the efficient cause
of our existence becomes an efficient cause of our freedom. The determination coming from God is the natural
tendency in our will.

We desire happiness by force. Natural desire is so undetermined that it consists in good in general, good as such.
How then can people with their whole power choose evil. People who chose to do evil for the sake of evil, for
personified evil, Satan. If we have the natural tendency towards good and God, why choose to go against God?

Sixteenth Lesson:

Determination in the nature of the rational appetite.

Limitation of human freedom is a natural necessity.

Natural volition: The pursuit of the ultimate end - happiness (“Act of will as nature”)
Deliberate volition: Movement towards goods that lead toward the ultimate end (“Act of will as free will”)

“Whether we are free and what it means to be free” Q83, partly Q82
The very question “Do we have a free will?” is not founding St. Thomas, because he links will with ‘arbitrium’
(decision) not with ‘libertas’. In Thomas language there is no expression equivalent to free will. He speaks of will in
rational appetite, but not of free will. What goes with the word free is ‘arbitrium’  liberum arbitrium = free decision

Human freedom is exercised only in regard to particular goods, goods with an alternative. We do not have freedom in
regards to a supreme good without an alternative. Particular goods are means towards happiness, not happiness
themselves. They are not a final aim. Freedom of will essentially is a freedom of choice/decision. Choice is linked with
menads not with the end (final end).

“Whether natural and deliberate volition are the same or different?”

Are the powers enabling us to do these acts the same or not? Both acts are proper to the same faculty, because it is
under the aspect of good in general, universal good, that rational appetite makes choices in regard to particular
goods. There is a collaboration between the sensual and the rational appetite. The sensual appetite has a its object
particular things which are good and tries to avoid evil. The rational appetite sometimes tends to go against the
decisions of the sensual appetite. The sensitive appetite is more instinctive, responds to judgments of cogitative
power, while will is able to deliberate over sensual appetite in view of a higher aim. That is why we cannot speak
about two different faculties.

The content of the highest good is not determinate, even though it is God, since we never stand face to face with God.

Ultimate good:
Aristotle: happiness  contemplation
God is an example because he is perfect contemplation. There’s no relationship between God and humans. But as an
act of pure and uninterrupted contemplation he is an example
Thomas: God is not an example for happiness. He IS happiness. For humans this happiness consists not so much in
contemplating but in loving God.
“What is the capacity of choice/freedom?”
Some philosophers tried to deny the capacity of freedom of choice. It is only disposition not a real
power/faculty/capacity. Disposition can be natural or acquired. Freedom, if not a power proper to will, can be neither
natural nor acquired disposition, because things that fall under natural disposition are not under our control (like desire
for happiness) and an acquired disposition makes us tend one way and not the other (towards or away from virtues or
vices) while it is proper to freedom to be able to go both ways. Our freedom is not enabled by disposition but by
power/faculty.

Movement of deliberate volition/free will: Occupied with particular goods as a means to an end. Act of free will is a
composed reality: Three elements  deliberation, choice, consent
Deliberation: Looking at the possibilities leading towards the desired end
Choice: Picking one = Giving preference to a particular way to reach the end
Consent: Saying “Yup! It´s what I want!” = Approving the acting in a particular way

Seventeenth Lesson:

Re.: Proper act of will as a free will, not as a natural tendency, is choice. Someone has a free will, because we can
take one thing while refusing the other, we are able to make choices. When considering the nature of free will we
have to consider the nature of choice. Speaking about free will is speaking about choice.

