The Problem with Solutions: Thomistic Narratives of Suffering As an Alternate Foundation for Medical Ethics

The Problem with Solutions: Thomistic Narratives of Suffering as an Alternate Foundation for Medical Ethics

Ann Maria Theresia Sirek Eperjesi

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Regis College and the Graduate Centre for Theological Studies of the Toronto School of Theology. In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Theology awarded by University of St. Michaels College

Ann Maria Theresia Sirek Eperjesi Doctor of Philosophy University of St. Michael’s College 2018

Abstract

Contemporary medical ethics uses the analytical approach; suffering becomes one more condition awaiting a solution. This thesis offers a different perspective; suffering is a manifestation of evil, a mysterious mendacity, which perpetually confounds the work of the speculative mind towards a solution. Thus a complementary rationality is required in the context of suffering. Following Thomas

Aquinas I am proposing practical reason as that rationality which will move the sufferer out of harm’s way towards the good because its work is the experiential know-how of the sensory nature. In contrast to the scientific method, this discourse of practical reason will proceed according to storied thinking using metaphors and symbols to imagine what the emergence from suffering into flourishing might look like. Departing from the subject-object paradigm of modern medicine, moral agency will be expressed in the voice of the first person—the sufferer. In working out a narrative, the sufferer undergoes transformation by imagery reflecting terminal

ii annihilation, or by imaginings beyond the empirical, i.e., real experiences of unanticipated vitality.

The narrative structure will follow Thomas Aquinas on the sensory nature with its triad of movements. 1.Sensory apprehension: external objects are perceived and stored in the interiority as images with primal meanings of harm or good

(intentiones), which when recollected by memory may undergo healing transformation. 2.Sensory appetition: the moral agent desires an alluring object, which, when attained, offers the promise of something pleasurable, joyful, and good.

3.Abiding in the good attained: analogically speaking, the human being abides in contemplative intimacy with the animating, healing Divinity. Suffering becomes an evil privation of these vital movement(s). To shift from suffering towards flourishing, the previously suppressed movements undergo reanimation.

Thus the logic of practical reason and the new ethics discourse emergent from it will be refocused upon the narrative of a sufferer who desires some particular movement, which will subvert impending annihilation so as to participate the mystery of ever more vigorous animation. While the old theoretical principles of right and wrong will remain true, a new contrapuntal voice of agency will arise, namely, that of the sufferer emerging from the immobility of suffering into an integrated dynamism.

iii Table of Contents Doctor of Philosophy...... ii Abstract ...... ii Table of Contents ...... iv Chapter 1. Introduction ...... 1 Method...... 7 Development of Chapters and Introduction of Interlocutors: a Summary...... 14 Chapter 2. A Thomistic View of Human Nature “From Below” ...... 25 2.1. Life as the Good...... 25 2.2.i. Human Nature: Hylomorphism...... 31 2.2.ii. Human Nature: sensory apprehension and intention ...... 40 2.2.iii. Human Nature: sensory appetitions: the passions ...... 56 2.3. conclusion ...... 80 Chapter 3. Suffering: a Description in Terms of the Sensory Aspect of Human Nature...... 81 Chapter 4. Contemplation and the Integration of Ruptured Hylomorphism ...... 107 4.a. justice and mercy...... 109 4.b.i. apprehension as an intellectual operation of contemplation ...... 113 4.b.ii. appetition as an intellectual operation of contemplation...... 121 4.b.iii. free-will as a key aspect of human appetition...... 124 4.c. fragmentation of the hylomorphic composite ...... 128 4.c.i. polarity of freedoms...... 130 4.c.ii. moral motivation...... 135 4.c.iii. secular mindfulness and Christian contemplation...... 146 4.d. conclusion...... 149 Chapter 5. A Spirituality of Performance ...... 151 5.i. suffering in the context of actus and performance...... 153 5.ii. reflections on evil and the Book of Job...... 165 5.iii. evil and the critique of theodicy ...... 169 5.iv. the limits of a science-based approach to evil ...... 180 5.v. Conclusion ...... 191 Chapter 6. Suffering: a Turn to Narrative ...... 194 6.i. practical reason and metaphor...... 196

iv 6.ii. the inadequacy of principlism...... 205 6.iii. the intuition of Narrative Medicine...... 214 6.iv. the nature of the good...... 225 6.v. conclusion...... 235 Chapter 7. Whose Voice? Which Story? ...... 239 7.i. the false excellence of violence...... 240 7.ii. compassion, the true excellence...... 253 7.iii. violence: the false good ...... 257 7.iv. resurrection experiences...... 266 7.v. images of resurrrection ...... 274 7.vi. the voice of the first person...... 288 7.vii. conclusion...... 305 Chapter 8. Synthesis and Conclusions ...... 309 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 318

Chapter 1. Introduction

Medicine, a profession dedicated to the alleviation of human suffering, harbours an unexpected violence that paradoxically augments suffering.1 This violence occasionally escalates. Dr. Lisa Rosenbaum records one such tragedy.

Around 11:00 a.m. on January 20, 2015, Stephen Pasceri arrived at the cardiovascular center at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital, where he had an appointment to speak to Michael Davidson, a 44-year-old surgeon who had performed valve surgery on Pasceri's mother a few months earlier. Davidson entered an exam room and greeted Pasceri, who fired two shots at the surgeon at close range before killing himself. A team of Brigham surgeons spent 9 hours in the OR in a futile attempt to save Davidson's life.2

She notes that in the days immediately following the murder, “fear pervaded the medical community. Physicians are always vulnerable to the anger of those whom they attend when a phone call is missed or a medication has side effects or a cancer is discovered.” She reflects,

The need to seek meaning in tragedy is fundamentally human, and yet the impulse to find reasons where there are none is as dangerous as it is therapeutic. Isn't that, in a sense, the root of our problem? That when something bad happens, we assume there's a cause that can be remedied, that someone is accountable? We are trained to ask ourselves, Where did I err? How could I do better? We are told that some 98,000 patients die in the United States each year because of medical errors. But in focusing on ridding hospitals of error, are we denying the public a critical distinction? A mistake is not the same as a bad outcome. Sometimes there is no reason but life itself, which one day must end.3

1 Vicki Lachman, “Ethical Issues in the Disruptive Behaviors of Incivility, Bullying, and Horizontal/Lateral Violence.,” Medsurg Nursing 23, no. 1 (February 2014): 56–58, 60. 2 Lisa Rosenbaum MD, “Being like Mike — Fear, Trust, and the Tragic Death of Michael Davidson.,” New England Journal of Medicine 372 (2015): 798–99. 3 Ibid.

1 2

Her distinction between “Reason” and “Meaning” lays a foundation for this dissertation. My goal will be to describe a rationality of “Meaning,” a kind of metaethics that will hold up in the face of tragedy and suffering, and a language that will serve this “new” rationality as it becomes a heuristic of importance in the ethical practice of medical.

The “Reason” that Rosenbaum refers to is the abstract theoretical reasoning of science; it is a rationality of impersonal, objective universals, which leads to theoretical problem-solving. Medical ethics has adopted this same rationality of working with universal principles by a process of dialectics towards the true; the presumption is that knowing the truth will give rise to a good act. Alasdair

MacIntyre has observed that the quest for this particular modality of “Reason” in ethics is exclusively a feature of English speaking cultures.

...[W]hat we are dealing with is a culture that is primarily Northern European. Spaniards, Italians, and the Gaelic and Slavonic-speaking peoples do not belong to it…. It has of course outposts outside Northern Europe, most notably in New England and Switzerland. It is influential in South Germany, Austria, Hungary, and the kingdom of Naples. And most of the eighteenth century French intelligentsia have the will to belong to it, in spite of the differences in their situation.4

In medical ethics, this heuristic of “Reason” was exemplified and to a certain extent formalized in the Belmont Report,5 which was a response to the violence perpetrated on American Black men with syphilis in Tuskegee, Alabama, in the

4 Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, a Study in Moral Theory, third (London: Bristol Classical Press. reprint: Bloomsbury Press., 1981). 5 “Belmont Report: Ethical Principles and Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research, Report of the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research.,” April 18, 1979, www.ketteringhealth.org/research/pdf/BelmontReport.pdf. This report may be viewed as a continuation of the Nuremburg War Crime Trials, in which doctors and scientists were adjudicated for biomedical experimentation on concentration camp prisoners

3 name of science.6 This report represents a consensus on principles to be applied in the setting of medical research to protect participants from being violated in the name of progress. The legacy to medicine has been a set of three theoretical, universal principles7 that are expected to guide day-to-day decision-making in research as well as in clinical practice.8 But as Rosenbaum has pointed out,

“Reason,” as a grammar of principles, without the complementarity of “Meaning,” can bring about harm, not good. “[T]he impulse to find reasons where there are none is as dangerous as it is therapeutic.”9 The universal truths belonging to modern, speculative reason, such as principlism and empiricism, are insufficient in the context of violence, mistakes, suffering, and harm.

In order to discover “Meaning,” I submit that, rather than looking away from our fallen, painful material existence towards an abstract perfection, we must look towards the suffering corporeality. The tradition of science and philosophy that looks away from suffering has evolved the language that Rosenbaum calls

“Rationality.” It is a language that would appear to follow a grammar of ordo and its derivatives, eg. ordinate passions, subordinate to reason, disordered behaviour,

6 Carol A. Heintzelman, “The Tuskegee Syphilis Study and Its Implications for the 21st Century,” Http://Www.Socialworker.Com/Feature-Articles/Ethics-Articles 10, no. 4 (fall 2003). In 1932 a study was commenced to observe the course of untreated latent syphilis in African American men. Although originally it was thought that these men had been inoculated with syphilis, it was later established that the men had contracted syphilis in the community but were recruited for the study by the promise of free treatment. The “treatment” turned out to be spinal taps to document the effect of the disease on the neural system. The treatment which they did receive, was in line with the standard of the times, namely, heavy metal administration, But when penicillin became available in the 1940’s and ‘50’s, it was withheld. 7 These principles are respect for persons (including autonomy of those who are able and protection of those who are disabled), beneficence, and justice. 8 Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics, fifth (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). 9 Rosenbaum MD, “Being like Mike — Fear, Trust, and the Tragic Death of Michael Davidson.”Rosenbaum MD.

4 etc.10 In science the ordo takes on the grammar of norms. In ethics we have the grammar of principles around right and wrong. Without any modifiers to temper it, such language of universals is readily internalized as an empowered voice of imperative preaching righteousness to the disempowered, disenfranchised, hurting, unsuccessful part of the self. But Christian spirituality is about resurrection for the victim; it looks towards that part of the self that is hurting. Therefor I propose that a fresh grammar to supplant that of the universal ordo, norms, and principles is called for. My project will present a language suited to communicating increasing vitality— a grammar of resurrection—for the victim who desires to speak and to move forward in the face of annihilating, evil circumstances. The proposed language will afford a “Meaning” rather than a “Reason” for desiring to being alive. The grammar of ordo provides a static benchmark for an internalized third person observer, who adjudicates one’s human failures and foibles. By contrast, the grammar of resurrection will give voice to the first-person sufferer, who will speak of transformation and healing in the face of the evils that have paralyzed and muted her movement towards the good.

My pursuit of “Meaning” is not to infer that “Reason” with its principles, norms, and ordering has not been fruitful. But, in truth, “Reason” has also left many silent sufferers in its wake.11 To engage “Meaning” is to call forth each person’s particular

10 Daniel D. De Haan, “Moral Perception and the Function of the Vis Cogitativa in Thomas Aquinas’s Doctrine of Antecedent and Consequent Passions,” Documenti e Studi Sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale XXV (2014): 289–330. This clear analysis in dense philosophical style is an example of the grammar of ordo. 11 By this I mean to point to the concern that medicine has become depersonalized and ill-equipped to attend human suffering. In fact, violence, as a surrogate marker for suffering, is endemic in medicine.

5 experiences of what has been life-giving and what has been life-attenuating. When the story of such shifts is told, he is talking about suffering and flourishing, and she tells a story about what felt bad and good under the circumstances. These stories of suffering engage the experiential realm of harm and good. To secondarily analyze such stories with our sciences, such as psychology, sociology, economics, physiology, anatomy, etc. is not the nature of this project. Nor do I propose to analyse suffering by “looking away,” as in the traditional heuristic of philosophy and theology. What I do propose is that such stories of suffering depend for their rationality upon a metaethics that affords each particular movement its coherence. This proposed metaethics will enable us to work with stories about harm and good with a certain intelligence that becomes like a contrapuntal voice12 to the dominant syllogistic reason of our contemporary sciences, modern medical ethics, and traditional philosophy. Whereas the convention might lead to a discourse of right and wrong, the contrapuntal voice sings of life-enhancing and life-attenuating movements. Both the universal and the particular are necessary for the integrated operation of human intelligence.

This contrapuntal language arose organically from my experience as a physician and my search for “Meaning” in the face of so many people’s suffering. Through a process of academic rigour involved in writing this doctoral dissertation in theology, my exploration matured from the enterprise of a subject mastering suffering-as- concept into the storied rationality of suffering-as-experience. In the process of

12 I mean to suggest here J. S. Bach’s fugues as a metaphor for intelligence and for moral agency. One voice establishes a melody. But without the contrapuntal melodies that support, deepen, and enhance that original theme, the experience/music would be incomplete.

6 bypassing the subject-object bias of our analytic, modern sciences, I have become immersed in the pre-modern texts of Thomas on Christian spirituality and transformation.13 Having processed and internalized certain texts of Thomas

Aquinas on the sensory body, I think with him in order to articulate an approach in circumstances of suffering, an approach that I believe to be tacit in his texts.

Inspired by his ethics of rational movement towards a telos of beatitude, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting, I propose aspects of a metaethics that I believe will satisfy Rosenbaum’s (and the profession’s) plea for “Meaning.” This rediscovered rationality will be articulated in terms of intelligent, morally important movements in pursuit of flourishing and emergence from suffering. In other words, from the texts that Thomas wrote to guide spiritual, transformative movement towards beatitude I have taken that which confers “Meaning” upon my attending persons-as-sufferers questing to emerge into flourishing. My approach to the texts of Thomas is one that filters his quest for the perfect form of being human through the experiences of my own sensory body around hindrances to that ultimate perfection in vitality. In the thought of Thomas, the passions of the sensory nature are those movements of our corporeality, which overcome the hindrances to flourishing and impel the emergence from suffering. Thus, Thomas illumines my own pursuit of a certain perfection, namely, compassion for those who suffer. I have come to understand such perfection in terms of a participation in the Christian divinity, whose name is Divine Justice and Mercy. This dissertation is to be read as

13 It is my hope that other traditions will in turn offer their own spiritual wisdom guided by ancient approaches that remain relatively free of our modern critical-analytical biases.

7 an articulation of such “Meaning”—a metaethics—in terms of the experiences of the sensory nature around annihilation (harm/evil) and animation (good). Most importantly, it is to be read as the voice of the first person sufferer speaking the in grammar of movement towards eternal vitality. This thesis does not elaborate the perspective of the empowered observer of modernity, who in looking away from the sufferer towards an abstract perfection ends up (unintentionally) adjudicating what he sees.

Method.

The method of this thesis project is an exploration of philosophical and theological texts in order to derive a new heuristic for medicine and its ethics, one which will empower practical movement towards flourishing-as-the-good while emerging from suffering-as-evil. This ethical pursuit of the good presumes circumstances of suffering, in which universal principles about what is true have proven insufficient to determining what is to be done. In this thesis suffering is regarded as an evil, not as a problem to be solved. Thus, religious texts around good and evil are my chosen resources.

My methodology is not a critical, analytical close-reading of texts; rather my method is an exercise in the experience-based heuristic that I am proposing. I begin from the experiences of suffering aggregated over a life-time in the practice of medicine. I have become convinced that ethics means the capacity to work not only with the rationality necessary to problem-solve disease but also with some other kind of rationality that enables meaningful presence to the person whose suffering is intractable. This intuition is countercultural in a world of overgrown, healthcare

8 bureaucracy where ethics has been redefined in terms of abstract principles of economic productivity and sustainability, such that medicine and human suffering have fallen prey to political manipulation of power.14 15 Because it is so countercultural, my intuition must be examined and tested in a rigorous manner in relation to philosophical and theological accounts of the human condition and of the human good. To practice medicine with a rationality that pursues the good is to practice the healing art of ethical medicine; to practice medicine with a rationality that pursues universal truths is to practice the science of effective medicine. Both are necessary, but it is the distinction that will guide the intellectual method of this thesis project.

I use the Summa theologiae of Thomas Aquinas, as well as texts of Thomistic scholarship,16 to provide an understanding of human nature. I approach these texts on human nature and moral agency via a perspective “from below,” which is to say, focused upon the sensory aspect of human nature. On this view, the sensory

14 Stephen R.C Hicks, “‘Ethics and Economics.,’” The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, n.d., http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/EthicsandEconomics.html. “Ethical issues connect intimately with economic issues. Take the economic practice of doing a cost-benefit analysis. You could spend one hundred dollars for a night on the town, or you could donate that one hundred dollars to the re- election campaign of your favorite politician. Which option is better? The night on the town increases pleasure. A politician’s successful campaign may lead to more liberty in the long term. We regularly make decisions like this, weighing our options by measuring their likely costs and likely benefits against each other.” 15 MacIntyre, After Virtue, a Study in Moral Theory. 27. In the context of explicating the meaning of an ethics of emotivism, MacIntyre elaborates the role of the modern bureaucrat as one who has such great power over others that he/she manages behaviours and passions to align with a third party’s preconceived goals and conclusions. The point is that when the bureaucrat has this kind of power, a kind of moral constraint upon the other comes about. 16 Diana Fritz Cates, Aquinas on Emotions: A Religious Ethical Inquiry. (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2009). Robert Miner, Thomas Aquinas on the Passions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). Nicholas Lombardo, The Logic of Desire: Aquinas on Emotion. (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011).Michael Sherwin, By Knowledge and By Love (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Pres, 2005). G.E.M. Anscombe, Intention (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1957).

9 materiality is overlaid by the intellectual, immaterial nature to comprise a hylomorphic unity of sensory-intellectual integration. This perspective “from below” allows me to focus on movement rather than cognition, practical reason rather than theoretical reason, the good (best possible, but not perfect) rather than the true, and the particular rather than the universal. In other words, this perspective enables me to suspend the prevailing heuristic of abstract, theoretical reason and to focus in on the complementary modes of rationality, which are, according to Thomas, the practical reason of the higher intellectual nature and the particular reason of the lower sensory nature. Thomas describes an intelligence concerned with meanings of good and harm, which serves as a counterpoint to the problematic true-false dyad of scientific “Reason.” What Thomas has named the particular reason I am interpreting as the intelligence of the sensory body, that primal intelligence, which naturally moves out of harm’s way towards flourishing.

This bodily awareness or interpretation of the external milieu becomes the raw material for the higher intelligence of practical reason, which, in light of harm’s threatening dynamic, knows what is best to do for now in these particular, difficult circumstances. This innate desire for experiences of animation rather than annihilation becomes for Thomas both the sensory and the intellectual foundation for the moral pursuit of the good. Sensory experiences of harm (annihilation) and of good (animation) aggregate and become the raw material for an intelligent pursuit of the good. (Experience is also the raw material for what ancient metaphysics called speculative reason in pursuit of the true.) Thus the perspective from below, which views human nature primarily in terms of its sensory aspect will enable a

10 focused description of the rational modalities concerned with an emergence from suffering into flourishing. These rationalities, as distinguished by Thomas, will serve as an important moral counterpoint to the prevailing scientific rationality, which labels all circumstances as a problem-disease awaiting a medical solution.

The perspective from below also enables one to suspend “Reason” (as

Rosenbaum did) and to refuse the norms of science (such as sociology, psychology, physiology, anthropology, etc.) as surrogate markers for the moral good. In assuming the perspective from below, I do not mean to infer a subordination of the

“lower” sensory nature to the “higher” intellect. On the contrary, domination of the lower materiality by the higher immateriality will be viewed as a kind of violent fragmentation of the hylomorphic integrity. Fallen human nature starts off in this dis-integrated condition, in various states of fragmentation, bondage, immobility, paralysis, and muteness, which will serve as the description of suffering. Suffering is a hindrance to flourishing, i.e., an evil hindering the good. The good is a dynamic process—a movement—of ontologic transformation whereby the fragmented aspects of one’s humanity are re-integrated. In short, this thesis begins from the presumption that human nature, although ordered to the good, is afflicted and vulnerable to evil, which means that suffering is ubiquitous to humankind. From this starting point of suffering, one gropes for flourishing of the hylomorphic whole, such that moving, sensory materiality and cognizing, spiritual (intellectual) immateriality realize a healing and transformative integration. The view from below enables one to see clearly that an integrated sensory nature is a state of flourishing that becomes

11 the experiential foundation for the ultimate good of joyful, creaturely abiding in the

Creator.

This view from below, with its emphasis upon the sensory nature as emerging out of suffering-as-evil into flourishing-as-good, calls forth a language of its own. My method has been to cross many academic disciplines and to selectively import elements that would serve to characterize the new language. It is a language that is intelligible according to a logic of imagery, analogy, and metaphor. Metaphor in contemporary linguistic studies, is understood as the intelligence that bridges between what is known experientially and what is as-yet-unknown; in other words, one may infer that the experiential knowing of sensory nature gropes by metaphor for a revelation of Sacred Mystery.17 The pursuit of flourishing as one emerges from the bondage of suffering unfolds over time and becomes a narrative of one’s experience rather than an argument or a proof.18 As the freedom for flourishing grows in contemplative intimacy with Divine Perfection, new character traits of excellence become manifest, reflecting the divine justice-as-mercy in contrast to the finite justice-as-vengeance.19 Integral to this process, the phantasms or experiential imprints on one person’s particular sensory nature undergo healing transformation.20 Thus, a narrative of suffering has the potential to bring about

17 Elaine Botha, Metaphor and Its Moorings: Studies in the Grounding of Metaphorical Meaning. (New York: Peter Lang AG, 2007). 18 Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988). 19 James. Alison, Raising Abel: The Recovery of the Eschatological Imagination. (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2003). 20 Robert Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature: A Philosophical Study of Summa Theologiae Ia,75-89. (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 2002).

12 ontologic change.21 Cultural narratives shape this potential. Hero mythologies, which reckon the good as effective winning, successful conquest, and necessary sacrificial violence imprint the listener with an apocalyptic formulation of the imagination.22 By contrast, stories that evoke the silenced voice of the sufferer—the victim of another’s victory—imprint an eschatological re-configuration upon the imagination, such that compassion looks to subvert violence and injustice.23 The images and metaphors used in story-telling also have significance. When fear dominates, as in times of persecution, images of stasis emerge, and a need to conserve the status quo of structural integrity dominates. In times of political stability, when persons are not so petrified by their circumstances, images of dynamism can be identified; analogical meaning-making then follows the desire of lover and beloved to be conformed to one another.24 Static images seem to reflect a pre-occupation with suffering and death, whereas dynamic images indicate a vivacity that is not quenched by circumstances of suffering or impending death. The resurrection narratives illustrate the mysterious reality of this latter disposition.

The narrative of suffering is the travail of the one who is the teller, the sufferer, the

21 Rita Charon and Laurie Zoloth, “Like an Open Book: Reliability, Intersubjectivity, and Textuality in Bioethics.,” in Stories Matter: The Role of Narrative in Medical Ethics (New York: Routledge, 2002), 21–36. 22 MacIntyre, After Virtue, a Study in Moral Theory. Alison, Raising Abel: The Recovery of the Eschatological Imagination. 23 Dorothee Soelle, Suffering, trans. Everett R. Kalin (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975). Brian Robinette, Grammars of Resurrection: A Christian Theology of Presence and Absence (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2009). 24 Caroline Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995).

13 emerging victim, the moral agent; it is told in the voice of the first person.25 The narrative of suffering cannot effect a personal, healing, ontological transformation if it is imposed by the imperative voice of a third person observer. The narrative of suffering is not a forceful, sacrificial process of insertion of an abstract hypothesis or ideology into a life of suffering deemed culpable; the narrative of suffering is an

Aristotelian-Thomistic process of gradually emerging into the good from a vulnerable state of suffering corporeality.26 If the “I” is to undergo this healing transformation of the self, then the “I” cannot assume the disposition of the adjudicating observer of the self, whose suffering is somehow deserved according to a human system of justice driven by penalty.27 The “I” who is undergoing transformation gradually explores—through narration—the meaning of the self’s suffering as undeserved and unjust according to a system of divine justice tempered by mercy.28 As the sufferer’s identity progressively shifts from victim to agent, the description of the moral travail also changes. The moral work of the agent is to emerge from the suffering, bringing about a new order that is marked by a subversion of annihilation by re-animation, vengeance by compassion, disintegration by re-integration, etc.29 By contrast, when the false identity of victim

25 Martin Rhonheimer, “‘Practical Reason and the Naturally Rational.,’” in The Perspective of the Acting Person: Essays in the Renewal of Thomistic Moral Philosophy. Edited by William F. Murphy Jr. (Washington, D.C: The Catholic University of America Press, 2008). 26 adapted from MacIntyre’s description of Plato, Aristotle, and other ancients in After Virtue. 27 Robert. Sweetman, “‘Thomas of Cantimpré: Performative Reading and Pastoral Care.,’” in Performance and Transformation, Edited by Mary A. Suydam and Joanna E. Ziegler. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999). 28 Soelle, Suffering. David Burrell, Deconstructing Theodicy: Why Job Has Nothing to Say to the Puzzle of Suffering. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Brazos Press, 2008). 29 Robinette, Grammars of Resurrection: A Christian Theology of Presence and Absence.

14 continues to bind, to paralyze, to silence, and to fragment the self, moral agency means “courageous” and heroic co-operation with the annihilation of the self. A narrative of suffering has the remarkable potential to change the identity of both teller and listener, and for this reason I have drawn from all these many different academic disciplines to name some of the characteristics that will be important in this new language.

My method has included a series of self-conscious correlations between my own medical experience on the one hand, and, on the other, the theoretical models that I have researched in the academic texts of theology and philosophy. These correlations emerged in the course of a three-staged process. At the first stage, I established a logical flow in and through which I identified the theorists who provided me conceptual tools (claims, descriptions and arguments) to give theoretical expression to the intuitions of my medical experience. In the second stage, I developed the criteria by which I came to embrace the tools and accounts of certain theorists and to resist others. In the final stage, I came to flesh out the logical flow of my argument via strategic citation of my interlocutors. The ordering of these citations worked to make my points much more effectively than had earlier précis of their texts.

Development of Chapters and Introduction of Interlocutors: a Summary.

Chapter 1. In the introductory chapter, I establish that medical ethics fails to find moral meaning in the voice of victims of violence.30 Medical ethics follows a process

30 Lachman, “Ethical Issues in the Disruptive Behaviors of Incivility, Bullying, and Horizontal/Lateral Violence.” M. J. Findorff et al., “Risk Factors for Work Related Violence in a Health Care Organization,”

15 of theoretical reasoning using abstract principles to move towards some kind of practical application. On this view, suffering becomes a conceptualized problem for which one is morally obligated to discover a solution. The solution begins as a hypothesis and then proceeds to become an intervention in reality. In this way the methodology of medical ethics works like science: a hypothesis is proposed according to universal laws or principles and then is tested in real circumstances.

By widespread use of this approach, suffering has become a concept abstracted from experience, and theoretical reason has come to define the methodology. Following the insight of Rosenbaum,31 I set up “Meaning” as an intelligence that has become absent from the heuristic available to the medical professional. A rational modality characterized by theoretical principles and abstract hypotheses (that I will call

“Reason”) has come to prevail both in scientific medicine and in medical ethics. It is a retrieval of the intelligence of “Meaning” towards a broadening of the professional heuristic that I pursue in this thesis.

Chapter 2. In order to search for this modality of intelligence that appears to be absent from our contemporary ethics deliberations, I have turned to the pre- modern texts of Thomas Aquinas, a medieval scholar and spiritual model acknowledged and revered as saint within the Christian tradition. I begin by researching the nature of being human in Thomas’ Summa theologiae, I.Q75-59 and

Injury Prevention 10 (2003): 296–302.D. M. Gates, “The Epidemic of Violence against Healthcare Workers,” Occupational and Environmental Medicine, no. 61 (2004): 649–50.Lisa L. Schlitzkus et al., “Workplace Bullying of General Surgery Residents by Nurses.,” Journal of Surgical Education 71, no. 6 (2014): 149–53.Powell Lorna, “Bullying among Doctors,” BMJ Careers, no. 16 Apr (2011): 154. 31 Rosenbaum MD, “Being like Mike — Fear, Trust, and the Tragic Death of Michael Davidson.”

I-II.Q 22-39. These quaestiones and my various interlocutors32 have provided me with a clue to the lost intelligence. Thomas based his Summa upon a fundamental observation: human beings moved towards the good and out of harm’s way, both with the sensory materiality and with the spiritual-intellectual-psychological immateriality.33 In other words, human intelligence guided one’s movements, both material and immaterial. There was more to human intelligence than thinking. An intelligent awareness that could distinguish harm from good suggested to me a modality of intelligence that was capable of medicine’s missing “Meaning.”

For Thomas, the sensory nature has a built-in desire to flourish and to get out of harm’s way. Thomas describes this natural set of capacities as apprehension, appetition, and abiding in the attained good. Following Diana Fritz Cates,34 I have imagined this as a dynamic triad, and indeed as a circular movement. Human nature is permeable to external “objects,” like energies, people, things, as well as to sights, sounds, touches, tastes, and smells. A human being undergoes the imprinting of such stimuli not as neutral images but as having the associated meanings of harm or good.35 And this imprinted meaning comes on account of one’s identity as a creature made in the image of the Divine Good. This imprinting of externals upon the interiority is the passive movement of apprehension.36 The desire to move towards

32 My interlocutors in chapter 2 are: Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature: A Philosophical Study of Summa Theologiae Ia,75-89.Fritz Cates, Aquinas on Emotions: A Religious Ethical Inquiry. Miner, Thomas Aquinas on the Passions.Lombardo, The Logic of Desire: Aquinas on Emotion.Sherwin, By Knowledge and By Love.Anscombe, Intention. 33 Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature: A Philosophical Study of Summa Theologiae Ia,75-89. 34 Fritz Cates, Aquinas on Emotions: A Religious Ethical Inquiry. 35 Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature: A Philosophical Study of Summa Theologiae Ia,75-89. 36 Anscombe, Intention.

17 the alluring object is the active movement of appetition or passion.37 A third movement is the contemplative resting in the good attained.38

The emphasis in the scholarly tradition has been to focus upon those higher intellectual capacities that quest for the truth. I have regarded this as the approach

“from above;”39 it suggests to me a certain dominating preponderance of the theoretical mode of rationality that I have called “Reason.” In order to bring into focus the lost intelligence around “Meaning,” I have chosen to examine the lower sensory nature, i.e. the part that moves with intelligence towards the good and out of harm’s way. Thomas affirms my intuition that “Meaning” is to be found in the sensory nature when he associates the cogitative sense with the primal, particular reason, (although he never develops this idea in the Summa). Moreover, he distinguishes two main human operations, cognition and movement, which become the work of the theoretical speculative reason and the practical reason, respectively.

My project is to develop more definition around the workings of practical reason, particular reason, and the sensory movements in pursuit/avoidance of good/harm so that an intelligence of “Meaning” may become a robust partner to the theoretical, solution-based, scientific rationality in the deliberations of contemporary medical ethics.

Chapter 3. The healthcare professions are usually identified with attending persons who are suffering. Suffering is a term that means different things to

37 Fritz Cates, Aquinas on Emotions: A Religious Ethical Inquiry. Miner, Thomas Aquinas on the Passions. Lombardo, The Logic of Desire: Aquinas on Emotion. 38 Sherwin, By Knowledge and By Love. 39 I am following the terminology of Diana Fritz Cates, Aquinas on Emotions

18 different people, depending upon the circumstances. And yet some kind of descriptive definition is necessary in a project that concerns “Meaning” in the context of suffering and medical ethics. By adhering to the view from below and researching Thomas on the passions of pain and sorrow, Summma theologiae I-II, questions 35-39, I am able to construct a description of suffering in terms of human movement: suffering is the experience of hindered, obstructed, fragmented, or paralyzed movement towards the good. Suffering as a hindrance to one’s movement may be viewed as a privation of the good, i.e., the effect of evil. To situate suffering in the context of sensory materiality, alive with movement but vulnerable to corpse- like immobilization, provides fresh insights in my quest for “Meaning” in the face of suffering. While my interlocutors on the passions often refer to them as emotions and/or cognitions, I have regarded “emotion” as a term of modernity, which could potentially derail my mind into its default modality of scientific problem-solving, which includes the science of psychotherapy.40 I have therefore chosen to adhere strictly to Thomas’ own description of the passions as movements, in contrast to the complementary, but distinctly other, operation of cognition.

When the locus of suffering is defined as within the sensory nature of vital movements then one can predict that the lost intelligence of “Meaning” will not be found in the pursuit of an abstract theoretical solution to the problem of suffering.

To define the sensory nature as the locus of suffering is to shift the search for lost

“Meaning” to the rationality of the sensory nature. “Meaning” will be found in an exploration of the movements that advance towards the good and get out of harm’s

40 Lombardo, The Logic of Desire: Aquinas on Emotion.

19 way. On this view, suffering emerges as key to discovering the lost mode of rationality.

Chapter 4. The third aspect of human corporeal vitality is its movement of abiding in the good attained. This abiding is first experienced as a resting in physical pleasure and progresses to the spiritual joy of abiding in God. I have regarded this resting in the good as the satiety and fulfillment of the contemplative disposition. It is a relational intimacy with the Source of all that is good, and as such, progressively shapes the knowing of harm from good. My principal text is Thomas, ST I.12 and 21,

ST I. 79-83, ST I-II.25-27 and 94.41 In this chapter the distinctive capacities of speculative and of practical reason are laid out.42

Based upon my research and upon my experience, I would suggest the following definition: contemplation is a stance of stillness in which the imprinted past experiences are allowed to surface into one’s awareness (recollection); one becomes conscious of experiences of joy that are hindered by experiences of suffering.

Healing comes about when the joy intensifies to the point of re-vitalizing the parts immobilized through suffering. This dynamic of transformation is experiential not theoretical; it calls for a robust practical reason with its habit of prudence. The good understood in terms of a contemplative proximity of creature to Creator represents a counterpoint to the prevailing self-referential understanding of the good. The

41 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, Complete English Edition in Five Volumes (Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, Inc., 1920). 42 Fritz Cates, Aquinas on Emotions: A Religious Ethical Inquiry. Servais Pinckaers, O.P., The Pinckaers Reader: Renewing Thomistic Moral Theology, ed. John Berkman and Craig Steven Titus (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005). Sherwin, By Knowledge and By Love. Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature: A Philosophical Study of Summa Theologiae Ia,75-89.

20 former requires an experiential immersion in the good, while the latter reduces the good to a good idea. Contemplative immersion in the good is the complex work of practical reason; a human-made good idea is a cognitive speculation or abstraction, which may or may not be continuous with the ground of experience.

Chapter 5. A corporeal locus of suffering suggests that the suitable response to suffering is also movement-based, experiential, and particular. A response to suffering that follows an exclusively intellectual theoretical problem-solving heuristic, i.e., “Reason,” is lacking in that innate higher rationality, which, grounded in experience, guides a person to move even when the speculative theoretical intellect is befuddled by the unintelligibility of evil. Suffering evokes a response in the modality of “Meaning,” i.e., in terms of the good and the harmful, regardless of the truth, obscured momentarily by overwhelming evil. My proposed understanding of suffering as immobilization coheres well with the response to suffering elaborated by David Burrell as “performative.”43 The movement of a choreographed performance subverts the bondage or immobility of suffering-as- evil. Dorothee Soelle renders even more nuanced the sensory nature of suffering by showing that a suppression of apprehension—a numbing out of sensibilities— necessarily goes hand in hand with the immobilization of appetition.44 Soelle critiques the arguments of theodicy, which have arisen in modernity on account of a hypertrophied rationality of principles. It is this preponderance of “Reason” that has eclipsed the rationality of “Meaning” in the context of human suffering and has led to

43 David Burrell, Aquinas, God and Action (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979). Burrell, Deconstructing Theodicy: Why Job Has Nothing to Say to the Puzzle of Suffering. 44 Soelle, Suffering.

21 the intuition that medicine is afflicted with a missing intelligence. Eric Cassell MD, is the interlocutor that I use to illustrate the problematic of suffering viewed through the lens of scientific “Reason.”45 His well-respected dissertation on suffering represents an intelligence so imbued with science that it has become oblivious to the possibility and the potential of another heuristic. Although his experience as a sensitive clinician comes across, more is needed than a visceral resonance to suffering, reduced to the scientific idiom. Cassell stands for the colleagues whose response to suffering Rosenbaum has found lacking in the intelligence of “Meaning.”

Soelle and Burrell are theologians without ties to medicine, but they serve my quest to illumine that missing intelligence, by their emphasis upon a comportment guided not by theoretical hypotheses but by the aggregation of experiential wisdom, i.e., by practical reason. My project becomes in the first place the rigorous elaboration in theological terms of the modality of “Meaning” that is missing from medicine. The subsequent phase becomes the transliteration of a theology of suffering in the idiom of practical reason back into the practice of medicine.

Chapter 6. In this chapter I specify the narrative characteristic of this new language; practical reason is storied thinking. I adapt the work of Elaine Botha to provide an understanding of the role of metaphor in the personal travail of one’s ontologic transformation.46 A closer look at the medical ethics textbook of

Beauchamp and Childress reveals the biases of “Reason” inherent in principlism,

45 Eric J. Cassell, The Nature of Suffering and the Goals of Medicine, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). 46 Botha, Metaphor and Its Moorings: Studies in the Grounding of Metaphorical Meaning.

22 preconceptions which obstruct “Meaning.”47 Rita Charon and other narrative- medicine ethicists48 identify the need for an alternate approach in medical ethics, namely, the Levinasian heuristic of resonating with the suffering in the face of the other. Alasdair MacIntyre provides helpful philosophic insights around the nature of the good as excellence or as effectiveness, enabling the insight that our contemporary ethics is flawed by the prominence of at least two varieties of utilitarian ethics, namely, an empiricist and a principalist version.49 In concluding this chapter, it becomes clear that while narrative is important, not any old story will do.

Chapter 7. In this chapter the moral quality of the narrative, the significance of the images and metaphors used, and the voice of the narrator will be specified.

Mythologies that feature violence are distortions in which the good masquerades as harm; the victim is murdered and a false “peace” prevails, at least temporarily.50 The

Girardian model identifies the mendacity of suffering-as-evil posing as flourishing.

An inspirational story, that aligns better with ultimate beatitude, is about compassion, but, as we shall see, compassion can also be distorted.51 Narratives of apocalyptic violence represent a false good, which can readily infiltrate the

47 Beauchamp and Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics. 48 Charon and Zoloth, “Like an Open Book: Reliability, Intersubjectivity, and Textuality in Bioethics.” Joan McCarthy, “‘Principlism or Narrative Ethics: Must We Choose between Them?,’” Medical Humanities 29, no. 2 (2003): 65–71. Rita Charon and Martha Montello, “Introduction: Memory and Anticipation: The Practice of Narrative Ethics.,” in Stories Matter: The Role of Narrative in Medical Ethics (New York: Routledge, 2002), ix–xii. 49 MacIntyre, After Virtue, a Study in Moral Theory. 50 René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightening., trans. James G. Williams (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2002). 51 Sweetman, “‘Thomas of Cantimpré: Performative Reading and Pastoral Care.’”

23 imagination and eclipse eschatological images of the good.52 The Christian

Scriptures introduce the experience of resurrection, which has the power to reconfigure the imagination and with it to shift the identity from death towards flourishing.53 Resurrection is a new understanding of justice, which reveals the experience of Divine Justice and Mercy subverting the need for vengeance.

Metaphors are how the tradition has communicated the resurrection experience and the transformation of human identity from death into everlasting life.54 These images fall into two categories, stasis and movement. In the paradigm I am developing, i.e., “from below,” the good is not a static perfection, but is rather a progressive animation of desire for emergence from suffering and injustice. The only way to acquire that desire for life is to personally engage in the travail of the transformation from death into life. If it has any place at all in the narrative, the subject-object paradigm is a modality of logic to be refused. The “I” is the active agent in the moral process of transformation; practical reason is the voice of the first person.55 Thus we have a set of features that must characterize the narrative of suffering if it is to become a travail of healing.

As we listen to narratives of suffering, not everyone will have had the experiences of loving embrace that ground the desire to emerge from life’s suffering. Many have had only the experience of suffering upon suffering without the images, let alone experiences, of the resurrection. Practical reason refuses to adjudicate the actions

52 Alison, Raising Abel: The Recovery of the Eschatological Imagination. 53 Robinette, Grammars of Resurrection: A Christian Theology of Presence and Absence. 54 Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336. 55 Rhonheimer, “‘Practical Reason and the Naturally Rational.’”

24 that arise from the imprinted terror of such overwhelming injustice; practical reason serves the attending with the imagery of a conduit that mediates Divine

Justice and Mercy to the sufferer, even as one vicariously and viscerally senses the suffering face of that Levinasian other.

Chapter 8. In this chapter I present a synthesis and conclusion to the themes presented in this study. A rigorous approach to “Meaning” as a sophisticated form of intelligence is offered to the discourse of medical ethics. “Reason” without the complementarity of “Meaning” wreaks violence, an injustice that goes unspoken when the language does not exist. As human beings we are both material and immaterial in nature; the former is readily accessible to the empiricist, and the latter is well-developed in the principalist. When moral movement is introduced, then the dynamic integration of the material and immaterial aspects comes into focus such that the human person as creature, moves from suffering and death into a life of beatific flourishing in Divine Justice and Mercy. This imagery of salvific healing is not dependent upon fluency in analytic thinking. Such integration requires a robust practical reason with its sensed analogies moving along in storied sequence, voiced by the “I” who is undergoing a graced, new identity.

Chapter 2. A Thomistic View of Human Nature “From Below”

If Rosenbaum’s reflection invites medicine to find meanings that enhance and amplify life, then a consideration of the meaning of life itself is in order. I will consider life in terms of the Aristotelian-Thomistic meanings, associated with a hylomorphic understanding of the human being: integrated movement and intellection. I regard these meanings and their association with the intensification or perfection of life, in turn, as foundational to ethics. The Thomistic maxim, to pursue the good and to avoid evil, then, becomes my succinct definition of ethics. This pursuit of the good, brings me to focus upon that pursuit as real, corporeal movement rather than as exclusively abstract, intellectual deliberation. When movement becomes integral to the good, the corporeal passions become a central consideration. Moreover, suffering and violence take on fresh meaning when considered in terms of movement. And finally human contemplation of the good takes on a sensory dimension when intellection does not dominate. Contemplation of the good brings about refined movement, i.e., a human corporeal performance of increasingly nuanced desire. Nuanced desire is a form of love that resonates with human suffering; I will refer to this as compassion.

2.1. Life as the Good.

In the paradigm of classic metaphysics, to have being is thought of as a kind of perfection in itself. But this being further advances towards ultimate perfection in goodness. Goodness is understood as a kind of final cause towards which any being

25 26 inclines. In the human being this inclination towards goodness as the ultimate end is called desire. Though being is good in virtue of what it is, it moves toward its perfection in and through the realization of those qualities implicit in being what-it- is. In this sense, the good becomes a form, which gives shape to being among humans, for example, by means of an experience of the good as alluring and desirable.

The essence of goodness consists in this, that it is in some way desirable….. [I]t is clear that goodness and being are the same really. But goodness presents the aspect of desirableness, which being does not present.56

Thomas understands goodness in terms of the virtuous, the useful, and the pleasant.

Some one (or more) aspect of goodness arouses desire, whereby movement towards that goodness comes about.

This division properly concerns human goodness. But if we consider the nature of goodness from a higher and more universal point of view, we shall find that this division properly concerns goodness as such. For everything is good so far as it is desirable, and is a term of the movement of the appetite; the term of whose movement can be seen from a consideration of the movement of a natural body. Now the movement of a natural body is terminated by the end absolutely; and relatively by the means through which it comes to the end, where the movement ceases; so a thing is called a term of movement, so far as it terminates any part of that movement. Now the ultimate term of movement can be taken in two ways, either as the thing itself towards which it tends, e.g. a place or form; or a state of rest in that thing. Thus, in the movement of the appetite, the thing desired that terminates the movement of the appetite relatively, as a means by which something tends towards another, is called the useful; but that sought after as the last thing absolutely terminating the movement of the appetite, as a thing towards which for its own sake the appetite tends, is called the virtuous; for the virtuous is that which is desired for its own sake; but that which terminates the movement of the appetite in the form of rest in the thing desired, is called the pleasant..57

The ultimate good that moves the existence of all things is God. “[A]ll things, by desiring their own perfection, desire God Himself, inasmuch as the perfections of all things are so many similitudes of divine being,…”58 Desire is aroused by an object

56 ST.I.5 57 ST.I.5.6 58 ST.I.6.1.2

27 that seems to echo this divine perfection. Of course not everything that we desire turns out to be truly good, but a desirable object always has the appearance (even though possibly a deceptive appearance) of the good. When a created being moves towards the good, it is considered to be participating in the divine perfection. Only

God is essentially and perfectly good. 59 For Thomas, this desire for the good on the part of the created being constitutes a relationship of longing for God.60 This longing animates movement. Thus both longing and movement take on moral meaning.

Thomas views life, as he views goodness, according to the classic paradigm.

Presuming a hierarchy of being from animate, immaterial pinnacle to inanimate, material base, Dionysius is cited as having written, “the last echo of life is heard in the plants.” Thomas reflects on what constitutes life.

We can gather to what things life belongs, and to what it does not, from such things as manifestly possess life. Now life manifestly belongs to animals, for it said in De Vegetab. i [*De Plantis i, 1] that in animals life is manifest. We must, therefore, distinguish living from lifeless things, by comparing them to that by reason of which animals are said to live: and this it is in which life is manifested first and remains last. We say then that an animal begins to live when it begins to move of itself: and as long as such movement appears in it, so long as it is considered to be alive. When it no longer has any movement of itself, but is only moved by another power, then its life is said to fail, and the animal to be dead. Whereby it is clear that those things are properly called living that move themselves by some kind of movement, whether it be movement properly so called, as the act of an imperfect being, i.e. of a thing in potentiality, is called movement; or movement in a more general sense, as when said of the act of a perfect thing, as understanding and feeling are called movement. Accordingly, all things are said to be alive that determine themselves to movement or operation of any kind: whereas those things that cannot by their nature do so, cannot be called living, unless by a similitude.61

Movement is identified with life, non-movement with death. For Thomas, understanding and feeling are considered movements and constitute the acts of more perfect things. His emphasis is that movement—of any kind—characterizes

59 ST.I.6.3 60 ST.I.6.2.1 61 ST.I.18.1

28 life. Inanimate bodies are at rest in “their proper place” unless moved by external forces; “they are displaced from their natural conditions.” But “plants and other living things move with vital movement, in accordance with the disposition of their nature.” 62 To live is to exhibit self-movement and the natural capacity to apply oneself to an operation.63 Note that Thomas cautions, “ ‘[L]iving’ is not an accidental but an essential predicate. Sometimes, however, life is used less properly for the operations from which its name is taken, and thus the Philosopher says (Ethic. ix, 9) that to live is principally to sense or to understand.” For Thomas, to live is not an operation, although linguistically “to live” can become conflated with “to understand.” Plant life is characterized by the operations of taking nourishment, growing, and reproducing. Animals have the additional capacity for locomotion.

Human life exhibits the unique operation of understanding. Beyond the operation of understanding, the human agent experiences a capacity for pleasure and delight.

It happens that there exist in men not merely such natural principles of certain operations as are their natural powers, but something over and above these, such as habits inclining them like a second nature to particular kinds of operations, so that the operations become sources of pleasure. Thus, as by a similitude, any kind of work in which a man takes delight, so that his bent is towards it, his time spent in it, and his whole life ordered with a view to it, is said to be the life of that man. 64

Unlike animals of instinct, human habits emerge on account of a sensory capacity for pleasure and delight. Human movement responds to sensory input; the more sophisticated the sensory faculty, the more perfect the power of self-movement.

Other things have self-movement in a higher degree, that is, not only with regard to executing the movement, but even as regards to the form, the principle of movement,

62 ST.I.18.1.2 63 ST.I.18.2 64 ST.I.18.2.2. Though Thomas is not here concerned primarily with the point I am making, he yet confirms my point incidentally and in doing so strengthens the point in that he makes the point even without meaning to.

which form they acquire of themselves. Of this kind are animals, in which the principle of movement is not a naturally implanted form; but one received through sense. Hence the more perfect is their sense, the more perfect is their power of self-movement. Such as have only the sense of touch, as shellfish, move only with the motion of expansion and contraction; and thus their movement hardly exceeds that of plants. Whereas such as have the sensitive power in perfection, so as to recognize not only connection and touch, but also objects apart from themselves, can move themselves to a distance by progressive movement. Yet although animals of the latter kind receive through sense the form that is the principle of their movement, nevertheless they cannot of themselves propose to themselves the end of their operation, or movement; for this has been implanted in them by nature; and by natural instinct they are moved to any action through the form apprehended by sense. Hence such animals as move themselves in respect to an end they themselves propose are superior to these. This can only be done by reason and intellect; whose province it is to know the proportion between the end and the means to that end, and duly coordinate them. Hence a more perfect degree of life is that of intelligible beings; for their power of self-movement is more perfect.65

Thomas here associates human movement with the capacity to identify an end and the means appropriate to that end. Human movement is shaped according to desire for the pleasurable end rather than according to an animal instinct rigidly oriented towards survival. Human desire, unlike animal instinct, can modify its object and its direction of movement relative to that object. To live as a human being is to experience, to discern, and to contour the appetitive movements of one’s human nature. Animals instincts do not have the quality of plasticity that human appetition has.

Thomas points out that although the human being is self-moved on account of desire aroused by understanding or interpreting the external stimuli, there is an additional external moving force to which the human being is receptive. This external force is that of a superior understanding of greater perfection than mere human understanding.

But although our intellect moves itself to some things, yet others are supplied by nature, as are first principles, which it cannot doubt; and the last end, which it cannot but will. Hence, although with respect to some things it moves itself, yet with regard to other things it must

65 ST.I.18.3

be moved by another. Wherefore that being whose act of understanding is its very nature, and which, in what it naturally possesses, is not determined by another, must have life in the most perfect degree. Such is God; and hence in Him principally is life. From this the Philosopher concludes (Metaph. xii, 51), after showing God to be intelligent, that God has life most perfect and eternal, since His intellect is most perfect and always in act.66

To be moved by God is to exhibit the highest degree of intelligence. In fact, Thomas cites Aristotle’s de anima. “In the sense [that] understanding is movement, that which understands itself is said to move itself.”67 In Thomas, human movement and human intelligence are inseparable and mutual. Moreover, human movement is intelligible insofar as it pursues participation and ultimate union with goodness/God.

Nicholas Lombardo understands being and goodness in the faith context of creation. He thus sees the movement in creation as ordered towards God.

In God’s plan creation is inherently dynamic: created imperfect and permeated with appetite, it cannot help moving towards its perfection. Without appetite, there would not be this dynamic movement, and creation would not move towards its perfection. Instead creation would stagnate. Appetite is not just intrinsically good; it is integral to creation’s inherent dynamism.68

Human movement is seen as intelligent insofar as it is increasingly ordered towards

God as its ultimate end.

In answer to Rosenbaum, I will propose that the meaning of human life is this intelligent movement towards its perfection (the good), with the corollary of suffering and death understood as privation of such movement. The anthropology elaborated in Thomas’ Summa theologiae is helpful to an understanding of this intelligent movement towards perfection. The relevant themes for consideration in

66 ST.I.18.3.2 67 ST.I.18.3.1 68 Lombardo, The Logic of Desire: Aquinas on Emotion.

31 the following sections will be hylomorphism of the material-immaterial composite, sensory apprehension and intention, and sensory appetition and the passions. I have devoted separate chapters to suffering and to contemplative resting.

2.2.i. Human Nature: Hylomorphism.

Rosenbaum has drawn attention, in the face of extreme suffering, to the inadequacy of the prevalent medical ethics, which focuses on rational scientific analysis. She has invited a different approach, which quests for meaning in life.

Thomistic hylomorphism implies both a unity of and a distinction between the sensory and intellectual aspects of human nature. I will show that when we work exclusively with the rational intellectual faculties, we are, in effect, silencing or repressing the sensory corporeality of human nature.

Thomas, following Aristotle, thought that the most ancient philosophers worked from a materialist paradigm of life. But Thomas diverged from this primitive materialism, using the classic notion of the form to derive an immaterial dimension to human nature.

Now life is shown principally by two actions, knowledge and movement. The philosophers of old, not being able to rise above their imagination, supposed that the principle of these actions was something corporeal: for they asserted that only bodies were real things; and that what is not corporeal is nothing: hence they maintained that the soul is something corporeal. This opinion can be proved to be false in many ways; but we shall make use of only one proof, based on universal and certain principles, which shows clearly that the soul is not a body.69

In other words, for Thomas, the soul was the form within a human being's composite nature. But as a form it was radically different than the classic notions of corporeal form. The soul according to Thomas had sensory operations in its

69 ST. I.75.1

32 corporeality while at the same time it had intellectual operations in the immaterial realm of the spiritual. Thomas writes, “Now life is shown principally by two actions, knowledge and movement.”70 In ancient times, as Thomas understood them, the principle of life was thought to derive from a material element, referred to as a body.

The foundational bodies were fire, water, earth, and air, which could not be reduced to more basic elements. Moreover the ancients believed that what was not material did not exist.

[F]or they asserted that only bodies were real things; and that what is not corporeal is nothing: hence they maintained that the soul is something corporeal.71

Thomas observed that the vital principle of these presumed basic material bodies was like the eye whose vital action is vision, or the heart whose vital action is life- sustaining. But the soul is to be seen differently; it is that very first vital principle originating from beyond the materiality of the body.

For it is clear that to be a principle of life, or to be a living thing, does not belong to a body as such; since, if that were the case, every body would be a living thing, or a principle of life. Now that it is actually… a body,[competent to be a living thing,] it owes to some principle which is called its act. Therefore the soul, which is the first principle of life, is not a body, but the act of a body.72

Thomas is describing the soul in terms of act or movement.

As everything which is in motion must be moved by something else, a process which cannot be prolonged indefinitely, we must allow that not every mover is moved. For, since to be moved is to pass from potentiality to actuality, the mover gives what it has to the thing moved, inasmuch as it causes it to be in act. But, as is shown in Phys. viii, 6, there is a mover which is altogether immovable, and not moved either essentially, or accidentally; and such a mover can cause an invariable movement. There is, however, another kind of mover, which, though not moved essentially, is moved accidentally; and for this reason it does not cause an invariable movement; such a mover, is the soul. There is, again, another mover, which is moved essentially---namely, the body. And because the philosophers of old

70 ST.I.75.1 71 ST.I.75.1 72 ST.I.75.1

believed that nothing existed but bodies, they maintained that every mover is moved; and that the soul is moved directly, and is a body.73

Generally, when a thing moves, it shifts from potentiality to actuality. When considering noetic movement, in particular, Thomas claimed that in such movement, one knows first in potency and reduces such knowledge to act. Thomas thus reasons that “the likeness of a thing known is not actually in the nature of the knower,” but is potentially known. The tree that I see is not actually part of me, and yet I know what a tree is. By pointing out that the ancient philosophers missed this distinction between actuality and potentiality, he could argue for the soul as an immaterial, incorporeal moving (vital) principle.74

The soul is not an organ because it has the capacity to know and to act beyond the very circumscribed acts of an internal or sensory organ.75 The intellectual quality of the soul means that in certain aspects its operation is “apart from the body;” in other words, the soul can be described as subsistent and non-material. The soul is unlike the material parts, such as the hand or the eye, which cease to operate as a hand or an eye when severed from the body.76 The subsistent immaterial soul with its characteristic operation of intellection has a more complex connection to the material body than any organ of the body.

The body is necessary for the action of the intellect, not as its origin of action, but on the part of the object; for the phantasm is to the intellect what color is to the sight. Neither does such a dependence on the body prove the intellect to be non-subsistent; otherwise it would follow that an animal is non-subsistent, since it requires external objects of the senses in order to perform its act of perception.77

73 ST.I.75.1.1 74 ST.I.75. 1,2. 75 ST.I.75.2 76 ST.I.75.2.2 77 ST.I.75.2.3

The intellectual capacity of the soul is dependent upon the material body and its sensory apparatus, although the soul is not in itself material. The soul is the form— the vital principle—of an actual material body, which brings from potentiality into actuality that which is beyond the body’s presently determinate contours.78 For

Thomas, an immaterial/spiritual realm (God) stands at the origin of human vitality.

This immaterial aspect of soul, receptive and responsive to the spiritual realm of

God, is referred to as the intellectual human soul. It completes the sensory human soul’s operations of “nourishment, sensation and local movement; and likewise of our understanding.”79 It is this understanding of the form of human nature that I find relevant to Rosenbaum’s appeal to something more dense with meaning than analytical reason.

Thomas considers a person—eg. Socrates—who understands something to exhibit the act of understanding. A particular human consciousness that can understand is associated also with human awareness of sensation. If understanding is considered an act, and if sensory capacities are associated with act, then sensory corporeality and its movement become integral to the human act of understanding.

…[I]t is one and the same man who is conscious both that he understands, and that he senses. But one cannot sense without a body: therefore the body must be some part of man. It follows therefore that the intellect by which Socrates understands is a part of Socrates, so that in some way it is united to the body of Socrates.80

Understanding is somehow one with the sensory-motor act of vital, material corporeality. But intellect is not to be seen as instrumental to understanding.

78 See ST.I.75.5 79 ST.I.76.1 80 ST.I.76.1

The intellect is not however, like a motor for the body, as though the intellect and body form one thing so that the act of the intellect could be attributed to the whole…. This is, however, absurd for many reasons. First, because the intellect does not move the body except through the appetite, the movement of which presupposes the operation of the intellect. The reason therefore why Socrates understands is not because he is moved by his intellect, but rather, contrariwise, he is moved by his intellect because he understands.81

The contrasting of intellect and understanding is noteworthy; Thomas does not regard understanding as an outcome of intellection. Understanding would seem to be intrinsic to Socrates’ particular corporeality, tied up, as it were, with the movement of appetition. Intellect is independent of materiality; it is immaterial and as such can access that which is beyond the determinate, corporeal particularity of

Socrates.

…[S]ince Socrates is an individual in a nature of one essence composed of matter and form, if the intellect be not the form, it follows that it must be outside the essence, and then the intellect is the whole Socrates as a motor to the thing moved. Whereas the act of intellect remains in the agent, and does not pass into something else, as does the action of heating. Therefore the action of understanding cannot be attributed to Socrates for the reason that he is moved by his intellect.82

Thomas also points out that the metaphor of the intellect as instrument is not helpful because human beings are self-moving, without the requirement for a detachable motor principle. The intellectual soul is not a detachable motive principle, but rather is the very form of human self-movement. If Socrates is a being, all aspects of Socrates have to be one absolutely, not detachable.83 For Thomas, both a sensori-motor material form as well as a non-material intellectual form determine the act of understanding.

Reflecting a similar understanding, Robert Miner has pointed out that

Bonaventure was incorrect in considering “the journey of the mind towards God” as

81 ST.I.76 82 ST.I.76.1 83 ST.I.76.1

36 the ultimate salvific dynamic, obstructed by the sensory body and its passions.84

Thomas was aware of the soul-body composite, in which the sensory materiality

“has something of its own.”85

As the Philosopher says (Polit. i, 2): "We observe in an animal a despotic and a politic principle: for the soul dominates the body by a despotic power; but the intellect dominates the appetite by a politic and royal power." For a power is called despotic whereby a man rules his slaves, who have not the right to resist in any way the orders of the one that commands them, since they have nothing of their own. But that power is called politic and royal by which a man rules over free subjects, who, though subject to the government of the ruler, have nevertheless something of their own, by reason of which they can resist the orders of him who commands. And so, the soul is said to rule the body by a despotic power, because the members of the body cannot in any way resist the sway of the soul, but at the soul's command both hand and foot, and whatever member is naturally moved by voluntary movement, are moved at once. But the intellect or reason is said to rule the irascible and concupiscible by a politic power: because the sensitive appetite has something of its own, by virtue whereof it can resist the commands of reason. For the sensitive appetite is naturally moved, not only by the estimative power in other animals, and in man by the cogitative power which the universal reason guides, but also by the imagination and sense. Whence it is that we experience that the irascible and concupiscible powers do resist reason, inasmuch as we sense or imagine something pleasant, which reason forbids, or unpleasant, which reason commands. And so from the fact that the irascible and concupiscible resist reason in something, we must not conclude that they do not obey.86

That the sensory soul can resist the intellect is not to be regarded as “merely a sad fact.”87 This resistance is the important expression of a certain aspect of rationality associated with the sensory soul.

But Thomas is ambiguous on this point of the relationship of the intellectual and the corporeal. The nobler a form is, the more it rises above corporeal matter. “Hence we find that the form of a mixed body has another operation not caused by its elemental qualities.”88 The intellect enables a human being to understand

“immaterial things and universals.” Thomas concludes, “in order that man may be

84 Miner, Thomas Aquinas on the Passions. 94. 85 from the citation that follows . 86 ST.I.81.2 87 Miner, Thomas Aquinas on the Passions. 94. 88 Ibid.

