Mediveal Seminar
For TA we need to differentiate the three different levels of the soul. Aristotle.
Does this distinction imply that there are three distinct souls in one human person? One person, but multiple souls. Odd.
According to Aquinas there is only one soul in a human. By thus ibe siyk akibe we are already living, sentient, and rational beings. Aquinas’ doctrine of the unity of the human soul became very controversial in the 13th century. Ie. the condemnation by Robert Kilwardby.
The seventh sentence of Aquinas, Kilwardby finds controversial: ”the generation of an animal is not merely a single and simple generation, that many generations and corruptions follow each other.”
and proposition 12: ”We are therefore left with the conclusion that there is in a human being only one soul substantially, a soul which is rational, sensitive, and nutritive.”
This is not that serious. In a medieval context, a condemnation just means that Aquinas’ tenets won’t be taught at the university. However, for Peckham, anyone who argues for the unity of the soul must be excommunicated. And this is a much higher kind of attack on Aquinas’ teaching.
Once our soul departs from our body, it’s called our body only in an equivocal way. This means that this body is not more properly called a human body; there are only apparent similarities between them, but a dead body is no more a living functional organism. Because life is what distinguishes a living organism from a corpse.
This is not the case for Peckham. Peckham argues that even if our soul leaves our body, there is still some identity that is maintained to it. This they call the substantial form of the body. For Peckham, after death, our body is still properly called our body, because on of our substantial forms remains in the body. And this is exactly because the shape of our body remains there.
At that time there were many catholics who thought that if you worship a relic, you may get some reward from it. And that’s very important for their general theological presumptions. But if we apply Aquinas’ theory of the soul, then the relics are not relics in the proper sense, but only equivocally; Peter’s body is not actually the body of the living man Peter anymore. Peckham cannot agree with this kind of conclusion.
Knapwell becomes excommunicated for defending Aquinas’ theory of the unity of the soul. Franciscan thinkers are more enclined to positions against Aquinas, like Bonaventure, and Ockham. Ockham does not only argue against the unity of the soul, but also argues against Aquinas in regard to the relationship between the human soul and its intellective powers. He thinks the intellective soul itself is identified with the ability to think, whilst Aquinas distinguishes the soul and its power.
”For Plato asserted that there were diverse souls in the body, and this conclusions did in fact follow from his principles. For Plato held that a soul is united to its body as a movier and not as a form, declaring that a soul is in its body as a sailor is in a ship.” Aquinas
Aquinas blames Plato, and platonic philosophy, for concluding that there are multiple souls in the human being.
Within a single body, one must posit multiple souls as the distinct principles underlying diverse vital activities such as sensation, appetite and reason.
This appears to correspond to the tripartite psychology in the pheadrus. This resonates with Plato’s theory of participation.
If there are multiple souls, does a human being not cease to be a unified subject?
”in like fashion it does not seem to imilitate against the unity of a human being or of an animal if in one body there are several souls as movers, subordinated to one another according to the hierarchy of the souls’ operations”.
”But one must posit diverse movers where there is evidence of actions wich are generically diverse. For example, on a ship one man steers and another man rows, and yet the fact that one of these men is not the other does not militate against the unity of the ship, beccause just as their actions are related to each other, so also the movers who are on the ship are related, one subordinated to the other”.
Their activities are exactly subordinated to each other in this way. They are rowing for a certain destination, just as different actions are subordinated to each other. This is why they remain one soul, in that each part is subordinated to the purpose of the whole boat. Aquinas thinks that we make moral wrongdoings when the sensation present in our soul takes over what they intellective part of the soul deems correct. The focus of the soul is disrupted in the case of adultery. The pleasure of the body takes control of our full attention, taking us astray from our moral doctrine or consensus.
Aquinas critique, the predication problem
”But this position is untenable because, if various things are predicated of a given subject according to diverse forms, one of them is predicated of the other accidentally: for example, when Socrates is said to be white because of whiteness and musical because of music, muscal is predicated of whiteness accdientally. Therefore, if Socrates is said to be a human being an anima because of two distinct forms, it follows that this predication, a human being is an animal, is accidental, and that a human being in truth what an animal.”
If several concepts are predicated of the same subject on the bais of distinct independently existing forms, then their mutual predication can only be accidental.
