On Hope: Article 2: Whether hope is found in the will as its possessor
On Hope () Memory does not, while hope does, involve holding on to anything that might give it the character of a virtue. Therefore the comparison does not hold.
Article : Whether hope is found in the will as its possessor Objections It seems not, because:
() The object of hope is a good hard to get. But whatever is hard is the object of the aggressive part. Therefore hope is found in the aggressive part, not in the will.
() Charity is the most complete of the virtues; therefore it is sufficient to bring any given capacity to completion. But charity is found in the will.
Therefore hope is not found in the will.
()Wearenotabletohaveseveralthingsinourunderstandingatexactly the same time, because our understanding cannot be informed at the same time by a lot of different concepts, just as a body cannot at the same time take on several different shapes, as Al-Ghazali says. Therefore, by parallel reasoning, one capacity cannot be actively informed at the same time by different dispositions, in the sense of actively doing things in accordance with each of them. But we can at the same time act with hope and act with charity. Therefore charity and hope cannot coexist in the same capacity.
But charity is found in the will; therefore hope is not.
() Hope is an expectation marked by certainty. But certainty belongs to the power of cognition. Therefore hope is found in the power of cognition and not in the will.
But on the other hand Hope 'flows from merits'. But merits belong to the will. Therefore hope is found in the will.
My reply As I have said, hope is a theological virtue, and so its object is God. No sensory power, though, can include God as one of its objects, because the senses cannot go beyond physical things. For this reason, hope cannot be located in any of the sensory powers. It is obvious, though, that hope belongs to one of the powers of desire, because its object is the good, as