37 able to understand all things by means of his intellect, and that his intellect may understand immaterial things and universals, it is sufficient that the intellectual power be not the act of the body.” There is an apparent difficulty here. On the one hand, in ST. I. 75 Thomas refers to understanding as an act, integral to the corporeality. On the other hand, the immaterial intellect, the active principle of the body, is not confined to the delimiting determinates of bodily materiality. Robert

Pasnau highlights two more of Thomas’ apparently contradictory statements. “[T]he intellect is not united to the body as its form.”89 On the other hand, ambiguity arises from statements that would appear to contradict this one, “[T]he intellect, which is the principle of intellective operation, is the form of the human body.”90 According to Pasnau

[Aquinas] wants to say that the rational soul is the form of the body, in one respect, and is not the form of the body, in another respect. As regards its essence, the soul precisely is the form or actuality of the body. But intellect, the soul’s intellective capacity, is neither the form nor the actuality of the body.91

He understands Thomas to be saying that everything is in actuality because of its form, but the intellective operation is not limited by the actuality of the body.”92 In the tradition however, the intellect, meaning the operation of cognition, became identified with the form or soul of the material body. In 1312 the Council of Vienne

“declared it a heresy to hold that ‘the rational or intellective soul is not per se and essentially the form of the human body.’”93 Pasnau prefers to hold in tension rather

89 ST I. 76.1.2 90 ST I.76.1c) 91 Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature: A Philosophical Study of Summa Theologiae Ia,75-89. 159. 92 ST I. 76.1, 76.3, 76.7 93 Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature, 160.

38 than resolve the ambiguity of the relationship of the material and immaterial aspects of human nature.

Following Pasnau, if we emphasize Thomas’ unity of body and soul—sensory soul and intellectual soul—as unum simpliciter and not unum secundum quid, then the soul can be understood as simultaneously both material form and subsistent immateriality, avoiding a dualism of matter and spirit. Thomas argues that because a human being exhibits the operation of sensing, the human being must be both body and soul, not soul alone. 94 He also observes that one defines what a thing is by what operations it exhibits,95 and views the senses as instruments.96 Moreover,

“[O]ur entire bodily nature is subject to the soul, and is related to it as matter to instrument.”97 Yet in ST I. 76 Thomas has argued that the intellectual soul is not the instrument or motor of the sensory material operations. Pasnau suggests that a slight shift in wording would help to clarify Thomas’ metaphor of the sensory body as instrument. The operation that forms human identity might be better qualified as an essential operation.98 Playing football or going to the store are operations but not essential ones. The essential aspect is that a unity of cognition and sensory corporeality are intrinsic to these activities. Pasnau’s reading of Thomas on this controversial point emphasizes the text of ST I. 75.3: “Sensing, and consequently the operations of the sensory soul, clearly do occur with some transformation to the body: in seeing for instance the pupil is transformed by the species of colour, and

94 ST.I.75.4 95 ST.I.75.4 96 ST.I. 75.1., 76.5. 97 ST.I.78.1. 98 Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature, 47

39 the same is evident in other cases.” Sensory operation is essential and it is corporeal; without the physicality of the sensory, the immateriality of cognition cannot arise. And yet the sensory capacity is not a mere precursor to cognition.

Pasnau elaborates on Thomas’ text,

[T]he body is not merely a conduit for some further operation at the level of soul. The operation of sensation just is certain operations of the bodily sense organs.99

Pasnau makes the controversial claim that Thomas viewed some experiences of our human consciousness as “wholly physical.”100 It is this physicalist perspective on human sensation that challenges us to set aside the philosopher’s habitual emphasis upon cognition as the superior vital operation ordained to inform the sensory of how it ought to act. Pasnau summarizes the nature of the soul thus,

Aquinas believes that the relationship between the human soul and the human body is fundamentally the same as all form-matter relationships. Soul actualizes body, with respect to both existence and the various operations of life. The only distinctive feature of this relationship in the human case is that the rational soul has an operation that surpasses matter, an operation that need not (and indeed cannot) be performed by the human body.101

As I proceed to a discussion of sensory apprehension, I will presume that human nature is bivalent but whole. I will suggest that the understanding of things intellectual or spiritual, i.e., non-material, will necessarily have an associated corporeal aspect. Moreover, especially important for a study of suffering, things apprehended at the sensory level will contour the receptivity of higher intellectual understanding. I will consider the sensory movements first as apprehension, i.e., the object moving inward into one’s interiority, and then as appetition, i.e., movement outwards towards the object.

99 Pasnau,, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature, 60 100 Ibid., 58 101 Ibid., 72

2.2.ii. Human Nature: sensory apprehension and intention

In responding to Rosenbaum’s plea in reaction to violence—the profession’s plea—for reflection on the meaning of life, I have shown that in a Thomistic paradigm, movement is an essential characteristic of vitality. For Thomas, to consider movement is to consider the sensory soul with both its apprehensive and its appetitive movements. Although apprehension is accomplished through an orchestration of multiple senses, I will focus upon intention as the interior sense that orients movement towards the good.

Thomas has defined movement in interesting and rather specific ways. Movement as locomotion is characteristic of animals in general and is instinctual, but he concentrates on the kinds of movement that are uniquely human, namely, appetitive desires arising from sensory apprehension.

…[S]ensual movement [is] an appetite following sensitive apprehension. For the act of the apprehensive power is not so properly called a movement as the act of appetite since the operation of the apprehensive power is completed in the very fact that the thing apprehended is in the one that apprehends: while the operation of the appetitive power is completed in the fact that he who desires is borne towards the thing desirable. Therefore the operation of the apprehensive power is likened to rest: whereas the operation of the appetitive power is rather likened to movement. Wherefore by sensual movement we understand the operation of the appetitive power: so that sensuality is the name of the sensitive appetite.102

Sensuality is divided against higher and lower reason, as having in common with them the act of movement: for the apprehensive power, to which belong the higher and lower reason, is a motive power; as is appetite, to which appertains sensuality.103

The sensual is apprehended and gives rise to desire/appetite for what is good and suitable for sustaining life and also gives resistance to what is harmful. This might be referred to as Thomas’ theory of movement.

102 ST.I.81.1 103 ST.I.81.1.2

In animals, Thomas observes “in the sensitive part…an estimative power, which perceives those things which do not impress the senses.” In other words, a furry, four-legged creature that howls is sensed as a predator; the animal’s instinctual movement is to flee the wolf. The afferent sensory impulses were visual, auditory, and olefactory, but the animal, by its estimative power of the sensory operation, understood “danger,” which triggered the movement of flight from harm. The animal responds to the sensory stimulus in a manner that is useful to its survival.

The human being responds to sensory stimuli not only according to the animal’s drive to survive but also to please the senses. This appetite for sensual pleasure becomes central to Thomas’ understanding of movement.

Thomas’ paradigm of sensory apprehension has two aspects, the obvious, five, external senses whereby the sense organ is materially changed by the object, and a complex set of interior senses whereby a non-material intention of harm or good is imprinted upon the interiority.104 Thomas assigns importance to intention, which is sensory apprehension without sensory-material configuration. Intentions are of the non-material set of operations of the soul, considered to be a sense of the interiority.

Animals, therefore, need to perceive such intentions, which the exterior sense does not perceive. And some distinct principle is necessary for this; since the perception of sensible forms comes by an immutation caused by the sensible, which is not the case with the perception of those intentions.105

Thomas is proposing two modalities of sensory imprinting, material and spiritual, which may be another way to think about exterior and interior sensation.106

104 ST.I.78.4 105 ST.I.78.4 106 Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature, 181

Regarding the external senses, Pasnau elaborates on the complexities inherent in

Thomas’ paradigm.

The essential difference between sight and hearing, for example, lies neither in experiential differences (what it s like to see, versus what it is like to hear) nor solely in the object themselves (colour versus sound). Instead the difference consists in the different mechanisms through which the different senses operate. Sound, for example, involves merely spiritual impression on the organ, but a natural impression on the medium, inasmuch as a vibrating object passes those vibrations into the air.107

It is not the experience of the sound or colour but rather the mechanism of sensory operation that is important.

Another complexity of Thomas’ model of sensory apprehension concerns the

Aristotelian distinction between proper sensible, common sensible, and accidental sensibles.

Size, shape, and the like, which are called "common sensibles," are midway between "accidental sensibles" and "proper sensibles," which are the objects of the senses. For the proper sensibles first, and of their very nature, affect the senses; since they are qualities that cause alteration.108

Pasnau reads the term, alteration, as referring to qualitative change, as distinguished from growth or locomotion.109 On this view, the proper sensibles are primary; these objects are directly apprehended by the external senses, for example, colours, sounds, textures, etc. The common sensibles are secondary, for example, size, number, shape, motion, etc.; these are the objects known simultaneously by multiple senses. The former are qualities, the latter quantities. Pasnau disagrees with the view that common sense, as a second order of perception, is possibly the sensory operation where immaterial consciousness begins.110 He counters, that

107 Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature, 181 108 ST.I.78.3.2 109 Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature, 181 110 Ibid., 196

Thomas did not likely have this meaning for the common sense because even the primary senses of vision, hearing, etc., are both immaterial apprehensions and material, sense organ changes. Moreover Thomas did not work with the concept of consciousness, in the modern sense of knowing one’s own inner state of mind; conscientia signified a self-knowledge of one’s acts.111

For Thomas, conscientia is not a sensory apprehension at all. The acts of conscience are to witness, to judge, and to accuse, such that “conscience denominates the

[moral] act.” (Importantly, conscience does not dominate the act.) Thomas does not view common sense “as the magical place where consciousness happens.”113 For

Thomas, “the soul’s different capacities play different roles, and, what we take to be unified functions, such as consciousness, are actually distributed over several capacities, working in tandem.”114 Thus the common sense is an operation of apprehension, rather than a common locus, in which multi-organ sensory data is integrated into some kind of coherence. Sensation per accidens (eg. birds, tress, etc.) involves intellectual operations, though it is “an intellectual activity limited to instantaneous judgments about sensation.”115 In delineating sensation per accidens,

111 Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature, 197 112 ST.I.79.13 113 Pasanu, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature, 198 114 Ibid. 115 Ibid., 278

Thomas proposes the sensory phantasms—sensory representations—as the basis of intellectual operations.

Our intellect both abstracts the intelligible species from the phantasms, inasmuch as it considers the natures of things in universal, and, nevertheless, understands these natures in the phantasms since it cannot understand even the things of which it abstracts the species, without turning to the phantasms, as we have said above.116

The intellect turns to the sensory phantasm for the basic content on which to operate. Noteworthy is that even when the intellectual function of abstraction from the phantasm is finished, intellect must return to the phantasm. Pasnau understands phantasms to be “remnants” of the proper and common senses.117 Phantasms are not only in the imagination (phantasia), but also in the memory and in the cogitative power.118 The phantasms are the stored, primary-sense data, and the memory stores the intentions that the cogitative sense has made out of the primary-sense phantasms. “Intentions” here means information qualified as not accessible to external senses. The information stored concerns sensory experiences of what is desirable or dangerous, and furthermore, it represents the past.119 Phantasia is not a passive taking in; there is an intelligent processing that shapes an image as it is being imprinted.

It may, however, be said, although the first impression of the imagination is through the agency of the sensible, since "fantasy is movement produced in accordance with sensation" (De Anima iii, 3), that nevertheless there is in man an operation which by synthesis and analysis forms images of various things, even of things not perceived by the senses.120

116 ST I.85.1.5 117 Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature, 280, citing InDMR 2, 130-44 118 ST.I.89 119 Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature, 280-1 120 ST.I.84.5.2

The imagination can form images of things absent or not previously known. New images can be constructed from the existing ones. (For example, the image of gold and the image of mountain becomes the image of a golden mountain.121) Pasnau cautions that phantasia must not be understood to produce sense experiences; it simply “records” and manipulates sense-data. The species of sense data that is stored in imagination and in memory is brought to the common sense, which then imagines some thing. Note that if non-veridical images are fed to the common sense, it imagines non-veridical things.122 According to this Aristotelian-Thomistic paradigm, this happens in one afflicted with the phrenetic condition. Thus phantasia’s role of retaining images and of re-presenting the stored images for further intellection could conceivably be shaped by the state of bodily health. The intellect always draws from memory through the mediation of phantasia.

Having considered the primary external sensory mechanism, the common sense, per accidens sensory apprehension, as well as the phantasia and memory, I will now turn to the interior cogitative sense, which is important in the contouring of intention. Thomas describes (although perhaps too briefly) the estimative sense in the animal, which is parallel to the cogitative sense in the human.

Again we must observe that if an animal were moved by pleasing and disagreeable things only as affecting the sense, there would be no need to suppose that an animal has a power besides the apprehension of those forms which the senses perceive, and in which the animal takes pleasure, or from which it shrinks with horror. But the animal needs to seek or to avoid certain things, not only because they are pleasing or otherwise to the senses, but also on account of other advantages and uses, or disadvantages: just as the sheep runs away when it sees a wolf, not on account of its color or shape, but as a natural enemy: and again a bird gathers together straws, not because they are pleasant to the sense, but because they are useful for building its nest. Animals, therefore, need to perceive such intentions, which the exterior sense does not perceive. And some distinct principle is

121 ST.I.78.4 122 Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature, 283

necessary for this; since the perception of sensible forms comes by an immutation caused by the sensible, which is not the case with the perception of those intentions.123

It is the estimative power which allows an animal to instinctively know a wolf means harm.124 The human being differs from the animal with its instincts in this aspect of sensory apprehension. Human beings have to learn what is harmful by experience and reflection.

Now, we must observe that as to sensible forms there is no difference between man and other animals; for they are similarly immuted by the extrinsic sensible. But there is a difference as to the above intentions: for other animals perceive these intentions only by some natural instinct, while man perceives them by means of collation of ideas. Therefore the power by which in other animals is called the natural estimative, in man is called the "cogitative," which by some sort of collation discovers these intentions.125

Intentions are sensory understandings which the external senses do not perceive.

Whereas in animals the shape of intention is instinctually pre-set, in humans it awaits determination. For Thomas, the contouring of intention is a very uniquely human operation of the interior senses. To this contouring of human intention

Thomas assigns two terms, cogitative sense and particular reason… “to which medical men assign a certain particular organ, namely, in the middle part of the head: for it compares individual intentions, just as the intellectual reason compares universal intentions.”126 The cogitative sense shapes the imprinted intention of the sensory interiority.

[T]he apprehensive power is not drawn to a thing, as it is in itself; but knows it by reason of an "intention" of the thing, which "intention" it has in itself, or receives in its own way. Hence we find it stated (Metaph. vi, 4) that "the true and the false," which pertain to knowledge, "are not in things, but in the mind."127

123 ST.I.78.4 124 ST.I.78.4 125 ST.I.78.4 126 ST.I.78.4 I.78.4 127 ST I-II.22.2

In other words, a human being learns or discovers intentions at the basic level of experiential sensory processing. One might paraphrase this by saying that the intelligence of the human interiority is in its sensitivity. And in accordance with the hylomorphic nature of the soul, that sensitivity has both the aspect of material imprint and non-material knowing.

Diana Fritz Cates emphasizes that this intelligence (particular reason) of the cogitative sense,128 is not to be confused with the higher intellectual operations of understanding or of practical reason.

We have not yet arrived at the power to conceptualize a thing or its properties, to think about a thing or its properties, to think about a thing’s properties as properties, to name them, or to compare them in terms of their contributions to a desired end of which we also have a concept. All of these cognitive activities rely on intellect. With the cogitative power we are still on the level of the sensory and the particular.129

It is important to recognize that the intentions of this sensory rationality, even without the input of the higher intellection, can perceive objects as having “sensible good or evil;” a human being can “sense” what is good or harmful.

…[I]t is common for humans to judge a long thin object moving quickly through the grass at their feet to be a threat of some kind, even before they have time to think, “this is a snake, and some snakes are dangerous.”130

The human midbrain retains some primal instinctive behaviours, but most human behaviours are not instinctive. Human movement depends upon a very complex process of the interior sensory apparatus, namely the contouring of intention.

128 Thomas does not elaborate more upon the cogitative power and particular reason. Human beings act on the basis of sensory judgments that have not been fully informed by intellectual evaluations. This action, that is primarily a sensory-motor reflex, is the kind of movement that reflects the unschooled passions, shaped by sensory intentions in a random disordered way. 129 Fritz Cates, Aquinas on Emotions: A Religious Ethical Inquiry. 114 130 Ibid., 114

Robert Miner provides a discussion of the cogitative interior sense. He emphasizes that sensory apprehension can be activated either by something sensed externally or by something imagined in the interiority. Moreover, in animals it is the estimation of what is useful or harmful, rather than pleasant or painful, that activates appetitive movement. These intentiones perceived by the estimative sense are “non-empirical valuations of a perceived thing as either useful or dangerous.”131

The sheep has never experienced the predatorial acts of the wolf, and yet it recognizes the wolf as dangerous. In animals the judgements of this estimative power are remarkably accurate, but in human beings, the sensory appetite may be opposed by the will (rational appetite).

If the passions are to perform their highest function of assisting the rational creature’s motion ad finem the possessor of those passions must also know how they are moved by sensation and imagination. She must also discern how they might be activated and shaped over time by reason and will.132

In humans the estimative power takes on a certain rationality of its own, the

“particular reason.” The process of collation referred to in ST I.78 discovers

“individual intentions,” which are neither the universal concepts of intellect, nor the sensory forms of the material body. The intentions of cogitative sense are said to resemble the intellectual concepts.

The particular reason is the capacity to arrive at estimations of utility or danger by associating sensible forms, neutral in themselves, with stored images that are charged with pleasure or pain. As such it presupposes the imagination.133

Miner provides the example of a child who over time learns sensory information about a hot burner, a flame from a lighter, and burning coals in a grill. If she touches

131 Miner, Thomas Aquinas on the Passions. 70 132 Ibid., 76. 133 Ibid., 78.

49 any one of these, her senses come to know pain, which experience is then stored as phantasms in her memory. When she subsequently sees a fire in the fireplace, particular reason will tell her that there is danger associated with this burning fire, despite the fact that she has never experienced the pain of this particular fire. The child knows this danger not by instinct but “by collation of the sensible forms attached to the fire with other sensible images that have previously caused her pain.”134 The child has to learn by experience how to protect itself from harm, and this learning by experience is the role of the cogitative power. What one knows by particular reason is “literally ingrained in a person’s soul,” and, according to Miner’s reading of Thomas, must be opened up later in life to modification by reason and will.135 He refers to the example of a woman encountering a man who reminds her of her abusive uncle. By psychotherapy she learns to recognize that “the estimations stored in her memorative power” can be modified by the higher intellect, which has come to know that “not all men are like my uncle.” The intentiones of the cogitative sense are important determinants of the movement of the passions, and particular reason must be re-shaped to “[conform] to the judgment of rightly directed universal reason”136 He points out that while psychotherapy can be helpful, infused and acquired virtue are also necessary for universal reason to have a positive influence.

G.E.M. Anscombe approaches intention from the perspective of a moral philosopher. She considers intention (not Miner’s universal rationality) as that

134 Miner, Thomas Aquinas on the Passions, 79 135 Ibid., 80-1. 136 Ibid., 82.

50 which gives rationality to movement. Intention is revealed as the answer to the question, Why. To know intention requires a question because it cannot be known simply by observing the external appearances.

It is without observation, because nothing shews him the position of his limbs; it is not as if he were going by a tingle in his knee, which is the sign that it is bent not straight. Where we can speak of separately describable sensations, having which is in some sense our criterion saying something, then we can speak of observing that thing; but that is not generally so when we know the position of our limbs.137

Nor is intention the reason or rationale for acting.

It is very usual to hear that such-and-such are what we call ‘reasons for acting’ and that it is ’rational’ or ‘what we call rational’ to act for reasons; but these remarks are usually more than half moralistic in meaning…; and for the rest they leave our conceptual problems untouched, while pretending to give a quick account…[S]uch remarks contain no hint of what it is to act for reasons.138

In keeping with Thomas’ classification of intention as a sensory apprehension,

Anscombe holds that intention is not conceptual. And yet intention does underlie the act. Where moral action is concerned, the goal is the good. Therefore desire must be engaged, and intention is integral to desire.

The conceptual connexion between ‘wanting’ and ‘good’ can be compared to the conceptual connexion between ‘judgment’ and ‘truth.’ Truth is the object of judgment and good the object of wanting; it does not follow from this that everything wanted must be good. But there is a certain contrast between these pairs of concepts too. For you cannot explain truth without introducing as its subject intellect, or judgment, or propositions, in some relation of which to the things known or judged truth consists; truth is ascribed to what has the relation, not to the things. With ‘good’ and ‘wanting’ it is the other way round; … an account of ‘wanting’ introduces good as its object, and goodness of one sort or another is ascribed primarily to the objects, not to the wanting: one wants a good kettle, but has a true idea of a kettle.139

Intention is a sensory apprehension integral to appetition; it is not a cognitive operation. If intention were a cognition, it would be synonymous with ‘motive.’

Popular parlance often conflates intention and motive. “When a man’s motives are

137 Anscombe, Intention. #8, p13. 138 Ibid. #5, p11. 139 Ibid. #40, p76.

51 good, this may in no way be distinct from calling his intentions good—e.g. he only wanted to make peace among his relations.”140 When there is a distinction implied, the quality of the motive is broader than the intention. A man may kill someone

out of love or pity…; but although these are forms of expression suggesting objectives, they are perhaps expressive of the spirit in which the man killed rather than descriptive of the end to which the killing was a means—a future state of affairs to be produced by the killing. And this shows us part of the distinction that there is between the popular senses of motive and intention.141

After the agent states his motive, that motive can be considered from various points of view and may ultimately be judged as untrue. Motives explain an action, “but that is not to say that they ‘determine’, in the sense of causing, actions.”142 When

Anscombe considers the nature of a motive, she is “very glad not to be writing either ethics or literary criticism, to which this question belongs.”143 Anscombe’s scholarship positions intention firmly as that which is not cognitional; it is distinct from theoretical reason and belongs to practical reason and the movement of desire towards the good.

Pasnau is interested in Thomas’ directive, that the intellect return to the phantasm after the process of abstraction is apparently finished.144 Although

Thomas has been explicit about the intellect having no corresponding corporeal organ, he is concerned about intellect’s non-veridical operation.

In the present state of life in which the soul is united to a passible body, it is impossible for our intellect to understand anything actually, except by turning to the phantasms. First of all because the intellect, being a power that does not make use of a corporeal organ, would in no way be hindered in its act through the lesion of a corporeal organ, if for its act there

140 Ibid. #12. p18. 141 Ibid. #12. p19. 142 Ibid. #12. p19. 143 Ibid. 144 Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature, 284. According to Pasnau, this return to the phantasm has not received much scholarly attention.

were not required the act of some power that does make use of a corporeal organ. Now sense, imagination and the other powers belonging to the sensitive part, make use of a corporeal organ. Wherefore it is clear that for the intellect to understand actually, not only when it acquires fresh knowledge, but also when it applies knowledge already acquired, there is need for the act of the imagination and of the other powers. For when the act of the imagination is hindered by a lesion of the corporeal organ, for instance in a case of frenzy; or when the act of the memory is hindered, as in the case of lethargy, we see that a man is hindered from actually understanding things of which he had a previous knowledge.145

It is at the sensory level that one is vulnerable to errors that misdirect intellection. It is the sensory capacity for working with images that shapes intellection and understanding. “For this reason it is that when we wish to help someone to understand something, we lay examples before him, from which he forms phantasms for the purpose of understanding.”146 In the Thomistic spiritual quest for the good, human intelligence begins and finishes with images. Because the intellect itself cannot form images, only universal abstractions, the intellect must return to the corporeal sensory realm of stored phantasms in order to keep on thinking. In

Pasnau’s words, “[T]hese higher intellectual operations are constantly supplemented by concrete sensory images.147 “… Given that the intellect’s role is to understand universal natures as existing in a particular, it is only to be expected that the intellect is constantly casting its attention on those particulars.”148 If, like the

Platonists, we held that the nature of a thing did not subsist in its particulars, that reality was some kind of immaterial universal (a form), then we would not need to be constantly returning to the phantasms. In a Platonic paradigm, the sensory nature of the phantasms would be irrelevant.

145 ST.I.84.7 146 ST.I.84.7 147 Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature: A Philosophical Study of Summa Theologiae Ia,75-89. 285-6 148 Ibid., 287 italics in original text.

The soul united to the body can understand only by turning to the phantasms, as experience shows. Did this not proceed from the soul's very nature, but accidentally through its being bound up with the body, as the Platonists said, the difficulty would vanish; for in that case when the body was once removed, the soul would at once return to its own nature, and would understand intelligible things simply, without turning to the phantasms, as is exemplified in the case of other separate substances…. The soul, therefore, when united to the body, consistently with that mode of existence, has a mode of understanding, by turning to corporeal phantasms, which are in corporeal organs; but when it is separated from the body, it has a mode of understanding, by turning to simply intelligible objects, as is proper to other separate substances. Hence it is as natural for the soul to understand by turning to the phantasms as it is for it to be joined to the body; but to be separated from the body is not in accordance with its nature, and likewise to understand without turning to the phantasms is not natural to it; and hence it is united to the body in order that it may have an existence and an operation suitable to its nature.149

Pasnau cites Bernard Lonergan and Norman Kretzman as interpreting this turn to the phantasms as a tendency of the intellect. Nicholas Lombardo thinks similarly in terms of a duality of cognition: sense cognition, oriented towards material reality, and intellectual cognition oriented towards non-material reality.150

The kind of apprehension that elicits passion is more than sheer perception. It involves both kinds of cognition and includes shaping the perception into a coherent object from an undifferentiated blurr of data, and some evaluation of the sensible object vis-à-vis the subject. Aquinas refers to the sense perception of an object combined with cognitive evaluation of its relevance to the subject’s interests as “intention” (intentio).151

The Thomistic understanding of intelligence is rich because it is three-dimensional, and not an opposition of material vs. immaterial. At the base-level is the particular reason which is at the same time the cogitative sense, so the sensory nature knows a certain level of meaning (intentiones) even before the higher intelligence engages; sensory experience is already rational at a primal level. These imprinted sensory intentiones give rise to the higher intelligence(s), both practical and speculative. Thus higher knowing is distorted when reduced to an abstraction stripped of experience.

149 ST.I.89.1 150 Lombardo, The Logic of Desire: Aquinas on Emotion. 21. 151 Ibid., 21

Such distortion affects the very structural integrity of the higher nature (knowing, willing (love/hate), and contemplative delight) and its sensory moorings

(apprehension, appetition, and abiding in satiety.) Informed by all levels of knowing, human vital movement (towards the good) comes from and returns to the sensory foundation “below.” The relationship between the sensory nature and the intellectual nature, as envisaged by Thomas, is not one of agonism but rather of (hylomorphic) integration. Rosenbaum’s “Meaning” lies in this pursuit of the good, which in turn implies movement, both the experience of advance and of hindrance.

On the other hand, the role of particular reason in configuring intention may lead to the cognitivist argument that intention is a cognition, and that the intellect is the non-material form that defines reality. Pasnau rejects this cognitivist view.

Given that the intellect’s role is to understand universal natures as existing in particular, it is only to be expected that the intellect is constantly casting its attention on those particulars. Since the intellect cannot directly apprehend particulars (86.1c), this implies that it must turn toward the senses, constantly.152

He takes a perspective in which the sensory apprehensions scrutinize the veridity of intellect, not vice versa. This is the meaning of returning always to the sensible data.

This turn to already existing sensory data is stronger than a tending; it is a fundamental disposition of the senses to tie the cognitive universals to material reality. The sensory rationality gives a primal contour to what the higher intellect imagines. Indeed, if the sensory powers are suspended, the intellect is hindered.

But in the present state of life whatever we understand, we know by comparison to natural sensible things. Consequently it is not possible for our intellect to form a perfect judgment, while the senses are suspended, through which sensible things are known to us.153

152 Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature, 287 153 ST.I.84.8

To return to the sensory phantasms is necessary as long as we live in our human nature, according to Thomas. But this necessity is not as “a fuse completes a circuit.”154 Rather, it is a necessity that confers upon abstract cognition its worth and value in this world of material reality. Pasnau elaborates,

In this life our cognitive position is such that the intellect’s activities are constantly accompanied by a parallel series of sensory activities. But of course the two do not run on wholly separate tracks. The intellect is constantly looking to see what the internal senses are doing, and is constantly instructing the internal senses on what to do next.155

The intellect works from the sensory phantasms towards abstract concepts. In this context, the human memorative power is not the animal’s “sudden recollection of the past,” but is the “reminiscence” of the past, which seeks “syllogistically, as it were,

…the application of individual intentions.” Thomas in a subsequent comment, observes that the cogitative and memorative senses “owe their excellence [not to the simple exterior senses] but to a certain affinity and proximity to the universal reason, which, so to speak, overflows into them.”156 Thus, he reasons, these powers in the human are “more perfect” than their counterparts in the animal. They are evidence of a certain rationality that can distinguish sensible good or evil independently of the higher intellectual operations. Indeed, it is this primal sensory operation that becomes substrate for the higher intellectual operations of understanding, evaluating, and choosing.

This emphasis upon the sensory apprehensions—the memory, imagination, and intentiones—as primal sensory experiences (rather than cognitions) is the position

154 Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature, 292. 155 Ibid. 293 156 ST. I.78.4.5

56 that I will take in developing my discussion of suffering and its narrative articulation.

From these apprehensions arise the movements (of desire). Having both sensory materiality and intellectual/spiritual immateriality, the intentiones shape desire not only in its immateriality but also in its material corporeality.

In the next section I will show that Thomas on the passions considers movement of the corporeal materiality as essential to the pursuit of the good. Clinicians, intent upon relieving suffering, might presume that psychological—immaterial— normalization of the emotions and/or cognitions is necessary to pursuit of the moral good. However, in a Thomistic paradigm, pursuit of the good is an additional dimension, which considers the effect of evil/sin upon human vitality in a manner that escapes our secular and empirical, medical science. The following section on the

Thomistic passions invites us to explore how the good—and its privation—affects human movement.

2.2.iii. Human Nature: sensory appetitions: the passions

As stated above, human movement is appetitive movement; we describe human life as dynamic, vivacious, animated, and in pursuit of what is good for life’s flourishing.

The passiones are these movements.

Thomas defines the passiones in ST I-II. 22 by identifying aspects of the passions; he does not provide a complete and concise definition. One aspect is the loss of something and the reception of something less suitable; because of this notion of loss, sorrow is more a passion than joy. This loss is associated with a “bodily transmutation.”

But passion, accompanied by the loss of something, is only in respect of a bodily transmutation; wherefore passion properly so called cannot be in the soul, save accidentally, in so far, to wit, as the "composite" is passive. But here again we find a difference; because when this transmutation is for the worse, it has more of the nature of a passion, than when it is for the better: hence sorrow is more properly a passion than joy.157

The immaterial soul is moved secondarily or accidentally because of the oneness of the material-immaterial composite. Passion is associated with the corruptibility of matter. Thomas draws upon his sources:

On the contrary, Augustine says (De Civ. Dei ix, 4) that "the movements of the soul, which the Greeks called {pathe}, are styled by some of our writers, Cicero [*Those things which the Greeks call {pathe}, we prefer to call disturbances rather than diseases (Tusc. iv. 5)] for instance, disturbances; by some, affections or emotions; while others rendering the Greek more accurately, call them passions." From this it is evident that the passions of the soul are the same as affections. But affections manifestly belong to the appetitive, and not to the apprehensive part. Therefore the passions are in the appetitive rather than in the apprehensive part.158

The terminology then and now is confusing: emotions, affections, and passions.

Thomas ties the passions to intentions as he begins. “On the other hand the apprehensive power is not drawn to a thing, as it is in itself; but knows it by reason of an ‘intention’ of the thing, which ‘intention’ it has in itself, or receives in its own way.”159 Apprehension is the movement of the object into the interiority; the dynamic of the subjective interiority is passive, which does not mean immobilized .

Passion is the active movement of desire towards the exterior object, which has become an internalized intention. Appetition is the principle of external movement into reality.

The appetitive power is said to be more active, because it is, more than the apprehensive power, the principle of the exterior action: and this for the same reason that it is more

157 ST.I-II.22.1 158 ST.I-II.22.2 159 ST.I.II.22.2

passive, namely, its being related to things as existing in themselves: since it is through the external action that we come into contact with things. 160

The passions are associated with a corporeal organ, which undergoes change, but the change is not the same as that which is observed when the sense organ apprehends.

…the material element in the definitions of the movements of the appetitive part, is the natural change of the organ; for instance, "anger is" said to be "a kindling of the blood about the heart." Hence it is evident that the notion of passion is more consistent with the act of the sensitive appetite, than with that of the sensitive apprehension, although both are actions of a corporeal organ.161

The passions are movements of the sensory “irrational” nature.

On the contrary, Damascene says (De Fide Orth. ii, 22), while describing the animal passions: "Passion is a movement of the sensitive appetite when we imagine good or evil: in other words, passion is a movement of the irrational soul, when we think of good or evil." I answer that, As stated above (A[1]) passion is properly to be found where there is corporeal transmutation. This corporeal transmutation is found in the act of the sensitive appetite, and is not only spiritual, as in the sensitive apprehension, but also natural. Now there is no need for corporeal transmutation in the act of the intellectual appetite: because this appetite is not exercised by means of a corporeal organ. It is therefore evident that passion is more properly in the act of the sensitive appetite, than in that of the intellectual appetite; and this is again evident from the definitions of Damascene quoted above.

The passions have material transmutation or corporeal change and are therefore not considered to be intellectual/spiritual, non-material dynamics. These latter dynamics are referred to as affections.162 The body can experience intense passion when it undergoes even seemingly unremarkable external forces because it is so vulnerable, passive, and receptive to exterior objects.

Intensity of passion depends not only on the power of the agent, but also on the passibility of the patient: because things that are disposed to passion, suffer much even from petty agents. Therefore although the object of the intellectual appetite has greater activity than the object of the sensitive appetite, yet the sensitive appetite is more passive.163

160 ST.I-II.22.2.2 161 ST.I-II.22.2.3 162 ST.I-II.22.3 163 ST.I-II.22.3.2

The spirits—God and the angels—do not experience the passions. They have love as an immaterial (”intellectual”) appetite, but not as a felt sensory passion. Spirit beings are not vulnerable (passive) to the contouring impact of externals upon their interiority. “When love and joy and the like are ascribed to God or the angels, or to man in respect of his intellectual appetite, they signify simple acts of the will having like effects, but without passion.”164 Thomas describes the human passions as sensory corporeal movements of desire contoured by intention, meaning passibility, passivity, or vulnerability. The implication is a certain human susceptibility to the privation of well-being.

Only in recent years have the passions, i.e., corporeal vulnerability to privation of the good, been the subject of scholarly interest in moral theology; previously the focus has been the immaterial, intellectual soul and its dynamics of judgement. But a

Thomistic understanding of the intellectual dynamics is inhuman if restricted to the power of judgement and will, de-sensitized to the cry of the sensory soul and its susceptibility to the perturbations of evil. I position the Thomistic maxim, “Pursue the good and avoid evil,” at the centre of ethics in general and of my project in particular. But my interest is not the voice of theoretical intellect defining the true good of the matter at hand. My attention is drawn to the verbs, to pursue and to avoid; in other words I am drawn to an exploration of movement and what hinders it. Researching contemporary scholars (the past 20 years), I will consider the passions from this perspective of movement.

164 ST.I-II.22.3.3

Diana Fritz Cates165 uses the contemporary term, emotions, for the English translation of passiones, the appetitive movements of the sensory soul. She distinguishes the intellectual affectiones, and also the religious affections, such as love, hope, etc., as interior appetitive movements (the will) of the higher intellectual soul. Her stated focus, however, is upon the emotions of the sensory apparatus.

I am interested in emotions, rather than affections. I analyze as emotions what Aquinas calls passions (passiones), which are mediated by the body and do involve a ‘commotion of the soul.’… I seek to show how an emotion can arise in relation to a sensible object that appears to disclose a religious truth, mediate sacred power, provoke religious questions, or the like... I do not deny the significance of ‘affections of the will’ for Aquinas… However, I consider these motions as they relate to emotions… In my view, what Aquinas says about affections that we experience as embodied beings is best understood by starting with the emotions and then considering how the emotions function in relation to motions of the will.166

Her work is informed by philosophic studies of emotion, but on account of significant disagreement on what is an emotion, her work aims to provide clarification of this term by a study of Thomas’ passiones.167 Philosophic studies on the theory of emotions168 work with a complex set of modern terms, such as feelings, thoughts, cognitive content, desire, appetite, movements, and bodily sensation. The psychological and social sciences use the terms emotions and cognitions toward re-configuring the psyche towards the normal, as a way to ease dysfunctionality and empower the self.169 But Thomas presents a paradigm that is

165 Fritz Cates, Aquinas on Emotions: A Religious Ethical Inquiry. 113-120. 166 Ibid., 8-9 167 Ibid., 10-13 168 Ibid, 65. Fritz Cates cites the work of Martha Nussbaum, who is not a Thomist but is an Aristotelian scholar of desire, emotion, and cognition. 169 Miner, Thomas Aquinas on the Passions. Miner has surveyed the literature on various scholarly definitions of the passiones. In a foot note (p35), he says, “There is some correspondence between Aquinas’ use of ‘affectiones’ and ‘emotions’ in contemporary parlance.” But he holds that Thomas made a distinction between the passiones of the sensory appetite and the affections of the rational appetite. The complexity arises out of the fact that the rational appetites impact upon the sensory passions, but yet the sensory appetites are not to be regarded as mere instinctual drives awaiting

61 not driven by the modern sciences of emotions and cognitions. His emphasis is upon how the human nature senses and then moves by intelligence (not animal instinct) along a moral trajectory out of harm towards beatitude.

It is in this Thomistic light that Fritz Cates understands emotion (passio) to be a motion of the “soul-body composite,” i.e., an exercise of the sensory appetite.

[Sensory appetite] has a material element. It is composed, in part, of patterned bodily changes that can be subtle, but are often noticeable in the form of felt bodily sensations. Yet an emotion is also intentional. It concerns some object—again a thing, a person, a relationship, a situation—which one apprehends in a certain way, as bearing directly or indirectly on one’s well-being. An emotion is evoked and defined, more precisely, by sensory judgments, images, and impressions, which are basic forms of cognition. Yet a given emotion is ordinarily informed, in a human being, by higher forms of cognition as well, which allow one to interpret on different levels the significance of an object of concern—in ways that further determine one’s experience of emotion.170

She refuses the position that would regard the emotions (passiones) as non-rational, random movements. On the other hand, the movement that is emotion is not to be regarded as an exclusively cognitional rationality either. She turns to both Aristotle and Aquinas.

As Aristotle says, “mind is never found producing movement without appetite.” Similarly, Aquinas says that “the apprehensive power presents the object to the appetite,” but it is by virtue of the appetite that one tends towards or away from an object: “Wherefore choice is substantially not an act of reason but of the will: for choice is accomplished on a … movement of the soul toward a good which is chosen. Consequently it is evidently an act of the appetitive power.”171

To be moved by an apprehended object is the movement of emotion/passiones. The object as perceived within one’s interiority is what confers rationality or intelligibility upon one’s appetitive movement. Fritz Cates writes,

As Thomas conceives it, the motion of emotion orients us relative to an object of apprehension, but in such a way that we reach, in a sense, beyond our cognitive grasp of the object and toward the object itself…. Rather than simply holding an object in mind, the intellectual direction. I concur with Miner’s advocating for a consistent use of the term, passions, not emotions. 170 Ibid., 62. 171 Fritz Cates, Aquinas on Emotions: A Religious Ethical Inquiry. 67. ST.I.78.1.4

object gets hold of us… The object draws us out of ourselves; it compels us to attend to it, and to enjoy the pleasure of being with it. Sometimes an interior reaching finds expression in the extension of arms, in the movement of the body as a whole towards the attractive object, or in speech than is intended to ‘reach’ someone’s ears—which is why it makes sense to identify a causally prior, interior reaching as form of interior motion.172

It is this rich, sensual, physical image that Fritz Cates offers in response to the text of

Thomas on sensuality.

On the contrary, Sensuality is defined as "the appetite of things belonging to the body." I answer that, the name sensuality seems to be taken from the sensual movement, of which Augustine speaks (De Trin. xii, 12, 13), just as the name of a power is taken from its act; for instance, sight from seeing. Now the sensual movement is an appetite following sensitive apprehension. For the act of the apprehensive power is not so properly called a movement as the act of the appetite: since the operation of the apprehensive power is completed in the very fact that the thing apprehended is in the one that apprehends: while the operation of the appetitive power is completed in the fact that he who desires is borne towards the thing desirable. Therefore the operation of the apprehensive power is likened to rest: whereas the operation of the appetitive power is rather likened to movement. Wherefore by sensual movement we understand the operation of the appetitive power: so that sensuality is the name of the sensitive appetite.173

Fritz Cates picks up Thomas’ distinction between the movement of sensory appetition and the movement of intellectual appetition (the will). The non-material intellectual operations are understood as metaphoric images of the sensory movements; non-materiality is understood in terms of experiences of corporeal movement. For Fritz Cates, by becoming more aware of the dynamics of the sensory appetitions—movements of love, grief, anger, fear, or hatred—we become more attentive to which objects might move us, and what kinds of movements we might experience. She points out the fact that most people prefer empirical investigation and secular clinical applications, which I understand to be the paradigm that

Rosenbaum refers to as “the reasons.” To regard the nature of reality, and in

172 Ibid., 67-8. 173 ST.I.81.1

63 particular the nature of emotion, from the speculative, scientific perspective has the potential to make one

more receptive and discerning in approaching the interior and relational lives of humans and imagining what is possible for them. It can make one more capable of accepting— indeed, loving—a good deal of the complexity and mystery that one finds within the human.174

Fritz Cates identifies the therapeutic potential of regarding the passions as emotions. However, it is not the clinical implication, but rather her emphasis upon sensory appetition as movement that is relevant to my project about human movement in the face of evil.

A study of the human passions of Christ according to Paul Gondreau allows us to understand the passions of human nature in terms of an ontological vulnerability to evil. In the context of Christ’s humanity, the passions that Christ took on are referred to as a defect of the soul. Gondreau specifies the meaning of passion as aligned with my own reading of Thomas, in which the passions refer to a corporeal transmutation or change, which reverberates in the soul.

By passion of the body, Thomas means the following: when the body undergoes some kind of physical hurt, as when pain is inflicted on the body, the soul is in like manner affected through its substantial union with the body. (Aquinas recounts a story from the life of Augustine, in which the Latin Father was unable to concentrate on his reading because of an acute toothache he was enduring.): “The soul’s whole essence is untied to the body, so that… when the body undergoes passion… the entire soul undergoes passion” and “any suffering undergone by the body must in some way make the soul suffer.” By passion of the soul, Thomas implies the proper meaning of passions, viz., a movement of the sense appetite that involves a bodily modification, as the passions are exercised by means of a bodily organ. The significance that this distinction between “body-first” passion and the “soul-first” passion holds for Aquinas’ Christology shall be explored later in this chapter.175

174 Fritz Cates, Aquinas on Emotions: A Religious Ethical Inquiry. 97. 175 Paul Gondreau, The Passions of Christ’s Soul in the Theology of St Thomas Aquinas. (Scranton and London: University of Scranton Press, 2009). 208. Citations are from ST III 46.7, and from Augustine, Soliloquium, Bk. I, 12 (CSEL 89, p32)

The passions in Thomas are not identical with passionate emotions, where

“powerful intensity and vehemence of affectivity are typically implied.”176

For [Aquinas], passio denotes any degree of affective inclination towards a suitable object (or avoidance of a harmful object) perceived by the senses. Though this inclination may— and many times does—attain a stage of powerful intensity or vehemence, it need not to qualify in the Dominican’s eyes as a genuine “passion.” Furthermore, … by passio Aquinas means an affective change for the worse in response to something disagreeable, or the loss of a suitable form and the acquisition of an unsuitable form, a sense that the English term “emotion” especially does not, at least on its own, impart (support for this is found in the fact that Christ’s own suffering on the cross is termed his “Passion,” while never being called his “Emotion.”)177

When we consider the passions as a defect of the soul, it is in reference to the passions that arise in response to evil objects obstructing or hindering the good.

…[P]assion is the affective inclination-in-motion that arises from the sense appetite as its facultative source. The specific type of inclination-in-motion, and, hence, the specific type of passion, will of course depend upon the formality of the object perceived: if it as a harmful or disagreeable object that is not yet present,… the affective inclination-in-motion will be one of aversion; if the harmful or disagreeable object is present and is being endured,… the affective inclination-in-motion will be one of sorrow; if it is a suitable or agreeable object that is difficult but possible to attain,… the affective inclination-in-motion will be one of hope, etc. Though passion stands for the sense appetite “in act,” this should not distract one from acknowledging… the genuine “passive” character of passion. For Aquinas, the sensitive appetite represents a passive power since it is acted upon directly or affected by something external, specifically the sentient knowing powers…. The passions, in other words, are a direct response to received information, and without this reception, or this being acted upon, no movement of passion is possible… This also means the passions are subjective experiences, since they are actions of a subject endowed with a sense appetite being acted upon.178

Fallen human nature is susceptible to the disagreeable passions, whose work it is to pursue the good in circumstances of suffering/evil. When there is loss of flourishing/good, the passions are the sensory intelligence that moves against the resistance of evil to restore flourishing. Thus understood, the difficult passions reflect human vulnerability to evil, not culpability.

176 Gondreau. 208-9. 177 Ibid., 209. 178 Ibid., 210-211.

In the pre-lapsarian state, by virtue of a special grace, the body was immune to corruption, because the soul was subject to God; it was not a natural state, but rather a praeternatural one. In Thomas, guilt and punishment are not conflated.

Corruptibility is punishment, but not guilt. Thus sin causes passibility, but without the associated guilt, simply because of the removal of the grace of the original justice; this is the meaning of punishment. “Death is both natural on account of the condition pertaining to matter, and penal on account of the loss of the divine favour preserving man from death.”179 Thus suffering and death may be seen as ontological defect, but not moral defect.

Ultimately what Thomas wishes to underscore through his designation of passion as a defect of soul is the fundamental notion of affective vulnerability that results from living in a world beset with evils, evils that were non-existent in the pre-lapsarian state… The present existential human condition inevitably involves affective or psychological “hurts,” or what one may call laesiones animae, just as it encompasses bodily hurts, or what Thomas terms, laesiones corporis; for Thomas, psychical or affective suffering parallels bodily suffering, as exemplified in his use of the term “pain” (dolor) as an equivalent for “sorrow” (tristitia) in the treatise on the passions… 180

For Thomas, mortality is a defect associated with the secondary defect of the difficult passions; loss of the pre-lapsarian state brought about the human characteristics of mortality and the passions.

It is this susceptibility to affective movement, particularly as it follows upon the burden of sin or upon passion as defect, that Aquinas wishes to affirm in the case of

Christ’s own existential condition.”181 Christ assumed human nature complete with its disagreeable passibility, by which is meant defect or vulnerability.

The need to underscore the psychosomatic reality of Christ’s suffering and pain explains in part , then, why the notion of passion as defect dominates all of Aquinas’ remarks on Jesus’

179 ST II-II. 164.1.1 180 Gondreau, The Passions of Christ’s Soul in the Theology of St Thomas Aquinas. 232-233. 181 Ibid., 233.

human affectivity; in short, since for Thomas (and all medievals) passibility in relation to Christ is interchangeable with affective suffering, passibility becomes a logical equivalent for defect,; i.e., with a penalty for sin and an optional feature of the Incarnation.182

Passibility thus becomes a term that refers to the affective suffering of Christ, inferring human nature’s defect, penalty for sin, and the coassumpta of the

Incarnation.183

In other words, a corruptible bodily-ness infers suffering in the sense appetite;

“passibility emerges as a natural consequence of the materiality and corruptibility of the body.”184

[T]he sense appetite is made to “suffer” on account of its natural union with a corruptible body. This, to repeat, captures the proper meaning of passion as a movement of the sensitive soul. From this one can say that the material body owns a certain command or sway over the soul, particularly the sensate soul.”185

But in taking on the human nature, it was not necessary that Christ take on the vulnerabilities of its fallen state. In choosing to assume the vulnerabilities (defects) as well as the perfections, Christ renounced perfect ontological integrity, but never perfect moral integrity.

If he pulls his humanity from the stock of a corrupt and weakened nature, it in no sense comes at the expense of his perfect sinlessness, or of his consummate moral integrity, nor certainly of his perfection in grace… “Defect” as an epithet for Christ’s passibility, then, signifies ontological or non-culpable deficiency, a deficiency or limitation of nature, rather than moral or culpable deficiency, such as a Stoic would mean by the term… Only those defects or infirmities that are entirely compatible with a sinless soul enter into the corrupt and weakened nature assumed by Christ.186

182 Ibid., 240. 183 Ibid. 184 Ibid. 185 Ibid., 241. 186 Ibid., 244.

He voluntarily assumed passibility, which involved the passions, i.e., a susceptibility to a change for the worse in response to evil.187 Gondreau states that the higher

(human) intellectual soul of Jesus was imbued with the eternal truths of beatitude, and so “no cause of sorrow could derive from the object of higher reason.”188 It was from the sensory soul that sorrow arose. In ST III.15.4, it was not only the passion of the body, but also the sensate soul responding to evil, that gave rise to suffering in

Jesus.189 Thomas posits a divine dispensation that allowed the soul to suffer in response to evil despite retaining the beatific vision at all times. Gondreau observes that because it is difficult to work out this contradiction between the beatific vision and a response to evil in the soul of Christ, Thomas expressed the passion of Christ’s soul in terms of the bodily passions.

For the first time in his career, then, Thomas unhesitatingly affirms that Jesus’ affective suffering may begin or originate with his sensate soul… [T]he properly “beatific” nature of such a [direct vision of God] normally precludes the experience of disagreeable passion. Thomas resolves this difficulty by holding that a “divine dispensation” prevented the joy of Christ’s “higher reason” from suppressing the capacity for affective suffering in his sense appetitive part.190

Thomas holds that while he retained the joy of his beatific vision, Christ was suffering in his sensory nature.

When regarded with the logic “from above” this simultaneous joy and suffering is mutually exclusive. But when regarded “from below,” experiences of suffering and joy need not cancel one another; such experiences of the sensory passions may well be simultaneous. It is this modelling of simultaneous joy and suffering in the life of

187 Ibid., 245. 188 Thomas Aquinas, Questiones Disputate de Veritate., Opera Omnia Iussa Edita Leonis Xiii p.M. (Rome: Typographia Polyglotta, 1970).. 189 Gondreau, The Passions of Christ’s Soul in the Theology of St Thomas Aquinas. 250. 190 Ibid., 250

Christ that I wish to bring to the narrative of suffering. While the sensory nature suffers, Christ reveals through his experience that joy may be retained. This becomes possible, as we shall see in the fourth chapter, by the practice of a contemplative abiding of the sensory-intellectual whole in Divine Justice and Mercy. It is this capacity to be mysteriously immersed in ultimate beatitude that stretches the boundaries of each person’s humanity, ultimately healing the vulnerability to suffer the presence of evil into a wholeness of hylomorphic re-integration.

Robert Miner begins his discussion of the passions with Thomas’ citation of

Damascene "Passion is a movement of the sensitive appetite when we imagine good or evil: in other words, passion is a movement of the irrational soul, when we think of good or evil."191 The passions have to do with the impact of good and evil upon corporeal movement. He considers the definition of movement according to

Aristotle: “The actualization of what exists potentially.”192 This is subdivided into three kinds: alteration, increase/decrease, and locomotion. Miner argues that because Thomas is speaking of the passions as a movement of the body-soul composite, not just in the formal non-material soul, the movement of alteration applies to the passions. When Thomas speaks of the passions as ‘motions’ of the sensitive appetite, “he is rigorously speaking of motion qua alteration, and not… of quasi-alteration.”193 Thomas is not speaking metaphorically when he speaks of the passions as motions. Miner disagrees with Eric D’Arcy, who suggests that the motion

191 Miner, Thomas Aquinas on the Passions. 30. 192 Aristotle, The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. J. Barnes, trans. The Revised Oxford Translation, vol. Physics 3.1. 202 all (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984). Quoted in Miner, Thomas Aquinas on the Passions, 39. 193 Ibid., 40.

69 of the passions is meant literally as locomotion.194 Although he refuses locomotion as the kind of motion relevant to the passions, Miner does suggest that motion in the sense of alteration may not exhaust Thomas’ meaning. “In particular the metaphorical designation of ‘a spiritual affection under the likeness of local motion’

(ST I.3.1.5) suggests that the passions are involved in ‘motion toward the end.’”195

The movement towards the end is seen to follow analogically the pattern of life and its movements.

Now, in the movements of the appetitive faculty, good has, as it were, a force of attraction, while evil has a force of repulsion. In the first place, therefore, good causes, in the appetitive power, a certain inclination, aptitude or connaturalness in respect of good: and this belongs to the passion of "love": the corresponding contrary of which is "hatred" in respect of evil. Secondly, if the good be not yet possessed, it causes in the appetite a movement towards the attainment of the good beloved: and this belongs to the passion of "desire" or "concupiscence": and contrary to it, in respect of evil, is the passion of "aversion" or "dislike." Thirdly, when the good is obtained, it causes the appetite to rest, as it were, in the good obtained: and this belongs to the passion of "delight" or "joy"; the contrary of which, in respect of evil, is "sorrow" or "sadness." 196

The movement of passion does indeed involve material corporeality, but the movement also has an immaterial, formal dimension. The immaterial, “formal” aspect is the orientation towards an end. It is this formal aspect that is understood in three steps. The first is the inclination towards the object, the second is the appetitive pursuit, and the third is the abiding in union with the object obtained.

The debate concerns whether love is a passion, i.e., a motion, or is it a principle of motion. Is love a passion only in its appetitive manifestation as desire (second step)?

194 Ibid., 40. 195 ST.I.3.1.5 “… [T]o draw near to or to withdraw signifies merely spiritual actions based on the metaphor of local motion.” Quoted in Miner, Thomas Aquinas on the Passions, 40. 196 ST I-II.23.4

How is love a motion (a passion) and yet also an apparently non-moving disposition such as an inclination (step one) and a resting (step three)? Thomas responds.

Although love does not denote the movement of the appetite in tending towards the appetible object, yet it denotes that movement whereby the appetite is changed by the appetible object, so as to have complacency therein.197

The movement of alteration is the one that fits Thomas’ description. But in addition to being an alteration whereby the appetite is changed, it is at the same time the primary change that becomes the underlying principle of the motions called passions.198

I answer that, Passion is the effect of the agent on the patient. Now a natural agent produces a twofold effect on the patient: for in the first place it gives it the form; and secondly it gives it the movement that results from the form. Thus the generator gives the generated body both weight and the movement resulting from weight: so that weight, from being the principle of movement to the place, which is connatural to that body by reason of its weight, can, in a way, be called "natural love." In the same way the appetible object gives the appetite, first, a certain adaptation to itself, which consists in complacency in that object; and from this follows movement towards the appetible object. For "the appetitive movement is circular," as stated in De Anima iii, 10; because the appetible object moves the appetite, introducing itself, as it were, into its intention; while the appetite moves towards the realization of the appetible object, so that the movement ends where it began. Accordingly, the first change wrought in the appetite by the appetible object is called "love," and is nothing else than complacency in that object; and from this complacency results a movement towards that same object, and this movement is "desire"; and lastly, there is rest which is "joy." Since, therefore, love consists in a change wrought in the appetite by the appetible object, it is evident that love is a passion: properly so called, according as it is in the concupiscible faculty; in a wider and extended sense, according as it is in the will.199

Thus love takes on a meaning in both the sensory and in the intellectual aspects of human nature as both the movement of alteration and the principle of all movement.

Miner cites commentators, both ancient and modern, who have struggled with the contradiction of regarding pleasure or rest as movement. Simo Knuuttila has

197 ST.I-II.26.2.3 198 Miner, Thomas Aquinas on the Passions. 42 199 ST .I-II.26.2

71 claimed that the “movement terminology is problematic.”200 Rest is taken to be the opposite of motion, inferring that the passion of pleasure cannot be considered a movement. Miner writes, “Constantino Marmo argues that Aquinas is grossly inconsistent on this point, and that this inconsistency was noticed shortly after

Aquinas’ death by Giles of Rome, who ‘implicitly accuses Thomas of incoherence.’”201

Marmo holds that, “It is not , in fact, admissible to define delectatio as motion

(according to genus), while also defining it as rest, without falling into contradiction.”202 But, as Miner points out, Thomas anticipated this kind of objection: “ ‘To be passive is to be moved,’ as stated in Phys. iii, 3. But delight does not consist in being moved, but in having been moved; for it arises from good already gained. Therefore delight is not a passion.”203 Thomas responds to the objection by noting that movement has two aspects. The appetite moves according to the intention, which continues to be active even when the exterior movement of pursuit is completed.

…[T]he movement of execution ceases, by which he tends to the end; yet the movement of the appetitive faculty does not cease, since, just as before it desired that which it had not, so afterwards does it delight in that which it possesses. For though delight is a certain repose of the appetite, if we consider the presence of the pleasurable good that satisfies the appetite, nevertheless there remains the impression made on the appetite by its object, by reason of which delight is a kind of movement.204

200 Simo Knuuttila, “Medieval Theories of the Passions of the Soul,” in Emotions and Choice from Boethius to Descartes, ed. H. Lagerlund and M. Yrjönsuuri (Boston: Kluwer Academic, 2002), 49–79. Quoted in Miner, Thomas Aquinas on the Passions. 42. 201 Ibid. 42 202 Constantino Marmo, “‘Hoc Autem Etsi Potest Tollerari…’ Edigio Romano e Tommaso d’Aquino Sulle Passion Dell’anima,” Documenti e Studi Sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievali. 2 (1991): 281–315. (299) Quoted in Miner, Thomas Aquinas on the Passions. 42. 203 ST I-II.31.1.2 204 ST.I-II.31.1.2

The pleasure of resting in union with the attained object involves an alteration in the appetite, the alteration of satiety. Unlike Pasnau, Miner does not understand the passions as physiological events that just are.205 The ambiguity in Thomas is seen in the following passage.

The cognitive faculty does not move except through the medium of the appetitive: and just as in ourselves the universal reason moves through the medium of the particular reason, as stated in De Anima iii, 58,75, so in ourselves the intellectual appetite, or the will as it is called, moves through the medium of the sensitive appetite. Hence, in us the sensitive appetite is the proximate motive-force of our bodies. Some bodily change therefore always accompanies an act of the sensitive appetite, and this change affects especially the heart, which, as the Philosopher says (De part. animal. iii, 4), is the first principle of movement in animals. Therefore acts of the sensitive appetite, inasmuch as they have annexed to them some bodily change, are called passions; whereas acts of the will are not so called. Love, therefore, and joy and delight are passions; in so far as they denote acts of the intellective appetite, they are not passions. It is in this latter sense that they are in God. Hence the Philosopher says (Ethic. vii): "God rejoices by an operation that is one and simple," and for the same reason He loves without passion.206

The question for debate is whether “the appetitive act is distinguishable from the somatic event.”

If both be considered aspects of the sensory material reality, then are the appetitive element and the somatic event still related as form to matter?207 Miner is careful to specify that the appetitive event is not the causal mechanism of the somatic event, as our modern scientific bias might readily presume.

For Aquinas, events within the soul produce distinct bodily events. But the distinction is not a separation. Because the body and soul are fundamentally integrated, there will always be an ordered connection between them. The connection is one of formal rather than efficient causality.208

205 Miner, Thomas Aquinas on the Passions, 44. 206 ST.I.20.1.1 207 Miner, Thomas Aquinas on the Passions, 45. 208 Ibid. 45-6

For Thomas, love, desire, and pleasure are the three concupiscible passions, where the motion is not locomotion but an alteration of the apprehensive-appetitive interiority associated with particular exterior comportment.

Nicholas Lombardo contributes to the discussion about the relationship between the immaterial mind and the material body vis-à-vis the passions, noting subsequently that passio, when translated as emotion, can be misleading. He cites

William James, who, in a seminal article, addresses the nature of an emotion.

The bodily changes follow directly the perception of the exciting fact, and… our feeling of the same changes as they occur IS the emotion. 209

James identified emotions with bodily sensation, a position which Lombardo upholds. However, there have been contrasting perspectives as well, in which the mind would appear to causally effect the bodily change. Historically in the early 20th century, emotion became identified with the feeling of physiologic change, thus reducing emotion to physiology. This was coherent with the philosophical trends of the times, such as behaviorism and logical positivism. If emotion was non-rational then it was something best left to non-philosophic disciplines; there evolved a purposeful avoidance of interior phenomena so that ethics did not end up reduced to an irrational emotivism.210 Some 50 years later, the Anglo-American tradition of philosophy began to shift back towards a consideration of emotion; they began to view the emotions as more than irrational feelings, with a new emphasis upon a previously overlooked cognitive aspect. Anthony Kenny published a landmark work

209 William James, “What Is an Emotion,” Mind, 1884, 189–90. Quoted in Lombardo, The Logic of Desire: Aquinas on Emotion. 10. 210 Ibid. 10

74 in which he recognized that emotions are intentional, i.e., having direction towards an object.211 Others followed, and the cognitivist account of the emotions became dominant in English philosophy and psychology. In other words, the intentional aspect was what gave emotion its rationality. This led to a hypothesis that emotion and intention are a kind of cognitive rationality. Lombardo notes that, because it lacks a universally accepted definition, emotion may not be the best translation of passio. “It seems inadvisable to present a working definition of emotion and then apply it to Aquinas’s thought. Such an approach would require an inevitably inadequate prejudgment of contemporary debate and then distort things further by viewing Thomas through its lens.”212 He makes the helpful recommendation that passio be translated simply as passion, not emotion. However, he retains a potentially problematic cognitive prism in his understanding of the passions. For

Lombardo, intention is sense perception “coloured by cognitive evaluation.”213 He then proceeds to a discussion of sensory appetition, reminding us that “to be good is to be appetible, that is, desirable.”214 Conversely, evil hinders appetite.

