Passion

PASSIONE. — In ordinary language, it denotes the impetus of an inclination toward a particular object, manifested in the form of attraction or repulsion. In philosophical usage, the term p. has a very broad application and generally denotes the state of a “subject” that finds itself under the influence of some extrinsic principle.

CONTENTS:

I. Notion

II. Worldliness of the passions

III. Psychology and physiology

IV. Historical outline.

I. NOTION

In its fundamental meaning, p. (πάθος) is “receiving” in general. It is therefore the effect that the action of an extrinsic agent exercises upon

a subject: in this sense p. indicates the actuality that stands at the terminus of the action as its correlative and constitutes the predicament p. (Aristotle, Cat., 4, 2 a 4; Met., V, 21, 1022 b 15-21). Considered in themselves, p. are qualities that cause alteration in the subject, such as white and black, hot and cold, sweet and bitter, and the like: this is p. in the physical-predicamental sphere and constitutes a subspecies or subordinate genus of “quality” (v.) and entails degrees of more and less according to the power of the agent and the receptive capacity of the subject: St. Thomas calls it passio naturae, that is, physical p. (In IV Sent., Dist. 44, q. 3, q. 1, a. 3).

But both Aristotle and St. Thomas consider p. in an even broader sense, as the purely positive reception of a perfection and an act by that which is in potency, as occurs in the operations of the senses and of the intellect itself (the possible intellect). This p. (passio perfectiva) is therefore accomplished without corruption or alteration, but signifies a pure “increase,” acquisition, and “preservation” of that which is in potency by that which is in act (... σωτηρία μάλιστα τοῦ δυνάμει ὄντος; Aristotle, De an., II, 5, 417 b 3). In this sense sensations are called p. because they are caused in the sense by sensible objects (Met., IV, 5, 1010 b 33). The phantasm that receives and gathers the objects of the external senses is likewise called p. (De mem. et rem., 450 a 12), as is also the act of the imagination (De an., III, 3, 427 b 18). Still within the sphere of the generic meaning, p. denotes the “property” of something in general, or any intrinsic determination of its essence: for numbers, being even or odd; and, for example, in animals, being male or female, as well as the organic and functional modifications to which living beings are periodically subject (Hist. anim., VII, 17, 600 b 29). Thus, in the logical sense too, p. denotes that determination which necessarily derives from the essence, such as risibility or sociability in man, and is called p. propria (πάθος ἰδίον, π. οἰκείον, π. καθ'εῖον). But in an even broader sense, p. is any modification or actualization that a certain “subject” (ὑποκείμενον) may undergo: qualities, attributes, and dispositions of every kind.

In the strict sense, p. denotes alteration or change according to quality (ἐλλοίωσις), both in the physical corporeal order and, especially, in the psychic order; in the latter case it is properly called passio animi vel animae. The p. of the organic body include everything that harms it in its vital functions, such as hunger, thirst, indispositions, and illnesses, or anything that intrinsically modifies it, such as the four humors that characterize the principal constitutions of man (De part. anim., III, 4, 667 b 12; Hist. anim., VI, 14, 544 b 22). The p. of the soul, or p. in the strict sense, are movements of consciousness and indicate the attitudes of attraction and repulsion that the subject experiences toward the objects of appetite. Thus Aristotle speaks of three p. existing in the soul: desire, anger, and fear (Rhetor., II, 6, 1385 b 34), followed by boldness, envy, joy, friendship, hatred, zeal, mercy, and in general everything that may cause joy or sorrow (Ethic. Nic., II, 4, 1105 b 20). St. Thomas, referring to St. Augustine, specifies the tendential character of p.: “Augustine states in Book IX of De civitate Dei (chap. 4) that the movements of the soul, called πάθος by the Greeks, are called by some Latins, such as Cicero, perturbaciones, by others affectiones or affectus, and by still others, more explicitly, as in Greek, passiones. It is therefore clear that the p. of the soul are nothing other than affections. And since affections belong more properly to the affective than to the apprehensive part, p. belong more to the appetitive sphere than to the cognitive” (Sum. Theol., 1a-2ae, q. 22, a. 2). In p. understood in this way, the characteristic element is bodily emotion or disturbance (transmutatio corporalis), especially in the circulatory function, as, for example, in anger, which “warms the blood around the heart” (Giovanni Damasceno, De fide orthodoxa, I, II, chap. 16: PG 94, 932). Hence the definition of p., again taken from Damascene: “Passio est motus appetitvae virtutis sensibilis in imaginatione boni vel mali” (op. cit., chap. 22: PG 94, 941, cited in Sum. Theol., 1a-2ae, q. 22, a. 3 sed contra). In this sense, in the higher part of the soul, in angels, and in God, one cannot properly speak of p. except metaphorically and by analogy (ibid., a. 2 ad 1 and 3 ad 3).

