The Structure of Craving (Appetitus)

[B:033131] Augustine writes that "to love is indeed nothing else than to crave something for its own sake," and further on he comments that "love is a kind of craving." Every craving (appetitus) is tied to a definite object, and it takes this object to spark the craving itself, thus providing an aim for it. Craving is determined by the definitely given thing it seeks, just as a movement is set by the goal toward which it moves. For, as Augustine writes, love is "a kind of motion, and all motion is toward something." What determines the motion of desire is always previously given. Our craving aims at a world we know; it does not discover anything new. The thing we know and desire is a "good" (bonum), otherwise we would not seek it for its own sake. All the goods we desire in our questing love are independent objects, unrelated to other objects. Each of them represents nothing but its isolated goodness. The distinctive trait of this good that we desire is that we do not have it. Once we have the object our desire ends, unless we are threatened with its loss. In that case the desire to have (appetitus habendi) turns into a fear of losing (metus amittendi). As a quest for the particular good rather than for things at random, desire is a combination of "aiming at" and "referring back to." It refers back to the individual who knows the world's good and evil and seeks to live happily (beate vivere). It is because we know happiness that we want to be happy, and since nothing is more certain than our wanting to be happy (beatum esse velle), our notion of happiness guides us in determining the respective goods that then became objects of our desires. Craving, or love, is a human being's possibility of gaining possession of the good that will make him happy, that is, of gaining possession of what is most his own.

This love can turn into fear: "None will doubt that the only causes of fear are either loss of what we love and have gained, or failure to gain what we love and [B:033132] have hoped for." Craving, as the will to have and to hold, gives rise in the moment of possession to a fear of losing. As craving seeks some good, fear dreads some evil (malum), and "he who fears something must necessarily shun it." The evil that fear makes us shun is whatever threatens our happiness, which consists in possession of the good. So long as we desire temporal things, we are constantly under this threat, and our fear of losing always corresponds to our desire to have. Temporal goods originate and perish independently of man, who is tied to them by his desire. Constantly bound by craving and fear to a future full of uncertainties, we strip each present moment of its calm, its intrinsic import, which we are unable to enjoy. And so, the future destroys the present. Whatever can be taken away from a lasting enjoyment for its own sake cannot possibly be the proper object of desire. The present is not determined by the future as such (although this, too, is possible with Augustine, as we shall see below), but by certain events which we hope for or fear from the future, and which we accordingly crave and pursue, or shun and avoid. Happiness (beatitudo) consists in possession, in having and holding (habere et tenere) our good, and even more in being sure of not losing it. Sorrow (tristitia) consists in having lost our good and in enduring this loss. However, for Augustine the happiness of having is not contrasted by sorrow but by fear of losing. The trouble with human happiness is that it is constantly beset by fear. It is not the lack of possessing but the safety of possession that is at stake.

This enormous importance of security—that nothing subject to loss can ever become an object of possession—is due to the condition of man and not to the objects he desires. Good and evil are good and bad for one who wants to live happily. Although all men want to live happily, each one means and seeks something else by happiness, and by the goods which constitute it. Hence the questions arise: what is good? what is evil? Each one understands something different by them. However, all are agreed on one point, namely, wanting to live. Thus the happy life (beata vita) is actually life itself. And it also follows that a life in constant peril of death is no true life, because it is continually threatened by the loss of what it is, and is even certain to lose it some day. "The true life is [B:033133] one that is both everlasting and happy," and "since all men want to be happy, they want also to be immortal if they know what they want; for otherwise they could not be happy." Thus the good love craves is life, and the evil fear shuns is death. The happy life is the life we cannot lose. Life on earth is a living death, mors vitalis, or vita mortalis. It is altogether determined by death; indeed it is more properly called death. For the constant fear that rules it prevents living, unless one equates being alive with being afraid.

This basic fear guides all our fears of specific evils. By putting an end to life, death is at the same time the cause of the constant worry of life about itself—the endless concern about its transient happiness—and about life after death. But, as Augustine writes, "what if death itself cuts off and puts an end to all worries along with all feeling?" Is there no consolation in death? Augustine has no answer other than to summon up the "authority of the Christian faith" with its claim that life is immortal. Do not all men agree that they want to live? Only where there is no death, and hence no future, can men live "without the anguish of worry." In their fear of death, those living fear life itself, a life that is doomed to die. Hence, their fear teaches them the true nature of life. "All things shun death, since death is the contrast of life; it follows necessarily that life, shunning its opposite, also perceives itself." The mode in which life knows and perceives itself is worry. Thus the object of fear comes to be fear itself. Even if we should assume that there is nothing to fear, that death is no evil, the fact of fear (that all living things shun death) remains. Hence, "either the evil we fear exists, or evil is the very fact of fear." The fearless security of possession reigns only where there is nothing to be lost. This fearlessness is what love seeks. Love as craving (appetitus) is determined by its goal, and this goal is freedom from fear (metu carere). Since life in its approach to death is constantly "diminished" and thus keeps losing itself, it is...