Theological Anthropology of St. Paul and St. Thomas Aquinas (original) (raw)

The Human Soul as Hoc Aliquid and as Substance in Thomas Aquinas

Dois Pontos, 2021

Thomas Aquinas defines the human soul with the same words of Aristotle: it is the substantial form of a human body potentially alive. However, one of the problems of the Thomistic psychology, according to D. Abel, consists in classifying the human soul by means of terms that are commonly used to name hylomorphic compounds, namely, substance and hoc aliquid. If the human soul is part of a hylomorphic compound, how could it be named as substance and hoc aliquid? The aim of this paper is to show the strategy that underlies this classification used by Aquinas. We suggest that it dates back to Aristotle when he attributes different meanings to the words substance and hoc aliquid. Aquinas' novelty consists in expanding this semantic field by introducing a meaning that refers exclusively to the human soul, that is, the peculiar sense.

The Ontological Status of the Body in Aquinas’s Hylomorphism

Studia Neoaristotelica, 2017

Hylomorphism is a term originating from the Greek words ὕλη (timber, matter) and μορφή (shape, form), which was introduced by the neo-scholastics at the end of 19 th century to characterize a metaphysical position under the dominant influence of Aristotle. 1 According to hylomorphism, a natural body is a metaphysical compound, consisting of two intrinsic principles: matter and form. Form determines its actual features, especially the essential ones, while matter serves as their substratum. It goes without saying that such a rough definition serves merely as the starting point and needs further refinement by conceptual analysis and rigid arguments. In the High Middle Ages, with the circulation of the Aristotelian corpus as a whole, this metaphysical picture occupied the predominant position in the Latin tradition. 2 Thomas Aquinas was no excep-8 Linda Farmer, Matter and the Human Body According to Thomas Aquinas, Ph.D. Thesis,

Thomas Aquinas On Being and Essence

Because a small error in the beginning grows enormous at the end, as the Philosopher remarks in Book 1 of On the Heavens and the World, 1 and being and essence are the first things to be conceived by our understanding, as Avicenna declares in Book 1 of his Metaphysics, 2 in order to avoid falling into error about them, and to reveal their difficulties, we should see what are signified by the names of being and essence, how these are found in various things, and how they are related to the logical intentions 3 of genus, species, and difference.

Thomas Aquinas on How the Soul Moves the Body

Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy, 2020

Interpreters of Thomas Aquinas's hylomorphic theory tend to focus on the problems that arise in his attempt to reconcile a hylomorphic account of substantial form with the individual immortality of human intellectual souls-a flagship claim often labeled "Thomistic hylomorphism." But although the difficulties there are indeed great, it would be a mistake to proceed as if Aquinas's hylomorphic theory is smooth sailing up until his account of the human soul. One important challenge for interpreters is his view that the soul moves the body, and that this ability to move the body distinguishes souls (including even the souls of plants) from other substantial forms. A good example is found in Summa contra gentiles 2.65 where he says that "an animal moves itself: the mover in it is the soul, while the moved is the body. The soul therefore is a mover which is not moved."¹ To hold that the soul, which is the form of the body, moves ¹ SCG 2.65. For discussion see n. 49 below. For discussions of the various media through which the soul moves the body see SCG 2.71 [Leon. 13.454: 1b-9b], QDDA 9 [Leon. 24/I.82: 278-95], and the De motu cordis. For the ability of the soul to move the body as that which distinguishes it from other substantial forms, see DV 22.3, n. 56 below. The commentary on the Liber de causis is cited according to the edition by H.-D. Saffrey (Louvain: Nauwelaerts, 1954). The commentary on the Sentences, books I-III according to the edition by R. P. Mandonnet and R. P. Moos (Paris: Lethielleux, 1929-47), and book IV according to the Parma edition (Parma: Typis Petri Fiaccadori, 1852-73)-abbreviated respectively as "Mand.," "Moos," and "Parma." The remaining texts are cited according to the Leonine edition of Aquinas's Opera omnia (abbreviated "Leon."). Titles of commonly-cited works are abbreviated as follows: InPhys = In octo libros Physicorum Aristotelis; DV = Quaestiones disputatae de veritate; InDA = Sentencia libri De anima; InDeSensu = Sentencia libri De sensu et sensato; QDDA = Quaestiones disputatae de anima; QDSC = Quaestio disputata de spiritualibus creaturis; DP = Quaestions disputatae de potentia; Sent. = Scriptum super libros Sententiarum; SCG = Summa contra gentiles; ST = Summa theologiae. Works are cited by their primary internal divisions and all translations into English are mine.

The Physical Status of the Spiritual Soul in Thomas Aquinas

THERE ARE probably several factors contributing to make Thomas Aquinas's conception of the human soul difficult for the contemporary mind to assimilate. But one of them is surely the profound change in the approach to the study of man initiated in the seventeenth century by René Descartes.This is the so-called "turn to the subject." In relation to Thomas, a particularly interesting figure in the transition to the modern approach is that of Nicolas Malebranche. As is well known, Malebranche received Descartes' L'Homme with great enthusiasm. On the other hand, Malebranche remains in some ways closer to Thomas than Descartes. Like Thomas, he is first and foremost a priest and a theologian; and the spirit of his philosophical thought is still very much in the tradition of fides quaerens intellectum.What he does not share with Thomas is the aristotelianism of the scholastics (against which, of course, Descartes also strove). This difference is nowhere more significant than on the question of the soul. And no one thinks this question more important than does Malebranche. A passage from the very beginning of his major work, The Search for Truth, shows how grave the issue is for him.

Thomas Aquinas On The Aristotle theory (15 pags).docx

Is physical substance an indivisible unit with its own identity? Or, rather, is it a collection of many tiny independent substances, each with its own identity? Aristotle and Aquinas investigated the solution of these two questions and gave them answer in the same line of thought. Their results are valid at the present time. They are useful in our world today to solve the mysteries that physics, chemistry and modern Biology, from one side, and philosophy, on the other, have about the intrinsic fundamentals of physical things, from their respective points view. The Aristotle’s search about the internal fundamentals of material substance as a whole composed of integral material parts finds its peak in its research about the substantial form. Because the substantial form is the intrinsic cause that keeps each physical thing united in itself, and also is the cause of its being (esse); because something that is dispersed may not have consistency or being (esse). Are the material component parts of the physical substance substances in act, each of them with its own substantial form? Thomas Aquinas responds flatly no, inspired by Aristotle. The material component parts are only substances existing in act. This research presents the demonstration of this thesis.