CONGRESSO TOMISTA INTERNAZIONALE

L’UMANESIMO CRISTIANO NEL III MILLENNIO:

PROSPETTIVA DI TOMMASO D’AQUINO
ROMA, 21-25 settembre 2003
Pontificia Accademia di San Tommaso – Società Internazionale Tommaso d’Aquino

St. Thomas Aquinas on Whether the

Human Soul Can Have Passions

Dr. Sister Mary Veronica Sabelli, RSM

Roma (Italia)

There has been much interest in recent decades in St. Thomas Aquinas’ account of the Passion of the human soul.
Much writing on this topic, however, isolates certain statements of St. Thomas apart from their larger context and
measures his account against modern philosophical or psychological theory of emotion. A contextualized analysis,
however, reveals that Aquinas does not take it for granted that the soul can even have passions. His exploration of how
it is that we can even speak of passions of the soul situates his theory within the larger context of his metaphysics and
philosophy of nature; more specifically, within the framework of act and potency, form and matter, soul and body. It is
not the soul in itself but the soul as part of the composite that has passions, not directly, but accidentally. Moreover,
following from the distinction between the essence of the soul and its powers, the soul has passions accidentally in two
ways: as the form of the body and as the body’s mover.

In recent decades, a great deal of interest has arisen in St. Thomas

Aquinas’s account of the passions of the human soul. There is a tendency in
much of the writing on this topic, however, to isolate certain statements made
by St. Thomas, mostly from the Summa Theologiae, without relating them either
to the larger context of the work in which they appear, or to the sources from
which they were derived and to St. Thomas’s original synthesis of the source
material. The tendency is rather to measure St. Thomas’s account against
modern and contemporary philosophical and, even more, psychological
theories, theories often not of passion, but rather of emotion. For many reasons,
however, viewing St. Thomas’s doctrine on the passions of the human soul in
this way can easily lead to misinterpretation of the very content of what he is
saying, let alone its significance and implications. 1

1Cf., for example, Mark P. Drost, “Intentionality in Aquinas’s Theory of Emotions,”

International Philosophical Quarterly 31 (December 1991): 449-460; Robert C. Roberts,
“Thomas Aquinas on the Morality of Emotions,” History of Philosophy Quarterly, 9(July
1992): 287-305.
© Copyright 2003 INSTITUTO UNIVERSITARIO VIRTUAL SANTO TOMÁS
Fundación Balmesiana – Universitat Abat Oliba CEU
 M. V. SABELLI, St. Thomas Aquinas on Whether the Human Soul Can Have Passions

One example of this is the shift in terminology from “passion” to

“emotion” just noted. Even etymologically, “emotion” indicates an outward
motion proceeding from a subject, while “passion” indicates receptivity or
undergoing a change. This difference in signification is not inconsequential. As
we shall see, since the notion of passion is linked with those of potency and
receptivity, it is firmly situated within Aquinas’s metaphysics and philosophy
of nature. This broader context is absolutely indispensable for a correct
understanding of what St. Thomas is saying about the passions. That larger
context, however, is rarely investigated in this connection.

In this necessarily brief investigation, we will attempt to situate the

passions within the notions of act and potency, form and matter, soul and body.
We will see that St. Thomas does not take for granted that the human soul can
have passions at all. On the contrary, the first question asked by Aquinas in the
beginning of the section of the Summa Theologiae2 that has come to be known as
the “Treatise on the Passions” 3 is precisely whether there is passion in the soul.
It is exactly this point that locates St. Thomas’s doctrine on the passions within
the notions of act and potency, form and matter, soul and body.

