11. Love's Effects: Union, Indwelling, and Ecstasy

Subscribe in Podcast App | Download Transcript

Lecture Notes

Main Topics #

The First Three Effects of Love #

Thomas Aquinas treats the first three effects of love as closely related and all concerning the relationship between lover and beloved itself:

1. Union (unio) - Love creates a binding of lover and beloved
2. Mutual Indwelling (adhesio) - The lover dwells in the beloved and vice versa
3. Ecstasy (ecstasis) - Love causes one to stand outside oneself

Union: Knowledge vs. Love #

Thomas argues that love unites more thoroughly than knowledge:

• Knowledge unites through likeness: the known is present to the knower through its likeness (the idea of the thing)
• Love unites through the thing itself: by loving what is bad, one becomes united with badness in a way that merely knowing badness does not
• Example: Knowing badness does not make one bad; loving what is bad truly unites one with it
• This is why the three theological virtues are ordered: faith gives knowledge of the end, hope tends toward it, but charity already unites us with the goal itself
• Charity remains even in heaven (perfected), while faith is replaced by beatific vision and hope by possession

Mutual Indwelling (adhesio) #

The Latin term adhesio means “gluing together” or mutual staying within.

On the knowing power:

• The loved is in the lover insofar as the loved remains in the lover’s knowledge/memory
• The lover is in the loved insofar as the lover seeks to penetrate the depths and details of the beloved (not merely superficial knowledge)
• Example: If I love Shakespeare’s plays, I enter into all the details and particular parts

On the desiring power (the heart):

• The loved is in the lover through affection—through conformity and agreement of heart with the object
• The lover is in the loved in two ways:
  • In the love of wanting: the lover seeks intimate possession of the beloved
  • In the love of friendship: the lover considers the beloved’s good or harm as his own; he is in the beloved insofar as he wills good to the friend as to himself
• In friendship specifically: friends wish the same things, sorrow and rejoice together (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics IX; Rhetoric II)

Critical point: Mutual indwelling does not require reciprocal love. Even if I love someone and they do not love me back, I still keep them in my mind and seek to know them deeply; this effect exists even in unrequited love.

Objections Against Union and Their Resolution #

Objection 1 (Containment Problem): How can two be in each other when containment requires that if one thing is in another, that thing cannot also contain it? (Glass-water analogy)

Resolution: Following Aristotle’s eight senses of in from Physics IV: things can be in each other in different ways. The genus is in the species (as part of the definition) while the species is in the genus (as a particular kind). Similarly, the lover’s mind can be in the beloved’s mind, but bodies cannot interpenetrate each other. Love, being spiritual/immaterial like the mind, operates differently from material containment.

Objection 2 (Reason’s Role): To get inside something and divide what is joined requires reason (the ability to distinguish), not love.

Resolution: Knowledge causes love, so if reason can penetrate and distinguish within things, then love—as an effect of knowledge—can follow. The analogy: the needle penetrates the cloth; the thread follows the needle into the cloth.

Objection 3 (Reciprocity Problem): If the lover is in the loved through love, then vice versa the loved would be in the lover, making their union itself the cause of love. This would mean the lover is always loved in return, which is false.

Resolution: This concern is addressed by distinguishing the love of wanting from the love of friendship, which produce different degrees and natures of mutual indwelling.

Ecstasy: Standing Outside Oneself #

Etymology: From Greek ekstasis = to stand outside of oneself

On the knowing power: Ecstasy can occur by:

• Being lifted above natural reason/sense (as in mystical experience like St. Paul’s vision of the third heaven)
• Being pressed below natural reason (as in madness or fury)

On the desiring power: The heart goes outside itself toward the beloved

Critical distinction between types of love:

• Love of wanting (amor concupiscentiae): Produces ecstasy only in a qualified way (secundum quid). The lover goes outside himself to obtain the object but ultimately brings it back to himself for his own satisfaction. Example: I am in ecstasy for candy insofar as I go to stores to find it, but this is ordered to bringing it back to my stomach.

• Love of friendship/wishing well (amor amicitiae): Produces ecstasy simply (simpliciter), without qualification. The lover goes entirely outside himself for the beloved’s own sake, not for personal gain. He considers the beloved’s good and harm as his own. Example: Parents who so identify with their children’s good that they seem to have “gone out of themselves” into the child.

Role of meditation: Love produces ecstasy on the knowing side by way of disposition—intense meditation on the beloved withdraws attention from other things, disposing one to be lifted into a higher knowledge.