…[E]vil is the effect of something good being impeded from the completion of ‘its natural and true disposition’—a claim that implicitly defines evil in terms of appetite, insofar as a thing’s disposition manifests its appetite. Hence evil can be defined not just as a privation of goodness, but also as a frustration of appetite and the consequent disintegration of being, insofar as evil blocks appetite from attaining its natural telos. This metaphysical opposition between appetite and evil has implications for the moral reliability of appetite in human action insofar as appetite, by pointing the way to human nature’s completion, also points the way to moral goodness…215

211 Ibid., 11. 212 Ibid., 14. 213 Ibid., 24. (also ST.I.5) 214 Ibid., 27. 215 Ibid., 30.

Appetite is vulnerable to external forces including the powers of evil. While the appetite does tend towards the good, it will not move without the interior imprint of an attractive (or repulsive) external object. The appetite must be acted upon; it is said to be passive. Lombardo views this external agency as cognitive, and thus appetite becomes cognition-dependent. The cognition is dual, sense cognition and intellectual cognition. Intellection is viewed in a Thomistic paradigm as the highest form of being, so the rational appetite is seen as superior to the sense appetite, but not in the sense of “distrust or disdain for the material.”216 The superiority of intellectual appetite is attributed to intellect’s “essential similarity with God’s appetite, and,…it has the capacity to love and enjoy God.”217 The intellect is capable of perceiving the superior good. But the sense appetite does direct us to “certain aspects of our telos.”218 The perceptive and cognitive faculties are said “to ‘present’ the finished product of an intention to the sense appetite, and if the intention corresponds to its capacities and inclinations, the sense appetite is triggered and a passion results.”219

Lombardo addresses the ambiguity that arises from this juxtaposition of the capacity of the intellectual appetite for the highest good and the traditional meaning of passion as sorrow more so than joy. Passion has always had the connotation of undergoing something contrary to the basic inclinations of nature, i.e., pain and sorrow. For Thomas, the most paradigmatic passion is pain and sorrow, brought

216 Ibid., 33. 217 Ibid., 33. 218 Ibid., 34. 219 Ibid., 34.

76 about when something external exerts its power and brings about suffering. Yet

Thomas has described the concupiscible passion of love as both the principle (form) and the motion of alteration (matter). Lombardo points out that in order to get around this apparent inconsistency, Thomas “locates passion’s defining characteristic in receptivity rather than suffering.”220 Passion can be a defect

(sorrow) with respect to its ultimate telos, and yet be morally praiseworthy in terms of its Aristotelian movement and dynamics. The human being is created imperfect so as to allow for the freedom to shape its own differentiation. Thus the vulnerability to external powers becomes an opportunity to respond as an agent of one’s own ultimate telos. The passivity is not absolute but is coupled with the active aspect of the human passions. When referring to the passions, one may emphasize different aspects. On the one hand, there is the vulnerability to being passively acted upon; on the other hand, there is movement and the capacity to advance towards the good.221 Around this tension in passive and active aspects of the passions, the tradition has evolved in contrasting directions. Lombardo summarizes this historical process.

Aquinas’s positive evaluation of the passions and their role in human flourishing pervades his analysis of particular passions. He touts the beneficial effects and inherent goodness of pleasure: it perfects actions, and insensitivity to pleasure is a vice…. By contrast, his Franciscan contemporaries, Alexander of Hales and Bonaventure, argued that … sorrow can be morally good because, in its inmost nature, it is ontologically good, even though it involves suffering of an evil.”222

But to my mind, the passion of sorrow propels us beyond evil, except when the evil is overwhelming (as in the circumstances of murder described by Rosenbaum).

220 Ibid., 37. 221 Ibid., 38. 222 Ibid., 42.

Overwhelming evil hinders the passion of sorrow. The irascible passions could be understood as those movements that fight evil or flee from it.223 The passions are the travail of the soul to advance towards the good as its ultimate end.

Now good, as such, cannot be a term wherefrom, but only a term whereto, since nothing shuns good as such; on the contrary, all things desire it. In like manner, nothing desires evil, as such; but all things shun it: wherefore evil cannot have the aspect of a term whereto, but only of a term wherefrom.224

There is an operative presumption that the intentiones of the good have not become blurred in the process of human vulnerability to evil.

Thomas classifies the concupiscible and the irascible passions firstly according to the object.

I answer that, The passions of the irascible part differ in species from those of the concupiscible faculty. For since different powers have different objects, as stated in the FP, Q[77], A[3], the passions of different powers must of necessity be referred to different objects. Much more, therefore, do the passions of different faculties differ in species; since a greater difference in the object is required to diversify the species of the powers, than to diversify the species of passions or actions. For just as in the physical order, diversity of genus arises from diversity in the potentiality of matter, while diversity of species arises from diversity of form in the same matter; so in the acts of the soul, those that belong to different powers, differ not only in species but also in genus, while acts and passions regarding different specific objects, included under the one common object of a single power, differ as the species of that genus. In order, therefore, to discern which passions are in the irascible, and which in the concupiscible, we must take the object of each of these powers. For we have stated in the FP, Q[81], A[2], that the object of the concupiscible power is sensible good or evil, simply apprehended as such, which causes pleasure or pain. But, since the soul must, of necessity, experience difficulty or struggle at times, in acquiring some such good, or in avoiding some such evil, in so far as such good or evil is more than our animal nature can easily acquire or avoid; therefore this very good or evil, inasmuch as it is of an arduous or difficult nature, is the object of the irascible faculty. Therefore whatever passions regard good or evil absolutely, belong to the concupiscible power; for instance, joy, sorrow, love, hatred, and such like: whereas those passions which regard good or bad as arduous, through being difficult to obtain or avoid, belong to the irascible faculty; such are daring, fear, hope and the like.225

223 The irascible passions are fear (flight), courage (fight), hope, despair, and anger. 224 ST I-II.23.2 225 ST.I-II.23.1

The second way to classify the passions is by the direction of movement.

Commenting upon the variety of possible movements, Thomas states, “Passion is a kind of movement, as stated in Phys. iii. 3, therefore contrariety of passions is based upon contrariety of movements or changes.”226 This happens in two ways. Firstly, there is one term/object and two possible directions, to or from. If one moves towards the life-giving good/God, one experiences augmentation of being, and if one moves away, one experiences diminution of being; for the same term, opposite directions of movement are possible. The concupiscible passions simply move with delight towards the good and with aversion to evil. In the second instance, the terms may be multiple—good and evil—but the direction is always a one-way movement towards the good, shunning the hindrance of the evil term(s) along the way. The irascible passions follow these more complex movements. One may move courageously towards evil in order to overcome it in one’s progress towards the good. Alternatively, one may flee from the evil, which threatens destruction, as one endeavors to advance towards the good. The irascible passions resist, overcome, and disable evil in order to attain the good.

Accordingly there is a twofold contrariety in the passions of the soul: one, according to contrariety of objects, i.e. of good and evil; the other, according to approach and withdrawal in respect of the same term. In the concupiscible passions the former contrariety alone is to be found; viz. that which is based on the objects: whereas in the irascible passions, we find both forms of contrariety. The reason of this is that the object of the concupiscible faculty, as stated above (A[1]), is sensible good or evil considered absolutely. Now good, as such, cannot be a term wherefrom, but only a term whereto, since nothing shuns good as such; on the contrary, all things desire it. In like manner, nothing desires evil, as such; but all things shun it: wherefore evil cannot have the aspect of a term whereto, but only of a term wherefrom. Accordingly every concupiscible passion in respect of good, tends to it, as love, desire and joy; while every concupiscible passion in respect of evil, tends from it, as hatred, avoidance or dislike, and sorrow. Wherefore, in the

226 ST I-II. 23.2

concupiscible passions, there can be no contrariety of approach and withdrawal in respect of the same object.227

To pursue the good and to shun, to avoid, to overcome, or to flee evil are the workings of the passions of the sensory soul.

For Thomas, movement towards the good is the work of the sensory passions.

When the emphasis falls upon “the good,” the scientific mind looks to solve the problem of evil. Alternatively, if the emphasis is allowed to fall upon “movement,” then one can see that a solution is neither the pre-requisite nor the substitute for movement. In a Thomistic paradigm, moral movement is vulnerable to being hindered by evil. But if one’s focus is to solve the problem of evil, one risks defining the good in terms of a solution to evil. The good, in its human shape, is a movement, not a solution. Human movement is comportment on the exterior and transformation on the interior. By contrast, a solution to mendacity, (which is the very nature of evil,) is an impossible oxymoron.

Rosenbaum has intuitively identified that this pursuit of the “Reason”—the rational solution—is in some unspecified way unsatisfactory in the face of overwhelming evil. Murderous evil, such as she describes, simply overwhelms and shuts down human flourishing, hindering all possible movements towards the good.

When the interior senses are active and give rise to the passion of sorrow, the movement of emergence from the hindrance of evil is possible. But when the evil is overwhelming, the sensory apparatus—apprehension and appetition—is disabled

227 ST.I-II.23.2

80 and “gets stuck.” In the next chapter, I will show that it is this incapacity to feel and to move that gives meaning to the illusive modern term, suffering.

2.3. conclusion

An image of human nature emerges in which there is a triad of operations at two levels, sensory and intellectual. This thesis project is primarily focused upon the sensory, i.e., the view “from below,” recognizing that ultimately there is integrity between the sensory and the intellectual natures. However, it is the distinction that will guide the quest of this project for a missing intelligence in our approach to suffering. In chapter 2, I have discussed the first two aspects of this triad, namely, apprehension and appetition; a discussion of the third aspect of the triad, namely, contemplation, awaits chapter 4. There is a dynamism in this triad as well as an integrity, such that any break in that dynamism or integrity will be regarded as harmful to the whole. This hylomorphic integrity will become important to the proposed, new heuristic around suffering. Indeed, I will evolve a descriptive definition of suffering in terms of the dynamism that is implicit in Thomas’ understanding of the sensory nature. It is to this description of suffering that I turn in the next chapter.

Chapter 3. Suffering: a Description in Terms of the Sensory Aspect of Human Nature.

I have thus far shown that a Thomistic understanding of human nature depicts a unity of the material and immaterial, such that the corporeal material aspect is identified with apprehensive sensitivity and appetitive movement while the immaterial aspect is identified variously with spirit, mind, cognition, rationality, and intellect.228 It is important to note how many different terms we use to signify the immateriality; each term perhaps indicates a distinct paradigm or heuristic for understanding that elusive, intangible part of what it means to be human. For example, we have the paradigm of psychotherapy, which offers treatment to the immaterial psyche in distress. We have the school system, which offers a system of education for the immaterial mind. We have religious institutions, which offer a tradition of worship for the immaterial spirit. The Western culture has evolved with a remarkable focus upon the immateriality of the human being. The outcome of such focus has generally been a positive one, and to critique the outcomes is not the goal of this project. My interest is to ask, which paradigm might offer medical ethics the best heuristic in the context of suffering? Is suffering best addressed in terms of education, religion, psychology, theology, medicine, etc.? Certainly, in history, suffering has been associated with the paradigm of medicine. But as medicine has

228 This intellectual/spiritual, immaterial side of human nature is understood to have an apprehensive dynamic (knowledge) as well as an appetitive dynamic (will), which is like the structure of the sensory aspect of human nature. My point in this introductory sentence is to highlight the many different terms used to signify that part of human nature, which is not the focus of my project.

81 82 become increasingly abstract and scientific, suffering too has been reduced to various models of abstraction, eg. socio-political, psycho-social, physiologic, socio- economic, etc. But, as Rosenbaum has so poignantly articulated, this habit of abstraction, our default attitude of “Reason,” requires revisiting.

In this chapter I will propose a paradigm that advances our understanding of suffering. This paradigm is informed by the anthropology of Thomas, in which he specifies movement as equally defining of human nature as is cognition. And while cognition and movement, meaning immateriality and materiality, of the human nature comprise a hylomorphic whole, an exploration of the distinction will be fruitful in nuancing our approach to suffering. Thomas did not use the modern term, suffering, nor was his medieval emphasis the view “from below.” Yet by looking through the lens of the sensory nature, it is possible to use the insights of Thomas to generate a fresh heuristic relevant to circumstances of suffering. The paradigm that

I am developing draws from the Christian paradigm, in particular the spiritual tradition of healing transformation, while attempting to suspend the medical science bias that would demystify and problem-solve this mystery. Most important is the experiential quality of this new paradigm; it depends upon a process of re- integration of the fragmented material and immaterial aspects of our (“fallen”) human nature.

Having established in the previous chapter the link between the passions and human movement, I will now examine Thomas’ Questions on the passions of pain and sorrow. This close reading of Thomas will furnish conceptual details to help with the meaning of the contemporary term, suffering. While I may not conclude

83 with a comprehensive definition, I would aim to present features that characterize suffering in terms of the sensory passions in pursuit of the good, vulnerable to the hindrance of evil. In other words, to situate suffering in the context of the vulnerable sensory materiality provides fresh insights in the (medical) quest for “Meaning” in the face of suffering.

Thomas describes pain first. There is a perceived loss of some bodily good

Just as two things are requisite for pleasure; namely, conjunction with good and perception of this conjunction; so also two things are requisite for pain: namely, conjunction with some evil (which is in so far evil as it deprives one of some good), and perception of this conjunction. Now whatever is conjoined, if it have not the aspect of good or evil in regard to the being to which it is conjoined, cannot cause pleasure or pain. Whence it is evident that something under the aspect of good or evil is the object of the pleasure or pain. But good and evil, as such, are objects of the appetite. Consequently it is clear that pleasure and pain belong to the appetite…..229

Pain at the loss of good proves the goodness of the nature, not because pain is an act of the natural appetite, but because nature desires something as good, the removal of which being perceived, there results the passion of pain in the sensitive appetite.230

On the authority of Augustine, Thomas writes that pain is caused by some hurt to the body, but “the movement of pain is always in the soul.” The pain that is caused by an interior apprehension rather than by some external harm is called sorrow. In fact, those things that begin as externals always end up in the interior; pain ultimately causes sorrow. Thus sorrow is a kind of pain, a pain of the interiority.

Pleasure and pain can arise from a twofold apprehension, namely, from the apprehension of an exterior sense; and from the interior apprehension of the intellect or of the imagination. Now the interior apprehension extends to more objects than the exterior apprehension: because whatever things come under the exterior apprehension, come under the interior, but not conversely. Consequently that pleasure alone which is caused by an interior apprehension is called joy, as stated above (Q[31], A[3]): and in like manner that pain alone which is caused by an interior apprehension, is called sorrow. And just as that pleasure which is caused by an exterior apprehension, is called pleasure but not joy; so too that pain which is caused by an exterior apprehension, is called pain indeed but not sorrow. Accordingly sorrow is a species of pain, as joy is a species of pleasure.231

229 ST I-II.35.1 230 ST.I-II.35.1.3 231 ST.I-II.35.2

Interior and exterior pain agree in one point and differ in two. They agree in this, that each is a movement of the appetitive power, as stated above (A[1]). But they differ in respect of those two things which are requisite for pain and pleasure; namely, in respect of the cause, which is a conjoined good or evil; and in respect of the apprehension. For the cause of outward pain is a conjoined evil repugnant to the body; while the cause of inward pain is a conjoined evil repugnant to the appetite. Again, outward pain arises from an apprehension of sense, chiefly of touch; while inward pain arises from an interior apprehension, of the imagination or of the reason.232

The type of sensory apprehension involved, namely the external primary sense of touch or the internal sense of imagination, determines the type of pain. The external object that causes exterior pain is repugnant to the material body and therefore repugnant to the appetite. The object that causes interior pain is repugnant to the appetite because of the higher faculties of reason and imagination. Moreover

“’Sadness of the heart is every wound,’ because even the pains of outward wounds are comprised in the interior sorrows of the heart,”233 but the converse is not the case, according to this section in Thomas. He refers to the external senses and contrasts these with the interior apprehensions, “of the imagination or of the reason.”234 The apprehensive role of the interior sense of particular reason

(cogitative sense) is unclear in this citation. Thomas seems to be contrasting the sensory body with the immaterial interiority of the higher soul and overlooking the cogitative sense.

Thomas sets up pain and pleasure as a contrariety, like opposite ends of a spectrum.

As the Philosopher says (Metaph. x, 4), contrariety is a difference in respect of a form. Now the form or species of a passion or movement is taken from the object or term. Consequently,

232 ST.I-II.35.7 233 ST.I-II.35.7 234 ST.I-II.35.7

since the objects of pleasure and sorrow or pain, viz. present good and present evil, are contrary to one another, it follows that pain and pleasure are contrary to one another.235

Yet, when understood as a contrariety, such contraries do not exclude one another; when in pain one retains a residual capacity to sense pleasure. For, example, lacking something, one seeks it more eagerly, undergoing pain in order to obtain that pleasure.236 Or one may recall “a beloved object to one’s memory,” feeling the love for that object even though its absence “gives us pain.”237 Reflecting this sensory dichotomy, at the intellectual level, the will and reason may reflect upon one’s actions under the aspect of good (like sensory pleasure) or of evil (like sensory pain). In recognizing the evil, one may sorrow but at the same time take pleasure in the re-ordering of one’s actions towards the good.238 The contrariety of dichotomy has the characteristic of fittingness or affinity. For example, white and black are both colours; one may approach the white while receding from the black. By comparison with this example, sorrow and pleasure can be seen as contraries around an object in common; sorrow is the receding and pleasure is the approaching. If the objects are disparate, the dynamic of recession and approach is more complex.

Now sorrow and pleasure, being passions, are specified by their objects. According to their respective genera, they are contrary to one another: since one is a kind of "pursuit," the other a kind of "avoidance," which "are to the appetite, what affirmation and denial are to the intellect" (Ethic. vi, 2). Consequently sorrow and pleasure in respect of the same object, are specifically contrary to one another: whereas sorrow and pleasure in respect of objects that are not contrary but disparate, are not specifically contrary to one another, but are also disparate; for instance, sorrow at the death of a friend, and pleasure in contemplation. If, however, those diverse objects be contrary to one another, then pleasure and sorrow are

235 ST.I-II.35.3 236 ST.I-II.35.3.1 237 ST.I-II.35.3.2 238 ST.I-II.35.3.3

not only specifically contrary, but they also have a certain mutual fittingness and affinity: for instance to rejoice in good and to sorrow for evil.239

Sorrow is movement that has a direction contrary to pleasure if the object is in common; sorrow is over the lost good, while pleasure is over the attained good.

When the objects of movement are diverse, they relate to one another as “fitting.”

Sorrow thus does not exclude pleasure but it is a hindrance to pleasure, while the remedy for sorrow is an experience of pleasure.240

Besides characterizing the passion of pain and sorrow in terms of object and direction of movement, Thomas introduces the effect of pain and sorrow.

“…[A]lthough not every sorrow is specifically contrary to every pleasure, yet they are contrary to one another in regard to their effects: since one has the effect of strengthening the animal nature, while the other results in a kind of discomfort.”241

Because the object of pleasure is some suitable good, while the object of sorrow is an evil, the desire for pleasure is more eager than the shunning of sorrow. Pleasure can be perfect, but sorrow can never be anything but the privation of the perfect good.

Moreover we find a confirmation of this in natural movements. For every natural movement is more intense in the end, when a thing approaches the term that is suitable to its nature, than at the beginning, when it leaves the term that is unsuitable to its nature: as though nature were more eager in tending to what is suitable to it, than in shunning what is unsuitable. Therefore the inclination of the appetitive power is, of itself, more eager in tending to pleasure than in shunning sorrow. 242

When the appetitive power is closest to the good it is most dynamic; proximity to evil, or, conversely, a distancing from the good dampens the dynamism of appetitive

239 ST.I-II.35.4 240 ST.I-II.35.4.2 241 ST.I-II.35.4.2 242 ST.I-II.35.6

87 movement. The beloved good, when absent, elicits sorrow, either through loss of the good or through its displacement by evil. Thus love (of the good lost) is the cause of sorrow as much as is love (of the good obtained) the cause of pleasure.243 Thomas contrasts movement from within and movement from without.

For movement from within tends to what is suitable more than it recedes from that which is unsuitable; as we remarked above in regard to natural movement. But movement from without is intensified by the very opposition: because each thing strives in its own way to resist anything contrary to it, as aiming at its own preservation. Hence violent movement is intense at first, and slackens towards the end. Now the movement of the appetitive faculty is from within: since it tends from the soul to the object. Consequently pleasure is, of itself, more to be sought than sorrow is to be shunned. But the movement of the sensitive faculty is from without, as it were from the object of the soul. Consequently the more contrary a thing is the more it is felt. And then too, accidentally, in so far as the senses are requisite for pleasure and pain, pain is shunned more than pleasure is sought.244

The apprehensive sensory faculty is vulnerable in that it is passive—permeable, as it were—to externals, which include the powers of evil. The movement of the external powers into the interiority happens against resistance; being tends to its own preservation especially when the penetrating force is contrary to it. Movement that involves resistance to what is contrary is regarded in the Aristotelian paradigm as violent. The more an object is contrary, the more the movement is violent,245 and the more intense is the perception of the object. On the other hand, the movement of the appetitive faculty is from the interiority towards the external object, without resistance. To shun evil246 has an unpleasant sensory intensity that exceeds the sensory intensity of pleasure in the good obtained. Thus Thomas can say that “the body undergoes a greater change from the movement of the sensitive appetite: and,

243 ST.I-II.35.6 244 ST.I-II.35.6.2 245 This notion will be developed in a subsequent section on violence and sacrifice. 246 To shun evil is not to be read as “to solve evil.”

88 in like manner, from outward than from inward pain.”247 Thomas states that the inward pain is caused by the greater evil in that the interior apprehension has a better knowledge of evil than the external primary senses (i.e., touch). Here again,

“interior apprehension” seems to refer to the apprehensive capacities of the higher intellectual soul.

If our focus were to remain on the sensory material body, an alternative to this hierarchical understanding of evil might emerge. The lesser movement observed with interior pain could conceivably be caused by a privation of the sensory interiority and the sensory appetitions. There is then no need to conceptualize the evil of interior apprehension as elevated above the evil of sensory apprehension. To allow this hierarchical stratification of evil is to suggest that real bodily evil, such as the murder of the surgeon, is somehow less when subordinated to “Reason.” It is this attitude of privileging “Reason” that Rosenbaum would scrutinize. If the hylomorphism of the material (exterior) and non-material (interior) aspects of human nature is to be respected, then the interior apprehensions of the intellectual soul must have a reciprocal (and indeed prior) apprehension in the sensory soul.

This impact of evil upon the sensory apprehensions of the soul ultimately manifests as movement—or its privation—in the corporeal whole. The role of the sensory nature, and in particular the cogitative sense, in the context of suffering and evil is not often considered in the thought of Thomas.248

247 ST.I-II.35.7.3 248 Researching the broader works of Thomas (not only in the ST), Daniel De Haan has identified that the cogitative sense of the sensory nature contributes to moral perception. He describes certain kinds of perceptions of the cogitative power which after being “sublimated into the judgments of practical reason” take on the quality of moral perceptions. If I were to invert this and look from

Thomas states that external pain moves into the interior to become sorrow, but that sorrow of the interiority does not become corporeal pain. Yet in the next article he seems to be suggesting that in the face of overwhelming evil, there is a parallel between the intellectual interiority and the movements of the sensory appetitions.

Sorrow effects the sensory appetitive movement of flight or fight. But when the evil is overwhelming, Thomas tells us the effect is bodily paralysis or torpor.

The proper effect of sorrow consists in a certain "flight of the appetite." Wherefore the foreign element in the effect of sorrow, may be taken so as to affect the first part only, by excluding flight: and thus we have "anxiety" which weighs on the mind, so as to make escape seem impossible: hence it is also called "perplexity." If, however, the mind be weighed down so much, that even the limbs become motionless, which belongs to "torpor," then we have the foreign element affecting both, since there is neither flight, nor is the effect in the appetite. And the reason why torpor especially is said to deprive one of speech is because of all the external movements the voice is the best expression of the inward thought and desire, not only in men, but also in other animals, as is stated in Polit. i, 1.249

To my understanding, Thomas has observed interior pain—sorrow—having the effect of bodily immobility. Previously Thomas has written that the sensory passivity to evil may manifest as violent intensity of movement, but according to ST

I-II.35, when the interiority is overwhelmed by contrariety, there is privation of movement. The response to evil may be forward or backward movement, or there may be suppression of movement altogether.

below, as in the context of suffering, I could re-word De Haan’s sentence thus: the experiences aggregated into intention via the cogitative power come to constitute a know-how around good/ flourishing and evil/suffering, a knowing that contributes to one’s overall moral perception. I note that De Haan’s approach presumes that the sensory nature becomes ordered by subordination to the intellectual nature. But another iteration is possible when the perspective is inverted; from below, the experiences of the sensory nature, ordered by habits of prudence, accumulate wisdom that knows what best to do for now under the circumstances. (The work of De Haan came to my attention 2 weeks after my defence; it is of great interest and will be the direction of my continued research.) Daniel D. De Hann, “Moral Perception and the Function of the Vis Cogitativa in Thomas Aquinas’s Doctrine of Antecedent and Consequent Passions,” Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale, XXV, 289-330, 2014. See also Daniel D. De Haan, “Percetion and the Vis Cognitiva: A Thomistc Analysis of Aspectual, Actual, and Affectual Percepts,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 88, no. 3, 397-437, 2014, 249 ST.I-II.35.8

Thomas considers pain and sorrow under two aspects, the object and the direction of movement. The object has two aspects, the end and the means.

Accordingly, since, in the movements of the appetite, sorrow is a kind of flight or withdrawal, while pleasure is a kind of pursuit or approach; just as pleasure regards first the good possessed, as its proper object, so sorrow regards the evil that is present. On the other hand love, which is the cause of pleasure and sorrow, regards good rather than evil: and therefore, forasmuch as the object is the cause of a passion, the present evil is more properly the cause of sorrow or pain, than the good which is lost.250

When the object of the passion is an evil, privation of the good comes about. This privation of the good insinuates itself and takes the place of the end or the goal of appetition.251 The object considered under the aspect of the means to the end is the interior inclination towards the good. This desire for the good, now unattainable because of the present evil object, becomes the cause of sorrow. Besides the object,

Thomas also considers the direction of movement in the passions of pain and sorrow.

Because whatever hinders a movement from reaching its end is contrary to that movement. Now that which is contrary to the movement of the appetite, is a cause of sorrow. Consequently, desire becomes a cause of sorrow, in so far as we sorrow for the delay of a desired good, or for its entire removal. But it cannot be a universal cause of sorrow: since we sorrow more for the loss of present good, in which we have already taken pleasure, than for the withdrawal of future good which we desire to have.252

The present hindrance—the evil—refers not only to the object but also to the direction of movement. Both the object and the direction of movement must be recognized, particularly in the case of pain and sorrow.

Sorrow also arises from the desire for unity with the good, in other words, from the desire for wholeness. A thing’s perfection of being depends upon this perfect goodness. “Separation from things hurtful and corruptive is desired, in so far as

250 ST.I-II.36.1 251 ST.I-II.36.2 252 ST.I-II.36.2

91 they destroy the unity which is due. Wherefore the desire for such like separation is not the first cause of sorrow, whereas the craving for unity is.”253 Evil is the hindrance and the contrariety to union with the good. Violence is associated with the insinuation of a contrary to this union. Augustine is cited as saying, “For what else is pain but a feeling of impatience of division or corruption?"254 To resist this power of corruption is, according to Augustine, the work of the will; to resist pain is the work of “sense resisting a stronger body.”255 Thomas explains that the object is the present evil, and the passion works to resist union with it. This greater power against which one must travail is the cause of sorrow.

Thomas points out that the action of one power may disable other powers of the soul.

Since all the powers of the soul are rooted in the one essence of the soul, it must needs happen, when the intention of the soul is strongly drawn towards the action of one power, that it is withdrawn from the action of another power: because the soul, being one, can only have one intention. The result is that if one thing draws upon itself the entire intention of the soul, or a great portion thereof, anything else requiring considerable attention is incompatible therewith.256

He returns to the hylomorphism—the one-ness—of the soul. Strong movement in one part will take the other parts with it. But with practice and the formation of strong habits rooted in love, he suggests that not even pain will deflect the intention.

In fact love will become the determining movement.

Now it is evident that sensible pain above all draws the soul's attention to itself; because it is natural for each thing to tend wholly to repel whatever is contrary to it, as may be observed even in natural things. It is likewise evident that in order to learn anything new, we require study and effort with a strong intention, as is clearly stated in Prov. 2:4,5: "If thou shalt seek wisdom as money, and shall dig for her as for a treasure, then shalt thou understand learning" [Vulg: 'the fear of the Lord']. Consequently if the pain be acute, man is

253 ST.I-II.36.3 254 ST.I-II.36.3 255 ST.I-II.36.4 256 ST.I-II.37.1

prevented at the time from learning anything: indeed it can be so acute, that, as long as it lasts, a man is unable to give his attention even to that which he knew already. However a difference is to be observed according to the difference of love that a man has for learning or for considering: because the greater his love, the more will he retain the intention of his mind so as to prevent it from turning entirely to the pain.257

For Thomas inward sorrow is less distracting than bodily pain, the former being seen as the formal aspect or soul, which, by virtue of its immateriality, is more inclined to contemplation of the truth despite the movement of sorrow.

External pain arises from hurt done to the body, so that it involves bodily transmutation more than inward sorrow does: and yet the latter is greater in regard to the formal element of pain, which belongs to the soul. Consequently bodily pain is a greater hindrance to contemplation which requires complete repose, than inward sorrow is. Nevertheless if inward sorrow be very intense, it attracts the intention, so that man is unable to learn anything for the first time: wherefore on account of sorrow Gregory interrupted his commentary on Ezechiel (Hom. xxii in Ezechiel).258

The body in pain means the body undergoing the effect of an evil object; this effect is the hindrance of contemplation.

Thomas states that it is helpful to name the soul’s passions metaphorically based upon “a likeness to sensible bodies.” 259 In other words, the movement of the passions is in some ways similar to the types of movement exhibited by material things.

And in this way fervor is ascribed to love, expansion to pleasure, and depression to sorrow. For a man is said to be depressed, through being hindered in his own movement by some weight. Now it is evident from what has been said above (Q[23], A[4]; Q[25], A[4]; Q[36], A[1]) that sorrow is caused by a present evil: and this evil, from the very fact that it is repugnant to the movement of the will, depresses the soul, inasmuch as it hinders it from enjoying that which it wishes to enjoy. And if the evil which is the cause of sorrow be not so strong as to deprive one of the hope of avoiding it, although the soul be depressed in so far as, for the present, it fails to grasp that which it craves for; yet it retains the movement whereby to repulse that evil. If, on the other hand, the strength of the evil be such as to exclude the hope of evasion, then even the interior movement of the afflicted soul is absolutely hindered, so that it cannot turn aside either this way or that. Sometimes even the external movement of the body is paralyzed, so that a man becomes completely stupefied.260

257 ST.I-II.37.1 258 ST.I-II.37.1.3 259 ST I-II.37.2 260ST I-II. 37.2

If the evil is not overwhelming, the soul retains “the movement whereby to repulse the evil.”261 It is important for my project to emphasize that evil can be overwhelming to the point of absolute immobilization, i.e., paralysis and stupor. The depressive aspect of sorrow can also be understood as a kind of contraction, such that the soul closes up and withdraws. “As far as the movement of the appetite is concerned, contraction and depression amount to the same: because the soul, through being depressed so as to be unable to attend freely to outward things, withdraws to itself, closing itself up as it were.”262 Moreover, sorrow consumes.

“Sorrow is said to consume man, when the force of the afflicting evil is such as to shut out all hope of evasion: and thus also it both depresses and consumes at the same time.”263 The formal element, the sorrowing soul, is understood metaphorically, but Thomas does not directly specify how we are to consider the material element, human corporeality, in the context of sorrow. If the passions involve movements of the sensory human body, then possibly it is the depression, constriction, and eradication (consumption) of these bodily movements in the context of an evil object that serves as the foundational experience for the metaphoric understanding of the sorrowing soul. In the next article, Thomas does recognize this relation between sorrow and real (not metaphoric) bodily movement.

261 ST I-II. 37.2 262ST I-II. 37.2.2 263ST I-II. 37.2.3

“Sorrow hinders any action.”264 Moreover, Thomas cites his authorities and makes the link between sorrow and the ultimate immobility of death.

It is written (Prov. 17:22): "A joyful mind maketh age flourishing: a sorrowful spirit drieth up the bones": and (Prov. 25:20): "As a moth doth by a garment, and a worm by the wood: so the sadness of a man consumeth the heart": and (Ecclus. 38:19): "Of sadness cometh death."265

In agreement with his authorities, sorrow is most harmful to the body. It would seem that sorrow of the interiority is understood as located in the form or soul, and the movement of the corporeal passions is the material aspect.

Sorrow is repugnant to man’s life in respect of the species of its movement, and not merely in respect of its measure or quantity, as is the case with the other passions of the soul. For man's life consists in a certain movement, which flows from the heart to the other parts of the body: and this movement is befitting to human nature according to a certain fixed measure… [W]hereas if this movement be hindered in its progress, it will be repugnant to life in respect of its species. Now it must be noted that, in all the passions of the soul, the bodily transmutation which is their material element, is in conformity with and in proportion to the appetitive movement, which is the formal element: just as in everything matter is proportionate to form. Consequently those passions that imply a movement of the appetite in pursuit of something, are not repugnant to the vital movement as regards its species, but they may be repugnant thereto as regards its measure: such are love, joy, desire and the like; wherefore these passions conduce to the well-being of the body; though, if they be excessive, they may be harmful to it. On the other hand, those passions which denote in the appetite a movement of flight or contraction, are repugnant to the vital movement, not only as regards its measure, but also as regards its species; wherefore they are simply harmful: such are fear and despair, and above all sorrow which depresses the soul by reason of a present evil, which makes a stronger impression than future evil.266

Once again I note that Thomas does not reference the sensory apprehensions, in particular the cogitative sense, which might also be considered as formal element and soul—sensory soul. When Thomas refers to the interiority, he seems to presume intellectual soul; the possible role of the sensory interiority in the depressed bodily movements of sorrow is left to the reader’s conjecture. And yet he

264ST I-II.37.3 265 ST I-II.37.4 266ST I-II. 37.4

95 says, “Since the soul naturally moves the body, the spiritual movement of the soul is naturally the cause of bodily transmutation.”267 Which soul is it that ultimately moves the body; is it not the intentiones and appetitions of the sensory soul, nuanced as they are by input from the higher intellectual soul? All the passions except sorrow effect “a bodily transmutation in conformity with the vital movement;” only sorrow works against vitality.268 The vital movements are shaped not only by the higher intellectual soul but at the most primal level by the sensory apprehensions of the exterior and interior senses. Without a consideration of the sensory apprehensions, the impact of sorrow in the higher intellectual interiority on corporeal movement is incomplete. It is this realm of the sensory (not intellectual) interiority that I believe to be relevant in coming to know one’s own vulnerability and suffering. While one must bring the higher operations of intellect to discern and to illumine these primal experiences, the sensory intentions are to be distinguished

(as Thomas initially does in pars I) from the intellectual conceptualizations. The person must come to an awareness of the evil interiorized in the intentiones of the sensory soul. Such coming to awareness is indeed an operation of the higher human capacities, but the moving principle is not a cognition of abstracted universals, but is rather the passion of sorrow and lament. It is this movement of sorrow that leads into a realm of meaning unrestricted by evidence-based, scientific reasoning.

Perhaps this lament for life and goodness is part of that “Meaning” to which

Rosenbaum appeals.

267 ST I-II.37.4.1 268ST I-II. 37.4.2

In ST I-II. 38, when offering remedies for the depressed movements of sorrow or pain, Thomas does appeal to the sensory apprehensions. He draws a comparison between repose and weariness. Both are instances of movements of the appetite, but repose is a suitable transmutation whereas weariness is “non-natural.”269

Therefore just as all repose of the body brings relief to any kind of weariness, ensuing from any non-natural cause; so every pleasure brings relief by assuaging any kind of sorrow, due to any cause whatever.270 If one comes to recognize evil in the things in which one previously took pleasure, sorrow begets repentance and healing.271 New things now bring pleasure, and it is this pleasure that “drives out sorrow.”

When there are two causes inclining to contrary movements, each hinders the other; yet the one which is stronger and more persistent, prevails in the end. Now when a man is made sorrowful by those things in which he took pleasure in common with a deceased or absent friend, there are two causes producing contrary movements. For the thought of the friend's death or absence, inclines him to sorrow: whereas the present good inclines him to pleasure. Consequently each is modified by the other. And yet, since the perception of the present moves more strongly than the memory of the past, and since love of self is more persistent than love of another; hence it is that, in the end, the pleasure drives out the sorrow. Wherefore a little further on (Confess. iv, 8) Augustine says that his "sorrow gave way to his former pleasures."272

Thomas then addresses the bodily expression of “tears and groans.” These expressions give vent to “hurtful things” that have become even more hurtful in being “shut up.” Furthermore, the expression of tears and groans is coherent with one’s interior state of sorrowing and in this way is considered to bring a certain pleasure.

Tears and groans naturally assuage sorrow: and this for two reasons. First, because a hurtful thing hurts yet more if we keep it shut up, because the soul is more intent on it:

269 ST I-II.38.1 270 ST I-II.38.1 271 ST I-II.38.1.2 272 ST.I-II.38.1.3

whereas if it be allowed to escape, the soul's intention is dispersed as it were on outward things, so that the inward sorrow is lessened. This is why men, burdened with sorrow, make outward show of their sorrow, by tears or groans or even by words, their sorrow is assuaged. Secondly, because an action, that befits a man according to his actual disposition, is always pleasant to him. Now tears and groans are actions befitting a man who is in sorrow or pain; and consequently they become pleasant to him. Since then, as stated above (A[1]), every pleasure assuages sorrow or pain somewhat, it follows that sorrow is assuaged by weeping and groans.273

There is a distinction between the cause of sorrow, which is not pleasurable, and the effect of sorrow, such as tears and groans, which is pleasurable. This is because the effect of sorrow is suitable to the sorrowing interiority, but the cause of sorrow is contrary to well-being.274 Friends who are saddened by another’s sorrow share the burden and assuage the sorrow.275 In times of sorrow, the greatest pleasure is to become immersed in contemplation of “Divine things.” But it is not the intellectual content that brings healing. Rather it is the very process of contemplation itself that brings pleasure. “The speculative intellect does not move the mind on the part of the thing contemplated: but on the part of contemplation itself, which is man's good and naturally pleasant to him.”276 Again Thomas refers to the sensory body. He uses the same language of “overflow” as in describing the particular reason.

In the powers of the soul there is an overflow from the higher to the lower powers: and accordingly, the pleasure of contemplation, which is in the higher part, overflows so as to mitigate even that pain which is in the senses.277

The cogitative and memorative powers in man owe their excellence not to that which is proper to the sensitive part; but to a certain affinity and proximity to the universal reason, which, so to speak, overflows into them. Therefore they are not distinct powers, but the same, yet more perfect than in other animals.278

273 ST.I-II.38.2 274 ST.I-II.38.2.1 275 ST.I-II.38.3 276 ST.I-II.38.4.2 277 ST.I-II.38.4.3 278 ST.I.78.4.5

The most direct sensory pleasure to assuage sorrow is the bath. Because sorrow is

“repugnant to vital movement” whatever can restore vitality to that movement is opposed to sorrow.279 In fact, any sensory stimulation will assuage sorrow by bringing pleasure. “The normal disposition of the body, so far as it is felt, is itself a cause of pleasure, and consequently assuages sorrow.”280 Thomas reflects upon sorrow as an evil or as a good. “…[A]ll sorrow is evil... because it hinders the repose of the appetite in good.”281 But sometimes one sorrows for the loss of the good, which intensifies the desire for the good. When the good is lost, not to feel sorrow is an evil in itself. “For if he were not to be in sorrow or pain, this could only be either because he feels it not, or because he does not reckon it as something unbecoming, both of which are manifest evils.”282 A good person feels sorrow in the presence of evil. “…[S]orrow is a good inasmuch as it denotes perception and rejection of evil.”283 Sorrow is good only insofar as it leads to movement towards the good; to be stuck in sorrow “is of no use.”284 “[E]xcessive sorrow… consumes the soul: such sorrow paralyzes the soul, and hinders it from shunning evil, as stated above (Q[37],

A[2]).”285 But to be without sorrow in the face of a present evil is worse; without sorrow one is lacking in perception and sensitivity to the evil that has insinuated

279 ST.I-II.38.5 280 ST.I-II.38.5.1 281 ST.I-II.39.1 282 ST.I-II.39.1 283 ST.I-II. 39.2 284 ST.I-II.39.3 285 ST.I-II. 39.3.1

99 itself and diminished one’s being.286 Thus for Thomas, sorrow depends upon the sensory perception of evil both in its arising and its assuaging.

I have identified in Thomas’ text that sorrow is a passion, the only passion that involves a transmutation of diminished vitality in response to evil. The interiority is to the corporeal change/movement as form is to matter. The interiority considered as form, soul, rationality, or meaning is immateriality. Two points emerge, one regarding sensory apprehension and the other regarding sensory appetition. 1) The role of the immaterial sensory soul is inferred in Thomas’ discussion of remedies for sorrow, but otherwise the term, “interiority” appears to signify a conflation of higher intellectual operations with the lower interior sense of particular reason

(cogitative sense). 2) In the presence of overwhelming evil, the corporeal appetitive movement is paralyzed, and, as such, it no longer fits the premise of a passion as corporeal transmutation. From these two observations I propose the following

Thomistic definition of suffering. Suffering is a state in which the sensory soul’s apprehension of evil shapes an intentio, such that all movement is suppressed; the locus of suffering thus becomes the sensory soul. Suffering is an evil in the sense of a privation of life and an aggrandizement of death. Suffering may be associated with psycho-social issues of clinical import. But when suffering is considered in terms of the Thomistic passions, it follows that the rationality required to address suffering becomes the language of good and evil, of life’s flourishing and of harm. When suffering is understood as a vulnerability of the sensory-appetitive apparatus, it is the sensory soul, with its particular rationality, which takes on relevance. Only

286 ST.I-II.39.4

100 secondarily and selectively will the higher cognitional operations of scientific universals be applicable.

In the following chapters I will attempt to depict what such a rationality of the sensory-appetitive apparatus might look like. Rosenbaum’s appeal to meaning would seem to be a plea to re-evaluate scientific reason as the universal epistemic method in medicine. It is this alternate epistemology that I would attempt to describe in proposing a rationality of the sensory-appetitive corporeality in the face of suffering.

The secondary texts that I consulted on suffering and the passions have set up an elision between suffering and the passion of pain and sorrow. When a similar elision between emotions and passions is considered, the question arises, Is suffering then to be understood as an emotion? This type of confusion comes of conflating medieval terms with modern ones. Suffering is a modern word and thus requires precise definition if a medieval text is to be used to illumine this human condition.

Nicholas Lombardo emphasizes the deficiency aspect of a passion.

Passion then is the ‘act’ of being acted upon. It implies the potential to be actualized and thus perfected. Insofar as this potential is bound up in the tendency toward something not yet attained, it also implies metaphysical deficiency….. Just as the term “appetite” encompasses many kinds of inclination, not just the sense appetite, the term “passion” encompasses many kinds of receptivity.287

Influenced as I am by the sensori-motor neurophysiological model,288 my own reading of Thomas is that perception/apprehension is distinct from movement.

287 Lombardo, The Logic of Desire: Aquinas on Emotion. 35. 288 I am referring to the scientific model in which there is afferent sensory perception and efferent motor response. I believe that Thomas, in observing this duality of direction (in and out) and the diversity of objects, developed his anthropology of cognition and movement. What one senses, one knows; what one knows brings about act/movement.

101

Passion refers to the aspect of movement into the exteriority, not reception into the interiority; perception and receptive apprehension are thus sensory, not appetitive

(motor), capacities. Apprehension includes the interior senses whereby the tending towards good/being is contoured into a particular intention. In this view, immaterial intention is integral to the material movement of passion according to the premise of hylomorphism. Thus in disagreement with Lombardo, “receptivity” is not the appetition of passion, but rather a pre-requisite sensory capacity for the movement of passion. I would propose that this precision becomes important to an understanding of suffering; when sensibility is overwhelmed by evil, so is movement paralyzed. Lombardo’s conflation of suffering and passion (sorrow) is confusing. “The primary attribute of the passions is their aspect of receptivity.

Passion in a stricter and more idiosyncratic sense also involves suffering, and so, according to [Thomas’] schema, sorrow is more properly a passion than joy.”289

Lombardo means that a passion such as sorrow brings about distress or discomfort, but suffering, on my view, is more than the travail of discomfort. Suffering is the impact of evil, just as passion intends to the good.

Robert Miner does not include the term “suffering” in his index; he describes suffering under the term “sorrow.” He stresses the value of sorrow.

Few things are more effective in preventing a person from acquiring the habit of contemplation than immersion in frivolous pleasures. The experience of sorrow is a salutary counter-weight to such diversions: it serves as an antidote to the supreme vice of shallowness.290

289 Lombardo, The Logic of Desire: Aquinas on Emotion. 36 290 Miner, Thomas Aquinas on the Passions. 201.

102

Miner appears to interpret Thomas through the lens of psychology and seems to image God as a disciplinarian. The term “depression” in the English translations remind him of the psychological diagnosis of depression: “…’[M]ild depression’ hinders the motion of the soul, but does not paralyze it completely.” When the soul loses hope it suffers from a “more intense aggravatio, which might correspond to

‘serious depression.’” Those who are most significantly depressed are those who are entirely unable to function. He concludes with, “Sorrow ought not to be eliminated or narcoticized: it is a condition of spiritual growth.”291 The problematic point in my view is that spiritual growth must be carefully distinguished from psychological evaluations. For me, the depression that Thomas associates with sorrow is a privation of movement towards the good, which may or may not be associated with the clinical state of depression. Clinical intervention for depression will aim to restore normal ego-strength. It is not designed to work with the sorrowing soul’s vulnerability to evil.

Moreover, sorrow is not a punitive consequence of excessive pleasure. Sorrow is the transformed appetitive desire, which arises when the sensory capacity becomes perceptive enough (by grace, not by human norms) to apprehend one’s particular vulnerability to the deceptions of evil.

Diana Fritz Cates reminds us that sorrow is a concupiscible passion, which is the converse of pleasure. The concupiscible passions represent a pair of triads. The first triad, love, is the tending towards something attractive, desire for that good thing, and finally delight in the object obtained. There is movement in all three steps because even though there would appear to be rest in the union of attainment, the tending

291 Ibid., 202

103 towards the object remains active. The converse triad, hatred, begins as a negative aptitude towards a harmful object, a movement of aversion, and finally sorrow for having been deprived of the good. The sorrow is a parallel to the resting in delightful union, but it is “like a violent repose.”292

Sorrow is, in other words, a motion of being weighed down, crushed, or “depressed.” It is the activation of a tendency, typical of most sensory beings, to be and to feel closed down and dispirited under the impact of something that has injured one…. [F]or sorrow itself implies a certain weariness of ailing of the appetitive faculty.293

Fritz Cates emphasizes that the movement of passion is a soul-body unity, ”As a motion of the soul-body composite, sorrow has a material element”294 Hatred and sorrow, like love and delight, involve interior motion.295 “They are activations of the tendency to be uncomfortable, to close down, and to feel weighed down in relation to what appears unsuitable.” In interpreting the passion, sorrow, Fritz Cates correctly adheres to the language of movement; she avoids the term, “suffering,” which Thomas did not use.

Robert Pasnau offers commentary on how the passions might affect the rational mind. The passions cannot act directly on the mind because they are corporeal and the mind is incorporeal; they do so by means of the internal senses, namely, imagination and the cogitative sense. Pasnau sets up these senses as effects of the passions, rather than as pre-requisites. “Although the passions do not affect the mind directly, they are able to exercise considerable influence through their effect on these internal senses. Because the two internal senses have physical organs, there is

292 ST.I-II.31.8.2 293 Fritz Cates, Aquinas on Emotions: A Religious Ethical Inquiry. 147. 294 Ibid., 148 295 Ibid., 148

104 nothing puzzling about this influence.”296 While the sensory apprehensions precede the movement of appetitions, this movement further shapes the sensory interiority, such that the sensory data available for intellection becomes a complex mix of apprehensions and appetitions. The cogitative sense is interesting because Thomas gives it an organ, the midbrain, where instinctive recognition of danger, (a snake means danger) takes place. But this cogitative sense does more and thus has an additional name indicating its non-organic function, the particular reason. It can classify sensory information and make comparisons of individual intentions “just as intellective reason compares universal conceptions.”297 The cogitative sense has “a certain affinity and proximity to the universal reason, which, so to speak, overflows into [it].” 298 The cogitative sense is at the boundary between the sensory and intellectual natures, “capable of intellect’s rational comparisons but incapable of intellect’s universality.”299 This sensory-rational faculty becomes important in the cognition of particulars, which the universal intellect does not do.

The choice of a particular thing to be done is as the conclusion of a syllogism formed by the practical intellect, as is said Ethic. vii, 3. But a singular proposition cannot be directly concluded from a universal proposition, except through the medium of a singular proposition. Therefore the universal principle of the practical intellect does not move save through the medium of the particular apprehension of the sensitive part, as is said De Anima iii, 11.300

Practical reason of the higher soul can only operate towards an action if it has the sense data of particular reason. The major premise is supplied by intellect: no sin

296 Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature: A Philosophical Study of Summa Theologiae Ia,75-89. 253. 297 ST.I.78.4. Pasnau. 254 298 ST.I.78.4.5 299 Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature: A Philosophical Study of Summa Theologiae Ia,75-89., 254. 300 ST.I .86.1.2

105 should be done. The minor premise is supplied by the cogitative power: this here is a sin (i.e., harm). The work of intellect and cogitative sense brings an integration of universals and particulars. Pasnau concludes, “The cogitative power plays a crucial role in human reasoning, especially practical reasoning. Any distortions to the cogitative power can easily affect the choices that one makes.”301 Evil can work its distortion through insinuating itself upon cogitative sense. Pasnau reiterates the traditional perspective that the consequence of evil may be unbridled passions, which “indirectly corrupt the intellect’s judgements and spoil the will’s choices.”302

Thus, one concludes that the role of the higher intellect is to control the sensory. But universal reason has control over the particular reason, the will exerts a permissive or inhibitory influence over the sensory appetites, and imagination shapes the phantasms of memory. However, reason cannot completely control the arousal of the appetites, and images may come “unbidden,” thus stimulating passions beyond the control of the intellect. If the issue is unbridled passions, then control is the obvious right way forward. But if evil has disabled the senses and devitalized the passions, (as in my description of suffering), then re-animation of the sensory-motor corporeality must become the good towards which we move. This new object and direction of movement involves a re-contouring of the distorted intentiones of the cogitative sense and a re-igniting of the movements of desire.

In concluding chapter 3, we being to see that a life that is re-animated and re- vitalized in the face of overwhelming murderous evil becomes rich with the

301 Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature: A Philosophical Study of Summa Theologiae Ia,75-89. 256. 302 Ibid., 257

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“Meaning” to which Rosenbaum appeals. Life that is increasingly controlled and subdued by intellectual abstractions and its rational penalties ultimately becomes a corpse. Two possible identities take shape; the victim of annihilation stands in tension with the agent of re-animation. It is at this point of potential ontologic transformation, i.e., from victim of death to agent of life, that one recognizes one’s insufficiency if restricted exclusively to a modern anthropology of atomic, individual autonomy. The human being has need of participation in the divine if the transformative movement of emergence from suffering into flourishing is to come about. I turn now to chapter 4, in which I will develop the third aspect of human nature, namely the habit of contemplative immersion in Divine Justice and Mercy.

Chapter 4. Contemplation and the Integration of Ruptured Hylomorphism

I have now detailed the sensory soul as having the aspects of apprehension and appetition. An act is evident as the exterior matter-movements of comportment, but it arises from the concealed, interior form-movements of desire. I have indicated that the intellectual soul, both speculative and practical, depends upon these sensory dynamics. The unity of the whole is essential to the flourishing of human nature. I have also described the vulnerability of the sensory nature to evil; movement in pursuit of the good is susceptible to hindrance and, in the case of extreme evil, to paralysis. This paralysis of the sensory apprehensions and appetitions, I have called suffering. Paralysis is contrary to movement in the way that suffering is contrary to vitality. In the paradigm of metaphysics, the imposition of contrariety is understood as violence. The imposition of suffering upon vitality constitutes a violence. To emerge from suffering one cannot simply “pull oneself up by the boot straps” and “get over it.” The healing from violence—the emergence from the immobility of suffering into a flourishing vitality—requires an ontologic re- configuration, of which the suffering self as lone individual is incapable. The healing of suffering understood as ontologic transformation involves an intention of receptivity to Divine Justice and Mercy. The perspective from above speaks of such redemptive transformation in terms of a divine gift of grace descending, but the perspective from below invites attention to the human sensory dynamics. The human interiority is remarkably permeable not only to exterior objects but also to

107 108 the supernatural. In this chapter, I will explore this permeability to grace in terms of movement of the sensory nature.

When grace is described in terms of the intellectual nature, i.e., from above, contemplation means the mind applied to a consideration of divine perfection. In the case of suffering, however, the speculative mind becomes disoriented and disabled by the mendacity of evil obstructing the truth. My intuition has been that, even when the speculative intellect is disabled, the sensory nature, on account of particular reason and practical reason, can still stand in dynamic receptivity to divine being. Just as the sensory nature rests in the pleasure of the good attained, even so can that resting become a mysterious contemplative abiding in the divine.

This relationship of contemplative abiding becomes the movement of life-giving intimacy between creature and Creator. When suffering prevails and the various capacities become paralyzed, human sensory nature still tends organically towards its flourishing. In the previous chapters I have emphasized the various paralyses that comprise suffering; in this chapter I will describe the paralyzed sufferer as retaining a contemplative, dynamic potential.

The challenge for this project is that Thomas describes the intellectual nature in terms of speculative reason, will, and a joyful abiding in the Treatise on Man.303 The rationality of the sensory nature is described in terms of a natural inclination towards the good in the Treatise on Law.304 Speculative and practical intelligences are distinct aspects of the higher intellectual nature, the former pursuing knowledge

303 ST.I.79 304 ST.I-II.90

109 of true/false and the latter pursuing know-how around harm/good. The features of these two distinct rationalities are scattered throughout the entire Summa.

Therefore, my reflections in this chapter on the role of practical reason and the sensory nature in contemplation are taken from the Treatise on Man and the

Treatise on Law.

4.a. justice and mercy.

I begin with a brief consideration of justice and mercy, to underline the direction of vital movement as out of suffering-as-evil into justice-as-gift. It is Divine Justice and

Mercy305 that conforms creaturely being to itself, not by force but by allure; human moral agency arises from a corporeality that is permeable to Divine Justice and

Mercy. This mysterious capacity is expressed in the imagery of contemplative intimacy with the Divine. This understanding, adapted from the Christian tradition, is the crux of the proposed new paradigm around suffering. The permeability of the sensory nature to the goods of justice and mercy will serve to anchor this chapter on contemplation.

Where the modern term might be suffering, Thomas uses “misery.” In the context of misery, Thomas introduces the notion of justice and mercy.

Mercy and truth are necessarily found in all God's works, if mercy be taken to mean the removal of any kind of defect. Not every defect, however, can properly be called a misery; but only defect in a rational nature whose lot is to be happy; for misery is opposed to happiness.306

305 Divine Justice and Mercy, when capitalized, will signify a name for God descending, in contrast to justice and mercy, which signify a sensory experience of goods received. 306 ST.I.21.4

110

Human nature experiences a vulnerability to suffering or misery, which obstructs happiness. The ultimate unfolding of God’s justice is beatitude not suffering. The flourishing of human beings is in conformity “to the rule of His wisdom, which is the law of His justice; [it] is suitably called truth.”307 By justice is meant “whatever is done by Him in created things, is done according to proper order and proportion wherein consists the idea of justice.”308 The justice of God is a donative justice, in which each thing is given what it needs for existence.309 God’s justice provides life and the means to sustain existence. The justice of God is an immaterial principle, a truth. “Justice, as to the law that governs, resides in the reason or intellect.”310 One might construe debt and penalty to be part of God’s justice; God may be considered as obligated to sustain what He has brought into being.

Thus also God exercises justice, when He gives to each thing what is due to it by its nature and condition. This debt however is derived from the former; since what is due to each thing is due to it as ordered to it according to the divine wisdom. And although God in this way pays each thing its due, yet He Himself is not the debtor, since He is not directed to other things, but rather other things to Him.311

To live and to be is in accord with God’s justice, and it is the creature that is indebted to the Creator for its living being. A human-made justice of vengeance might find murder intelligible, but by standards of divine justice murder cannot be intelligible.

The commutative justice of exchange of goods—murder in exchange for making a mistake—does not belong to God.312 Death is a vulnerability of the fallen state. The

307 ST.I.21.2 308 Ibid. ` 309 ST.I.21.1 310 ST.I.21.2 311 ST.I. 21.1.3 312 ST.I.21.1

111 donative quality of divine justice means that being is mysteriously intensified even in the dying.

The mercy of God is that element of divine perfection, which bestows justice and subverts the defective human need to inflict, to extract, or to exact justice. Thomas tells us that the mercy of God is not a passion; God is already the completeness of act and does not undergo material transformations towards perfection.

Mercy is especially to be attributed to God, as seen in its effect, but not as an affection of passion. In proof of which it must be considered that a person is said to be merciful [misericors], as being, so to speak, sorrowful at heart [miserum cor]; being affected with sorrow at the misery of another as though it were his own. Hence it follows that he endeavors to dispel the misery of this other, as if it were his; and this is the effect of mercy. To sorrow, therefore, over the misery of others belongs not to God; but it does most properly belong to Him to dispel that misery, whatever be the defect we call by that name. Now defects are not removed, except by the perfection of some kind of goodness; and the primary source of goodness is God…313 [I]t is clear that mercy does not destroy justice, but in a sense is the fulness thereof. And thus it is said: "Mercy exalteth itself above judgement" (James 2:13).314

Mercy has a delicacy and a generosity that softens justice. “God out of abundance of

His goodness bestow[s] upon creatures what is due to them more bountifully than is proportionate to their deserts.”315 The justice and mercy of God is not of human proportions. In a Platonic paradigm, the immaterial things are the primal human way to true knowledge and an understanding of justice.

For Plato taught that immaterial subsisting forms, which he called "Ideas," are the proper objects of our intellect, and thus first and "per se" understood by us; and, further, that material objects are known by the soul inasmuch as phantasy and sense are mixed up with the mind. Hence the purer the intellect is, so much the more clearly does it perceive the intelligible truth of immaterial things.316

313 ST.I.21.3 314 ST.I.21.3.2 315 ST.I.21.4 316 ST.I.88.1

112

But Thomas aligns himself with the contrasting position of Aristotle. On this view, the immaterial things, such as the divine qualities of justice and mercy, can only be understood in material and experiential ways.

But in Aristotle's opinion, which experience corroborates, our intellect in its present state of life has a natural relationship to the natures of material things; and therefore it can only understand by turning to the phantasms… Thus it clearly appears that immaterial substances which do not fall under sense and imagination, cannot first and "per se" be known by us,… 317

The dilemma is that we desire to experience God’s non-violent justice, and yet the very materiality by which we come to know justice is imprinted with the images of so much experienced harm. It is this Thomistic emphasis upon desire as complementary and intrinsic to rational knowing that renders human nature receptive to divine justice despite so much imprinted injustice. Graced appetitive desire is the dynamic that enables a vitality so increasingly intense that in the end it cannot be repressed by violence and death. According to the Christian Credo, “I believe in…..the resurrection of the body and life everlasting;” the resurrection means that the mysterious dynamic of vitality does not shed its sensory desires and appetitions in its longings for eternal beatitude. There is something about the donative quality of God’s justice that mysteriously refuses the violence of such shedding, refuses the violence of an intellect exiled from its sensory moorings, refuses a consumerist disposal of the bodily aliveness. The moral travail is to introduce and to habituate the suffering corporeality to beatitude using a rationality more robust than speculation. By virtue of God’s mercy, every aspect of our nature is

317 ST.I.88.1

113 eligible to undergo progressive ontologic transformation into the joy of contemplative intimacy with the divine.

4.b.i. apprehension as an intellectual operation of contemplation

Contemplation involves the whole of one’s human nature postured to participate in

Divine Justice and Mercy. When Thomas describes the intellectual operations of the soul, he is usually referring to the speculative rationality but at times points to a contrasting capacity of the practical reason. His perspective is “from above,” and he does not provide any insights on how the speculative rationality, the practical rationality, and the sensory particular reason might operate as a hylomorphic whole. In order to develop an image of the contemplative sensory nature, I will continue, despite these challenges, with my perspective “from below” as I examine the capacities of the intellectual nature. 318

The rational power is the capacity to know and to aggregate knowledge. It is the capacity of apprehension, taking place not only at the level of the sensory soul but also at the level of the intellectual nature. Thomas is careful to specify that the essence of the soul is not its powers. “In accordance with what has been already shown (ST.I.54.3, ST.I.77.1) it is necessary to say that the intellect is a power of the soul, and not the very essence of the soul… for as power is to operation as its act, so is the essence to being.”319 In God alone, intellect is being; in human creatures intellect is a power distinct from the essence of being human. In ST.I.79.2 Thomas

318Fritz Cates introduces this helpful phrase, “from below,” as contrasted with “from above.” It helps us to grasp much more clearly the role of the sensory nature in our movement towards the good. 319 ST.I.79.1

114 states that intellect is a passive power. The created intellect is passive in relation to universal being. The Divine Intellect is the act of all being. Created intellect cannot be the act of all things intelligible; created intellect is to Divine Intellect as potentiality is to pure act.

For the intellect, as we have seen above (ST I.78.1) has an operation extending to universal being. We may therefore see whether the intellect be in act or potentiality by observing first of all the nature of the relation of the intellect to universal being. For we find an intellect whose relation to universal being is that of the act of all being: and such is the Divine intellect, which is the Essence of God, in which originally and virtually, all being pre- exists as in its first cause. And therefore the Divine intellect is not in potentiality, but is pure act. But no created intellect can be an act in relation to the whole universal being; otherwise it would needs be an infinite being. Wherefore every created intellect is not the act of all things intelligible, by reason of its very existence; but is compared to these intelligible things as a potentiality to act.320

The human intellect is at first in potentiality to understand—“like a blank slate”— and then understands actually.321 Thomas, in accord with the classic hierarchy of being, imagines an intellect above that of a human being, “from which the soul acquires the power of understanding.”322

For what is such by participation, and what is mobile, and what is imperfect always requires the pre-existence of something essentially such, immovable and perfect. Now the human soul is called intellectual by reason of a participation in intellectual power; a sign of which is that it is not wholly intellectual but only in part. Moreover it reaches to the understanding of truth by arguing, with a certain amount of reasoning and movement. Again it has an imperfect understanding; both because it does not understand everything, and because, in those things which it does understand, it passes from potentiality to act. Therefore there must needs be some higher intellect, by which the soul is helped to understand.323

By virtue of its participation in the Divine Intellect, the intellectual soul “lights up” the phantasms of the lower sensory soul.324 This enlightenment is a universal, which bears upon the particular of material reality. “That true light enlightens as a

320 ST.I.79.1 321 ST.I.79.1 322 ST.I.79.4 323 ST.I.79.4 324 ST.I.79.4

115 universal cause, from which the human soul derives a particular power, as we have explained.”325 Thus the created intellect is passive and in potentiality, with the capacity for movement/act as a manifest participation in the Divine Intellect of pure act.