Focusing our inquiry primarily on the Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 22, a. 1

and the Quaestiones disputatae de Veritate4 q. 26, we recall first that Aquinas has
already established in the Prima Pars of the Summa Theologiae that the soul is not
a body 5 and that the soul is not composed of form and matter but rather is form
only; it is precisely the form of the body.6 Thus the soul itself has no matter.
Rather, “the soul, by its very essence is an act,”7 because it is a form, and “form
as such is act, and that which is purely potential cannot be part of an act, since
potentiality is repugnant to actuality as being its opposite.”8 Potency, by

2 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Leonine edition, ed. Petri Carmello (Turin
and Rome: Marietti, 1950); English translation: St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica,
5 Vols., trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benzinger
Brothers, 1948; reprint, Westminster, Maryland: Christian Classics, 1981). Hereafter
abbreviated as ST.
3 ST I-II, qq. 22-48.

4 St. Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae, Vol. 1, Quaestiones disputatae de Veritate,

ed. Fr. Raymond Spiazzi, O.P. (Turin and Rome: Marietti, 1953). Quotations in English
translation are taken from St. Thomas Aquinas, Truth, 3 Vols., trans. Robert W.
Mulligan, S.J., James V. McGlynn, S.J., and Robert W. Schmidt, S.J. (Chicago: Henry
Regnery, 1952-1954). Hereafter abbreviated as DV.
5 Cf. ST I, q. 75, a. 1.

6 Cf. ST I, q. 75, a. 5.

7 “Nam anima secundum suam essentiam est actus.” ST, I, q. 77, a. 1 c.

8 “...quia forma, inquantum forma, est actus; id autem quod est in potentia repugnet

actui, utpote contra actum divisa.” ST I, q. 75, a. 5c.

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contrast, pertains to matter as the substrate that undergoes change:

“potentiality is receptive of act.”9 Thus matter in its most primitive state - prime
matter - is identified with pure potency, possibility, and receptivity. Form is
that which is received by matter such that matter passes from possibility to
actuality, and it is that which makes the composite to be what it is.

The significance of the question of whether there is any passion at all in

the soul thus becomes apparent: if matter, as potency and possibility, is passive
and receptive to form, while form in relation to matter is identified with act and
causes matter to pass from possibility to actuality, how can the soul, which is a
form and is not composed of both form and matter, have passivity or passion?
Can we even speak of “passions of the soul?”

In order to understand St. Thomas’s response to this question, we must

first understand what the term “passion” meant in the time and place in which
Aquinas lived and worked. The term had a very much broader range of
signification in St. Thomas’s time than it does in ours. A 20th century author
illustrated well the range of signification of the term:

...The mediaevals...were well aware that passio derives from the verb pati, meaning “to
suffer” – not in the particular sense of bearing pain, but in the general sense of
suffering, bearing, supporting, or receiving anything at all. It should not be surprising,
then, to find mediaeval philosophers referring to the transcendentals, to predicates in
sentences, to conclusions in a science, and to perfections in general as passions; for the
one, the true, and the good are what being “suffers,” a subject in a sentence “suffers” or
bears its predicate, the conclusions of a science are what the subject matter of that
science “suffers,” and things “suffer” (i.e. receive, bear, support) their perfections.10

In his response, St. Thomas distinguishes three senses in which passion

or passivity can be understood. Since the third is included under the second as
its subcategory, we will, for our purposes, concentrate on the first and second
meanings. The first and most general meaning signifies the circumstance in
which something is received while nothing else is taken away. In this sense, St.
Thomas designates air being lighted up, or the human intellect attaining
understanding, as passions. 11 Explaining this further, he acknowledges that, “It
belongs to matter to be passive in such a way as to lose something and to be
transmuted: hence this happens only in those things that are composed of
matter and form. But,” he continues, “passivity, as implying mere reception,
need not be in matter, but can be in anything that is in potentiality. Now,

9 “Potentia...sit receptiva actus...” ST I, q. 75, a. 5, ad 1.

10 Juvenal Lalor, O.F.M., “The Passions,” in Summa Theologica (New York: Benziger
Brothers, 1947), 3:3220.
11 Cf. ST I-II, q. 22, a. 1c.

