From the Editor
The first thing we did, when we relaunched the ACQR, was to reaffirm the Review’s original salutatory, which contained this bracing assertion: “With politics, as they are commonly understood, and partisan contentions for place and power, the Review has nothing to do.”
However, the Review has always been deeply interested in public moral questions, especially in what Catholics need to know to be good citizens. Consider these titles from the archives: “The Sociological Aspect of Christian Charity” (1884), “The Morality of the Aims and Methods of the Labor Union” (1904), and “The Public Press and Public Morals” (1883).
In such a spirit, we are pleased to publish today a thoroughly reliable essay by a first-rate Thomist on the meaning of the “order of love” in St. Thomas—a phrase much invoked of late but seldom explained.
David M. Gallagher
Introduction: The Importance of the Ordo Amoris
To see the importance of the order of love (ordo amoris) for the moral life, let us consider that if there were only negative precepts prohibiting certain kinds of actions such as murder, theft, and detraction, then the moral life would ultimately be concerned only with evil actions and our moral options would be simply to commit or to avoid such acts. In fact one could be morally good simply by doing nothing at all; the negative precepts are such that they can all be obeyed simultaneously, indeed, simply by refraining from action. But the moral life consists of more than just avoiding evil. And as soon as we introduce positive precepts which command the performance of good actions, that is, precepts which enjoin positive duties and obligations, then the difficulty arises, at least potentially, that the fulfillment of one duty may conflict with the fulfillment of another. It may happen that I must take my sick child to the hospital precisely when I should be teaching my students.
This possibility of a conflict of duties points to the need each moral agent has of weighing up the various duties and obligations he has toward himself and others (including God). Such a weighing would be greatly simplified by the utilitarian view of John Stuart Mill, namely, that the goal of moral action is simply the highest possible sum of good/happiness (pleasure) and that I should not consider anyone, including myself, as somehow privileged in the calculation. [1] But if we reject such a view, then we must admit that we owe more to some persons than to others, that our obligation to seek the good of some persons outweighs our obligation towards others, and then knowing how to act rightly ceases to be a simple matter. Whose good an agent should seek over the good of some other persons is precisely the subject matter of the ordo amoris, for we seek the good more for those whom we love more.
I. The Structure of Rational Love
If to speak of the order of love is to speak of loving more or less, we must clarify first of all what we mean by loving. Thomas usually employs Aristotle’s brief definition: “to love is to wish or will good for someone.” [2] This definition refers not to love in general (amor), but rather to dilectio, the specifically rational form of love found in intellectual natures. Now, as the definition suggests, dilectio is always two-pronged: its object is simultaneously some person and some good that is willed for that person. The person for whom the good is willed is either oneself or another; the good willed for the person ranges from things as pedestrian as a drink of water to such noble things as virtue, knowledge, or even beatitude, that is, perfect happiness. [3] Thomas refers to the love of the person (whether self or other) as love of friendship (amor amicitiae) and to the love of the good willed for the person as the love of concupiscence (amor concupiscentiae). [4]
We can speak of an order of love, i.e., having a greater or lesser love, both in one’s love of concupiscence and in one’s love of friendship. In terms of love of concupiscence, among the many goods we can will for a person, we can will some more than others, that is, we can prefer some goods to others. Here, according to Thomas, the basic order to be observed is that spiritual goods are to be preferred to sensible goods; when this order obtains, one’s love is said to be just (dilectio iusta). [5] Thus one is said to love himself most truly when he seeks most the higher spiritual goods; the same applies to a person’s love for others. [6]
The main issue in Thomas’s discussion of the ordo amoris, however, is the order of love as it is found in the love of friendship, the love directed to persons as such. Which persons should be loved more and which less? This question is always applied to a single person and refers to the various loves that that one person has for different persons. We do not ask, for example, whether my love for person X is greater than your love for person X, but rather whether I should love person X more than I love person Y. The persons I can love are myself, God, and all other created persons (called neighbors). Thus the questions raised are the following: Should I love God more than myself? Should I love God more than any other person? Should I love any other created person more than myself? Should I love one created person more than another?
