Abstract
In Summa theologiae I-II.40.3, Thomas Aquinas discusses whether nonhuman animals possess the emotion of hope (spes) and despair (desperatio). According to his division of emotions, humans have hope when they try to attain a good that is absent but attainable. Despair, by contrast, is felt when one longs for something that is absent and unattainable. The question now is whether nonhuman animals also have such feelings. Aquinas introduces ordinary observations of animal behaviour that support the ascription of an emotion such as hope to nonhuman animals. A dog, for instance, seems to hope that it can catch a hare. Otherwise, it would not even try to catch it. Still, the question is whether hoping for something requires a notion of future states or events (namely, those states and events we hope for), and if so, whether animals are endowed with this kind of cognitive prerequisite. Contrary to his answer to the question of enjoyment in nonhuman animals, Aquinas does not introduce a terminological distinction between perfect and imperfect types of such emotions. Rather, he distinguishes between the ways in which they are sensed by humans and nonhuman animals. This finally allows him to justify the ascription of hope and despair to nonhuman animals without neglecting the fact that they have a different nature in such animals than they have in rational beings.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
- 3.
John of Damascus, De fide orthodoxa, c. 43, ed. Buytaert (1955), 158.
- 4.
This distinction is not found in book VI but V; see Aristotle, Metaphysica V.12, 1019b22–34.
- 5.
Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram IX.14.25, ed. Migne (1887), 402.
- 6.
Romans 8:24.
- 7.
On this appetite see Chap. 17.
- 8.
E.g. ST I-II.1.2.
- 9.
I.e. God.
- 10.
See, for instance, Aristotle, Metaphysica V.12, 1019a15–33.
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Oelze, A. (2021). Hope and Despair (Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Part I-II, Question 40, Article 3). In: Animal Minds in Medieval Latin Philosophy. Studies in the History of Philosophy of Mind, vol 27. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67012-2_19
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