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 M. V. SABELLI, St. Thomas Aquinas on Whether the Human Soul Can Have Passions

though the soul is not composed of matter and form, yet it has something of
potentiality, in respect of which it is competent to receive or to be passive,
according as the act of understanding is a kind of passion, as stated in De anima
iii. 4.”12 This is consistent with what Aquinas demonstrates in the Summa
Theologiae I, q. 75, that is, that the human soul, the essence of which is rational,
is incorruptible13 and subsistent.14 St. Thomas says that when the notion of
passion or passivity is used in the sense of simple reception without a
corresponding loss of something else, it refers more properly to being perfected
than to undergoing passion, and does not imply corruption in any way.15

The reason for this is that change implies generation and corruption, that
is, it involves losing one form and gaining a contrary form. However, as St.
Thomas states,

“There can be no contrariety in the intellectual soul; for it is a receiving subject

according to the manner of its being, and those things which it receives are without
contrariety. Thus, the notions even of contraries are not themselves contrary, since
contraries belong to the same science. Therefore it is impossible for the intellectual soul
to be corruptible.16

Anthony Kenny elaborates the meaning of this passage in discussing St.

Thomas’s doctrine of the intellect:

The intellect...is incapable of decay....It is not that it is incapable of taking on a contrary

form...: it can take on contrary forms simultaneously, while continuing to exist
unchanged in its own nature. Health may be incompatible with sickness, but
knowledge of health is compatible with knowledge of sickness, and indeed according

12 “...pati, secundum quod est cum abiectione et transmutatione, proprium est

materiae: unde non invenitur nisi in compositis ex materia et forma. Sed pati prout
importat receptionem solam, non est necessarium quod sit materiae, sed potest esse
cuiuscumque existentis in potentia. Anima, autem, etsi non sit composita ex materia et
forma, habet tamen aliquid potentialitatis, secundum quam convenit sibi recipere et
pati, secundum quod intelligere pati est, ut dicitur in III de Anima.” ST I-II, q. 22, a. 1,
ad 1.
13 ST I, q. 75, a. 6.

14 ST I, q. 75, a. 2.

15 Cf. ST, I-II, q. 22, a. 1c.

16 “In anima autem intellectiva non potest esse aliqua contrarietas. Recipit enim

secundum modum sui esse: ea vero quae in ipsa recipiuntur, sunt absque
contrarietate; quia etiam rationes contrariorum in intellectu non sunt contrariae, sed
est una scientia contrariorum. Impossibile est ergo quod anima intellectiva sit
corruptibilis.” ST I, q. 75, a. 6c.

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to a familiar Aristotelian slogan, it is the very same thing. Eadem est scientia oppositorum:
to know what it is to be F is eo ipso to know what it is not to be F.17

It is well to recall that St. Thomas’s metaphysics the notion of potency is

not always identified with matter. In certain contexts, form can be identified as
potency. As is well known, Aquinas maintains that, beyond the composition of
matter and form, there is another composition that is even more fundamental,
that is, the composition of being (esse) and essence in every existing thing. This
composition extends beyond things composed of matter and form to purely
spiritual substances, which are form only, unmixed with matter. In such
creatures, form alone constitutes the essence of the entity. Insofar as form alone
constitutes the essence of such beings (entes), and essence stands as potency to
the act of being (actus essendi), form here stands as potency in relation to being
(esse). St. Thomas’s metaphysics, then, already acknowledges a kind of
potentiality in created pure forms, completely apart from matter. He states,

“...In intellectual substances, there is composition of actuality and potentiality, not,

indeed, of matter and form, but of form and participated being. Therefore some say
that they are composed of that whereby they are and that which they are; for being itself is
that by which a thing is.”18

Although the human soul is ordained to be the form of a body, it is still a

subsistent, intellectual form, and therefore what is stated here can be applied to
the intellectual soul of man. In fact, it can be said that the human soul as form
stands as potency to the act of being and as act in relation to the body (matter).