II. The Meaning of More and Less with Respect to Love
The next question is the following: just what does it mean to say that I love someone more or less? Thomas distinguishes two basic ways in which we can speak of a greater or lesser love. First, I am said to love person X more than person Y if the good I will for person X is greater than the good I will for person Y. Second, I love person X more than person Y if I love the good for person X more intensely than I love the good for person Y. [7]
Let us look more closely at the first way. Imagine some parents who have two sons, one of whom is extremely talented athletically and one who is not. With respect to sports, the parents will naturally wish for greater success for the talented son than they will for the untalented. In this respect (and only in this respect) the parents can be said to have a greater love for the talented son than for the untalented. Or imagine some parents whose child possesses average intellectual gifts while their neighbor’s child is extremely gifted. These parents would wish for a greater good for the neighbor’s child (greater academic success) than they would for their own child, and in this respect could be said to love the neighbor’s child more than their own. Now, the most important good a person can have is virtue (especially the acts of the virtues), and it is chiefly in wanting a higher degree of virtue for one person than for another that we are said to love the person more. In this way parents could be said to love their child more than the neighbor’s child if they want their own child to be the more virtuous. [8] Here we should note that wanting or willing a good for someone takes two forms: desiring the good that is absent and rejoicing in the good that is present. Thus willing the greater good for someone may mean simply rejoicing at his possession of the good (as opposed to envy, which is sadness at his possession of the good). [9]
The second sense of being greater or less refers to the intensity of a love. This intensity, like the intensity of such things as heat or physical force, must be described in terms of its effects. The stronger the love, the greater the effect it causes. The primary effect in terms of which we measure love’s intensity is beneficence, the seeking of the good of the other in deeds (as opposed to simple benevolence, the wanting of the good for the other which need not result in actions). In this sense, then, I am said to love a person more if I am more prepared to seek that person’s good. [10] And I am said to love person X more than person Y if I am more inclined to seek the good of X than the good of Y. The relative strengths of the loves will be most manifest in those cases in which a person has to choose between benefiting one person and another. For example, if a building were burning down we would expect that a man would rescue his own child before rescuing another child. Here the good sought for the two children would be the same: to escape from the fire. But since the man loves his own child more than someone else’s child, he saves (benefits) his own child and not the other (ceteris paribus). The relative intensity of the loves shows up in one’s choices; one chooses what one loves more intensely. The choice may be, as we have already noted, among the goods to be sought for a person (i.e., in the realm of amor concupiscentiae), or the choice may be among those persons whom I shall benefit; I will benefit more those I love more intensely. Let us note here that the determination of just whom I shall love more intensely can occur in the choice itself. This is important for understanding Thomas’s statement that there is such a thing as elective or chosen love (dilectio electiva). [11] I can, indeed must, freely choose whom I am to love.
It should be clear, by now, that it is possible to love person X more in the sense of wanting a greater good for the person, while at the same time loving person Y more in the sense of actually seeking the good for him with more intensity. To return to an earlier example, the parent may desire a higher level of academic achievement for his neighbor’s gifted child, while expending much more effort for the education of his own child of average intelligence. Consequently, it is not enough simply to say that I love person X more than person Y; we must also specify whether the “more” refers to the good willed for the person or to the intensity with which it is willed.
III. The Two Poles of the Order of Love
Having seen what it means to love more or less, we can turn to the question of who ought to be loved more and who less. This question takes us to the heart of the moral issue posed by the ordo amoris, for moral rectitude demands that a person’s loves be rightly ordered. What are the principles of this ordering? Thomas gives two basic principles. First, we should love more those who are objectively better. Second, we should love more those who are more closely joined to us. [12]
To love those more who are better, in the most fundamental sense, means to love more those who are more virtuous. The reason for this is that it is by moral (and theological) virtue that a person is said to be good (better) without qualification (simpliciter). To be more virtuous also means, for Thomas, to be closer to God, so that another way of expressing the principle, especially in the specific love of charity, is that we should love more those who are closer to God. In a secondary way—considering only some quality by which a person is good in a qualified way, secundum quid—we love a person more who is better in one respect or another. Thus in loving musicians as such, we should love more those who are better musicians. So too with philosophers, athletes, and so on.
