PASSION. — In ordinary language it denotes the impetus of an inclination toward a determined object, manifesting itself in the form of attraction or repulsion. In philosophical usage the term p. has a very broad application and generally indicates the state of a subject under the influence of some extrinsic principle.
OUTLINE:
I. Notion
II. Morality of the p
III. Psychology and physiology
IV. Historical sketch.I. Notion
In its fundamental meaning p. (πᾶσος) 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 end of the action as its correlative and constitutes the category of 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, like 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 admits of degrees of more and less according to the virtuality of the agent and the receptive capacity of the subject; St. Thomas calls it passio naturae, i.e., physical p. (In IV Sent., Dist. 44, q. 3, q. la 1, a. 3).But both Aristotle and St. Thomas consider p. in an even broader sense, as the pure positive reception of a perfection and an act on the part of what is in potency, as occurs in the operations of sense and of the intellect itself (possible). This p. (passio perfectiva) is accomplished therefore without corruption or alteration but signifies pure “increase,” acquisition, and “preservation” of what is in potency on the part of what is in act (πᾶσος μᾶλλον τοῖς δυνάται ὑστές; Aristotle, De an., II, 5, 417 b 3). In this sense sensations are called p. because they are caused in the sense by the sensibles (Met., IV, 5, 1010 b 33). The phantasm that receives and gathers the objects of the external senses is also called p. (De mem. et rem., 450 a 12), and likewise the act of the imagination (De an., III, 3, 427 b 18). Still within the scope of the generic meaning, p. is said of the “property” of something in general, or any intrinsic determination of its essence: for numbers, being even or odd, and as, e.g., in animals, being male or female and the organic and functional modifications to which living beings are periodically subject (Hist. anim., VII, 17, 600 b 29). And therefore also in a logical sense p. is said of that determination which necessarily derives from the essence, such as the capacity for laughter or sociability in man, and is called propria p. (πᾶσος δέον, π. οὔστος, π. χῶς χύς). But in an even broader sense p. is said of any modification or actualization that a certain “subject” (ὑποκείμενον) may undergo—qualities, attributes, dispositions of every kind.
In a strict sense p. indicates alteration or change according to quality (ἀλλοίωσις), both in the corporeal physical order and especially in the psychic order, and then it is properly called passio animi vel animae. The p. of the organic body are all those that damage it in its vital functions, such as hunger, thirst, indispositions and diseases, or those that modify it intrinsically, 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 the motions 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 (Rhet., II, 8, 1385 b 34), to which follow boldness, envy, joy, friendship, hatred, zeal, mercy, and in general all that can cause joy or pain (Ethic. Nic., II, 4, 1105 b 20). St. Thomas, following St. Augustine, specifies the tendency-character of p.: “Augustine affirms in Bk. IX of De civitate Dei (ch. 4) that the movements of the soul, called by the Greeks πᾶσος, some among the Latins, like Cicero, call perturbationes, others affectiones or affectus, and still others more expressively, as in Greek, passiones. It is clear therefore that the p. of the soul are nothing other than affectiones. And since affections belong more properly to the affective part than to the apprehensive, the p. belong more to the appetitive sphere than to the cognitive” (Sum. Theol., 1a-2ae, q. 22, a. 2). In p. thus understood, the characteristic element is commotion or corporeal perturbation (transmutatio corporalis), especially in the circulatory function, as, e.g., in anger which “heats the blood around the heart” (John of Damascus, De fide orthodoxa, I, II, ch. 16: PG 94, 932). Hence the definition of p., taken again from the Damascene: “Passio est motus appetitivae virtutis sensibilis in imaginatione boni vel mali” (op. cit., ch. 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 by metaphor and analogy (ibid., a. 2 ad 1 and 3 ad 3).
