Medieval Seminar
We’ll talk about Aquinas on the soul in its broader philosophical background. What is a human soul, body, and so on. And what is a person. And how many souls are there in a human? In 13th century thinkers there are usually 3 types of souls, and Aquinas answer this somehow. More importantly, this human soul functions in different ways. As a human person we can do a lot of different things. These are such different powers, distinct abilities. What are their ontological relationship then? We will have a chance to take a look at this question. As a human person, we are able to think, understand abstract concepts, and we are able to make our own choice. Why? Aquinas answers this is because we have exactly the intellective abilities, and what are they?
How does the human person understand? And themselves? Our own existence?
Thomas Aquinas
Probably the best known medieval philosopher. He was born in 1225 and died in 1274. He could’ve written more tihngs for us to read if he didn’t die. He studied with Albert the Great. He could tell Aquinas was so talented that Aquinas became regent-master in Paris at the age of 30, it’s the same as distinguished professor. And also worked at the university of Paris. This is the place where the most genius talents worked at this time. Aquinas was surrounded by these geniuses. After Aquinas’ death, many of his doctrines were attacked and scrutinised, and even sanctioned. There is a famous event under which Aquinas was condemned by the Parisian bishop in 1277. The bishop was very unhappy with Aquinas’ theory of the human soul. The same condemnation also happened in Oxford. This gave rise to a decades long debate between the thomists and the authorities. In less than 40 years, Aquinas’ philosophy again aqcuired the significane it had before he died. He became the teaching-doctor of the dominican order. Every dominican friar was supposed to read and defend Aquinas’ doctrines. In 1323 he became canonised as Saint Thomas. In the 19th century he became the official teaching of the catholic church.
”Let carefully selected teachers endeavour to impant the doctrine of TA in the minds of students, and set forth clearly his solidity and excellence over others. Let the universities already founded or to be founded by you illustrate and defend the doctrines of Aquinas.”
He wrote a lot. Probably you cannot finish reading all of Aquinas in an entire life.
All of his works range from political philosophy to biblical commentaries.
What is the soul, what is the human soul, and how does it account for human nature, our human being?
There are two fundamentally different approaches in TA’s theory of Soul. According to Pasnau there is a natural approach to the soul. Aquinas thinks we are a soul-body union, the soul is essentially united with the body as its substantial form. And on the other hand there is a supernatural approach by which he means that the human soul itself can be seperated from the body. It is also totally different from a bodily thing. These are two controversial committments in his theory.
The soul and the body are essentially the same thing. This is part of Aquinas’ commitment to Aristotleian hylomorphism. To understand human nature, we must not only study our intellective power, but our body as a whole. The soul provides a full account for how our organic body works. A human being as a soul-body union, must be explained by the causal actions between soul and body. Aquinas is not a great follower of Plato. He is very hostile to Plato. Frankly speaking I suspect that Aquinas has never read Plato seriously. He probably didn’t have access to any texts of Plato. And he learned so many things about Plato through other ancient philosophers, like Augustine. When you study more on Plato, you feel like what Aquinas says about Plato seems untrue.
”The soul, therefore, is th efirst actuality of a physical body capable of life. The body so described is a body which is organised… If, then we have to give a general formula applicable ot all kinds of soul, we must describe it as an actuality of the first kind of a natural organised body. That is why we can dismiss as unnecessary the question whether the soul and the body are one: it is as though we were to ask whether the wax and its shape are one, or generally the matter of a thing and that it is shaped to.” – Aristotle
Each of us are a primary substance, because my existance does not necessarily depend on something else. To account for this kind of existence, Aristotle thinks we must have a matter of which it is made of, and a form that makes the table what it is. A huge marble stone is totally different than a statue of Aristotle made of marble. A marbel statue. The statue is the form, and the marble is the matter. The two things are not seperable objects, but two principles of one thing.
According to Aristotle, living organisms are hylomorphic composites. The body has some matter, and it has some human soul. Soul = form = what makes a living body the kind of thing it is.
And a body + soul = a living organism. The soul is what makes the body living.