The second principle is that we should love those more who are more closely joined to us. There are various ways one person can be joined (coniunctus) to another. The first is in terms of our shared humanity (the shared nature). On this basis alone, however, no one is more closely joined to any other, and so no order of love is generated. [13] But there are many modes whereby one person is joined to others without being joined to all others. The most obvious is family, including marriage and blood relatives. Another is the political relationship we have with fellow citizens (what Aristotle called political friendship). There are many others that arise from all the various forms of association persons enter into, such as, for example, our professional relationships. Each of these relationships demands a greater love than that arising simply from the shared nature. Yet within each of these distinct kinds of relationships there are also varying degrees of nearness. Within the family one is closer to one’s siblings than to one’s cousins, closer to one’s parents than to one’s aunts and uncles. So too, in something like the army, one is closer to those in one’s own unit than to those in another unit. In each case the order of love requires that those more closely joined be loved more. [14]
Given that there are these two principles governing the order of love, objective goodness and nearness to oneself, how does a person decide which principle applies with respect to any given person? Whom should I love more, a person who is nearer to me (e.g., my brother) or a person who is remoter yet more virtuous? In answering this question Thomas relates the distinction between the two poles governing which persons are to be loved more (oneself and God) to the distinction we described earlier, i.e., the distinction between the two senses of loving someone more (willing a greater good vs. willing the good more intensely). The relationship is the following. We should love those who are objectively better more in the sense that we will a greater good for them. For example, if my neighbor’s child is more gifted intellectually than my child, I should love the neighbor’s child more in that I will for that child his greater good. This would take the form, at least minimally, of rejoicing in the child’s intelligence and consequent academic success (vs. envy). But with respect to the intensity of our love, we should love more those more closely united to us. So I would will more intensely the smaller academic achievement of my own child; that is, I would do much more to develop the lesser talents of my own child than I would for the other child. [15]
IV. The Species of Friendship
There is yet another factor to take into account in determining the order of love. This is the variety in the species of friendship. A person has multiple friendships not only because he is friends with numerically distinct persons, but also because his friendships can differ in kind or species. All friendships are based upon some shared good (communicatio) and where there is a different good, there is a specifically different friendship. Thus Thomas distinguishes the friendships found within the family from those among citizens of the same polity, from those among fellow soldiers, and from those among fellow students. Thomas also refers to there being different attachments—coniunctiones—by which he designates the different ways people are joined on the basis of different goods. [16]
Now there is an order of love within each species of friendship. Thus among my family I can determine whom I should love more or less, keeping in mind both senses of loving more. So too among the military or the political friendships. The result is that if I ask whom I should love more, I must ask not only whether what is meant is willing the greater good or willing the good more intensely, but also within what species of friendship I will the good.
So long as the question refers to two persons loved within the same species, this issue does not arise. For example, when Thomas asks whether a person should love his children or his parents more, he replies simply that the person should love his parents as being better than his children and so should love his parents more by willing a greater good for them (i.e., honor), but the person should love his children as being more closely joined to him and so should have a more intense love for them (this appears in that normally he benefits his children more than his parents). [17] But let us suppose my brother and I are both in the army, in different units, and then ask whether I should love my brother more or another soldier in my own unit. The answer would be different depending upon the friendship we consider. In family matters, for example, I should love my brother more, since he is closer to me within that friendship. But in military matters, I must love the soldier in my unit more. Thus the answer to the question has to specify the species of the friendships. [18]
V. Priorities among One’s Loves: God and Self
The determination of priorities among one’s loves that we have seen up to this point has dealt solely with the loves one human person has for other human persons. In other words, we have seen what factors determine which of my fellow human beings I should love more and in what sense.
The next question to raise is the following: how should one’s love for oneself compare with one’s love for other human beings? Should I always and in all senses love myself more than other persons, or are there some persons whom I should love more than even myself? Thomas’s answer to this question is quite clear: I should always love myself more than the others.
