Principles of nature

This is a commentary on the Principles of Nature by Thomas Aquinas.

Since some things can be, although they are not, and some things now are; those which can be and are not are said to be potency, but those which already exist are said to be in act. But existence is twofold: one is essential existence or the substantial existence of a thing, for example man exists, and this is existence simpliciter. The other is accidental existence, for example man is white, and this is existence secundum quid. (¶1)

Thomas uses terms differently from how I do. As I said, it is impossible that “some things can be, although they are not”, since for non-being to be would be a contradiction. But some things can appear which do not, while others already appear. Some things, moreover, cannot appear, although they are – which is to say, they are unimaginable, but conceivable.

So, according to these differences, I will define my own terms as follows:

• intelligible, imaginable, apparent: act
• intelligible, imaginable, unapparent: potency
• intelligible, unimaginable: form
• unintelligible, imaginable, apparent: privation
• unintelligible, imaginable, unapparent: disordered image
• unintelligible, unimaginable: nothingness

According to my usage, forms are neither in potency nor in act, since potency and act only divide material things. The imagination is also capable of imagining appearances which cannot be understood, and I have no better name for those than “disordered images”, although this is new.

I will omit all paragraphs from this commentary which I believe can easily be interpreted according to my usage of the terms, and with which I would agree after this were done. Those are the majority, so this will be a short commentary, compared to the treatise itself.

In this way matter differs from subject because the subject is that which does not have existence by reason of something which comes to it, rather it has complete existence of itself (per se); just as man does not have existence through whiteness. But matter has existence by reason of what comes to it because, of itself, it has incomplete existence. Hence, simply speaking, the form gives existence to matter; the accident, however, does not give existence to the subject, rather the subject gives existence to the accident; although sometimes the one is used for the other, namely matter for subject and conversely. (¶4)

Again, existence here seems to mean appearance. But complete existence here seems to mean intelligible appearance, such as actual things – substances and accidents – have. In my terminology, I avoid using such imaginative language as of “giving” or “receiving” existence, as though existence is a ball which is passed around.

Besides this caveat about completeness, all unqualified instances of existence and being in this treatise seem to refer to appearance, as before.

From this it is plain, therefore, that there are three principles of nature: matter, form and privation. But these are not sufficient for generation. What is in potency cannot reduce itself to act; for example, the bronze which is in potency to being a statue cannot cause itself to be a statue, rather it needs an agent in order that the form of the statue might pass from potency to act. Neither can the form draw itself from potency to act. I mean the form of the thing generated which we say is the term of generation, because the form exists only in that which has been made to be. However, what is made is in the state of becoming as long as the thing is coming to be. Therefore it is necessary that besides the matter and form there be some principle which acts. This is called the efficient, moving or agent cause, or that whence the principle of motion is. Also, because, as Aristotle says in the second book of the Metaphysics, everything which acts acts only by intending something, it is necessary that there be some fourth thing, namely, that which is intended by the agent; and this is called the end. (¶18)

While the former parts of the work were properly demonstrated, the principles that “what is in potency cannot reduce itself to act”, and that “neither can the form draw itself from potency to act”, are simply stated and not proved. In lieu of proof, we get the statue example; but there is no reason to take this particular case as representative of all reality.

As I said in my metaphysics, I believe that efficient causes are implied by the understanding of apparent things because “something movable must be referred to the motions of [a moving] object in order that their particular arrangement in time and space may be understood”. I still believe that this is the proper concept of efficient causes, and I must regard Thomas’s explanation of them as merely conjectural. However, I will also define the agent as the efficient cause of a motion.

I have also not changed my definition of final causes from my metaphysics, which I mention because I am not sure whether Thomas’s definition of them is substantially different. Given a motion, however, I grant that its final cause may be said to be “intended by” its agent.

Element, on the other hand, is applied properly only to the causes of which the thing is composed, which are properly the materials. Moreover, it is not said of just any material cause, but of that one of which a thing is primarily composed; for example we do not say that the members of the body are the elements of man, because the members also are composed of other things; rather, we say that earth and water are the elements, because these are not composed of other bodies, but natural bodies are primarily composed of them. (¶24)

I quote this only because I have made a point to quote all the parts I disagree with, thereby agreeing with the other parts by implication, as long as they are interpreted according to my definitions. Obviously, I do not believe that earth and water “are not composed of other bodies”.

