Aquinas on Anger, I

This weekend I was busy with emergency vehicle qualification, so I didn't have time to respond at length to an anonymous comment* citing St. Thomas Aquinas on anger. Now Aquinas' discussion of anger is one of the least helpful, most dense things he ever wrote. It requires a Ph.D. in philosophy to understand what he's even talking about. 

Fortunately for you if you were interested in the question, I happen to have a Ph.D. in philosophy. I'm going to spend a few days working through this to try to make it sensible to a contemporary audience.

First, a general comment on reading the Summa Theologiae. The ST is written in a style that was unique to its age. Every single part of it begins not with a statement of doctrine, but with objections to the doctrine. You get the actual doctrine in the middle, and then replies to the objections. People think the Middle Ages was all about stoning heretics, but in fact it gave a lot of attention to considering their objections and replying to them thoughtfully. Objections to the doctrine of faith were centered, as the philosophy kids say today. 

Here we are in the second part of the first part of the ST, the first part of the first part dealing with God. Here we are dealing with God's principal creation, man. This is a proto-psychological reading of how the insides of a man work. Because it predates psychology by a long time, it may be a better or worse understanding than the ones that psychology itself has developed. I tend to be pretty suspicious of psychology as bad philosophy, but it's fair to argue either side here.

So, article one of question 46 asks "if anger is a special passion." What on earth does that mean?

It might be helpful to compare with fear, which also proves to be a "special passion." The contrast is with a "general passion," i.e., a passion that is overriding of everything else. Aquinas notes that all the passions are connected, though, through love: so you can still get an overriding special passion if it is intense enough.

Well, hold on: let's drop back. What is a passion? It is important to note the cognate between "passion" and "passive." In ancient and medieval philosophy, a passion is something that happens to you. You're not in charge of it, it acts upon  you. (The Irish speak this way: "Joy was on me," "Sadness was on me," "Anger came on me.")

Anger is confusing, because it is caused by contraries. You are angry because you hoped for something better, but are confronted by something worse. The arising of contrary emotions in the soul is disruptive (cf. cognitive dissonance theory in current psychology).

Note that Aquinas is defending the prospect that anger is a "special" and not a "general" passion, but in fact isn't really able to come down solidly on the point. "But, in a third way, anger may be called a general passion, inasmuch as it is caused by a concurrence of several passions."

He was a genius and a miracle, Aquinas, but not every single thing he said is going to prove out. We're going to see some more problems as we work through it.

* Hall rules require comments to be signed; the name can be a pen name, but we need to keep track of which person is talking. Fully anonymous comments are not allowed as a consequence.