Aquinas’s argument for this is quite simple. I love others with a love of friendship when I have some good in common with them, something that is ours; at the root of all such love is what he calls a communicatio, a sharing in some good (this is the similitude that he speaks of as a cause of friendship: we are alike in that we both share in the same good: our nature, our family, our city, etc.; see ST I-II, q. 27, a. 3). Thus I love my fellow professors in my department because we share in the common enterprise of teaching and research, that is, we are united because we aim at the same good. So too brothers are united around the shared good of their generation by their parents. Another of Thomas’s common examples is that of citizens who love one another with what he calls political friendship; the citizens love one another as united around the common good of the polity. This means, then, that I love the other person qua pertaining to the community of those who share this common good; I love that person, not as an isolated individual, but as ordered to that common good. Now, I only love those who belong to the communities to which I myself belong, for only thus can we be united around a common good. This means that I love those who are associated (consociati) with me in the community. But the very first condition for such an association to obtain is that I myself first belong to the community. Hence the common good must first of all be my good before it can be the basis for my loving others. I want the good, whatever it may be, first for myself and only then for the others joined to me. Thus self-love is the condition of loving any other person, and as such it must be more intense than the other loves. [19] Thomas expresses this point by comparing self-love to intellectus, the grasp of first principles. Just as intellectus is a superior and stronger form of knowledge than the scientia, or demonstrated knowledge, that depends upon it, so too self-love is superior to and stronger than the love of others that arises from it. [20]
While Thomas gives this argument with regard to the specific kind of friendship that is charity, it seems in principle to apply to all friendships. Hence it seems that any love of others is based on self-love and that consequently in any love of another, one loves oneself more than that other. We should note, however, that Thomas always maintains that the common good is loved more than one’s own private good (as long as we are seeking goods in the same order). But the common good is not a person but rather a good for persons, and so does not enter into the ordo amoris as Thomas describes it. [21]
There is, however, one case in which the common good is a person, and that is God. And it is precisely here that we encounter the one person who, according to Thomas, should be loved more than self. Thomas’s analysis rests on his view that God himself is the common good of the universe toward which every creature, as a part, is ordered. The universe is conceived of as a whole made up of subsisting parts whose unity consists in the order among the parts. This internal order constitutes a common good for the universe (as it does for any such whole, e.g., the political whole), but the internal order is itself directed to some external common good which is God. Thus, since the good of the whole is loved more than the good of any part considered in itself, God’s goodness is to be loved more than any good of any part; that is to say, God is to be loved more, both in terms of the good willed for him—his perfection—and in terms of intensity: all other goods are ultimately to be willed for the sake of God and consequently less than God. [22]
Thomas illustrates this with examples of his own. A hand will put itself in the way of a blow aimed at the head, because the good of the hand lies in the good of the whole body; so too a virtuous citizen will risk his life for the safety of his city, because he takes the good of the city to be more truly his own than his private safety. [23] In the same way, a creature who loves God more than himself does not give up his own good; he loves his own good in the whole to which he belongs.
Thomas also describes the relationship of creatures to God as one of part to whole in terms of participation. The perfections of all creatures are sharings or parts of the infinite perfection found in God. On this basis Thomas can relate the good found in any one creature as a part to the whole that God is; any created good is a part (a participation) of the good found in God. Thus any creature finds in God the same good that he loves in himself and finds it there more perfectly. That is to say, he can truly say of God’s goodness that it is his own, and so in loving God he is loving his own good as it is to be found in its most perfect form. A person should love his own good most intensely where he finds it most perfectly. [24] That a person should love as his own good a good that is not to be found in himself is not strange: this is what occurs any time a person loves a common good and takes as his own good a good that is a good not only for himself but also for persons other than himself.
It is important to note that, in his discussion of the ordo amoris, Thomas several times points out that the normal order (which he says is the per se order [25]) will change when the person to be benefited is in a condition of urgent need. In such cases it will be morally required to attend to the person in need, even though he may not be the person more closely connected to the agent. Here, Thomas says, there are no fixed rules and it is a matter of prudence to decide in each individual case what is required and appropriate. [26]
Conclusion
The order of love, then, is not a simple ranking of persons from nearest to farthest. To ask whom I should love more is to ask at least three further questions: whether “more” means a greater good or a more intense love; whether the person in question is better, or nearer to me, or both; and within what kind of friendship the question arises. Thomas’s answers yield a pattern at once realistic and demanding. I should rejoice in the greater goods of those who are better, even if they are strangers to me; I should labor most for those who are nearest, beginning with myself; and I should love God more than all, myself included, because in him I find my own good, and every good I share with others, in its perfect form.
Notes
1. See John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1979), pp. 16–17: “As between his own happiness and that of others, utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator.”
2. E.g., ST I-II, q. 26, a. 4, c.: “As the Philosopher says in Rhetoric II [1380b35], to love is to will good to someone.” For the incompleteness of this definition, see ST II-II, q. 27, a. 2, ad 1.
3. ST I, q. 20, a. 1, ad 3: “The act of love always tends toward two things: toward the good that one wills for someone, and toward the one for whom he wills it. For this is properly to love someone: to will good to him.” Cf. Quodlibet I, q. 4, a. 3, c.
4. ST I-II, q. 26, a. 4, c.: “The movement of love thus tends toward two things: toward the good that one wills for someone, whether for himself or for another, and toward the one for whom he wills the good. Toward the good that one wills for another, one has amor concupiscentiae; toward the one for whom one wills the good, one has amor amicitiae.”
5. ST II-II, q. 44, a. 7, c.; De perfectione spiritualis vitae, c. 14.
6. ST II-II, q. 25, a. 7, c.; q. 26, a. 5, c.; De perfectione spiritualis vitae, c. 14.
7. ST I, q. 20, a. 3, c.: “Since to love is to will good to someone, a thing can be loved more or less in two ways. In one way, on the part of the act of the will itself, which is more or less intense. . . . In another way, on the part of the good itself that one wills for the one loved; and in this way we are said to love that person more for whom we will a greater good, even if not with a more intense will.”