The soul is the first principle of life and account for cognition and movement. Your soul is exactly the internal source from which life spreads into your body. It accounts for the existence of every living thing. Things become alive because simply because we are ensouled. A stone and a table are non-living things, because they don’t have a soul. To be something alive you must be functional, and you must be able to exercise certain operations. As a human person: what makes us a living thing? We must be able to have reflection, whether the thing the hot dog is edible or not. And to eat the hot dog, our body must move because we want and decide to eat the hotdog.
Aristotle provides his most essential claim for what the soul is. ”The soul is the first actuality of a physical body capable of life.”. Here there is a hierarchy of potentiality and actuality. Aristotle cannot speak french, but is naturally apt to acquire it, because as a human person he is naturally able to acquire French knowledge. Possessing a knowledge of speaking french is different from actually speaking french.
The capacity to speak french is the first actuality, it enables me to do a certain thing.
The second actuality is the operation of actually applying this feature.
How is this related to the soul?
An organised body capable of life = potentiality, this means that without life but is naturally apt to have it. So the soul is the first actuality, the soul comes back to his body. Real life-activities such as seeing and eating are second actualities.
The soul is the source from which any operations proceed.
”But as for the fact that the body is actualy such, it has this from a principle that is called its actuality. Therefore, the soul, which is the first principle of life, is not a body but the actuality of a body.”
The soul functions as the principle of life, but the soul also accounts for the fact that each soul is the specific thing it is. The soul is the thing that makes a living body also fundamentally different from a corpse. The soul enables the body to fulfill different operations.
Soul is the principle of living ie. not a body itself but the actuality of an organic body.
But then there is the supernatural approach in Aquinas.
Aquinas also talks about the human soul from a different view. He takes the human soul as a kind of intellect which has its own existence. Which is totally independent from the body. The soul subsists even after the bodily death. Aquinas is a catholic thinker so he has to defend the doctrine of resurrection and human immortality. The soul needs to remain after the body decays. For Aquinas, there is also a strong presence of the platonic philosophy. We see many platonic elements in early church fathers. Take Augustine for example. He follows Plato in many ways. He is following Plato saying that ’you are what your soul is, you are a human using your body, but your body is not you.’
Aquinas must have something to reject a strong form of materialism with. The soul is nothing other than another body. It can be something corporeal with our imagination, and Aquinas is unsatisfied with this approach that was prevalent at the time. The immaterial powers of the intellecet and will must be sustained by an immaterial subject as well. Because like breeds like.
”to investigate something through the body is to do it through the senses – it is dragged by the body to the things that are never the same, and the soul itself strays and is confused and dizzy, as if it were drunk… but when the soul investigates by itself it passes into the realm of what is pure, ever existing, immortal and unchanging, and being akin to this, its exprience must be like this”.
The soul is deathless and intelligible and by nature completely distinct from the body.
”But the ancient philosophers, unable to transcend their imaginations, claimed that the principle behind these living functions is a body. They said that the only hings that exist are bodies.”
Aquinas argues that the ancient philosophers think that only bodies interact with each other.
”It is clear, first, that not just any principle of an operation associated with life is a soul. For if so then the eye would be a soul, since it is a pronciple of seeing, and the same would have to be said for the soul’s other instruments. But we say that the first principle of life is the soul. Now altough a body could be a principle of life, in the way that the heart is a principle of life in an animal, nevertheless no body can be the first principle of life.”
The body can still be the principle of various operations of life. But not every principle of operation is a soul. Each organ funcitons only as part of an organised whole. The coordinated functioning of the whole body cannot be reduced to any single bodily part. This ordered unity of organs requires further and deeper explanation that goes beyond any particular organ.
”For it is clear that through the intellect a human being can cognise the natures of all bodies. But that which can cognise certain things must have none of those things in its own nature, because that which exists in it naturally would impede is cognition of other things. In this way we see that a sick person’s tongue, infected with a jaundiced and bitter humor, cannot perceive anything sweet; rather, all things eem bitter to that person. Therefore, if the intellectual principle were to contain within itself the nature of any body, it could not cognise all bodies. But every body has some determinate nature. Therefore, it is impossible for the intellectual principle to be a body.”