Quid sit amor, quid charitas, quid cupiditas
Two Senses of Love
Love is examined as both a natural power of the rational soul and as the act by which that power is exercised rightly or wrongly.
The place and the moment call for us to take up a bit more fully what we set aside earlier — namely, how love is to be shown. To make this clearer, I think what love is needs to be laid out more plainly. And it's certainly true that love is love — though it's just as true that not every love is love.1 For this reason a closer look is needed, so that what love is can quickly become clear to the one considering it; and once the general kind has been recognized, the specific form may not escape the one searching. Love, then, is spoken of in two ways — as everyday usage makes clear. First, love is spoken of as a certain power or nature of the rational soul, by which the soul naturally has within it the capacity to love something — not merely the bare ability to love.2 And love is also spoken of as a certain act of the rational soul, exercising that power — when the soul uses it either in the things it ought to, or in the things it ought not to. This act, when specified by an addition, is usually called love — for example, the love of wisdom, the love of money. And such a love must necessarily be either good or evil.✦ For that power of the soul, or that nature, by which this love — whether good or evil — is exercised, is something good in the soul, and in good and in evil alike it can never fail to be good.
Love, Nature, and the Shape of Character
Because love belongs to our God-given nature, its right use shaped by grace forms charity and a good character, while its abuse forms cupidity and a corrupt one.
This love, then, belongs to the very nature of our being — a nature that comes from the highest Good itself, who made each thing good, and all things together exceedingly good.✦ But man, endowed with free choice — just as he uses the other gifts of his nature well when helped by grace, or badly when abandoned by justice — so also with this love: he either uses it rightly, aided by grace, or wrongly, left to his own justice. Since, therefore, as someone has said, good or bad character is shaped by nothing other than good or bad loves — the right use of the aforementioned good love makes a person good, because it shapes a good love within them; but the abuse of it makes a person bad, because it shapes a bad love. Why, then, do we hesitate to call charity the right use of that love, and the abuse of it cupidity?
Read the original Latin
Locus et tempus exigit, ut quod superius distulimus, quemadmodum videlicet charitas sit exhibenda, paulo latius exsequamur. Quod ut manifestius fiat, quidnam sit charitas, enucleatius video ostendendum. Et manifestum quidem est quod charitas amor sit, quanquam non minus manifestum, quod non omnis amor charitas sit. Quocirca subtiliori indagatione opus est ut primo quid sit mox pateat intuenti ; quatenus genere agnito species non lateat inquirentem. Dupliciter igitur amorem dici, animadversa loquendi consuetudo demonstrat. Dicitur enim amor, animae rationalis vis quaedam sive natura, qua ei naturaliter inest ipsa amandi aliquid, non amandive facultas. Dicitur et amor ipsius animae rationalis quidam actus vim illam exercens, cum ea utitur vel in his quae oportet, vel in his quae non oportet : qui quidem actus cum additamento amor appellari solet, verbi gratia amor sapientiae, amor pecuniae; quem utique amorem vel bonum necesse est esse, vel malum. Nam vis illa animae, sive natura, qua hic amor, sive bonus sive malus exercetur, bonum quiddam animae est, et in bono et in malo nunquam potest esse non bonum.
Pertinet quippe ad ipsius naturam substantiae, quae ab ipso summo bono est, qui fecit singula quidem bona, universa autem bona valde. Sed homo libero muneratus arbitrio, sicut ceteris naturae suae bonis, sic et hoc aut bene utitur, adjutus per gratiam ; aut male, relictus per justitiam. Quia igitur, ut quidam ait, bonos aut malos mores non faciunt, nisi boni aut mali amores ; praemissi boni bonus usus bonum hominem facit, quia bonum amorem facit; abusus autem, quia malum amorem facit, utique malum hominem facit. Quid ergo dubitamus charitatem dicere ipsius amoris rectum usum, abusum autem cupiditatem ?
Scripture echoes
- ↩1Tim.6.10 — For the root of all evils is the love of money, which some, reaching for it, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.
- ↩Gen.1.31 — And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
Notes
- 1 ↩The Latin plays on charitas and amor as near-synonyms. The repetition of 'love' in English mirrors the tautological force of the original, but the distinction Kempis draws is between love in general and specifically charitable love. A footnote may be warranted in review to flag the charitas/amor distinction.
- 2 ↩The form 'amandive' (token 17) is uncertain — possibly a gerundive. The translation renders the contrast as 'the capacity to love' vs. 'the bare faculty of loving,' capturing the likely intended distinction between an inherent active power and a mere abstract ability.
Speculum caritatis (The Mirror of Charity) companion
Reorder one love at a time, daily
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