Two components of choice: The acting of the cognitive power and the act of the appetitive power. A choice stands
at the borderline between cognitive and appetitive powers. Choice is when what is required is counseling on the one
part (provided by cognitive powers; a judgment about different things to be preferred) and on the other side you have
an act of appetitive power because the acceptance of the judgments is on the side of the appetites. So is freedom as
such an act of separate power? If not it has to be proper to one of those powers (cognitive and appetitive). Thomas:
Free act is not proper to a separate power. Is the choice as such essentially an act of appetite or cognition?
Judgments appearing in practical reasoning seem to be linked to the positive power, not the appetitive act. Is it
appetitive intellect or intellective appetite? Thomas: The origin of our acting is in choice. The origin of a choice is in
appetition but an appetition which is linked with means and reasoning. Thinking in itself does not move us towards
action. Only a reasoning that is thinking about the means to an end does that. Choice therefore is a combination of
cognition and appetition, because on the cognitive side it involves deliberation. But it also involves an appetitive side,
because it implies giving an assent. Free rational action also must have a motive, an aim. Freedom consists in the
control of the intention of the object towards which we want to go. Therefore a free choice has its element from
intellect and will, but given the fact that the reasoning involved is not about the truth of the things but about the utility
of the things, this kind of deliberation is a secondary in regards to choice and is a deliberation of a particular kind,
looking t the reality from the point of view of its goodness. This deliberation has an implication of appetitive cognition.
Choice as such essentially belongs to the appetition, according to Thomas. Giving an assent, picking up one element,
is an act of will. The reasoning previous to it is done from the particular point of view of looking at reality as good or
useful. Therefore choice, which is a main aspect of our freedom, is essentially an act of will, therefore appetite.

Interdependence of will and intellect:

Thomas: Are the rational powers reason and will operating together? And how do they act together without interfering
with each other?
Intellect moves will and will moves intellect, therefore there is an acting of one on the other. How? According to
Thomas the intellect moves will (is an efficient cause of will) because it specifies the object of choice. From a formal
point of view it presents these objects to the will.
Will moves intellect because it is the will, which forms the last practical judgment, it gives the end to deliberation.
Will and intellect are like two men of which one is blind and one paralyzed, cause intellect without will is like paralytic
who can see but not walk and will without intellect is like a blind man who can walk but not see. Together they work.
The intellect is the eyes that present reality and the will allows us to move towards it.
The will is the efficient cause for the last judgment, for the picking of one of the possibilities presented by the intellect.
Will needs intellect because intellect shows desirability and helps to see end and means. Intellect needs will in order
to formulate the last judgment.
Intellect, imagined apart from the will, can determinate what is good, but only in abstract. Choice is essentially
concerned with something, which we perceive as good or bad for us. Choice is concerned with the means to an end
which is good for me, it is much more concrete. Without the will the intellect could not make its practical judgments,
would never be able to become practical. The will sets the intellect to act. Our thinking as such depends on our will
power in the sense that the operations of our intellectual capacities (unlike for instance the operations of our digestion,
where organism just follows its own way) are subject to our voluntary control. Will moves intellect as far as the
exercise of the act is concerned. Will is responsible how and when we exercise our cognitive faculties. Will needs
intellect because the good we aim at has to be specified. Freedom requires that intellect is determining the will,
because it is on the side of our intellect where you find the specification of the good that is our aim in general.
Intellect helps will in two ways: Showing the aim and showing the means towards the end. Will directs the way in
which we think.

Objection: It is our will that determinates will and will determinates intellect, which came first? If intellect must
determine the will to what we want and the will must determinate the intellect to a judgment, which is first? Solution: It
is one and the same act of will, which determinates the last judgment of the intellect and is determined by the same
judgment. Actually the will is determining itself. The powers are acting simultaneously. Also, we never start nowhere.
All of our powers are naturally determined towards a proper object. Since we are created our powers naturally
respond not to each other but to the reality in front of us. Both will and intellect are naturally determined.

