Whether Love Is a Passion?
Objection 1: It would seem that love is not a passion. For no power
is a passion. But every love is a power, as Dionysius says (Div. Nom.
iv). Therefore love is not a passion.
Obj. 2: Further, love is a kind of union or bond, as Augustine says
(De Trin. viii, 10). But a union or bond is not a passion, but rather
a relation. Therefore love is not a passion.
Obj. 3: Further, Damascene says (De Fide Orth. ii, 22) that passion
is a movement. But love does not imply the movement of the appetite;
for this is desire, of which movement love is the principle.
Therefore love is not a passion.
_On the contrary,_ The Philosopher says (Ethic. viii, 5) that "love
is a passion."
_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.
Reply Obj. 1: 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.
Reply Obj. 2: 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 (Polit. ii,
1) that union is the work of love.
Reply Obj. 3: 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.
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