The primary elements, at the time of writing, seem to me to be the so-called “elementary particles”, as understood within the so-called “standard model of particle physics”; but I don’t really know or care what they are.

But, because every cause, as cause, is naturally prior to that which it causes, notice that we say a thing is prior in two ways, as Aristotle says in book XVI of the History of Animals. (¶31)

This one is just strange. The History of Animals does not have a “book XVI”, and at any rate, why would it be the source for a claim about priority? The Categories defines four senses of priority; of those, he seems to have meant the first two, which best apply to a cause and its effect.

The rest of the treatise seems right, and I have nothing to say about it.

Metaphysical commentaries

This is a list of my commentaries on various philosophical texts, which I wrote as a means to develop the opinions from my fundamental metaphysics.

While they will also be listed in the full list of posts, in this list I will write a short summary of what I do in each of them, so that my development is easier to track.

• Fundamental metaphysics: Not a commentary. Defines being, non-being, matter, form, nothingness, final cause, formal cause, material cause, efficient cause.

• Hume’s relations: Comments on Hume’s Treatise, §1.1.5. Defines relation, contrary opposition, contradictory opposition, difference in kind, difference in number.

• Substance and accident: Comments on Hume’s Treatise, §1.1.6. Defines substance and accident.

• Hume’s required medium: Comments on Hume’s Enquiry, §4. Elaborates on a priori reasoning about apparent motions.

• Principles of nature: Comments on Thomas Aquinas’s De principiis naturæ. Explicitly defines act, potency, agent, privation, and element; gives new explanations of form and nothingness, which had already been defined. Implicitly defines generation, corruption, cause, principle, absolute necessity, conditional necessity, per se cause, per accidens cause, simple cause, composed cause.

• Descartes’s confusions: Comments on the Discourse on the Method. Criticizes a misleading, ambiguous concept of “existence”.

Incorporeal class differences

With actual hereditary power largely mitigated, it seems that when we now speak of persons being “aristocratic” or “proletarian”, in a looser sense, we mean to say it of their incorporeal differentiæ.

• According to his knowledge, someone is called aristocratic for having much education and learning, and proletarian for having nothing of the sort.

• According to his taste, someone is called aristocratic for having a preference for the ‘fine arts’, ‘high’ fashion, ‘refined’ cuisine, and so on; or proletarian for lacking a taste for these things, and enjoying what the common man enjoys.

• According to his habits, or attitudes, someone is called aristocratic insofar as he considers other people to be ‘beneath’ him, and adheres to certain rules of etiquette; and someone is called proletarian insofar as he is easily approachable by anyone, and adheres to a different and more common conduct.

The aristocratic and proletarian tendencies in these three respects are all distinct, and separable, of course. Someone may have an aristocratic education but proletarian tastes, and his tastes in different things may be differently refined.

This division seems to exhaust all applications of these words to human personalities, which lends more credence to the original division, of the incorporeal human differentiæ, being sound.

Incorporeal human differences

Since form is universal, all differences between particulars are material. And in human beings, all differences between persons are caused by their bodily nature.

But it is not true that all differences between human beings are themselves bodily. Although the fact is caused entirely by their having different bodies, human beings do nevertheless have different minds.

The differences between their bodies are well-known and, well, visible – height, weight, shape, color, sex, and so on. But I have never seen an enumeration of the differences between their minds, which is why I came up with this one.

I believe that they are exactly these three: knowledge, tastes, and habits; all of which are taken in a broad sense. They are explained as follows:

• Knowledge here includes not only universal knowledge, but also different memories and sense experiences.

• Tastes are likes and dislikes of any kind, generally; which is to say, desires.

• Habits, or attitudes, are any enduring dispositions to act in a certain way. When they are good, they are called virtues, and when they are bad, vices.

They may be divided according to the personal differences in human actions, taken generally:

• Human beings seek different ends with their actions, because, having their bodies in different locations, they have knowledge or awareness of different things.

• Human beings assign different priorities to their ends, which is because their bodies have different objective affinities, or tastes.

• Human beings are disposed to seek their ends through different means, which differences constitute their habits.

