The Logic of Desire: Aquinas on the Emotions by Nicholas Lombardo (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 152 “Object and Intention in Moral Judgment according to St. Thomas Aquinas,” The Thomist 65 (2001): 1-44; and John Michael McDermott, S.J., “Charles Curran’s Moral Theory: Foundational and Sexual Ethics,” Anthropotes 23 (2007) 167225 . Curran totally ignores these and other relevant studies. Moreover, he ignores a very simple passage from St. Thomas’s De Malo, q. 15, a. 1, ad 15. There, St. Thomas replies to an objection posed by a commentator on Aristotle known as the “Old Scholiast” that adultery (sexual union with the tyrant’s wife) is morally permissible when done to save a nation from tyranny, by declaring: “the Commentator is not to be followed in this; one ought not commit adultery for the sake of any good whatsoever.” Curran likewise ignores the following texts in St. Thomas’s Quaestiones Quodlibetales IX, q. 7, a. 2: “There are some [quaedam] actions that have a deformity inseparably attached to them, like fornication, adultery and the like, that can never be done rightly” (Quaedam enim sunt quae habent deformitatem inseperabiliter annexam, ut fornicatio, adulterium, et alia huiusmodi, quae nullo modo bene fieri possunt). In this and other writings Curran surveys a wide range of literature relevant to the subject matter of his work. Unfortunately, he is quite selective in the literature he chooses to survey; he steadfastly ignores important studies criticizing his understanding of the documents of Vatican Council II, Pope John Paul II, and other documents of the ecclesial magisterium. The central arguments he advances to support his interpretations are fundamentally the same arguments he used in the late 1960s and 1970s. It is unfortunate, but he fails to take seriously—or for that matter even to acknowledge the existence of—competent scholarly studies that examine his own views carefully, compare them with the magisterial documents in question, and conclude that he has managed gravely to misinterpret them. WILLIAM MAY John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family Washington, D.C. The Logic of Desire: Aquinas on the Emotions. By NICHOLAS LOMBARDO. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011. Pp. 319. $34.95 (paper). ISBN: 978-0-8132-1797-0. In this work, Fr. Nicholas Lombardo, O.P., offers a detailed and well-argued retrieval of Thomas Aquinas’s understanding of emotion. He accomplishes this through a sustained consideration and critique of the scholarship that has been generated fairly recently concerning this much-neglected area of Thomas’s thought, and he does this in dialogue with the contemporary analytical tradition of philosophy and its attention to the phenomenon of emotion. The virtues of BOOK REVIEWS 153 this work are many: careful attention to the distinctions that Thomas makes throughout the whole of his work concerning man’s affectivity; the interpretation of this doctrine within the context of Thomas’s theological anthropology and ethics; a detailed understanding of the secondary literature concerning this area of Thomas’s thought; appropriate attention to and understanding of the state of the problem concerning emotion in modern philosophy;healthy awareness of the peculiar difficulties that this area of thought presents; careful assessment of Thomas’s doctrine, particularly where it is found to be lacking; and sound judgment concerning its relevance not only to Thomistic studies but to the wider fields of philosophy and theology. Throughout this reconstruction, Lombardo is careful not to rush to a conclusion concerning what corresponds to the phenomenon of emotion in Thomas’s writings, but instead allows his examination of all psychological phenomena that are typically considered to be part of emotion in the modern discussion (as covered in his “Introduction”) to guide him in his discernment of what might correspond to emotion in Thomas’s work. This constitutes the majority of his study (chaps. 1 through 7), with the final two chapters being devoted to an initial evaluation of what the book discovers to be emotion in Thomas’s writings and its application to philosophy and theology. Chapters 1 and 2 attend to those psychological phenomenain Thomas’s works that have commonly been identified with emotion, namely the passiones animae. Lombardo finds the identification of passio with emotion to be misleading, as Thomas’s use of the term...