Suffering and Spiritedness

This study examines the relationship between comfort, understood as an interior strengthening or emboldening, and the spirited element of the soul—that element which Plato and Aristotle called thumos. In the Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation, More follows his Greek precursors in regarding the spirited element as that part of the person which alone can unite the reason and the passions, making for human wholeness. More also follows Plato in using the dialogue form as a mode of psychagogia, or statesmanly soul-leading, whereby he elicits in the soul of the attentive and involved reader the same comfort which Antony calls forth in Vincent. The dialogue demonstrates how comfort requires arousing the spirited element in the soul, especially in its honor- and victory-loving aspect (Vincent’s name is in fact redolent of this aspect of thumos.) But the kind of comfort which concerns More is supernatural in its origin and final end. This study will show how in his knowledge of the causes and conditions of supernatural comfort, More amply demonstrates that he is a theologian no less than a statesman or literary artist

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• More’s Dialogue and the Dynamics of Comfort

  Open Access•Jared Russell, J Stephen Russell•Moreana•1980

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