P. are therefore divided according to the two species of appetitive tendencies. In the “concupiscible appetite,” good is considered either absent, future, or present, and thus there are love, desire, or joy; with respect to evil, there are respectively hatred, flight, or sadness. The “irascible appetite,” whose object is arduous good, contains only five p.: with respect to good not yet attained but attainable, there is hope; or, if it is considered unattainable, despair. With respect to evil that has not yet become imminent, there are fear and boldness; and when evil is already imminent, anger, which alone remains in its genus, since gentleness (πρῶτης), for Aristotle, is a defect and not the opposite of anger (Rhetor., 1125 b 28). There are therefore eleven p. in all, through which the entire affective behavior of the sensible sphere is actualized (cf. Sum. Theol., 1a-2ae, q. 23, aa. 1-4). It can thus be understood that p., although it has an initial moment of the subject’s passivity with respect to something extrinsic, subsequently expresses the subject’s active behavior toward good and evil in their effective reality (cf. ibid., q. 22, a. 2 ad 2).

II. MORALITY OF THE P

As long as they are considered movements of the sensitive appetitive tendencies and operate without any influence of reason, the passions lie outside morality: in early childhood, in the mentally deficient, and in certain more serious categories of persons with constitutional disorders (irresistible compulsions to suicide, homicide, alcoholism, erotic excesses, kleptomania, etc.). But in a human being who has attained the normal development of reason and maintains the exercise of freedom within the unity of consciousness, the passions come under the guidance and authority of reason and become good or evil, and hence the subject of virtue and vice, merit and guilt, according as they conform to reason or oppose it (cf. Sum. Theol., 1a-2ae, q. 56, a. 4 and ad 1; ibid., q. 24, 1, which refers to Aristotle, Ethic. Nic., I, 13, 1103 b 13; V. II, 4, 1105 b 32).

Reason exercises its influence over the passions by subjecting them to its rule of maintaining the “mean” (τὸ μέσον, μεσότης) against extremes, whether of excess or deficiency; and it is this medium rationis that makes it possible to define moral virtue (Ethic. Nic., II, 6, 1106 b 14 ff.; V. anche ibid., 9, 1109 a 19 ff.). Far from being intrinsically evil and immoral, the passions have thus become valuable incentives and supports of virtue, and are indispensable if a human being is to confront the risks and dangers encountered in striving toward noble works and virtue. The sudden passion that impels one to act (the p. antecedens) diminishes freedom and may take it away altogether when it is so vehement as to cloud reason itself (Sum. Theol., 1a-2ae, q. 24, a. 3 and ad 1). In Protestant theology, on the other hand, passion is essentially the inclination of corrupt nature toward error and disordered desires (cf. R. Rothe, Theol. Ethik, III, § 493, Wittenberg 1870, p. 63).

III. PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY

The predominance of modern philosophy, oriented chiefly toward the structures of subjectivity, on the one hand, and, on the other, the development of the experimental sciences, which tend toward knowledge of the laws and behavior of individual processes (physical, biological, psychological, social, etc.), have completely renewed the study of the p. From the physical-ethical and ontological-ethical plane on which the conceptions of antiquity and the Middle Ages moved, modern psychology has passed to a physiological-phenomenological, or rather analytical, consideration.

The p. have a direct repercussion on the physiological behavior of the organism, as is shown both by immediate experience and by scientific investigation: acceleration or diminution of the cardiac rhythm, peripheral vasoconstriction, modification of respiratory movements, hyperglobulia, hyperglycemia or glycosuria, modifications in the diameter of the pupil, etc. Recent experimental investigations, due especially to Cannon (1925) and continued by Watson’s behaviorist school, have confirmed the physiological substrate of the behavior of the p. When the emotions reach a certain degree of intensity (anger, indignation, intense fear, etc.), the secretions and contractions of the smooth muscles of the stomach may be completely blocked and digestion halted. Analysis of the blood shows the presence of an excess of sugar which, through the regulatory action of adrenaline, makes possible an increase in the defensive and offensive energies required by the organism: thus, according to Cannon, what under normal conditions requires an hour or more of work can be accomplished by adrenaline in five minutes or even less (cf. J. B. Watson, Psychology from the standpoint of the behaviorist, Philadelphia-London 1929, p. 250 ff.). However, when secretion exceeds a certain maximum limit, the result is complete disorganization and ataxia of conduct; in man, the higher processes, e.g. imagination and will, may indirectly exert an influence by moderating the p. within the same physiological mechanism, and it is probably in this way that the Joga method operates.