The differences among the modes of receptivity of a body, a sensitive

soul, and an intellectual soul can be seen in the different ways in which they are
receptive of forms. When a body receives a form, it does so according to its own
mode of being, that is, materially. Thus, for example, when a material thing
receives the form of white, it is altered in the sense that it becomes white.
Contrasting this with the mode of reception found in the external senses, which
are powers of the soul that make use of a corporeal organ, we see that when for
example, the sense of sight receives the form of white by means of the eye, the
eye receives it according to the mode of being of the soul, that is, immaterially,
but, because sight makes use of a bodily organ, what is received is still subject
to matter’s individuating conditions of here and now. Thus, the eye, in

17 Anthony Kenny, Aquinas on Mind (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), 142-
143.
18 “In substantiis vero intellectualibus est compositio ex actu et potentia: non quidem

ex materia et forma, sed ex forma et esse participato. Unde a quibusdam dicuntur

componi ex quo est et quod est: ipsum enim esse est quo aliquid est.” ST I, q. 75, a. 5, ad
4.

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 M. V. SABELLI, St. Thomas Aquinas on Whether the Human Soul Can Have Passions

receiving the form of white, does not itself become white (thus the form of
white is received immaterially) and in this sense does not undergo a bodily
alteration, but white is perceived, yet only as existing in a particular object
present to the perceiver at a particular point in time. Contrasting this once again
with the way that the intellect receives forms, we see that the intellect receives
the form of white immaterially and absolutely for all time; thus the intellect
does not become white as a material thing becomes white; nor does it perceive
whiteness in some object that is before it here and now; rather it understands
whiteness itself, precisely as a universal form.19

According to St. Thomas, passion in the second sense, that is, the proper
and more narrow sense, is only found where not only a new form is acquired,
but also a contrary form is lost, resulting in a corporeal alteration, and this takes
place only in matter. In other words, then, passion properly so called is found
only where there is a corporeal transmutation. Thus it is also clear from the
foregoing that passion understood in this way can be in the soul only
accidentally, because the soul has no matter. It is the composite as a whole that
is subject to transmutation; the soul undergoes passion only insofar as it is part
of the composite.

That the soul should be able to undergo passion because of its union
with the body in the composite raises another question: even within the
composite, how can passions, understood in the strict sense, which cannot be in
the soul considered by itself, “bleed” so to speak from the body into the soul?
One 20th century author suggests the following:

Because of this corporeal alteration which has repercussions in the activity of the
faculties of the soul, one must say that the human composite as a whole undergoes
passion.20

Here we find mention of a point that is central to the problem of

passivity within the rational soul, in that the corporeal alteration is said to have
repercussions in the faculties of the soul. St. Thomas has established in ST I, q.
77, a. 1 that there is a real distinction between the essence of the soul and the
faculties of the soul, precisely because the soul is essentially form and the first
act of the body; it is not a potency to another act. The faculties of the soul,
however, are precisely potencies, that is, potencies to the various operations, or

19 Cf. ST I, q. 75, a. 6c.

20 “A cause de l’altération corporelle qui se répercute dans l’activité des facultés de
l’âme, on doit dire que le composé humain tout entier subit passion” H.D. Noble, O.P.,
Les passions dans la vie morale, Vol. 1, Psychologie des passions (Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1931),
20 (the English is my translation).

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second acts, of which the soul is capable. St. Thomas concludes that this
principle of the second act cannot be the essence of the soul directly:

for, as a form, the soul is not an act ordained to a further act; rather, it is the ultimate
term of generation. Therefore, for it to be in potentiality to another act does not belong
to it according to its essence as a form, but according to its power....Therefore, it follows
that the essence of the soul is not its power. For nothing is potentiality by reason of an
act, as act.21

The powers or faculties of the soul are the potencies to the further acts
which flow from its essence. The powers of the soul have the distinction of
having within them both something that is moved and something that moves.
They can, that is, be moved by an object and in turn move other powers of the
soul as well as the body to operation.