The p. are therefore divided according to the two species of appetitive tendencies. In the “concupiscible appetite” the good is considered as absent, future, or present, and thus there is love, desire, or joy; with respect to evil there is, respectively, hatred, aversion, or sadness. The “irascible appetite,” which has as its object the arduous good, contains only five p.: with respect to the good not yet obtained but attainable there is hope, or if considered unattainable, despair. With respect to evil not yet impending there are fear and daring, and when the evil is already impending there is anger, which remains alone in its genus since gentleness (πραότης) for Aristotle is a defect and not the opposite of anger (Rhet., 1125 b 28). In all there are therefore eleven p. according to which the entire affective behavior of the sensible sphere is realized (cf. Sum. Theol., 1a-2ae, q. 23, aa. 1-4). One can therefore understand that p., if it has a first moment of passivity of the subject with respect to something extrinsic, then expresses the active behavior of the subject toward good and evil in their actual reality (cf. ibid., q. 22, a. 2 ad 2).
II. MORALITY OF THE P
As long as they are considered as movements of the sensible appetitive tendencies and operate without any influence of reason, the p. lie outside the sphere of morality: in early childhood, in the insane, and in certain grave categories of constitutional defects (invincible manias of suicide, homicide, alcoholism, erotic excesses, kleptomania, etc.). But in man who has attained the normal development of reason and maintains the exercise of freedom in the unity of consciousness, the p. come to be under the guidance and dominion of reason and become good or bad and thus subject to virtue and vice, to 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. also II, 4, 1105 b 32).Reason exercises its influence on the passions by subjecting them to the rule of maintaining the “just mean” (τὸ μέσον, *mesótēs*) against extremes, whether of excess or defect; and it is this *medium rationis* that allows the definition of moral virtue (Ethic. Nic., II, 6, 1106 b 14 ff.; cf. also ibid., 9, 1109 a 19 ff.). Far from being intrinsically evil and immoral, the passions have thus become valid stimuli and supports of virtue and are indispensable if man is to face the risks and dangers encountered in striving for noble deeds and virtue. A sudden passion that impels to action (passio antecedens) diminishes freedom and may remove it altogether when it is so vehement as to obscure 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 corrupted nature toward error and unruly desire (cf. R. Rothe, *Theol. Ethik*, III, § 493, Wittenberg 1870, p. 63).
III. PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY
The predominance of modern philosophy, which is oriented chiefly toward the structures of subjectivity, on the one hand, and, on the other, the development of the experimental sciences that aim at knowledge of the laws and behavior of individual processes (physical, biological, psychological, social, etc.) have completely renewed the study of the passions. From the physical-ethical and ontological-ethical plane in which the conceptions of antiquity and the Middle Ages moved, modern psychology has shifted to a physiological-phenomenological or analytical consideration.The passions have a direct repercussion on the physiological behavior of the organism, as is shown both by immediate experience and by scientific investigation: acceleration or slowing of the heartbeat, peripheral vasoconstriction, modification of respiratory movements, hyperglobulia, hyperglycemia or glycosuria, changes in the diameter of the pupil, etc. Recent experimental investigations, especially those of Cannon (1925) and continued by Watson’s behaviorist school, have confirmed the physiological substratum of the behavior of the passions. When emotions reach a certain degree of intensity (anger, indignation, strong fear, etc.), the secretions and contractions of the smooth muscles of the stomach can be completely blocked and digestion arrested. Analysis of the blood shows the presence of an excess of sugar that, through the regulatory action of adrenaline, makes possible the increase of the energies of defense and offense necessary to the organism: thus, according to Cannon, what normally requires an hour or more of work, adrenaline can accomplish in five minutes or less (cf. J. B. Watson, *Psychology from the standpoint of the behaviorist*, Philadelphia-London 1929, pp. 250 ff.). When, however, the secretion exceeds a certain maximum limit, the effect is the disorganization and complete ataxia of conduct; in man the higher processes, e.g., imagination and will, can indirectly influence, moderating the passion even in the physiological mechanism itself, and it is probably in this way that the method of Yoga operates.
