What is cupiditas and caritas?

Augustine of Hippo, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

Augustine of Hippo answers

The distinction is not primarily terminological — though I am aware that amor, dilectio, and caritas are used interchangeably in Scripture without the rigid separation some philosophers would impose — but structural.1 It is a distinction between two directions of love, and those two directions constitute two entirely different modes of existence. Cupiditas is love of the creature for itself.

When you love something created — a person, a pleasure, a possession, even your own life — and you love it as though it were its own end, resting in it rather than passing through it toward God, that love corrupts rather than helps you.2 The creature is not thereby evil; the gold is not at fault when the miser prefers it to justice.3 The fault is in the disordering of love, in loving a lower good as though it were the highest.

And notice what this disorder does to the soul: loving its own power and its own portion rather than the whole governed by God's laws, it slips from the common good into a private grasping, and by lusting after something more, becomes less. Cupiditas is therefore the root of the soul's diminishment, which is why covetousness is called the root of all evils. Caritas is what love of the creature becomes when it is referred to the Creator.45

The same affection, turned in the right direction, ceases to be cupiditas and becomes caritas — not because the creature is now despised, but because it is loved ordinately, in God rather than instead of God.6 I put it this way: as you ought to enjoy yourself not in yourself but in Him who made you, so also him whom you love as yourself.

We are to enjoy both ourselves and our brethren in the Lord, not yielding ourselves downward to ourselves.7 The will itself is the hinge. A right will is well-directed love; a wrong will is ill-directed love.8 From the direction of love flow all the other motions of the soul — desire, joy, fear, sorrow — and these are evil if the love is evil, good if the love is good.9

The entire moral life is therefore not primarily a question of acts but of loves: what you love, and whether you love it in the right order. And the disorder of cupiditas is self-reinforcing. When a man loves temporal life more than eternal life, he begins to measure evil not by what truly damages the soul but by what threatens his temporal comfort — so that thieves and murderers seem worse to him than the lascivious and the drunkard, because the former injure this life while the latter injure only what belongs to God.10

This perversity of loving is the engine of moral blindness: we cannot see rightly what we do not love rightly. Caritas, by contrast, cannot be loved evilly. If the Creator is truly loved — He Himself, not another thing in His stead — then that love, being ordered toward the unchangeable good, makes us live well and virtuously by its very nature.11

The order of love is not an external constraint imposed on a neutral will; it is the condition under which the will finds what it was made for.

Sources

  1. we wished to show that the Scriptures of our religion, whose authority we prefer to all writings whatsoever, make no distinction between amor, dilectio, and caritas
    The City of God, pp. 703–704
  2. it is desire when the creature is loved for itself. And then it does not help a man through making use of it, but corrupts him in the enjoying it.
    The Harmony of the Gospels, pp. 6044–6045
  3. When the miser prefers his gold to justice, it is through no fault of the gold, but of the man; and so with every created thing.
    The City of God, pp. 791–792
  4. the soul loving its own power, slips onwards from the whole which is common, to a part, which belongs especially to itself
    The Harmony of the Gospels, pp. 6114–6115
  5. by lusting after something more, is made less; whence also covetousness is called 'the root of all evil.'
    The Harmony of the Gospels, pp. 6114–6115
  6. it is loved rightly when it is loved ordinately; evilly, when inordinately
    The City of God, pp. 791–792
  7. as thou oughtest to enjoy thyself, not in thyself, but in Him who made thee, so also him whom thou lovest as thyself. Let us enjoy, therefore, both ourselves and our brethren in the Lord; and hence let us not dare to yield, and as it were to relax, ourselves to ourselves in the direction downwards.
    The Harmony of the Gospels, pp. 6044–6045
  8. The right will is, therefore, well-directed love, and the wrong will is ill-directed love.
    The City of God, pp. 703–704
  9. Now these motions are evil if the love is evil; good if the love is good.
    The City of God, pp. 703–704
  10. when a man shall have begun to love this temporal more than that eternal, for the sake of this which he loveth he thinks all things right to be done; and there are not any, in his estimation, more grievous sins than those which do injury to this life
    On Lying, pp. 8068–8069
  11. if the Creator is truly loved, that is, if He Himself is loved and not another thing in His stead, He cannot be evilly loved; for love itself is to be ordinately loved, because we do well to love that which, when we love it, makes us live well and virtuously.
    The City of God, pp. 791–792