Ecstatic Morality and Sexual Politics: A Catholic and Antitotalitarian Theory of the Body

Chapter 1: Desire and Violence

Chapter One DESIRE AND VIOLENCE But sacrifice is no more. The blood that is spilled, is spilled atrociously, and only atrociously. There was a spirituality of Christ’s wounds. But since then, a wound is just a wound—and the body is nothing but a wound . . . —J. L. Nancy, Corpus Thomas’s analysis of the body rests on a peculiar metaphysical claim, and some might think this claim alone makes any putative restoration absurd; yet, I do not think this ought to be conceded directly. From Aristotle, Aquinas draws the idea that matter desires form (ScG II, c.  and c. ; III, c. , para. ). In his Commentary on the Physics, Aquinas asks if perhaps this is meant metaphorically, as Avicenna insists . Thomas, with Averroes, prefers to think that Aristotle meant it quite literally (I Phys., lect. , n. ). Indeed, for Thomas, prime matter is a principle of desire (De Verit., q. , a. ).1 While Descartes may have transformed nature into dead matter, others of the metaphysical tradition, at least until Schopenhauer, have agreed with Thomas. Schopenhauer scoffs at anyone who would think that iron filings are pulled toward a magnetic body; rather do they desire to be united with that body. Leibniz explains that the monads are centers of desire seeking perception. Augustine in the City of God sees each aspect of nature as tripartite in structure, imitating the Trinity, and especially as centers of desire imitating the Father. This passage impressed Schopenhauer, as did ones he found in Suarez, but he could just as well have applied to Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and Aquinas for a related understanding of desire throughout nature. PAGE 1  ................. 11244$ $CH1 03-18-05 08:27:23 PS  Ecstatic Morality and Sexual Politics What is most interesting is not that Aquinas is a part of this metaphysical tradition but the manner in which he explains the relationship between desire and its object, the relationship between matter and form. In his concept of the concreatum2 —and it is unusual in the period —Thomas argues that matter and form are always already internally related; in other words, that desire is always already united to its object. This is the import behind a common image in Thomas: natural inclinations attain their ends as an arrow attains its inclination from the archer’s act of shooting (ScG III, c. , para. ; c. , para. ). That desire finds satisfaction in its object when attained (ScG III, c. , para. ) is the significance of the concreatum and marks Thomas’s metaphysics with a certain serenity (Gauthier) that is quite exceptional in the metaphysical tradition. The material world with which we are familiar is in its inner structure a host of such concreata. The term is quite dense, for not only does it emphasize that the material world is a created world, it also telegraphs that there is a relationship between the components of material things, of which things the human is a very special kind. As will be seen, that relationship for Thomas is essentially one of desire, order, and peace. Indeed, in a sense to be explained, I show that the relationship is ecstatic. That is, the desire of the parts for one another deposes each in the service of the other. That the concreatum is a reflection of the metaphysical order as such is shown in chapter , and how its ecstatic dynamism shapes human moral experience is the topic of chapter . Why Thomas developed this concept in opposition to Averroes’s description of material composites as congregatum is explained shortly. It is in contrasting Thomas’s concept with the aggregatum of Giles of Rome that I hope to show why one can claim an exceptionalism for Thomas. Christian theologians and later Western philosophy did not follow Aquinas’s lead, and this is seen as early as his student, Giles. It is quite important to note that the metaphysical basis of the concreatum is present in Thomas’s Sentences. Here (II Sent., d. , q. , a. , ad ) Thomas makes a distinction between matter as a principle of desire and the way of being possible for that principle (ratio possibilitatis ). This is important because, although Thomas will use the concreatum in the Summa contra gentiles and link it to his powerful theory of PAGE 2 ................. 11244$ $CH1 03-18-05 08:27:24 PS Desire and Violence  ecstatic being, he does not develop there his quite exceptional theory of concupiscence. The metaphysics of such a...