In the affective or tendential sphere, tendencies, emotions, sentiments, and p. are distinguished; tendencies or inclinations are the innate elements, so to speak the endogenous stimuli, of the affective and operative sphere; sentiments are inclinations in the process of being actualized; emotions represent the acute states of sentiments themselves, whereas p. are generally understood as attitudes, good or perverse, by now established and constitutive of the individual personality. In the ordinary language of psychology, however, p. means disordered conduct in opposition to reason (e.g. the p. of gambling, drinking, sensual pleasure, etc.), and consequently one speaks of “passionate characters” when the subject’s behavior follows the impulse of the p. It is then the p. that confers a certain unity and structure upon the individual’s life, by virtue of the “resistances” arising from the remaining healthy forces that seek to impede the dissolving action of the p. and restore a certain order within II. In this sense, the p. appears as a “deviation” (déreglement) of primitive sentiments and may be defined as a “flight from the control of automatism regarding the regulation of sentiment, over which reason presides” (M. Pradines, Traité de psychologie générale, II, Paris 1948, p. 337). In the modern classification, the principal p. are preferably identified with the excesses of intemperance—eating and drinking, lust, and covetousness for riches (cf. Pradines, op. cit., p. 317 ff.); psychologists of deterministic tendency are nevertheless mistaken when they assert that the p., as such, lies outside the sphere of morality, so that a person who acts out of p. would have to be considered wholly irresponsible.

The first English associationists (Adam Smith) reduce the p. to forms of sympathy and antipathy, which would derive from processes of imitation, reproduction, and affective projection: according to Hume, all p. arise from “impressions,” or pleasant and unpleasant sensations variously combined according to the laws of association in the imagination (cf. A dissertation on the passions, in Essays and treatises, II, London 1788, p. 168 ff.). The proponents of evolution (Darwin, Spencer) trace the origin of the p. to the development of the social instinct in the species. Psychoanalysis (v.) interprets the p. and all the attitudes of life—including religion and morality—as a proliferation of the undifferentiated sexual instinct that Freud called libido. Max Scheler admits that every sphere of existence (vegetative, sensory, intellectual, and volitional) has its own energy, but in such a way that interferences and influences of one upon another are possible: the essence of love—understood as the p. in its pure state—is therefore indicated as “a movement in which every individual and concrete object, capable of values, attains the highest values compatible with its nature and its ideal determination” (M. Scheler, Wesen und Formen der Sympathie, 5th ed., Frankfurt am Main 1948, p. 174). The p. of hatred, on the other hand, has an opposite “movement,” not in the sense that it is purely destructive, but insofar as it turns toward inferior values and fixes itself upon them in order to set them against superior values.

Modern psychology has not yet provided an exhaustive and unified explanation of the p., because of the difficult interweaving of the problems that the p. displays in personality (v.). Its chief merit lies above all in the analytical and phenomenological investigation of the various p., in the careful distinctions unknown to ancient psychology, and in the appropriate classifications (cf. D. Lagasche, Les sentiments complexes de l’amour et de la haine, in G. Dumas, Nouveau traité de psychologie, VI, III, Paris 1939, p. 115 ff.).