Since this division is clearly exhaustive, I believe that my enumeration was sound.

Conspiracy theories

It is difficult to argue against this kind of paranoia, which seems endemic to human psychology. Couldn’t those people really be communists or terrorists or witches in disguise? How can you be sure?

— Gary Lachman, The Quest for Hermes Trismegistus (quote added 2023-08-19)

I summarize the conclusions of a lovely conversation with my best friend, Kate Nelson, almost six months ago, about conspiracy theories.

0. Contents

1. The neutral sense
2. Insufficiency of the neutral sense
3. The negative sense
4. Notes

1. The neutral sense

First, we had some problems with the meaning of the term, conspiracy theory.

This was because, at first, I was understanding conspiracy theories in what I will now call the neutral sense:

• the neutral sense: a conspiracy theory is a theory that explains some facts by supposing that there was a secret agreement between some people; this secret agreement is called the conspiracy.

I did not even think twice about defining conspiracy theories in this way. This definition is merely an expansion of what the words seem to mean: “conspiracy theories are theories about conspiracies”. There is nothing mysterious about it.

I call this the neutral sense because it is not intrinsically good or evil. That is, there is nothing intrinsically bad about supposing that there was a secret agreement between some people at some time; it all depends upon how plausible the supposition is, and for what reasons it was made.

The neutral sense is, therefore, sometimes adopted by conspiracy theorists themselves; many have no shame in calling themselves conspiracy theorists, or claiming to believe conspiracy theories. I know some of them myself. As Olavo de Carvalho used to say, the alternative to the Conspiracy Theory of a strange event is the Pure Coincidence Theory, and sometimes the latter is much less reasonable. Murray Rothbard was also quite happy to speak of “conspiracy theory”, or “conspiracy analysis”, as only one among other kinds of theories and analyses, which may be varyingly acceptable depending on their aptness to the particular event explained.

The neutral sense certainly applies, of course, to many famous historical conspiracy theories, such as the various conspiracy theories about the Jews, the Jesuits, the Bilderbergers, the Rockefellers, and the Rothschilds. All of these theories were certainly about conspiracies within (or between) these groups; and no major conspiracy theories seem to have lacked conspiracies, so that the neutral sense at least correctly identifies a necessary condition of them.

2. Insufficiency of the neutral sense

Kate was talking about conspiracy theories. She said that there had been a rapid increase in the spread of conspiracy theories, and that this was a problem.

So I told her that, supposing that there has been such an increase – I often grant such empirical propositions as suppositions, because I don’t follow news – I was not sure that it was a problem. What’s wrong with people believing in more conspiracies? Did she perhaps mean false conspiracy theories? But then the problem would be with their falsehood – or was there something especially bad about the falsehood of claims about conspiracies? I did not know what she meant.

Then she told me her criticisms of conspiracy theories, and sure enough, they simply do not apply to the neutral sense of the term. She clearly meant something else. Her criticisms were as follows:

• First, conspiracy theories are false, at least in the way she meant it. (She actually only meant this as a clarification, since she thought that their being harmful was something quite apart from that.)

• Second, conspiracy theories always teach – by definition, she thought – that everyone else is “brainwashed”, or “out to get you”, which leads to various unhealthy behaviors, and so, in turn, to broken families and relationships.

• Third, if “political” conspiracy theories spread widely, they may lead significant percentages of the voting population to be completely out of touch with the reality of politics, and to instead believe in strange, unsubstantiated entities.

• Fourth, conspiracy theories typically postulate that particular, often vulnerable, groups, are involved in conspiracies – ethnic groups, religious groups, immigrants from a particular country, etc. – which is, of course, bad, for reasons that need not be said.

Kate’s criticisms clearly applied to various conspiracy theories that she had in mind. As examples, she mentioned the flat Earth, Pizzagate, QAnon, and certain anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. Her criticisms did seem to apply to the ones that she was thinking of, and it did seem to her that it was because of something they had in common, which she actually mentioned quite immediately, but I took a while to understand.

I took a while to understand because I clung to the neutral sense of the term, as I had explained it. As I told her, most conspiracy theories, in the neutral sense, are about select, secretive groups, such as could easily have conspired – the Freemasons, the Bilderbergers, and so on. They wouldn’t generally teach you to think that some average person is “brainwashed” or “in on it”, and even the anti-Semitic theories do not tend to include every single Jew in the world. As such, they change little about your view of reality and of other people you meet. Certainly, conspiracy theories, in the neutral sense, were not as harmful as she thought conspiracy theories were.

