Human being should have a prudence and a rightful appetite whose are one another uniting to be moral. Reason introduces a rightful end and proper means in conformity with human nature. Will morally acts by desiring them and making choice of them. Ther ...
Human being should have a prudence and a rightful appetite whose are one another uniting to be moral. Reason introduces a rightful end and proper means in conformity with human nature. Will morally acts by desiring them and making choice of them. There are both rational appetite of will and passion of sensible appetite in human appetite. If reason and will could not regulate and control passions, man could not be moral.
Passion is the sensical desire generated by body. Human being loves and pursues the good on the one hand, and hates and tries to avoid evil, on the other hand. Feeling of joy or sorrow as response to the good or evil as such comes with such action. S/he longs for the good which is not acquired yet, but despairs with regard to the hardly acquirable good. S/he fears or dares predictable evil, and angers against unjust treatment.
Human being can exercise the virtue such as temperance and fortitude through controlling passions by reason and will. In addition, there are virtues that regulate money, love, or honor, which are beyond sensical stage. Of course, justice on the basis of will is to be included in those virtues beyond the level of passion. Reason have wisdom and understanding, science as intellectual knowledge, and prudence and art as practical knowledge. Furthermore, theological virtue consists of faith, hope and love whose are given by grace.
Moral virtue is formed by rightful consideration of reason and rightful practice of will. However continence and incontinence happen in discord with reason and passion. Although such passion is more batter than that which is accord in malice, it is not right because that is discord in reason. In that case the prudence is imperfect, and the will is weak. As reason introspects doxa that produce fault passion, and fault results of excessive passion, will rightfully practices according to this means, that passion could be correct.
What is the genuine love that does not exclude passion The concept of love can be traced back to the Greek notion of Eros. It may be described as aspiration of unifying oneself with the Ultimate by cultivating physical health and social virtue. Plato defines Eros by aspiration of being united with the Idea of ultimate beauty, thereby accepting various modes of human love. Aristotle's Philia places an emphasis on friendship which is shared in common by people. In contradistinction to this, Christian's Agape signifies the dimension of unconditional sacrifice as represented by the divine love of God.
The Greek notion of Eros is problematic in the sense that human being might be tempted to realize infinite and transcendent perfection through Eros, although there is no contradiction or antagonism between self-perfection and other-perfection in the concept. It is also true of the Christian notion of Agape, since it does not seem to allow an autonomous self perfection on the basis of human subjectivity.
With regard to such difficulty, Thomas Aquinas appears to maintain that human being can realize sensible and intelligible love with sensible and intelligible appetite. With the help of Caritas given by God, the imperfect and natural love can be rooted and accomplished to its perfection. By Caritas human being can actualize self-perfection which unifies ego with other, and with God. This love will synthesize both Eros and Agape, instead of separating them from each other. Therefore human being can realize genuine love through reliance upon God on the one hand, but without loosing the sense of human subjectivity on the other.
While eros signifies natural love, agape means supernatural love that is given only by grace. Caritas, which is given by grace like agape, supplements and perfects natural love that actualizes the good imperfectly. The human draws upon the natural law through participating in the eternal law by means of reason and will. Although the human can actualize the objective good through proper love in accorda