IV. CENNO STORICO

Nella speculazione dei presocratici si afferma il contenuto e la natura «fisica» della p. che è perciò riservata alla vita inferiore e contrapposta alla ragione e alla virtù: per Empedocle (v.) amore e odio sono elevati a principio del divenire cosmico. Democrito (v.) afferma che la sapienza libera l'anima dalla p. (σφῆν ψυχὴν παθῶν ἀφρίεσται: Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, II, 5ª ed., Berlino 1935, fr. B 31, p. 152,3; cf. fr. A I, p. 84, 22). Presso i tragici prende rilievo il conflitto fra la p. (ἔρως) e l'opposta virtù della castità voluta dalla ragione (συφροσύνη); nell'Ippolito di Euripide l'amore è l'elemento creativo primordiale, irrazionale e amorale, bello e terribile, dolce e penoso nelle sue manifestazioni, ed è rappresentato da Venere ciprigna, mentre la virtù è simboleggiata in Diana o Artemide casta; anche qui però il bene per l'uomo è prospettato come un «temperamento» fra la p. e la ragione nel senso di una mutua integrazione di beni parziali con predominio del bene migliore (cf. W. Ch. Greene, Moira, Fate, Good and Evil in greek thought, Cambridge, Mass. 1944, p. 180 sg.). Nell'analogia platonica del cocchio a cui sono legati due cavalli, l'uno egregio e generoso, l'altro perverso e sordido, è accentuato l'aspetto morale delle p. che avrà la sua teoria completa nell'etica aristotelica. Nella concezione stoica antica (p. es., Zenone) la p. è un moto di contrazione o dilatazione dell'anima e precisamente dello «spirito vitale» (πνεῦμα) che ha la sua sede nel cuore (Stoicorum veterum fragmenta, ed. H. von Arnim, I, Lipsia 1905, p. 51, 28); esso è volontario e consegue a un'opinione falsa (δάξα) ed è perciò un impulso vano, improvviso, irrazionale, disobbediente alla ragione (ὁμοι πλεονάζουσα, ἄλογος, ἀπειθῆς λόγῳ), un «movimento contro natura» (αἰνίησις παρὰ φύσιν: loc. cit., pp. 50, 21 sgg.; 93,5). Le p. sono pertanto «malattie dell'anima» e si riducono ai piaceri e ai dolori, mentre il saggio invece dei πάθη ha la volontà (βούλησις) contrapposta al desiderio (ἐπιθυμία), la gioia (γαρά) contrapposta al piacere (ἡδονή) e la previdenza (εὐλάβεια) contrapposta al timore (φόβος). Epicuro (v.), nella polemica contro la concezione stoica, ritornava al principio aristotelico che le p. non disdicono al saggio che le sa moderare per rendere possibile una maggior fruizione del piacere: soggetto del piacere e dolore fisico (ἀληγηδόν) è la carne (σάρξ), del piacere e dolore morale o dispiacere (λόπη) è l'anima o piuttosto la sfera psichica (διάνοια; C. Diano, Epicuri ethica, Firenze 1946, p. 121). edonismo (v.) e di egoismo che è stata fatta alla dottrina epicurea delle p. è contraddetta da recenti studiosi; Epicuro assegna il vertice della vita umana al culto dell'amicizia e «il saggio darà, se occorra, la sua vita per l'amico» (Diog. Laerzo, X, 121; cf. R. Mondolfo, La coscienza morale in Epicuro, in Problemi del pensiero antico, Bologna 1936, p. 189 sgg.). Mentre il medioevo attinge da Platone e Aristotele e dagli stessi stoici per il tramite di Cicerone e dei Padri, l'umanesimo del Petrarca e del Valla BRUGNATO (v.) Gassendi (v.) tentano di riprendere e riabilitare la dottrina epicurea, secondo la tesi del Saitta (Il pensiero italiano nell'Umanesimo e nel Rinascimento, Bologna 1949, I, pp. 180 sgg. e 232 sgg.): tuttavia tanto il Valla come poi il Gassendi non intendevano affatto di contrastare la morale cristiana

e davano perciò a quella riabilitazione un significato e un contenuto diversi da quello della tesi in questione. Nel pensiero moderno merita un cenno particolare Cartesio per il suo Traité des passions (scritto verso il 1646) la cui originalità riguarda più alcune analisi particolari che non i principi generali nei quali non fa che riprodurre la concezione tradizionale di S. Tommaso: la differenza più notevole è la divisione in p. simples et primitives (ammirazione, amore, odio, gioia e tristezza) e p. particulières che sono derivate e sottospecie a quelle, come ha chiaramente dimostrato M. Meier (Die Lehre des Thomas von Aquino «De passionibus animae» in quellenanalytischer Darstellung, in Beiträge Baeumker, XI, II, Münster i. V. 1912, pp. x-xiv). Sulla scia di Cartesio si muove la dottrina delle p. di A. Geulick (v.) nella postuma Ethica (Amsterdam 1696) Leibniz (v.) nell'opuscolo De affectibus del 1679 (ed. Giua, Textes inédits de Leibniz, Parigi 1948, I, p. 512 sgg. e passim). Spinoza ritorna decisamente alla concezione stoica e chiama actiones le inclinazioni (cupiditates) che la mente domina con idee adeguate, e passiones quando l'impulso viene piuttosto dalle cose che non dalla mente, onde questa non le può perfettamente dominare (Ethica, parte 4ª o prop. 73: appendix c. 2). Nel seguito della filosofia moderna la considerazione filosofica delle p. andò sempre scemando mentre assunse rilievo quella psicologica e fenomenologica; l'idealismo (v.) ha eliminato le p. dalla vita della coscienza perché rappresentano l'io empirico, ESISTENZIALISMO (v.) ha intrapreso in vari modi di darne una fondazione e deduzione trascendentale in funzione dell'esistenza ch'è la libertà in atto.