Thomas Aquinas on the Passions by Robert Miner (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 481 is the Alpha and Omega of creation and of our divinization, and he polarizes the whole economy of salvation, because the first initiative and ultimate finality belong to him. Well founded on Scripture and patristic and medieval sources, this work takes up relevant modern questions, such as the relation between the economic and immanent Trinity; Christocentrism versus theocentrism; the Father's relation to the Holy Spirit; and the concepts of person, substance, and relation. The author's exposition of God the Father in the thought of Bonaventure and Aquinas is superior and original. For that reason alone, Le Pere Alpha et Omega de la vie trinitaire is an indispensable resource for any scholar interested in the theology of God the Father. Dominican House ofStudies Washington, D.C. JOHN BAPTIST Ku, 0.P. Thomas Aquinas on the Passions. By ROBERT MINER. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Pp.328. $90.00 (cloth). ISBN: 978-0-521-897488 . In Thomas Aquinas on the Passions, Robert Miner offers his readers three reasons for studying questions 22 through 48 of the Prima Secundae of the Summa Theologiae. First, reading Thomas on the passions increases our understanding of the historical pedigree of contemporary philosophical reflections on emotions and how these stand in continuity (or discontinuity) with classical traditions. Second, reading Thomas on the passions can help us enter into a constructive conversation with the sciences on the study of human emotions while avoiding "scientistic" reductionism. Finally, Miner adduces a more important reason for taking the time to study Thomas's "treatise" on the passions: It helps us better to understand Thomas's account of the virtues and happiness. Miner's book amply substantiates these reasons, to which this reviewer would like to add yet another reason: Reading Thomas on the passions (with the aid of Miner's study) helps us better understand the role of the passions in our sanctification. The structure of Miner's study cleaves closely to Thomas's questions on the passions in the Summa Theologiae. The study is divided in three parts: the passions in general, the concupiscible passions, and the irascible passions. In the first part of his study, Miner considers the passions in general, their nature, their 482 BOOK REVIEWS relation to sensitive apprehension, and their moral significance. In the Summa, Thomas does not offer a strict definition of passion. Instead the angelic doctor leads his readers to greater conceptual penetration by means of carefully sifting through a range of authorities on the subject. Miner too engages a variety of interlocutors in this section (as he seeks to place Thomas's account of the passions in the context of the philosophical debates of his day and ours). Miner begins his study of Thomas's account of the passions by attending to the sensitive appetite. The passions are acts of the sensitive appetite requiring bodily organs for their operation. Every passion involves some kind of bodily alteration. However, the embodiedness of the passions does not make them exclusively material realities without any relation to the spirit. The subject of the passions is not the body or the soul but the whole person, body and soul. Correlatively, since God and the angels lack bodies, they lack passions. As Miner explains, "Thomas consistently reserves passiones for acts of the sensitive appetite. He uses affectiones (and, less frequently, affectus) for acts that may or may not belong to the sensitive appetite" (35). The joy attributed to God and the angels is a pseudopassion, a simple act of the will that bears a resemblance in its effect to the act of the sensitive appetite. Hence, "it is clear that while Thomas restricts passions, in the proper sense of the term, to acts of the sensitive appetite, he neither overlooks nor denies affections that belong to the rational appetite (pseudopassions). He simply does not label them as passiones" (36). A thread that runs through Miner's study of Thomas on the passions is the ontological priority of good over evil. Given the structure of the appetite, evil is never sought for its own sake as evil. As Miner avers: "Inclination toward a perceived good is the cause of repugnance from evil, but the...