In the affective or appetitive sphere, tendencies, emotions, sentiments, and passions are distinguished. Tendencies or inclinations are the innate elements, so to speak the endogenous stimuli of the affective and operative sphere; sentiments are the inclinations in their actualization; emotions represent the acute states of the sentiments themselves, while passions are generally understood as the attitudes, good or perverse, now established and constitutive of the individual personality. In ordinary psychological language, however, passion denotes unruly conduct in contrast to reason (e.g., the passions of gambling, drinking, sensual pleasure, etc.), and hence one speaks of passionate characters when the subject’s behavior follows the impulse of passion. It is then passion that confers a certain unity and structure on the individual’s life by virtue of the “resistances” that come from the remaining healthy forces seeking to hinder the dissolving action of passion and to restore a certain order. In this sense passion appears as a “derangement” (*dérèglement*) of primitive sentiments and may be defined as “a flight from the control of automatism regarding the regulations of sentiment that reason superintends” (M. Pradines, *Traité de psychologie générale*, II, Paris 1948, p. 337). The principal passions, in modern classification, are preferably indicated in the excesses of gluttony, eating and drinking, lust, and avarice (cf. Pradines, *op. cit.*, pp. 317 ff.): yet psychologists of deterministic tendency affirm that passion as such lies outside the sphere of morality, so that a man acting from passion would be held altogether irresponsible.
The first English associations (Adam Smith) reduce the passions to forms of sympathy and antipathy derived from processes of imitation, reproduction, and affective projection; according to Hume all the passions 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, pp. 168 ff.). The evolutionists (Darwin, Spencer) trace the origin of the passions to the development of social instinct in the species. Psychoanalysis (q.v.) interprets the passions and all attitudes of life—including religion and morals—as the proliferation of undifferentiated sexual instinct, which Freud called *libido*. Max Scheler admits that each sphere of existence (vegetative, sensitive, intellectual, and volitional) has its own energy, yet in such a way that interferences and influences of one upon another are possible: the existence of love—understood as passion in its pure state—is indicated in “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 a.M. 1948, p. 174). The passion of hatred, on the other hand, has an opposite movement, not in the sense that it is purely destructive, but in that it turns to inferior values and fixes itself in them in order to oppose them to superior values.
Yet a complete and unitary explanation of the passions modern psychology has not yet given, because of the difficult interweaving of problems that the passions present in the formation of consciousness and personality (q.v.). Its merit lies especially in the analytical and phenomenological investigation of the various passions, in the careful distinctions unknown to ancient psychology, and in the appropriate classifications (cf. D. Lagache, *Les sentiments complexes de l’amour et de la haine*, in G. Dumas, *Nouveau traité de psychologie*, VI, III, Paris 1939, pp. 115 ff.).
IV. Historical Outline
In the speculation of the pre-Socratics, the content and "physical" nature of the passions (*p.*) is affirmed; they are therefore confined to lower life and contrasted with reason and virtue. For Empedocles (v.), love and hate are elevated to the status of principles of cosmic becoming. Democritus (v.) himself asserts that wisdom frees the soul from the passions (*ποχήν δρυτῶν σφάσματα*; Diels-Kranz, *Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker*, II, 5th ed., Berlin 1935, fr. B 31, p. 152,3; cf. fr. A I, p. 84, 22).
Among the tragedians, the conflict between the passions (*ἐξωσχέ*) and the opposing virtue of chastity willed by reason (*σωφροσύνη*) comes to the fore. In Euripides’ *Hippolytus*, love is the primordial, irrational, and amoral creative force, beautiful and terrible, sweet and painful in its manifestations, represented by Cyprian Venus, while virtue is symbolized by chaste Diana or Artemis. Yet even here, the good for man is envisaged as a "tempering" between passion and reason, in the sense of a mutual integration of partial goods with the predominance of the better good (cf. W. Ch. Greene, *Moira, Fate, Good and Evil in Greek Thought*, Cambridge, Mass. 1944, pp. 180 ff.).
In Plato’s analogy of the chariot drawn by two horses—one noble and generous, the other perverse and base—the moral aspect of the passions is emphasized, a theme that would receive its full development in Aristotelian ethics.