Augustine, one of Thomas’ auctoritates, has written that "memory, understanding, and will are one mind.” (De Trin. x, 11)326 The memory of the sensory soul involves a corporeal organ, as discussed above.327 But the intellectual memory has no organ; any intellectual function remains immaterial. The intellect is not susceptible to change in the way of corporeal matter. Thomas explains the nature of intellectual memory thus.

For what is received into something is received according to the conditions of the recipient. But the intellect is of a more stable nature, and is more immovable than corporeal nature. If, therefore, corporeal matter holds the forms which it receives, not only while it actually does something through them, but also after ceasing to act through them, much more cogent reason is there for the intellect to receive the species unchangeably and lastingly, whether it receive them from things sensible, or derive them from some superior intellect. Thus, therefore, if we take memory only for the power of retaining species, we must say that it is in the intellectual part. But if in the notion of memory we include its object as something past, then the memory is not in the intellectual, but only in the sensitive part, which apprehends individual things. For past, as past, since it signifies being under a condition of fixed time, is something individual.328

The (intellectual) soul remembers universals; the particular events of the past and present are imprinted upon the corporeality of the sensory soul. The set of individual and particular acts of understanding over time (sensory memory) is not regarded as contrary to the notion of memory as an act of the universal intellect.

The memory of intellect concerns itself with understanding the species (not the

325 ST.I.79.4.1 326 ST.I.79.6 327 Sirek 2.2.ii 328 ST.I.79.6

116 particulars) of an event.

The intelligible species is sometimes in the intellect only in potentiality, and then the intellect is said to be in potentiality. Sometimes the intelligible species is in the intellect as regards the ultimate completion of the act, and then it understands in act. And sometimes the intelligible species is in a middle state, between potentiality and act: and then we have habitual knowledge. In this way the intellect retains the species, even when it does not understand in act.329

Memory, then, is “the soul’s habit of retention,”330 both a corporeal imprinting and a non-corporeal grasp of the species.

Thomas regards reason, intelligence, and mind as one, following again the precedent of Augustine. Reason is the process of acquiring true understanding.

[M]an arrives at the knowledge of intelligible truth by advancing from one thing to another; and therefore he is called rational. Reasoning, therefore, is compared to understanding, as movement is to rest, or acquisition to possession; of which one belongs to the perfect, the other to the imperfect. And since movement always proceeds from something immovable, and ends in something at rest; hence it is that human reasoning, by way of inquiry and discovery, advances from certain things simply understood---namely, the first principles; and, again, by way of judgment returns by analysis to first principles, in the light of which it examines what it has found.331

Thomas points out that movement and rest are, in nature, the same power; a thing moves to the place where it comes to rest. Similarly, reason moves one to rest in understanding. He therefore concludes that reason and understanding are the same power.332 Of note is the classic paradigm in which eternity is viewed as non- movement, whereas time is movement. On this view, intellect is like eternity and reason like time. “For eternity is compared to time as immovable to movable. And thus Boethius compared the intellect to eternity, and reason to time.”333 Rationality is a time-bound movement until eternity prevails. Thomas uses the terminology of

329 ST.I. 79.6.3 330 ST.I.79.7 331 ST.I.79.8 332 Ibid. 333ST.I.79.8.2

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Augustine to refer to a higher and lower rationality of the higher intellectual nature.

For he says that "the higher reason is that which is intent on the contemplation and consultation of things eternal": forasmuch as in contemplation it sees them in themselves, and in consultation it takes its rules of action from them. But he calls the lower reason that which "is intent on the disposal of temporal things." Now these two---namely, eternal and temporal ---are related to our knowledge in this way, that one of them is the means of knowing the other. For by way of discovery, we come through knowledge of temporal things to that of things eternal, according to the words of the Apostle (Rom. 1:20), "The invisible things of God are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made": while by way of judgment, from eternal things already known, we judge of temporal things, and according to laws of things eternal we dispose of temporal things.334

The higher intellectual nature knows both the eternal and the temporal matters.

Perhaps this an oblique reference to the eternal matters of perfection as belonging to speculative reason and the temporal, contingent matters to practical reason. He states that the ultimate terminus of both is being and truth. Truth belongs to speculative reason; perhaps being, as the ultimate good, belongs to practical reason.

Neither must we say, without any qualification, that a power, by which the intellect knows necessary things, is distinct from a power by which it knows contingent things: because it knows both under the same objective aspect---namely, under the aspect of being and truth.335

Here Thomas is emphasizing the integration of these two intellectual capacities.

He refers to the acts of the intellect, some of which may belong to the speculative and some to the practical reason. What might belong to particular reason, he does not specify.

For "opinion" signifies an act of the intellect which leans to one side of a contradiction, whilst in fear of the other. While to "judge" or "measure" [mensurare] is an act of the intellect, applying certain principles to examine propositions. From this is taken the word "mens" [mind]. Lastly, to "understand" is to adhere to the formed judgment with approval.336

After these various acts of intellect have played out, then follows the act of

334 ST.I.79.9 335 ST.I.79.9.3 336 ST.I.79.9.4

118 examining what it has found.

This scrutinizing is called phronesis or wisdom, which belongs to the practical reason. Once it has fully scrutinized something, it seeks to make its “interior speech” available to others and proceeds with “external speech.”337 It is here that Thomas introduces the notion of the speculative intellect as distinct from the practical intellect, though still one and the same power. “For it is the speculative intellect which directs what it apprehends, not to operation, but to the consideration of truth; while the practical intellect is that which directs what it apprehends to operation.”338 The practical intellect moves in the sense of disposing one to action, i.e. the action of movement towards the good.339

Truth and good include one another; for truth is something good, otherwise it would not be desirable; and good is something true, otherwise it would not be intelligible. Therefore as the object of the appetite may be something true, as having the aspect of good, for example, when some one desires to know the truth; so the object of the practical intellect is good directed to the operation, and under the aspect of truth. For the practical intellect knows truth, just as the speculative, but it directs the known truth to operation.340

This movement towards the good involves yet another modality of knowing, namely, synderesis. Thomas classifies syneresis as a habit, (not a power.)

“‘Synderesis’ is not a power but a habit; though some held that it is a power higher than reason; while others [*Cf. Alexander of Hales, Sum. Theol. II, Q[73]] said that it is reason itself, not as reason, but as a nature.”341 Human reasoning proceeds as a kind of movement from that which is known by experience towards some further, new understanding. Practical reason uses as its means the principles, which come to

337 ST.I.79.10.3 338 ST.I.79.11 339 ST.I.79.11.1 340 ST.I.79.11.2 341 ST.I.79.12

119 be known through experiences of harm and good. Whereas speculative reasoning has its universal principles, practical reasoning derives its principles from the natural habit of synderesis. “Whence ‘synderesis’ is said to incite to good, and to murmur at evil, inasmuch as through first principles we proceed to discover, and judge of what we have discovered.”342 Intelligent judgements require both the principles of speculative intellect and the habits of experiential synderesis. This habit of synderesis is perhaps a reference to the particular reason of the sensory nature, which knows harm from good even without the superimposition of higher intellect.343

Thomas then delineates the act of conscience associated with intelligence.

For conscience, according to the very nature of the word, implies the relation of knowledge to something: for conscience may be resolved into "cum alio scientia," i.e. knowledge applied to an individual case. But the application of knowledge to something is done by some act. Wherefore from this explanation of the name it is clear that conscience is an act. The same is manifest from those things which are attributed to conscience. For conscience is said to witness, to bind, or incite, and also to accuse, torment, or rebuke. 344

Conscience knows what we are doing, scrutinizes what we ought to be doing, and judges what we have done in terms of the good. Conscience gives rise to habit, which in turn becomes the principle of act.

[P]roperly speaking, conscience denominates an act. But since habit is a principle of act, sometimes the name conscience is given to the first natural habit---namely, 'synderesis': thus Jerome calls 'synderesis' conscience (Gloss. Ezech. 1:6); Basil [*Hom. in princ. Proverb.], the "natural power of judgment," and Damascene [*De Fide Orth. iv. 22] says that it is the "law of our intellect."345

342 ST.I.79.12 343 I will describe synderesis further in chapter 7. My purpose here is to describe contemplation in terms of apprehension, naming the various modalities of knowing. When practical reason is included, we have phronesis and also knowing by particular reason or synderesis (as I will show in chapter 7) and finally we have conscience. 344 ST.I.79.13 345 ST.I.79.13

120

Conscience is an act of the immaterial intellectual soul—practical reason—whereby the quest for the good, arising from experiential synderesis, becomes habitual. Like all knowing, it is an act of apprehension.

In the preceding few paragraphs I have summarized the acts of reason that culminate in the understanding of intellect (ST I.79 in 13 articles). These acts of reason are part of a continuum of apprehension that begins with the primal external sensory apparatus, is synthesized into phantasms by the common sense, further collated into intentiones by the cogitative sense and stored in memory, and then the cogitative sense (midbrain) becomes the synderesis of particular reason.

Progressing along the continuum, the intellectual soul takes the sense information and continues to evaluate by means of the acts of theoretical and practical reason, such that the movement of comportment can become an intelligent pursuit of the true good. And to re-iterate Pasnau’s important emphasis, the intellectual soul must always “check in with” or return to the material corporeality of our reality.346 Thus, although not always emphasized in the tradition, the discursive aspect of both practical and theoretical reason proceeds along a continuum back “down” into the phantasms and intentiones of the sensory soul, where they must be understood in terms of the primal sense experiences of the living being.347 It is in this returning to the physicality of the sensory nature that justice and mercy become intelligible.

346 ST.I.84.7. Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature: A Philosophical Study of Summa Theologiae Ia,75-89. 285. 347 In physiology, this kind of two-way exchange of information is referred to as a feedback loop. It is a universal principle across many physiological systems, mediated by the hormones of the endocrine system, neurotransmitters of neurological systems, and ions carrying certain electrical charge at the intracellular level.

121

Whatever Rosenbaum might have had in mind in her appeal to finding some kind of

“Meaning” in life, she did intuit the fact that abstract scientific “Reason” is simply insufficient in times of overwhelming evil.348 Thomas affirms this breadth of

“Meaning” in his description of rational apprehension as being so much more than the empirical knowing of science.

4.b.ii. appetition as an intellectual operation of contemplation.

Contemplation is not only a heightened sense of apprehension but also intense appetitive desiring. In this section I will examine the will, i.e., the appetitive capacity of the intellectual nature, in order to highlight the engagement of the appetitive capacity of the sensory nature in contemplation.

Thomas confers the significance of “necessity” upon the will. There are various kinds of necessity, according to the paradigm of metaphysics. The necessity of coercion is a forceful necessity in which the agent is unable to do the contrary; it is repugnant to the will. The will inclines naturally to something and this inclination of its nature is what is meant by its freedom. If it is coerced against its inclination, then the will is no longer free. “For we call that violent which is against the inclination of a thing… [J]ust as it is impossible for a thing to be at the same time violent and natural, so it is impossible for a thing to be absolutely coerced or violent, and voluntary.” 349 Another kind of necessity is necessity of end. When the end cannot be attained except with difficulty, this difficulty is not repugnant to the will. Nor is natural necessity repugnant to the will. Thomas states that the intellect of necessity

348 Rosenbaum MD, “Being like Mike — Fear, Trust, and the Tragic Death of Michael Davidson.” 349 ST.I.82.1

122 adheres to first principles, while the will aligns itself with the end. The rationality of the intellectual nature works with speculative principles, but the end—happiness— is a process of particular choices of the will. In metaphysical terms, movement arises from something immovable; materiality can only move from a formal principle. Intellect is that formal principle of human nature; it knows universals and knows also the experience of the sensory nature in pursuit of the good. The work of the will is to exercise choice with respect to the concrete means towards the good.350

The will extends to those things opposed to the end as well as those coherent with it; the will is not compelled of necessity to choose means aligned with the true good.

[T]here are some things which have a necessary connection with happiness, by means of which things man adheres to God, in Whom alone true happiness consists. Nevertheless, until through the certitude of Divine Vision the necessity of such connection be shown, the will does not adhere to God of necessity, not to those things which are of God. But the will of the man who sees God in His essence of necessity adheres to God, just as now we desire of necessity to be happy.351

There are many kinds of good to which the will may attach itself. Thomas makes the important observation that the will of the intellectual nature is oriented towards the universal and perfect good, and for this reason, any one particular individual good cannot compel it to move “of necessity.”352 This is where the appetitive capacity of the intellectual nature (the will) differs from that of the sensory nature. “[T]he reason is a power that compares several things together: therefore from several things the intellectual appetite… may be moved; but not as a necessity of one

350 ST.I.82.1.3 351 ST.I.82.2 352 ST.I.82.2.2

123 thing.”353 The will can compare apprehensions at a more nuanced level before it moves, whereas sensory appetites move in a determinate way according to some one sensory thing apprehended.

To differentiate the reason and the will (apprehension and appetition) in the intellectual nature, Thomas looks at the object of each. The intellect has as its object immaterial universals while the will has as its object material particulars. In the classic hierarchy of being, immaterial is at the pinnacle, and material is at the base, which the tradition has imaged as God, the immaterial pinnacle ruling over the created material base. One must be careful not to insert a dynamic of domination into this image of hierarchy; it simply reflects the view “from above.” The apprehending intellect may be “higher and nobler than will” in terms of the immateriality of its object, but, where good or evil, i.e., corporeal vulnerability and suffering, are the terms of reference, the appetitive will becomes the important dynamic. In the context of my thesis about moving through suffering-as-evil “from below,” the appetitions of the intellectual will and the sensory passions assume a kind of priority over the speculative cognitions of intellect. Somewhat ambiguous yet compatible with a view “from below,” Thomas states, “The love of God is better than knowledge of God, but, on the contrary, the knowledge of corporeal things is better than the love thereof.”354 What remains implicit is the distinction between the intellectual nature and the sensory nature: the will, associated with intellectual appetition, pursues the good in terms of the true, whereas desire, associated with

353 ST.I.82.2.3 354 ST.I.82.3.

124 sensory appetition, pursues the good as emergence from harm.

If the goods are justice and mercy, a certain love of corporeality must prevail, without which these terms signify abstract perfections of God without relevance to someone’s human corporeality struggling towards flourishing. Without the corporeal experience of evil, justice and mercy are not intelligible. Thus, while the emphasis in classic texts may well be on the various distinctions implied by the view

“from above,” in the context of suffering, it is the hylomorphic oneness of material

(sensory) and immaterial (intellectual) human nature that make justice and mercy meaningful in the very face of the ever-repeating, violent annihilation of created being. I would suggest that justice and mercy are about corporeal suffering. As a formal principle they are perfections of God, but when human appetition is engaged, vulnerable corporeality becomes the object of the movement of both will

(intellectual nature) and desire (sensory nature). The human sensory nature desires more than mere survival; it pursues being that is ordered to healing, transformation, and abiding in its ultimate perfection. Justice and mercy are goods that mean the experience of emerging from suffering into flourishing. By virtue of its oneness with the will of intellectual nature, the appetitive desire of human sensory nature is no mere instinctual drive. Human sensory nature—the body—wants the goods of justice and mercy. Thomas does not elaborate further the link between the sensory wanting and the intellectual willing.

4.b.iii. free-will as a key aspect of human appetition

Free-will points to the non-instinctual quality of the human will. Free-will means choosing from the underlying synderesis (of the sensory nature) and rational

125 judgement (of the intellectual nature) around which way to make a move.

For the sheep, seeing the wolf, judges it a thing to be shunned, from a natural and not a free judgment, because it judges, not from reason, but from natural instinct. And the same thing is to be said of any judgment of brute animals. But man acts from judgment, because by his apprehensive power he judges that something should be avoided or sought. But because this judgment, in the case of some particular act, is not from a natural instinct, but from some act of comparison in the reason, therefore he acts from free judgment and retains the power of being inclined to various things. For reason in contingent matters may follow opposite courses, as we see in dialectic syllogisms and rhetorical arguments. Now particular operations are contingent, and therefore in such matters the judgment of reason may follow opposite courses, and is not determinate to one.355

There is a process of sensory intelligence, i.e., “collation,” by which the corporeal materiality knows harm from good. There is also the higher intellect with its habits of prudent comportment and truthful thought. The ultimate appetitive move (the will) towards some contingent good reflects not only the knowing of the speculative intellect, but also the prudential knowing of experience and the knowing intentiones of the sensory nature. At the level of the will all the underlying dynamics come together in a funnel of integrated rationality, from which process arises the will to make a move. Thomas, “from above,” thinks that this funneling process is more intellectual than “rational.” “The will, so far as it desires a thing naturally, corresponds rather to the intellect as regards natural principles than to the reason, which extends to opposite things. Wherefore in this respect it is rather an intellectual than a rational power.”356 I believe Thomas means the speculative intellect of universals signified here as “intellectual” and the practical intellect of contingent affairs as “rational.” What he may think about the contribution from the particular reason of the body itself is not explicit. What he does specify is that free

355 ST.I.83.1 356 ST.I.82.1.2

126 will is “the subject of grace, by the help of which it chooses what is good.”357

Regardless of what all goes into shaping this free-will, it requires the help of God to adhere steadfastly to the good. In contrast to modernity’s understanding, freedom consists in the underdetermined quality of a non-instinctual desiring, which depends for its movement on God. Freedom is the capacity to cultivate and to intensify the receptivity to God as first cause of all one’s movement.

Now the natural quality may be in the intellectual part, or in the body and its powers. From the very fact, therefore, that man is such by virtue of a natural quality which is in the intellectual part, he naturally desires his last end, which is happiness. Which desire, indeed, is a natural desire, and is not subject to free-will,… But on the part of the body and its powers man may be such by virtue of a natural quality, inasmuch as he is of such a temperament or disposition due to any impression whatever produced by corporeal causes, which cannot affect the intellectual part, since it is not the act of a corporeal organ. And such as a man is by virtue of a corporeal quality, such also does his end seem to him, because from such a disposition a man is inclined to choose or reject something. But these inclinations are subject to the judgment of reason, which the lower appetite obeys…358

There is an implicit invitation to become aware of the particular corporeal inclinations of one’s disposition so that one may come to cohere with an increasing freedom for participation in Divine Justice and Mercy. Such coherence is contoured by an intellect conscious of the imprints of harm upon the sensory nature and a will that has become integrated with the desire of the sensory nature to emerge from habitual harm.

This re-ordering of the passions and modification of comportment is a process coherent with the natural tending of sensory nature towards the good. There is no violence between the will of intellectual nature and the desires of sensory nature; in fact, a progressive integration of the two natures comes about. “Such [changes… are]

357 ST.I.83. 358 ST.I.83.1.5

127 in our power either to acquire them, whether by causing them or disposing ourselves to them, or to reject them. And so there is nothing in this that is repugnant to free-will.”359 Choice is what positions free-will as an appetitive power. “Choice is a desire proceeding from counsel.”360 Although associated with the intellectual nature, counsel is not of the speculative intellect; rather, counsel comes of prudence and practical intellect. Counsel identifies and assesses the good. Counsel is an apprehensive capacity giving rise to desire in the appetitive aspect of sensory nature. When viewed from below, the free-will—to choose—is quite similar to the appetitive capacity of the ordered sensory nature.

Wherefore it is evident that as the intellect is to reason, so is the will to the power of choice, which is free-will. But it has been shown above (Q[79], A[8]) that it belongs to the same power both to understand and to reason, even as it belongs to the same power to be at rest and to be in movement. Wherefore it belongs also to the same power to will and to choose: and on this account the will and the free-will are not two powers, but one.361

Thomas distinguishes between the apprehensive capacity of speculative “intellect” and the apprehensive capacity of practical “reason.” In parallel, this distinction applies also to will and free-will, thus aligning the will with speculative intelligence and free-will with experiential know-how. He then reverts to his principle of hylomorphism, which I do not read as an elision but rather as an integration of two capacities into a functional unity. Although Thomas from above elaborates no further, on the view from below one might argue that free-will is the work of sensory nature, grounded in experiential prudence and practical wisdom. Free-will becomes more free from hindrances as one’s corporeality becomes increasingly

359 ST.I.83.1.5 360ST.I.83.3 361 ST.I.83.4

128 ordered to participation in Divine Justice and Mercy.

In this section, I have shown that the sensory nature is vital to the human capacity not only to survive but indeed to abide in pleasure and ultimately in beatitude.

When the context is suffering and one looks from below, to contemplate God takes on the meaning of an experiential abiding in Divine Justice and Mercy. From below, justice and mercy are those goods that allure the sufferer to choose to move out of the bondage of harm into the freedom for flourishing.

4.c. fragmentation of the hylomorphic composite

In this section I will discuss examples of the diverse and subtle ways in which the human hylomorphism can be violated. By showing this fragmentation as a privation of the good, my intention is to indicate the path to be avoided. Recalling that fragmentation means suffering,362 I intend that an alternative understanding of moral movement (ethics) emerge; in the context of suffering, ethics will take on the meaning of a contemplative re-integration of the hylomorphic whole.

The image of a pair of triads, as proposed by Fritz Cates towards an organization of Thomas’ anthropology, includes the apprehensive and the appetitive movements on both the intellectual and the sensory levels. There is a third pair of elements in the triad. On the level of sensory nature, there is repose in the pleasure of attainment of the object. On the level of intellectual nature, there is joyful abiding in

God. For the purposes of this thesis about suffering, the abiding in God has a particular quality; abiding in God is the movement of resting in Divine Justice and

362 Sirek, chapter 3

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Mercy even in the face of immobilizing injustice and violence. I would suggest that

Fritz Cates’ image of the triad has a circular dynamic in which the abiding in joy/pleasure moves into the intendere/intentiones of apprehension, which in turn gives rise to desire/appetition. The dynamic can move both ways around the circle; it can also integrate up and down an imaginary helix between the intellectual and the sensory levels at any/all point(s) on the circle. The term, contemplation, will signify this increasing integration of all possible movements.363 To block (at any point) this dynamic of wholeness is to exclude some part from the process of movement towards beatitude. Thus a hindrance to the integrity of hylomorphism constitutes a violence to human nature. I will use the terms fragmentation, rupture, separation, violation, silencing, and paralysis to signify a hindrance to human nature in its movement of integration. These terms are intended to convey the violence of any dynamic that is contrary to the integrity of the sensory-intellectual whole. In this, I would amplify the perspective of Fritz Cates.

I suspect that some of us downplay the sensory dimension of human life and are quick to identify the human with the intellectual because we want to recognize and celebrate the peculiar dignity of the human relative to other sorts of beings…. However, when we focus too intently upon the human qua intellectual, we neglect the dignity that is ours, as humans, by virtue of the fact that we are also sensory beings akin to other animals; we are living beings akin to other living things, such as plants; and we are (partly) material entities akin to other material entities such as stones… 364

We risk diminishing our humanity when we become so focused upon the intellectual capacities that we lose sight of the marvelous wisdom of our sensory corporeality. It

363 Grace, i.e., the “downward” reaching of divinity, is required for integration and is inferred in any discussion of contemplation. However, the role of grace is not the topic of this project. My perspective will presume the divine origins of grace, and will focus instead upon describing the “upward” reaching of human corporeality. 364 Fritz Cates, Aquinas on Emotions: A Religious Ethical Inquiry. 122.

130 is the sensory capacities that make possible the human relational quality of “being akin to.” Each of the six elements in Thomas’ anthropology—the pair of triads, as described by Fritz Cates—is indispensible to the contemplative life. Each element contributes in some particular way to the movement that transforms states of paralysis and suffering into a newfound vivacity. Conversely, recollecting

Rosenbaum’s story, the act of murder is the culmination of violent disintegration within someone’s human interiority; it transmits reverberations of violence not only throughout the exterior milieu, but also into the interiority—“the heart”—of every person in the community.

4.c.i. polarity of freedoms.

The hylomorphic whole can be ruptured when systems of ethics and morality position the sensory materiality as inferior in value to the immaterial spiritual/intellectual nature. Servais Pinckaers develops the position that the terms,

“natural” and supernatural,” bring about a wrongheaded polarity of freedoms. These terms signify a state of problematic independence, self-sufficiency, or autonomy of nature. Pinckaers works analogically with a meaning of nature, identified in

Thomas’ tertia pars, that builds upon Aristotle and the Greek Fathers. According to

Pinckaers, Thomas’ meaning of nature has four strands: nativity or birth is unique to the nature of living things, which brings into focus generation, both as act and as interior “source” of the act; nature connotes the inner principle of movement, including change or movement of both form and matter; and nature refers also to

131 the essence of the species, quod quid est.365 The term ‘nature’ thus seems to stand for an all encompassing and dynamic reality.

We note especially the dimension of interiority as essential to the concept of nature. What characterizes ‘natural ‘ action is that it proceeds from inner principles or sources. Thus nature is different from technology: it acts from within. Because of this, nature is linked with the person in view of all the external causalities that may affect him. At the core of the person it forms an essential component of human interiority. This interiority is not only biological or psychological; it is dynamic. The concept of nature invites our reflection, beginning with our experience of the way we produce acts and works, as though by a kind of generation, and going on to their intimate sources: our free will and our spiritual nature. We are thus led to seek the causes of human morality.366

Important for my work is Pinckaers’ understanding of nature as the linking of dynamism (movement) and freedom.

The problematic that Pinckaers is addressing concerns the work of free- will/choice. Thomas began with Peter Lombard’s Sentences. “Free will is the faculty of reason and will, through which good is chosen with grace assisting, or evil with grace desisting.”367 On this view, free-will proceeds from reason and will. He builds upon his conviction that there is in human nature an interiority that shapes all our movements, namely, the sense of the truth and the attraction to the good. It is this immaterial/spiritual interiority that makes the material corporeality free to act in a determinate manner. “In this concept, nature—but let us understand this as spiritual nature—is the very source of free and moral action.”368 There is a spiritual aspect (soul) to the sensory nature, whereby freedom of movement is conferred upon the sensory apprehensions and passions; human beings are free because of the

365 Pinckaers, O.P., The Pinckaers Reader: Renewing Thomistic Moral Theology. 360. He is working with ST.III.2 366 Ibid., 361 367 Ibid., 361 368 Ibid., 362

132 under-determined (non-instinctual) quality of the sensory soul, not despite these apprehensions and passions. This freedom is the very capacity to contour the sensory so as to receive the gratuitous gift of participation in Divine Justice and

Mercy. Human freedom is a kind of growing freedom for God. Thomas’ understanding of human perfection is based on the Genesis account of a human being referred to as God’s greatest work.

This, by its universal opening to the infinity of truth, goodness, and being render a person at once free and capable of receiving the gratuitous gift of God which surpasses the active possibilities of creatures, whether human beings or angels, and which, for this reason, is rightly called supernatural.369

This growing capacity for participation in God is the key to a Thomistic world-view.

This is the contemplative stance in which every movement of one’s human vitality is shaped, more passively than actively, by the incremental transformation of knowing and desiring the ultimate abiding in God. “The human person is both capable and incapable of God….. Our free-will aspires to [the capacity for God] naturally as it aspires to beatitude, …”370 Evil operates by setting up

a contradiction in the depths of the human person between a free choice, made explicitly or implicitly in view of a given beatitude, and the natural human aspiration to truth and goodness expressed by the natural law in the depths of our conscience. Sin stirs up a polarity within the human person: our spiritual nature with its decision is pitted against our free commitment to the contrary. 371

We thus have a description of the rupturing caused by evil. The self, driven by its own autonomous powers, “seeking his beatitude in himself alone,”372 becomes separated off from true human freedom.

369 Ibid., 362 370 Ibid., 363 371 Ibid., 363 372 Ibid., 364

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In Pinckaers’ view, the understanding of an opposition or polarity of freedoms is the basic misconception of modernity. On the one hand, the autonomous, choosing self is free, but on the other hand, there is a god, who is also free to adjudicate each human choice. This notion enters the discourse of philosophy and science with

Ockham’s critique of Thomas.373 Whereas Thomas understood free-will to proceed from reason and will, Ockham (building upon Bonaventure) understood free-will to precede reason and will. Ockham’s free-will chooses between two contraries, and this choice informs reason and will. One is free to choose—“to choose indifferently”—between what leads to beatitude or not.374 On this view, rather than being free for participation in the divine, human nature is indifferent to the divine and must make a choice between beatitude or damnation. Pinckaers refers to

Ockham’s understanding as the freedom of indifference and to Thomas’ understanding as the freedom for participation in the divine perfections.

Ockham will maintain that I can choose indifferently to follow or not follow the inclination to beatitude, to be or not to be happy. In doing this, Ockham breaks the link connecting freedom and nature; he thrusts the latter into a position outside of freedom and places it in opposition to it. A radical difference is inaugurated in the relationship between freedom and nature. The latter, henceforth to be subject to freedom and the spirit, is relegated to a lower level, to the physical biological, or sensitive plane. His isolation of freedom in relation to nature, as to everything outside of itself, has a direct consequence: morality will no longer be something belonging to the human person “from birth.” Free actions are of themselves indifferent; they become moral only through the intervention of the law that expresses the will of an external freedom, notably the will of God. He, all-powerful and sovereign, can impose his will with the force of obligation.375

According to Ockham, one is free to follow God’s law or not, but the law remains external to human nature. For Thomas, the freedom consists in the law being

373 Ibid., 359 374 Ibid., 364 375 Ibid., 365

134 internal to human nature, imprinted within, such that it is the very principle and act of being alive. For Ockham the choosing is exclusively intellectual and only incidentally (and unfortunately) embodied; for Thomas choice is embodied in the sensory nature, i.e, appetitive, passionate, and generative.

In a paradigm of polarity of freedom, the supernatural becomes a value-added dimension to a self-sufficient, autonomous, natural reality; experiential, felt awareness of divine good is no longer “rooted or grafted into the human person.”376

This contemplative awareness of the divine becomes a parallel order in opposition to nature. “…[T]he supernatural becomes competitive and dialectical, as if between agonistic freedoms.”377 Evil takes on a different meaning as well.

[W]ithin the context of freedom of indifference the idea of sin assumes a preponderant importance. Where there is freedom for excellence, the backbone of action is formed by the desire for truth and goodness; sin is a weakness and resembles illness. With freedom of indifference, on the other hand, the ability to sin is essential. It enters into its very definition as the power to choose between what the law decrees and its contrary, between sinning and not sinning. We can even say that this kind of freedom is especially prone to affirm itself through sin, seen as a claim to independence of law and all authority.378

For Thomas, the gift of graced participation in Divine Justice and Mercy “has primacy in theology.”379 Nature is all of the sensibilities and passions of being alive.

Such movements are not a hindrance to beatitude. In fact, when life is free to move, that innate freedom of movement brings about a contouring in the goods of justice and mercy. This perfected movement of vitality, in perfectly human ways, becomes generative of radically new life. I believe this to be Pinckaers’ meaning.

Nature is not beneath freedom and the spirit. It is on the same level with them, and even at their source, assuming that in this case we are dealing with a spiritual nature…. [Nature] is

376 Ibid., 365 377 Ibid. 378 ibid., 365-6 379 Ibid., 367

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no longer a sort of biological barrier limiting freedom, but becomes once more a source of inspiration whence flow moral rules…380

For Pinckaers, as for Thomas, the meaning of the contemplative stance is the dynamic harmony, or integration, of the sensory aspects of human nature with the intellectual towards an abiding of the human whole in God. Human nature is capable not only of apprehensive and appetitive movements, but also has the capacity to manifest the divinity incarnate in nature’s birthing, laughing, crying, and dying.

Contemplation refers to this making manifest our concealed human sensory interiority as it becomes increasingly contoured to the embrace of Divine Justice and

Mercy.

4.c.ii. moral motivation.

There has evolved another kind of fragmentation, which involves an ignorance around the limitations of speculative reason and leads to a disabled and silenced prudential practical reason. In the discourse of medical ethics, the distortion brought about by moral motivation theology has been problematic. Michael Sherwin engages this problematic of the motive-as-concept.

In the Roman Catholic tradition, because priests were educated to hear confessions by a system of moral manuals, morality became a kind of equation.

Moral principles were likened to mathematical axioms; their meaning was thought to be univocal. Behaviour that was allowed or forbidden was likened to necessary conclusions from first principles; judgements about rightness or wrongness were universally applicable. Based on a modern scientific ideal, moral reasoning erected a coherent, a historical, and closed system of norms and precepts to guide everyday life.381 In the…confessional, the moral analysis of the manuals amounts to the following: it is the

380 Ibid., 368 381 Sherwin, By Knowledge and By Love. 2-3. Citing Thomas R. Kopfensteiner, “Science, Metaphor, and Moral Casuistry,” in The Context of Casuistry, ed. James F Keenan and Thomas A. Shannon (Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1952). 212.

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application of laws to particular cases in the courtroom of conscience in order to determine the moral status of an act and its degree of merit or sinfulness. Employed antecedently to action, this method applies laws to particular cases in the courtroom of conscience in order to determine the extent to which the law restricts one’s freedom in a specific situation.382

The moral life according to the manualist tradition was reduced to a pre-occupation with sin and transgressions of the law. To counter this tradition, theologians began to shift the focus away from the external act to the person with a developing spiritual interiority. This trend led to a theology of moral motivation in which

“charity’s act [was seen] as the will’s motivation—distinguishing it from the will’s intentions or choices.”383 According to Sherwin, the moral motivation theologians

(in particular Fuchs and Keenan) separate “the will’s motion on the level of one’s transcendental freedom from one’s practical reasoning or categorical acts.”384 On this view, there is morally significant motion of the will that is antecedent to practical reasoning and choice. This is called the “transcendental freedom” or the

“fundamental option,” whereby one either surrenders to the Absolute or refuses to surrender. The self-surrender is charity or love, while the refusal to surrender is mortal sin. Freedom is now exercised on two levels: a freedom of indifference before the object of choice and yet a freedom restricted by the range of choices presented to will by reason. As Sherwin explains,

Our knowledge and our ability to make clear judgements are limited, while our emotions are often disordered. As a result, freedom in this level is of often profoundly restricted or entirely absent. Yet from the perspective of moral motivation, freedom of choice is not the deepest level of freedom. There is also one’s basic freedom. This freedom is not actualized by any particular object of cognition: thus one’s basic freedom is not restricted by the social

382 Ibid., 3 383 Ibid., 6. Sherwin points out that the moral motivation theologians, such as Joseph Fuchs and James Keenan, grounded their work in the texts of Karl Rahner, although their interpretations may or may not have accurately understood Rahner’s meaning. Moreover there is a lack of concordance among the moral motivation theologians. 384 Ibid., 6

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or psychological limitations that afflict us.385

On this view, on a certain level one can be open and totally subordinated to the will of God, and yet on another level, because of compromised psycho-social circumstances, one can claim that a murderous act is non-culpable. The transcendent realm concerns only the immaterial; the realm of corporeality participates neither in immateriality nor in transcendence. One’s self-realization occurs at the level of the transcendent not at the level of the practical. One is understood to experience a morally significant “motion of the will” which occasions a state of surrender to God, but this “motion” is entirely disconnected from any particular real circumstance/object and is not shaped by any “prudential reasoning about means to an end.”386 Sherwin traces the problem to Ockham’s misconception of the will. On this view, which we examined via Pinckaers’ descripton, the work of the will precedes reason. 387 A non-Thomistic distinction is added: goodness is reflected in motivation and rightness is in intention. Motivation is that act of the will that precedes practical reasoning, while intention388 is the first act of the will within the process of practical reasoning. “Persons are right if they reason in ways that lead to right action and if they themselves engage in right action. Persons are good

385 Ibid., 8 386 Ibid.,10 387 Ibid.,11. James Keenan builds upon Joseph Fuchs, both representing the moral motivation school of thought. 388 While the work of this thesis is to explore movement towards the good in the context of suffering, I am struck by Thomas’ multivalent use of intention. At the sensory level, intention would appear to be an informed apprehension (I.78.4), whereas when speaking of the higher intellectual faculties, intention becomes an act (I-II.12.2). Is it an act of appetition, because it is part of the work of the will? Or is it an act of rational apprehension analogous to the sensory intention? Act does, of course, contain (so to speak) the intention. I suspect this clarification might eventually contribute to a fuller understanding of practical reason.

138 only if, being motivated out of love, they strive to reason and act rightly.”389 Acts must be justified rationally if they are to be viewed as morally righteous. On this view, goodness refers to the transcendental level, while rightness pertains to acts in the material realm. In other words, according to moral motivation theology, what we do is not necessarily influenced by our interiority of love or the lack thereof. An

“objectivity” dissociated from any subjective affectivity becomes morally justifiable.

Sherwin presents a counter-position in which he outlines the complex steps in the workings of the will, all of which have as their principle, love. The will is best understood as love, both as the triphasic apprehensive-appetitive-resting dynamic and as the underlying principle of such movement. Thomas discusses love at the sensory level as a concupiscible passion, citing Augustine, “Love yearning for the beloved is desire; and, having and enjoying it, is joy.”390 Thomas elucidates this understanding.

And this very aptitude or proportion of the appetite to good is love, which is complacency in good; while movement towards good is desire or concupiscence; and rest in good is joy or pleasure. Accordingly in this order, love precedes desire, and desire precedes pleasure. But in the order of intention, it is the reverse: because the pleasure intended causes desire and love. 391

There is a difference in the direction of movement depending on whether one is considering the intention or the exercise of the movement. But regardless of direction, love (desire) is intrinsic to movement at the sensory level; it is a concupiscible passion. In the human being there is “another appetite following freely from an apprehension in the subject of the appetite. And this is the rational or

389 Sherwin, By Knowledge and By Love. 13. He explicates moral motivation 390 ST.I-II.25.1 391 ST.I-II.25.2

139 intellectual appetite, which is called the ‘will.’”392 It is described as having “a certain share of liberty insofar as it obeys reason.”393 Moreover, like the sensory appetite for physical well-being, the will has a natural proportionality with the good. 394 “[T]he aptitude of the sensitive appetite or of the will to some good, that is to say, its very complacency in good is called ‘sensitive love,’ or ‘intellectual’ or ‘rational love.’” The meaning of love is the freedom to act from one’s personal apprehension of integrated sensory-intellectual intentiones of the good. For Thomas, love is the appetition that characterizes both the sensory and the intellectual aspects of the human soul. Love is neither unique to the higher rationality, nor does it exclude the higher rationality; conversely, love is not unique to the sensory passions, nor does it exclude the sensory. “Natural love is not only in the powers of the vegetal soul, but in all the soul's powers, and also in all the parts of the body, and universally in all things...”395 However, love is more than a passion or a cognition; it is the very primal principle of all movement. “Since power denotes a principle of movement or action,

Dionysius calls love a power, in so far as it is a principle of movement in the appetite.”396 Love comes first from outside the lover and secondarily renders its effects.

Union belongs to love in so far as by reason of the complacency of the appetite, the lover stands in relation to that which he loves, as though it were himself or part of himself. Hence it is clear that love is not the very relation of union, but that union is a result of love. Hence, too, Dionysius says that "love is a unitive force" (Div. Nom. iv), and the Philosopher says

392 ST.I-II.26.1 393 ST.I-II.26.1 394 Although not specified, the quality that is proportionality with the good suggests that Sherwin is speaking of free-will and practical reason. 395 ST.I-II.26.1.2 396 ST.I-II.26.2.1

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(Polit. ii, 1) that union is the work of love.397

Love renders the effect of change within the lover, a transformation that amplifies the primal proportionality of the human lover to the beloved and desired good.

“Although love does not denote the movement of the appetite in tending towards the appetible object, yet it denotes that movement whereby the appetite is changed by the appetible object, so as to have complacency therein.”398 This transformation by love is the movement that is essential to a Thomistic understanding of suffering; one who has become immobilized by the evil of suffering may discover the dynamic of resting in God mediated by a compassionate, loving, human presence. Such presence communicates the perfections of justice and mercy not only as an ideology but as a real physical companionship. The presence of real physical companionship becomes the appetible external human “object” that mediates to the sufferer a contemplative abiding in Love towards ontologic transformation.

Compassion, justice, mercy, and love are accessed from outside a human being’s natural state. This access to the divine perfections depends upon the human disposition referred to as contemplation. Thomas implicates both the speculative intellect and the sensory soul in the act of contemplation.

Our natural knowledge begins from sense. Hence our natural knowledge can go as far as it can be led by sensible things. But our mind cannot be led by sense so far as to see the essence of God; because the sensible effects of God do not equal the power of God as their cause. Hence from the knowledge of sensible things the whole power of God cannot be known; nor therefore can His essence be seen. But because they are His effects and depend on their cause, we can be led from them so far as to know of God "whether He exists,"…399

God is known by natural knowledge through the images of His effects.400

397 ST.I-II.26.2.3 398 ST.I-II.26.2.3 399 ST.I.12.12 400 ST.I.12.12.2

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We have a more perfect knowledge of God by grace than by natural reason. Which is proved thus. The knowledge which we have by natural reason contains two things: images derived from the sensible objects; and the natural intelligible light, enabling us to abstract from them intelligible conceptions. Now in both of these, human knowledge is assisted by the revelation of grace. For the intellect's natural light is strengthened by the infusion of gratuitous light; and sometimes also the images in the human imagination are divinely formed, so as to express divine things better than those do which we receive from sensible objects, as appears in prophetic visions;…401

From the images either received from sense in the natural order, or divinely formed in the imagination, we have so much the more excellent intellectual knowledge, the stronger the intelligible light is in man; and thus through the revelation given by the images a fuller knowledge is received by the infusion of the divine light.402

Faith is a kind of knowledge, inasmuch as the intellect is determined by faith to some knowable object. But this determination to one object does not proceed from the vision of the believer, but from the vision of Him who is believed.403

Thomas emphasizes the passive, infused aspect of contemplative knowledge, which depends upon the sensory. It is the sensory capacity for imaging, collating, and remembering experiences of the natural order through which the human mind

(higher intellect) imagines—contemplates—divine perfections. For Thomas, the very sensory experiences of reality become the food for spiritual—contemplative— encounter with God.

…[T]he vision of God is a higher good than the will’s act of delighting in God… Yet [as our knowledge of God is perfected] “to love God is something greater than to know him, especially while one is in this life.”… Love has priority one way, knowledge has priority another.404

For Sherwin, contrary to the theology of the moral motivation school, knowledge and love are inseparable. To that I would add the emphasis that the sensory aspect of knowledge and love is inseparable from its intellectual counterpart.

401 ST.I.12.13 402 ST.I.12.13.2 403 ST.I.12.13.3 404 Sherwin, By Knowledge and By Love. 83. Citing ST.I-II.27.4.2

142

When the sensory, material corporeality is seen as infused with divine love, then

Sherwin’s progression to a consideration of how love shapes practical reason takes on more clarity. He draws attention to Thomas’ description of practical reason as the principles of creating a work of art; the human act can be good not in the legal sense of compliance with a pre-determined mould, but rather in the sense of an artfully crafted work. “In Aquinas’ view, the principles of practical reason, which he also describes as the natural law, are analogous to the rules or guiding measure of a practical art. The human act is like a work of art.”405 A morally good act requires “a well-ordered love… in the will”406 The particular contour of love in the will determines how one evaluates and comes to a choice around what is to be done.

“[Love] can focus the intellect’s attention upon certain objects instead of others because of the intensity of the love it has for those objects.”407 Sensory love—alive and active—is what ignites the will to make a move; without sensory passion, the will is boring, abstract, and irrelevant to the sufferer.

When the will is regarded as animated by the passions, then the importance of the moral virtues, prudence, and practical reason comes into focus. Thomas describes practical reason/natural law as an acquired habit of principles by which we reason towards suitable action.

[T]he term habit may be applied to that which we hold by a habit: thus faith may mean that which we hold by faith. And accordingly, since the precepts of the natural law are sometimes considered by reason actually, while sometimes they are in the reason only habitually, in this way the natural law may be called a habit.408

405 Sherwin. 101. Citing ST.I-II. 57.1.2, and 68.4.1&3. 406 Ibid., 102 407 Ibid., 102 408 ST.I-II.94.1

143

The term, synderesis, refers to this kind of habit of the mind, a law of the mind, and a natural law, which is the first principle of human actions.409 The natural law provides precepts for movement in such matters as suffering and flourishing; the work of practical reason is distinct from that of speculative reason. The precepts, principles, and propositions of natural law are not universally evident; they are evident only to the wise “But some propositions are self-evident only to the wise, who understand the meaning of the terms of such propositions…”410 These propositions of natural law/practical reason have to do with the good.

Now as "being" is the first thing that falls under the apprehension simply, so "good" is the first thing that falls under the apprehension of the practical reason, which is directed to action: since every agent acts for an end under the aspect of good. Consequently the first principle of practical reason is one founded on the notion of good, viz. that "good is that which all things seek after." Hence this is the first precept of law, that "good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided." All other precepts of the natural law are based upon this: so that whatever the practical reason naturally apprehends as man's good (or evil) belongs to the precepts of the natural law as something to be done or avoided.411

Like all things in nature, the human being relates to the good as to an end; the good

(fullness of being) is the object of pursuit, and evil (a privation of being412) is the object of avoidance. Beyond simply preserving the intactness of being, humans also pursue the goods proper to their intellectual nature, namely,

to know the truth about God, and to live in society: and in this respect, whatever pertains to this inclination belongs to the natural law; for instance, to shun ignorance, to avoid offending those among whom one has to live, and other such things regarding the above inclination.413

Natural law impels acts of moral virtue; it identifies the operations suitable to a

409 ST.I-II.94.1.2 410 ST.I-II.94.2 411 ST.I-II.94.2 412 I understand such privation of being to include a disintegration or fragmentation of human nature such I have described in suffering. 413 ST.I-II.94.2

144 person according to the innate form of a human being, i.e., the soul whose rationality consists in pursuit of the good. The natural inclination of a human being is “to act according to reason: and this is to act according to virtue.”414 Natural law means that reason dictates to act virtuously, but natural law is not a codification of all possible virtuous acts that might potentially be crafted.

But if we speak of virtuous acts, considered in themselves, i.e. in their proper species, thus not all virtuous acts are prescribed by the natural law: for many things are done virtuously, to which nature does not incline at first; but which, through the inquiry of reason, have been found by men to be conducive to well-living.415

Practical reason is concerned with contingent matters and particulars, whereas speculative reason considers universals. It is in this realm of the practical and particular that “we encounter defects,”416 which might be understood as the imprints of particular evils that have contoured one’s interiority. In the context of the particular contours of one’s interiority, there are any number of diverse ways in which one may choose to emerge from evil in pursuit of the good. “But in matters of action, truth or practical rectitude is not the same for all, as to matters of detail, but only as to the general principles: and where there is the same rectitude in matters of detail, it is not equally known to all.”417 The means towards the good elected and crafted by the co-operation of will and practical reason are personal expressions of the interior imprints of love, both love’s accretion and its privation. Acts with intentions of justice and mercy support life with its transformative integration; the ripple-effect of murder is injustice, violence, and disintegration upon all concerned.

414 ST.I-II.94.3 415 ST.I-II.94.3 416 ST.I-II.94.4 417 ST.I-II.94.4

145

As Rosenbaum has indicated, speculative “Reason” is insufficient in the face of disintegrating violence; in this context we require the trained comportments of rectitude directly at the level of corporeal movement. It is the habits of excellence guided by a prudential practical reason, that move us towards the good even when suffering-as-evil sabotages our passions and disables our speculative reason. When evil prevails, the will makes choices on the basis of sensory habits of excellence and not on the basis of speculative reason’s problem-solving capacities.

When ethics concerns the human question of how to move forward, one must also seek awareness of the principle underlying this dynamic. If life is ultimately nothing more than death, then stasis and a corpse-like immobility are the moving principle.

But on closer reflection, this is an oxymoron; death cannot be a “moving” principle; it is a privation of the moving principle.418 This begets the further question, “What is this moving principle of animation?” For Thomas, it is love that is both the principle and the movement in this earthly life towards an eternal life. This mysterious, transformed life is unrestricted by death. Thomas understands the will as the complex movements of love, but this love is not self-originating; it is an animating divine love, which is infused into the integrated corporeal and intellectual apprehensive capacities. All practical, corporeal, human acts are seen as creative, moral acts in that they express habits of comportment shaped by love. Contrary to the theology of moral motivation, there can be no morally neutral, human behaviours; there are only behaviours that express with greater or lesser intensity

418 One must be careful not to ascribe to violence a positive movement of its own; violence, as an evil, signifies a privation of true movement.

146 the movements impelled by love of the good and an aversion to evil. Those who suffer the disintegrating ripple-effects of an evil such as murder may become paralyzed in their creative expressions of the good by fear, anger, grief, or despair, unless the power that is love (compassion, mercy, justice) accompany them. Love is that powerful principle of life and its movement that cannot be extinguished by evil.

Love, in the Thomistic sense of the principle of life, provides a clue to Rosenberg’s plea for the “Meaning” of life. Love, as a life-enhancing principle, comes from beyond the sufferer, perhaps mediated by the compassion of a contemplative companion.

4.c.iii. secular mindfulness and Christian contemplation.

If all of reality were empirically observable, then the speculative, scientific rationality might suffice. The fact that we experience danger, injury, harm, and suffering attests to another realm of reality that we cannot directly observe and analyse. In order to get in touch with a reality known by the interior senses rather than by observation, the speculative rationality must be temporarily suspended.

This discipline of suspending the “mind” brings about a desirable state of stillness, which is described in texts on the practice of Christian contemplation as well as in texts on secular, mindfulness meditation.419 When the mind is still, heightened awareness of the bodily senses, both exterior and interior, becomes possible; synderesis, intentiones, and body memory—an imagery of the sensory phantasms—

419 Anthony de Melo, Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality (New York: Doubleday, 1992). Will Johnson, Alert, Aligned, Resilient: The Physical Foundations of Mindfulness (Boston: Shambhala, 2000).

147 comes into focus. When Rosenbaum’s “Reason” is suspended, the imagery of

“Meaning” becomes accessible.

In this section, I will use an anecdote from the Jewish tradition420 and explain it in the language of mindfulness practice in order to highlight this realm of non- empirical reality, namely, suffering and flourishing. This exercise will serve to illustrate a meaning of contemplation that depends upon the full engagement of the sensory nature and the relative quieting of the intellectual nature.

Once upon a time, Moshe, an upwardly mobile man of the world, decided to get himself a new suit. As he stood in front of the mirror, trying on his new suit, he said to the tailor, “Look here, Mr. Goldberg! This right sleeve does not fit.” Mr. Goldberg took a good look and adjusted the posture of Moshe’s right arm until the sleeve fit perfectly. Then Moshe noticed that the left sleeve was not right either, and Mr. Goldberg had to teach him how to hold his left arm too. And so it went for each of the pant legs as well. Finally the fit was perfect, and Moshe left the shop in his new suit, all contorted in his new postures. Passers-by remarked what a skilful tailor was Mr. Goldberg to make a suit that fit such a mis-shapen man!

Moshe suffered distressing contortions of his body so as to fit into the tailor’s ill- fitting suit, all in the name of a pursuit of the good—good looks! He eventually came to view this painful posture as obligatory suffering. Like every one of us, Moshe was accustomed to assuming such postures of compromised movement as an obligation to the good. To continue the story in contemporary terms, when the contorted postures lead to intolerable pain and disability the desire arises for a better way.

Usually, in our scientific bias, we interpret this desire as the need for some kind of rational analysis and a solution to the problem. But when the doctors, psychologists, rabbis, and priests cannot solve the problem, like Moshe contorted with suffering, one may encounter a companion from a faith-based, non-empirical paradigm, who

420 The Power of Connection, TEDxTelAviv (YouTube, 2010), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEaERAnIqsY .

148 listens carefully and then asks, “Have you ever considered sitting up straight, like this?” The modern Western intellect will immediately ask, “How could that possibly help?” But the sage deflects that mindset with, “Perhaps you don’t really want to get better?” Moshe does want to get better. And so every day for half an hour, Moshe, sits up straight with the intention of re-training and healing his posture, suspending the intellectual need to know how and why.421 Moshe has discovered contemplation: sitting up straight—physically—with the intention of being moved forward into something inchoate and mysteriously better. With practice, Moshe’s posture, aligned with a new sense of the good, takes on new habits of strength, agility, resilience, and responsiveness, no longer contorted by the conniving tailor’s ill-fitting, bad suit.

In the language of Ignatian Christian spirituality, freedom from the old posture leaves Moshe free for a whole new range of divinely-inspired movements towards flourishing. Contemplation is not a practice of intellectually transcending or dominating one’s corporeality; it is the receptive posturing of one’s entire being, both sensory and intellectual. It is this receptive posture that affords human nature

421This is the practice referred to as mindfulness, which has become popular as a secular intervention in relapse prevention for conditions such as depression, addiction, and more recently for diabetes management. As in Christianity, there are many traditions in Buddhism, some of which advance methods for a trance-like state of consciousness and a diminished awareness of embodied reality. However, the tradition that I have practised teaches mindfulness with the intention of heightened awareness of sensory experience. This practice involves the intentional suspension of the busy-ness of the discursive intellect—the “monkey mind”—and allows the arising sensations to be experienced most acutely. The arising sensations and impulses are accepted gently, without cognitive analysis and without acting upon an impulse. These energies are viewed as inessential, passing thoughts. They are the human physicality, that just is, (in accordance perhaps with the position taken by Pasnau.) A comparison of mindfulness with Christian contemplation is beyond the scope of my current project and must await future studies. See the following works inspired by Buddhist spirituality. Mark Epstein, Thoughts without a Thinker. (New York: Basic Books, A Member of Perseus Books Group, 1995). Richard S Surwitt, The Mind Body Diabetes Revolution (New York: Free Press, a division of Simon and Schuster, 2004). Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness, 15th anniv. (New York: Random House, Inc., 1990).

149 access to participation in the divine actus of one’s own ontologic transformation.

Without the practice of contemplative, sensory resting in the vitality of divine compassion, suffering is an evil that binds one’s identity to death. In other words, contemplation is that discipline which allows one to see that a desire for death is part of the suffering, not a solution to the problem of suffering.

4.d. conclusion.

At the sensory level, human nature recognizes danger and shuns it in favour of the good. When the good is attained, an organic resting in satiety takes place. Because at the sensory level this dynamic is organic, the same dynamic happens at the immaterial, spiritual-intellectual level as well. To abide in beatitude is like resting in the sensory satiety of the good attained. Beatitude is not independent of sensory nature; quite on the contrary. The experience of beatitude is mediated by experiences of satiety re-collected. Experiences of flourishing become the substrate for divinization into beatitude. The receptive contemplative posture brings to awareness not only experiences of flourishing but also of those hindrances to flourishing that we call suffering. These experiences of suffering are progressively healed in the process of divinization so that in the end no hindrance remains to the movement of flourishing into beatitude. Thus one arrives at a fleshed-out understanding of the third component of human nature, namely the capacity to rest in satiety, whether that be the pleasure of a sensory good attained or the joyful abiding in Divine Justice and Mercy. Contemplation is a certain posture of the hylomorphic whole, attentive, vulnerable, resilient, perceptive, and responsive not only to flourishing but also to the suffering that gets in the way. It is this powerful

150 human capacity for contemplation that allows awareness of a realm of harm and good, suffering and flourishing, disintegration and integration, violence and compassion, paralysis and movement, etc. as a counterpoint of “Meaning” to the realm of empirical, scientific “Reason.”

Chapter 5. A Spirituality of Performance

In the previous chapters, I have emphasized, following Thomas, the hylomorphism of the sensory and intellectual sides of human nature, in other words, movement and cognition are the two prisms through which human nature may be viewed

(Chapter 2). Moreover, cognition arises from and returns to the sensory apprehensive and appetitive movements. Using the sensory prism, i.e., the view from below, I have offered a descriptive definition of suffering (chapter 3). Suffering is a privation of movement, a diminution of vitality, and a suppression of animated being. Opposed to the fullness of being, suffering is an evil. Suffering comes of violence to the integrity of one’s being, i.e., to the hylomorphism of one’s human nature. Violence to the hylomorphic whole can take the form of fragmentation, subordination, submission, control, domination, immobilization, or silencing. When such descriptors of violence are applicable to a situation, suffering is likely to be found. The religious imagery of evil bondage describes the state of suffering. The moral goal becomes the retrieval of freedom of movement in the direction of an emergence out of suffering-as-evil into flourishing-as-good. Movement, in Thomas, is in the appetitive dynamic; the desires, the passions, and the will are the human capacities of movement. And the appetitive movements are understood as integral with the apprehensive sensibilities422 and the contemplative abiding,423 both at the sensory and at the intellectual levels. To flourish means that the circular triad must

422 Sirek, chapter 2 423 Sirek, chapter 4

151 152 undergo a graced re-integration, such that the passions, the senses, and ultimately the freedom to choose come back to life, a new life, suffused with Divine Justice and

Mercy.

In this chapter, my perspective “from below” will present a response to suffering that is movement based, i.e., the emergence from suffering into flourishing. From this perspective, the traditional view “from above,” with its controversial theological arguments around obligation and the merit in suffering, is bypassed. It is at this point in the project that my proposed understanding of suffering in terms of movement finds coherence even beyond the boundaries of Thomist scholarship.424 I will show that if suffering is regarded as a privation of corporeal movement, then the suitable response is the passion of lament (awakening sensory appetition), rather than a hypothetical solution to the problem of evil (cognition). I will emphasize, as well, the suppressed sensory-apprehensive capacities, associated with our human incapacity to be moved by suffering, a numbness that has characterized the last half of the 20th century, despite (or perhaps because of) the horrific suffering of world-wide political upheavals. This state of apathy gives rise to a certain intellectual disposition, in which analytical cognition eclipses the sensibilities around matters of sensory-corporeality, including movement. In a cognition-dominated paradigm, one can justify violence to the sensory nature as a good and valid means to accomplishing divine justice. Theodicy has a parallel in science; suffering can be described in terms of psychology, sociology, economics,

424 Burrell, Aquinas, God and Action. Cassell, The Nature of Suffering and the Goals of Medicine. Soelle, Suffering.

153 political theory, etc. This cognition-dominated rationality would seem to correspond to the intelligence of “Reason,” that Rosenbaum found problematic in the context of extreme suffering. This inadequacy of scientific discourse in response to a patient’s suffering is exposed by the perspective “from below;” statements of universal norms may well be true, but they do not help the sufferer move along towards something better. In other words, it is something distinctly other than scientific truths, which impels towards the good. In a movement-based paradigm, this something other is the sensory allure of the good and the repugnance of evil. The imagined state of flourishing exerts a draw; suffering, as a state of immobility, must be intentionally subverted by recollecting and imagining the allure of flourishing. From the interiority thus allured arises a movement or performance-based response to one’s suffering. In this “Meaning” of allure and repugnance is the discursive logic of the proposed narrative of suffering. The view “from below” enables a process of performance, by which I mean a choreography by the sufferer, whose interiority— memory, imagination, and intention—becomes progressively reconfigured away from suffering into flourishing.

5.i. suffering in the context of actus and performance.

Thomas’ term, actus, is a “master metaphor,” according to David Burrell, one which will be helpful to the centrality that I assign to movement. He states that such

“[master metaphors] are inherently analogous; we use them better the more we realize how using them reveals us to ourselves and shapes the self we will become.

In short, inherently analogous expressions are inescapably performative in

154 character.”425 In Thomas, perfect being (esse) is pure actuality. The term, actus, infers that God is not a material body with unfulfilled potential. God is pure actuality.

It is absolutely true that God is not a body; and this can be shown in three ways. First, because no body is in motion unless it be put in motion, as is evident from induction. Now it has been already proved (Q[2], A[3]), that God is the First Mover, and is Himself unmoved. Therefore it is clear that God is not a body. Secondly, because the first being must of necessity be in act, and in no way in potentiality. For although in any single thing that passes from potentiality to actuality, the potentiality is prior in time to the actuality; nevertheless, absolutely speaking, actuality is prior to potentiality; for whatever is in potentiality can be reduced into actuality only by some being in actuality. Now it has been already proved that God is the First Being. It is therefore impossible that in God there should be any potentiality.426

God is immaterial spirit who is pure act; this is what it means to be divine. Thomas’ text puts it thus, “[T]he first active principle must needs be most actual, and therefore most perfect; for a thing is perfect in proportion to its state of actuality, because we call that perfect which lacks nothing of the mode of its perfection.”427

The significant insight here is that Thomas draws a logical link between being (esse) and act (actus). Burrell interprets, “Esse itself is the most perfect thing of all, to be compared to everything else as act.”428 To link being and act is significant because it introduces something more than logic into the discussion. Burrell points out that

“what we cannot say may none the less be taken” to have significance.429 It is by tracing how Thomas works with the master metaphor, actus, that Burrell draws conclusions about the significance of performance.

425 Burrell, Aquinas, God and Action. 116. 426 ST.I.3.1 427 ST. I.4.1 428 Burrell, Aquinas, God and Action. 116 429 Ibid.

155

Burrell takes the traditional Thomistic approach from above, in which the act of understanding is seen as the paradigm form of actus. Understanding takes on the aspect of act when we consider the desire to know. Things become intelligible when their material phenomenality takes on an immaterial aspect.430 But this power is not a simple, passive response to all the materiality that impacts upon our senses.

