Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Acknowledgments
- A note on the texts
- Introduction
- Part 1 THE PASSIONS IN GENERAL
- Part 2 PARTICULAR PASSIONS: THE CONCUPISCIBLE PASSIONS
- Part 3 PARTICULAR PASSIONS: THE IRASCIBLE PASSIONS
- 9 Hope and despair
- 10 Fear
- 11 Daring
- 12 Anger
- Epilogue: The passions, the virtues, and happiness
- Bibliography
- Index
10 - Fear
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Acknowledgments
- A note on the texts
- Introduction
- Part 1 THE PASSIONS IN GENERAL
- Part 2 PARTICULAR PASSIONS: THE CONCUPISCIBLE PASSIONS
- Part 3 PARTICULAR PASSIONS: THE IRASCIBLE PASSIONS
- 9 Hope and despair
- 10 Fear
- 11 Daring
- 12 Anger
- Epilogue: The passions, the virtues, and happiness
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
After sorrow, fear is most evidently a passion in the strict sense. In explaining fear's status as a passion, Aquinas provides a useful review of what makes something a passion. Distinguishing between natural and unnatural fear, he provides a fine-grained analysis of the emotional phenomena that constitute the species of fear (§10.1). Every passion has its own formal object. But only in the treatment of fear does Aquinas devote a separate Question to the passion's object. Identifying the precise conditions under which a thing inspires fear, rather than sorrow, daring, or anger, is a delicate task, requiring careful attention to both time and modality (§10.2). Clarity about fear's formal object does not for Aquinas exhaust the question about its cause. The proof is that he proceeds to discuss the cause of fear in a separate Question that contains only two Articles (§10.3). What does fear do to a person? In approaching this question, Aquinas attends not only to the formal element of fear, but also to the corresponding somatic effects, such as knees that knock, lips that quiver, bowels that loosen. By disturbing the reason, fear clouds the judgment and can produce panic. It would seem that fear's effect is typically negative. Nonetheless, Aquinas ends the consideration on a more positive note, not only by using Aristotle and Augustine to temper the Stoics, but also by citing the Pauline exhortation to work out your salvation with fear and trembling (§10.4).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Thomas Aquinas on the PassionsA Study of Summa Theologiae, 1a2ae 22–48, pp. 231 - 251Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009