Love of Friendship and Love of Concupiscence

Abstract

Love of Friendship and Love of Concupiscence Jordan Olver WE LOVE WINE and other lifeless things in a different way than we love our friends. We love our friends for their own sake, wishing good for them and being inherently pleased by their possession of it. We love wine and other such things as objects to be used, enjoyed, or possessed by someone we care about; we do not love them fundamentally as subjects for whom we wish some good but as goods we wish for some subject. Aristotle, in his Nicomachean Ethics, drew attention to this difference and, through it, identified friendship as essentially a benevolent love, that is, one that wishes good for the loved one for the loved one’s own sake.1 In the thirteenth century, theologians looked back to Aristotle, and presumably to experience itself, and distinguished between two kinds of love: the kind of love one has toward wine they called concupiscence or love of [End Page 573] concupiscence; the kind one has toward a friend they called friendship or love of friendship. Thomas Aquinas received the distinction between love of friendship and love of concupiscence from his Scholastic predecessors, and in a sense from Aristotle as well. He used the terms love of friendship and love of concupiscence throughout his career, and the distinction associated with them eventually came to occupy a central role in his thought on love. Arguably, the distinction became so central that without it one cannot present his thought except in a vague manner, nor can one solve the primary problem associated with his doctrine of love, namely, how love of others for their own sake is possible.2 Scholars have often treated of the distinction between love of friendship and love of concupiscence. Most treatments, however, have been part of a broader inquiry; rarely has the distinction been the proper object of study. The effect has been that scholars have rarely considered the two loves as a controversial topic, one over which to argue.3 But differences in interpretation do exist, some being more obvious, others more subtle. These differences exist in turn because Thomas’s understanding of love of friendship and love of concupiscence is itself difficult to discern. Thomas presents the two loves in a variety of ways, and it is not clear how we are to reconcile these different accounts. Some dedicated studies, accordingly, are needed to [End Page 574] address the various textual difficulties and consider the diverse interpretations in the secondary literature. This study aims to provide such a treatment. With the help of the secondary literature, we will first set out the questions we will seek to answer in our inquiry. Then, to provide a firmer foundation for interpreting Thomas, we will survey his predecessors’ use of love of friendship and love of concupiscence. Afterward, we will examine Thomas’s own use of the terms throughout his career. Finally, we will return to the questions raised and draw conclusions about how we ought to understand the two loves and the distinction associated with them. I. Scholarly Treatment and Possible Interpretations Twentieth- and twenty-first-century interpreters of Thomas generally present love of friendship and love of concupiscence in one of four ways. Some divide the two loves as other-oriented and self-oriented: love of friendship is a disinterested love of others for their own sake while love of concupiscence is a love of something wished for oneself.4 Others divide the loves as being of persons and of things wished for persons: love of friendship is of a person, whether oneself or another, for that person’s own sake, while love of concupiscence is of some good wished for a person.5 Still others divide the loves similarly but [End Page 575] add that the loves are not distinct acts, but two aspects or tendencies found in every act of love: in each act, one tends with love of friendship to some subject for whom one wishes some good and with love of concupiscence to some good one wishes for that subject.6 Finally, some identify multiple senses of the two loves. Most notably, Guy Mansini...