Sadler's Lectures Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiae - Love, The Appetites, and Passion - Sadler's Lectures
Nov 8, 2025
Explore the intricate world of love through the lens of Thomas Aquinas. Delve into the conflict between sensitive and intellectual appetites and how love operates within both. Discover whether love is merely a passion or something deeper. Hear about the distinctions Aquinas makes between natural, sensitive, and intellectual love. Ultimately, the conversation reveals love's multifaceted nature as a driving force behind our desires and joys.
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Love Is Divided By Appetites
- Thomas Aquinas frames love through a medieval psychological model of appetites: natural, sensitive, and intellectual.
- This model distinguishes kinds of love by the appetite in which they arise and their objects.
Natural Love Is Con-Naturality
- Aquinas identifies natural love as a tendency of a thing toward what suits its nature, grounded in an apprehension outside the subject.
- He treats this as a metaphorical 'love' like a heavy body's con-natural pull toward its center.
Sensitive Appetite: Concupiscible vs Irascible
- The sensitive appetite arises from apprehension in the subject and splits into concupiscible and irascible parts.
- Concupiscible love regards good absolutely, while the irascible deals with difficult goods requiring overcoming resistance.