Kate had a lot of patience explaining her meaning to me, and despite my misgivings about her usage, I paid close attention. Her explanation is what gives me what I now define as the negative sense of the term.

3. The negative sense

I call it the negative sense, of course, because it means something intrinsically bad. It is as follows:

• the negative sense: a conspiracy theory is a theory that meets both of these conditions:

• (a) the conspiracy postulate: the theory explains some facts by supposing that there was a secret agreement between some people; this secret agreement is called the conspiracy. (i.e., it is a conspiracy theory in the neutral sense)

• (b) the widespread lies postulate: the theory discredits all reports that oppose it by supposing that there are many widespread lies about it; lies which were, at least initially, spread intentionally, as a means to further the interests of the conspiracy. This supposition may be called the widespread lies postulate.

As Kate had put it, all conspiracy theories, in the negative sense, posit that some group is intentionally manipulating people into believing something that is wrong for some particular nefarious purpose – and they are obviously insane.

As such, they push a cultish sort of logic. Anything that appears to be evidence against the theory is planted by “them,” and you’re a fool and a sheep if you believe it, whereas any tea-leaf of “evidence” in favor of the theory is proof, and you’re a fool and a sheep if you don’t accept it.[1]

This is all because of the widespread lies postulate, which they make in addition to conspiracy theories in the neutral sense. Since the widespread lies postulate leads to an irrational way to think, it intrinsically tends to making people “out of touch with reality”, justifying her third criticism, and to some extent the first – which she did not, at any rate, mean as a criticism, but as an additional part of the definition. The second criticism follows straightforwardly from the supposition that lies are widespread, and the fourth criticism is made possible by it.

We then discussed the possibility that some philosophical theories, without necessarily making the conspiracy postulate, might still make something like the widespread lies postulate – I was thinking about certain Marxist ideas, whereby opposing theories to the Marxist are thought to be mere apologia for the ruling class. Kate seemed to think that, even if they do make that postulate, they are not as dangerous, since their claims are generally not directly about empirically observable facts, and it is more dangerous to think irrationally about those. Such philosophical theories are, instead, about the more abstract explanations of those facts. So it is really the conjunction of the postulates that makes conspiracy theories, in the negative sense, so dangerous.

4. Notes

[1] Although, for editorial purposes, I think it works better to paraphrase than to directly quote, this paragraph, and the preceding one, retain much of Kate’s original wording in her text messages, out of respect for her style. Because of this, I have kept her usage of the word “evidence” as a concrete noun, although I have forbidden myself from using that word in that way.

Hume’s required medium

Instead of continuing my commentary of Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature,[1] I have decided to turn instead to his Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, beginning at section 4.

Due to the foreignness of Hume’s terminology to my own, I believe that if I were to write in-depth comments about his first fifteen paragraphs, I should then spend much time parsing his words, only to then find that his meaning, if interpreted with due charity, is something quite plain and undeniable, and at any rate irrelevant to my project. So I skip to the question at the end of ¶16, which I find curious enough to answer, although, at any rate, the answer was implicit in what I said before.[2]

In the context of our inferring, from some new object’s looking like bread, that it will nourish us, Hume asks:

These two propositions are far from being the same, I have found that such an object has always been attended with such an effect, and I foresee, that other objects, which are, in appearance, similar, will be attended with similar effects. I shall allow, if you please, that the one proposition may justly be inferred from the other: I know in fact, that it always is inferred. But if you insist, that the inference is made by a chain of reasoning, I desire you to produce that reasoning. The connexion between these propositions is not intuitive. There is required a medium, which may enable the mind to draw such an inference, if indeed it be drawn by reasoning and argument. What that medium is, I must confess, passes my comprehension; and it is incumbent on those to produce it, who assert, that it really exists, and is the origin of all our conclusions concerning matter of fact.

OK. Since he asked, I will produce the reasoning. But first, since I quoted from Hume – even for such a short passage – I must make some clarifications to dispel difficulties with his wording:

• First, of course, what I will produce is not the way in which everyone always derives one proposition from the other, but the way in which it may be done validly, which might happen much less often than invalidly.