Will and intellect as powers, who have a “say” in choice are interdependent. The intellect is thinking as the will wishes.
It can stop when we wish to stop deliberating. In the end deliberation therefore seems to be determined by will. Will
again is determined by intellect, insofar as the intellect presents the possibilities that are means to the end. This is not
a vicious circle because both powers are independent in their acting, being naturally predisposed towards particular
objects. But also taking the act of choice, what is already determined is the aim. In this determination the intellect
plays a big role (not in choosing happiness but in choosing what the happiness is). In each act of choice it is actually
the will that is determining itself. It is somehow determined by the intellect/the object: Yes and no: Determined in the
way that the object is presented. But the intellect might say “’A’ is the best for you!” but the will says “No way! I’m
gonna pick ‘B’”. So here everything comes from will. I am able to chose against the counsel of the reason. That is my
freedom of choice.
There is no act of choice without the collaboration of intellect and will. This is the condition of the possibility for
choices to occur.
Last question linked with the topic: “What is better: Will or intellect?”
Rational cognition and appetite are the most perfect powers on the power-tree (vegetative, sensitive, rational).
Thomas: In order to answer correctly we have to consider the superiority of one thing over another relatively and
absolutely speaking. Absolutely in this case means that the superior thing is considered in itself, while relatively
means that it is such in regards to something else. Absolutely considered, simply as a faculty in itself, the superiority
is on the side of the intellect. It is the most perfect faculty we have. It becomes clear when we look at the objects of
those faculties. The object of intellect is simpler and more absolute than the object of will. The object of intellect is
more abstract and the level of abstraction is the measure of perfection. The intellect possesses its object as a form is
possessed by matter. The cognitive union consists in the object becoming one with the intellect, an internal union,
while the will is directed outside towards the object. According to Thomas it is better to have something spiritually that
to tend towards an external thing. According to Thomas the absolute superiority of intellect is also seen in the
hierarchy/specification of things (genera/species) is never done on the basis of appetite but cognition, because
rational cognition is foundation of appetite. So the higher power is a cognitive one. Definition of human is “rational
animal” not “desiring animal”. Relatively considered the situation is slightly different: Sometimes will is higher than
intellect. There can be a situation when particular activities of will are superior to the acts of the intellect. When and
how? Particularly in one case: There is a situation in which will is closer attached than intellect to the reality of the
thing to which they are related. In the act of cognition this what is known is in the subject, the knower, according to the
way of the existence of the knowing subject, because the act consists in the fact that the idea of the thing understood
becomes one with the person who understands. Therefore the activity of the intellect consists in the existence of the
concept in the subject. In the act of volition the thing towards we tend is in the subject according to the way of the
existence of the thing itself, not of the willing subject. The object to which the will is inclined is finally achieved as it is.
Thomas: “Good and evil are in the things, truth and error are in the mind.” Considering this, when the things in which
there is good are nobler, more perfect than the soul itself then the will is higher than the intellect. When the thing,
which is good is less perfect than the soul then the intellect is higher than the will. Our love of God is better than the
knowledge of God. Here the will and its movements/acts take priority over the intellect. Relatively because it depends
on towards what will is directed. Our knowledge of the supreme goodness of God is limited, our love for God can be
perfect, however, even if we do not have perfect knowledge of him. Something can be loved more than known. That is
why there always be a margin of potentiality/incompleteness in relation to God, even in the beatific vision. Aristotle:
Happiness consists in contemplation (love of truth, theoretical contemplation of truth). Thomas: Complete fulfillment
has a lot to do with knowing the reality that is loved, but stronger is the act of love itself, which is an act of rational
appetite, of will. Love presupposes knowledge. We cannot love what we do not know. But love can give a certain
feedback to knowledge, because it works as an efficient cause on the cognition. The more we love the more we want
to know. Here is an interdependence of the two realities again.

Eighteenth Lesson:

Passions: (Q 26, 27, 28)

Love, hate, desire, flight, delight, sorrow = Concupiscible
Hope, despair, courage, fear, anger = Irascible

Love:
According to Thomas the most important passion is Love. Everything starts and ends with love.
Whatever we do is done because of an end, because of a good, which is an object of love. Love is a conaturality
with the good, an inclination towards the good. Love is being pleased with the good. According to Thomas love is
also the cause of other passions. Love moves hope, it is an efficient cause or moving cause for hope. We hope for
what we love and what is not yet in our possession. Love causes despair when we cannot have the loved. Love
moves audacity, moves us to obtain what we love. Even if love causes the other passions (each can be caused by
love) no passion can cause love, because love is the first of all the passions.
Love is a willing of a good of another thing or reality. We can love something for our good but we also can love
something, which is a good for someone else. The first kind of love is called love in simple proper terms, or
concupiscible love. The second kind of love is what Thomas calls love of friendship. The concupscible love does
not stop until it arrives at having what it wants. This love is imperfect because the one who loves considers only his or
her good. From that point of view love of friendship is more perfect, because it also considers the good of another
person and therefore the good itself. It is less egoistic.
What is the cause of love (or, Aristotle: What is the cause of friendship)? What do we feel a conaturality with? The
similar or the dissimilar? Thomas: The similar. That is one of the reason why we love ourselves and cannot do
otherwise.
With concupiscible love we want to participate in the form of the loved, we want to have the form in ourselves. The
principle effect of love is unification with the object of our love. There can be two kinds of union. One is the
apprehension, which implies the knowledge of the thing loved. The other is the real union which results in passion of
delight. You can receive the delight simply by reflecting about the thing loved. But love is not satisfied with that. The
proper effect of love is a mutual inhesion between lover and loved. According to Thomas this being one in another can
appear in three ways. The first is through the concupiscible love when the thing we love is present to us on intellect,
senses. The second is proper to the love of friendship, when the good is present in the person of the friend. The third
kind is the mutual love of two persons for each other.
Another effect of love is the fact that it always goes towards something which is suitable for us, to things similar to us.
According to Thomas we cannot but love ourselves.

