The integration of affectivity into practical reason: the doctrine of the passions in Thomas Aquinas

Abstract

This article examines Thomas Aquinas’s conception of the passions, situating it within the framework of the contemporary debate between anthropological dualism and physicalist reductionism. Its main objective is to analyze the Thomistic doctrine of the passions, considering its metaphysical foundation in hylomorphic theory, its structure and classification, its relationship with practical reason and the moral virtues, as well as its implications for understanding incontinence and mental illness. The methodology adopted is a conceptual review and reconstruction of Aquinas’s main works, placing it in dialogue with contemporary scholarship and integrating the metaphysical, anthropological, and ethical levels. The study shows that, for Aquinas, the passions are movements of the sensitive appetite arising from a cognitive apprehension of good or evil and necessarily involving bodily change; therefore, they belong to the whole human composite, that is, body and soul, avoiding both spiritualism and reductive biologism. It also emphasizes that reason does not exercise a despotic rule over the passions, but a political one, guiding them through virtue toward the true good. The article concludes that the Thomistic proposal constitutes a middle path capable of overcoming contemporary emotivism and scientism, offering a unified understanding of affectivity as an intentional and cognitive dimension that can be morally integrated into human life.