Whereas at the sensory level the apprehension is passive, at the intellectual level the apprehension is both passive and active. Sensible things are found in act outside the soul; and hence there is no need for an active sense. Wherefore it is clear that in the nutritive part all the powers are active, whereas in the sensitive part all are passive: but in the intellectual part, there is something active and something passive.431

This active, selective aspect of intellectual apprehension is referred to as inquiry or the desire to know. “Inquiry is a heuristic process, and whatever understanding we attain comes as a result of inquiring—even when it upsets our guiding preconceptions.”432 Apprehension at the level of the intellectual nature has the aspect of a desire. What is known is then completed in a performance expressing the known. “A person is never more active than when he or she is actually understanding.”433

This does not mean that such acts of understanding are the outcome of “explicit decisions. Aquinas’ model is much more organic than the Cartesian or existentialist alternatives: human action is intention through and through.”434 To emphasize intention is to recall the apprehending interiority of the sensory soul and also the

430 Ibid., 121. 431 ST.I.79.3.1 432 Burrell, Aquinas, God and Action. 121. 433 Ibid., 122 434 Ibid.

156 tending of the intellectual soul.435 While the sensory apprehension concerns intention as imprints with primal meanings of good and harm, the intellectual apprehension understands both the object of an act and its ultimate end. Thus human agency in the fullness of its performative act is characterized by intention

(sensory apprehension) and by the means towards the end (intellectual apprehension/understanding/tending). These are the qualities of apprehension that make an act personal and meaningful.

Note that the Thomistic notion of divine actus refers analogically to human actus when sensory awareness and intellectual counsel are mutually operative. For a human act to be analogical to divine actus, it need not necessarily be effective;

435 The continuity of the term, intention, in its sensory and its intellectual aspects is not well developed in Thomas. In the Questions on human acts as rational, he specifies certain aspects of intention vis à vis the will. “Intention, as the very word denotes, signifies, ‘to tend to something.’ Now both the action of the mover and the movement of thing moved, tend to something. But that the movement of the thing moved tends to anything, is due to the action of the mover. Consequently intention belongs first and principally to that which moves to the end: hence we say that an architect or anyone who is in authority, by his command moves others to that which he intends. Now the will moves all the other powers of the soul to the end, as shown above (Q[9], A[1]). Wherefore it is evident that intention, properly speaking, is an act of the will.”(ST.I-II.12.1) When Thomas describes the sensory apprehensive capacities, he is quite detailed in his description of the interior senses and intention. “Again we must observe that if an animal were moved by pleasing and disagreeable things only as affecting the sense, there would be no need to suppose that an animal has a power besides the apprehension of those forms which the senses perceive, and in which the animal takes pleasure, or from which it shrinks with horror. But the animal needs to seek or to avoid certain things, not only because they are pleasing or otherwise to the senses, but also on account of other advantages and uses, or disadvantages: just as the sheep runs away when it sees a wolf, not on account of its color or shape, but as a natural enemy: and again a bird gathers together straws, not because they are pleasant to the sense, but because they are useful for building its nest. Animals, therefore, need to perceive such intentions, which the exterior sense does not perceive. And some distinct principle is necessary for this; since the perception of sensible forms comes by an immutation caused by the sensible, which is not the case with the perception of those intentions.”(ST.I.78.4) When considering the sensory operations, intention seems to signify a kind of collated imprint of an object from the exterior upon the interiority. When considering the intellectual operations, the term, intention, seems to signify a tending towards. The integration of these passages would suggest to me that intention has a physicality in its origination (apprehension) as well as in its performative act (appetitions). The usual discourse about the workings of will overlook this physicality, as did Thomas, with the consequence that an exclusive emphasis is laid upon the immaterial even when considering the appetitive corporeal act.

157 uncontrollable circumstances, including evil, may disable the effectiveness of the outcome. The human act, when it is understood as analogical to divine actus, is a choreography expressing one’s transformation and re-creation in divine justice.

Moral agency in Thomas is a question of who one is becoming, in terms of the perfections of justice and mercy, not in terms of a tally of “good”—effective— outcomes. If human actus is to be truly analogous to divine actus, then the emphasis becomes transformation of intentiones rather than a quota of effective outcomes.

This, in turn, implies increasing integration of both the sensory-corporeal and the intellectual aspects of human nature.

Acts of murder are the contrary to analogy with the divine actus because such acts are not a performance of divine justice and mercy. Murder is an act of violence not integration. A murder impacts the murderer and those in his/her community with the fear of death; in colloquial language, one feels scared to death, or one feels petrified. When the murder overwhelms the capacity to feel anything at all, movement is reduced to a reaction of vengeance: you punch me, I’ll punch you back.

When divine compassion can penetrate the circumstances, mediated by some human act of mercy or kindness, only then can an alternate intention of justice be configured in the human interiority.

When considering the human act as analogical to divine actus, we must consider not only the aspect of understanding (apprehension), but also the aspect of will. In

Thomas, the will is the appetitive aspect of the intellectual operations. One aspect of human rationality is the capacity to apply one’s appetitive movement to one object or to another.

158

But irrational animals have not the command of the appetitive movement; for this is in them through natural instinct. Hence in the irrational animal, there is indeed the movement of the appetite, but it does not apply that movement to some particular thing. And hence it is that the irrational animal is not properly said to consent: this is proper to the rational nature, which has the command of the appetitive movement, and is able to apply or not to apply it to this or that thing.436

This is the Thomistic meaning of consent. This power of the creature to move itself and to determine who it is becoming is not cancelled by the receptive capacity to be moved by the Creator. Consent in the rationality of the creature is not dependent upon autonomy from the allure of the Creator.437 One is receptive to and allured by the ultimate end, which shapes the interiority (intention) such that freedom becomes the possibility to move towards the desired object. The reason that one moves is in the intention imprinted upon the interiority; it is not in a justification of the act. The reason “is not extrinsic to our actions, as though impeding originativeness.”438 Burrell reminds us that the means to the ultimate end are not so much chosen as they are embraced as something that has grown on us.439 The end functions as a principle guiding the deliberations of taking counsel, but the process cannot be deductive because it quests for a particular action, not a universal one. In other words, the conclusion of taking counsel “is not a proposition but a performance.”440 It is significant that when one is considering the human act as analogical to divine actus, rationality is a particular, meaningful performance, not

436 .ST.I-II.15.3 437 In clinical medicine, consent becomes “informed consent, “ and implies an autonomous, unbiased choice, free from coercion and free from ignorance of the empirical facts. The kind of coercion that might come from systemic biases that favour, for example, compliance with the advancement of science, are not usually part of the information provided. 438 Burrell, Aquinas, God and Action. 124. 439 Ibid., 126 440 Ibid.

159 one that is universally suitable. Burrell’s emphasis upon actus in Thomas allows the

“from below” perspective to emerge, with its emphasis upon movement or performance.

In a Thomistic paradigm, an act defines a particular person not because it is rationally defensible, but because it reflects a habit of action, which has come to characterize that person. Human persons, in that they are both actively self-moving from their interiority and passively moved by external objects, form habits of movement.

For everything that is passive and moved by another, is disposed by the action of the agent; wherefore if the acts be multiplied a certain quality is formed in the power which is passive and moved, which quality is called a habit: just as the habits of moral virtue are caused in the appetitive powers, according as they are moved by the reason, and as the habits of science are caused in the intellect, according as it is moved by first propositions.441

Habits of movement are the habits of the appetitive powers, i.e., the passions.

Meaningful performance is less a habit towards universal propositions and more a habit of human corporeal physicality. These existing habits become the principles that contour the next act. Another usage of the term, actus, is to signify analogically the principle/habit that comes to be inherent with increasing clarity in each act. For example, the habit of compassion becomes a principle that shapes each subsequent act into an increasingly nuanced performance of compassion. By contrast, an act of technical competency, perfected by many repetitions, is not the kind of habitual movement that becomes analogical to the divine actus. Movement is good not on account of a successful or effective outcome; movement is good if it approximates a divine perfection, such as compassion, mercy, or justice.

441 ST.1-11.51.2

160

For Thomas, “causing an effect is properly a relation.”442 ‘A’ can cause something to happen to ‘B’ if ‘A’ is “in act,” and ‘B’ comes into ‘A’s orbit. If something is susceptible to being changed by ‘A,’ it will change when it comes in contact with ‘A,’ like a dry branch ignites when in the vicinity of a fire. The fire itself—the agent—is not altered by causing ‘B’ to ignite. ‘B’s flame is in a relation of dependence upon ‘A,’ the fire. From this metaphor we can understand that God is the cause of each particular human life without being altered within God-self. Analogically speaking, a person of compassion is not depleted by acts of compassion. “Whatever is itself in act in the relevant respect need not do anything further to be a cause.”443 Burrell concludes that when the human agent is understood as moved by the agency of God, then the performance “shifts...from actus to relatio”.444 Unlike the movement transferred between colliding billiard balls, nothing is passed on or transferred between God, considered as cause, and human, seen as effect. Thomas deconstructed this presumption

by removing causality from its prima facie location as an accident (or accidental action), to locate it in its formal category of relation… [C]ausality occurs when the activity of the object changed can be described in terms identical with those describing the active power of the agent.445

No activity beyond proximity to the Source is required of it in order to effect a participation of the object—the human being—in the perfections of the Source. The cause of human perfections, such as mercy and justice, is God; these divine

442 Burrell, Aquinas, God and Action. 132. 443 Ibid., 133. 444 Ibid., 134. 445 Ibid.

161 perfections can be more clearly nuanced in human acts if the relation of creature to

Creator becomes the meaning of human awareness or knowing.

Burrell states that what we are aware of, i.e., what we know and are conscious of, takes possession of the consciousness, even as we come into possession of the knowing.446 “Since understanding, as an intentional activity, is ipso facto conscious, to express what we know is to express it to oneself, even if that be not the purpose of the expression. Everyone learns something more about a subject in the act of writing about it.”447 Thus understanding, as it becomes our own, becomes language, i.e., “a syntactical fact.”448 Language makes explicit one’s understanding. When one responds to Rosenbaum’s question about the meaning of life, one makes explicit one’s understanding. Linguistic articulation is one way to make explicit one’s understanding. “And because language offers a nearly transparent metaphor for understanding, Aquinas describes this activity as immanent production, or emanation, of an inner word.”449 Burrell specifies that sounds, ciphers, and gestures comprise this language of emanation; and this language is guided by “the inner word,” which is not itself one of these. Thus according to Thomas, there is an intellectual emanation that completes the act of understanding by expressing it.

When one expresses what one has come to understand, one introduces this knowing into “a systemic field of force;” we connect the dots to make a bigger picture. Human understanding is dependent upon language to connect partial understanding to a

446 Burrell, Aquinas, God and Action. 149. 447 Ibid. 448 Ibid., 150. 449 Ibid.

162 larger whole. “Hence the capacity to generate an appropriate expression is at once characteristic of the singular activity called understanding, yet it remains a distinctive feature of that understanding termed human.”450 Burrell reminds us that

Thomas uses language as a metaphor for extroversion, but this act of expression need not be linguistic. “Dance, art, or music constitute alternative forms of expression to the verbal, but because they provide a pattern of responses designed to communicate, we often call them languages.”451 Moreover, any one word must be considered as functioning beyond the apparent syntax and grammar. According to

Burrell, when Thomas uses the idiom, inner word, he is not making a contrast to the exterior world. “Rather ‘inner’ betokens that a merely objective consideration of linguistic expressions is misleadingly abstract…. Calling a word ‘inner’ would offer a way of acknowledging the demands of intentionality as well as of logic.”452 If by

“intention” Burrell is referring to the sensory apprehension and by “logic” he is referring to intellectual apprehension, then he is interpreting “inner word” as an hylomorphic sensory-intellectual dynamic. This dynamic is outward reaching and expressive; it manifests as the human performative act analogous with the divine articulation of the Word.

The traditional view “from above” allows us to see first and most clearly that understanding is the human act analogous to the divine actus/esse. Human understanding— consciousness—is ignited or awakened by proximity to the divine

Source. The proximity implies that the relationship between creature and Creator

450 Ibid., 151. 451 Ibid., 152. 452 Ibid., 153.

163 becomes human consciousness. The greater the intimacy, the more truly analogical is the human act emerging from the consciousness or knowing. According to the view “from above” the act of expression is in second place, secondary to understanding.

My own view has been “from below;” the first thing I see is the expressive act with its gestures, postures, carriage, facial grimaces, and behaviours. I hear some verbal language, but largely limited to medical (including pseudo-medical453) words.

The view “from below” engages primarily the language of the body. But the intelligence of this body language, its coherence, awareness, and wisdom, is not empirically evident to the observer. The body that I am observing conceals its own intention and consciousness. This unique interiority of a human body is determined by the experiences of the particular life lived. It is here that the paradigm of

Christian ethics can enrich a secular, evidence-based paradigm of science. If the observer is unaware of the paradigm in which a human interiority is more robust than its psychology on account of its intimacy with the very Source of being, then suffering is viewed as a matter to be solved by engaging the methodology of science.

If however, suffering is understood in terms of the mysterious movements of analogy (the echoes of the Divine Actus) immobilized and silenced, then intimacy between self and God becomes the new focus. A paradigm of effectiveness, such as science with its technical competencies, is not helpful when the real issue is the evil

453 By pseudo-medical I mean the words uttered by a patient, that are intended to have diagnostic meaning, but to the physician these words are not helpful and may even be misleading. “I am having migraines, doctor! it feels like my head will split open.” This is drama—perhaps the passion of lament—but not a medical description of migraine. To unpack this statement with the patient might lead to a better awareness of where the suffering is happening.

164 disruption of the human pursuit of divine perfections. I believe that Rosenbaum’s quest for “Meaning” represents every reflective physician’s quest for this complementary paradigm when evil and suffering prevail. This paradigm offers its own heuristic for coming to understand what is to be done in the face of suffering; it is a heuristic that complements, but is distinct from, the scientific method.

This new heuristic combines two factors that I have developed in the preceding chapters. The first is the Thomistic understanding of human nature in terms of a pair of triads, in which the premise of hylomorphism means that each of the six elements must be engaged (Chapter 2). As I have shown, without this integration, suffering is amplified, not assuaged (chapter 3). The second factor is the paradigm of the analogous act, in which one pursues contemplative intimacy with the divine perfections of justice and mercy (chapter 4). If the human act is regarded as analogous to the divine actus, and one is in pursuit of goods of perfection, such as compassion, we come to a recognition that effectiveness, efficiency, productivity, competency, etc. are not divine perfections, and therefore are not the virtues or goods that we wish to pursue. On this view, it is helpful to regard the goods of perfection—divine justice and mercy—as distinct to the goods of efficacy.454 Thus I

454 See Sirek, chapter 6, citing Alasdair MacIntyre on the incompatibility of goods of effectiveness and goods of excellence. If effectiveness and excellence were to be regarded as principles, we might speak of effectiveness as the means to an end and excellence as the perfection that is the final end. For the purposes of this thesis project, I regard such principles as abstractions out of experience. I prefer to set up effectiveness, competency, productivity, efficiency as a certain class of experience that every clinician is familiar with on account of the bureaucratic structuring of the healthcare system. The excellence of compassion, which requires a habit of contemplative intimacy with Divine Justice and Mercy, is an experience requiring a very different kind of induction. Compassion, although perhaps intuitive, requires to be specified with the academic rigour that our culture associates with the truth. It is this specification of an unfamiliar experience—“Meaning”—that is the goal of this project. The true goods are those infused and ignited by Divine Justice and Mercy, humanly mediated, practised, and experienced. Such human excellence is to be distinguished from the aggregation of competencies in effectiveness.

165 would see in Rosenbaum’s contrasting of reason vs. meaning a reflection of this contrast between effectiveness and perfection. The pursuit of perfection, rather than effectiveness, guides the response to suffering, when one regards suffering as immobility and response as performance. These two factors—the hylomorphic performative response to suffering and the contemplative pursuit of perfection— allow a fresh perspective on suffering and offer a new heuristic for ethically difficult considerations.

5.ii. reflections on evil and the Book of Job.

For an exegesis of Scripture that emphasizes the human act as a movement of increasing intimacy with God I turn to David Burrell on the Book of Job.455 Job has run into bad times, but not on account of culpability. He mounts a persistent and repeated cry of lament to God. Note that this lament is not to be read as a whining melodrama, but as the travail of ordering one’s human desires towards God. This painful searching for God in the face of evil and adversity is the performance of a relationship of loving desire between creature and Creator. The friends of Job represent the various analytical approaches that try to solve the problem using the principles and ideas operative in their respective professions.

Eliphaz, as the dogmatist, would never confound an abstract premise with a consideration of the particular reality at hand. “He frustrates the devices of the crafty so that their hands achieve no success,… but he saves the needy from the sword of their mouth, from the hand of the mighty.”(Job 5:13,15). Eliphaz advises

455 Burrell, Deconstructing Theodicy: Why Job Has Nothing to Say to the Puzzle of Suffering.

166 that even if things are bad now, eventually God will come through with the saving move. Job derives no consolation from such preaching. “My companions are treacherous like the torrents, like ravines of torrents that pass away… [Y]ou see my calamity and are afraid.” He turns on them with a counter-logic, “Will you consider words a proof and the speeches of a sufferer wind?” Burrell points out that, as he progressively frees himself from his peers’ logic of debate, Job becomes more bold in his cries to God. “Why have you made me your target?” (Job 9:20).456

Job’s next interlocutor is Bildad, the jurist, with the agenda of defending God’s justice. “God will not reject a blameless person, nor take the hand of evildoers.”

Extrapolating this line of logic, Job, answers, “… [Then] how can a mortal be right?”

Job is not questioning God’s justice, but is concerned with his own lowliness and wretchedness before God. “Though I am right, I cannot supplicate for my right. If I summoned him… I do not believe he would listen to my voice…. If it is a contest of strength, he is the strong one. If it is a matter of justice, who will plead for me?”(Job

9: 12, 16, 19). And yet despite the inequality of the relationship, Job persists. “Your hands fashioned and made me; and now you turn and destroy me.” (Job10:2,8) The fact that Job dares to address the Source of the universe in the relational I-Thou grammar points to an intimacy between creature and Creator, which flourishes despite the infinite power differential between them.

The third interlocutor is Zophar, the “wise” philosopher, who advises that Job’s fate lies in his own hands, which fate depends upon acknowledging his guilt. But Job becomes angry and proclaims that the wisdom of these consultants may well be

456 Ibid., 27-30.

167 celebrated, but he, Job, is not stupid either. He cries out, “I am a laughing stock to my friends, I who called upon God …, a just and blameless man,”(Job12:4) while the really culpable evil-doers rest in peace. Zophar flaunts his “wisdom.”

Ask the animals, they will teach you…. With Him are wisdom and strength; he has counsel and understanding… he uncovers the deeps out of darkness, and brings deep darkness to light. He makes nations great, then destroys them….. he strips understanding from leaders of the earth, and makes them wander in trackless waste. (12:13, 22-24)

Job is unmoved by the rhetoric. “If only you would keep silent, that would be your wisdom.”(Job13:5) He cuts through all the annoying, theoretical discourse with a direct and passionate appeal to God, “Only grant two things to me, then I will not hide myself from your face. Withdraw your hand from me, and do not let dread of you terrify me. Then call, and I will answer; or let me speak and you reply.”(Job13:20-22) The very heart of the drama is in this supplication, to be relieved of the fear planted by evil just enough to be able to show up before God to be heard and to hear God’s reply.

As the three rounds of dialogue with the “friends” evolve, Job is seen to move beyond an ethics of mere uprightness and to seek, ever more boldly, a personal audience with God. Once again he prays, “Only grant two things to me, then I will not hide myself from your face. Withdraw your hand from me, and do not let dread of you terrify me. Then call, and I will answer; or let me speak and you reply;”(Job13:20-22) Despite Bildad’s appropriation of the covenant as impersonal principles and ideas, Job insists on relational terms, “Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is Wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.”(Job28:27-28) 457 Those

457 Ibid., 40.

168 who try to enunciate wisdom only show themselves to be foolish, but upon those who act properly, it is bestowed. It is this wisdom that Job seeks right from the

Source by demanding an audience with God. And ultimately Job does experience the

Lord addressing him personally. Satisfied and spent, he now can “retreat and

...repent in dust and ashes.”(Job 42:6)

Thus Burrell describes a distinction between the one who cries out to God in suffering and those who observe impartially the God-sufferer drama. The theorists consider suffering to be a problem to be analyzed in terms of cause and effect in order to provide a solution. But Scripture tells us that it is Job, not his analytical observers, who are righteous in the sight of God. Job moves relentlessly towards a mind-boggling audience with God; he refuses mere human-made speculations about

God and his own circumstances. The logic of theodicy is problematic because it has to make Job guilty if God is to remain righteous. It is the story of this exclusively cognition-based mode of rationality, the theodicy implicit in Job’s advisors, that exemplifies the flaw in our scientific and principalist approaches to suffering. By contrast, the logic of performance allows one to appreciate that Job is indeed an upright man, and in the face of evil he performs according to habits of righteousness, deepening his intimacy with God in the lament of his wretchedness. Our modern consciousness finds it hard to think that Job might not have been expecting a solution from God; but on Burrell’s view, what Job desired was an experience of the real and direct compassionate presence of God.

Burrell’s exegesis of Job puts emphasis upon safeguarding the dynamism of the passions, namely the passion of pain and sorrow, with its expression of lament. The

169 intellectualism of his consultants is threatening to the lament; “Reason” in this context is the very real possibility that Job’s passionate language will be violently muted, to the point that his “Meaning” will be lost. Rosenbaum alluded to this harmful aspect of unrestrained “Reason.”

5.iii. evil and the critique of theodicy

Theodicy has a destructive effect in the face of suffering. Amplifying the experience of Job, Dorothee Soelle holds that it is the analytic discourse of theodicy which silences and disables the prayer of lament.458 Those who engage in such discourse appear to be free of suffering but in fact may be seen to have disabled their prayer and silenced their suffering. They are immersed in the mendacity of illusion, minimization, and apathy.

It is more difficult for the younger generation to put suffering into words because apathy has grown with the assimilation of middle-class notions of what to strive for. This doesn’t mean that apathetic people in the industrial nations don’t suffer—let alone that they are happy. What they lack is an awareness of their own suffering and a sensitivity for the suffering of others. They experience suffering, but they “put up with it, “ it doesn’t move them. They have no language of gestures with which to battle suffering. Nothing is changed; they learn nothing from it.459

She sets out the letters of one particular foundry-worker to his family in which he communicates the affliction of his chemical burns from the work environment, where he has no recourse to protection, healing, or compassion for fear of losing his livelihood.460 Unlike Job, he suffers the increasing debilitation of his physical wounds in mute silence. For Soelle, such social injustice is an evil perpetrated by persons in power, who, in becoming desensitized to their own suffering, are

458 Soelle, Suffering. 6. 459 Ibid., 36-7 460 Ibid., 61-70

170 oblivious to the suffering of those whom they exploit and oppress in the interest of productivity and profit. Although they may have moments of hedonistic pleasure, such persons of power experience no depth or fullness of the passions, neither in joy nor in sorrow.

[This societal apathy] is understood as a social condition in which people are so dominated by the goal of avoiding suffering that it becomes a goal to avoid human relationships and contacts altogether. In so far as experiences of suffering… are repressed, there is a corresponding disappearance of the passion for life and of the strength and intensity of its joys.461

In the equilibrium of a suffering-free state the life curve flattens out completely so that even joy and happiness can no longer be experienced intensely. But more important than this consequence of apathy is the desensitization that freedom from suffering involves, the inability to perceive reality.462

This apathy of the Western world manifests in a preference for corpse-like things that do not move.

“My characters’ distinctive mode of behavior is silence, for their speech is inoperative. They have no positive intentions. Their problems are of such long standing and are so advanced that they are no longer capable of articulating them.” They remain in their state of apathy….463

To desire freedom from pain means to desire death. In this sense one can understand the apathy of society as part of what Erich Fromm call its necrophilic orientation. Necrophilia is the love for that which is dead, frozen, motionless, “the wish to transform the organic through “order.”464

When harmful, unjust circumstances are stripped of suffering, a corpse-like state of silence and immobility prevail. This sensory stripping manifests as apathy. Only the disengaged logic of argument remains, as in the discourse of theodicy in which one is turned away from the sufferer’s experiential reality. Such a turning away from the

461 Ibid., 36. 462 Ibid., 39. 463 Ibid., 37. Citing F.X. Kroetz, Heimarbiet, Hartnäckig, Männersache: Drei Stücke (Franfurt: Suhrkamp, 1971). 8. 464 Ibid., 37. Citing Erich Fromm, The Heart of Man: Its Genius for Good and Evil (New York: Harper and Row, 1964). 44.

171 sufferer’s experience leads also to the default logic of adjudication. In order to retrieve one’s human sensibilities around suffering and joy, Soelle calls for the recovery of a language of symbol.

The need is… to embark on the search for new theological language. Limiting our speech to scientific language leads to an ever increasing silence; “whatever cannot be said clearly,” to use Wittgenstein’s phrase, then remains untreated… A theology that could wrest land away from the sea of speechless death would be a theology worthy of that name.465

The methodological prohibition against using theological-symbolic language in our day appears to me to be a demand for one-dimensional thinking.466

Soelle’s evocative call for a language of symbolic meaning to offset the harm inflicted by arguments of theodicy would seem to fit with Rosenbaum’s cry for “Meaning” in the face of the harm caused by an approach to suffering shaped exclusively by scientific “Reason.”

As I have previously indicated in my exploration of Gondreau’s work,467 and as I have indicated in the previous section on the exegesis of Job, it is defensible to understand pain, sorrow, and suffering as a reflection of human vulnerability rather than culpability. Soelle critiques a distorted Christian tradition, in which suffering is understood in terms of culpability. Citing Calvin, she begins her chapter on Christian masochism. “And surely, O Lord, from the very chastisements which thou hast inflicted upon us, we know that for the justest causes thy wrath is kindled against us; for seeing thou are a just Judge thou afflictest not thy people when not offending.”468 In contrast to this example of a tradition shaped by theodicy, Soelle

465 Ibid., 7. 466 Ibid., 8. 467 Sirek, 2.2.iii 468 Soelle, Suffering. 9. Citing John Calvin, “"Forms of Prayer for the Church”,” in Tracts and Treatises on the Doctrine and Worship of the Church., trans. Henry Beveridge, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1958). 108f.

172 proceeds to show that the one who suffers is to be understood as a victim of evil.

She introduces an anecdote in which a woman is suffering on account of an abusive spouse.

The marriage we have described is, for one of the partners at least, a veritable hell, and the children who are growing up in that home are systematically learning to despise life. There is no reason to preserve such a marriage, as though God desired this to be done. This is already clear from the fear that the children feel, fear that they will retain until it turns into … hatred and contempt for their father. There is no justification for letting innocent people endure such avoidable suffering. Almost all Christian interpretations, however, ignore the distinction between suffering that we can and cannot end. And, by referring to the universality of sin, they deny the distinction, in a marriage involving guilt, for instance, between the guilty and the innocent party. To that extent the Christian interpretations of suffering sketched here amount to a recommendation of masochism. Suffering is there to break our pride, demonstrate our powerlessness, exploit our dependency. Affliction has the intention of bringing us back to a God who only becomes great when he makes us small. In that case affliction is seen as unavoidable, as with the wife whose marriage was destroyed, and turned into a fate, thus rendering any change through suffering an impossibility. Suffering is considered a test sent by God, that we are required to pass.

In this passage Soelle exposes the importance of regarding suffering-as-experience, i.e., “from below.” In the tradition (eg. the passage from Calvin) this has not been the case. Suffering, when regarded “from above” becomes an abstract principle, like an

‘x’ in the equation of salvation. An approach to suffering that privileges the conceptual will adjudicate as righteous the sufferer who has come to identify with the afflicted state. Such sado-masochistic distortion of the Christian tradition comes of an exclusively abstract approach to suffering as though it were a set of universal principles, with no sensed resonance with a particular person’s circumstances.

The logic of this sadistic understanding of suffering is hard to refute. It consists of three propositions which recur in all sadistic theologies: 1) God is the almighty ruler of the world and he sends all suffering; 2) God acts justly, not capriciously; and 3) all suffering is punishment for sin…. The two presumptions that God is almighty and just lead to the conclusion that all suffering is punishment for sin.469

469 Ibid., 24.

173

Masochism adds in the assumption that God is loving, as well as almighty and just.

So now suffering becomes “loving” punishment, intended to test and to train. A modality of rationality that relies exclusively upon arguments of justification ends up identifying the Christian God with the principle of human misery.

Not that theological sadism would offer instructions on behaviour. But it does school people in thought patterns that regard sadistic behaviour as normal, in which one worships, honors, and loves a being whose “radicality,” “intentionality,” and “greatest sharpness” is that he slays. The ultimate conclusion of theological sadism is worshipping the executioner.470

For Soelle, to substitute a conceptual righteousness for a sensed resonance with the suffering other is a distortion of who God is and, by extension, a distortion of human creaturely identity.

Did the victims of Auschwitz die at God’s hands, and not because of Cyclone Beta, which the IG-Farben Compnay manufactured for a few cents a dose? Was he on the side of the executioner—or still on the side of the dying?... In the face of suffering you are either with the victim or with the executioner. Therefore that explanation of suffering that looks away from the victim and identifies itself with a righteousness that is supposed to stand behind suffering has already taken a step in the direction of theological sadism, which wants to understand God as the torturer.471

Theodicy serves to project concepts of righteousness, punishment, and atonement into one’s relationship with God, meanwhile disabling the sensory, corporeal lament that would move one out of suffering into flourishing. By promoting a kind of calculus of righteousness, theodicy demythologizes the life-giving symbols in our language, replacing them with images of destruction. Lost are the divine qualities of mercy, ordered towards the mysterious reversal of injustice. Silenced is the lament in a world restricted to the rationality of cause and effect. Only the voice of detached

470 Ibid., 28. Italics are mine. I wish to emphasize the problem that arises on account of the view “from above” in which thought is privileged to the point that one loses awareness of the experience of misery. 471 Ibid., 32

174 apathy remains, lording it over the silenced, afflicted sufferer with theories and principles of righteousness. Steeped in conceptual principles, such an adjudicating god-like other is no longer capable of the compassion that would mediate Divine

Justice and Mercy. A sado-masochistic Christianity, that regards suffering as culpability, makes suffering an exercise in righteousness. I embrace Soelle’s critique of this approach “from above” in which suffering ends up being sacralised; I propose the view “from below” in which it becomes possible to regard suffering as the corporeal reality of permeability or vulnerability to evil.

Soelle advances the insight that when suffering is regarded as a vulnerability, i.e.,

“from below,” it is possible for a sufferer to move through the paralysis of evil into freedom. This unfolds like a performance, in stages.472 In the first stage of deepest suffering, persons are reduced to individuals living an atomic, isolated existence in mute silence, enduring exploitation and abnegation to the point of powerless collapse. Such victims display a remarkable orderliness, moving more like automatons than animated beings.473 Such persons are no longer capable of responding like a human agent. Extreme suffering of this sort turns a person in upon him/herself, such that communication, learning, and change are impossible.

Conscious knowing, which I have previously identified as an apprehensive capacity, appears to be paralyzed. This state of apathy renders the person numb and mute, totally helpless, stripped of the capacity to think, speak, and act, capable only of unpredictable, explosive, primal reactions. Soelle understands this endemic apathy

472 Ibid., 75. Soelle presents a table with the qualities that characterize the three stages of suffering. 473 Ibid., 61.

175 and death-like paralysis in the very midst of productivity and prosperity as the most profound stage of suffering. In the second stage of suffering, the oppressed person displays the fragile movements and vocalizations of re-animation—lament, petition, and a (graced) new-found capacity to express hope. If apathy is to be displaced and suffering mobilized, the groans of lament must prevail. In the third stage, when the voice of lament becomes strong, it resists being toned down by pessimistic banalities about the universal benefits of suffering. Previously isolated individuals now learn to bond in relationship with one another. Speech leads out of the isolation of suffering into the solidarity through which change may occur. Even if the conditions are not amenable to change, pain can be better endured if articulated.

“Even for the dead there must be cries and prayers.”474

With her remarkable sensitivity for the suffering of the Jewish people, industrial labourers, and the Latin American indigenous peoples, Soelle has been able to articulate a way to penetrate the apathetic suffering state of modernity. Her work is powerful because she takes the perspective “from below,” refusing to become desensitized to the suffering of those dominated by the powerful. In order to retrieve the silenced voice of suffering in the power-holders of the world, Soelle describes two remarkable saintly persons in the last century, Simone Weil and Edith

Stein. Their lives were characterized by great travail exercised in a countercultural way to call forth a renewed sensibility around suffering.475 The witness of these women was that only through the felt experience of suffering was the relation of

474 Ibid., 74. 475 Soelle, Suffering. 151-157. Dorothee Soelle, The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001). 147-155.

176 compassion realized. Speaking of Edith Stein, Soelle writes, “What oriented the way of an intellectually gifted phenomenologist to mysticism was, above all, her experience of suffering.”476 Stein chose to remain associated with her Jewish people and to die, with her mentally disabled sister, in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. She believed that her suffering, and that of her people, was a participation in Christ’s crucifixion.

It is not a dolorousness that seeks suffering and then chooses which one to shoulder; rather it is a mystical approach to the reality that comes from the passive experience of being overwhelmed to accept voluntarily the suffering of the downcast and insulted. In Roman Catholicism, such acceptance is often called ‘sacrifice,’ which is in my judgement an insufficient term.”477

Soelle refuses the posture of allowing oneself to become an object of fate, commending rather an act of participation. Simone Weil, also a modern intellectual, was intent upon overcoming her dependency upon the rational mind as well as her need for food and healthcare. She wanted to feel with those in the factories who had become slaves no better off than those in Roman times. “The manifold attempts of self-sacrifice in Simone Weil’s life have to be understood from this radical perspective from below, from that of the victims of history.”478 Soelle identifies in

Weil the intent to lament without becoming numb, to experience both sorrow and joy most fully and simultaneously. The intent was not to abolish the pain, but to hold it firmly in tension with love.479

Simone Weil did indeed despise numbness; in agony she cried out to God rather than do without such cries. She did not regard Christianity as a supernatural remedy for suffering…

476 Soelle, The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance. 147. 477 Ibid., 148. 478 Ibid., 151. 479 Ibid., 152.

177

This mystically experienced oneness of joy and suffering shines forth from the agony present in many experiences of suffering free of numbness. It is an inconsolability that stays steadfastly in the love for God.480

“Love is not consolation. It is light.” Those sentences were written prior to Auschwitz. Are they still valid after Auschwitz?481

Soelle emphasizes the felt sense that characterizes an authentic Christian struggle.

She cites Reinhold Schneider and refers to his struggle,

“It is better to die with a burning question on one’s heart than with a faith that is not quite honest anymore; better in agony than in numbness.” In the Nazi era, he secretly distributed carbon copies of his sonnets. His diary entries, Winter in Wien completed just a few days before his death, connect with his tradition of looking down into the abyss. These entries are, in his words, “soliloquies of outer and inner misery.” They testify to the struggle of a Christian with the insuperable night that Schneider interprets as “the cosmic and historical absence of Christ.”482

There was a refusal in these remarkable persons to be consoled, because it would be a false consolation, taking one away from a fully sensed sorrow for the murderous reality of our world.

What is noteworthy is the spirit in which pain and sorrow were experienced. It was not simply a painful wallowing in the hopelessness of evil. There appeared to be a dynamic of complementarity between the annihilating experience of evil in its various forms—shame, hunger, illness, exploitation, torture, and death—and the vivifying experience of being loved by the crucified Christ. This love meant that one did undergo and suffer horrific evil, but with hope in a resurrected life no longer susceptible to such evils. The resurrection meant the possibility of love introducing a new animation into the pain and sorrow, even, indeed, into the mute, immobilized lifelessness of persons overwhelmed by evil. For these exemplary women and men,

480 Ibid. 481 Ibid. Citing Simone Weil, Schwerkraft Und Gnade (Munich, 1952). 48. 482 Ibid. 152. Citing Reinhold Schneider, Winter in Wien: Aus Meinen Notizbüchern. (Freiburg i. Br, 1958).

178 the actual experiences of isolation, humiliation, hunger, pain, etc. seemed to be held in their sensory materiality simultaneously with the recollected image of the crucified, suffering Christ. The felt experiences of evil were held in tension with the imprinted intentio of Christ’s resurrection-reversal of injustice. Theirs was a witnessing through their very corporeality; their compassion had an aspect of physicality that many would consider irrational in the extreme. But in the cultural context of extreme insensibility to injustice, their immersion of the sensory self in human misery accomplished a powerful expression of compassion and loving solidarity with the oppressed. The tenacity of the sensory immersion into misery did not extinguish their relationship with God, but, on the contrary, intensified that intimacy. Heightened apprehension of human suffering—both sensory perception and intellectual consciousness—served to galvanize the desire (directed appetitive movements) for the God of divine justice and mercy.

When I read Soelle through the lens of Thomas’ description of torpor, I am struck by the correspondence between Thomas’ medieval observations and Soelle’s insights on suffering and apathy in modernity. Soelle describes apathy as leading to a progressive experience of nothingness and systematic annihilation.

All extreme suffering evokes the experience of being forsaken by God. In the depth of suffering people see themselves as abandoned and forsaken by everyone. That which gave life its meaning has become empty and void: it turned out to be an error, an illusion that is shattered, a guilt that cannot be rectified, a void. The paths that lead to this experience of nothingness are diverse, but the experience of annihilation that occurs in unremitting suffering is the same. 483

Thomas discusses torpor as a species of sorrow what deprives one of the movements of corporeal animation.

483 Soelle, Suffering. 85.

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In accordance with this manner of speaking, the species of sorrow are reckoned by an application of the notion of sorrow to something foreign to it. This foreign matter may be taken on the part of the cause or the object, or of the effect. For the proper object of sorrow is "one's own evil." Hence sorrow may be concerned for an object foreign to it either through one's being sorry for an evil that is not one's own; and thus we have "pity" which is sorrow for another's evil, considered, however, as one's own: or through one's being sorry for something that is neither evil nor one's own, but another's good, considered, however, as one's own evil: and thus we have "envy." The proper effect of sorrow consists in a certain "flight of the appetite." Wherefore the foreign element in the effect of sorrow, may be taken so as to affect the first part only, by excluding flight: and thus we have "anxiety" which weighs on the mind, so as to make escape seem impossible: hence it is also called "perplexity." If, however, the mind be weighed down so much, that even the limbs become motionless, which belongs to "torpor," then we have the foreign element affecting both, since there is neither flight, nor is the effect in the appetite. And the reason why torpor especially is said to deprive one of speech is because of all the external movements the voice is the best expression of the inward thought and desire, not only in men, but also in other animals, as is stated in Polit. i, 1. 484

Although Thomas did not elaborate further on this condition of immobility and muteness, in ST I-II. 37.4 he goes on to quote Scripture on the harms of sorrow to the body. “A joyful mind makes age flourishing: a sorrowful spirit dries up the bones…. Sadness of a man consumes the heart.”(Prov 17:22, 25:20) Similarly, “of sadness comes death.”(Eccles. 38:19) Perhaps, like Soelle, Thomas understood the bodily immobility and muteness in the face of overwhelming evil to be an ultimate dissolution of life. Both texts—Soelle’s contemporary suffering-as-apathy with

Thomas’ torpor-in-sorrow—suggest to me a sense of progressive and systematic annihilation in suffering. Suffering is an evil and a privation of the good; how one responds to evil presents an opportunity to recover one’s advance towards the good.

Both Thomas and Soelle have observed that movement is suppressed in conditions where evil prevails, and that this suppression is associated with a preponderance of analytical cognition. As developed in the previous chapter, this

484 ST.I-II.35.8

180 rupture between movement and cognition is a violence to human hylomorphism, a state of affairs that has played itself out in history as overwhelming evil.485 It is the sensory apprehension of such evil and the recovery of the lament of sorrow that re- awakens the life-giving creature-Creator relationality. Such relationality is the safe container in which to progressively integrate all elements of vital movement comprising the hylomorphic human nature. Such integration points us towards the

“Meaning” that Rosenbaum found lacking in medicine. “Meaning”” might now be specified as the practical rationality of the sensory nature in pursuit of flourishing and emergence from suffering, a morally important counterpoint to the rationality of empiricism and principlism in medicine.

When “Meaning” is allowed to principlism in ethics, and empiricism in medicine, a new heuristic declares itself; sensory-corporeal movement becomes intelligible as impelling a person “from below” towards the excellence of Divine Justice and Mercy.

5.iv. the limits of a science-based approach to evil

The problem with science in the context of suffering is that by disqualifying the language of religious imagery it removes the possibility of the sufferer’s agency in the emergence from suffering into flourishing. Eric Cassell MD, a most respected and sensitive clinician, elaborates a meaning of suffering that is informed by this secular scientific paradigm.486 I will identify two areas of contrast with the paradigm that I

485 I am referring here to the ideology of Nazi Germany’s Auschwitz, of Pinochet’s clandestine torture centres in Chile, of the ongoing violence of Latino gangs throughout South, Central, and North America, and of the radical ideological groups of the Middle East that justify ongoing widespread terrorist operations. 486 Cassell, The Nature of Suffering and the Goals of Medicine. v

181 am proposing. The first is the nature of the spiritual—the soul—and its role in human agency. The second is the role of desire and the passions in the context of human suffering.

In an attempt to ground his approach to suffering, Cassell builds upon the notion of personhood as something distinct from the body. He remains tied to the subject- object idiom of science in which the subject is the doctor and the object the sufferer.

Doctors do not deal with suffering in the abstract—they treat persons afflicted by something that leads to suffering. The separation of the disease that underlies the suffering from both the person and the suffering itself, as though the scientific entity of the disease is more real and important that the person and the suffering, is one of the strange intellectual paradoxes of our times.487

Person, suffering, and disease are spoken of in the voice of the third person scientific observer, in the manner that a clinician communicates “objectively” the symptoms of disease. Using science as the intelligence that gives rise to action, the doctor will treat the patient. What begins as the patient’s story turns into an analysis of cause and effect via scientific disciplines (eg. psychology, sociology, physiology, and pathology).

This young woman had severe pain and other physical symptoms that caused her suffering. But she also suffered from threats that were social and others that were personal and private. She suffered from the effects of the disease and its treatment on her appearance and her abilities. She also suffered unremittingly from her perception of the future.488

The nuanced sensitivity of the observer is apparent, but the language is the impersonal idiom of science. When Cassel makes the shift to compassion “from below,” fresh, non-empirical issues of integrity and destruction become apparent.

Suffering occurs when an impending destruction of the person is perceived; it continues until the threat of disintegration has passed or until the integrity of the person can be

487 Ibid., vii 488 Ibid., 30

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restored in some other manner… most generally, suffering can be defined as the state of severe distress associated with events that threaten the intactness of the person.”489

In this passage he corroborates my own experience and observations concerning suffering and disintegration without using scientific labels; suffering is a state in which the integrity of one’s very being is threatened. Here we have what I would consider a foray into Rosenbaum’s “Meaning;” the term, integrity, suggests a paradigm shift away from the analytic empiricism of the sciences.

Integrity requires elaboration, but with clarity around the restrictions imposed by defaulting into empiricism. I look to the medieval Thomas Aquinas with the intention of becoming aware of and then bypassing the bias of a subject-object dichotomy, in which the “right way” demands that the physician be reduced to a disengaged observer, whose mind is restricted exclusively to analyses of what is empirically evident. This is important because a sensitive physician not only sees and hears, etc. with the external senses, but also experiences at the level of the interior senses. Integrity, personhood, and suffering engage the interior sensory realm of memory, imagination, and cogitative sense. When the sensory nature of the physician (and patient) is not appreciated, the approach is reduced to the empiricist paradigm of cause, effect, and solution in the face of suffering.

In sum, people in pain frequently report suffering from pain when they feel out of control, when the pain is overwhelming, when the source of the pain is unknown, when the meaning of pain is dire, or when the p[ain is apparently without end. In these situations, persons perceive pain as a threat to their continued existence—not merely their lives but their integrity as persons. That this is the relation of pain to suffering is strongly suggested by the fact that suffering can often be relieved in the presence of continued pain, by making the source of the pain known, changing its meaning, and demonstrating that it can be controlled and that an end is in sight.490

489 Ibid., 32. 490 Ibid., 35. Italics as in the original text.

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It seems unlikely that the suffering, disintegrating person would be capable of appropriating more information. I suspect that when there appears to be less distress, there has been a subtle shift in paradigm away from speculative problem- solving. The paradigm that I infer is that of practical reason i.e., the search for the good while emerging from habits that harm. To remain restricted to an information- driven empiricism, especially when all therapeutic interventions have been exhausted, on my view, represents a suppression of experiential sensory consciousness and a privileging of intellectual information. In the model of suffering that I am proposing, such fragmentation only begets more suffering.491

In a paradigm based upon the hylomorphism of speculative and practical reason, disintegration and fragmentation signify a hindrance to animation—an evil— whereas integration is the intensification of one’s vitality—a good. In this non- empiricist paradigm, subjective experiences of good and evil at the level of the sensory nature are key. On this view, integrity includes the sensory interiority, fully alive. Conversely, when the sensory nature, with its corporeal movements, is eclipsed by cognition, integrity is hindered. To pursue integrity is to reclaim previously muted aspects of the apprehensive-appetitive-contemplative sensory nature. 492 This shift in paradigm away from analytic empiricism towards a practical and particular (personal) pursuit of the good offers the possibility of a corresponding shift in identity. When the sensory nature mounts a lament, suspending the logical solutions of intellectual nature, the injustice experienced can

491 Sirek, chapter 2 and 3 492 Sirek, chapter 2

184 be offered into that space of intimacy between the sufferer and Divine Justice and

Mercy. This paradigm empowers the dawning of a transformed identity, not delimited by suffering and death.

However, for Cassell, this work of the interiority towards integration is not associated with the “spiritual.” He understands “spiritual” to be fragmented off from the whole, located in the peripheral and declining realm of religion. “The decline of the spiritual includes two simultaneous changes: an enlarged belief in a self as a legitimate entity apart from God and a decline in the power of religious belief.”493

By contrast, in a paradigm concerned with discerning harm from good, a sufferer needs the spiritual capacities for the moral agency to move from annihilation to animation. The spiritual is core, not peripheral, to a paradigm describing movement from evil towards good, from death into life, from suffering into flourishing.

Empirical observation, if used to obviate the spiritual as Cassell does, reduces human identity to the observation that suffering and death terminate life. The possibility of transformation is subverted by the marginalization of the spiritual.

Person, mind, and self become the hallmarks of the human spirit,494 which may be lost, even though the body may still live on.

Everyone has a transcendent dimension—a life of spirit, however, expressed or known… it is most directly dealt with in mysticism and in the mystic traditions both within and without formal religions… But it seems evident that the frequency with which people have intense feelings of bonding with groups, with ideals, or with anything larger and more enduring than the person—of which patriotism is one example—is evidence of the universality of human transcendence… When I see patients in nursing homes who seem to go on forever, existing only for their bodily needs, I wonder whether it is not their transcendent dimension that they have lost.495

493 Cassell, The Nature of Suffering and the Goals of Medicine. 32. 494 Ibid., 33. 495 Ibid., 41.

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Cassell has limited himself to the role of observer, which makes it difficult to apprehend the meaning of the spiritual as key to moral agency in suffering.

By contrast, for Thomas, the human spirit is the form that animates the material body; it is a unity of intellectual soul and sensory soul. The sensory soul is that primal vitality that keeps the whole person moving—with or without capacities of cognition—towards union with the Creator. Persons of faith, whose interiority is conscious of Scriptural imagery, perceive life as a movement from bondage into freedom, from exile to embrace, from disintegration towards integration, from lost to found, from suffering into new life, and ultimately from death into resurrection of the body. Such movement coheres with a rationality of meaning-filled stories and images. As I will elaborate in the next chapter, the empirical logic of science can become a dominating metaphor, which serves to eclipse such religious symbolism.496 This religious imagery is not simply an interesting alternative paradigm. It has the power to shape the intentiones of the sensory interiority so that the sufferer participates in the birthing of a new identity in communion with Divine

Justice and Mercy. On this view, the spirit is not accessible to observation by an external assessor; it is concealed at the sufferer’s core, revealed only if that agent so chooses. The methodology of Cassell, as a third person observer of another’s sprit, cannot but relegate the spiritual to the periphery; when empowered to speak, it is the voice of the first person, the sufferer, that reveals the role of the soul as central to the transformative movement..

496 Sirek, chapter 6, I will explore Elaine Botha’s work on metaphor.

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Desire is another element important to the understanding of integrity, and conversely to the disintegration that is suffering. In the paradigm that I am proposing, desire, inferring the sensory nature, has the potential to shift one’s identity beyond suffering into flourishing, with an implied acquiescence to the unpleasant travails of irascibility. In the secular paradigm of Cassell, the understanding of desire is quite different. On his view, desire is simply a set of emotions, which harm one’s relationships and interfere with one’s societal roles,497 thus contributing to suffering.

It is in relationships with others that sexuality, giving and receiving love, and expressing happiness, gratitude, anger, and the full range of human emotionality find expression. Therefore in this dimension of the person illness may injure the ability to express emotion. Furthermore, the extent and nature of a sick person’s relationships strongly influence the degree of suffering that a disease may produce.498

By way of example, he recounts an anecdote. A man who wanted to stop his futile chemotherapy treatments screamed at his wife, “Damn you, you’re just trying to get out and leave me like you always have.” The wife was stunned at his perception of the situation because she regarded herself as faithful, caring, and attentive. Cassell comments that suffering amplifies relationships that are sound but also those that are already falling apart.499 A failing marriage may be accurately described in terms of the analyses of psychology, as Cassell does. However, when one is restricted to nothing but the analytical science of the finite human mind, after trying several possible interventions, one ends up feeling hopeless in the face of persisting cycles

497 Cassell, The Nature of Suffering and the Goals of Medicine. 274. 498 Ibid., 39. 499 Ibid., 39.

187 of violent, marital agonism.500 In the paradigm that I am proposing, the failing marriage is understood at the level of suffering-as-evil. By introducing this dimension of evil there is also the divine offer of subverting evil.501 The subversion of evil becomes possible as a movement of contemplative intimacy with Divine

Justice and Mercy. When abiding in the divine perfections, the sensory nature, with its appetitive irascibility, is aroused. The irascibility of the passions serves to move one out of the bondage to evil with its illusive solutions into the freedom for a re- configured vitality grounded in a new set of goods quite distinct from those of analytical problem-solving. On this view, the desire to have one’s needs met introduces Divine Justice and Mercy into the psycho-social institution of marriage, transforming not only the atomic self but the marriage relationship as well. On this view, desire is harnessed and sanctified, implying struggle as well as delight, towards the instantiation of the divine perfections of justice and mercy.

By contrast, Cassell works from the perspective that desire ought to be relinquished. He addresses desire in the context of mindfulness practice, which he understands to be a way of displacing fear. The fearful patient, understood to be suffering on account of this fear,

cannot give up her fears; she cannot relinquish her sense of future, despite the agony they cause her. Because of its temporal nature, suffering can frequently be relieved in the face of continued distress by causing the sufferers to root themselves in the absolute present— “This moment and only this moment.” Unfortunately this is difficult to accomplish.502

500 I will discuss cycles of violence in the chapter 6, and more fully in 7.i. 501 The view from above might use the term “grace” to describe this potential to subvert evil. 502 Ibid., 35.

188

Unfortunately Cassell does not footnote his reference to mindfulness practice. Jon

Kabat-Zinn pioneered the practice of mindfulness as a way of coping with stress, not as a way of numbing out suffering. Describing his eight-week program, Kabat-Zinn writes, “…[W]e invite [the participants] to do something radically new for themselves, namely to experiment with living intentionally from moment to moment.”503 This is not the same as hedonistically living “for the moment.” As a secularized spiritual process, mindfulness does not attempt to transcend reality but rather to teach a discipline in which participants develop heightened awareness of their own corporeality. The practice of mindfulness is to “listen to their own bodies and minds, and to begin trusting their own experience more.”504 Mindfulness is thus not a suspending of desire, as Cassell has understood, but rather an increasing awareness of one’s desires and cognitions as well as the whole spectrum of one’s physicality, from itches to pains. He again cites his (mis)understanding of religion.

“Some Eastern theologies suggest that desire is the source of human suffering. To end suffering one must give up desire.”505 Moreover, for Cassell, to give up desire means to give up hope, by which he means, “the enchantment of the future.”

In the paradigm that I am proposing, hope is an irascible passion, and thereby moves one towards the good, out of harm’s way.

It is easy to understand how the unpleasant irascible passions could be

(mis)understood as suffering.

503 Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness. 19. 504 Ibid. 505 Cassell, The Nature of Suffering and the Goals of Medicine. 35.

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The nature of the illness or impairments produced by it may make it appear to be impossible for the person to live in public without shame, thus rupturing previous relationships with friends or even family members. In some situations, the illness or life events may make continued connections with loved ones problematic or impossible, thus setting in motion grief and bereavement. Individual roles—mother, doctor, executive, athlete, and life-of-the-party—may be impossible to sustain and thus destroy self-respect and the person’s face to the world. Similarly, work, which may have loomed large in the person’s life before the process of event that started the suffering, might now be impossible, taking away the person’s life. Hopes dreams and aspirations for the future may be seen as disappearing, stranding the person in the unsatisfactory present. Unconscious conflicts and repressed traumas are often reactivated by the pain or the illness so that, for example, the person abused in childhood begins to see the pain and illness as a repetition of the abuse, re-inhabiting as a consequence, the role of marginalized victim. Self-conflict, as constant feature of suffering, emerges between, for example, the needs of the person ad the needs of the body, … self-esteem, the desire to be approved of, the desire to be considered superior, and the desire to be like those one admires have been recognized as motives for human behaviour since the eighteenth century…. The sick person has these desires, but illness may prevent their realization. That does not stop the desire; instead it feeds self-conflict.506

Cassell makes a series of sensitive observations about persons who are struggling, and he interprets these experiences as suffering. An alternate reading of such experiences would be that the arduous passions of anger, despair, fear, courage, and hope, as well as pain and sorrow, are the “symptoms” of integration-in-progress. In other words, the process of emergence from the disintegration of suffering into the integration of flourishing is hard work. In the paradigm that I am proposing, the dynamism of the arduous passions can be distinguished from the sense of

“stuckness” associated with suffering. Cassel identifies experiences of conflict, humiliation, despair, loneliness, weakness, and vulnerability with suffering. By contrast, I am interpreting those same experiences as offering the potential of integration. The paradigm that I am proposing discovers a particular movement of integration precisely when evil immobilizes with the conclusion that all resources

506 Ibid., 274.

190 have been exhausted. Because desire is integral to the very soul of the sufferer, to harness this desire is to enable moral agency in the face of suffering-as-evil.

When the passions are disallowed, and indeed seen to constitute suffering, then lament takes on a distorted meaning. Cassell’s exegesis of the Book of Job offers an example of such distortion, in which he understands the deity as a grotesque source of suffering.507 Citing the same passage that Burrell used, he lands upon an entirely different understanding.

In the Book of Job, Job in the extreme of his suffering, which he feels is undeserved, wants to plead his case directly with God. But his bodily affliction and fear have undermined his being: “There is no umpire between us, who might lay his hand upon us both. Let him take his rod away from me, and let not dread of him terrify me. Then I would speak without fear of him, for I am not so in myself.”(Job 9:33-35) The actions of others can increase the fears of the sick.508

When the rationality of symbol and religious imagery is disallowed, this passage is understood in terms of the default rationality of principles, i.e., judgements of right and wrong. Rather than the image of a creature constantly receiving new life from a donative Creator, we now have an adjudicated being pleading for existence from the deity. The secular imagination does not see Job’s lament arising as a life-giving cry from within the dynamic creature-Creator relationship; it understands the lament to be the suffering. For Cassell, it is the external acts, when proceeding according to the person’s set roles, which define the integrity of wellness or the disintegration of suffering. “Persons do things. They act, create, make, take apart, put together, wind, unwind, cause to be, and cause to vanish. They know themselves and are known by these acts.”509 Cassell’s paradigm fails to account for the possibility that, in a stance

507 Sirek, chapter 5, iii. 508 Cassell, The Nature of Suffering and the Goals of Medicine. 39-40. 509 Ibid., 40.

191 of contemplative intimacy with Divine Justice and Mercy, one may undergo suffering, and in the process one may gradually allow one’s sensory irascibility and concupiscibility to fully engage. With time, such a one emerges from suffering and from the turbulence of the passions into an unfolding, radically new identity. Such is the nature of transformation.

5.v. Conclusion

In this chapter I have established two pre-requisites for my proposed narrative heuristic in suffering. Firstly, the hylomorphism of human nature demands that in suffering one pursue the movement from disintegration to integrity. Secondly, religious images that enable intensification of the shared desire between creature and Creator have the graced power to shift a person’s identity from suffering (evil) into the flourishing that is human participation in Divine Justice and Mercy.

Suffering, when viewed “from below,” becomes an experience to be described in terms of one’s vitality, expanding or constricting, growing or shrinking, bound or free, alive or dead, etc. When vitality is at stake, the language of movement is a good fit. Movement has a direction—towards the good and away from evil. The logical sequencing follows from one particular setting to the next towards an ultimate goal, which is mysterious Divine Justice and Mercy. Such mystery is conveyed by religious symbolism and is occluded by the language of proof and adjudication.

When viewed “from above,” suffering becomes a subject matter to be intellectually mastered. When the mastery of a subject matter is at stake, a discourse of principles of true and false prevails. Using universals, the logic proceeds according to proof and justification. Theodicy is an example of this approach;

192 religious imagery is reduced to its analytical principles of goodness, justice, power, and love, making God into a concept, which may invalidate the sufferer’s experience.

This habit of analytic cognition is found also in science, where religious imagery is inadmissible; scientific thinking has become a cultural bias that obstructs anything that is not a solution-based approach to suffering.

The hylomorphism of human nature offers a way out of this destructive scientific bias that has so profoundly restricted our cultural approach to suffering. This religious perspective, informed by the Summa of Thomas Aquinas, affords a view of the intellectual nature as beginning and completing its intellection with the phantasms and intentiones of the sensory nature. What this means in terms of the sensory nature is seen most clearly when we appropriate the view “from below.”

The recollecting, imagining, and collating, as well as the deepest, full-bodied yearnings are the operations of the sensory nature; these operations are geared to move a person out of harm’s way, i.e., suffering, towards flourishing. And the ultimate flourishing is intuitively known to be a mystery, expressed only analogically as coming to rest in God. There are no proofs available, only resurrection narratives both ancient and contemporary. In order to assuage the suffering of the isolated and exiled intellectual nature, with its apathy, stripped of all subjectivity, habituated to nothing but evidence-based objectivity, that intellectual nature must become re-integrated with its sensory nature re-vitalized. Such re- integration can occur only in the symbolic language of a graced and healing transformation experienced in the contemplative stance of mutual loving desire between creature and Creator.

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It is to this language of re-integration to which I will now turn. The imagination must be stimulated with stories and images so as to once again know the meaning of good and evil. The passions must be allowed to play out, ordered to a good that coheres with images of one’s ultimate beatitude. Sensory experience is allowed to aggregate into wisdom, complementing and grounding the capacities of a cognition that has become afflicted and oppressed by its own disembodied condition of

(Rosenbaum’s) “Reason.”

Chapter 6. Suffering: a Turn to Narrative

In the previous chapters I have pursued a quest for a missing intelligence that would complement with its “Meaning” the prevailing modality of theoretical “Reason,” signifying principlism and empiricism. The mode of rationality prevalent both in theology/philosophy and in science pursues the truth of abstract principles and laws. It has been my experience that although cognitively aware of the principles, a human person who is desirous of a particular good at this time in these specific circumstances moves according to a mode of rationality that is distinct from our abstract theoretical thinking. The modality of rationality identified by Thomas as practical reason would seem to be this intelligence that requires re-appropriation in modernity. Practical reason is that innate intelligence of the sensory nature, which knows what to do for now in these circumstances. It is the (higher) intelligence, which distinguishes a particular harm from a specific good and then mounts a set of passions to move one towards attaining that good. This modality of reason attaches the “Meaning” of harm or good to one’s experiences, guiding the movement of progressive emergence from suffering into flourishing. If the context of medical ethics is human suffering, and if an element of “Meaning” is observed to be absent from our prevailing heuristic, then I suggest that practical reason becomes this missing intelligence. When suffering is the context, then besides the truth of ones’ sciences, laws, and principles, one must consider the situation in terms of the harm and the good. In the preceding chapters, I have established that the harm and the

194 195 good are to be understood as the emergence from the paralyses of suffering into the freedom for flourishing.

Having established from my theological sources that the “Meaning” of suffering is to be overwhelmed by evil,510 I now turn to the second part of this project, which is the task of transliterating this newfound understanding from theological/ philosophical terms into other modalities of articulation. While our scientific language and that of theological and philosophical inquiry follows the heuristic of critical analyses, abstract hypotheses, arguments of justification, and experimental proofs, I suggest that the work of practical reason is better served by a new language that remains to be defined. It is the elements of this new discourse in service of practical reason that I will propose in the next two chapters.

In chapter 6, I will examine features of narrative discourse, including the power of metaphor,511 as well as the nature of what one understands to be good.512 I will contrast approaches to ethics guided by a rationality of principlism513 and by a storied intelligence (practical reason).514 Stories spell out the teller’s “Meaning” through the use of metaphors and images. The storied intelligence of practical reason must engage the sensory nature at the apprehensive and at the appetitive levels; the teller and the listener must both sense-feel the situation and must come

510 Sirek, chapter 3 511 Botha, Metaphor and Its Moorings: Studies in the Grounding of Metaphorical Meaning. 512 MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? 513 Beauchamp and Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics. 514 Charon and Montello, “Introduction: Memory and Anticipation: The Practice of Narrative Ethics.” Charon and Zoloth, “Like an Open Book: Reliability, Intersubjectivity, and Textuality in Bioethics.”Joan McCarthy, “Principlism or Narrative Ethics: Must We Choose between Them?,” Medical Humanities 29, no. 2 (2003): 65–71.