8. ST II-II, q. 26, a. 7, c.
9. ST I-II, q. 28, a. 2, c.; see also q. 25, a. 2, c.
10. De perfectione spiritualis vitae, c. 16: “Second, the perfection of love of neighbor is considered according to the intensity of love. For it is clear that the more intensely something is loved, the more readily other things are disregarded for its sake; from what a man disregards for the love of his neighbor, then, one can judge whether his love of neighbor is perfect.”
11. ST I, q. 60, a. 2.
12. ST II-II, q. 26, a. 4, ad 1; a. 9, c.
13. ST II-II, q. 114, a. 1, ad 2.
14. ST II-II, q. 26, a. 8, c.
15. ST II-II, q. 26, a. 7, c.
16. See, e.g., ST II-II, q. 26, a. 8 for the relationship of coniunctio and communicatio.
17. The good willed per se for one’s parents is honor and reverence. Per accidens, in time of special need, one would also benefit one’s parents as needed. See ST II-II, q. 101, a. 2.
18. There is still a question of what species take precedence over others; for this point see ST II-II, q. 26, a. 8.
19. ST II-II, q. 26, a. 4, c.: “God is loved as the principle of the good on which the love of charity is founded; a man loves himself out of charity insofar as he participates in that good; and his neighbor is loved insofar as he is his fellow in that good. Now fellowship is a reason for love by reason of a certain union in relation to God. Hence, just as unity is greater than union, so a man’s own participation in the divine good is a greater reason for love than another’s being associated with him in that participation. Therefore a man ought, out of charity, to love himself more than his neighbor.” I develop this argument at greater length in “Thomas Aquinas on Self-Love as the Basis for Love of Others,” Acta Philosophica 8 (1999): 23–44.
20. ST II-II, q. 25, a. 4, c.: “Since charity is a kind of friendship, we can speak of it in two ways. In one way, under the common notion of friendship; and in this respect we must say that friendship is not properly had toward oneself, but something greater than friendship. For friendship implies a certain union (Dionysius says that love is a unitive power), whereas each is one with himself, and unity is greater than union. Hence, just as unity is the principle of union, so the love with which one loves himself is the form and root of friendship; for we have friendship toward others in that we relate to them as to ourselves. As is said in Ethics IX, the marks of friendship toward another come from those toward oneself. So too, of first principles we have not scientia but something greater, namely, intellectus.”
21. ST II-II, q. 26, a. 4, ad 3: “The common good is always more lovable to each than his own good, just as the good of the whole is more lovable to the part itself than its own partial good, as has been said.” Cf. a. 3, c.: “. . . because each part naturally loves the common good of the whole more than its own particular good.”
22. ST I-II, q. 109, a. 3, c.; II-II, q. 26, aa. 2–3.
23. ST I, q. 60, a. 5, c.
24. ST I, q. 60, a. 5; In III Sent., d. 29, a. 3, c.
25. ST II-II, q. 26, a. 10, c.; q. 101, a. 2.
26. For this point see especially ST II-II, q. 31, a. 3, c.: “Absolutely speaking, each individual is to be given more of the benefit that pertains to that matter according to which he is more closely connected with us. Yet this can vary, depending on the time and place and situation. For in some instances a stranger should be helped more than even one’s own father—say, if the stranger is in extreme need and one’s father is not suffering such great need.” Also ad 1: “For one must understand that those who are more connected with us should be benefited more, all other things being equal. But if one of two individuals is more closely connected with us and the other is more needy, then there is no universal rule by which it can be determined which one should be helped more, since there are diverse degrees of both need and closeness. Rather, this requires the judgment of prudence.” This final text is Aquinas’s reply to an objection based on the Gospel admonition to invite the needy stranger to your dinner rather than family and friends who will invite you back (Luke 14:12–14). He takes this admonition to refer to the exception to the normal order of love, an exception based on a situation of urgent need. See also q. 26, a. 9, ad 3.
David M. Gallagher, formerly professor of philosophy at The Catholic University of America, lives in New York.
Cover: Agostino Carracci after Federico Barocci, Aeneas and His Family Fleeing Troy, engraving, 1595: Aeneas carries his father, Anchises, from the burning city, with his son, Ascanius, at his side. Cleveland Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0).