Important caveat: Even when one lays down his life for a friend (seemingly the ultimate ecstasy), one is actually choosing the greater good for oneself—virtue, courage, noble action—over mere physical survival. One does not love the friend more than oneself in ultimate reality, but rather goes outside oneself for the friend’s sake while still choosing what is truly better.

Objections Against Ecstasy and Their Resolution #

Objection 1: Not all love produces alienation of mind; sometimes lovers possess full mental powers. Therefore ecstasy is not an effect of love.

Resolution: Only the love of friendship produces ecstasy simply. The love of wanting produces it in a qualified way only. Not every love alienates the mind completely.

Objection 2: The lover seeks to draw the beloved to himself, not to go outside himself to the beloved.

Resolution: This applies only to the love of wanting. The love of friendship goes entirely outside itself toward the beloved.

Objection 3: If ecstasy means going outside oneself, it follows one loves the beloved more than oneself, which is false.

Resolution: One can go outside oneself for the beloved’s sake while still choosing the greater good for oneself (virtue, noble deed). Even Christ in dying for us chose the better thing for himself—the redemption of the world and supreme virtue.

Important Definitions #

Unio (Union) #

The binding together of lover and beloved through love, which can exist formally (through affection of the heart) even in absence, and as an efficient effect (through the pursuit of presence and real union).

Adhesio (Mutual Indwelling) #

The mutual “gluing together” or staying within of lover and beloved. The lover dwells in the beloved through knowledge and affection; the beloved dwells in the lover through being kept in memory and heart. Latin adhesio from adhærere (to adhere, stick).

Ecstasis (Ecstasy) #

From Greek: to stand outside of oneself. The movement of the lover outside himself, which can occur on the knowing power (elevation above natural reason or depression below it) or on the desiring power (the heart going outside itself toward the beloved).

Simpliciter vs. Secundum Quid #

• Simpliciter = simply, without qualification, completely, absolutely
• Secundum quid = in a qualified way, in some respect, limitedly, imperfectly

Used to distinguish how the love of friendship produces ecstasy simpliciter while the love of wanting produces ecstasy only secundum quid.

Amor Concupiscentiae (Love of Wanting) #

Love directed toward something for the good it will bring to the lover; the lover seeks to possess the object for personal benefit or satisfaction.

Amor Amicitiae (Love of Friendship/Wishing Well) #

Love directed toward another for their own sake; the lover wills good to the beloved not for personal gain but for the beloved’s own good. The beloved is loved as “another self.”

Examples & Illustrations #

Shakespeare Examples #

Antony and Cleopatra:

• “Hence, ever then, my heart is in thy breast”
• “Can I go forward when my heart is here?”
• Illustrates how love keeps the beloved dwelling in the lover’s heart, making separation a “tortured body” being torn apart

Romeo and Juliet:

• “I have lost myself. I am not here. This is not Romeo”
• Illustrates ecstasy in the love of wanting
• Capulet’s speech on his daughter’s apparent death: “My soul, and not my child”
• Shows how parents go outside themselves, identifying with their children’s good as their own; parents feel their child’s harm as harm to themselves

The Merchant of Venice:

• “I made her half myself” / “half of myself”
• If one loves another as half of oneself, they become part of one’s own being

Measure for Measure:

• “Heart in heart”
• The conciseness of expressing mutual indwelling

As You Like It:

• Character warns against excessive ecstasy: “Oh love be moderate, allay the ecstasy… In measure reign thy joy”
• References the Greek saying “Know thyself” and “Nothing too much”
• Shows the danger of ecstasy overwhelming reason

Hamlet:

• Polonius concludes Hamlet is mad from love with Ophelia
• “This is the very ecstasy of love whose violent property foredoes itself”
• Describes ecstasy as a passion that “afflicts our natures” and leads to “desperate undertakings”

Two Gentlemen of Verona:

• “Love thou knowest is full of jealousy”
• One lover laments his “foolish rival” whose possessions attract the beloved’s father

All’s Well That Ends Well:

• “I grow to you… our parting is a tortured body”
• Separation from the beloved is like being torn apart on the rack

The Tempest:

• Ferdinand: “If a virgin… your affection not gone forth [outside yourself toward another], I’ll make you Queen of Naples”
• Shows that affection being “gone forth” means having gone out of oneself toward another

Much Ado About Nothing:

• Leontes: “In mine that I was proud on, mine so much… that I myself was to myself, not mine”
• The parent so identifies with the child’s good that he is “not his own,” having gone entirely outside himself for the child’s sake

References to Literary Tradition #

Berquist notes that Shakespeare’s expression of mutual indwelling and ecstasy parallels Thomas Aquinas’s philosophical treatment—both the “greatest poet” and the “greatest theologian” use the language of being “rooted within” one another.

