104. The importance of well-disposed emotions
104. THE IMPORTANCE OF WELL-DISPOSED EMOTIONS
Psychoanalysis does not make us holy. It helps us to understand and regulate our emotions, not our religion or our morality. How important is that? How important are well-ordered emotions to the religious and moral life?
(Of the other powers in man) some obey reason blindly and without any contradiction whatever: such are the limbs of the body, provided they be in a healthy condition; for as soon as reason commands, the hand or the foot proceed to action. Hence the Philosopher says that the soul rules the body like a despot, i.e., as a master rules his slave, who has no right (or power) to rebel. Accordingly some held that all the active principles in man are subordinate to reason in this way. If this were true, for man to act well it would suffice that his reason be perfect. . . . This was the opinion of Socrates, who said every virtue is a kind of prudence (practical wisdom). . . . Hence he maintained that as long as a man is in possession of knowledge, he cannot sin; and that every one who sins, does so through ignorance.
Now this is based on a false supposition (assumption) . Because the appetitive faculty obeys the reason not blindly but with a certain power of opposition; wherefore the Philosopher says that reason commands the appetitive faculty by a politic power, whereby a man rules over subjects that are free and have a certain right (and power) of opposition . . . in so far as the habits or passions of the appetitive faculty cause the use of reason to be impeded in some particular action. And in this way there is some truth in the saying of Socrates that so long as a man is in possession of knowledge he does not sin, provided, however, that this knowledge is made to include the use of reason in this individual act of choice.
Accordingly, for a man to do a good deed it is requisite not only that his reason be well disposed by means of a habit of intellectual virtue, but also that his appetite be well disposed by means of a habit of moral virtue (I-II,58,2).
. . . in order that he be rightly disposed with regard to . . . ends, he needs to be perfected by certain habits whereby it becomes connatural, as it were, for man to judge aright of the end. This is done by moral virtue; for the virtuous man judges aright of the end of virtue because such as a man is, such does the end seem to him (Aristotle) (I-II,58,5).
Two easy errors are possible about emotions, as about nearly anything: to overrate or to underrate their importance; to be an Epicurean or a Stoic; a Rousseau or a Kant. Emotions are to reason and will what soil is to plants, sound to music, and words to literature. They (as well as physical actions and pleasures and pains), are the material, the raw material, the potentialities, that are shaped and formed by the reason and will into who you are, into your personal character. It’s like taming a pet.
For this reason, emotions are more important than we usually think. (Well, most men, anyway.) Stoics, and people of Stoic tendencies, underestimate them. But people of Epicurean tendencies overestimate them because they know nothing greater, and so they make even morality and religion matters of emotion. Emotions may be the starting point for virtue and wisdom, as soil is the starting point for a garden; and good emotions may be the result of wisdom and virtue, as fruit and flowers are the result of a garden; but they are not the plants themselves. Good feelings are not good choices, though they make good choices easier and more powerfully motivated. For instance, when you are morally good you will have more interior pleasure, more happiness, and more joy, even while you have pain, sorrow, or misery; and you will certainly have more of these goods afterwards. So cultivating “well-disposed” emotions is important for morality and for happiness. And knowledge is even more important, as St. Thomas explains: Socrates was half right.