Socrates is a human being, Socrates is an animal. If humanity and animality arise from distinct forms, then a human being is an animal becomes only an accidental predication, and a human is not essentially animal.
But a human is a rational animal, essentially.
He considers a reply.
”perhaps essential predication through multiple form is still possible, if those forms are mutually related. We say that something possessing a surface is colored, for color exists in the substance through the medium of the surface.”
But these cases are different.
A colour exists in a subject, it requires a certain quantity of something to colour to maintain itself. In this case the concept of surface is conceptually and ontologically included in colour. In the sentence, ’a surface is colored’, the subject is surface and the predicate is color. The concept of a subject is encoded in the predicate. And this causes a lot of trouble. Because it reverses the proper order of predication. The definition of a predicate must always be more universal, than the content of a subject. But in the case of ’a surface is colored’, we actually have the concept of surface as more universal in this case.
”But this mode of preciation is not an essential one but rather the opposite, because the predicate is not included in the definition of the subject.”.
It becomes the case that human predicates what animals are.
Unity as Mere Aggregation
”Another difficulty also follows from Plato’s principles. For something unqualifiedly one does not arise from several things which exist in act unless there be something which unites them by binding them together in some manner.”.
Principle of substantial unity: an individual that is one in the absolute sense cannot be composed of multiple independently existing thungs unless there is a unifying principle.
We end up having a ship that is one, but not in the absolute sense, and then there would be no unifying metaphysical principle, just a merely hierarchical subordination. Plato has to then posit a diverse soul which independently exists on its own. And therefore, this platonic model lacks a on ontologically important principle; that is of being able to have primary substances.
A pile of stones for example is relatively one, but absolutely many. The same is true of a heap of grain.
Then a person would be an aggregate of traits; like being socrates = being animal + being human + being white + being happy etc. etc.
This would not explain why we perceive Socrates as an unqualified unity.
”For nothing is unconditionally one except through the one form through which that thing has existence, because a thing’s existence and its unity come from the same source. For that reason, things that are characterised by different forms are not one thing unconditionally.”
The form is universal for Aquinas in that it can be grasped, but we can’t actually find something that exists as something universal in the real world, like we do with Plato’s world of forms. Each of us share the universal human nature, simply because all of us are human beings, but this form is embodied in different human individuals. But it is because we perceive human individuals that we can grasp the very fact of the universal human form.
Functional deprivation
”consequently it is necessary that the sensitive soul, on account of which socrates is called an animal, be his substantial form: and as a reult it is necessary that this soul gives existence without qualification to its body and makes it to be this particular ting. Therefore, if the rational soul is other than the sensitive soul in substance, it does not produce a particular thing nor does it give existence without qualification, but only existence of a certain kind, since it accrues to a thing which already subsists. Hence it will not be a substantial but an accidental form, will not give socratese a specific human nature.”
The function of substantia form is to give existence without qualification to its body and make it to be this particular thing, and to give existence ofa certain kind”.
If the intellecive soul is other than the sensitive soul in substance, and the sensitive soul is present in the human being before the intellective soul, then, it is the substantial form by which socrates is an animal that gives existence without qualification and make socrates to be this particular thing.
If the rational soul is distinct from the sensitive soul, and is added later, its function as a substantial form is deprived. It does not produce a particular thing nor does it give existence without qualification, but only existence of a certain kind, since it accrues to a thing already subsists.
The intellective soul must itself be the substantive form which gives the thing its existence as a specific thing.
The human soul does not allow lower souls to remain as independent substantial forms, instead, it corrupts lower souls. It kills them and overtakes them.
”the generation of an animal is not merelely a single and simple generation, but that many generations and corruptions follow each other, so it is said that an animal first of all has the form of semen, and secondly the form of blood, and so on until its generational terminus”
There is basically stages of development for a human being. First you are semen, then blood, then an embryo, then you develop the vegetative soul, the sensitive soul, and then the rational soul.
To reach the final step, to receive the human soul, we need divine intervention. It’s not a purely natural process that leads to a human being developed; when the fetus is developed to be better at something, it already exhibits certain potentialities for having human life, but the human baby does not immediately exhibit rationality until they have more sensory input and growth. When they are born however, they are still rational animals.