• Second, I have no pretension that the reasoning between these two propositions “is the origin of all our conclusions concerning matter of fact” – I have no idea why Hume thought that it should be.

• Third, I think that, obviously, no “object” of experience is “attended with” any “effect” always and everywhere, but rather, that it is attended with that effect in a range of contexts. Hume himself must have known this, since he made such a big deal (in ¶2) about it not being logically necessary “that the sun will rise tomorrow” – even the least sceptical philosopher must admit that it will only rise if there are no impediments in place, and we all only differ about how certain we are that there will be no such impediments tomorrow. I want to make this more explicit, so I will add amendments about the context of the observation to both propositions.

Alright, so, the reasoning goes more or less like this:

• Proposition 1. (First Premise) I have found that such an object in such a context has always been attended with such an effect.

• Clarification 1: By “such an object”, I mean a collection of appearances which are precisely such as allow me to understand a certain form.

• Clarification 2: By “such a context”, I mean a different collection of appearances, by which I understand different forms.

• Proposition 2. (Second Premise – Medium) The forms which I understand through these appearances, when I perceive such an object in such a context, are all such as to which I can ascribe the motions which produce the effect.

• Clarification 3: By “forms”, I mean the objects of understanding, as defined in my metaphysics. The relevant fact about them here is, that the same conjunctions of forms are always connected with the same motions, which fact is called final causality.

• Proposition 3. (Conclusion) I foresee, that other objects, which are, in appearance, similar, will be attended with similar effects in similar contexts.

• Clarification 4: By “similar objects”, I mean objects through whose appearances I can understand the same form that I can understand through this object’s appearances, insofar as I can ascribe their motions to it.

• Clarification 5: By “similar contexts”, I mean contexts through whose appearances I can understand the same forms that I can understand through this context’s appearances, insofar as I can ascribe their motions to them.

This could probably be restated more directly, but this will have to do. The way I have chosen to lay it out has the advantage of giving Hume’s (modified) propositions at the beginning and end, with the medium being in the middle, as the name would suggest that it should be.

While ¶17 implies that Hume is passing from this question into a more “positive” argument, he is really just repeating the question in different ways. “May I not clearly and distinctly conceive, that a body, falling from the clouds, and which, in all other respects, resembles snow, has yet the taste of salt or feeling of fire?” You can certainly imagine it; you may be able to conceive of it; you probably have no reason to expect it. If, through the appearance of those other respects, you would be able to perfectly understand the form of snow, then it follows that the taste and feeling do not belong to the nature of snow as you understand it, and that in such a situation, you would have simply found a unique type of snow – one that must have been, intelligibly, brought about by its particular context.

Hume is right in saying, in ¶19, that all, or almost all, propositions about experience are only probable judgments; but this is not because it is impossible to deduce effects from causes. It is rather because we usually do not take care to ascertain the true nature of what appears to us. We do not try to get apodictic knowledge that a car is a car before we get in it; it is sufficient to us that it probably is a car, and that we have no reason to expect otherwise. But we are certain that, if it is a car, then it has an engine, and the power of spinning its wheels in certain conditions, and whatever else we ascribe to the nature of a car.

When Hume says, later on in ¶19, that “all our experimental conclusions proceed upon the supposition, that the future will be conformable to the past”, I take him to be speaking rather obliquely about the fact of final causality, which I mentioned above in Clarification 3. The proof of this fact, as it was given in my metaphysics, is that it is a necessary condition of the fact that any apparent objects are understood at all. It may be consistently denied only by denying that apparent objects are understood, and therefore remaining at the Parmenidean theses about being and non-being; but such a conclusion would break the First Rule of Philosophy. So, a philosopher is compelled, qua philosopher, to accept the alternative.

In ¶20, Hume says:

Nothing so like as eggs; yet no one, on account of this appearing similarity, expects the same taste and relish in all of them. It is only after a long course of uniform experiments in any kind, that we attain a firm reliance and security with regard to a particular event. Now where is that process of reasoning, which, from one instance, draws a conclusion, so different from that which it infers from a hundred instances, that are nowise different from that single one?