With this understanding of the distinction of essence and power in the

soul, we are in a position to deepen our understanding of the way in which the
soul undergoes passion indirectly insofar as it is united to the body in the
composite. We turn to De Veritate, q. 26, where St. Thomas discusses this aspect
of passion in the soul in relation to the distinction between the essence and the
power of the soul, the union of the soul with the body, and the possibility of
motion in the soul: “Now the soul is united to the body in two respects: (1) as a
form, inasmuch as it gives existence to the body, vivifying it; (2) as a mover,
inasmuch as it exercises its operations through the body.”22 In other words,
considered in its essence, the soul is united to the body as form; considered as it
executes the operation to which it is ordained, the soul considered in its powers
is united to the body as its mover. St. Thomas continues, “And in both respects
the soul suffers indirectly but differently. For anything that is composed of
matter and form suffers by reason of its matter just as it acts by reason of its
form.”23 Aquinas therefore concludes that insofar as the soul is united to the
body as form, “the passion begins with the matter and in a ceratin sense

21 “Non enim, inquantum est forma, est actus ordinatus ad ulteriorem actum, sed est
ultimus terminus generationis. Unde quod sit in potentia adhuc ad alium actum, noc
non competit di secundum suam essentiam, inquantum est forma; sed secundum
suam potentiam....Relinquitur ergo quod essentia animae non est eius potentia. Nihil
enim est in potentia secundum actum, inquantum est actus.” ST I, q. 77, a. 1c.
22 “Unitur autem corpori dupliciter: Uno modo ut forma, in quantum dat esse corpori,

vivificans ipsum; alio modo ut motor, in quantum per corpus suas operationes exercet.”
DV q. 26, a. 2c.
23 “Et utroque modo anima patitur per accidens, sed diversimode. Nam id quod est

compositum ex materia et forma, sicut agit ratione formae, ita patitur ratione
materiae...” Ibid.

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 M. V. SABELLI, St. Thomas Aquinas on Whether the Human Soul Can Have Passions

indirectly belongs to the form.”24 But insofar as the soul is united with the body
as its mover, “the passion of the patient [in this case, the body] is derived from
the agent [in this case, the soul], because passion is the effect of action.”25 From
this, St. Thomas derives a twofold manner in which the soul suffers as a result
of its union with the body:

A passion of the body is therefore attributed to the soul indirectly in two ways:
In such a way that the passion begins with the body and ends in the soul
inasmuch as it is united to the body as its form;...[and] in such a way that the
passion begins with the soul inasmuch as it is the mover of the body, and ends
in the body...26

In the reply to the third objection in DV, q. 26, a. 2, St. Thomas offers
another, rather elegant, explanation of the union of soul and body that arises
from the very act of being of the composite thing, and which also offers another
possibility of resolving the difficulty of how passions can be in the soul
accidentally by reason of its union with the body. The substance of the objection
is that the passions, as alterations, are qualities that depend upon matter and,
therefore, upon the body. But accidental forms or qualities that are in the body
directly are not said to be in the soul indirectly. St. Thomas replies, “Although
the quality of a body by no means belongs to the soul, yet the act of being of the
composite is common to soul and body, and likewise the operation. The passion
of the body therefore overflows into the soul indirectly.”27

It is evident, then, that St. Thomas’s account of the passions cannot be

understood adequately apart from the context of his metaphysics and
philosophy of nature. Of course, what Aquinas is saying must be understood
before his account is set in comparison or contrast to any other theory of the
passions or of human emotion.

24 “...passio incipit a materia , et quodammodo per accidens pertinet ad formam...” Ibid.

25 “...passio patientis derivatur ab agente, eo quod passio est effectus actionis.” Ibid.
26 “Dupliciter ergo passio corporis attribuitur animae per accidens. Uno modo ita quod

passio incipiat a corpore et terminetur in anima, secundum quod unitur corpori ut

forma;...Alio modo ita quod incipiat ab anima, in quantum est coporis motor, et
terminetur in corpus...” Ibid.
27 “...quamvis qualitas coporis animae nullo modo conveniat, tamen esse coniuncti est

commune animae et corpori, et similiter operatio: unde passio corporis per accidens
redundat in animam.” DV q. 26, a. 2, ad 3.

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