Whether There Can Be Moral Virtue Without Passion?
Objection 1: It would seem that moral virtue can be without passion.
For the more perfect moral virtue is, the more does it overcome the
passions. Therefore at its highest point of perfection it is
altogether without passion.
Obj. 2: Further, then is a thing perfect, when it is removed from its
contrary and from whatever inclines to its contrary. Now the passions
incline us to sin which is contrary to virtue: hence (Rom. 7:5) they
are called "passions of sins." Therefore perfect virtue is altogether
without passion.
Obj. 3: Further, it is by virtue that we are conformed to God, as
Augustine declares (De Moribus Eccl. vi, xi, xiii). But God does all
things without passion at all. Therefore the most perfect virtue is
without any passion.
_On the contrary,_ "No man is just who rejoices not in his deeds," as
stated in _Ethic._ i, 8. But joy is a passion. Therefore justice
cannot be without passion; and still less can the other virtues be.
_I answer that,_ If we take the passions as being inordinate
emotions, as the Stoics did, it is evident that in this sense perfect
virtue is without the passions. But if by passions we understand any
movement of the sensitive appetite, it is plain that moral virtues,
which are about the passions as about their proper matter, cannot be
without passions. The reason for this is that otherwise it would
follow that moral virtue makes the sensitive appetite altogether
idle: whereas it is not the function of virtue to deprive the powers
subordinate to reason of their proper activities, but to make them
execute the commands of reason, by exercising their proper acts.
Wherefore just as virtue directs the bodily limbs to their due
external acts, so does it direct the sensitive appetite to its proper
regulated movements.
Those moral virtues, however, which are not about the passions, but
about operations, can be without passions. Such a virtue is justice:
because it applies the will to its proper act, which is not a
passion. Nevertheless, joy results from the act of justice; at least
in the will, in which case it is not a passion. And if this joy be
increased through the perfection of justice, it will overflow into
the sensitive appetite; in so far as the lower powers follow the
movement of the higher, as stated above (Q. 17, A. 7; Q. 24, A. 3).
Wherefore by reason of this kind of overflow, the more perfect a
virtue is, the more does it cause passion.
Reply Obj. 1: Virtue overcomes inordinate passion; it produces
ordinate passion.
Reply Obj. 2: It is inordinate, not ordinate, passion that leads to
sin.
Reply Obj. 3: The good of anything depends on the condition of its
nature. Now there is no sensitive appetite in God and the angels, as
there is in man. Consequently good operation in God and the angels is
altogether without passion, as it is without a body: whereas the good
operation of man is with passion, even as it is produced with the
body's help.
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