Accounting for the Unity of the Human Person in St. Thomas Aquinas and Rene Descartes (original) (raw)

The Unity of Descartes's Thought

History of Philosophy Quarterly, 2005

Dualism--that the world divides to the mental and the corporeal--is a central tenet in Descartes's philosophy. It is therefore puzzling that Descartes sometimes suggests that certain phenomena--including perceptions, sensations, emotions, called the 'special modes'--belong to neither mind nor body alone, but specifically to the union of the two. It has been suggested that, accordingly, we should regard Descartes as a 'trialist' rather than a dualist. I criticize the 'trialist' interpretation, and offer an explanation of the theory of the special modes which reveals it to be perfectly compatible with Descartes's dualism.

A Critique of Descartes' Mind-Body Dualism

In this enterprise, I shall present Descartes' theory of 'methodic doubt,' moving systematically as he (Descartes) himself would suppose we do, from the establishment of the being of his thinking self (his soul), through the existence of a non-mischievous, infinitely, perfect Being, God, to the existence of a corporeal, extended substance (his body), as distinct from his mind; and the ultimate interaction of the two distinct and separate substances: mind and body. Also, I shall give a critical evaluation of Descartes' method, bringing into focus the alternative theories of other philosophers aimed at resolving the Cartesian dualism. The scientific standpoint on the issue shall also be considered. Through these analyses, I shall establish the thesis that, the interaction of mind and body is only probable.

Thomas Aquinas on Separated Souls as Incomplete Human Persons

The Thomist, 2019

In recent years an old Thomistic debate on the separated soul has been resurrected. All parties to the debate agree that, for Aquinas, the separated soul (anima separata) designates the rational soul of a human person that survives the death of the human and, prior to the resurrection, the rational soul subsists in itself unnaturally apart from the body of which it is the substantial form in statu viae. According to some Thomists, called ‘corruptionists,’ the separated soul is not a person. Contrary to the corruptionists, other Thomists, called ‘survivalists,’ contend that the separated soul is a person. Both views seem to have a point, and neither side seems able to convince the other. Corruptionism is the exegetically stronger position with respect to the texts of Aquinas; survivalism’s strength rests in the clarity with which it draws attention to the person-like features of the separated soul. We aim to carve out a middle way. In this paper, we argue on Thomistic grounds that the separated soul is an incomplete person. We defend this novel position by drawing upon Aquinas’s application of a distinction between a complete and incomplete ‘this something’ (hoc aliquid) to human nature and the rational soul, respectively. We argue that since Aquinas’s metaphysics of personhood is framed by and tracks his quixotic metaphysics of the rational soul as an incomplete hoc aliquid, his metaphysical principles entail that the separated rational soul is an incomplete person. Consequently, our position results with the fortuitous conclusion that the views presented by corruptionists and survivalists are both partially correct, but incomplete; the separated soul after death is not a person simpliciter, but it is an incomplete person. Our argument proceeds in two stages. In the first part of the paper we identify and explain Aquinas’s three criteria for personhood: subsistence, rationality of the supposit, and completeness. Satisfying these criteria is individually necessary and jointly sufficient for any being to be a person. Said otherwise, any being that satisfies these criteria also satisfies the Boethian definition of person that Aquinas appropriates, ‘an individual substance of a rational nature.’ The subsistence criterion requires a person be a per se subsistent individual. The rationality of the supposit requires a person be a supposit that performs rational operations in virtue of the rationality of its nature. And the completeness criterion requires that a person be complete or whole. In the second part of the paper, we argue that the separated soul as understood by Aquinas satisfies each of these criteria. Yet, it satisfies them imperfectly and therefore must be qualified as an incomplete person instead of a person simpliciter.

The Substantial Nature of Descartes' Human Being

This is the long version of a forthcoming article on Descartes' concept of substance. This version draws on my previous work to provide an argument that Descartes' human being is a substance within his ontology. This conclusion is reached through an examination of Descartes' fundamental ontology of substance, mode, and attribute within its scholastic-Aristotelian context.

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.

Descartes' Argument for Mind-Body Dualism

1969

After establishing his own existence by the Cogito argument, Descartes inquires into the nature of the self that he claims to know with certainty to exist. He concludes that he is a res cogitans, an unextended entity whose essence is to be conscious. Although a considerable amount of critical effort has been expended in attempts to show how he thought he could move to this important conclusion, his reasoning has remained quite unconvincing. In particular, his critics have insisted, and I think quite rightly, that his claim to be "entirely and absolutely distinct" from his body is not justified by the reasoning which he offers in its support. Nevertheless, I also believe that the proffered criticisms of Descartes' sketchy defense of his position fail to provide us with a full understanding of either the force of his argument or the errors which he commits in reaching his conclusion. In what follows I propose to explain how his arguments may be filled in with certain reasonable premises which make his reasoning concerning his nature" appear less implausible and his mistakes more interesting than his critics have acknowledged. I