Hate:
Hate (Q29) is contrary to love and has as its object evil. Hate consists in a certain disorder or dissonance of the
appetite. What is apprehended presents itself to us as something harmful. Love can be a cause of hate because hate
can concern the corruption in gaining the unification with the good we love. From this point of view, if we love
something and there is some impediment to get to it, the thing in the way can become an object of hate. There are
different causes of hate. Hate is towards something that we do not feel a conaturality with. Hate can move hope or
can be the origin of hope, because you can hope that something evil will happen to someone. Hate can be a cause of
despair, when what you hate cannot be avoided. It can cause audacity, when we feel that something we hate can be
avoided. There is a parallel between love and hate. A person always wants the good for himself and can therefore not
wish evil upon himself or hate himself. We can only hate ourselves accidentally, from a certain respect. The one who
loves things, which are evil can hate himself, even when the evil is mistaken with the good from a certain point of
view. Someone can will the evil, but always under the notion of good. Thomas: There is one object of our hate, which
is of a particular nature: The truth which seems to be a good of a particular kind. A truth can become an object of our
hatred from three points of view. In the first place we can hate the truth, when we wish things to be true, which are
not. In the second place we can hate truth when it represents an obstacle for us in coming to the thing, which we love.
You would not want to know the truth about the moral code so you could continue doing wrong. In the third place you
can hate the truth, which is in another intellect. I can hate someone knowing something, when the truth in the intellect
of others becomes an evil for me.

Desire:
(Q30) An object of the passion of love and hate is good and evil from the points of view as being past, present or
future. Desire is an inclination towards a loved thing, which we do not yet have in our possession. It is a movement
towards something in the future. A cause of desire can be love, when whatever we love is absent. Hate can also a
cause desire, when you desire to avoid evil and strive towards something good. Delight can be a cause of desire
indirectly, when someone is already in possession of the thing loved. Desire then comes to rest properly speaking.
Yet what takes the place of desire is delight. It can still be a cause of desire, when you remember something that gave
you a delight. It is not a delight properly, but a memory of a delight. Desire can cause delight, when you finally unite
with the desired. It can cause sorrow, when the desired cannot be achieved/received, when the desire cannot be
fulfilled. Desire can also cause despair, when the desired is known to be unobtainable. Desire can cause fear, when it
looks like the desired might be out of reach. Difference between love and desire: Love concerns good in absolute
terms, good in itself. Desire concerns good not yet in our possession. Love also is the appetite which consists in being
pleased with something but it does not necessarily imply that we want this thing here and now. You say “I like
something”. This does not mean you want it here and now. “I want something” does. Desire has no contrary passion
strictly speaking. Love has hatred, desire has no contrary, because desire is about a good which is not yet obtained, it
is an inclination towards some good. The contrary would be an inclination towards some evil. but sometimes the
passion of flight, of fleeing from something is called desire’s contrary, because it is receding from the evil, whereas
desire is moving towards the good. The contrary of desire might also be fear, because fear concerns a future evil that
has not yet arrived but might very well arrive.
We can have natural and unnatural desires. Natural desires are desires about things proper to us, but for example not
proper for the animals. We can desire to have a car, which animals do not. This is due to our cognitive and creative
capacities. But some desires are nut natural, for example desire for drugs, because they are harmful. Strictly
speaking, desiring the car is also not a natural desire, because it isn’t something fulfilling our natural tendencies (food,
reproduction, knowing the truth). Yet from another point of view it can be called natural because it can be seen by us
as something good that helps our natural capacities.
Our desires can be infinite, because the reason can present an infinite number of goods.

