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1 See Giuseppe Butera, "On Reason's Control of the Passions in Aquinas's Theory of Temperance," Mediaeval Studies 68 (2006): 133-60. More precisely, Butera is speaking only of passions for the virtue of temperance, but given the texts that he cites, it seems reasonable to extrapolate his conclusion to all virtuous passions. 193 The Thomist 77 (2013): 193-227 VIRTUOUS DELIBERATION AND THE PASSIONS STEVEN J. JENSEN University of St. Thomas Houston, Texas I N HIS 2006 ARTICLE “On Reason’s Control of the Passions in Aquinas’s Theory of Temperance” Giuseppe Butera argues that, according to Aquinas, the virtuous person feels no passions or emotions until he judges what is best to be done, at which point his passions follow the lead of his judgment.1 The only exceptions—a concession on account of original sin—are mild passions, passions so mild that they have no impact upon the person’s deliberations. The idea is that passions get in the way of clearheaded thinking, so that any passions preceding the judgment of reason have the potential to cloud that judgment. Only when the judgment has been finally made can the virtuous passions then follow, obedient to the judgment of reason. This interpretation portrays Aquinas in a rather stoic light. Butera does give some role to the passions within virtue (contrary to the Stoics, or at least some interpretations thereof), but this role is minimal. The passions never lead the way, but simply follow reason, and reason itself operates virtuously only when undisturbed by the emotions, deliberating with a dry intellectual calculation. Passions are useful only to help us execute the judgments we have already reached apart from passion. Virtuous STEVEN J. JENSEN 194 passions are the obedient slaves of reason; in no way do they help reason to reach its judgment. We might be averse to this interpretation on two counts. First, we might desire a less slavish role for the passions; they should not always have to be completely subservient to reason. Virtuous passions should sometimes be spontaneous emotions, moving of their own accord, even apart from a judgment of reason. Second, we might desire a less dry and cold deliberation. Our deliberations should sometimes be moved, it seems, by virtuous emotions. Butera presents virtuous emotions as always being moved by deliberation. Does the reverse never happened? Realistically, it seems that a person’s virtuous desires might help him to reach a judgment about what is to be done. These two criticisms of Butera’s interpretation of Aquinas might well be combined. Or, more likely, they might be confused. Someone might criticize Butera’s view without having clearly separated these two elements: the desire for spontaneous emotions and the desire for a kind of affective deliberation. Arguing for one of these points might well be confused with arguing for the other. In fact, Butera focuses almost exclusively on rejecting the spontaneity of the emotions. He tries to argue that virtuous passions are not spontaneous; they always follow upon some judgment of reason. His argument does not immediately concern the character of deliberation. Rather, the dry character of deliberation is a consequence of his view, for if virtuous passions do not arise until judgment is reached, then the deliberation leading up to judgment can have no virtuous passions. I wish to separate the two points, criticizing Butera on the latter but not the former. Butera is correct in his main assertion: virtuous passions do indeed always follow upon the judgment of reason; they do not arise spontaneously, apart from reason. At the same time, I wish to argue that virtuous deliberations are not always dry deliberations; sometimes our passions assist us in VIRTUOUS DELIBERATION AND THE PASSIONS 195 2 Judith Barad, in "Aquinas on the Role of Emotion in Moral Judgment and Activity," The Thomist 55 (1991): 397-414, maintains the same position, but she provides no detailed account of it and no details of how it is to be reconciled with the texts of Aquinas. The account of Elisabeth Uffenheimer-Lippens (“Rationalized Passion and Passionate Rationality: Thomas Aquinas on the Relation between Reason and the Passions," Review Of Metaphysics 56 [2003]: 525-58), which she develops...

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