75. The Four Principal Passions: Joy, Sadness, Hope, and Fear

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Lecture Notes

Main Topics #

The Four Chief Passions #

• Joy (Gaudium) and Sadness (Tristitia): Completing and final passions that follow upon all other passions
• Hope (Spes) and Fear (Timor): Principles of motion in the genus of motion (imperative motion) toward or away from future goods and evils
• Distinction by temporal reference:
  • Present good → Joy
  • Present evil → Sadness
  • Future good → Hope
  • Future evil → Fear

Why These Four Are Principal #

Joy and Sadness as Chief:

• Chief because they are completing and final simpliciter with respect to all passions
• Follow upon all other passions (as noted in Aristotle’s Ethics, Book II)
• When one achieves a desired end, joy results; when one encounters harm, sadness results
• Example: Anger leads to desire for revenge, which leads to joy when accomplished

Hope and Fear as Chief:

• Not completing simpliciter, but completing in the genus of motion (in the imperative motion toward something)
• Structure of motion toward the good:
  1. Motion begins in love
  2. Proceeds to desire
  3. Comes to completion in hope (for difficult goods)
• Structure of motion away from the bad:
  1. Motion begins in hate
  2. Proceeds to aversion
  3. Ends in fear (for difficult evils)

The Objections and Their Solutions #

Objection 1 - Augustine’s Alternative List:

• Augustine lists desire (cupiditas) instead of hope as one of the four chief passions
• Both desire and hope pertain to future good, but they differ in formality
• Response: Augustine speaks loosely; hope is the more proper principle passion because it formally designates the motion toward difficult future good

Objection 2 - Order of Intention vs. Order of Execution:

• If we follow the order of intention, only joy and sadness (being final) should be chief
• Response: The four are chief according to both the order of intention and the order of completion; joy/sadness are completing simpliciter, while hope/fear are completing in the genus of motion

Objection 3 - Boldness vs. Hope:

• Since boldness is caused by hope, shouldn’t despair and boldness be the chief passions as causes?
• Response: Both despair and boldness imply recession from or approach to evil per accidens (not per se); they cannot be chief because what is per accidens cannot be said to be chief
• Only hope, which directly regards the good, is a principal passion

Reduction of Other Passions to the Four #

• All other passions (anger, boldness, despair, etc.) reduce to these four as their completing principles
• This is why these four are general and principal in nature

Key Arguments #

The Good-Evil Distinction:

• The good is naturally before the bad in the order of desire
• Motion toward the good is per se; motion away from the bad is per accidens
• Therefore, hope (toward difficult good) is naturally prior to despair (away from good)
• And fear (from difficult evil) is naturally prior to boldness (toward difficult evil)

The Present-Future Distinction:

• Passions are ordered according to the difference between present and future
• Motion regards the future; rest is in something present
• This four-fold division exhausts the possibilities and shows why these are chief

Important Definitions #

Amor (Love):

• The agreement or complacence of the appetitive power with the good
• Can exist in natural appetite, sense appetite (in the concupiscible), or rational appetite (in the will)
• The beginning of motion toward the desirable object
• More general than dilectio (chosen love)

Spes (Hope):

• Motion toward a good believed to be difficult but achievable
• Adds to mere desire a certain elevation and striving of the soul
• The principle passion of the irascible power
• Naturally precedes fear because it directly regards the good

Gaudium (Joy):

• Rest in the good that is possessed
• The final completion of all passions tending toward good
• Follows upon hope when the difficult good is achieved

Tristitia (Sadness):

• Rest in the evil that is present
• The final completion of passions tending toward evil
• May involve a certain depression or heaviness of soul

Concupiscible Power:

• The appetitive power that regards the good absolutely (not as difficult)
• Produces the passions of love, desire/aversion, and joy/sadness
• More fundamental; the irascible serves to remove impediments to it

Irascible Power:

• The appetitive power that regards the good or evil as difficult/arduous (arduum)
• Produces the passions of hope, fear, boldness, despair, and anger
• Serves the concupiscible by overcoming obstacles

Examples & Illustrations #

Augustine’s Formulation of Love’s Effects:

• Love seeking what is loved = desire
• Love having what is loved = joy
• Love seeing what is feared (evil) = fear
• Love experiencing the feared evil = sadness
• Berquist notes this is causal predication, not essential

Comedy vs. Tragedy:

• Tragedy moves us to pity (a form of sadness) and fear
• Comedy should move us to joy and hope (not boldness, as one might initially think)
• Berquist developed this insight through studying Aristotle’s Poetics and Terence’s comedies
• The principal forms of fiction correspond to the principal passions
• Terence’s translator noted that comedy is characterized by hope rather than boldness, drawing parallel to St. Paul’s “faith, hope, and charity”

Gaudium et Spes Application:

• The Second Vatican Council’s pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes (The Church in the Modern World) opens: “The joys and hopes and the sorrows and anxieties of people today, especially of those who are poor and afflicted, are also the joys and hopes, the sorrows and anxieties of the disciples of Christ.”
• These precisely mirror the four principal passions: joy, hope (for future good), sadness, and fear/anxiety (for future evil)
• Shows contemporary magisterial application of this medieval philosophical framework

Natural Love Examples:

• Heavy bodies naturally “love” their natural place (center of universe) through weight
• Augustine: “My love is my weight” (Pondus meum amor meus)
• Plants naturally desire what is suitable to their nature (e.g., sunlight, nutrients)
• Birds’ attraction to certain colors suggests natural aesthetic sense related to reproduction

Notable Quotes #

“Augustine’s not as careful as he should be sometimes…excuse him a bit. He’s a busy man.” — Berquist, on Augustine’s looser treatment of the passions

“My love is my weight.” — Augustine, on natural love as the connatural inclination of things

“The joys and hopes and the sorrows and anxieties of people today, especially of those who are poor and afflicted, are also the joys and hopes, the sorrows and anxieties of the disciples of Christ.” — Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes, opening of the pastoral constitution

“Aristotle means what Thomas says he means. That’s my ruling principle.” — Berquist’s hermeneutical principle for interpreting Aristotle

Questions Addressed #

Article 4: Why Are These Four (and Not Others) the Chief Passions?

Question: Why designate joy, sadness, hope, and fear as principal rather than, say, desire, aversion, boldness, and despair?

Resolution:

• Joy and sadness are chief because they are completing and final with respect to all passions, regardless of their object
• Hope and fear are chief because they are completing in the special genus of motion (motion toward or away from difficult future goods/evils)
• All other passions either precede these four (as causes) or follow them (as effects) or reduce to them (as particular instances)
• The distinction follows naturally from the structure of appetitive motion: it begins in love, proceeds through desire, is elevated to hope (for difficult goods), and finds rest in joy; similarly for the bad

Connection to Broader Framework #

The Order of the Passions in Execution (as previously established):

1. Love and hate
2. Desire and aversion
3. Hope and despair (for difficult goods/evils)
4. Fear and boldness
5. Anger
6. Joy and sadness

The four principal passions represent the first (love/hate) and last (joy/sadness) in motion, plus the principle moving passions of the irascible (hope/fear).

Relation to Will and Intellect:

• Love can exist in the will as well as the sense appetite
• The intellectual/rational love (in the will) differs fundamentally from sense love, though both are properly called amor
• This distinction is crucial for understanding the command to “love your neighbor,” which primarily refers to an act of the will, not a feeling