Flight:
Flight (Q32(?)) is an act of concupiscible appetite concerning evil. The causes of flight: It is the passion caused by
hate, because we hate something we perceive as evil. Fight is a certain inclination to flee evil and finally arrive at the
good. This passion is also called aversion sometimes. Desire for something good can cause flight/aversion for its
opposite. Another cause of flight is love. Flight is different from hate. Hate concerns evil in absolute, flight is about the
future. Aversion/flight is not something equal to sorrow. It originates in us when we want to avoid the evil, while sorrow
occurs when something evil is present. Flight has a relationship with sorrow. It occurs before sorrow. Once sorrow
kicked in, it can warn us in future situations and make us flee evils. Flight can cause audacity, when someone wants
to avoid evil. Flight can cause anger, when someone cannot actually flee from the evil not yet present.

Delight:
Delight (Q35) is a passion of concupiscible appetite, relating to the good possessed. It responds to the presence of
some good. Sometimes it is called joy. Difference: Joy belongs more to the reason than to the sensitive appetite. We
can have joy in the intellect but not necessarily in the concupiscible appetite, and vice versa with delight. Delight can
be said about the will and the appetite. Joy is a delight rather proper to the will and the rational faculties, delight rather
to the body and the sensual faculties. Act of delight can be in both appetites, joy only in the rational. Delight is the
passion of rest in the presence of good. It satisfies the appetite. Delight takes place in the presence of good. Properly
speaking the contrary of delight is sorrow. But delight might have as a contrary another delight. You can have delight
in what is a vice and a virtue. You feel delight in evil and in good, which you misjudge. Delight is a final end of desire
but can also cause desire by means of the memory. Delight (joy) can be natural or unnatural with a parallel discourse
to desire. According to Thomas, joy is more perfect and greater then delight, because the objects of joy are immaterial
or spiritual realities. While joy is more perfect, delight can be more intense, because of three reasons. The first is that
sensible realities are more known to us than intelligible realities (Proper object of our senses are the qualities of
corporeal realities). The second reason is that those physical things are the cause of bodily changes and therefore
have a greater impact on the individual. The third reason is that the bodily/sensible delights can give a spontaneous
fulfillment of a certain lack or defect. Sensitive delights do not constitute a discernment of what is mortally good or
bad, cause I can feel a delight in doing something morally bad. Delight is just an indication of our judgment of the
things. When we fell delight, we rightly desired the thing we now possess. The desire for something that brings delight
can be exchanged for a way that might bring sorrow in view of a greater good.

Sorrow:
Sorrow (Q 39) is a passion contrary to delight. It takes place in the presence of some evil or when a good is lost or not
achieved. Two things are required for sorrow, the presence of evil and an apprehension or perception of evil.
Sometimes sorrow is mistaken for pain. There are two realities: Intellective and sensitive. Pain is caused by sense
experience. It can be caused by apprehension, which can be intellectual or by the imagination, which is more a
sorrow, when it is in imagination. Sorrow is a kind of pain, that’s why you sometimes call it a pain (D’uh). Difference
between pain and sorrow: Pain is of the present. We fell pain because something inflicts us know and our senses are
moved by something. Sorrow can be both because of what is present but also because of what is in the past or future.
sorrow can come from pain, since this is the evil of our body. When we experience physical pain we can feel sorrow.
Sometimes we can experience one reality without another. There can be the moment when we feel pain without
sorrow or vice versa, we fell sorrow without pain, and of course both realities can go together. Sorrow is stronger than
pain, because sorrow occurs in the presence of evil, which is understood and apprehended, not something that is only
afflicting our body/senses. Accidentally sorrow can be a cause of delight. When we lost something and we feel sorrow
and the thing lost is regained, then our delight is greater. Causes for sorrow can be love (when the thing loved is
absent) or hate (when the thing hated is present) or desire (when the thing desired is not obtained) and so on. A
sorrow contrary to reason is morally bad. Not everything that is the cause for our sorrow is automatically an evil
reality.