I suppose that we might not form this expectation from the first appearances of eggs because, at that point, we do not yet know the nature of eggs. But after we know it, then whenever we see what we understand to be an egg, in what we understand to be an appropriate context, then we know exactly what range of tastes to expect from it. Usually, that is rather too much investigation about a small meal, and we are satisfied with probability about all these understandings; and it really may take many experiments to find which inessential appearances are best relied upon for a probable judgment. (For instance, these.)

I see nothing of interest in the paragraphs 21 through 23, so I pass over them.

Notes

[1] Following a preambular post to my commentaries in general, I have written commentaries of sections 1.1.5 and 1.1.6 of Hume’s Treatise.

As explained in the preambular post, the purpose of my commentaries is to find a plan of topics around which to write my opinions about metaphysics. Not finding them useful for this purpose, I skipped the first four sections of the Treatise, as well as the first three sections of the Enquiry.

[2] While I tend to avoid repetition of my own doctrines – which avoidance is the very reason for this blog – I could not help being engaged by Hume’s question. Generally, I find it difficult to look at rhetorical questions without trying to think of answers for them. So I wrote this post partly as an exercise, and I find this reformulation of my opinions to be interesting enough to be posted. If I ever bring my opinions into more systematic form, though, I should find some way to avoid such repetitions.

Stoicism

You either have passion or reason. This was the core teaching of the Stoics, as I see it, and it was fundamentally right.

I have believed this for a while; and so it was that, in one of my earliest posts, a haphazard treatment of the passions,[1] I spoke of each passion in connection with an intellectual mistake to which I thought it was wont to lead, and ended the post by describing some mistakes which I thought arose from them in combination. It was at that time that I noticed that all mistakes arise from passion, and I was trying to trace them all to their source. Were we unburdened by flesh, we should never err.

Of course, without the body, we should never judge at all about apparent things. If we understand anything through appearances, this is partly because appearances are not all wrong. But all mistakes arise from them, and no truth comes truly from them, but rather from the forms, which are understood rather than sensed. It happens that most appearances are in accordance with understanding; but no reasoning being is authorized, by the natural law, to follow them. “Do not believe the Devil, even when he speaks the truth.”[2]

Most particularly, when Thomas Aquinas spoke of the passions in the narrow sense, he defended the conclusion that they are not all morally evil on these exact grounds. I quote at length:

On this question the opinion of the Stoics differed from that of the Peripatetics: for the Stoics held that all passions are evil, while the Peripatetics maintained that moderate passions are good. This difference, although it appears great in words, is nevertheless, in reality, none at all, or but little, if we consider the intent of either school. For the Stoics did not discern between sense and intellect; and consequently neither between the intellectual and sensitive appetite. Hence they did not discriminate the passions of the soul from the movements of the will, in so far as the passions of the soul are in the sensitive appetite, while the simple movements of the will are in the intellectual appetite: but every rational movement of the appetitive part they call will, while they called passion, a movement that exceeds the limits of reason. Wherefore Cicero, following their opinion, calls all passions “diseases of the soul”: whence he argues that “those who are diseased are unsound; and those who are unsound are wanting in sense.” Hence we speak of those who are wanting in sense of being “unsound.”

On the other hand, the Peripatetics give the name of “passions” to all the movements of the sensitive appetite. Wherefore they esteem them good, when they are controlled by reason; and evil when they are not controlled by reason. Hence it is evident that Cicero was wrong in disapproving of the Peripatetic theory of a mean in the passions, when he says that “every evil, though moderate, should be shunned; for, just as a body, though it be moderately ailing, is not sound; so, this mean in the diseases or passions of the soul, is not sound.” For passions are not called “diseases” or “disturbances” of the soul, save when they are not controlled by reason.

As Thomas notes, both schools had the same fundamental opinion, which is that sensitive movements are only good when controlled by reason. And as a matter of philosophical distinctions, I follow Thomas’s divisions and wordings on this point; passions may sometimes be controlled by reason, and in that case, they are not morally evil. There are good passions, and strictly speaking, you may have passion with reason. I have spoken in these same terms in my own post on moral psychology. They are the clearest, when speaking technically.

The Stoic terminology, however, is more closely in accordance with a common way of speech. For we do not say that an action was moved by passion, except when it produces apparent movements in the actor which may be ascribed, by an observer, to passion. But if such movements were in accordance with reason, they could not be so ascribed.