In the early Stoic conception (e.g., Zeno), the passions are motions of contraction or dilation of the soul, specifically of the "vital spirit" (*πνεῦμα*), which has its seat in the heart (*Stoicorum veterum fragmenta*, ed. H. von Arnim, I, Leipzig 1905, p. 51, 28). They are voluntary and arise from false opinion (*δόξα*), and are therefore vain, sudden, irrational impulses disobedient to reason (*οὐμή πλεονάζουσα, ἄλογος, ἀπευθύς λόγου*), a "movement contrary to nature" (*ἀνάγκας πάρα φύσιν*: loc. cit., pp. 50, 21 ff.; 93,5). The passions are thus "diseases of the soul" and reduce to pleasures and pains, while the sage, instead of the *πάθη*, possesses will (*βούλησις*) opposed to desire (*ἐπιθυμία*), joy (*χαρά*) opposed to pleasure (*ἡδονή*), and prudence (*συζάβεια*) opposed to fear (*φόβος*).
Epicurus (v.), in his polemic against the Stoic conception, returned to the Aristotelian principle that the passions do not disturb the sage who knows how to moderate them, thereby enabling a greater enjoyment of pleasure. The subject of physical pleasure and pain (*ἀγνόδων*) is the flesh (*σάρξ*), while that of moral pleasure and pain or displeasure (*ἀντιγόνη*) is the soul or rather the psychic faculty (*διάνοια*; C. Diano, *Epicuri ethica*, Florence 1946, p. 121). The charge of hedonism (v.) and egoism leveled against Epicurus’ doctrine of the passions is contradicted by recent scholars; Epicurus assigns the summit of human life to the cult of friendship, and "the sage will, if necessary, give his life for a friend" (Diog. Laertius, X, 121; cf. R. Mondolfo, *La coscienza morale in Epicuro*, in *Problemi del pensiero antico*, Bologna 1936, pp. 180 ff.).
While the Middle Ages drew from Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics through Cicero and the Fathers, the humanism of Petrarch and Valla BRUGNATO (v.) Gassendi (v.) sought to revive and rehabilitate Epicurean doctrine, according to the thesis of Saitta (*Il pensiero italiano nell’Umanesimo e nel Rinascimento*, Bologna 1949, I, pp. 180 ff. and 232 ff.). However, neither Valla nor later Gassendi intended to oppose Christian morality; rather, they gave this rehabilitation a meaning and content different from that of the thesis in question.
In modern thought, Descartes deserves particular mention for his *Traité des passions* (written around 1646), whose originality lies more in certain particular analyses than in general principles, which merely reproduce the traditional conception of St. Thomas. The most notable difference is his division into *passions simples et primitives* (admiration, love, hatred, joy, and sadness) and *passions particulares*, which are derived and subspecies of the former, as clearly demonstrated by M. Meier (*Die Lehre des Thomas von Aquino «De passionibus animae» in quellenanalytischer Darstellung*, in *Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters*, XI, II, Münster i. V. 1912, pp. x–xiv).
Following Descartes, the doctrine of the passions was developed by A. GEULINCX, ARNOLD (v.) in his posthumous *Ethica* (Amsterdam 1696), and by Leibniz (v.) in his treatise *De affectibus* (1679; ed. Giua, *Textes inédits de Leibniz*, Paris 1948, I, p. 512 ff. and passim). Spinoza decisively returned to the Stoic conception, calling inclinations (*cupiditates*) *actiones* when the mind dominates them with adequate ideas, and *passiones* when the impulse comes rather from external things, so that the mind cannot fully master them (*Ethics*, Part IV, prop. 73; *Appendix*, ch. 2).
In the subsequent development of modern philosophy, philosophical consideration of the passions gradually waned, while psychological and phenomenological approaches gained prominence. Idealism (v.) eliminated the passions from the life of consciousness, as they represent the empirical ego, whereas existentialism (v.) has sought in various ways to provide them with a transcendental foundation and deduction in function of existence, which is actualized freedom.