Washington Irving on Shakespeare: Irving tells his nephew that it is “idle for the rest of us to claim any merit for our writings” compared to Shakespeare “and maybe one or two others.” This illustrates both the recognition of Shakespeare’s supremacy and authentic humility in recognizing one’s own lesser achievement.

Notable Quotes #

“Love makes as an efficient cause… moves me to seek to be with you, or to be with the candy.” - Berquist on love as a moving force

“Lovers desire from two to become one. But because from this it would happen that either both or one of them would be corrupted, they seek a union which is suitable and fitting… staying together and talking together.” - Aristophanes (via Aristotle), cited by Thomas on the nature of lovers’ union

“Knowledge is perfected through this, that the known is united to the knower by its likeness, right? But love brings about that the thing itself which is love is united in some way to the lover.” - Thomas Aquinas on why love unites more than knowledge

“By knowing what badness is, it doesn’t really make me a bad man, does it? But by loving what is bad, right? That really unites me with the bad.” - Berquist’s illustration of love’s unifying power

“He who remains in charity remains in God and God in him.” - 1 John 4:16, cited as scriptural confirmation of mutual indwelling

“Can I go forward when my heart is here? Turn back, thou earth.” - Shakespeare’s illustration of love’s tendency: the heart dwells where the beloved is

“My spirit is thine, the better part of me.” - Shakespeare on the union of spirits in love

“It is a property of friends to wish the same things, and to sorrow and rejoice in the same.” - Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics IX; Rhetoric II), cited by Thomas on friendship

“This is the very ecstasy of love whose violent property foredoes itself and leads the will to desperate undertakings.” - Shakespeare (Hamlet) on ecstasy as a destructive passion

“I have lost myself. I am not here. This is not Romeo.” - Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet) on ecstasy in love

“My soul, and not my child.” - Shakespeare on parental love: identifying with the child as one’s own soul

“Greater love than this hath no man than that he lay down his life for his friends.” - John 15:13, cited in context of the ultimate ecstasy of the love of friendship

“Where your treasure is, there your heart shall be.” - Matthew 6:21, illustrating where the beloved dwells in the lover’s affection

Questions Addressed #

Does Union Require Physical Presence? #

Resolution: No. Love creates union of affection (adhesio) even in the beloved’s absence. Physical union may be sought as an effect and sign of love, but union itself exists formally through affection and knowledge, which are not dependent on physical proximity.

How Can Two Be in Each Other? #

Resolution: Following Aristotle’s eight senses of in from Physics IV: things can contain each other in different ways. The genus is in the species (as part of the definition) while the species is in the genus (as a particular kind contained within). Similarly, the lover is in the beloved through knowledge and affection (the lover penetrates and dwells mentally/spiritually in the beloved), while the beloved is in the lover through being kept in the lover’s mind and heart.

Why Is Love More Unifying Than Knowledge? #

Resolution: Knowledge unites through likeness or representation—the known thing is present to the knower through its likeness/idea. Love unites through the thing itself—by loving what is bad, one becomes truly united with badness in a way that merely knowing about badness does not achieve. Love effects a real joining, not merely representational presence.

How Does Ecstasy Occur If the Lover Seeks to Draw the Beloved to Himself? #

Resolution: This applies only to the love of wanting, which produces ecstasy in a qualified sense—the lover goes outside himself to get the object but brings it back inward. The love of friendship produces ecstasy simply because the lover goes entirely outside himself for the beloved’s own sake, not to bring them back for personal benefit.

Can One Love Another More Than Oneself? #

Resolution: Not in ultimate reality. Even when one dies for a friend, one chooses the greater good for oneself—virtue, courage, the noble deed—over mere bodily survival. However, in the love of friendship one does go entirely outside oneself (ecstasy) for the beloved’s sake, ordering one’s will entirely to the beloved’s good while still maintaining proper love of self.

Is Ecstasy Compatible with Reason? #

Resolution: Yes, ecstasy in the love of friendship is compatible with reason. On the knowing power, ecstasy can be either elevation above natural reason (mystical experience) or depression below it (madness), but these are different from ecstasy on the desiring power. The heart can go outside itself toward the beloved without the mind being alienated or going mad.