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Chapter Ten: The Religious-Ethical Study of Emotion
- Georgetown University Press
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CHAPTER TEN The Religious-Ethical Study of Emotion ✦ Thomas Aquinas’s account of the structure of emotion is partly what Robert Roberts (in describing his own account) calls “mentalist.”1 Aquinas construes emotions as embodied states of mind or awareness, and he analyzes them from the perspective of the subjects who experience them. Yet Aquinas analyzes the structure of emotion relative to what he takes to be the structure of reality as such. In this chapter I present a summary of Aquinas’s account, recollecting some of its metaphysical depth and making explicit the way in which, in his view, certain principles or laws at work in the universe and in humans themselves determine, to some extent, the forms that emotions can take, how emotions can and do behave, and how (in formal terms) humans do well to feel emotions. I also highlight some practical ethical benefits of this sort of inquiry, indicating how religious-ethical reflection on our emotions , aided by the study of Aquinas and others, can help us to gain perspective on what is going on within us and around us, and can thereby enhance our freedom to make desirable changes in our lives. ORDER WITHIN THE UNIVERSE Aquinas thinks that everything has a built-in appetite or tendency to be the sort of thing it is and to realize its defining potential in relation to other things,which have their own tendencies.2 Everything has an appetite to unite with itself—with its own actuality. Moreover, everything stands in relation to other things with which it can in principle unite and must unite if it is to actualize its potential and contribute to the actualization of the larger wholes ◆ 241 ◆ of which it is a part. Objects move into and out of various unions, some of which are relatively stable (such as the union of the elements that compose a stone), and some of which are relatively fleeting (such as the union that occurs between a person and a blooming lilac bush, through the person’s sense of smell). Aquinas observes patterns of motion or interaction in nature, and with the science of his day he infers laws that help to account for these patterns. For example, he observes that iron filings are attracted to a magnet.3 They “love” the magnet in that they have properties that allow them to unite with the magnet, which has its own related properties. When the magnet is brought within a certain distance of the filings, the filings “desire” and “seek” the magnet and come to relative “rest” on the magnet. From this and other observations, Aquinas infers that the heavenly bodies have something to do with the relationship between iron and magnets. In effect, he looks to the other planets and the stars, in relation to the earth and the material bodies on the earth, for comprehensive laws that determine how various bodies behave relative to other bodies. Indeed, as a theologian, he looks all the way to the first principle of the universe for the most complete explanation of how things can exist at all, how they operate in relation to other existing things, and what purpose all of this relating serves. When Aquinas turns from the relationship between iron and magnets to the relationship between humans and objects of human experience, he observes similar patterns.4 He observes, for example, that human bodies, like many other entities, are “attracted” to the earth. Human bodies have properties that make them well suited to “seek” the earth and “cling” to its surface. Looking to a higher level of complexity within the human, he observes that human bodies are also “attracted,” as living organisms, to the nutrients and water that are essential for life and proper functioning. Human organisms are capable of “uniting” with these elements through natural processes of nutrition and hydration. Today, we might think of events that occur inside cells as “drawing” certain molecules into the cells, where the molecules can “seek”(or “be sought”) and “unite”(or “be united”) with other molecules in the form of biochemical reactions.5 Looking to an even higher level of complexity, Aquinas observes that hungry humans are drawn toward items of food as if toward magnets.Yet humans enter into relationships with food through the use of sensory powers, by entertaining real or imagined food items as objects of apprehension and appetite. To be sure, humans enter into relationships with food through the use of other powers as well...