196 to desire something as culmination and conclusion of the narration. If the goal of practical reason in medical ethics is not merely to convey information but to move from suffering into flourishing, then the story must take on a very particular

“Meaning;” it becomes a story that enables a healing shift in identity. Moreover, if the goal is an identity shift from harm to good, then the notion of the good must reflect growth of the interiority and cannot be restricted to merely amassing empirically observable good deeds on the outside.

In these next two chapters I cross many academic boundaries in order to elaborate the many features of this discourse of practical reason. I propose the term, analogic, to describe the language of this modality of intelligence, which thus becomes distinct from the well-established and familiar heuristic of analytic inquiry.

6.i. practical reason and metaphor.

In the Christian religious tradition, symbols are mundane movements, objects, or words that mediate the divine energies of creative transformation.515 It is this identity of mediating the divinization of creation that gives rise to a vision of the integrated, material-immaterial, human creature as analogical with respect to the divine Creator.

The human being is possessed of a spirit that wrestles with experiences of suffering and evil so that it can induct material reality into an as-yet-unknown state of flourishing, a process which engages the complex workings of practical reason.516 It

515 Richard P. McBrien, Catholicism (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1994) 787. 516 This is not intended as a negation of the relevance of the truth, which is presented by the theoretical speculative modality of reason. It is a distinction intended to help identify the lost rationality of “Meaning.”

197 is practical reason (with information from speculative intellect and from sensory particular reason) that recognizes suffering as the known, mundane domain, and moves corporeal nature towards the beatitude of the mysterious as-yet-unknown.

All of these statements refer to the same thing: the human process originates in and returns to the material sensory experience517 even as it gropes towards and is constantly re-configured by the mysterious, sacred unknown. In the academic field of linguistics, this intellectual capacity of bridging between the familiar and the unknown has been identified as the idiom of metaphor. Thus metaphor would seem to be an element important to evolving new language around suffering. In the context of suffering, the power of metaphor to reveal meaning beyond experiences of harm becomes a heuristic that serves as an important counterpoint to the logic of empiricism.518

In Elaine Botha’s view, the modern academy has been shaped by the objectivist paradigm, and has regarded the linguistic metaphor as a “deviant form” of “literal language.” However, Botha aligns herself with the perspective of “North American philosophers, cognitive scientists and linguists [who] have developed their own alternative non-objectivist stance in which knowledge is viewed as being the result of an ongoing interpretation that emerges from our embodied capacities of understanding.”519 Whereas knowledge in the objectivist, scientific paradigm is abstracted out of reality into a strictly representational, mirror-like imprint of nature upon the mind, the philosophers of phenomenology have advanced “a more

517 Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature: A Philosophical Study of Summa Theologiae Ia,75-89. 518 Botha, Metaphor and Its Moorings: Studies in the Grounding of Metaphorical Meaning. 519 Ibid., 21-23.

198 dynamic and ‘full bodied’ understanding of the nature of knowledge….”520

Knowledge is now to be seen as dependent upon our language and our social history, i.e., meaning is always anchored in our human materiality. For Botha, the meaning of metaphor rests upon

the non-propositional and pre-conceptual structures.521

The patterns that constrain meaning are those embedded in human culture and the physiological interaction with the world.522

[There are] meaning gestalts connected to structures of bodily experience and pre- conceptual structures of our sensibility.523

Meaning is not a primal concept; meaning is firstly experiential. Similarly, memory and recognition do not involve a re-presentation in the sense of a precise mirroring of previous experience. It is rather an imaginative appropriation of present experience in light of what has previously been experienced and is now re-collected.

The notion of understanding as ‘a way of being in’ or ‘having’ a world emphasizes the interactive character of understanding, and meaning is developed in opposition to what Johnson regards as the erroneous objectivist claim that “only a viewpoint that transcends human embodiment, cultural embeddedness, imaginative understanding, and location within historically evolving tradition can guarantee the possibility of objectivity.”524

For Botha the cognitive system is an embodied structure, dependent upon experience, with implications for action. Action is the “en-action of… a domain of distinctions that is inseparable from the structure embodied by the cognitive system.”525 This cognitive structure is more “like a background—a setting of and

520 Ibid., 24. 521 Ibid., 25. She aligns herself with the scholarship of Johnson, Lakoff, Hesse, and others. See 23-29. 522 Ibid., 26. 523 Ibid., 29. 524 M. Johnson, The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason. (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1987) 175. Quoted in Botha, Metaphor and its Moorings, 28. 525 Ibid., 31.

199 field for all our experience, but one that cannot be found apart from our structure, behaviour, and cognition.”526 The perspective in which subject views object is now displaced by an alternate paradigm, one which opens up the possibility of creative cognition towards context-dependent, interactive, and dynamic know-how.527

Cognition is not representation but embodied action, which depends upon the kinds of sensori-motor capacities that are in turn embedded in biological, psychological, and cultural contexts. The world we cognize is not a pre-given world but one enacted through our history of “structural coupling.528

This “structural coupling” of cognition has two aspects: “In the first instance perception consists in perceptually guided action, and in the second instance cognitive structures emerge from the recurrent sensorimotor patterns that enable action to be perceptually guided.”529 In other words, embodied cognition is enriched by the diversity found in the particulars; disembodied cognition is impoverished by the lack of experiences of contingency. On Botha’s view, metaphor, both tethered to sensory experience and open to the as-yet-unknown, is the linguistic idiom that human intelligence uses to arrive at meaning.

In Thomas one finds a remarkably similar understanding to Botha’s. He posits the interior senses of intention, memory, and imagination, all of which depend upon imprinted sensory images or “phantasms.” Robert Pasnau interprets the phantasms as “remnants of sensation,” or “left over sensory impressions.”530 The dynamic of

526 R. Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princetin University Press, 1981). 527 F. Varella, E Thompson, and E. Rosch., The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991). xvi. Quoted in Botha, Metaphor and its Moorings,31 528 Ibid., 31. 529 F. Varella, E Thompson, and E. Rosch., The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991). fn1.Quoted in Botha, Metaphor and its Moorings, 31. 530 Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature: A Philosophical Study of Summa Theologiae Ia,75-89.

200 sensory apprehension depends upon a complex array of senses both external and interior.531

Through the sensory soul an animal must not only receive the species of things that are sensible when they, being present, make an impression on that animal, but it must also retain and preserve these species.532

Memory stores a phantasm once the cogitative sense has shaped it with some basic meaning; the primal phantasm becomes an intentio of the sensory interiority. Thus for Thomas, recollection has a sensory quality, like in Botha’s description. Pasnau offers an illustration.

When you call to mind the generic image (or sound or smell) of an elephant you are using phantasia. When you call to mind an image (sound, smell) of an elephant that you associate with some particular past experience—in the zoo, on safari, and so on—then you are using memory. 533

In his comprehensive manner of describing the sensory human nature, Thomas elabrates what is implicit in Botha’s thought, namely, imagination. The interior senses of cogitative sense/intentio and memory are enhanced in their capacity for meaning-making by the third interior sense, the imagination.

Although the first impression on the power of imagination occurs through the movement of sensibles,… still there is an operation of the human soul that, by dividing and compounding, forms different images of things, even ones that have not been taken in by the senses.534

Beginning with primal sensation, a cascade of images can superimpose upon one another, like a kaleidoscope, through the work of imagination. Thomas gives the example of the image of gold and the image of a mountain, which can be associated together in the imagination to form a new image, a golden mountain. The golden

531 Sirek, 2.2.ii. I elaborate on the complex Thomistic process of sensory apprehension. 532 ST.I.78.4. 533 Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature: A Philosophical Study of Summa Theologiae Ia,75-89. 281. 534 ST.I.84.6.2

201 mountain, in an open-ended manner, is an image that suggests a rich set of possible new meanings, eg. wealth, stability, glory, height, divinity, illumination, climbing, alchemy, etc.535 The Thomistic, sensory phantasms become the data, which at a secondary level intellect uses in cognition. The substrate for intellection is imprinted, experiential, sensory information (phantasms) that has been shaped by the cogitative sense and by imagination and is stored in memory as intentiones. The interior senses confer a level of meaning upon sense data even before the higher intellect engages. Thus for Thomas as for Botha, meaning begins as sensory experience not as primal cognition.

I have juxtaposed two sets of ideas. Firstly, we have Botha’s contemporary description of metaphor, a linguistic modality, which bridges between sensory experience and the cognitive pursuit of meaning-making. Secondly we have Thomas’ description of sensory apprehension as pre-cognitional meaning-making. The important role of imagination, memory, and cogitative sense/particular reason, tacit elements in Botha’s text and explicit in Thomas’ work, will be developed in the next chapter. In this chapter, Botha’s identification of the potential of metaphor to shape and to transform meaning is positioned as a key characteristic of the language of analogy in a narrative of suffering. This central role of metaphor will lead into a discussion in chapter 7 around images of life and death. Using Caroline Walker

Bynum’s work in which she has collected the imagery used by early Christians to describe death and resurrection, I will suggest that some of these images refer to situations of bondage and death to be shunned as evils, and some to states of

535 ST.I.78.4

202 transformation and vitality to be pursued as good.536 In this thesis project, I am envisioning that the overarching metaphor of this new language for communication around suffering become an image of movement. The movement has a specified direction: it shifts one’s identity from suffering towards flourishing.

Botha has articulated the insight that certain important and prevailing metaphors have the power to plant an ideology in the undiscriminating mind, which curtails the potential of other metaphors. Science holds that the truth can be found only through the rational process of scientific de-mystification, a statement that Botha views as a metaphor of modern culture. When viewed as a metaphor, one can better appreciate the power that this statement, which de-legitimizes metaphors of good and evil by declaring science to be the exclusive discourse of reality. From Botha’s perspective, the metaphor that is modern science has implanted an ideology powerful enough to confound and to subvert other ways of viewing the world.537

Perhaps the most salient point where the need for the delineation of ontic boundaries becomes acute is the challenge to identify ideologies. Any attempt at diagnosing metaphorical hypertrophy (internal ideological derailment) in science necessarily has to appeal to some philosophical interpretation of the limits set by these ontic boundaries.538

She points out the multivocity and complexity that metaphoric thinking enables when it is reclaimed, even in science. “…[M]ultivocity [of meaning] becomes apparent on the level of theoretical concept formation and the displacement of meaning when one theoretical paradigm is replaced by another.”539 Thinking with metaphors is open-ended in terms of cognized meanings and at the same time

536 Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336. 537 Ibid., 51-2, 60. 538 Ibid., 52. 539 Botha, Metaphor and Its Moorings: Studies in the Grounding of Metaphorical Meaning. 130.

203 tethered in terms of sensory corporeal experience. It is my intention to offer to medical ethics this language of metaphor, using images of movement and transformation in circumstances of suffering, so that the practice of medicine is enriched beyond the “hypertrophy” of scientific “Reason” and its entrenched metaphors.

What Christianity offers is an approach to suffering through images of mystery and meanings of good/evil, allowing one to suspend the scientific heuristic of demystification and to draw upon a more ancient and nuanced wisdom-based tradition. The image that the Christian tradition offers is that of a relationship of intimacy between the creature and the Creator.540 This analogy of creature to

Creator is a powerful and transformative image. As Botha writes, “A powerful analogy can re-structure, disturb, influence and change our category structures”541

Although in medicine one may begin with the non-analogic likenesses and propositional logic of science, it is the metaphors of analogy that reveal meaning in the context of suffering and mystery. It is images and metaphors, with their inherent open-endedness of meaning, that have the power to induct intelligent, sensory, human nature into a new order of identity. The fragmentation of one’s person in suffering542 may restrict the meaning of one’s identity to this state of suffering, because the sensory corporeal experience is so strong. But if images of flourishing can be configured in the imagination, then the desire for a new identity can be

540 Genesis, 1 and 2. 541 M. Turner, “Categories and Analogies,” in Analogical Reasoning: Perspectives of Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Science, and Philosophy, ed. D Helman (Dordrecht: Kluwer Publishers, 1988)25- 40. Quoted in Botha, Metaphor and its Moorings, 19. 542 Sirek, 5.iv

204 insinuated into the consciousness. There is an important plasticity in the human identity, which allows evil to be dis-entrenched by the new allure of some contingent good. This shift in identity from one delimited by suffering and death to one with a new-found potential for vitality and dynamism is tied to the power of metaphor. There is a complex and nuanced human process in which the work of a

Thomistic, interior sense—imagination—expressed in the linguistic idiom of Botha’s metaphor has the power to effect ontologic shifts in identity.

Thomas has distinguished movement towards the good from the intellectual pursuit of truth. Metaphor is possibly unsuited to a questing for universal truths; the dialectic argument of the Western Greco-Roman tradition is well-established as the mode of discourse for the speculative intelligence. By contrast, Thomistic practical reason guides advance towards the good in the context of having been scarred with harm.543 It is these movements that lend themselves to description in the analogies and images of metaphor. But analogic rationality of metaphor in the context of suffering and its paralyses has been eclipsed by the powerful influence of our modern scientific idioms, as mentioned above, and what has prevailed is a language around suffering in terms of the familiar, problem-solution dialectic of scientific reason. A proposal of this thesis project is that if ethics were to re-discover practical reason, with its advance into flourishing, even as one bears the scars of suffering, then metaphors of movement would become important. A rationality of movement engages experiences in which one has been vulnerable to forces of immobilization as well as empowered by internalized energies of re-animation.

543 Sirek, 4.ii

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6.ii. the inadequacy of principlism.

In contrast to the image-based, analogic heuristic described above, the prevailing approach in medical ethics relies exclusively upon universal principles arranged into some abstract hypothesis, as though this scientific methodology ordered towards discovering the truth were capable also of defining the good.544 To critique this existing principalist approach, I will use the lens of analogic thinking and images of a movement of emergence from suffering. In other words, I will show how difficult it is to suspend the entrenched metaphors of science and to engage metaphors of movement. I corroborate Rosenbaum’s observation that the modality of “Reason,” tends to eclipse the intelligence of “Meaning.” She correctly points out that where there is even a flicker of life, the ethical medical professional aligns with the struggle to move a vulnerable being out of harm’s way towards an instantiation of flourishing. This is the work of practical reason and its habits of the sensory nature more than it is the outcome of an analytic, theoretical rationality and its habits of cognition. This distinction between the theoretical thinking of principlism

544 I am careful to distinguish the speculative modality of rationality in the paradigm of metaphysics from the contemporary speculative rationalities of principlism of medical ethics and the empiricism of science. In metaphysics, the theoretical speculative mode of rationality proceeds by contemplating the universal form(s) of perfection in order to recognize such universals in the contingency of reality. Conversely practical reason proceeds from the wisdom aggregated by experiences of particularity towards the universal truth. The liberalist principlism of our contemporary medical ethics is characterized by a mode of theoretical logic that works with abstract hypotheses, which originate and culminate in the cognizing self, without engaging the sensory nature with its apprehensions, appetitions, and contemplations. In this project, I propose that the ancient understanding of practical reason has much to offer as a corrective to principlism in ethics. While both a speculative rationality of metaphysics and a speculative rationality of science/principlism pursue the true, practical reason pursues the good as distinct from the quest for the true. And, while the truth and the good stand to be integrated progressively in the life lived, one must guard against a facile conflation of these two aspects of perfection. When the true and the good are kept distinct, then the two rational modalities concerned can be clearly distinguished. I am proposing that this distinction in modalities of reason will serve to enrich the deliberations of medical ethics.

206 and the habitual practice of a life-giving act will guide the following discussion on principalist medical ethics.

In this section, I will restrict my discussion of principlist medical ethics to the text of Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress,545 as their text has become the leading ethics textbook for medical education; I will not engage the texts of Catholic principlism other than to note that such authors exist.546 I begin my discussion of a principalist medical ethics by referring to an occurrence about 50 years ago; human subjects incarcerated in the Tuskegee prison were subjected to degrading procedures in the interest of advancing the knowledge of science.547 In response to this objectionable research initiative, the US government mandated a group of select theologians to develop a consensus on principles that would guide future medical research. These principles are autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice, which are explicated in the classic text, now in its fifth edition, by Beauchamp and

545 Beauchamp, Tom L., Childress, James F., Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 5th edition, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001) 546 It is noteworthy that, in addition to the secular principlism of Beauchamp and Childress, a Catholic principlism has become the accepted modus operandi in Catholic medical ethics discourse. The principle of double effect is an idiom believed to convey a Thomistic perspective on ethics. It has found traction because medical ethics, like most disciplines in modernity, has privileged concept over movement. To supplement this theoretical speculation, the practical dimension in ethics has traditionally been provided by a method of casuistry in which the circumstances of one case are compared to that of a pre-existing case. The principle of double effect is abstracted from ST II-II.64.7: Nothing hinders one act from having two effects, only one of which is intended, while the other is beside the intention. Now moral acts take their species according to what is intended, and not according to what is beside the intention,… From this text have arisen principles such as praeter intentionem, permissible harm, permissible killing, to name just a few. These principles presume a legal codification of a priori rightness and wrongness, and generate arguments of justification, expressed in the voice of the third person observer/adjudicator. The problem, as with all principlism, is that the voice of the sufferer is not integral to the paradigm. For an excellent text that works (uncritically) with these principles see: T.A. Cavanaugh, Double Effect Reasoning: Doing Good and Avoiding Evil, Oxford Studies in Theological Ethics, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006) 547 Heintzelman, “The Tuskegee Syphilis Study and Its Implications for the 21st Century.” See also Sirek, Introduction, P1.

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Childress. Although originally intended for research ethics, these principles have become central to difficult, clinical deliberations even in non-research settings. I will show that, in a clinical setting, an ethics of principles offers an inadequate heuristic for the professional, who listens to narratives of suffering-as-evil.

The presumption underlying principlism is that norms, if adequately refined, will bring about a good act. Beauchamp and Childress define their Method of

Specification as follows:

a process of reducing the indeterminateness of abstract norms and providing them with action-guiding content. For example, the specification ‘do not harm’ is an all-too-bare starting point for thinking through problems, such as assisted suicide and euthanasia. It will not adequately guide action when norms conflict.548

The elision of norms and the moral good is presumed. The project of “normative ethics” is to examine the many existing ethical theories, “attempting to identify and justify these norms.”549 These abstract theories are then applied in the discipline of

“practical ethics,” whereby the point is “to implement general norms and theories for particular problem contexts.”550 The process involves “theory, argument, and analysis to examine moral problems, practices, and policies in professions, institutions, and public policy.”551 There is also “non-normative ethics,” which is divided into two subcategories. The first is descriptive non-normative ethics, which relies upon “scientific techniques to study how people reason and act, including such sciences as anthropology, sociology, psychology, and history, to identify the moral norms and attitudes expressed in codes of conduct, mission statements, and

548 Beauchamp and Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics. 16. 549 Ibid., 3. 550 Ibid., 2. 551 Ibid.

208 rules.”552 The second is “metaethics,” which analyzes concepts, language and the methods of reasoning in ethics.553 “It also treats moral epistemology… and the logic and patterns of moral reasoning and justification, as well as investigating whether morality is subjective or objective, relative or non-relative, and rational or emotional.”554 Beauchamp and Childress state that their objective is to examine whether such norms are justifiable.

Descriptive ethics and metaethics are grouped together as nonnormative because their objective is to establish what factually or conceptually is the case, not what ethically ought to be the case. Often in this book we cite descriptive ethics—for example, when discussing current professional codes of ethics. However, our underlying interest is usually in whether the prescriptions of such codes are justifiable, which is a normative issue.555

We can recognize in this approach the voice of the scientific observer, who, as one accustomed to universalizing empirical norms, applies this same heuristic towards an adjudication of arguments of justification. What remains tacit is the sufferer’s actual, corporeal movement away from evil towards the good. Something important is not being said because the language of principlism reflects the working of a kind of speculative theoretical rationality, which has become fragmented off from practical reason. Moreover, as is characteristic of modernity’s version of speculative reason, although the starting point may be observations of reality, the goal is abstract universals. This rationality reflects the mind of the scientific observer, not a sufferer’s first-hand experiential wisdom.

552 Ibid., 2. 553 Ibid. 554 Ibid. 555 Ibid.

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A further limitation of the B&C principalist paradigm is the understanding of virtuous character. “[W]e care especially about [a person’s] characteristic motives, that is, motives deeply embedded in their character.”556 For example, one usually approves of a person whose action is motivated by sympathy and personal affection and disapproves when the same act is motivated by personal ambition.557

Imagine a person who discharges a moral obligation because it is an obligation, but who intensely dislikes being placed in a position in which the interests of others override his or her own interests. This person does not feel friendly toward or cherish others, and he or she respects their wishes only because obligation requires it. This person can nonetheless perform morally right action and have a disposition to perform that action. But if the motive is improper, a critical moral ingredient is missing; and if a person characteristically lacks this motivational structure, a necessary condition of virtuous character is absent. The act may be right and the actor blameless, but neither the person nor the act is virtuous. In short people may be disposed to do what is right, intend to do it, and do it, while also yearning to avoid doing it. Persons who characteristically perform morally right actions from such a motivational structure are not morally virtuous even if they always perform the morally right action.558

Acts done just because one feels obliged to perform them are not yet morally good acts. On this view, acts are morally neutral until shaped by the “motivational structure.” But what is meant by the motivational structure? In this project I have shown that it is the sensory nature that gives meaning to acts as morally repugnant, alluring , or OK-to-ignore. Anscombe has elaborated the difficulty with conflating cognitive motivation with sensory intention. 559 In chapter 4 I have shown that an ethics of moral motivation suppresses the sensory interiority of intentionality, enabling an act such as killing to be justified as morally obligated.560 When the

556 Ibid., 27. 557 Ibid. 558 Ibid. 559 Anscombe, Intention. Sirek, chapter 7 560 Sirek, 4.c.ii

210 sensory voice of intention shifts to the intellectual voice of motive, ethics discourse can bring about harm.

The current debate on Medical Assistance in Dying is an example of legislation that may bring harm. The institutional voice in favour of euthanasia mounts a persuasive argument based upon motive, but remains unmoved by the contrapuntal voice of sensed moral abhorrence. The current Ontario legislation, which encodes the right to bring about the termination of one’s own life, has the corollary of obligating a physician (as well as a nurse and a pharmacist) to use their professional competencies to effect this termination of life. For a professional whose intention

(sensory nature) is to support life not to end it, such an act takes on the repugnance of killing, if not outright murder. By privileging the argument of justification, the legislation adjudicates the non-co-operating physician as guilty of non-compliance with the law, and the co-operating physician as not guilty of murder. As it now stands, the “morally right action” is independent of the interiority of the clinical agent. Moral agency is reduced to compliance with the request to be killed, silencing the one whose deepest desire is not to kill. In the paradigm that I am proposing, a request to be killed calls forth a response from professionals of virtuous integrity; both the sensory and the intellectual natures engage to apprehend the suffering and to make a move towards flourishing. The visceral revulsion, discerned and scrutinized by the workings of practical reason integrated with speculative intelligence, ultimately finds its expression in an act of emergence from suffering into flourishing in some small way. The solution to suffering, i.e., the obliteration of suffering and sufferer as in the current legislation, does not express the work of

211 virtuous integrity. In the paradigm that I am proposing, a technically competent act cannot be construed as a just and virtuous act on account of the agent’s motive to be in compliance with legislation. Nor is the desire to please and placate the patient an expression of virtuous character. Virtue does not necessarily do what others want, neither at a personal nor at an institutional level. It is experiences of harm and good lived in contemplative intimacy with Divine Justice and Mercy that contour the character in virtues such as prudence, justice, and compassion.

Lacking the symbolic meanings and images of intimacy with Divine Justice and

Mercy, the secular view assigns the origin of virtue to consensus.561 Their understanding of compassion is of particular interest to my project.

The virtue of compassion is a trait that combines an attitude of active regard for another’s welfare with an imaginative awareness and emotional response of deep sympathy, tenderness, and discomfort at another’s misfortune or suffering. Compassion presupposes sympathy, has affinities with mercy, and is expressed in acts of beneficence that attempt to alleviate the misfortune of suffering of another person. Unlike integrity, which is focused on the self, compassion is focused on others.562

While I concur with the description, the origin of compassion is self-referential. In the absence of analogical perceptivity, human compassion is not understood as a mediation of Divine Justice and Mercy. Beauchamp and Childress understand compassion in terms of the work of Hume, Kant, and Spinoza; the moral good is a matter of objective rationality, which is in opposition to affective movement.

They [Kant and Spinoza] have maintained that a passionate (even compassionate) engagement with others frequently blinds reason and impartial reflection. Health care professionals understand and appreciate this phenomenon. Constant contact with suffering can overwhelm and even paralyze a compassionate physician or nurse. Impartial judgment gives way to impassioned decisions and emotional burnout sometimes occurs. To counteract this problem, medical and nursing education is designed to inculcate detachment as well as compassion. The language of detached concern and compassionate

561 Beauchamp and Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics. 32. 562 Ibid.

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detachment occasionally appears in health care ethics expressly to identify a complex characteristic of the good physician or good nurse. However, misplaced compassion or excessive emotional involvement only serves as a warning, not as grounds for emotional withdrawal. Emotional responses need not be irrational or impulsive. They are often controlled and voluntary. When compassion appropriately motivates and expresses good character, it has a role in ethics alongside impartial reason and impassionate judgment.563

It is inferred that healthcare is primarily focused upon problems and interventions requiring the objective rationality. On the occasion when one engages in the

“constant contact with suffering,” compassion is a necessary virtue, but in opposition to objective rationality. Moreover, compassion requires a tolerance for suffering, whereas objective rationality is concerned with erasing suffering.

A rationality that suppresses the virtue of compassion is not good for a profession that deals with suffering human beings. Contrary to the modernist view put forward by Beauchamp and Childress, it is possible to view rationality not only in terms of problem-solving disease; rationality may also be the practical wisdom around movement through suffering towards flourishing. This more robust understanding of rationality removes the opposition between compassion and rationality. When the virtue of compassion is understood as the habit of increasing sensitivity to suffering, we begin to move against the cultural apathy that Soelle has identified. When the imagination shifts away from the subject-object paradigm of modernity, it is free to retrieve symbolic imagery of flourishing hindered by suffering, which, for the Christian, brings us to a re-appropriation of the Scriptural images of freedom and bondage, death, and resurrection, etc.

563 Ibid., 33-34. Italics as they appear in B & C’s text.

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In summary, the problem with principlism is the imposition of scientific analytic rationality upon particular instances of suffering. On this view, compassion is a hindrance to the rational project of problem-solving. But in this post-modern era, medicine is shaped by the possibilities of ever-more-powerful technologies, which, while marvelous, also may arouse a visceral repugnancy on the level of moral sensibility. When applied to suffering, a juridically proven righteousness, (as in

MAiD) may not feel good at this visceral level. In the paradigm that I am proposing, the universal experience of personal suffering is best regarded not as a problem awaiting analysis and solution, but as participation in the mystery of good and evil that confounds human existence. When the virtue of compassion is regarded as a rationality complementary to speculative intelligence, a fresh approach to the conundrums in medicine becomes possible. Compassion, as a virtue, is a good received in contemplative intimacy with Divine Justice and Mercy, not a self- referential accomplishment defined in terms of scientific rationality. Compassion, understood as a mediation of divine perfection, coheres with the desire shared between creature and Creator to emerge from suffering into flourishing. Thus understood compassion is the flowering of sensory desire ordered around emergence from suffering into ultimate beatitude. Both desire and compassion, ordered towards the good by practical reason, afford a most nuanced integrity to human rationality. Principlism, restricted as it is to speculative scientific reason, is found lacking in the experiential wisdom of practical reason. A discourse open to experiential wisdom around suffering and flourishing re-appropriates ancient religious symbols of evil and good.

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6.iii. the intuition of Narrative Medicine.

The potential of the patient history to provide not only diagnostic clues but also to reveal suffering has been identified by a group of clinicians, who refer to this insight in terms of “narrative medicine.” Their intuition is that while the locus of suffering is the living, sensing body, the ability to speak that suffering and to talk about it unfolds over time. The language of the story being told arises gradually into the consciousness from a kind of non-linguistic body-language in the process of sharing with a listener. Deep listening means to resonate with the other’s suffering at the level of one’s own body. This deep listening both challenges and complements the kind of listening that would analyze away the symptoms into a diagnosis. The emphasis of the narrative medicine group is upon the storied open-ended-ness of this process both for the teller and for the listener. In this section, I will highlight the features of this narrative approach that are relevant to the proposed new language.564

In an effort to identify what principlism does and does not do, Joan McCarthy has noted that, as a method, principlism is like science: hypotheses are proposed, proven, revised, etc. Using the example of truth-telling as a problematic principle in the context of dementia, she shows how an alternate heuristic can be derived from narrative. A nursing home resident with dementia—the “forgetful mourner”—keeps

564 Charon and Montello, “Introduction: Memory and Anticipation: The Practice of Narrative Ethics.” Charon and Zoloth, “Like an Open Book: Reliability, Intersubjectivity, and Textuality in Bioethics.”Rita Charon, Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).

215 on forgetting that her son has died. The “forgetful mourner” experienced renewed distress each time she asked for her son and was told that he had died.

Put simply, on this view, the force of the imperative, “Tell the truth”, derives from its grounding in universally accepted norms, not for example, in the subjective viewpoint or intuition of the health professional. Moreover, even in situations of doubt and uncertainty, such as that of “The forgetful mourner”, the deliberative process which comes into play appeals to reasoning strategies and goals that are also considered objective, not intuitive.565

In response to this incapacity for verbal learning, one of the nurses had the woman put on the same black dress that she wore to the funeral. Wearing the dress seemed to quell the woman’s anguished questioning. The use of the dress appealed to a kind of body-knowing, which served to bypass the disintegrating linguistic process of comprehension. Wearing the dress assuaged the painful anxiety,566 as evidenced by the diminished need to keep asking for her son.567 For McCarthy, this strategy represented an “intuitive strategy,” which supplemented the principle of truth- telling. From my perspective, the excellence of this intuition was in the shift or

565 McCarthy, “Principlism or Narrative Ethics: Must We Choose between Them?” 65-71. 566 Thomas advises on assuaging the pain via sensory stimuli: “[J]ust as all repose of the body brings relief to any kind of weariness, ensuing from any non-natural cause; so every pleasure brings relief by assuaging any kind of sorrow, due to any cause whatever.” (ST.I-II.38.1) 567 Robert Sweetman, “Exemplary Care: Storytelling and the ‘Art of Arts’ among Thirteenth Century Dominicans.,” in Learning to Love: Schools, Law, and Pastoral Care in the Middle Ages. Essays in Honour of Joseph W. Goering., Edited by Tristan Sharp, Isabelle Cochelin, Greti Dinkova-Bruun, Abigail Firey, Giulio Silano. (Toronto: The Pontifical Institute for Medieval Studies, 2017), 628–46. In this article, Sweetman describes the pedagogical value of exemplum, as set out by Etienne de Bourbon, a medieval Dominican monk. “[T]he terminus of pedagogical motion was memory….. [W]ise philosophers give ‘body,’ or sensual tangibility, to their discourses… for an ‘embodied’ discourse travels more easily from sense to imagination, and from imagination to memory.”(633) In this observation, the knowing is likened to a pedagogical motion—movement. Knowing moves in the direction from mind to body, indeed from the teacher’s mind to the learner’s body. In the case of the forgetful mourner, whose mind was disabled, the movement of knowing began in the sensory nature and moved into the mind only very incompletely due to her dementia. I am struck by the reference to the imagination and to the memory, which Thomas has classified as capacities of apprehension in the sensory nature. Ultimately the goal is not the re-configuration of the mind but rather the transformation of the sensory-intellectual nature as a whole. The donning of a garment is not always literal; story can evoke the sensory experience of the garment and its meaning, even in those whose intellectual side is “rough-hewn,” uneducated, and unlikely to appreciate the meaning of the logical argument (634).

216 movement away from the abstract principle of truth telling towards the good of relieving the recurring anxiety; the nurse made a compassionate move to validate the mourner’s loss. By contrast, the paradigm of principlism would try to justify the wearing of the dress in terms of the truth being told. To assuage pain is a good in the practice of medicine; this good has a validity for which truth-telling is not a pre- requisite. A well-practised, clinical imagination enabled the nurse to know what best

(the good) to do under these particular circumstances to assuage the grieving; she created an appeal to the senses, enacted from her intentio of compassion. The bodily reality of dementia precluded the principle of truth-telling. The mourner was able to receive this act of compassion despite her failing cognitive capacities precisely because it was at the level of the sensory-experiential that the act permeated her being.568

To appeal to the sensory aspect of a person’s suffering is not easy. Rita Charon, founder of the narrative medicine movement, both an internist and a literary scholar, wrestles with this sensory aspect as somehow inchoate; the science is easier to master. “Although illness is, indeed, a biological phenomenon, the human response to it is neither biologically determined nor arithmetical.”569 The scientific

568 This story could be re-interpreted with the emphasis upon the authenticity (truthfulness, truth- telling) of the nurse’s maneuver. However, my goal in this thesis is to illumine the work of practical reason so that the awareness of the medical professional comes to see theoretical, scientific “Reason” as a pursuit of the true, which is distinct from the rationality of “Meaning” as a pursuit of the good. The true and the good are integrated, just as theoretical and practical reason are ultimately become integrated. However, learning to distinguish difference is part of the process of integration; the existing problem in medical ethics is the prevailing conflation of truth and goodness. In other words, there exists the (inadequate) presumption that if it makes sense, then it must be true, and if true, therefore morally right and good. 569 Charon and Montello, “Introduction: Memory and Anticipation: The Practice of Narrative Ethics.” ix

217 mind habitually defaults into abstract analyses of the biology of illness or into the statistical probabilities of successful intervention or even into the evaluation of successful application of an ethical principle. But as seen in the anecdote about the

“forgetful mourner,” these responses of the speculative rationality are inadequate in the face of suffering. Charon looks to literary theory to illumine how the professional, as the reader, might respond to the patient, understood as the writer of a text.

[There is] a reciprocal responsibility incurred by the writer who encodes thoughts and feelings into language and by the reader who rescues from words their secrets. Writer and reader (or teller and listener) develop deep powers and intimacies as they meet in text, for the writer, however cannily or uncannily, reveals aspects of the self while the reader, with whatever skill is available, penetrates the text toward that which put it in motion. This literary brand of textual ethics guides the textual actors toward mutual respect and comprehension, while governing the potential for exploitation or expropriation whenever one opens oneself to penetration by another.570

For Charon as for myself, to be a healthcare professional is not merely to interpret symptoms and signs as a semiotic text—the case history—but it is to engage in a kind of communion with the patient who is sharing a story of personal suffering.

Charon refers to the communion between physician and patient as allowing “a reversibility of self and other.” She holds that without the willingness to submit to vulnerability and similarity with the afflicted one no genuine moral deliberation is possible. A close reading of Charon’s text would suggest that this receptivity to the suffering of teller is a sensed corporeal affair. The clinician’s body requires a certain sustained focus beyond the analytical acuity of medical problem-solving. Charon describes this in terms of the attentive stance of mindfulness meditation.571

570 Ibid., 22. 571 Charon, Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness. 132.

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The stance of tonic attention—the habit of mind of openness and readiness to absorb what we see—contributes to the day-in, day-out work of medicine by giving clinicians constantly refreshed of knowledge of the patient and giving the patient an attuned and ready-to-be- surprised doctor.572

It is this habit of bodily receptivity cultivated by the attentive posturing of the body and stillness of the analytical mind which, when integrated with analytic diagnostics, makes a clinician responsive to suffering. She cites Simone Weil on the profound attentiveness of meditation. “Extreme attention is what constitutes the creative faculty in man… Attention alone, that attention which is so full that the I disappears, is required of me.”573 Such marked attentiveness requires the full participation of all faculties, corporeal and intellectual/spiritual.

We clinicians donate ourselves as meaning-making vessels to the patient who tells of his or her situation; we act almost as ventriloquists to give voice to that which the patient emits. I put it that way because the patient cannot always tell, in logical or organized language, that which must be told. Instead, these messages come to us through the patient’s words, silences, gestures, facial expressions, and bodily postures as well as [clinical] physical findings, diagnostic images, and laboratory measurements, and it is our task to cohere these different and sometimes contradictory sources of information so as to create at least provisional meaning.574

I underline Charon’s use of metaphor in this passage; the image of the ventriloquist is how she explicates the doctor’s receptivity as a “meaning-making vessel.” As she temporarily suspends the analytical diagnostic reasoning, she allows herself to resonate with the teller’s body-language, reverently allowing herself to become a

572 Ibid., 134. 573 Ibid., 132. Charon Cites Simone Weil, , “Attention and Will.” Gravity and Grace., trans. Arthur Wills (New York: Putnam, 1952). 170-2. Weil’s remarkable capacity for maintaining a focused state of attention has also been described in terms of a Stoic ethical vigilance, whereby one aligns oneself with the cosmos towards an experience of being subsumed by the creative logos of the cosmos. Yvana Mols, “Weil, Truth and Life: Simone Weil and Ancient Pedagogy as a Way of Life.” (MA, Institute for Christian Studies, 2007). The attentiveness of the mindfulness stance (which is gaining increasing interest in medicine) thus becomes an evolution of the Stoic practice of antiquity, which was adapted by Weil in the first half of the 20th century, and is now being further modified and appropriated in modern medicine by Charon and her colleagues. 574 Ibid., 132.

219 vessel to hold the other’s suffering. She comes to understand the suffering over time, not because she analyzes it, but because her engagement is at the ongoing level of sensory experience. The knowing derived from such aggregation of experience engages far more the prudence of practical reason than the diagnostic data of scientific, speculative reason. It is this aggregation of experience in response to the many retained narratives that in time becomes the narrative of the listener. When not suppressed, the listener too may become the teller of a narrative of suffering, rich and powerful with images of experiential wisdom.

And yet there is a difficulty: our own fragmentation may get in the way. Charon cites Ralph Harper’s reference to “our fragmented and shaky souls, that may be closed to presence when it is offered, and totally unable to give our whole attention, the gift of ourselves as whole, to anyone else.”575 She goes on to explain,

Despite the seeming contradiction or ambiguity of this available yet suspended state of self in attention, the doctor or nurse or social worker who achieves it knows it, as do his or her patients, who can take comfort from the radiance and elevation of being accepted as a mystery, a singularity, a self.576

The approach to this aspect of mystery within the other calls forth a rationality that works at the visceral level. For Charon, when this felt resonance with the storytelling other arises, there is a moral imperative to engage it, not to shut down one’s own listening body in the interest of diagnostics. If we respect the integrity of our own sensory-intellectual wholeness, there is an obligation to grope beyond diagnostic competency in the face of suffering. Charon has described this deepening

575 Ibid., 134. Charon cites Ralph Harper, On Presence: Variations and Reflections. (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1991). 42. 576 Charon, Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness.134.

220 of one’s response to suffering in the imagery of a vessel or a receptacle. I would progress and advance the work of Charon by stating that it is not sufficient to finish the story by becoming a permanent receptacle for the suffering. Such identification with evil eventually expresses itself as Soelle’s apathy, Thomas’ torpor, and modernity’s burnout.577 There is need for more imagery to guide one’s further movement over the progression of time as the narrative continues to take shape.

Following the Thomistic dynamic of apprehension and appetition, the listening vessel-clinician who receives the suffering is engaging the apprehensive aspect of human movement. A hylomorphic understanding of human nature predicts that the imagery around the apprehended suffering must progress into the movements of appetition. The appetitive desire to emerge from suffering/harm into flourishing is essential to completeness. After awakening into an awareness of one’s sensory interiority, imprinted with experiences of harm and suffering, the moral goal is to realize a shift in identity from this bondage towards movement. As the bodily passions come alive, one’s state of apathy and torpor becomes re-animated. The first step in this process of re-animation is lament or sorrow for a good that might have been but was obstructed by some circumstance of deprivation, bondage, or paralyses. Sorrow is the first flicker of vitality recovered, and that first rudimentary flicker must be ordered towards further movement. By engaging the embodied habits of practical reason rather than the abstract principles of speculation, desire

(appetition) moves one forward out of harm’s way as best as possible for now under the complex circumstances. Without this emphasis upon movement, Charon’s

577 Sirek,, chapter 4, (Soelle) & 3, (Thomas).

221 sensibilities might undergo the numbing of apathy due to the nature of all suffering, which is the overwhelming bondage of evil. The quality of narrative is that it moves along and affords this progression from the movements of apprehension of suffering to the appetitive movements of emergence from suffering’s evil bondage.

Thus narrative enables a process of becoming in the teller; narrative has the capacity to effect ontological transformation. This potential of the narrative to shape who one is becoming is captured in the work of Laurie Zoloth.

Levinas has become a germinal thinker for bioethicists from both philosophy and literary studies because his work illuminates the transformative and disconcerting implications of listening to the other, hence taking responsibility for the other. Levinas’s thought also helps to clarify the particularity of the ethical moment, that is to say, the incommensurability of each relation between subject and other, the impossibility of repeating that which occurs, authentically, between two human beings, and the subtlety of the debt that the philosopher incurs by being in conversation… it is the ethical encounter with the other that allows us meaning—and in this we understand why the ethics consultation is not only an interpretive act, it is both an ontological and a world defining activity. It is the “calling into question…”578

Zoloth, influenced by Emanuel Levinas, appropriates his understanding of ontological transformation. Levinas resists the modernist understanding of ontology as driven by the observing, analytic subject’s interpretation, adjudication, and ultimate domination of the other as object. The ontological potential lies not in the subject-object naming of one by the other but in the transformative dynamic inherent in the relationship between them. For the Levinasian narrative medicine group, the relational encounter invites a re-defining of who I am becoming in relation to you; I do not define who you are supposed to become in relation to me.

This reference to the relationship with the other as having ontological potential

578 Charon and Zoloth, “Like an Open Book: Reliability, Intersubjectivity, and Textuality in Bioethics.” 28.

222 hints at the movement that might arise from the sensing of suffering. The teller of the story evokes in the clinician a spontaneous resonance of the corporeal passions, which sensory movement becomes the ethical counterpoint to the analytical, diagnostic process. Thus the moral act becomes responsive, corporeal movement, not a cognitive abstraction of principles. This Levinasian refusal of adjudication and naming coheres well with Gondreau’s Thomistic position in which the passions

(pain/dolor) are not viewed as adjudicated culpability. If Gondreau has elaborated the Thomistc view that the passions are an ontological defect or vulnerability,579

Levinas and the narrative medicine scholars have viewed the narrative disclosure of defect as an “ethical moment,” pregnant with ontological potential.

For Zoloth, to apprehend the narrative is primarily to allow the teller’s face to resonate deeply within the listener’s corporeality. The fundamental moral meaning is encountered in the face of the other, experienced—“disguised”—as a responsibility to him or to her.580 Zoloth extends Levinas’ idiom of the face of the other to “the stark nakedness of the ‘clinical’ body.” Our ethical encounter with nakedness reveals human secrets and mediates divine mystery. For Levinas, this corporeal proximity of one to the other leads to the meaning of being in a way that, for him, the immaterial forms of metaphysics can never provide. “[This proximity or intimacy] does not lead back to ontology, and is not based on the experience of being, and […] meaning is not defined formally [through the forms of classicism], but

579 Sirek, chapter2.2.iii 580 Charon and Zoloth, “Like an Open Book: Reliability, Intersubjectivity, and Textuality in Bioethics.” Citing Emmanuel. Levinas, Outside the Subject., trans. Michael B. Smith (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994). 28.

223 by an ethical relation to the other person in the guise of responsibility to him or her.” Using Levinas’ metaphor of the face of the other, Zoloth elaborates,

In the encounter with the exposed face of the other (and, we would add, in the heightened starkness of the naked ‘clinical’ body of the other), one comes to confront the secrets of the other that come unannounced through the usual ‘sign, facial expressions, language and words.’ One is summoned, claims Levinas, by immediacy, claimed by a responsibility that is incurred in no previous experience.581

This encounter reveals that which is radically other than self, apprehended as the other not by analytical processes of cognition, but rather by “gut feel” in the very corporeal sensing of nakedness and facial expression. It is this sensed awareness of the other as suffering that Levinas refers to as a responsibility that claims the listener in some inchoate manner. The Levinasian narrative medicine clinicians identify this visceral apprehension of suffering as an ethically compelling moment of ontological potential, but without elaborating how this moment of ontologic obligation is to unfold.

I would suggest that the ontologic transformation does indeed begin with the apprehension of suffering and evil. The narrative unfolds further with the progressive activation of appetition, which moves according to the various

Thomistic passions. Following the Thomistic, hylomorphic triad, there is an important third element in the narrative progression, namely, the capacity for contemplative receptivity.582 The potential of the ontologic process can be stymied if delimited by a scientific empiricism which de-mystifies suffering and death.

Conversely, this remarkable, ontological potential can be progressively realized if

581 Charon and Zoloth, “Like an Open Book: Reliability, Intersubjectivity, and Textuality in Bioethics.” 28. 582 The triad of human nature that Thomas has described is apprehension, appetition, and contemplation. Sirek, chapter 4 and chapter 2.2.ii & iii.

224 inspired by experiences of mystery. These mysteries, non-empirical yet very real, are the experiences of kindness, compassion, tenderness, friendship, forgiveness, etc. It is this contemplative attentiveness to mystery, i.e., the third facet of human nature, which inspires the ontological transformation. This contemplative capacity allows the teller to open up beyond the psycho-socio-biologic-linguistic frameworks defined by our sciences. In proximity to divine mystery, justice becomes a perfection of compassion and mercy; no longer is justice understood in terms of the evil that is injustice. The new justice raises up the one who, in suffering the unjust disintegration of paralysis and muteness, became identified with evil. The new justice, to be realized through immersion in an imagery of contemplative intimacy with the divine, transforms the identity of the victim through the inchoate experiences of kindness, tenderness, and compassion. This new identity is that of the beloved one. This potential to be re-contoured from the inside out is the marvelous capacity of plasticity, the capacity for healing, the capacity to realize change—in short, the capacity to move and be moved. A narrative account of this complete spectrum of movement has the potential to bring about one particular human being’s ontologic transformation.

The narrative medicine group has made a culturally essential move, which is to identify the sensory corporeal nature of suffering; suffering is not a disease to be considered in terms of diagnostics and interventions. The cultural apathy that Soelle described583 is subverted by their Levinasian sensory awakening. Moreover, the

583 Sirek, chapter 5.iii

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Thomistic Christian paradigm enables the narrative of suffering to unfold beyond the identity of bondage in the direction of renewed vitality.

6.iv. the nature of the good.

If the narrative of suffering is to be a narrative of ontological transformation inspired by the experience of suffering and a contemplative awareness of divine goodness, we must consider which of the many possible goods in this life are analogical to divine goodness.584

How one understands the good determines one’s recognition of privation of the good. One’s understanding of the privation of the good shapes one’s awakening to suffering, evil, and injustice.

Does justice permit gross inequality of income and ownership? Does justice require compensatory action to remedy inequalities which are the result of past injustice, even if those who pay the costs of such compensation had no part in that injustice? Does justice permit or require the imposition of the death penalty and, if so, for what offences? Is it just to permit legalized abortion? When is it just to go to war? The list of questions is a long one.585

One might be compelled to argue that the answers to such questions are to be guided by standards of rationality. But, as I have shown by contrasting the rationalities of empiricsm and of principlism with practical reason throughout this thesis project, the nature of rationality is also multivocal. MacIntyre also describes the diverse quality of rationality.

Yet someone who tries to learn this at once encounters the fact that disputes about the nature of rationality in general and about practical rationality in particular are apparently as manifold and as intractable as disputes about justice. To be practically rational, so one contending party holds, is to act on the basis of calculations of the costs and benefits to oneself of each possible alternative course of action and its consequences. To be practically

584 I examine closely the goods of excellence and the goods of effectiveness, adapting MacIntyre’s terminology to the healthcare context. MacIntyre, After Virtue, a Study in Moral Theory. MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? 585 MacIntyre, After Virtue, a Study in Moral Theory. 1.

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rational, affirms a rival party, is to act under those constraints which any rational person capable of impartiality which accords no special privileges to one’s own interests, would agree to be imposed. To be practically rational, so a third party contends, is to act in such a way as to achieve the ultimate true good of human beings.586

This fundamental disagreement as to the nature of justice and of rationality is often unacknowledged and “disguised by a rhetoric of consensus.”587 MacIntyre holds that academic philosophy, political institutions, and religious groups are all unaware of the breadth and depth of this incongruity. Furthermore, there are secular fideists who resort for their rationality to a set of beliefs held by a group even while recognizing the “arbitrariness of their commitments.”588 Medicine might be viewed as one such secular fideism, which has become exclusively and arbitrarily committed to modern science. Botha’s metaphor of a hypertrophied science, re- stated in terms of MacIntyre’s critique, becomes the power of our rationality to dominate by argument.

Sometimes those who level an argument do not really hold to the belief. …[B]y appealing to argument, they are able to exercise a kind of power which favors their own interests and privileges, the interests and privileges of a class which has arrogated the rhetorically effective use of argument to itself for its own purposes. Arguments, that is to say, have come to be understood in some circles not as expressions of rationality, but as weapons, the techniques for deploying which furnish a key part of professional skills of lawyers, academics, economists, and journalists who thereby dominate the dialectically unfluent and inarticulate. … To the readership of the New York Times, or at least to that part of it which shares the presuppositions of those who write that parish magazine of affluent self-congratulatory liberal enlightenment [!], the congregations of evangelical fundamentalism appear unfashionably unenlightened. But to members of those congregations that readership appears to be just as much a community of pre- rational faith as they themselves are but one whose members, unlike themselves, fail to recognize themselves for what they are, and hence are in no position to level charges of irrationality at them or anyone else.589

586 MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? 2. 587 Ibid. This emphasis upon consensus as an heuristic method is embedded in the roots of the modern discipline of medical ethics after the Tuskegee affair and the mandate of the US government for a consensus on principles that might govern research ethics. 588 Ibid., 5. 589 Ibid.

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As our culture, including medicine, emerged from the Enlightenment, it came to believe that the rational argument of justification and a discourse of demystification were the key to justice and to the good. MacIntyre suggests that this

Enlightenment rationality of argumentation has obscured from view as much as it has illumined. The problem is that “any attempt to provide a radically different alternative standpoint is bound to be found irrationally unsatisfactory in a variety of ways from the standpoint of the Enlightenment itself.”590 He thus examines the history of enquiry with the intention of becoming aware of the biases as well as riches inherent in the tradition.

And since within any well-developed tradition of enquiry the question of precisely how its history up to this point ought to be written is characteristically one of those questions to which different and conflicting answers may be given within the tradition, the narrative task itself generally involves participation in conflict.591

Although there is a kind of tension or conflict between values and meanings as the truth emerges, this is not the tension of dialectic argumentation but rather more like the suspense of an unfolding narrative. As the consciousness awakens and matures, goods that used to be precious are coloured over by new goods, perceived to be more true to the ultimate goal of communal flourishing. What is not explicit in

MacIntyre’s thought is that this unfolding of the good can happen in association with either an emergence from suffering or in parallel with the escalation of suffering.592

Botha furnishes a hint in this direction: science has become a metaphor for the unfolding of the good, and by the preponderance of its methodology, this metaphor

590 Ibid., 7. 591 Ibid., 11. 592 Soelle, Suffering. 73. She presents her helpful understanding of the stages of emergence form suffering.

228 has derailed our cultural ideas of what constitutes the good. I would suggest that in our eagerness for the good the derailed clarity concerns suffering as an evil. Our cultural ways of thinking do not encourage an examination of our attitudes towards suffering in terms of evil. Moreover, we have become desensitized to how suffering- as-evil becomes escalated, (as Soelle has pointed out.) The proposed new language of suffering will tie the good to an emergence from suffering-as-evil. I define the narrative unfolding of the good as necessarily parallel to the movement of emergence from suffering. This rationality parallels Thomas on practical reason, for which the defining maxim is the pursuit of the good and the shunning of evil. The true good liberates from suffering-as-evil.

In order to elaborate what kind of good it is, which at the same time subverts the evil that is suffering, I will digress for a bit into the history of ancient Greece. In ancient Greece, the story of the hero was like a sacred text, which narrated this very process of countering human vulnerability and death with certain traits of virtue that brought about the flourishing of the whole community. A person was not understood in terms of modernity’s individualism; a person was identified with a role vital to societal peace and prosperity. The traits of excellence described in the earliest Homeric mythology were fourfold: heroic courage/strength in time of adversity or crisis; quick wit, cunning, or wry humour; reliable friendship/kinship; and, for the women running the household, fidelity. Society prescribed what a man owed and what was owed to him based upon his success or failure in living up to the expectations of the role. Honour followed successful fulfillment of the role, and failure brought shame. In ancient times, the outcomes of heroic deeds were at the

229 same time the valuation, without further deliberation. “[M]orality and social structure are in fact one and the same in heroic society… Morality as something distinct does not yet exist. …Evaluative questions are social facts.”593 He compares societal action and evaluation to

the rules and precepts of a game such as chess. It is a question of fact whether a man is a good chess player, whether he is good at devising end-game strategies, whether a move is the right move to make in a particular situation. The game of chess presupposes, indeed is partially constituted by, agreement on how to play chess. Within the vocabulary of chess it makes no sense to say, ‘That was the one and only move which would achieve checkmate, but was it the right move to make?’ 594

If a human life is understood as a progress through harms and dangers, moral and physical, which someone may encounter and overcome in better and worse ways and with a greater or lesser measure of success, the virtues will find their place as those qualities the possession and exercise of which generally tend to success in this enterprise and the vices likewise as qualities which likewise tend to failure.595

A successful and effective avoidance of harm and advancement in communal flourishing depended upon an excellence in virtue when attending to one’s societal role. When the common good was not contentious, the goods of an effective

“progress through harm” and the goods of excellent and virtuous character were not in conflict.

MacIntyre holds that over time a disconnect set in between the goods of excellence and the goods of effectiveness. Excellence came to involve a process of apprenticeship with ongoing scrutiny of one’s performance in the context of relationship with a mentor. Errors and mishaps were to be expected, but occurred less often as the apprentice grew in experience and judgement.

Qualities of mind, body, and character acquired in one may play a useful or essential part in achieving success in another. Moreover, all of them require the same kind of disciplined apprenticeship in which, because initially we lack important qualities of mind, body, and

593 MacIntyre, After Virtue, a Study in Moral Theory. 122. 594 Ibid., 125. 595 Ibid., 144.

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character necessary both for excellent performance and for informed and accurate judgement about excellence in performance, we have to put ourselves into the hands of those competent to transform us into the kind of people who will be able both to perform well and to judge well. What is it that we have to learn from them? We have to require both in performance and in judgement the ability to make two different kinds of distinction, that between what merely seems good to us here and now and what is good or best unqualifiedly.596

The performance of an apprentice would eventually mature from flawed beginnings towards the perfection expected of a master.

The second kind of distinction is that between what is a good—perhaps the best possible— performance for someone at his or her present stage of educational development relative to his or her particular talents and capacities and what would be the best kind of performance which can now be envisaged by those best qualified to judge.597

What directs [participants in the good] toward that goal is both the history of successive attempts to transcend the limitations of the best achievement in that area so far and the acknowledgement of certain achievements as permanently defining aspects of the perfection toward which that particular form of activity is directed.598

A practical knowing of particulars (phronesis) was distinguished from the knowledge of theoretical universals (episteme).

Someone with extensive experience of particulars, but who is by reason of his or her lack of episteme unable to appeal to argument (logos), may be better at judging what is the case and what to do correctly than is someone whose episteme provides them with arguments, but who has inadequate experience of particulars.1

While the emphasis was upon the practical, contemplation of the perfection of form was necessary in order to recognize the good as it emerged in reality. The shaping of reality was according to a hierarchy of means towards an ultimate end.

The deliberative task of rational construction is then one which issues in an hierarchical ordering of means to their ends, in which the ultimate end is specified in a formulation which provides the first principle or principles from which are deduced statements of those subordinate ends which are means to the ultimate end. What is an ordered hierarchy of “for the sake of” relations leading to the arche [universal truth] is also a deductive hierarchy descending from the arche.599

596 Ibid.30. See especially 30-46, “The division of the Post-Homeric Inheritance” 597 Ibid., 31. 598 Ibid. 599 Ibid., 132.

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This hierarchical ordering of means and ends may be understood as an intentional shaping of reality. The transformation moved not only towards the good but also included a progressive emergence from the flawed and difficult beginnings. For

Aristotle, true perfection was not an insertion into reality but a complex emergence from within the particular circumstances of reality. On the other hand, to remain at the level of practical reasoning alone, without a speculative questing for the truth, was to rest in a certain ignorance of the emerging perfections. For Aristotle, experiential reality was not in conflict with the immaterial form. He did not diminish, discard, destroy, or conquer a materiality that struggled to express its innate perfection. This materiality with potential for perfection and excellence was, in ancient times, the polis. Moreover the encounter of material reality with the form of ideal perfection was not an agonistic conflict between counterparts; rather materiality was enhanced and transformed by its immaterial counterpart.

Excellence was a dynamic pursuit, but it was not a dynamic of power over imperfection. Perfection was not seen as the effective conquest of imperfection, but was rather an unfolding transformation of reality. Aristotle’s paradigm is characterized by an interiority of progressive excellence in virtue, which enabled the effective flourishing of society.

In a principalist ethics, this transformative process of evolving excellence is subordinated to the preconceived outcomes. According to established principles, an abstract model is developed to pre-define the outcomes. The model is then applied, i.e., imposed upon or inserted into reality. On this view, the emergence from a flawed state of affairs is rectified by an intervention presumed to represent the

232 universally right and good. The possibility of an unfolding of the as-yet-unknown good, with a responsiveness to contingency and with a graced emergence from evil, is not accounted for in our current paradigm of principalist ethics. The universals are not constituted by reflection on the experience; they are presumed a priori. The emphasis is upon the effective execution of the proposed intervention, and the character traits are defined in terms of effective implementation. In principlism, the desired effectiveness is pre-determined and the outcomes are subsequently measured as a mode of evaluation. Character traits are deemed valuable insofar as they enhance effectiveness.

Aristotle’s paradigm of the emerging good, but with the addition of grace according to the Christian tradition, is a promising model for the proposed narrative of suffering. A sufferer who seeks only effective solutions will suffer more deeply if the contingent nature of reality and the unintelligibility of evil obstruct success. The

Christian paradigm stands in contrast to this dependency upon evident success. A person is empowered from suffering into beatitude by a graced shift in identity, which is experienced through intimacy with Divine Justice and Mercy. Such ontological shifting from an identity shaped by annihilation towards an identity shaped by animation is the goal of a narrative of suffering. A cataloguing of successful endeavours—effectiveness—does not heal the identity of a sufferer. The maturation of excellence comes of a graced contemplative intimacy with the Divine regardless of the effective endeavours that one would want to regard as evidence of the good.

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To better understand MacIntyre’s goods of effectiveness and their potential to mislead the one telling of his suffering, I will explore his presentation of Thucydides.

Thucydides offered “a conception of justice as entirely in the service of effectiveness, a justice to which dessert is irrelevant except when those who happen to have power choose to make it relevant. There is no appeal beyond realities of power.”600

Thucydides’ thesis was that “the goods of effectiveness are bound to prevail over those of excellence and the goods of excellence will be prized only insofar as those who prize the goods of effectiveness permit them to be.”601 When the goods of effectiveness came to determine justice, certain characteristics emerged.

Under the normal conditions of life in human societies each person can only hope to be effective in trying to obtain what he or she wants, whatever it is, if he or she enters into certain kinds of cooperation with others and if this cooperation enables both him or her and those others generally to have rationally well-founded expectations of each other. Thus a rule-governed mode of social life will be required, and it will be important, if obedience to the rules is to be a means to the goods of effectiveness, that disobedience to the rules should carry certain penalties. A well-designed penalty is one which attaches to disobedience to the rules a cost assessed in terms of the goods of effectiveness such that for most people most of the time it will outweigh any benefit that is likely to accrue from disobedience.602

Thus systems of exchange, reciprocity, and co-operation became entrenched in the justice system, with suffering meted out as penalty to enforce the rules. When effectiveness became the societal good, justice became a system of deterrence, not of creativity; the just person was one who was disposed to follow the rules, without an interior awakening or perception of the ultimate goal.603 Those who were effective and powerful—the winners—brought about a class of others, namely, the

600 Ibid., 66. 601 Ibid., 69. 602 MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? 36. 603 Ibid., 36-38.

234 powerless, disenfranchised losers. An act was assessed as good in terms of the effective manipulation of power; acts were not scrutinized in terms of communal flourishing. The narrative of the sufferer did not matter.

When the good is described in terms of an effective rendering of what the empowered class desires, there is an inherent risk that the suffering of the disempowered will be overlooked or even justified as necessary to the prospering of society. In a principalist ethics, those with intellectual knowledge stand for the empowered class. They are the ones who articulate the model to be implemented, the values to be encoded, and the penalties for non-compliance. The good in this case is hypothetical and severed from the experience of the sufferer. One class of persons is solving the problems on behalf of another group. As Burrell has shown in his exegesis of Job, to restrict one’s understanding of the good to such ungrounded, disembodied conceptualizations is to disqualify the cry of those who would move out of the evil that is suffering into an intimate abiding in the ultimate Good that is flourishing.604 When effectiveness means measurable outcomes, then the interior transformation of the sufferer and of the clinician may be overlooked at best and distorted at worst. Thus the proposed narrative of suffering must avoid an understanding of the good in terms of an exclusively effective intervention. The narrative of suffering must be the story of the one who suffers and who undergoes both the grace and the travail of shifting his/her identity from the bondage of progressive annihilation to the renewed vitality of transformed animation. This

604 Sirek, chapter 5,ii.

235 excellence of interior transformation must be the good that characterizes one’s narrative of suffering.

6.v. conclusion

In the subculture called clinical medicine, a (non-exhaustive) list of the prized goods includes evidence-based outcomes, competent execution, achievement, success, conquest of disease, productivity, resource allocation, problem-solving, and the autonomy of the independent individual. I would suggest that these goods align with

MacIntyre’s goods of effectiveness. This prevailing ethics of utility usually overlooks the interiority of the agent, but when compelled to specify, virtue is seen as a matter of identifying the character traits necessary for effective performance. The good is measurable, quantifiable, and external to the agent. An ethics of utility does not recognize human happiness as an ultimate goal. Value is specified in empirical measures of success. A utilitarian ethics prizes goods of effectiveness.

