Whether These Are the Four Principal Passions: Joy, Sadness, Hope and
Fear?
Objection 1: It would seem that joy, sadness, hope and fear are not
the four principal passions. For Augustine (De Civ. Dei xiv, 3, 7
sqq.) omits hope and puts desire in its place.
Obj. 2: Further, there is a twofold order in the passions of the
soul: the order of intention, and the order of execution or
generation. The principal passions should therefore be taken, either
in the order of intention; and thus joy and sadness, which are the
final passions, will be the principal passions; or in the order of
execution or generation, and thus love will be the principal passion.
Therefore joy and sadness, hope and fear should in no way be called
the four principal passions.
Obj. 3: Further, just as daring is caused by hope, so fear is caused
by despair. Either, therefore, hope and despair should be reckoned as
principal passions, since they cause others: or hope and daring, from
being akin to one another.
_On the contrary,_ Boethius (De Consol. i) in enumerating the four
principal passions, says:
"Banish joys: banish fears:
Away with hope: away with tears."
_I answer that,_ These four are commonly called the principal
passions. Two of them, viz. joy and sadness, are said to be principal
because in them all the other passions have their completion and end;
wherefore they arise from all the other passions, as is stated in
_Ethic._ ii, 5. Fear and hope are principal passions, not because
they complete the others simply, but because they complete them as
regards the movement of the appetite towards something: for in
respect of good, movement begins in love, goes forward to desire, and
ends in hope; while in respect of evil, it begins in hatred, goes on
to aversion, and ends in fear. Hence it is customary to distinguish
these four passions in relation to the present and the future: for
movement regards the future, while rest is in something present: so
that joy relates to present good, sadness relates to present evil;
hope regards future good, and fear, future evil.
As to the other passions that regard good or evil, present or future,
they all culminate in these four. For this reason some have said that
these four are the principal passions, because they are general
passions; and this is true, provided that by hope and fear we
understand the appetite's common tendency to desire or shun something.
Reply Obj. 1: Augustine puts desire or covetousness in place of hope,
in so far as they seem to regard the same object, viz. some future
good.
Reply Obj. 2: These are called principal passions, in the order of
intention and completion. And though fear and hope are not the last
passions simply, yet they are the last of those passions that tend
towards something as future. Nor can the argument be pressed any
further except in the case of anger: yet neither can anger be
reckoned a principal passion, because it is an effect of daring,
which cannot be a principal passion, as we shall state further on
(Reply Obj. 3).
Reply Obj. 3: Despair implies movement away from good; and this is,
as it were, accidental: and daring implies movement towards evil;
and this too is accidental. Consequently these cannot be principal
passions; because that which is accidental cannot be said to be
principal. And so neither can anger be called a principal passion,
because it arises from daring.
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