Passion is only in accordance with reason when it has been examined by reason and is strictly in accordance with it, and therefore, leads to an action which is exactly the same as that to which reason would lead, by itself, in the first place. Insofar as a man is visibly passionate, he sinks into his animal nature, and acts irrationally. Just as no display of emotion is admissible in philosophical speech, no display of emotion is admissible in rational action, generally. A man that visibly acts from emotion is following an unexamined sensitive desire, which is immoral.

I say all of this without departing one inch from the doctrine that I quoted from Thomas, that passions are not immoral in themselves, but may be controlled by reason and so be good. It is only a clearer and more qualified way to say it. And it is more clearly expressed, to the common man, by using the Stoic terminology: you either have passion or reason. Which all understand, correctly, to mean: insofar as you show emotion, you are irrational, and therefore immoral.

Using Thomas’s wording to the common man obscures this. People start thinking that showing emotion is moral and right, as long as the emotion is, to some extent, in accordance with its object. And yes, it is definitely and undeniably better to act from sensitive desire for good things, and hatred for evil things, than from the reverse inclinations, which would be disordered. But if you act from those passions, rather than from the reason which sanctions them, and if therefore you are visibly passionate, you have done wrong by your nature, and to that extent, steered away from God.

There are other ways in which I find the Stoic school attractive. Since national and ethnic affiliation seems to me to be a mere passion, Stoic “cosmopolitanism” makes a lot of sense to me. I have also written on my enjoyment of “paradoxes”, which I share with the school. And I am more inclined than average to take seriously such libertarian theses as, “a coerced man is deprived of the opportunity to act morally”,[3] and, “incitement is not a real crime”, which I believe come from a fundamentally Stoic understanding of morality.

Also, I just tend to find the Stoics themselves very enjoyable to read. I have read Seneca’s Letters, and they are awesome; so are Epictetus’s Discourses, insofar as I have read them – only some sections, admittedly. Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations are also alright, though they seem overrated nowadays.

Notes

[1] In the beginning of this blog post, I speak of passions in the broad sense, including all bodily movements of which we are aware, and therefore including also the senses, as I did in my old blog post. After quoting Thomas Aquinas, who spoke of them in the narrow sense, I follow that usage. It is only in the narrow sense, of course, that passions can cause actions, at any rate – but even in the broad sense, they can affect judgments.

[2] This saying is said by various Christian writers in relation to the literal Devil, and demons in general. See, for instance, Athanasius’s Life of St. Anthony, §25–26 and §33; the second section of this discourse by John Chrysostom; and Erasmus’s Paraphrase on Mark regarding Mark 1:25 – a footnote to this edition of which attributes similar sayings to the Greek fathers Theophylact, Lyra, and Euthymius.

[3] I have given an answer to this thesis, to some extent, in my post on virtue. It was defended by various authors, and I believe it to be the core premise of the fundamental argument for liberalism – as I had said, rather obliquely, in my old post about my political opinion.

While that old post still shows many similarities with my current opinions on a broad level, I have elected to retract it. It is worth noting, though, that in that post, I had said that “I delight in how unintuitive my opinions are” – much as the SEP, in its article about Stoicism, which I had not read at the time, said that “it seems clear that some Stoics took a kind of perverse joy in advocating views which seem so at odds with common sense”. My similarities of personality with the Stoic school run deep, and so it is no wonder that another of my old posts, which is also retracted, was written about what I saw as an Epicurean kind of personality – and which I think I had thought of as opposed to my own, much as the Epicurean school was opposed to the Stoic.

I do not, any longer, find much delight in speaking “paradoxically,” by the way. Back then, I did it mostly so that my opinions would catch people’s attentions, and I could start conversations with them. But not only did that not work very well – since it turns out, disappointingly, that you can often “get away with” saying a lot, and people often only take exception to what you don’t expect them to –, I am also no longer interested in starting conversations with most people. I suppose it is fitting that, while I was new to philosophy, I was eager to argue with everyone, much like Socrates; and I am glad that I did this, since such arguments, when I had them, were often delightful, and a genuine help to my growth as a person and the development of my thoughts. Your mileage may vary, of course.