Aquinas on Anger, IV

This has been a deeply profitable, honorable and honest discussion which is almost entirely unlike the kind of useless talk we have so much of. Good for you. 

Article 3 gets us even into deeper Yoda territory: anger leads to hate, we are warned specifically in the second objection. It is a kind of desire, a longing of the sort that often leads to damnation. It mixes with sorrow, which is not itself bad -- it can sometimes be a very worthy emotion -- but how brightly that contrasts with the discussion of anger's beauty. 

Aquinas takes a bold strategy here: he simply makes a division. "On the contrary, The concupiscible is distinct from the irascible faculty. If, therefore, anger were in the concupiscible power, the irascible would not take its name from it."

That is to say, anger is too pure to be a kind of desire because anger is its own thing. And that's probably right. It ought to be, I guess, since it's included in the doctrine of the largest faith in human history. It's been true enough that we've accepted that argument for nigh a thousand years.

He actually gives more than a bald assertion. It's rooted in Aristotelian psychology, which you can give as much weight or not as you prefer.

"I answer that, As stated above (I-II:23:1), the passions of the irascible part differ from the passions of the concupiscible faculty, in that the objects of the concupiscible passions are good and evil absolutely considered, whereas the objects of the irascible passions are good and evil in a certain elevation or arduousness. Now it has been stated (Article 2) that anger regards two objects: viz. the vengeance that it seeks; and the person on whom it seeks vengeance; and in respect of both, anger requires a certain arduousness: for the movement of anger does not arise, unless there be some magnitude about both these objects; since "we make no ado about things that are naught or very minute," as the Philosopher observes (Rhet. ii, 2). It is therefore evident that anger is not in the concupiscible, but in the irascible faculty."

That may be hard to follow. Here's a helpful analogy, I hope: I said something very similar in the comments to the post on 1883. Yellowstone is like desire, what Aquinas is calling the 'concupiscible passions.' Yellowstone is about a man who loves his home, and wants to maintain it. Ultimately it means a lot to him, but in the end -- as people keep pointing out to him -- if he loses it won't be that bad. He'd just have to sell the land for a lot of money, and could go do something very similar somewhere else like Oklahoma.

1883 is high art. It's the best thing I've seen in years. 'The irascible passions are good and evil in a certain elevation or arduousness,' that's how Aquinas puts it. It's not just whether you cowboy here or there; it's life and death, good and evil, love and hate, the very highest things we know how to want as human beings. For Aquinas, that's so different from things like mere sexual passion as to be categorically different. It's literally not the same thing at all.