Hope:
This is a passion of the irascible appetite and considers the good not yet obtained. Difference to desire: Hope
concerns a reality that is obtainable. There is a good chance that what you hope for will actually happen. Desire is
towards something good not yet possessed, while hope implies the element of possibility. Desire is simpler. Hope is
about something, which is difficult to obtain. There are two kinds of hope: A hope, where the fulfillment lies in our own
capacities and hope that lies in the capacity of others. The first gives us the power or strength about certain
difficulties. This power or strength can be increased by anything that seems helpful in obtaining the good. Thereby the
hope is also increased. For instance if you really hope to be able to go on that somewhat expensive trip to Australia
and your boss just happens to give you a serious raise, then this increases your power to go on the trip and it also
increases your hope. Experience can cause our hope, because it helps to acquire the facility of doing things with
ease. Certain things, like the object of despair, can become an object of hope. A cause for our hopes can also be
foolishness and inexperience. A lack of experience can also be a cause for hope, because if I didn’t experience
certain realities, I can have hope, because I cannot see the impossibility of things and my judgment is wrong. Another
cause for hope is the temporary factor. Being young is the cause of hope, because the future is still ahead of the
young. So the young see more possibilities. When you get older, time gets narrower and you stop hoping for certain
things. Also, being young you do not have a lot of wrong experiences, you are not badly marked.

Despair:
Despair (Q40) is an act of the irascible appetite and it is the contrary of hope. Despair regard a future good that is
impossible to be obtained or a future evil that is impossible to avoid.

Audacity:
It is an act of the irascible appetite. It has as an object some kind of imminent evil towards which it behaves in an
active aggressive way in order to overcome it and achieve a victory over it. In regard to danger audacity also includes
some kind of insecurity or ignorance towards the evil, so that you sometimes do not evaluate the danger properly and
switch to rabid-audacity-mode when really escaping might be the better idea. A reason for audacity can be bodily
strength or wealth or influence or whatever else appears to give us the power to engage in a certain action against a
danger/an evil. Here you can find a similarity to hope. Even being properly sloshed might count as a valid cause for
audacity.

Fear:
It is an act of the irascible appetite. It regards an evil that is not yet present. Audacity concerns evil that cannot really
harm us or can be overcome with a certain amount of will, strength and energy. Fear concerns evil that is definitely
going to affect us. It is in the apprehension, it is still somewhere in the future, but it is also real and present to us. Fear
does not really concern the evil itself but its difficulty. We fear something because it is too big for us or because we
are convinced that we are too weak. Fear creates flight as a natural reaction to an evil that cannot be overcome. Fear
can be caused by the possible loss of a good that we have. Thomas sees five different kinds of fear, three of which
are:
1) Laziness (I know, I had to laugh, too!): This is fleeing from certain actions because they involve lots of work. This
work can be seen as a sort of evil, so laziness indeed may be seen as some kind of fear.
2) Amazement/Awe: This is the fear of ignorance that we experience when something unknown surrounds us.
3) Anxiety: This is a reaction in response to an unforeseen evil. When there was no time to properly evaluate
possibilities of overcoming the evil and it just sort of hit us, we experience anxiety.
Fear can be dealt with in different ways: Imagination is within our rational and volitional control, so we can change the
images causing the fear. Pre-meditation, thinking the situation over, can help to see a way out. Counsel + deliberation
are means to deal with fear as well.
Effects of fear are contraction, growing emotionally cold, losing appetite or control over bodily functions as well as
losing the capacity to think properly

Anger:
It is an act of the irascible appetite. It is the reaction to a present evil. It has no contrary passion, therefore we only
have five irascible passions. It has no contrary because the contrary would be an act corresponding to the possession
of a good and we already have that with delight/joy. Desire is sort of a pre-supposition for anger. Because when you
feel anger you always feel the desire to get even, to take revenge. This actually is a consolation in anger, because
you can imagine retaliation towards the evil harming you. Therefore anger is also linked with hope. Thomas calls
anger a complex passion. It has two objects: The present harm, which is causing pain and the hope for revenge,
which can be seen as the comforting aspect. While sorrow corresponds to the presence of evil as well, anger is more
violent. Anger can create delight by simply imagining the act of revenge. This delight can calm the anger. Anger can
have different sources: It can come from our imagination, because passions are moved by imagination and everything
that effects imagination can create anger. Memory, for instance, can be a source of anger, if you recall an evil you
suffered some time ago. Our reason can create anger as well, if we think of situations that involve a great deal of
injustice.