At the other extreme, there is an ethics of principlism in which abstract truths are what impart value to human reality. Scientific research is also a value system based upon abstract concepts; a theoretical hypothesis is tested out by insertion into someone’s reality. This too is an ethics of utility in which measurable outcomes are assessed as supporting or opposing the hypothesis. This variety of utilitarian ethics professes a theoretical concern with avoiding harm to the other. But the very methodology of imposing or inserting something upon another—doing something to another—means that the agency of the investigator restricts the agency of the objectified research subject. The agency of the research “subject,” is restricted to the act of subordination of the self to the acting investigator, an act considered

236 honourable in many circles. The problem with this paradigm is that self-sacrifice or annihilation becomes imprinted upon the research “subject’s” interiority as a moral good; the suffering or the harm intrinsic to self-annihilation is re-cast as a good.

Such an understanding of the good is morally questionable, as I shall discuss in the following chapter, using the insights of Rene Girard.605 Principlism is a variety of utilitarian ethics, founded upon an abstract hypothetical concept taken to represent morally the true, the right, and the good. Like the rationality of science, it depends upon empirical measures of conformity with the hypothesis; principlism is a paradigm of effectiveness. On this view of morality, the interiority, i.e., the suffering or the flourishing, of the investigator or of the research “subject” are meaningless.

I believe that MacIntyre’s goods of excellence point our ethics deliberations towards Thomas and his understanding of the human interiority. True moral agency must engage the interiority of the one who desires to emerge from suffering into flourishing. What that comportment will look like on the outside to the empirical observer is not pre-determined in the sense of an a priori outcome. Nor is it the instinctual behaviour of an animal. Moral agency, as I have described in the previous chapters on the nature of being human,606 is a highly complex thing with both immaterial and material aspects becoming progressively differentiated and integrated as the creature advances in relational intimacy with the Creator. The mysterious nature of this statement is not an abstraction out of reality by a process of theoretical speculation. It is rather an experience that human beings have, an

605 Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightening. 606 Sirek, chapters 2-5

237 experience of overwhelming mystery, which gropes for an adequate modality of expression. Our scientific penchant for abstract hypothetical models does not adequately express the travail of our human immaterial-material composite in its dynamic of ontological transformation. Nor do our measurements of effectiveness serve adequately as surrogate material markers of this immaterial-material transformation-in-progress.

It is the goods of excellence, ignited within the human interiority by relational intimacy with Divine Justice and Mercy, which enable the middle path between purely material values and purely hypothetical values. This Way through the fragmentation and suffering brought about by the two “ethical” extremes comes into focus only when the good is understood in the context of a simultaneous emergence from suffering. The reality that a) humans suffer and b) the locus of suffering is within the sensory particularity will ground medical ethics even as the sufferer, in a stance of contemplative intimacy with the divine, is illumined by the grace that mysteriously rescues, heals, and re-animates. The reframing of one’s identity as emerging from the bondage of suffering into the freedom for flourishing is the travail of narrative. Abstract arguments of justification and scientific evidence-based proofs, although born of hard work, simply do not empower the agency of ontological transformation. Moral agency profound enough to render ontological change requires a distinct modality of rationality, namely the analogic rationality of a narrative of suffering.

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In the next chapter I will elaborate the inspirational narratives and the specific metaphors that reconfigure the imagination so that the narrative of suffering becomes instrumental in the ontological transformation.

Chapter 7. Whose Voice? Which Story?

I have now established that a storied rationality is well-suited to the elaboration of

“Meaning” around harm and flourishing. The proposed narrative of suffering must feature a discourse suited not only to “Meaning” in general, but to a specific kind of meaning that will serve as a means to ontologic transformation. I am referring to an initial identification with suffering, harm, and death, i.e., with evil, and an ultimate identification with Divine Justice and Mercy, such that one’s vitality grows to exceed the empirical finality of death. This shift in identity is expressed as the mystery of the resurrection; the resurrection saturates the senses, escapes logic, and yet, once experienced, becomes an indubitable knowing. Such mystery is expressed by certain kinds of narratives and certain specific kinds of metaphors. Moreover, the narrator of the story cannot be the objective observer. Only the “I” can reveal what it is like to experience the transformation of interiority from my suffering to my flourishing, from death to life, from bondage into freedom, from annihilation into animation. These are experiences that do not have an external surrogate marker available to empirical observation.

Mythologies that sacralise violence are unacceptable, as they inspire the violence of annihilation, not the vital movements of animation.607 The excellence of compassion may become corrupted by the evil of compassion fatigue, requiring

607 Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightening.

239 240 exorcism.608 The imagination must be re-configured from apocalyptic to resurrection imagery.609 The metaphors may convey a corpse-like stasis on the one hand, or on the other hand, a vital dynamism that exceeds any prior sensory experience.610 Finally the voice of the first person as narrator is essential to the desired identity shift; the research “subject’s” subordination to potential annihilation is exactly contrary to that agency, which desires to emerge from death into resurrected life.611 The proposed narrative of suffering must be crafted with these many features if it is to express the graced healing of a transformed identity.

7.i. the false excellence of violence.

In a culture and a medical ethics that has lost awareness of suffering,612 violence may be seen as necessary to the good. But in God there is neither violence nor killing. Rene Girard develops this thesis using a methodology that juxtaposes

Scripture and pagan mythologies.613 Scripture provides the countercultural revelation that agonistic conquest and the consequent suffering of the victims is not the work of God. By contrast, mythologies are problematic because violence is framed as a laudable means to the good. By exploring the work of Girard on the violence concealed in our cultural mythologies, I will demonstrate the importance of

608 Robert Sweetman, “Thomas of Cantimpré: Performative Reading and Pastoral Care,” in Performance and Transformation, ed. Mary A. Suydam and Joanna E. Ziegler (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999). Sweetman.133-167. 609 Alison, Raising Abel: The Recovery of the Eschatological Imagination. Robinette, Grammars of Resurrection: A Christian Theology of Presence and Absence. 610 Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336. 611 Martin Rhonheimer, “Practical Reason and the Naturally Rational,” in The Persepctive of the Acting Person: Essays in the Renewal of Thomistic Moral Philosophy, ed. William F. Murphy Jr. (Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2008). 612 Sirek, chapter 5,iii. Soelle describes the cultural apathy that fails to perceive suffering. 613 Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightening.

241 scrutinizing carefully the stories that we tell, lest we unwittingly mentor our learners in violence. Firstly, I will introduce the complex metaphor, which Girard uses to explore evil and violence. Then, I will illustrate how he uses this model as a tool to critique a myth.

According to Girard, one finds in mythologies a kind of sacralisation of violence as potentially bringing about a good state of affairs. Human beings learn by “mimesis” or imitation of a model. In learning to desire according to the mentor’s desiring, the learner may come to covet the object of the mentor’s desiring and turn into a rival.

According to Girard, such rivalry readily devolves into violence and may even escalate to the act of murder. A single broken relationship acts as a seed of contagion, breeding chaotic, toxic violence. As the community becomes polarized, one against another, society eventually becomes re-configured as the many against some one. That unfortunate one has effectively become a scapegoat for the tensions of the community as a whole, re-enacting a very ancient, cultic behaviour in which the scapegoat, bearing the woes of the community, is driven out to die, leaving the community purged of its tensions. This victim, the scapegoat, is seen to be guilty, and the lynching is understood to be well-deserved; indeed the lull in the violence following the murder is interpreted as sacred proof that the victim was rightly expunged. The lull is referred to as peace, conferred by a divinity appeased. In this manner the violence is sacralised.

This Girardian model of the sacralized persecutor-victim dynamic has potential as a metaphor to be used when composing one’s narrative of emergence from suffering. If suffering is understood as the privation of movement, then the one who

242 suffers—expulsion, scapegoating, physical otherness, etc.—is mute and immobilized at some level,614 like the murdered corpse of the Girardian victim. The victim has been silenced because the consensus has deemed that person irrelevant, or adjudication has condemned the victim to guilt and penalty, or a diagnosis has destined the patient for therapeutic intervention. Given the competitive characteristics of medical learners and their mature mentors, mythologies of conquest may unwittingly justify this suffering state of silence and paralysis in the name of effective advancement in one’s professional education, progress in science, a justice of resource allocation, etc. In the clinical context, this language of conquering disease, like a battle-cry, may rouse one to violence—against the self— silencing the cry of suffering; this use of language is in stark contrast to Charon’s compassionate, receptivity to the suffering face of the other. When each person’s emergence from suffering becomes integral to the pursuit of societal flourishing,

Charon’s presence, quiet, compassionate, and receptive, allows the silenced interiority to find the embodied movement of voice questing, as Job did, for the mysterious Source of all that is life-giving.615 Had Job not refused to identify with evil despite the urgings of his advisors, his intimacy with Mystery would have been silenced. When emergence from suffering with complete satiation in well-being is the ultimate, mysterious terminus of human life, then the pursuit of human-made goals tied to violence becomes less compelling. The use of Girard’s model of mimetic rivalry may be used as a metaphor to illumine our understanding of the violence

614 Sirek, chapter 3. Suffering is not only a privation of the movement of the passions but also, in extreme cases, paralysis of the vocal apparatus. 615 Sirek, 5,ii. Burrell’s exegesis of Job emphasizes the importance of voice and performance.

243 from which the world of scientific medicine—its patients and professionals—must emerge as an integral aspect of pursuing the good.

The Girardian model understands human desire according to an imagery of something corrupted, de-railed, or fallen. While human desire is vulnerable to these images of evil, it is also free and has the capacity to make choices. Human desire is free to pursue either violent means to an end or to re-define the end such that violence becomes unintelligible. Fallen human desire is conflicted; it wants to emerge from suffering and yet wants to retain violence-as-necessary. For Girard, the last six prohibitions of the Decalogue address the conflicted desires that bring about suffering through violence. In particular, he points out that the tenth commandment may be understood as illumining the nature of human desire generally. “Doesn’t the tenth commandment succumb to that gratuitous itch to prohibit, to that irrational hatred of freedom, for which modern thinkers blame religion in general and the

Judeo-Christian tradition in particular?”616 But the desire for the neighbour’s goods is very commonplace, and without a prohibition or the containment of this desire,

“[t]here would be perpetual war in the midst of all human groups, and subgroups, and families. The door would be wide open to the famous nightmare of Thomas

Hobbs, the war of all against all.”617 Girard holds that it is this desire to have what the neighbour desires and possesses that is

at the very heart of human social relationships. This rivalry, if not thwarted, would permanently endanger the harmony and even the survival of all human communities. Rivalistic desires are all the more overwhelming since they reinforce one another. The principle of reciprocal escalation and one-upmanship governs this type of conflict. This phenomenon is so common, so well known to us, and so contrary to our concept of

616 Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightening. 8. 617 Ibid.

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ourselves, thus so humiliating, that we prefer to remove it from consciousness and act as if it did not exist….. The commandment that prohibits desiring the goods of one’s neighbour attempts to resolve the number one problem of every human community: internal violence.618

It is to the corrupted human desire that the tenth commandment speaks. “What the tenth commandment sketches is a fundamental revolution in the understanding of desire.”619 Girard holds that desire is neither subjective nor objective, but is rather dependent upon “a third party who gives value to the objects.”620 This third party is the neighbour. The neighbour is, in fact, the model for another’s desire. Girard refers to this as “mimetic desire.”621 Mimetic desire is susceptible to the corruption of envy; desire corrupted with envy becomes an escalation of violence.

Opposition exasperates desire, especially when it comes from the man or woman who inspires desire. If no opposition initially comes from him or her, it soon will, for if imitation of the neighbour’s desire engenders rivalry, rivalry in turn engenders imitation. The appearance of a rival seems to validate the desire, the immense value of the object desired. Imitation becomes intensified at the heart of hostility, but the rivals do all they can to conceal from each other and from themselves the cause of this intensification. Unfortunately, concealment does not work. In imitating my rival’s desire I give him the impression that he has good reasons to desire what he desires, to possess what he possesses, and so the intensity of his desire keeps increasing.622

When healthy mimetic desire is corrupted, it becomes a destructive, violent rivalry, which Girard sees as a kind of idolatry (sin) of the neighbour and the self. “The more desperately we seek to worship ourselves, and to be good ‘individualists,’ the more compelled we are to worship our rivals in a cult that turns to hatred.”623 As this rivalry progresses, it also becomes increasingly violent. Initially the model becomes my rival, but then I become the model for the other, and the rivalry escalates.

618 Ibid., 9. 619 Ibid. 620 Ibid. 621 Ibid., 10. 622 Ibid. 623 Ibid., 11.

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The principle source of violence between human beings is mimetic rivalry, the rivalry resulting from imitation of a model who becomes a rival or of a rival who becomes a model. Such conflicts are not accidental, but neither are they the fruit of an instinct of aggression or an aggressive drive. Mimetic rivalries can become so intense that the rivals denigrate each other, steal the other’s possessions, seduce the other’s spouse, and, finally, they even go as far as murder.624

The problem is not desire as such; human desire is vulnerable to corruption with the belief that violence is integral to the good. Desire, described with images of the corrupt, the de-railed, or the fallen, can be re-framed as vulnerable to evil, i.e., to the privation of the good. It is the state of one’s desire, understood in terms of metaphoric imagery, that reveals in the same imagery one’s state of suffering.

The proposed narrative of suffering will invite an exploration of how violence and mimesis have shaped both one’s desire and one’s suffering. The images of the

Girardian model can help shift the exploration from the (psycho)analytic to the analogic rationality. The object of one’s desire may be idolatrous—the other objectified—in which case violent rivalry with the other will prevail, and suffering will be perpetrated. By contrast, if the object of desire is re-imagined as an advancing intimacy with the Source of all flourishing, then the hindrance that is suffering, i.e., violence in its various guises, will no longer be an intelligible good. In the process of narrating, the end is re-envisioned such that the meaning of violence shifts from an acceptable good to an intolerable evil. Each object for possible imitation is repeatedly scrutinized in light of the ultimate goal of emergence from suffering into the satiety of perpetual flourishing. In Girard’s Christian context, the model for this new meaning of the ultimate is Jesus. “What Jesus invites us to imitate is his own desire, the spirit that directs him toward the goal on which his intention

624 Ibid., 11.

246 is fixed: to resemble God the Father as much as possible.”625 In imitating Jesus, violence-as-necessary falls away because the desire, previously hindered by an idolatry of conquest, becomes re-ordered towards a compassionate intimacy with the sufferer.

Girard further develops the metaphor for evil in his depiction of the stumbling block, or skandalon. This imagery allows the seductive and cyclic quality of harmful behaviour—suffering—to become apparent. The Greek root is skandalikein, which means to limp. The image of limping suggests recurring falls or collisions. “Each

[rival] consistently takes the opposite view of the other in order to escape their inexorable rivalry, but they always return to collide with the fascinating obstacle that each one has come to be for the other.”626 The limping, or scandal, is a kind of addiction, which escalates the falling back into a vortex of “envy, jealousy, resentment, and hatred.”627 The powers of this world—political, economic, sexual, artistic, academic, scientific, religious, etc.—multiply scandal by condoning effective mimetic rivalry. Limping—rivalrous, disordered mimesis—has an irrationally seductive quality to it that obscures and hinders the way to the true good. Girard cautions that we must not default into the rationality of scientific psychoanalysis when considering this image of evil and the escalating mimetic rivalry. In terms of psychology, desire that has devolved into the violence of mimetic rivalry can still pass as normal. Girard refers to modern interpretations of familiar Scriptural passages.

625 Ibid., 13. 626 Ibid., 16. 627 Ibid., 17.

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Resorting to a psychological explanation is less innocent than it appears. In refusing the mimetic interpretation, in looking for the failure of Peter in purely individual causes, we attempt to demonstrate, unconsciously of course, that in Peter’s place we would have responded differently; we would not have denied Jesus. Jesus reproaches the Pharisees for an older version of the same ploy when he sees them build tombs for the prophets that their fathers killed. The spectacular demonstrations of piety towards the victims of our predecessors frequently conceal a wish to justify ourselves at their expense: “If we had lived in the same time as our fathers” the Pharisees say, “we would not have joined them in the spilling of the blood of the prophets.” The children repeat the crimes of their fathers precisely because they believe they are morally superior to them. This false difference is already a mimetic illusion of modern individualism, which represents the greatest resistance to the mimetic truth that is re- enacted again and again in human relations. The paradox is that the resistance itself brings about the re-enactment.628

The victims and the oppressors as well as the descendants are all afflicted with the same disordered desire, even though their psychological diagnoses, if any, may differ. “The most humiliated persons, the most crushed, behave in the same fashion as the princes of this world. They howl with the wolves. The more one is crucified, the more one burns to participate in the crucifixion of someone more crucified than oneself.”629 Disordered mimetic desire is a contagion “that divides, fragments, and decomposes communities” and ultimately escalates into “a collective contagion that gathers all those scandalized to act against a single victim who is promoted to the role of universal scandal.”630 Girard’s thesis of “all against one” emerges not as a psycho-analytic diagnostic process but as a metaphor of evil, namely, the image of the skandalon. “The condensation of all the separate scandals into a single scandal is the paroxysm of a process that begins with mimetic desire and its rivalries.”631 The skandalon that triggers the cyclic mimetic violence is paroxysmal, in the sense of an unpredictable, chaotic, and toxic movement; it does not infer a scientific model of

628 Ibid., 20. 629 Ibid., 21. 630 Ibid., 21. 631 Ibid., 24.

248 predictable, static deviance from a universal norm. These paroxysms of violence occur over and over despite the escalating suffering.

To illumine this paradoxic cyclicity of suffering Girard presents the related image of Satan, as a metaphor for the toxic allure that drives harmful behaviours and addictive violence. The pull of evil is like the pull of gravity that makes us fall and get hurt.

If we listen to Satan, who may sound like a very likeable educator, we may feel initially that we are ‘liberated,’ but this impression does not last because Satan deprives us of everything that protects us from rivalistic imitation. Rather than warning us of the trap that awaits us, Satan makes us fall into it. He applauds the idea that prohibitions are of no use and that transgressing them contains no danger. 632

At first Satan sets our sights on something that promises to be good; drawn to the good, one falls for the vision. But Satan then quickly switches his guise and becomes the sinister adversary, the unexpected obstacle blocking the way to the good. The adversarial desire of Satan-the-rival now eclipses other desires for the good, and one oversteps the prohibitions against violence in order to comply with the threatening adversary. The violence escalates. Satan-the-accuser persuades everyone that the victim is truly guilty before God as well as before the people.633

In transforming a community of people with distinct identities and roles into a hysterical mass, Satan produces myths and is the principle of systematic accusation that bursts forth from the contagious imitation provoked by scandals… Everyone can set upon the victim without having to fear the least reprisal.634

The offence of the victim may be rather trivial, but the power of the massed, wild desires, escalated and de-differentiated into hatred, is now unstoppable. The community is emptied of all previous hatreds and tensions towards anyone else but

632 Ibid., 32-33. 633 Sirek, 5.iii. Soelle develops the evolution of the image of a tyrant god. 634 Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightening. 35-36.

249 the victim. A paradoxical sense of catharsis and cohesion prevails as the persecutors now unite in violence against the single victim. In the wake of the death of the victim, like after the crucifixion of Jesus, a calm descends upon the community.

Where “peace” is tied to violence, the calm is merely a lull in the cycles of violence rather than a true peace. Seduced by violence, corrupt human desiring culminates in murder, a skandalon or obstacle to the vital human desire to flourish. “From the beginning he was a murderer and had nothing to do with the truth because the truth is not in him. When he speaks lies, he draws them from his own nature, because he is a liar and the father of lies.”(John 8:44-45) The lie is the unjust condemnation of the victim and the people’s belief that “they are supporting the truth when they are really living a lie.”635 Those who are shaped by the seduction of the lie lose their differences and identities—the particularity of movement towards the good—and become identified with the very scandals that hinder such movement. Suffering involves a seductive or addictive repetition of harmful behaviours, which is described by the image of the Satan, who in seducing vulnerable human desire, in truth obstructs human flourishing.

These murderous paroxysms of the deranged desire are further elucidated in

Girard’s exegesis of the Scriptural image of flattening out, levelling, and straightening of the roads in preparation of the coming of the Lord (Isaiah 40:3-5).

He avoids the perspective that would envision a giant, ancient road-works. These images of huge geological erosions and eruptions conjure up for Girard the dynamic of mimetic crisis, “whose essential feature is the loss of differences, the

635 Ibid., 41.

250 transformation of individuals into doubles whose perpetual conflict destroys culture.”636 The desire of each participant shifts into “an unconscious obedience” to the vortex of violence against the victim; this is the Girardian mechanism of

“unanimity of the victim.”637 There is an “overwhelming victory of the superficial and the uniform” which paradoxically prepares us for a very different way, the way of the Lord. This flattening out of desire is seen as a kind of de-differentiation; it is a silencing of one’s particularity. As rivals lose sight of the original object of desire and set their hatred upon each other, they are said to become “doubles.”

The more the antagonists desire to become different from each other, the more they become identical. Identity is realized in the hatred of the identical. This is the climactic moment that twins embody or the enemy brothers of mythology such as Romulus and Remus. It is what I call the confrontation of doubles. At first the antagonists occupy fixed positions at the heart of conflicts whose relentless character ensures stability, but as they persist, the interplay of scandals transforms them into a mass of interchangeable beings. In this homogeneous mass the mimetic impulses no longer encounter any obstacle and spread at high speed…. Scandals initially appear rigid, immovably fixed on a specific antagonist, each forever separated from the other by reciprocal hatred, but at the advanced stages of this development substitutions come about as antagonists are exchanged. Then scandals become “opportunistic.” At this point they are easily drawn to another scandal whose power of mimetic attraction is superior to theirs. In short, scandals may turn away from their original antagonist, from whom they seemed inseparable, in order to adopt the scandal of their neighbours and substitute a new antagonist for the original one.638

In terms of a Thomistic perspective of human nature, the escalation of mimetic rivalry subverts movement towards the true good by suppressing the experiential wisdom (apprehension) of the differentiated desire (appetition). Nor is there the contemplative resting in perfection wherein the deification of one’s sensory capacities might be realized. When wild with violence, desire ruptures the Thomistic

“trinity” of apprehension-appetition-contemplation, blocking all particularity and

636 Ibid., 29. 637 Ibid., 28. 638 Ibid., 22-23.

251 differentiation. Wild desire is characterized by a de-humanizing univocity, described metaphorically as the experienced yet unfathomable mob violence against the victim. It is into this violent, de-differentiated state of human affairs that the Christ came as prophesied to enact humanity’s salvific healing.

Using his model to critique the myth of the Ephesians and Apollonius,639 Girard enables the reader to clearly associate violence, suffering, and evil. When a story about violence is told by the power-holder, the telling can readily sacralise that violent use of power. After they erupt in violence, the Ephesians experience a catharsis or relief from their plague of bio-socio-economic tensions. “Somewhere anger flames up, a panic is set off, and all the community is thrown into violence by the working of instantaneous contagion.”640But once the lynching is finished, societal order comes back, and “the confusion of differences is restored to proper differentiation.”641 The victim is posthumously recognized as a divine benefactor,

639 Ibid., 49-50. Apollonius of Tyana was a guru in the second century AD, whose miracles were highly acclaimed. The Greek writer, Philostratus, recorded a story about Apollonius 100 years later, with the political intention of resisting the spread of Christianity. Once upon a time, in the land of the Ephesians there had been a persistent plague, resistant to many remedies. Apollonius drew the people to the amphitheatre, where an image of “the averting god,” Hercules, had been set up. There in the amphitheatre was a mendicant man, dressed in rags, blinking his eyes as if blind. “Apollonius therefore ranged the Ephesians around him and said: ‘pick up as many stones as you can and hurl them at this enemy of the gods.’ Now the Ephesians wondered what he meant, and were shocked at the idea of murdering a stranger so manifestly miserable; for he was begging and praying them to take mercy on him.” But Apollonius stirred up the Ephesians to attack. “…[A]s some of them began to take shots and hit him with their stones, the beggar who had seemed to blink and be blind, gave them all a sudden glance and showed that his eyes were full of fire. Then the Ephesians recognized that he was a demon.” So they began in earnest to stone him. After a while Apollonius commanded them to desist and to remove the stones that had heaped up over their target. They did so and found there, to their consternation, that the beggar had disappeared and instead of him there was a wild dog, “pounded to a pulp by their stones and vomiting foam as mad dogs do.” After the stoning a calm prevailed, and Hercules’ image was revered for his evident intervention. 640 Ibid., 65. 641 Ibid., 65.

252 the one who is now responsible for the reconstruction of the community. From the persecutors’ perspective, the murder was righteous; the victim must have been guilty because the divine favour of victory now prevails. As Girard observes,

“Lynchings restore peace at the expense of the divinized victim.”642 The stoned beggar, in the minds of the murderous, Ephesian mob, had become a mad dog. The last communication from the face of the dying beggar had been his terrified gaze.

Those in power, including clinicians who read the body as text, can be impressed by the distortion mendaciously perpetrated by the sly Apollonius: the terror in the victim’s eyes was “diagnosed” as a presentation of bestiality. Murder-by-stoning silenced the terrified victim, and, as throughout the history of humanity, the perspective of the vulnerable one remained un-voiced. After a murder, only the voices of those left—those in power—are heard. This is the theological bequest of the literary form of the myth, according to Girard.

When the Girardian dynamic model is used as a metaphor to detect violence, it becomes important to the evolving narratives of suffering for both patient and clinician. For example, the patient can become the means to effective advancement of one’s career, which may also mean the victim of a mendacious process of mimetic rivalry between physicians. To re-order this state of affairs, one might re-focus upon the vulnerability of human desire and the seductive nature of mimetic violence. The harm wrought through the dynamic of mimetic rivalry leaves its imprint upon patient and clinician alike and cries out for healing when such suffering is recollected to conscious awareness. When the reconfiguration of these harmful

642 Ibid., 66.

253 imprints upon the interiority and the emergence from suffering are approached in the analogical images of the GIrardian model, the desire for violence-as-necessary is gradually re-ordered towards a new sacred “Object” in whom there is no violence, evil, or death, but only one’s abiding in a perpetual flourishing. Violence is a manifestation of the corrupt, fallen desire, vulnerable to the seduction of evil, and not an excellence of divine inspiration.

7.ii. compassion, the true excellence.

I have previously referred to the human capacity for contemplative participation in the divine perfections of justice and mercy.643 In one’s pursuit of the good, as one becomes intimate with the divine, one’s character takes on the contour of these divine perfections. But the world, having fallen away from the divine perfections, is shot through with injustice and suffering. Suffering needs divine mercy in order to emerge from the evil state of affairs. Divine mercy finds its analogue in human compassion. I would offer a definition of compassion as the intentional mediation of a radically joyful Spirit into the evil of suffering. But the practice of compassion in the context of evil is exhausting. Compassion fatigue and burn-out have become a concern of narrative-based care-givers.644 The evil of suffering, vicariously

643 Sirek, chapter 4 644 Michael Rank, Compassion Fatigue: Prevention and Resiliency., Video Journal of Counseling and Therapy (Eau Claire, WI: CMI/Premier Education Solutions, 2013). Susan D. Moeller, Compassion Fatigue How the Media Sells Disease, Famine, War and Death (New York: Routledge. Electronic resource, 1999). Charles R. Figley, Compassion Fatigue: Coping with Secondary Traumatic Stress Disorder in Those Who Treat the Traumatized. (New York: Brunner/Mazel, c1995.). Charles R. Figley, Treating Compassion Fatigue (New York: Brunner-Routledge, 2002). Françoise Mathieu, The Compassion Fatigue Workbook: Creative Tools for Transforming Compassion Fatigue and Vicarious Traumatization. (Kingston, Ontario: Françoise Mathieu, c2009). Sherry E. Showalter, Compassion Fatigue --- Enhancing Resiliency., Video Journal of Counseling and Therapy (CMI/Premier

254 interiorized, may overwhelm and immobilize the interiority of the care-giver as well as the patient, making the contemplative joy of abiding in God seem unattainable.

Emphasizing the distinction between fatigue and compassion, I will show that fatigue from the work of compassion requires rest, whereas compassion-fatigue requires exorcism. In chapter 6, I contrasted the image of absorbing vicarious suffering as receptacle or as conduit. I will use a medieval story of exorcism to elaborate analogically the image of compassion as the flowing movement associated with a conduit rather than with the stasis of a receptacle.

If we immerse ourselves in the starkness of the suffering physicality of the other, as the narrative medicine group directs us to do, we risk becoming shaped ontologically—vicariously scarred—by the suffering and evil that has over-taken and imprinted itself upon the other.645 This ontologic shaping by vicarious suffering has the qualities of immobility and silencing that I have associated with the overwhelming evil of suffering. I believe this condition of paralysis and muteness is the meaning of compassion burn-out or compassion-fatigue. Compassion, unhindered by compassion-fatigue, means to receive the story of another’s suffering like a conduit that moves the evil through one’s own personal materiality. But this image of dynamic conduit readily shifts to a static receptacle, if the movement necessary to the exorcism of evil/suffering is not appreciated.646 Rather than viewing exorcism as an exotic, outdated ritual, it is important to understand compassion in terms of an act of exorcism. A medieval text about the exorcism of

Education Solutions, 2011). 645 Sirek, chapter 6 646 Sirek, 6,iii. This concern first arises in my presentation of Charon’s work.

255 demonic possession, presented by Robert Sweetman, will serve as instructive metaphor for this section.647 I will advance this text as inspiration and script for compassion-as-exorcism, offering the image of conduit; the corollary is that compassion-fatigue is analogous to the static receptacle of vicariously absorbed suffering. If suffering is best approached with metaphoric images of movement and performance rather than with analysis, this medieval story of exorcism becomes an analogy for the movement of emergence from the evil of suffering that is integral to one’s progress towards the good.

Thomas of Cantimpré, a medieval exorcist, engages in a dialogue of wits with the demon and disables the evil—exorcises—by exposing the mendacity of its claims.

The demonic mendacity that enslaves and binds is a woman’s belief that compassion

(towards her husband) has left her spent and unworthy of heavenly beatitude. The holy exorcist proclaims the truth: the habit of compassion is a good—an excellence—that inclines her towards, not away from, heaven. The prideful demon is disabled when exhorted to mobilize lament and receive the graced capacity for heavenly joy. From this demonic bondage the woman emerges writhing into freedom. This initial release from evil is a symbolic snake-like writhing, which duly expends itself and ceases. Note that Thomas and the woman may be taken to represent complementary qualities in the self; this story is not necessarily about two distinct persons. A modern-day version might end like this: thus exorcised of compassion-fatigue, Ms. Healthcare Professional is then free to re-create once again her own movements of compassion.

647 Sweetman, “Thomas of Cantimpré: Performative Reading and Pastoral Care.” 133-167

256

The dynamism of the conduit becomes a choreography of the woman’s newly vivified comportment. She does not simply return to the old lie of being obligated towards the generosity of a compassion delimited by burn-out and defined by adjudicated guilt. The Thomistic triad of hylomorphism predicts that from a disposition of contemplative receptivity she experiences the narrative of the other’s suffering as indirectly interrogating and clarifying her own paralyses and silences.

Her interiority of imprinted intentiones is re-shaped and healed by the regular practice of prayerful immersion in sacred justice and mercy, which in turn, gives rise to the passion of lament over the injustice (evil/suffering). Her identification with the evil of another’s suffering, referred to as compassion-fatigue in medicine, resolves into physiologic fatigue on the one hand and ontologic redefinition through the passion of joy on the other. The conduit metaphor signifies this shifting identity as it flows from the privation of suffering to the satiety of joy. For the fatigue, physical measures such as sleep, baths, good nutrition, and exercise are restorative.648 In this manner the competent practitioner of scientific medicine is freed—exorcised—to become increasingly sensitive and permeable to the suffering of others, without the bondage of carrying the paralyzing burden of retained evil.

The story about Thomas of Cantimpré and the woman possessed with compassion-fatigue can become a text that inspires true compassion in the healthcare professional. Compassion-as-exorcism affords the analogical imagery that refuses to remain stuck in violence, evil, and suffering. Compassion narrated in

648 Sirek, chapter 3. ST.I-II.38. Thomas elaborates the remedies—all sensory pleasures—for the restricted and depressed human spirit in the state of sorrow.

257 the mythology of conquest invites violence-as-necessary. In the former understanding, the ontological wholeness of apprehension-appetition- contemplation is preserved. Compassion becomes a human mediation of divine mercy, ignited by contemplative intimacy with the divine perfections. In the latter, violence takes the shape of self-annihilation, adjudication, expulsion, scapegoating, lynching, “sacrifice”, etc. On this view, compassion is conceptualized without an analogous experience of the divine perfections and is distorted by the seductive mendacities of Girard’s Satan, ultimately becoming synonymous with violence itself.

By contrast, compassion understood as a Christ-like excellence animates the emergence from suffering. On this view, compassion is precisely that unquenchable refusal to be identified with and annihilated by evil.

7.iii. violence: the false good

I have emphasized that the proposed new language is distinctly different from, although complementary to, the rationality of dialectic argument around the truth of the matter. Questing for the best way forward in the context of suffering, i.e., pursuing the good, this proposed new language becomes a rationality of images.

Pursuit of the good and emergence from evil are movements that conjure up images of flourishing and its privation. This “new” rationality rests upon the integrated capacities of firstly the interior senses of intention, memory, and imagination that work with phantasms and secondly the higher intellect speaking in the metaphors that bridge suffering and flourishing. In chapter 2, I presented imagination as part of human nature, which, although corporeal and sensory, is open to being shaped by the higher intellectual nature. In this section I will examine the effect of this higher

258 intellectual working with metaphor upon the sensory nature both at the level of apprehension (especially imagination) and at the level of appetitive movement towards the good.649

One of the themes developed in this thesis is that emergence from suffering into flourishing is a shift in identity so profound that it amounts to an ontologic transformation.650 A fundamental shift in imagination is necessarily part of this ontologic transformation, according to James Alison. As a Girardian theologian his starting premise is that suffering, violence, sacrifice, and death are false goods, whereas the dynamism of life and love are the true goods.651 Unlike rigid animal instincts, these possibilities for the flourishing of one’s human life—for movement towards the good—are underdetermined and ever-evolving.652 It is this underdetermined aspect of human nature that compels the intelligent movement towards always-new instantiations of the good. A human being shapes her reality by recollecting imprinted experiences and imagining something better. This imagined new state of affairs is the sensory trigger from which arises an appetitive desire to make a particular move. When the imagination is in its fallen state, the desired new state of affairs is shaped by mythologies of agonistic rivalry, as Girard has described.

But when the imagination is in its empowered, contemplative state, new comportments, which echo and amplify the resurrection narratives of Christianity,

649 I will juxtapose Thomas on the imagination with James Alison on the eschatological imagination. Alison, Raising Abel: The Recovery of the Eschatological Imagination. 650 Sirek, 6,iii. Using the work of Laurie Zoloth, I introduce the power of narrative to transform the teller’s identity at the profound level of an ontologic shift. 651 Sirek, Chapter 6.v 652 Sirek, Chapter 2.2.ii.

259 become possible. The resurrection inspires a differentiation of one’s comportment according to a vision of suffering and death inverted, not conquered.

[The Spirit imparts] openness towards diversity of something which always starts from the same. We might call this a ‘flexible paradigm’… Jesus’ creative self-giving toward his death opened up for us the possibility that we might begin to inscribe ourselves into an immense variety of different and meaningful stories, all of which have as their starting point the creative human overcoming of death.653

We are, as Girard, has pointed out, de-differentiated into a same-ness, to greater or lesser degrees, by the mimetic rivalry that plagues fallen human nature.654 But the resurrection calls us forth from this de-differentiation of death. Human culture is shot through with death; the imagination of a fallen human nature envisions things as arising from death and finishing in death. The power of the Creator-God is not like this human pre-occupation with death; in God, life is not restricted by death.

God’s excellence is not the effective manipulation of worldly power.655 God is simply and perfectly life-giving, “completely and entirely alive, living without any reference to death. There is no death in God.”656 For us to be alive usually means to be not dead. Our reality is so circumscribed by death that even life itself is defined by death’s absence. But this is not so for God. “For God being alive has nothing to do with death and cannot even be contrasted with death.”657 The process of ontologic transformation involves the progressive movement of the imagination towards this absolute aliveness; we begin to see new possibilities for animation, vivacity, and

653 Alison, Raising Abel: The Recovery of the Eschatological Imagination. 69. 654 Sirek, Chapter 6.v 655 Sirek, Chapter 6.iv. I am applying MacIntyre’s contrast of effectiveness and excellence to our image of God. 656 Alison, Raising Abel: The Recovery of the Eschatological Imagination. 39. 657 Ibid.

260 emergence from suffering because our vision is no longer confined by the threat of death.

The teachings of Jesus reflect the excellence of a human imagination not delimited by death. Jesus’ imagination “was capable of being fixed on the ineffable effervescence and vivacity, power and deathlessness of God in a way that seems almost unimaginable to us.”658 Jesus allowed himself to move in the direction towards death, but he was not being moved by death; paradoxically, he was moved towards death by the desire for greater life, a radical vivacity hitherto unknown.

Jesus allowed the endemic sacrificial violence of human culture to target him and to make him its victim, thus undergoing the experience of all victims. But by his being raised from the dead it was revealed that the Creator-God does not deal in the currency of sacrificial death; the Creator is intimate with the life of the victim, breathing into the victim a radically new life.659 In a paradigm founded upon the

Creator-God, life, in all its vulnerable delicacy, is the ultimate and exclusive good.

This ultimate telos enables Christians to believe that life, delicate, intimate, and relational, is what gives meaning to every act. The Girardian insight states that the defining meaning of a pagan (secular) paradigm is death, but in a Creator-creature paradigm, it is life in all its relational vulnerability that confers intelligibility and meaning. The order of the world is violent sacrifice; the order of the Creator-God is never the annihilation of life. The loving compassion of God is expressed in the gifting of each life with the possibility of a differentiated vivacity, mysterious and

658 Ibid., 43. 659 See Genesis 2, for a reading of the image of God breathing into the clay to bring it to life.

261 powerful enough to move through suffering and death so as to emerge into a radically new life.

Alison calls this resurrection-transformation of the imagination a shift from an apocalyptic to an eschatologic configuration. The apocalyptic configuration is depicted in the Gospel texts as a dualism of the just and the unjust, the afflicted and the persecutors, etc. The imagination of fallen human nature recognizes dualistic pairs, based upon an anticipated, future adjudication; the operative dynamic of this

Scriptural (everyman’s) apocalyptic imagination is violence against the evil-doers.

Citing Wayne Meeks, Alison writes,

The apocalyptic genre, and for that reason the apocalyptic imagination, is characterized by the presence of certain dualities, which can be characterized as follows: a cosmic dualism, that is between heaven and earth (with heaven becoming known through visions mediated by angels); a temporal dualism, between this world, or age, and the world, or age, to come, which will begin with the end, probably the destruction , of this one: and a social dualism, that is , a division between the good and the bad, the righteous and the impious, the afflicted and the persecutors. This dualism, which imagined the distress of the righteous and afflicted would of course be reversed in the age to come.660

Alison suggests that in the Gospels we see Jesus subverting this apocalyptic status quo. “The eschatological imagination is nothing other than a subversion from within of the apocalyptic imagination. That is, Jesus used the language and imagery which he found around him to say something rather different.”661 The subversion of these dualities was grounded in how one regarded the victim.

[T]he social duality is redefined in term of the victim, so that the victim is the criterion for determining if one is a sheep or a goat(Matt. 25), or if one is a neighbour( Luke 10); it is victims and those who live precariously who are to be at the centre for the new victim people, to whom belongs the kingdom of God, which is arriving(Matt 5-6)… It is thus that the forgiving victim, the crucified and risen one, comes to be, himself, the presence of the kingdom in the here and now. 662

660 Alison, Raising Abel: The Recovery of the Eschatological Imagination. 124-125. 661 Ibid., 125. 662 Ibid., 126.

262

The imagination begins to recognize a new eschatological order as it is reconfigured by a Gospel that raises up and embraces the suffering victim, including that suffering victim deeply embedded within even the most externally successful self. The perspective of the victim rather than victor applies equally to the self as it does to the other. By recognizing the silenced victim within the interiority of the victor, and conversely, by recognizing the possibility of enabled agency within the interiority of the victim self, an eschatologic transformation of the apocalyptic victor-victim dualism comes about.

Alison identifies a new dynamic that replaces the old acts of violence against evil- doers. If vengeance and violence are no longer seen to be part of who God is, then the End is no longer “a conclusion” but rather “a principle, operative in time, by means of which we may live out the arrival of the Son of man… ”663 Allison appears to be using the term, End, metaphorically to signify dynamism and living movement.

The End as a metaphor for movement becomes an image of “time as capable of participating in eternity, as distinct from time bent away from eternity.”664 When time is bent away from eternity, the irruption of God into time can only be violent: one age ends and a new one begins. By understanding time differently, one can imagine that human life and society need not be shaped by violence and death.

There was and continues to be a slowly evolving eschatological understanding with radical ontologic impact. Something as-yet-unknown comes about when human relationality is shaped by “the definitive eschatological presence of God.”665

663 Ibid., 127. 664 Ibid. 665 Ibid., 129.

263

What I am suggesting is exactly the same slow and conflictual process by which it came to be understood that what God is calling into existence is universal, without frontiers, is at work in the relationship of the apostolic group and ‘time.’ That is to say, there was a big gap before the full force of the consequences of the eschatological imagination which Jesus already had, and which was accessible to the apostolic group starting from the resurrection, was able to carry through the subversion of the prodigious inertia of cultural comprehension (and of the apocalyptic imagination proper to small group and threatened groups), and thus enable that eschatological imagination to be received by the church.”666

The resurrection enabled a slow shift in understanding away from the apocalyptic, self-dissipating, violent vengeance towards an eschatological perception of the subversion of such violence by a God of tenderness, justice, and mercy.

Rather it seems to me to be totally coherent with what we have seen of the way in which the subversion from within of the apocalyptic imagination by Jesus’ eschatological imagination developed, that the time after Jesus be, in fact, the time in which those who are called to Jesus by the Father have access to eternal life and construct a counter history whose fullness will be revealed and crowned on the last day. Please notice that this last day is no longer the Day which we have seen in the apocalyptic imagination, a day of fulminating vengeance. Rather the last day is a new reality, inconceivable both for the apocalyptic imagination and for the paganism of the eternal return: the end of the human story, not produced by divine intervention but by the winding down and the tendency toward dissolution that is proper to human time abandoned to itself. That is to say, any “historical” apocalypse will be purely human, and the responsibility for it purely its own. 667

Like the apostles, who were the first to experience what it meant to be possessed of

Jesus’ eschatological imagination, Christians continue to be led by the eschatological imagination, which enables a radically creative response to suffering and injustice without recourse to violence and vengeance. Thus the End becomes a refusal of violence and instead a choice for compassionate intimacy with victims who are emerging from suffering into the fullness of life. When the imagination is no longer configured in apocalyptic images but rather is transformed by the eschatological

End, movements and comportments of repetitive violence fall away, replaced by uniquely differentiated movements of tenderness and compassion

666 Ibid., 128. 667 Ibid., 130.

264

When the imagination, an apprehending interior sense, is configured with eschatological images of life, then, by reason of the Thomistic hylomorphism, the appetitive passions of our sensory nature undergo a parallel transformation. For example, Alison outlines the transformation of hope, a Thomistic passion. Whereas hope for the apocalyptic imagination was hope of rescue, the eschatologic transformation of hope becomes the fixing of the imagination upon intimacy with

God.

The God of victims becomes present not as rescuer, but as the One who gives hope to persons so that they may themselves run the risk of becoming victims. The tender and kind-hearted Father, absolutely effervescent and vivacious, becomes present as the empowering of the subject to live in the absolute twilight of being crushed…”668

Where death appears to be a threatening, empirical certainty, yet hope provides a different surety in life. Hope now begets the passion of fortitude and virtues of patience and perseverance. Hope, set free of the apocalyptic imagination,

empowers [us] to bear the crushing violence of the world precisely because it keeps the mind fixed on the God who is revealed by the victim as seated at the right hand of God. Patience means nothing else; it doesn’t correspond to our banal use of the word, but it has its root in the same word as “passion,’ that is, suffering, undergoing. The inner structure of hope in the “generation” that was born with the frightening resurrection of Jesus is the empowerment to risk suffering to bring light to this world.669

The victim of crushing violence awaits the One who is not complicit with all the violent annihilation that surrounds us. Alison compares God’s presence to the other who is not in the car crash; only that living other can accompany—though not necessarily save—those who are hurt and stuck in the crashed wreck. The God of the eschatological imagination “is capable of entering in a purely gratuitous, non- violent way into our story to empower us to learn to forge another story…. [but this

668 Ibid., 165. 669 Ibid., 165-166.

265 narrative of suffering is empowering] exactly in the degree to which our image of a rescuing God begins to collapse...”670 The presence of God does not align with heroic rescue and restoring the familiar status quo, but rather with experiences of letting go of the old story of death having dominion over life. The narrative of ontologic transformation is a new story that engages the eschatologic imagination so that one hopes for life, with a hope that previously was silenced by the threat of death. In keeping with the hylomorphism of human nature, metaphors of life reconfigure the sensory apprehension, specifically the imagination, which then re-configures the sensory appetitions, for example, the passions of hope and fear.

In summary, the human response to evil and to suffering undergoes transformation if the symbolism of apocalyptic vs. eschatologic images is critically apprehended. An imagination in its primal apocalyptic state begets violence and annihilation; compassion and re-animation are possible only if the imagination undergoes eschatologic transformation. This eschatologic transformation is the travail of a contemplative receptivity to the healing inspired by intimacy with Divine

Justice and Mercy. The teller who speaks a narrative of suffering must make a considered and prayerful choice around the imagery to be entertained and the direction of change that these images will inspire. When a rationality of imagery is taken seriously, it becomes possible to subvert the dualistic opposition of life and death, despite the evidence-based rationality that would uphold such dualistic claims.

670 Ibid., 167. Alison’s italics.

266

7.iv. resurrection experiences.

The teller may be silenced when sensory experience is reduced to a scientific rationality of empirical evidence, which refuses meaning-making at a metaphysical level. The higher intellectual processes of language, specifically symbol and metaphor, must be allowed to refine raw experience into meaning. Those original, frightened disciples of Jesus experienced in the resurrection something irrational, if evidence-based rationality were considered the only legitimate way of thinking. But from this apostolic experience arose a most powerful tradition that offers to make sense of suffering and death in images of life unceasing. In this section, I will interact with the thought of Brian Robinette to develop these images of life unceasing as important to a narrative of suffering that intends the healing of ontologic transformation.671

The Scriptural resurrection narratives are stories that juxtapose terror and peace, the seen yet not recognized, both touched and untouchable, known and unknown, etc. These incongruous sensory experiences repeatedly overwhelmed the disciples.

From these experiences arose a language of metaphor that was both grounded in the experience of the apparition as well as receptive to the possibility that there was an order of reality-as-mystery capable of defying death. The resurrection idiom renders incoherent “a metaphysics of violence.” Brian Robinette writes, “[no longer] is ontic difference […] viewed in terms of strife, antagonism, contrariety, force, and instinct…”672 The resurrection experience revealed that the never-ending cycles of

671 Robinette, Grammars of Resurrection: A Christian Theology of Presence and Absence. 672 Ibid., 355.

267 mimetic violence no longer gave shape to a human being’s life. The experience of the resurrection sightings, touchings, eatings, and hearings ignited burning desire in those who loved Jesus. The injustice, the suffering, and the death were all very real experiences, which had aligned the identity of the disciples with evil. At the level of their deepest interiority they experienced the guilt that Girard has described as part of the victim identity. Yet at some primal level of physicality, the resurrection experiences of loving intimacy intensified each one’s alive-ness, countering the paralyzing guilt. The apparitions were experiences of joyful re-animation paradoxically simultaneous with the horrific experience of suffering and death.

This revelation, reversal, and subversion of the victim state of annihilating guilt takes place in what Robinette refers to as a resurrection-space. Outside the empty tomb Mary is weeping and so consumed by her grief over the absence of Jesus that she does not recognize him (John 20). He calls her name, and through her sense of hearing Mary comes to recognize that Presence, even as the sorrow of his absence still echoes in her corporeality. There is an imperative from Jesus, “Do not touch me.” Robinette interprets this as a call to the imagination from beyond human reality to allow an experience of the radically unfamiliar, “an invitation to accede to a new dispensation.”673 The disciples could not fully comprehend Jesus’ presence on account of an “eschatological excess, a surplus of phenomenality that could not … be fully anticipated or grasped, an unanticipated and ever surprising Gift that continues to lure its recipients towards a self-transcending hospitality.”674 For Robinette,

673 Ibid., 4. 674 Ibid.

268 when Jesus asked Mary not to hold on to him, an external distancing or opening was established in order to set in motion the infinite diversity of love’s partings and returnings.675 Citing Jean-Luc Marion, Robinette elaborates this meaning of love.

Loving requires an exteriority that is provisional but effective, an exteriority that remains for long enough that one may cross it seriously. Loving requires distance and the crossing of distance. Loving requires more than a feigned distance, or one that is not truly dug out or truly crossed. In the drama of love, actions must be accomplished effectively over the distance—distributing, going, coming, returning.676

The Scriptural resurrection stories are manifestations of love, indeed they are the comings and goings—the movements—of love. “[T]he empty tomb and appearance narratives in the gospels are full of crossings, spacings, gatherings, veerings, and sendings.”677 It is this set of experiences which grounds the early Christian tradition as it unfolds into the ecclesial Body of Christ,

the ecclesial body that forms as two or more are gathered in his name (Matt 18:20); the textual bodies and sacramental signs that commemorate and analogize the presence- absence of the risen One in our ongoing history: the prophetic and politically charged memory of dead, forgotten, and victimized bodies; acts of reconciliation precisely where victims and victimizers remain locked in spirals of violence; the hope for the absolute fulfillment (or ‘divinization’) of creation in all its particularity, which Christians call ‘eternal life.’ It is the resurrection of Jesus from the dead that constitutes the basic grammar for authentic Christian discourse and praxis.678

This new eschatological identification of one’s corporeal existence with Christ’s body begins as a sensory experience of violence suffered to the point of death. The

Holy Saturday process of being dead culminates with a resurrection experience of emptiness and absence. This is, analogically speaking, the space of the empty tomb.

In this space of emptiness, which becomes the opening between Jesus and Mary,

675 Henri de Lubac, The Discovery of God, trans. Alexander Dru (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1996). Quoted in Robinette, Grammars of Resurrection, 352. 676 Jean-Luc Marion, The Erotic Phenomenon, trans. Stephen E. Lewis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007) Quoted in Robinette, grammars of resurrection, 5.9/17/2018 9:20:00 PM 677 Ibid., 5. 678 Ibid., 5.

269 arises the possibility of an absence from the guilt that comes of violence. The revealed new Justice is a relationship of mercy not guilt. This space of emptiness is paradoxically the space of life’s fulfillment precisely because apocalyptic violence and annihilation cannot find entry into eschatological space. This space, empty at first, calls into existence a different reality.

To enter into this space of the movements of love between Jesus and Mary is for

Robinette the imagined starting moment for the choreography of the rest of one’s life. “[It is] an act of intellectual purgation so that we may allow the echoes and traces of Jesus’ resurrection to be heard and felt in their eschatological given-ness, above all in their narrative presentations.”679 He cites William Placher.

When the Christian story is told most persuasively, then the sweep of that epic gives our own part in it far greater meaning, not less, in a way that becomes most clear not through some argumentative analysis but precisely in the power of the narrative in which general movement and the character of individual episodes illuminate each other. Christian faith sorts out the world by seeing a pattern in things. One does not “prove” such a way of looking at the world, if “proof” means a series of syllogisms from universally accepted premises. Yet Christians want to claim that these really are the patterns of reality.680

There is in the resurrection something that animates and moves the human nature to a more grounded and intelligent hylomorphic integrity. And this movement requires that we let go of our presumed foundations of rationality, becoming “open to that which gives itself to thought and language by way of Gift, as that which saturates and potentially transforms our pre-established horizons of expectation and intelligibility.”681 It is a certain quieting of human syllogistic logic that is required if one is to choreograph one’s life according to the resurrection mystery.

679 Ibid., 32. 680 Ibid., 33. 681 Ibid., 33.

270

The resurrection is a paradox of both presence and absence, revealed and hidden, seen and unseen, touched and untouchable, etc., a set of “both one thing and another” that cannot be resolved by logic. But as a foundation for ontological transformation, the resurrection paradox, which exposes the mendacity of death-as- ultimate-telos, becomes a richly nuanced narrative template for the mysterious re- ordering of the imagination and the desires towards life that pulsates eternally, precisely in the very context of the pulse-less quality of suffering and death. The space between Jesus and Mary Magdalen enables the progressive transformation from one to the other, but exclusively in the resurrection direction, which advances, without extinguishing, towards life.

For Robinette this comportment arising from self-immersion in the resurrection experience follows three soteriological themes: “justice for victims, forgiveness for victimizers, and participation for all (“divinization”) in the Trinitarian life of God.”682

He draws special attention to the “grammar” of this resurrection discourse as a linguistic groping to express what remains fundamentally a mystery and yet has unfolded in history as the real and particular experiences of Christians. By grammar

Robinette means “a deep structural tendency in expression of thought; a characteristic and coherent pattern of understanding; an identifiable and habitual mode of articulation which results in relatively consistent thematization.”683 Botha elaborated the linguistic function of metaphor as bridging between experiential and abstract knowing, which I have adapted as suffering and flourishing. Now, Robinette

682 Ibid., 181. 683 Ibid., 184.

271 elaborates the linguistic function of grammar as thematizing habits of resurrection comportment that subvert suffering through mysterious ways of paradoxic flourishing.

Firstly he identifies a theme of reversal, secondly of double reversal, and thirdly of fulfillment; elements of all three are essential to a fullness of resurrection meaning. Although he uses many Scriptural examples, I find particularly illuminating his citing of Miroslav Wolf on the war between the Croats and Serbs.

The interchanging roles of victim and victimizer in this war illustrate the parallel dynamics of both the victim’s need for reversal of injustice and, perhaps unexpectedly, the victim’s need for forgiveness. The horrendous suffering was contagious and overwhelming.

Nobody seemed in control…. There seemed to be an insatiable appetite for brutality among ordinary people. Once the war started and the right conditions were maintained, an uncontrollable chain reaction was underway. These were mostly decent people, as decent as most of us tend to be. Many did not, strictly speaking, choose to plunder, rape and torture, or secretly enjoy these. A dormant beast in them was awakened from its uneasy slumber. And not only in them. The motives of those who set to fight against the brutal aggressors were self-defence and justice. The best in others, however, enraged the best in them. The moral barriers holding it in check broke down and it went after revenge. In resisting evil, they were trapped by evil… Evil engenders evil, and like pyroclastic debris from the mouth of a volcano, it erupts out of the aggressor and victim alike.684

As each side became victim of the other, the roles of indignant victimizer and wounded victim alternated; everyone was both victim and victimizer. The understandable hatred arising in the hearts of the victims required healing by liberation from the (Girardian) cycles of seductive violence. The transformation that has “extraordinary social and political significance” is a spiritual process of healing

684 Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996) Quoted in Robinette, Grammars of Resurreciton, 270.

272 and transformation to be distinguished from a psychological process of making normal the traumatized psyche. Referring to the victims and aggressors in the war in former Yugoslavia, Robinette writes,

It is “a release from the understandable but nonetheless inhumane hatred in which their hearts are held captive.” This is not merely a matter of personal feeling, or of some kind of psychological release. It is a process of healing with extraordinary social and political significance.685

It is the two-sided theme of a reversal of the injustice suffered and a recognition of one’s own mimetic perpetration of more injustice that characterizes the transformed identity of a resurrection spirituality. In other words, in recognizing one’s suffering as an evil insinuated upon the victim-self’s interiority, one becomes capable of seeing the suffering as a source of contagion for those in relationship with the self. Awareness of one’s identity as victim brings with it the awareness of one’s own potential for escalating violence with the desire for vengeance. This resurrection awakening is a process of entry into that space of love in which vengeance and death are stripped of their threatening qualities. To recognize both the self-as-victim and the other-as-victim is not an awakening into self-hate and self- condemnation, but rather into the mystery of forgiveness. Forgiveness is the pre- requisite for human flourishing.686

Flourishing, fulfillment, or saturation with eternal life describe the third theme of

Robinette’s grammar of resurrection. A contemplative flooding of the human imagination by divine generosity, i.e., forgiveness, disables vengeance and enables freedom for fulfillment. Human fulfillment or flourishing, in a resurrection idiom,

685 Ibid., 270. The citation within my citation is from Miroslav Wolf, Exclusion and Embrace, 117. 686 Ibid., 293.

273 means a process of divinization. This transformative process of sanctification is ongoing and gradual; it is “the progressive revolution of our own entire framework of knowing, receiving, speaking, and behaving through the Spirit of the risen

Christ.”687 When Christ becomes the model for a new mimesis, the ritual, violent expulsion of a scapegoated victim is clearly recognized as an evil hindrance to life’s flourishing. Once saturated with divine forgiveness, one ceases to be the victim of injustice, who desires revenge. The previous victim stance shifts to that of an agent increasingly animated with a passion for such intensity of life that even death cannot extinguish this resurrection mystery. This ontologic transformation of one’s humanity is more powerful and more far-reaching than death. The sensed experience of graced flourishing in divine Justice and Mercy disables the rationality of death’s seductive empiricism. No one has come back from the dead to tell of the experience, but many have described the vivifying, sensed experience of Justice and

Mercy in their narrative of suffering.

The grammar of resurrection effects a saturation of the senses with images of vitality, which in turn give rise to a comportment of progressive liberation from the victim disposition both in oneself and in the other. It is this resurrection-saturation of the corporeal senses with life’s flourishing that brings about the shift in identity from one who is immobilized by suffering to one who is free to advance in a graced differentiation. The grammar of resurrection signifies a mysterious dynamism and animation that intensifies progressively and is not subject to the restrictions of a scientific materialism such as the biology of death. The proposed narrative of

687 Ibid., 306.

274 suffering must be careful not to suppress this grammar of resurrection with the discourse of empirical science.

7.v. images of resurrrection

The proposed narrative of suffering, as described this far, has the following characteristics. It is configured by the eschatologic imagination and spoken in the grammatical themes of resurrection imagery. The metaphor of movement—living movements in the resurrection space of the empty tomb—becomes central to one’s unfolding narrative in which a new justice of mercy displaces the old justice of vengeance. In this section I will explore the imagery that arose around the resurrection in the earliest era of Christian resurrection practice, between 200 and

1336, using Caroline Walker Bynum’s work.688 I will show that these early images around death and resurrection signify certain meanings that have relevance for a contemporary ethics discourse around suffering and death.

I would suggest that the various, historic metaphors of resurrection that Bynum holds up for consideration fall into two groupings. There are the metaphors of stasis and immobility, which bespeak suffering and an overwhelming fear of violence and death, and there are the metaphors of desire, which signify movements of animation and vivacity. Metaphors of stasis or of paralysis convey a petrified stance, which has the effect of immobilizing vital movements, including movement towards the good.

Metaphors of desire or passion bring about the intensification of movement in general, which is a necessary condition for particular movements towards the good.

688 Caroline Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995)

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When studied in the historical context of their evolution, metaphors of desire for a life-enhancing justice of mercy progressively come to assert tense incongruity with images of an immobilizing, oppressive justice of penalty. I will highlight in Walker

Bynum’s work those sets of metaphors that become archetypes of movement or of its privation. This classification of metaphors may be helpful both in composing and in understanding narratives of suffering in terms of, on the one hand, an identity that restricts itself to the modern principles of autonomy, rights, individualism, and a violent rivalry with death, and, on the other hand, an identity groping beyond such human futility into an inchoate, new reality.

Walker Bynum begins with an examination of the Scriptures, in which she identifies the metaphor of the seed, i.e., an identity of transformation, with resurrection.

Romans 6-8 seems to suggest that our resurrection has already begun through baptism. Resurrection is thus the rebirth of embodied persons, and it begins in this life. In contrast, 2 Corinthians 5, 1-10 may be read as implying that we discard body when we exchange our earthly clothing or tabernacle for habitation in heaven. Whatever it is that survives in paradise, it is not… either accompanied or reclothed by anything physical or material. Gospel accounts of Jesus’s resurrection clearly imply the same range of interpretation, from exaggeratedly physicalist to exaggeratedly spiritualist. They stress the materiality of Jesus’s body, which ate boiled fish and honeycomb and commanded Thomas the Doubter “Handle and see”(Luke 24. 39, 41-43) Yet they also underline the radical transformation of the resurrected Christ, who passed through closed doors, was sometimes not recognizable to his beloved disciples, and bade his friend Mary Magdalen “Touch me not!” (Luke 24.16- 30, 31, 36, and 51; John 20.14, 19, and 21.4) Moreover in the Gospel of Luke, the two interpretations exist side by side, as if to complement each other.689

In the pre-Christian historical context this transformation into the after-life was expressed in markedly contrasting ways. The Hebrews understood the person as a psycho-somatic unity, whereas the Greeks saw a human soul that in death separated from the corpse. Which aspects of human nature would come into the resurrection

689Ibid., 4-5.

276 was a question subject to cultural shaping. The corollary was the question of personal identity as material body or as immaterial soul. The early Christian communities were influenced both by the Greek and by the Hebrew cultures. Some became more interested in the eternity of the immaterial part of one’s human nature while others were concerned more with the fate of one’s corporeal materiality. Identity came to be about the soul or about the body. As the composite whole moving through suffering towards resurrection, certain images emerged. The characteristics of these images help us to understand the narratives of contemporary sufferers and their approach to death.

