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  • Thomas Aquinas on the Relation Between Cognition and Emotion
  • Christopher A. Bobier

SCHOLARLY interpretations of Thomas Aquinas on the relation between cognition and emotion are divided along cognitive and noncognitive lines.1 Some scholars think that Thomistic emotions are noncognitive, purely conative impulses: “Aquinas’s account of emotion,” William Lyons writes, is “in terms of impulses or desires, and the accompanying physiological changes and feelings, rather than in terms of cognitive evaluations.” 2 While cognitions cause and sustain emotions, [End Page 219] they are not constituent parts of emotions. I label any reading of Aquinas that denies cognition a constituent part in Thomistic emotions a noncognitive reading. Other scholars, by contrast, argue that Thomistic emotions are, or essentially involve, certain types of cognition. “Since emotions are attitudinal responses of the sensory orexis [i.e., sensory appetite] either to objects intended as simple goods or evils or to objects intended as complex goods or evils,” Mark Drost argues, “the emotions have a cognitive component in them.”3 On this reading, an emotion has three parts: eliciting and sustaining cognition, appetitive movement, and physiological change. I label any reading that affords cognition a constituent role in Thomistic emotions a cognitive reading.

Despite the profound difference between these two readings, little has been done to bring them into conversation with one another.4 This is surprising because the debate has ramifications [End Page 220] for our understanding of how Thomistic emotions relate to reason, rationality, and morality. Robert C. Roberts, for instance, argues that Aquinas’s position is that emotions do not include a cognitive component—they are noncognitive impulses—and that this in turn entails that Aquinas cannot do justice to the rationality of emotions. 5 Maria Carl, in turn, argues that Thomistic emotions are intrinsically cognitive and that Roberts’s criticism is therefore misguided.6 The cognitive versus noncognitive debate also has ramifications for our understanding of the applicability of Thomistic emotions to present-day issues. For instance, Giuseppe Butera argues that Aquinas’s philosophical psychology can “serve as a theoretical framework” for cognitive therapy.7 A problem, Butera notes, is that, “whereas CT makes a sharp distinction between emotions and their eliciting cognitions, APP [Aquinas’s philosophical psychology] does not.”8 If, however, Aquinas does distinguish cognitions from emotions, then Butera’s point about the difference between CT and APP is not apt.

The aim of this article is thus twofold. First, I present the case for endorsing both a cognitive and a noncognitive reading of Aquinas’s account of emotion, highlighting the merits of each position. My goal is to bring these competing interpretations into discussion with one another, something that has been largely neglected in recent studies. Second, I argue in favor of a noncognitive reading, according to which Thomistic emotions are caused by but distinct from eliciting cognitions. [End Page 221]

I. The Noncognitive and Cognitive Readings

Aquinas identifies emotions as moved-responses of the sensory appetite (De Verit., q. 26, a. 3; STh I-II, q. 22).9 These responses have both a passive and an active component. Emotions are passive because they need to be actualized: the sensory appetite needs to be presented with a particular good or evil object in order for the emotion to occur. To be clear, that which actualizes an emotion is not a material object. Aquinas recognizes that while Attila experiences fear upon seeing a wolf, Henrietta may experience delight. What actualizes a movement of Attila’s and Henrietta’s sensory appetite is their sensory cognition of the wolf as good or threatening. Aquinas refers to these evaluative cognitions as “intentions.” Intentions are evaluative judgments that enable one to cognize something relative to one’s interests (STh I, q. 78, a. 4; I–II, q. 22, a. 2, ad 3; De Verit., q. 26, a. 4). A sheep judges that the wolf is dangerous and to be feared, not only on account of the wolf’s perceptual qualities (e.g., color), but most essentially on account of the evaluative judgment that the wolf is dangerous to it, which judgment is reached by way of the perceptual qualities (STh I, q. 78, a. 4). Once formed...

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