Moral perception and the function of the Vis Cogitativa in Thomas Aquinas’s doctrine of antecedent and consequent passions

Thomas Aquinas distinguishes between passions that are antecedent to the judgment of reason and passions that are consequent to the judgment of reason. The recent interest in Thomas’s moral psychology, and in particular his treatment of the passions, their obedience to practical reason, and the part they play in virtuous, continent, incontinent, and vicious human action, has occasioned a few scholarly studies attendant to his distinction between antecedent and consequent passions. Some of these studies have also taken notice of Thomas’s detailed division of the complex interplay among the concert operations of the senses, passions, reason, and will. Nonetheless, few scholars have highlighted the function of the highest internal sense power, the cogitative power (vis cogitativa), within the dynamic complex of operations and powers that Thomas ascribes to the human person. And so far as I know, no recent study takes the function of the vis cogitativa in Aquinas’s moral psychology as its primary focus. In this paper I aim to fill part of that lacuna by explicating the function of the vis cogitativa as a power of moral perception. I shall show that getting clear on how the cogitative power contributes to moral perception also illumines Thomas’s distinction between antecedent and consequent passions, and accordingly, a host of other connected issues in Aquinas, such as the obedience of the passions to reason, continence and incontinence, and the unity of the virtues through prudence. Needless to say, I shall not venture into the details of each of these intricate topics. The paper is divided into two parts. In the first part I shall summarize the salient points of a few recent studies on Thomas’s doctrine of antecedent and consequent passions. This synopsis will provide the philosophical and exegetical point of departure of the second part by setting in relief a lacuna in these recent interpretations of Thomas’s treatment of the contribution of virtuous passions to practical reason. The second part will aim to complement these studies by filling that lacuna through a detailed exposition of Thomas’s account of the salient functions ascribed to the cogitative power with respect to the operations of practical reason and the obedience of the passions to reason.