In the first and second centuries of Christianity, the cultural context for the

Christian parousia was persecution and martyrdom. Thus the resurrection was expressed in metaphors that reflected this terrifying reality. The resurrection was like passing through an ordeal into a fertile land of vineyards, wheat fields, fruit trees, and the flowering of these. In the first century AD, Clement of Rome wrote to the faithful exhorting them

to compare themselves to a tree of vine…[using] a plethora of natural images for the resurrection, especially the metaphor of the seed (which is explicitly said to die and decay in the earth before rising) and the analogy of the phoenix (which, in Clement’s account, does not immolate itself but rather rises as a worm from its own decaying flesh).690

Although based upon the Pauline seed image, these texts do not signify transformation from corruption to incorruption, or from natural to spiritual, according to Walker Bynum. These images confer a sense of bringing about “a grander and more abundant version of the world.” They draw “a close analogy

690 Clement of Rome, Épître Aux Corinthiens. Translated by A. Jaubert., trans. A. Jaubert (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1971)122-123. Quoted in Caroline Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336, New York: Columbia University Press, 1995. 27.

277 between resurrection and natural change…[such that] they make either resurrection a process set in motion by the very nature of things, or they make all growth dependent on divine action.”691 At this stage of history, the identity of the resurrected body is not questioned; the metaphors of natural phenomena mean that the whole person returns, changed and perfected like a fertile tree.692 What arises from the dead phoenix is a larva, feeding upon the putrefying remains of the dead bird; the larva eventually grows wings and carries the bones of the dead bird, now stripped clean, to the altar-place of glory. The identity of the bird does not pose a concern in the meaning of this ancient narrative. In the first century, the resurrection meant simply transformation towards wholeness, perfection, and fruition. The question as to how this mystery of material flourishing was to come about began to emerge as the second century unfolded.

In the second century, the question of identity as material continuity arose. In the context of Christian martyrs being thrown to the lions, there was concern about one’s bodily self being dismembered, eaten, digested, and excreted as dung; these concerns clearly reflected experiences of annihilation with respect to human particularity and identity. Ignatius of Antioch, on his way to martyrdom, identified martyrdom itself with resurrection. For him, the particularity of his suffering would remain in the resurrection.

Desiring complete destruction so that his followers will not be endangered by the need to bury his remains, Ignatius nonetheless says he will rise ‘with’ or ‘by’ his chains, which are,

691 Ibid., 24. 692 Ibid., 25.

278

he says, ‘pearl’s’—an odd phrase, which seems to mean that whatever it is that rises, Ignatius’ suffering is never to be lost because it is who he is.693

Ignatius refers to his martyrdom thus, “I am the wheat of God, ground by the teeth of wild beasts that I may be found pure bread… the wrenching of bones, the mangling of limbs, the grinding of my whole body, evil punishments of the devil—let these come upon me, only that I may attain Jesus Christ.”694 The lions are the means to

Ignatius’ transformation; i.e., his martyred materiality becomes his resurrection and ultimate union with Christ.695

Later in the second century, a Coptic document, the Acts of Paul (circa 160), document the meaning of resurrection as a healing from persecution. Though fallen into the ground to rot, the person will rise again with every hair intact, as though regurgitated from Jonah’s belly. Like Christ, the raised will bear the wounds of earthly suffering, but the power of God will restore and perfect the full particularity of each person’s embodiment.

Justin Martyr in the same era also showed concern for formal and material continuity. He imagined the bits that remain after decomposition as re-assembled by God in the manner that a statue is re-cast or a mosaic is re-made. The resurrection, imaged as a re-making or re-assembly, represented the introduction of an inorganic metaphor in place of the organic decomposition of the Pauline seed.

693 Ton H. C. Van Eijk, La Resurrection Des Mort Chez Les Pères Apostoliques. (Paris: Beauchesne, 1974)122-123. Quoted in Caroline Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336, New York: Columbia University Press, 1995. 27. 694 Ibid., 28. 695This perspective of an early Christian martyr is one that the modern mind finds hard to appropriate!

279

In the years 180-200, Theophilus of Antioch described resurrection as a mechanical re-moulding of a vessel such that flaws were removed; images of biological metamorphosis were now being displaced by images of persisting, elemental bits of matter and their mechanical re-assembly. “When he deploys the standard set of organic metaphors, found in I Clement, he changes them so as to convey a sense that a material element persists; on his account, true biological change becomes inexplicable.”696 Theophilus was also responding to the cultural context of persecution by the heinous, pagan practice of cannibalism. He compared the resurrection to a patient recovering from sickness; a sick man mysteriously loses his flesh and in wellness recovers his bodily bulk as “new flesh.” Walker

Bynum points out that, on this view, the new flesh was seen to come from God, not from nutrition, and conversely, the loss of flesh was not due to being eaten or to eating; some essential aspect of identity was untouched by the ravages of cannibalistic digestion and putrefaction. This logic of ancient thought is somewhat opaque. “The argument is so bizarre that one distinguished modern scholar has simply dismissed it as ‘confused.’”697Although the particulars may be unintelligible in the context of modernity, it would seem that the meaning of resurrection by the end of the second century had come to reflect a concern with protecting the victimized, Christian body, if destined for resurrection, against destruction by pagan persecution, such as cannibalism or animal digestion.698 Disgust for the putrefying

696 Ibid., 30. 697 Ibid., 31. 698 I am referring here to the practice of throwing Christians to the lions.

280 corpse and fear of contamination were difficult to reconcile with the promised glory of resurrection.699

Athenagoras, in the third century, was still immersed in the pre-occupation with death by digestion. If animals and people ate people, then the digested particles of one person became part of another animal/person, and God might have trouble sorting out which particles constitute each person. To resolve this conundrum,

Athenagoras’ asserted that any digestive process cannot absorb human beings; the particles pass through unharmed and unassimilated.

He argues that the human being cannot be said to exist when body is scattered and dissolved, even if soul survives. So “man” must be forged anew. But it will not be the same man unless the same body is restored to the same soul: such restoration is resurrection… We have grown from soft seeds into bones and sinews, and we will decay again into the materials we came from.. Therefore for the dead dissolved bodies to rise, they must be changed into incorruptible bodies; otherwise they would merely dissolve again. But Athenagoras mentions the growth and decay of seeds and semen only to argue against such processes as paradigms of resurrection. Resurrection is the reassemblage of parts. God “can reunite fragments” that have been entirely “resolved… into their consitutents.” … Even if the body has been divided up among many animals who have eaten and digested it and “united [it] with their bodies,” and even if these animals have decayed or been eaten, God can still find the human bits to reassemble.700

Resurrection meant that God could find the bits and re-forge the original person.

Moreover, the new person made by God was made incorruptible so that he was no longer susceptible to organic processes of disintegration and putrefaction by digestion. This imagery equates stomach and grave; death by cannibalism is the threat. The apocalyptic imagination comes up with resurrection as a victory over death-by-digestion.701

699 Ibid. 27-31. 700 Athenagoras, “De Resurrectio.Chapter 25, Paragraph 2, 146-47.,” in Legatio and De Resurrectione, ed. and trans. Schoedel, n.d. Quoted in Caroline Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995. 32. 701 Ibid., 32-33.

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The eschatologic meaning702 of resurrection as fulfillment is not born of such images. In the same era, Minucius described the body in the grave as like a tree in winter; it would later put out new shoots. The texts of Minucius speak of destruction in terms of eating, consuming, digesting; the risen body triumphs even in hell by not being consumed but by feeding the flames.703 This imagery too is an apocalyptic triumph over organic processes. God could and would suspend the laws of nature.

Iranaeus also associated identity with the exact material continuity of particles; the withered and the healed hand were the same hand. “Whether dust or ashes, moisture or smoke, bodies perdure.”704 However, unlike Athenagoras, Iranaeus specified that what we eat became so much a part of us that, when we were nourished by eating the body and blood of Christ, we also underwent a transformation of fruition, like the planted cutting or the sown seed. Moreover, our bodies would decompose in the ground but, at the appointed time, would rise because the Eucharist that we consumed would make us incorruptible.

The texts of Tertulian reflected a similar belief in the re-assemblage of material particles, but with the specification that the organs would be replaced. Urination, menstruation, and mastication would not be necessary in the resurrection. There would be a transformation of parts such that their original utility would change to beauty, and the ugliness of putrefaction would no longer happen. For Tertulian, change was rot; changeless stasis is what would confer immunity to decomposition.

702 Sirek, 6.vii. I am referring here to eschatology as defined by James Alison, as the fulfillment or intensification of life. 703 Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336. 34. 704 Ibid., 3.

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The ultimate characteristic of that which would go on forever was resistance to consumption.

The final victory must be the eating that does not consume, the decay that does not devour, the change that transmutes only to changelessness. The fact that we eat God in the Eucharist and are truly fed on his flesh and blood is a paradoxical redemption of that most horrible of consumptions: cannibalism.705

The flesh that would rise had to begin as a cadaver, unclean from eating, excretion, and copulation, killed by dismemberment, then consumed and finally excreted as putrid contagion. To be flesh and blood was not an evolving experience of transformation from apocalyptic violence into eschatologic mercy; resurrection was tied to the violence of sacrificial destruction of one’s flesh-and-blood.

Scholars have criticized Tertullian for rhetorical and theological excesses and most of all for inconsistency—for stressing resurrection as a prelude to punishment while relating it to the grace provided by Christ’s rising, for glorifying flesh and creation while indulging in a castigation of woman that sounds misogynistic and a castigation of body that sounds dualist, But surely these inconsistencies—however offensively or incoherently expressed—are exactly the point. What must rise is the site of our rottenness. It is corruption that puts on incorruption. Caro salutis est cardo: the flesh is the pivot of salvation.706

If the flesh was the pivot of salvation, that pivot was understood in terms of extraordinary violence to the flesh. Thus the cultural context of Tertullian’s texts and of all the early patristic writings must be seen as paralyzing (petrifying) fear.

Moreover the terrifying image of death-by-digestion also suggested the meaning of becoming so lost in a realm of corruptibility that the possibility of resurrection was also lost. Because of the overwhelming cultural reality of pagan, sacrificial death, the imagination was confined to an apocalyptic understanding of resurrection.

“Resurrection was finally not so much the triumph of martyrs over pain and

705 Ibid., 41. 706 Ibid., 43.

283 humiliation as the triumph of martyrs’ bodies over fragmentation and scattering, and the loss of a final resting place.”707 Images of stasis, hardening, and reassemblage gave the flesh a promise of victory over death-by-digestion and ensured the arrival in the final resting place of resurrection.

Moving forward into the last years of the fourth century, the influence of Origen becomes prevalent. His original texts have been lost, and many of his works appear only as citations in the work of others or in Latin translations. For Origen, although the corporeal materiality was in flux, like a river, the personal identity remained because the form characterizing the body remained the same. Scars, blemishes, and other peculiarities remained, and yet the body could also adapt and transform in response to the milieu; by contrast, the soul was unchanging. Like a fish that developed gills not lungs, the person who was to live in the kingdom of heaven has to be transfigured. “[T]he previous form does not disappear, even if its transition to the more glorious [state] occurs, just as the form of Jesus, Moses and Elijah in the

Transfiguration was not [a] different [one] than what it had been.”708 The unchanging principle of this organization of the flux of flesh, with its inherent quality of growth, was the soul, although it was not yet the hylomorphism of

Thomas. It was “a combination of Platonic form, or plan, with Stoic seminal reason

(an internal principle of growth and development). A pattern that organizes the flux of matter and yet has its own inherent capacity for growth, it is… a bit like a genetic

707 Ibid. 50 708 Origen, “Fragment on Psalm 1.5,” in De Resurrectio, by Methodius, ed. Nathanael Bonwetsch, vol. 1, Die Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller Der Ersten Drei Jahrhunderte, 27 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1917), 244–48. Quoted in Caroline Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body. 64.

284 code.”709 Dynamism and change could now be understood as fertility not rot. The image of a developing fetus or a flowering fig tree came to describe the spiritual movement towards heaven. “To Origen, the body that survives and rises is not the pot or statue or ship of Tertullian; it is not the dry bones of Ezekiel 37 or the dust of

Genesis 3:7 and 2:19; it is not reassembled with all its parts or planks or organs intact; nor is it called again, as tiny decaying particles, from the stomach of the earth or the depths of the sea.”710 The significance of Origen is his metaphors of movement—growth and transformation—not of static preservation. But Methodius of Olympus challenged Origen’s visioning of dynamism with a concern about the particles: how will the original bits be recovered, re-assembled, and preserved? He shifted the focus once again to the reconstruction of the temple, the clay pot, the mosaic image, etc., eclipsing once again the organic growth-metaphor of the seed.

Methodius feared change and found Origen’s dynamic understanding of the body offensive. Change could be understood as fertility (good) rather than rot (evil) only if God was directly effecting the change. 711 For the Slavonic Methodius, “what grows and changes is sinister, needing to be curtailed or destroyed; that which is salvageable is that—and only that—which persists unchanged.”712 Thus the legacy of the first four centuries of resurrection faith is images that highlight the tension between metaphors of movement and stasis, of fertility and putrefaction, of dismemberment and integrity, of fragmentation and re-assembly. This materialist

709 Ibid., 67. 710 Ibid. 711 Ibid., 69. 712 Ibid., 70.

285 pre-occupation was brought about by experiences of external forces of destruction and fear-based concerns around basic survival.

Skipping forward to the thirteenth century, when persecution of Christians was no longer a cultural reality, there came about increasing attention to human desiring. The human passions were identified. “If the resurrection of the body involves bringing particles together, the particles are not, to Bonaventure, bits of inert stuff; they are dynamic—pregnant with something akin to feeling.”713 Already in the fifth century Augustine had been attentive to desire. “Soul is said to need, to desire, to yearn for body, as a man loves a beautiful virgin.”714 Walker Bynum interprets this cultural shift.

These metaphors of love, production, or unfolding thus express an ontological point. To speak of the desire of separated soul from body is another way of saying that to be a human being… is to be embodied, that soul without body is not a person. The notion of bodily perfection as manifestation, or spilling over (redundantia), of soul is a means of underlining the instrinsic necessity of every particular detail of the risen body. Henry of Ghent argued that the separated soul is “retarded” or “dragged down” not by “a natural desire for the body” but by something even deeper: its imperfect personhood.” For while separated, it subsists only in imperfecta personalitate and cannot be “perfectly borne by its own action to the object of fruition.” Aquinas wrote: “Beatitude is the perfection of man as man. And since man is man not through his body but through his soul, it follows that man’s beatitude does not consist chiefly otherwise than in an act of soul and passes from the soul on to the body by a kind of over flow715…. Since then at the resurrection it behoves a man’s body to correspond entirely to the soul…it follows that man must rise again perfect.”716

In late medieval times, these images of interiority and desire, arising from lived experience, were associated with profound ontologic significance.717 Desire, expressed in a rationality of imagery, became that which shaped the body’s vital

713 Ibid., 241, 714 Ibid., 242, 715 Ibid., 243, citing Aquinas sup.92.2.6 716 Ibid., 243, citing Aquinas sup. 80.1 717 A modern understanding of desire in terms of the analytical discourse of its sciences did not yet exist.

286 movements, including the vitality of resurrection. In a Thomistic paradigm desire is not a disembodied power; it is the sensory soul of living, moving, changing human materiality. As such it inducts the corporeal reality into the realm of a spiritual dynamism more powerful than death. Medieval images of loving desire are important because they introduced the possibility of a justice of mercy; becoming just no longer depended upon the violence of martyrdom.

However, a materialism that associates the cadaver and a story of violence with the good is remarkably persistent. Walker Bynum comments on this materialism.

…[T]he basic conclusion of my study of resurrection is that a concern for material and structural continuity showed remarkable persistence even where it seemed almost to require philosophical incoherence, theological equivocation, or aesthetic offensiveness. This concern responded to and was reflected in pious practices of great oddness; without it such late medieval curiosities as entrail caskets, finger reliquaries, and miracles of incorrupt cadavers are inexplicable. The materialism of this eschatology expressed not body-soul dualism but rather a sense of self as psychosomatic unity. The idea of person, bequeathed by the Middle Ages to the modern world, was not a concept of soul escaping body or soul using body; it was a concept of self in which a physicality was integrally bound to sensation, emotion, reasoning, identity—and therefore finally to whatever one means by salvation. Despite its suspicion of flesh and lust, Western Christianity did not hate or discount the body. Indeed, person was not person without body, and body was the carrier or the expression… of what we today call individuality.718

She understands this materialism, though it be dead matter, as attesting to a

Christian embrace of physicality, without a dualistic separation of body and soul. Of this pre-occupation with matter, she writes, “Whatever ultimate glory medieval thinkers hoped for, however much they came to understand physicality and individuality as necessary components of self, they did so at the expense of freezing much of the biological process and sublimating much of sensual desire.”719 She does not identify this “freezing” of desire as the root of a problematic dualism. On closer

718 Ibid., 11, 719 Ibid., 12. Italics are mine.

287 examination, it is evident that to embrace a dead materiality amounts to an incoherent disregard for the dynamic soul as integral to human nature. A more plausible embrace of human materiality recognizes the essential characteristic of movement that is inferred by the hylomorphism of human nature. The body alive has active sensory soul and moving materiality, understood by Thomas as the dynamic triad of apprehension-appetition-contemplation.720 If this image of dynamism represents the integrity of the whole, then to overlook movement is to change the defining image of human materiality into the stasis of a corpse. To understand one’s identity in the necrophilia terms of a corpse is to identify with the immobility of suffering, death, and evil. To identify with resurrection is to understand oneself in terms of a moving and vital animation of the immaterial- material composite, unbounded by death. Human desire is movement, movement is change, and change is ontologic transformation. In the fullness of one’s contemplative, sensing, acting nature, an ontology or identity of suffering and death give way to flourishing in the fulfillment of resurrection. The identity shift into resurrection, an awakening that subverts our cultural necrophilia and materialism, becomes intelligible only through a rationality of imagery, in which the static corpse gives way to unquenchable animation. Pre-occupation with images of the static integrity of a dead corpse may well signify the extreme fear of dismemberment characteristic of a martyr’s consciousness. By contrast, desire for relationships

720 Sirek, chapter 2. I describe Thomistic anthropology, influenced by the understanding of Diana Fritz Cates.

288 healed of images of vengeance into images of forgiveness may reflect the ontologic transformation from death into resurrection.

The narrative of suffering must recognize the power of specific imagery to effect this ontologic transformation. In attending the suffering body, its animating principle must be accorded a voice, and this requires attention to a language of suitable imagery.

7.vi. the voice of the first person

The analytical rationality of empiricism or principlism calls forth the subject-object paradigm; a subject analyzes perhaps a theological/literary text or a patient’s story.

What plays out is a process of discovering some underlying universal truth by critical analysis of text or of symptoms. In the case of symptoms, the diagnosis is applied to practicality by the consequent intervention and solution to the problem of some disease state. In the case of theology (and ethics), the abstract truth is applied to corporeal reality and becomes an imperative for a particular behaviour.

Rosenbaum’s theoretical “Reason” has a certain resemblance to the speculative rationality of metaphysics in that it generates a certain comportment derived from the abstract principle. Such “Reason,” which I have called principlism in ethics or empiricism in medicine, differs from the metaphysical tradition in that it lacks the complementarity of practical reason and particular reason. Rosenbaum has referred to this lacking intelligence as “Meaning.” When the good is an abstract idea that has not arisen from the sufferer’s experience, but is rather the idea of a beneficent theorist towards solving the sufferer’s problem, there is potential for violence to the sufferer. The violence comes of an imposed solution that is done to the sufferer by a

289 detached, third person observer-agent. These insertions of abstract, theoretical solutions or ideologies into someone’s corporeal reality do not satisfy the Thomistic understanding of grounding speculative rationality in one’s material nature.721 In fact, the forceful insertion of a consensus about the truth to which the receiver has not yet matured is a violence that only serves to escalate the receiver’s suffering. A paradigm shift is required in which the powerful, theoretical, scientific “Reason,” offering its applications of the truth, is offset and indeed complemented by exercise of the practical and the particular rationalities. In an ethics shaped by the proposed narrative of suffering, an agency of the practical reason and the particular reason must render more subdued the dominating imperatives of “Reason.” It is only by means of a return to the phantasms, which means getting in touch with the sensory nature, that an emergence from suffering becomes a true ontological transformation towards the good.722 This paradigm shift towards the practical rationality of the

721 ST.I.84.7. Thomas wrestles with his sources. Augustine, informed by Democritus, held that “all knowledge is caused by images issuing from the bodies… entering our souls.” “Plato…held that the intellect is distinct from the senses: and that it is an immaterial power not making use of a corporeal organ for its action. And since the incorporeal cannot be affected by the corporeal, he held that intellectual knowledge is not brought about by sensible things affecting the intellect.” Aristotle agreed that sensible objects left images upon the interiority, but ascribed to intellect the capacity of abstraction, which “causes the phantasms received from the senses to be actually intelligible.” In this Questio, Thomas is presumably using the term, intellect, to refer to speculative intellect not practical reason. My approach from below is intended to magnify the movements of sensory nature and practical reason in a sufferer. 722 Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature: A Philosophical Study of Summa Theologiae Ia,75-89. 287. “The Treatise defends the turn towards the phantasms in 84.7, which is in fact Aquinas’s most extended treatment of the topic. The main reply begins by offering two indications (indicia) of the need for this turn toward phantasms. These are not decisive proofs, and certainly not demonstrations; they are intended as pieces of empirical evidence that tend to confirm the hypothesis. First is the obvious fact that our ability to think can be impeded by damage to our bodily organs, especially the brain…”(284) Although the intellect is immaterial, an intact materiality, especially of the brain, is required for intellect’s proper functioning. One recognizes within oneself that examples and images serve to help one’s thinking, and so Thomas presumes that the sensory phantasms are necessary in the operation of rationality around practical moves.(ST.I.84.7) “[The use of phantasms] is not just a useful practice, but a necessary one. It is not a matter of sound methodology; it is not something learned, in the way that careful drivers learn to use their rearview

290 sensory phantasms is reflected in a switch in the narrative voice, from that of the third person observer to that of the first person sufferer. In this section I will elaborate the implications of this shift to the voice of the sufferer and will point to some habits of the speculative intellect that might hinder and corrupt this shift in paradigm.723

Rhonehimer’s work on the perspective of the acting person takes on importance for this thesis project because I understand that acting person to be the sufferer, not the observer. The narrative of suffering must be told in the voice of the first person.

This previously overlooked agency becomes the narration of the suffering by the sufferer. In elaborating upon this shift to the voice of the first person, Rhonheimer describes moral agency with a fresh emphasis. Thomistic natural law, practical reason, and three of the cardinal virtues (namely, temperance, prudence, and justice) become the elements that afford a strong counterpoint to a morality of imperatives and impositions.

For Rhonheimer, natural law signifies the principle of movement towards the good; it is “that fundamental, cognitive, and appetitively-moving orientation toward the good, through which the human being is constituted as an acting subject. [It is] to place oneself from the outset in the perspective of the first person.”724 Law—that which commands and binds—is a rationality, according to Thomas, but a rationality

mirrors. This is, rather, the way that all human beings do and must think. Our intellects in this life, can work no other way.”(287) 723 My appropriation of the work of Rhonheimer gives shape to the following section. Martin Rhonheimer, “Practical Reason and the Naturally Rational,” The Perspective of the Acting Person: Essays in the Renewal of Thomistic Moral Philosophy, edited by William F. Murphy Jr., (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2008) 724 Ibid., 100.

291 that arises and binds from within; the natural law is not some divine judiciary system externally mediated by one human being upon another.

…for "lex" [law] is derived from "ligare" [to bind], because it binds one to act. Now the rule and measure of human acts is the reason, which is the first principle of human acts, as is evident from what has been stated above (Q[1], A[1], ad 3); since it belongs to the reason to direct to the end, which is the first principle in all matters of action, according to the Philosopher (Phys. ii).725

The rationality that Thomas refers to is always the speculative intelligence enhanced by the experiential knowing of practical reason and the sensory imprints

(phantasms) of particular reason (which is also the cogitative sense). The moral agent, the “I” who speaks the narrative of suffering, senses and moves in response to the allure of the good, emerging from bondage to the not-so-good. This describes the rational principle of human acts, and it is referred to as law. This rationality that

Thomas calls law is the coherence of one’s acts with sensory phantasms of harm and good and the synthesis of such experiences into meaning by the capacities of the higher intellect.

[T]he law belongs to that which is a principle of human acts, because it is their rule and measure. Now as reason is a principle of human acts, so in reason itself there is something which is the principle in respect of all the rest: wherefore to this principle chiefly and mainly law must needs be referred. Now the first principle in practical matters, which are the object of the practical reason, is the last end: and the last end of human life is bliss or happiness, as stated above (Q[2], A[7]; Q[3], A[1]). Consequently the law must needs regard principally the relationship to happiness. 726

If we approach this excerpt from Thomas analogically rather than analytically, we can recognize that Thomistic beatitude has as much to do with suffering in medicine as it does with theological doctrine. A pursuit of the good involves the process of arriving into beatitude, which in practical terms might be paraphrased as coming to

725 ST I-II.90.1 726 ST I-II.90.2

292 a peace with one’s past and leaning into the future by resting in God with one’s particular and increasingly integrated material-immaterial human nature. The proposed new discourse of medical ethics, informed by Thomas on ultimate beatitude, becomes a means to participate beatitude in an anticipatory mode.

The orientation of medical ethics, as well as in soteriology, eschatology, spirituality, morality, etc., is not towards a moral rectitude of the external actions

“according to commandments, duties, or demands of the ought,” but rather towards the deeper, interior origins, within the soul-body unity, of any given act.727

Whoever speaks about the lex naturalis in St Thomas’ interpretation does not speak in fact about moral norms or the normative grounding of the rectitude of actions, but rather about the body-and-soul unity of the human person as a subject of actions and about the origin of the person’s reason-guided striving, through which this person can be understood as a subject that moves himself towards the good for man.728

The human soul-body composite is seen as “naturally” organized for movement but that movement is not random; the natural law ordains that human movement is directed towards a justice of beatitude, which becomes increasingly less susceptible to the seductive, violent energies of evil. Thus human movement is ordered to becoming capable of abiding in God. The human capacity for ontologic transformation is so intrinsic to human nature that Thomas has described it as a law of that nature, a “natural law.” In other words, on Rhonheimer’s view, Thomistic natural law is not a juridical system that adjudicates and punishes the guilt of the other, nor is it a system that scrutinizes and annihilates the self. Natural law refers to a human interiority that seeks to model itself after the divine excellence of justice

727 Rhonheimer, “Practical Reason and the Naturally Rational.”100. 728 Ibid.

293 and mercy, rather than after an external effectiveness of outcomes and productivities.729 The Thomistic natural law places emphasis upon excellence not guilt, interiority not externals, self-awareness not self-annihilation, beatitude not misery, etc. On this view, the moral agent remodels the self not the other.

Imperatives, obligations, and responsibilities are no longer a set of projected impositions from external others; moral awareness now arises from within the narrating sufferer, whose agency is a progressive emergence from the bondage of harm into a freedom for flourishing.

This emergence from harm’s imprints into flourishing is an iteration of the maxim of Thomistic practical reason. Practical reason knows what best be done for now in these particular circumstances. 730 This knowing arises not from abstract principles of righteousness but from a synthesis—synderesis—of past experiences of harm and good. Rhonheimer puts it thus.

This has nothing to do with the question of derivation of judgements for concrete actions from general norms [or principles], nor with maintaining an infallibility of the prudent person in determining what is “right” in every instance. What is meant is not factual rectitude, but rather the moral “being right” or “being good” of action on the basis of “practical truth,” that is, its coincidence with the goal of virtue.731

According to Rhonheimer’s reading of Thomas, the moral process involves becoming a just person “on the inside.” It is important to note that this becoming just does not mean compliance with the external norms defined by sociology,

729 Sirek, 6.iv. In chapter 6 of this thesis I have interpreted the work of Alasdair MacIntyre, (After Virtue): the goods of excellence become coherent with the particularity and interiority of natural law, and the goods of effectiveness become coherent with conformity to an externally imposed system of laws. 730 Sirek, 4,ii. In chapter 4, I have described practical reason as distinct from speculative reason, according to Thomas. 731 Rhonheimer, “Practical Reason and the Naturally Rational.”101

294 psychology, or even by measures of “factual rectitude,” and a ledger of good works.

Thomistic moral agency does not equate being right, competent, or effective with being morally good (although these attributes are not contrary to goodness). In a

Thomistic paradigm, the good is not viewed in terms of empirically quantifiable outcomes, nor is the good an effective, textual argument of justification. With a

Thomistic shift in focus towards the interiority, it is a rationality of sensory

(experiential) imprints that becomes relevant and indeed essential to moral agency.

On this view, moral awakening begins as an experience of images—phantasms— generated by the cogitative sense according to the primitive rationality of particular reason.732 These imprinted images of the sensory interiority conceal meaning or intentiones, which are accessible only to the narrating subject.733 From these images of the apprehensive, sensory interiority arise the desires or appetitions. Only then, like the visible tip of a deep iceberg mostly submerged, do the external acts become evident. As the voice of the narrating sufferer re-collects the images of past harms and goods, the eschatological imagination (also an aspect of the sensory interiority) comes up with possible, non-violent images of justice and mercy. The desire, previously paralyzed or distorted by harm’s violence, is rekindled. The contemplative posture of resting in these images and rekindled desires becomes a

732 Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature: A Philosophical Study of Summa Theologiae Ia,75-89. 451-2, note 16. “It is the cogitative power that is responsible for actually apprehending a human being as a particular human being… “ The Aristotelian premise is that the senses are not conceptual. “But we can say that the cogitative power doesn’t give us true conceptualization, insofar as the cogitative power doesn’t have the power to grasp universal concepts.” See also Sirek, , 2.2.ii.. The rationality in question is one of particulars, of images, and of experiences. 733 Anscombe, Intention.#8, p13. Intention refers to “the class of things which [one] knows without observation. Eg. a man usually knows the position of his limbs without observation.” Intention is revealed by an answer to the question, Why. Intention is another aspect of the sensory interiority, as constituted by the cogitative sense/particular reason.

295 space in which imprints of past harm and desires of vengeance undergo a graced re- configuration into new images of a justice of non-violence and mercy. Practical reason is that capacity of the intellect, which, by a process of synderesis, takes images of gold and of mountain and creates the possibility of a golden mountain.

This synthesis of old memories into a previously unimagined new state of affairs, vivified by the power of contemplative resting in God, is the complex sensory foundation of practical rationality, whereby the process of ontologic transformation unfolds. It requires the exclusive travail of one’s own subjectivity as sufferer to enable the narrative unfolding of a new identity. The third person observer, regardless of benevolent motivation, cannot impose or insert a perfected state of human participation in the divine. Only the complex and powerful capacity of practical reason and its corollary triad of sensory operations734 can modulate the particular differentiation of a person’s ontologic transformation.

Rhonheimer provides a discussion of alternate understandings of natural law, which do not quite recognize the full implication of natural law as a doctrine of practical reason. When the full significance of a rationality of experience is not appreciated, the importance of the narrating voice of the sufferer becomes muted rather than enabled by the principles.735 As I have emphasized above, Thomistic natural law envisions the locus of moral agency as vested in the acting subject, not in a third-person, observing or adjudicating body.

[These interpretations] do accept the doctrine of lex naturalis as a doctrine of practical reason, but nevertheless they do not take the next step of understanding this reason as that which constitutes man in a fundamental way as an acting subject that moves himself

734 Sirek, chapter 2. The triad: apprehension-appetition-abiding. 735 Sirek, chapter 5. Recall the advisors of Job.

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towards the good; thereby they are not capable of explaining how the orientation of man toward what is naturally good for him comes into existence through the practical reason, or how the “naturally rational,” which alone has the character of a principle, is constituted. The real “normative discourse” is thereby largely detached from its link to “nature,” and this shows, to say the least, that it becomes difficult in the framework of such a conception, to recognize the relevance of a virtue-ethical approach to normative ethics.736

Principles are universals, which means static unchanging elements of truth, belonging to the speculative reason. Natural law is not concerned with things static, such as principles; to move a person towards the good is what belongs to practical reason and to the natural law. It is practical reason, not speculative intelligence, which “constitutes the human being as at once an acting and a moral subject.”737 If natural law is (mistakenly) viewed as a static image of the good, for example, as a status quo observed to exist in nature, then the rationality at work is speculative and not practical. On this view, when the natural world is framed as providing a template or a blueprint for the good, the intellect must cognitively deduce the good.

By contrast, according to Rhonheimer, natural law concerns the living interiority whose movement is under-defined and un-restricted by templates, be they natural or conceptual. The only proscription is against movements of violence.738 But in the fullness of its potential, the movement of the natural law is a participation in the ongoing creativity of the divine actus, unimpeded by a conceptual commitment to finitude. For Rhonheimer, this shift from principles to action theory ties into the goals of the moral virtues.

In this way the concrete behaviour is recognized as a realization, or non-realization, of a goal. This has nothing to do with the question of the derivation of judgments for concrete actions from general norms, nor with maintaining an infallibility of the prudent person in determining what is “right” in every instance. What is meant is not a factual rectitude, but

736 Rhonheimer, “Practical Reason and the Naturally Rational.”102-103 737 Ibid., 101. 738 Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightening. 7.

297

rather a moral “being right” or “being good” of action on the basis of its “practical truth,” that is, its coincidence with the goal of virtue. 739

Natural law arises in created human nature as a mysterious capacity for the good, which does not depend upon the capacity for speculative intellection. It is helpful to an understanding of natural law to complement the language of analysis with an image: the contemplative creature-Creator intimacy enables a human being to move and to breathe and to have its very being in the Spirit of God.

For Rhonheimer, conformity with Thomas requires that one respect the strict distinction between speculative and practical reason.

The [practical] reason needs no recourse to the fact that lex naturalis is a participation in the eternal divine law. In the actual field of operations of natural law, the eternal law does not itself possess any behavioural guiding function, but is simply supplementary interpretation, a speculative referencing to its creational foundation. In any event, the insight into this creational/theological and metaphysical context allows, among other things, some explanation why revelation of the natural law is also possible, which can then become immediately directive of action in the supernatural order as positive “divine law.”740

And once again it becomes clear: practical reason possesses its own and in this sense autonomous point of departure; practical judgments are not derivations from or “prolongations” of theoretical judgments, which means, again, that ethics is not simply to be deduced from metaphysical premises. It acquires its principles in its own way by reflection on praxis that illumines praxis. But holding to this autonomy of practical reason does not negate the relationship of practical reason to reality or truth, nor does it exclude the possibility of subsequent, mutual illumination through the philosophical and metaphysical considerations of anthropology and ethics.741

The ordering of nature is good, but not a good to be understood as the ultimate telos; nature is in the process of becoming better by agency of the human capacity to respond passionately to the allure of divine perfection. Practical reason does not identify a universal principle and then build an argument to justify the action.

739 Rhonheimer, “Practical Reason and the Naturally Rational.”101. 740 Ibid., 104. 741 Ibid., 111.

298

According to Rhonheimer. scholars such as L. Honnefelder have conflated theoretical and practical reason.

Honnefelder appears to conceive of the highest principle of the practical reason as a “statement” that “says” something, a binding expression, in fact. But when we consider it closely, neither the highest principle of the practical reason nor all consequent principles can be called “sentences” or “normative statements”; they can only become such in the mode of reflection of reason upon its own practical act. The principles of the practical reason (=precepts of natural law) are those first practical judgments, which through being embedded in the appetitive dynamism of the natural inclinations have a fundamentally practical/moving character, and as such, independently of linguistic formulation, they first of all constitute the subject as an acting subject through its orientation toward the naturally known good.742

The principles of the practical reason… are those first practical judgements, which through being embedded in the appetitive dynamism of the natural inclinations have a fundamentally practical/moving character, and as such, independently of linguistic formulation, they first of all constitute the subject as an acting subject through its orientation towards the naturally known good.743

For Rhonheimer, practical reason is expressed as movement towards the good that is primal and pre-linguistic. By contrast, Honnefelder holds that all reason, even practical reason, is primarily conceptual and ordered towards the true. In other words, for Honnefelder, practical reason is like theoretical reason in that it chooses between true or false, and he presumes that practical reason follows the principle of non-contradiction. By contrast, Rhonheimer holds that practical reason instantiates the maxim, the good is to be done and evil is to be avoided.744 For Rhonheimer, practical rationality is not like theoretical reason; theoretical reason cannot serve as a metaphor to help us understand practical reason. Thomistic moral agency is in the first place an experiential rationality—a performance of the appetitive

742 Ibid., 106. 743 Ibid., 106. 744 Ibid., 109. Quod bonum est faciendum et prosequendum, et malum vitandum. (ST. I-II.94.2)

299 movements—which opens secondarily to the universals of the speculative rationality.

Natural appetitive drive must be refined or schooled, which engages the discursive aspect of practical reason, without conflating it with speculative reason.

In Rhonheimer’s Thomistic view, natural appetitive drive is the matter, and reason the form, like the distinction between body and soul. When the appetitive drive is being schooled under the influence of this discursive aspect of natural law/practical reason, one may, to use Rhonheimer’s example, choose to situate one’s sexuality in the context of the responsibilities and privileges of married life, which refines and nuances the primal sex drive. This rationality is pliable and fluid, unfolding with time and experience—discursively—inside the contours of each particular marital relationship.

The [Thomistic] process of discursive inventio is a process of the explication of principles through the mediation of experience that is at first external to reason, and in this way amounts to a “concretizing” of the highest principles which are increasingly illuminated in the very process of inventio….745

The aggregation of practical reason comes about from both experience and discursive reflection upon such experience; Rhonheimer refers to “the discursive unfolding of the lex naturalis.”746 He cautions his critics that the principles referred to in the above citation and the discursive aspect of this rationality are not to be understood as the universals of theoretical reasoning.

…[N]ot rarely, “discursive reason” is identified with the reason that arises from judgement of concrete actions, and therefore those passages where I speak of discursive discovery of principles are mistakenly taken as referring to statements about the concrete level of action. But on the other hand, it also appears that many interpreters confuse the inventio doctrine with the adinventio mentioned in I-II. 91.3 but only in the context of the treatise

745 Ibid., 116. 746 Ibid., 116.

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on human law. In fact, some scholars of Thomas have recourse to this over and over again, in order to characterize as a process of “discovery” the relationship between a natural appetitive goal and its rational transformation all the way to the formulation of secondary precepts of the natural law.747

If there were no discursive element in practical reasoning, all discursive thinking would be in the language of universals, which means in the voice of the third person adjudicator or the detached, clinical observer. When external adjudication by the third person observer dominates it aborts a first person reflection upon one’s interiority. This aborting is in effect a fragmentation of the hylomorphic whole, and suffering is perpetrated.748 Rhonheimer suggests that those scholars who have interpreted the discursive aspect of practical reason in terms of a speculative rationality have produced “an awkward, shrunken, ‘deductivist’ version of Thomas’s teaching on the practical reason.”749

Rhonheimer’s strict distinction between speculative and practical reason has an important relevance for the understanding of synderesis, whereby the moral agent knows harm from good even prior to engaging the higher intelleect. Although it is conventional to consider synderesis as the work of the speculative intellect, I have understood it to be more directly linked to practical reason. I believe that in his positioning of synderesis Thomas is ambiguous. In the context of natural law, which elaborates the workings of practical reason, Thomas defines synderesis as a habit of the intellect. “Synderesis is said to be the law of our mind, because it is a habit containing the precepts of the natural law, which are the first principles of human

747 Ibid., 117. 748 Sirek, chapter 2. I develop this proposed understanding of suffering. 749 Rhonheimer, “Practical Reason and the Naturally Rational.”117.

301 actions.”(ST I-II.94.1.2) In the context of discussing the intellectual powers of human nature, Thomas sets out the meaning of synderesis as a kind of movement, in keeping with this understanding of habit.

A man’s act of reasoning, since it is a kind of movement, proceeds from the understanding of certain things—namely, those which are naturally known without investigation on the part of reason, as from an immovable principle,--and ends also at the understanding, inasmuch as it is by means of those principles naturally known, we judge of those things which we have discovered by reasoning. Now as it is clear that speculative reason argues about speculative things, so that practical reason argues about practical things. Therefore we must have, bestowed on us by nature, not only speculative principles but also practical principles. Now the first practical principles bestowed on us by nature, do not belong to a special power, but to a special natural habit, which we call synderesis.750

Because Thomas describes synderesis as a principle of practical reason, one that does not arise from the speculations of the complementary theoretical rationality, I would preserve synderesis as distinct from speculative reason. On this view, it would become an apprehension (knowing) of the practical reason. Thus aligned with the interior cogitative sense/particular reason, which knows harm from good at the level of the sensory nature, the habit of synderesis takes on significance as a knowing directly linked to practical reason. When viewed in terms of movement, synderesis belongs to practical reason.

On the other hand, using citations from de veritate,751 Michael Sherwin situates synderesis in the theoretical rationality, as is conventional. “Judgement is twofold: about universals, and this pertains to synderesis, and about particulars, which belongs to the judgement of choice,… (liberem arbitrium).” In terms of the distinction between universals and particulars, synderesis, as principle, falls under

750 ST.I.79.12 751 Thomas Aquinas, Questiones Disputate de Veritate. 24.1.17. Quoted in Sherwin, By Knowledge and by Love.

302 the universal and therefore under speculative reason. But, as Rhonheimer has argued,752 synderesis is not the kind of principle constituted by the work of speculative reason in pursuit of the true. It is an innate (embodied) principle of movement (towards the good), not a principle signifying a universal truth. Of course, movement towards the good is a true principle of all movement. But the integration of the true and the good is a process over a life-time. This process of integration requires experiential recognition of the distinctions rather than a conceptual elision of the good and the true. The recognition of a presumed good to be false requires a practised awareness of synderesis over time. The practised awareness that is synderesis comes of grounding within the sensory nature in order to become attuned (configured, inclined, intended, and many other verbs referring to the movements of apprehension) to one’s innate aptitude for knowing harm from good. On this view, synderesis is a habitual practice or stance, not a dialectical argument of the theoretical reason. This ambiguity around the classification of synderesis is yet another instance of the importance of distinguishing between aspects of practical and of speculative reason. As Rhonhiemer has emphasized, practical reason is not a subcategory of speculative reason, although some aspects do overlap, depending upon the terms of reference.

This precision around synderesis and the way practical reason works is important to the proposed narrative of suffering. As it builds, the narrative reveals the time-bound interior movements of emergence from evil and the progressive ontologic re-creation of one’s vitality. The discursive process is the reflection upon a

752 Rhonheimer, “Practical Reason and the Naturally Rational.”117.

303 progression of appetitive movements with the intention to heal the sensory interiority of its imprints of harmful fragmentation. Although a discursive unfolding, this desire for healing is not an appeal to the logic of principles; it is best understood in terms of the same imagery that describes natural law, namely, the image of contemplative intimacy with the divine.753

The desire that characterizes the proposed narrative of suffering is a desire for healing transformation. The narrative of suffering grows in its transformative power as the passions are increasingly ordered by practical reason towards contouring one’s human interiority in intimacy with Divine Justice and Mercy. The experience of the well-ordered passions giving rise to a particular, concrete action becomes the virtue of prudence. 754 While movement as such is undeniably primal, prudent movement bears the mark of being intelligent and virtuous. When evaluated by the principles learned through experience, movement becomes prudent, which is to say intelligent, although not a deductive rationality.

We are concerned here not with a deductive, but rather a reflective process, a constantly deepening reflection by the practical reason on one’s own action and judgment which—to employ an image—operates not so much in a linear deductive, as in a circular or spiralling inventive way.755

This constant re-calibration and refinement builds the habit of integrating principle with experience towards concrete virtuous action; thus, prudence confers both intelligibility and virtue upon an act.756 “[T]he forming of [practical] principles and

753 Sirek, chapter 4. 754 Sirek, 2.3.ii. In this section I provide an extensive Thomistic development of prudence. 755 Rhonheimer, “Practical Reason and the Naturally Rational.”120. 756 Conversely, certain actions are contrary to prudence, principle, and experience, which make such actions irrational; such actions are intelligible only as a contradiction of the moral good.

304 their interaction with the situational experience possess the character of a process with a narrative kind of structure.”757 Based upon experientially-learned principles of practical rationality, prudence knows the best thing to do, for now, in this particular circumstance. Our human nature in its very materiality undergoes a principle of ordering, which renders what we do reasonable. Because human nature tends to that which is good for it, there is a concreteness from which particular experiences of the good can arise and compel ever-more complex movements towards the concrete good. This prudence-based ethics is the Aristotelian-Thomistic virtue–ethics. It is an ethics, which depends upon storied learning through concrete experience, refusing the default habit of abstracting out universals from the concrete. Remaining always in the concrete reality, the natural appetitive functions are modified according to experience. This spiral of learning aggregates into the prudent, corporeal movements that we call practical rationality. If a narrative of suffering is to have healing potential, it must begin with the telling of one’s personal, experience of suffering and then of sorrow, despair, anger, etc. in response to the evil. But it must not finish there, stuck in the fragmentation that is a privation of the good. The ontologically powerful narrative keeps moving. There is a prudent unfolding in the direction of a virtuous readiness to undergo transformation both within the interiority of one’s intentiones and in the exteriority of one’s comportment. This storied rationality of practical reason confers a growing excellence of prudence and the moral virtues. Thus growth in prudence and the moral virtues becomes another characteristic theme in the proposed narrative of

757 Rhonheimer, “Practical Reason and the Naturally Rational.”120.

305 suffering. In an ethics of prudence and practical reason/natural law, the intelligibility is in the story. The ethics process is in the narrative communication of some one person’s emergence from suffering towards a greater freedom for human flourishing. It is the story of a particular movement of questing for flourishing/good, while emerging from particular instances of suffering/evil. This process involves calling forth in the sufferer the “I,” the voice of the one usually silenced as the human object of the powerful subject speaking loudly in the voice of command. The corrective comes as an image of that suffering objectified other, who has become a new kind of subject, transformed, ignited, and re-animated, despite experiences of injustice, by intimate proximity to Divine Justice and Mercy. The voice of the first person who suffers is key to a transformative narration of suffering.

7.vii. conclusion.

In this chapter I have linked Rosenbaum’s cry for “Meaning” with the modality of intelligence that works with symbols of harm and good. These symbols are the metaphors that, according to Botha, have great power. I have suggested that the power of metaphor in our narratives of suffering includes the potential for ontologic change. In other words, when the mysteries of life, death, and suffering are approached through metaphor and imagery, not through the evidence-based universals that Rosenbaum calls scientific “Reason,” a new dimension of reality becomes apparent. Mystery and the analogic mode of rationality become an important way to move beyond the despair that comes of seeing the self as an autonomous, self-reliant individual, who, despite every desire to remain intact, is susceptible to being overwhelmed with the disintegration of suffering. This

306 proposed analogic approach, which refuses to resolve mystery, offers an image of the self as a relational creature, who suffers indeed, but in the context of suffering advances nevertheless in relational intimacy with the Creator. And within this relationship with the Creator the disintegration that is suffering cannot obstruct an ever-more-intense and vital flourishing; in other words, the injustice of this world is subverted and divine justice ultimately comes to prevail. Medicine is particularly bound down with the finality of evidence-based universals that have come to define not only suffering and death, but also the ethical good; it has overlooked the complementary counterpoint of an analogic rationality that has no need to demystify its eschatologic images. When strung together in a storied rationality, these eschatologic images give intelligibility to human experiences of suffering and of flourishing.

Many stories tell of conquest and of sacralised violence. When understood as a spiritual Way and not in terms of its history of political conquests, the Christian tradition offers a counter-narrative in which the victims of violent conquest are invited to find their own voice and to experience an awareness of their physicality, even in the extreme suffering of becoming a corpse. Stories inspire, either towards violent rivalry and conquest, as in the hero mythologies, or towards compassion, as in tales of virtuous men and holy women, who suffer both the bondage and then the liberation from demonic lies. Stories narrate differing understandings of the good.

Some look to highlight effectiveness, productivity, and efficiency, regarding another’s suffering as the violence necessary for success. Other stories tell of compassion for those who suffer, an excellence reflective of the divine perfections of

307 justice and mercy. The metaphors used to tell a story communicate its meaning.

Some metaphors, arising from deep-seated fears of being dis-membered or dis- integrated, depict re-construction, re-assembly, or re-making of the self as the ultimate goal; they communicate a static understanding of well-being that reflects the petrifying quality of overwhelming evil. Metaphors that arise from experiences of love rather than terror give voice to the lover’s desire for the beloved, reflecting the movements of passion.

In contemporary Christian spirituality, the resurrection narratives have the meaning of this latter experience of love mysteriously subverting the terror of the crucifixion. When the idiom of resurrection is used, it carries the meaning of the mystery called love, with all of its tender waiting, joyous arriving, and sad departing, a mystery which may come to prevail even in a human consciousness previously pre-occupied with defending against violent disintegration. This emergence from terror has three aspects: justice for the victims, forgiveness for victimizers, and victim and persecutor alike participating in God’s justice and mercy. As the voice of the victim is discovered in the heart of every victimizer, the agonistic, terrifying rivalry is subverted by compassion’s embrace.

When this experience of emergence from the immobilization that is suffering arises into language, it becomes the voice of one previously silenced by terror and/or death. The narration of one’s suffering has the potential for ontologic transformation; how the narrative is told shapes who one is becoming. The storied progression of emergence from evil and advance towards the good is the work of the analogical rationality of practical reason; the resurrection metaphors of a desire

308 ordered towards one’s physicality re-animated in the divine embrace reflect the aggregation of prudence. Prudence and practical reason are those capacities, which enable the “I” whose narration becomes a refusal of the role of rival bent upon some mimetic acquisition. According to the rationality of experiential prudence, the “I” undergoes the vivifying presence of compassion, and the experience becomes an embrace of the vulnerable, suffering self within. An ethics based upon a narrative of suffering does not terminate with the lament; it moves forward to inscribe itself into the Scriptural resurrection narratives such that the personal narrative of suffering becomes a particular instantiation of mysterious, death-less vitality. Moral agency in the iteration of a narrative of suffering is concerned with this ontologic transformation towards a state of animation resurrected from the paralyses of suffering. In other words, in telling one’s story, one may undergo such renewed vitality of being that one no longer identifies with the violent fragmentations of evil, but instead becomes identified with the image of a contemplative human abiding in

Divine Justice and Mercy.

Chapter 8. Synthesis and Conclusions

This project was inspired by an intuition that the distinction between the art and the science of medicine is important to ethical practice. Dr. Lisa Rosenbaum perhaps expressed the same intuition when, in the wake of overwhelming violence, she made a plea to suspend the search for “Reason” and to grope for “Meaning.” The

“Meaning” dimension of medicine concerns the ethics questions about harm and flourishing, death and life, the bondage of suffering and its release, etc. The language of “Meaning” includes the art of attending suffering. “Meaning” is often considered less rigorous than the related medical discourse of scientific “Reason.” The art of medicine seems to lack the heuristic precision characteristic of the science. When science has exhausted its solutions and yet a continued presence to the one who suffers is desirable, we seem to be at a loss. We lack a way to form the interiority in compassion. We lack the habit of regarding suffering as an evil to be subverted by the excellence of compassion. We have lost our regard for the Divine Justice and

Mercy from whence and towards which we move. We are no longer equipped to work in those lacunae where life and death meet and where the desire for flourishing would move to subvert suffering. We have learned to practise an exclusively analytical mode of rationality; we work with principles in ethics and hypotheses in science. In the name of such objectivity the palpable experience of suffering has gone away.

My project has been to develop a disciplined and rigorous heuristic, which will serve us in times of irremediable suffering to continue to attend the sufferer at the

309 310 bedside, in the office, and in the home. Medical ethics will approach its questions from the ground of palpable suffering, not from the lofty perspective of intangible principles. While abstract hypothetical models will continue to shape the effectiveness of scientific medicine, palpable suffering and the intelligence of the sensory corporeal nature will contour the excellence of compassion. Suffering will no longer be a problem awaiting a solution that is part of the universal solution to all evil in general; suffering will be seen as a bondage or immobilzation by some particular evil awaiting a movement—the passion of lament—that advances towards flourishing even as it emerges from the harm. This movement must be recognized as having its own distinct intelligence of knowing harm from good, a knowing that aggregates wisdom with experience.

My research discovered this type of knowing in Thomas Aquinas (Summa theologiae) on practical reason. The maxim that guides practical reason is, “ Pursue the good and avoid evil.” What Thomas observed resonated with my own clinical observations, namely, that people have a deep-seated desire to flourish and to avoid suffering. When being can flourish, we experience something that is a good; when being is reduced to nothing more than the survival of suffering, then we have the presence of evil. This maxim serves as a counterpoint to the principle, If it makes sense it must be right.758 An ethics discourse guided by the modality of logic in pursuit of the true and the right is a principalist ethics, in which the true and the good have become conflated. What might an ethics discourse look like if guided by

758 MacIntyre, After Virtue, a Study in Moral Theory; MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?

311 that modality of reason, which, although informed by the truth, was engaged in pursuing the good while emerging from harm/suffering?

I have identified this re-discovered rationality concerned with harm and good using the term, analogic, in order to create a contrast with the analytic modalities of our principalist ethics and our empirical sciences. The re-appropriation of practical reason gives rise to an intelligence characterized by symbols and imagery, which calls forth a corresponding re-configuration of the sensory interiority. While the theological term, analogy, signifies an academic discipline concerned with the identity of the human being as the image of God, my usage of the term elaborates the experiential meaning. The sensory nature with its vulnerable interiority imprinted with the wounds of evil seeks a healing transformation as it progresses in this dynamic excellence of human identity as imago dei. Practical reason is the mode of rationality that guides this pursuit of excellence in the sensory nature. Its way of knowing (apprehension) is by analogy, imagery, metaphor, and symbol. Analogic thinking engages the movement-logic of such sensory imagery (a kind of videography, choreography, performance, or story) and is clearly quite distinct from the discursive conceptual logic of principles and proofs.

What I am calling analogic reason requires the intact and integrated bodily senses and desires; in other words, it is a rationality grounded in the experience of one’s human physicality, which necessarily includes suffering. When practical reason, with its analogies and symbols, arises from within the corporeal dimension of the sensory nature, suffering can be imaged as a choreography of emergence from bondage into freedom. This role of practical reason in the context of suffering

312 represents an offering from the Christian tradition; a complementary counterpoint to the rationality of our analytical sciences becomes possible with practical reason.

When the analyses and interventions of our sciences begin to fail, practical reason offers the rich, analogical imagery of movement (desire, passion, appetition) to re- vitalize the sensory interiority, which has become immobilized by the empirical knowledge of death. Practical reason still knows harm from good even in suffering— especially in suffering—and thus restores moral agency to the sufferer, regardless of the helplessness and futility that may overwhelm and paralyze the analytic modalities of reason. The imagery that configures the interiority is still there and may be accessible to the attending professional even when the analytic modalities of reason are no longer relevant. Even in terminal suffering, recollected images of desire, as simple as experiences of embrace or rejection, may mediate a graced transformation in identity by inspiring a re-vitalized desire that mysteriously yearns to release the suffering of deeply imprinted images of harm. Such release is not to be underestimated; it is ontologically transformative. I have shown that this process requires the analogic rationality of the sensory interiority, synderesis, and prudence, which together comprise the sophisticated higher intelligence of

Thomsitic practical reason.

I have defined suffering as an experience of immobilization or silencing of some part of the intact nature; it is a fragmented state of one’s human nature, brought about by the evil of some violence. In its integrated state, Thomas understands human nature as a unity (hylomorphism) of created materiality and immateriality, which the English translations refer to as sensory and intellectual respectively. At

313 the sub-level of the sensory nature a dynamic triad of apprehension, appetition, and resting in attained pleasure comprise a further unity. From the pleasure of the attained good, the interiority becomes imprinted with the experience of good as pleasure, kindling a desire/passion for external objects with the allure of more goodness. The fallen sensory nature is permeable not only to goodness, but is also vulnerable to penetration by harm. The interiority of a human being becomes imprinted with experiences of both harm and flourishing, of evil and good, of injustice and justice, of penalty and gift, of taking and giving, etc. Even before the higher intelligence engages, the bodily senses, especially the cogitative sense, which is also called particular reason, displays a remarkable knowing of harm from good.

Awareness of suffering depends upon this awareness of pleasure and harm, which

Thomas ties to the natural human awareness around good and evil. Because of its capacity for such sensibilities, I have positioned the locus of suffering within the sensory nature. And it is from within this corporeal interiority, where one apprehends one’s suffering as an evil immobilization or silencing, that a cry of lament arises, initiating the movement of emergence from suffering, with its corollary process of re-integration and re-animation.

Enriching the practical reason is the speculative rationality, which, like the sensory nature, is also a kind of dynamic triad of knowing (apprehension), willing

(appetition), and abiding in love. It has the role of presenting universal truths to the sensory-intellectual unity, as human nature moves in some particular way towards its ultimate flourishing. Principlism in ethics and empiricism in medicine have become modern instantiations of speculative reason, but these forms of “Reason”

314 differ from the ancient metaphysical kind of speculative rationality in that they have become severed from their dependency upon practical reason. This loss of practical reason has brought about an absence of “Meaning” in our prevailing medical heuristic of “Reason,” especially in the context of suffering. The Christian tradition offers clarification around suffering and meaning. From the horrid immobilization that is suffering one desires to regain healthy movement. This desired movement is directional: towards the good i.e., out of bondage into freedom for renewed vital movement. It is this rationality of “Meaning” that Thomas has elaborated as the sophisticated higher intelligence of practical reason, the intelligence that knows suffering as harm/evil and guides movement out of harm’s way towards flourishing/good.

My starting point has been my clinical experience of encounter with a patient. My sense-operations of seeing, hearing, palpation, smell, and sometimes even taste call forth not only my analytical diagnostic skills, but also a powerful alternate rationality that senses the other’s suffering as a resonance deep within my own corporeality. This kind of sensing and visceral knowing is not described in the physiology texts; Thomas, however, does describe a set of interior senses that are ordered to that visceral knowing of good from harm. In a Thomistic ethics, it would seem that rational moral agency depends upon a robust and properly formed practical reason that is informed but not dominated by the abstractions of modern, speculative reason. If practical reason is that rationality with which one moves towards the good and out of harm’s way—out of the way of suffering—then it becomes an indispensible rationality in a discourse of ethics. Practical rationality

315 enables a heuristic that begins with the experience of harm/suffering and works towards well-being/flourishing, without making pre-requisite the mode of rationality that seeks a logical solution to the problem of evil.

If practical reason is to be the predominant rationality of ethics discourse, then further specification of the language is called for. I identify several points of rigor that allow practical rationality to do its work. Analyses and arguments of justifications and proofs do not characterize this proposed discourse of practical reason. This re-discovered rationality works with analogy and metaphor; it is the movement-logic of a story, a performance, or a movie. Metaphor is the intelligence that bridges between felt experience and the mysterious as-yet-unknown. The dominant analogy or image is the creature-Creator relationship; the creature, always advancing in proximity or intimacy with the alluring Source, becomes ignited with the divine perfections of justice and mercy. The image is one of movement, emergence, advancement, and transformation, i.e., images of animated vitality not corpse. This dynamism becomes a story over time, with its ultimate goal understood to be the beatitude of no-more-suffering, a beatitude of abiding in pleasurable satiety and perfect justice, no longer vulnerable to harm. To work with imagery requires that the imagination be stretched beyond the cultural mythologies of justice-as-penalty, with its presumptions of violent mimetic rivalry; this evidently eternal vengeance is subverted by an eschatological imagining of justice-as-mercy.

One’s narrative of suffering has the power to shape at a fundamental level one’s own ontologic becoming. The disempowered victim of evil circumstances undergoes a shift in identity, becoming the agent of a new kind of good, no longer tied to an

316 identity of violent rivalry. This ontologic shift is conveyed using a story, which traces the progressive emergence from suffering into an unfolding of flourishing. This story follows the logic of a narrator’s understanding of his/her own experience in terms of the meaning apprehended from other stories. In the process, particularly in contemporary times, the teller may reveal an understanding of the ultimate good as self-annihilation.

By contrast, a Christian, Thomistic understanding of the ultimate good is the eternal animation of resurrection, which begins as a mysterious refusal to become identified with the annihilation of suffering and death. The images in a contemporary narrative of suffering may be illumined by the metaphors of antiquity. Whereas an ancient era of persecution was characterized by resurrection images of reconstruction in the after-life, later images gave way to the movements of transformation by loving desire. When images of stasis—reconstruction, preservation of identity, re-assembly of fragments—prevailed, terror seemed to be the determining cultural experience. Such experiences of terror, imprinted upon but unrecognized within the interiority, may underlie the cry of contemporary sufferers for control over suffering and death. Many sufferers are entirely defined by suffering and death because they lack experiences of loving safety upon which to build a transformed identity. Practical reason works with the symbols afforded by the life lived. Experiences of safe embrace may simply not be there among the imprints within the interiority, and so an identity of intimacy with Divine Justice and Mercy is hard to realize. The sufferer’s voicing of a personal narrative of injustice and lament aids in the discovery of the power of narrative; the attending’s practice of

317 contemplative intimacy with Divine Justice and Mercy mediates the revelation of

“Meaning” in the imagery.

Practical reason becomes the key to a rationality of “Meaning” and requires that one practise periods of temporary suspension of the analytical “Reason” of science.

Practical reason enables the visceral sensory nature of the observing, clinical self to resonate with the sufferer’s narrative and to offer responses of compassion.

Practical reason guides the sufferer’s travail in appropriating such an offering in the best way possible for now under the circumstances. Practical reason may assess the sufferer as overwhelmed on the inside and imprinted with experiences of terror; practical reason understands the sufferer to be crying out for the preservation of corporeal integrity with whatever mode of rationality she/he can muster. But what practical reason refuses, despite the truth of prohibitions against murder, is the analytic adjudication of the externally manifest, self-annihilating action of the sufferer. The proposed deliberate formation of the clinician in the modality of practical reason will include a contemplative contouring in the excellence of compassion, understood as the human mediation of Divine Justice and Mercy towards the sufferer. The proposed formation in practical reason will enable the integration of the sensory and the intellectual aspects of human nature in the clinician towards capacity not only in “Reason” but also in “Meaning.” A heuristic for the art of attending the sufferer, i.e., an approach to medical ethics, depends upon this rigorous formation in practical reason, whereas the science of medical diagnostics and therapeutics requires a distinctly different process of learning.

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