Saint Thomas Aquinas argued that the soul has the capability of to exist apart from the body and that it happens in life after death since the soul is incorruptible. According to Aquinas, therefore, a human being is a type of substance with a dualist nature, the body being one and the soul being the other. The soul interacts with the body as it were with it. This, however, is a contradiction to what Aristotle held about the interaction of the soul and the body. For instance, according to Aristotle, asserts that the body and the soul are one. The core issue, therefore, is the perception of the two philosophers of the interaction between the body and the soul. For example, which of the two ideas is plausible enough to explain the nature of the human soul as being different from that of other animals? This paper explores Aquinas’ perspective of the interaction between the body and soul. It is clear, as the paper reports, that Aquinas’ perception is plausible since the soul can exist in itself independent of the body, which is a major theological belief since it differentiates the souls of humans from those of other animals that can stop to exist as soon as the animal dies.
Aquinas realized that he had contradicted Aristotle’s perception of the soul and body, yet his works had been a foundation to what he perceived. In fact, Aquinas tried to indicate such consciousness to the fact that his works would be questioned by philosophy when he opined that questioning the unitary nature of the soul and body was like asking if the seal and the wax were one (Lambert, 2007). The soul is capable of existing without the body when an individual dies. Such incorruptibility causes the actualities of comprehension and willing, which are not akin to the actualities of any organ of the body, but of the animal that is human as such defined by the rational form. Aquinas however, only concludes from such a fact that the human soul relates to a particular thing, which means that it is a subsistent following the death of the body. Aquinas further held that what is a part of the idea of a particular thing is merely that it be a subsistent, and not a substance that is complete in nature (Davies and Stump, 2012). He considered that a subsistent is an object that has its operation and existing either independently or within another thing as an integral component, but not in the manner either material or accidental that forms exist in others.
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Aquinas elaborated that existing on its own is not specific to substance alone. He used the example of a chair and suggested that it was a particular thing, which made it a subsistent. However, on his account, the chair is not a substance, but an accidental unit of several other subsistence that might or might not be substances on their own. He reported using another example that a hand has an operation akin to itself as a part of a living body, which is different from that of the stomach, which means that it is both a subsistent and a particular thing (Thomas and Hood, 2002). However, existing as a functional and integral component of a substance, the hand lacks the complete nature of a substance. A fundamental question, therefore, is to understand Aquinas’ definition of a substance. He considered that a substance is a thing that is both complete in a nature and subsistent. A nature being is used as an internal principle of change and movement in the object.
Therefore, it means that the soul of a human is a constructive element relating to the nature of a person substance (Lambert, 2007). The soul is also the official principle of human substances and what is specified when Aquinas says what a substance is. However, one argument about this perception is the fact that the soul is incomplete by considering what it is for souls to be is some substance’s form. In this sense, the soul is a principle of substance, which Aristotle referred to as arche. Therefore, the soul lacks its complete nature, which also means that fails to exist as a substance in its justification even while it has the capability to subsist in the absence of the living body (Thomas and Hood, 2002). This conclusion draws from an argument that the soul lacks a natural completeness as subsisting outside the body, Aquinas perceives as unnatural for it. This perspective is an insinuation to and not an argument to support the resurrection of the body following death (Davies and Stump, 2012).
The soul exists inside a living body as a critical form of the animal that is the body since it is considered to be a fundamental form of the material body. It is critical to elaborate a dual meaning of immaterial in relation to forms. First, any form is immaterial for the fact that it is not a material of principle. The form is definitive as an actuality principle within a being from the principle of material that is itself a potentiality and change principle in corporeal beings. Judged from such a principle, any substantial form could immaterial, including substantial forms of oak tress or dogs. In the same way, the substantial form of a human being is immaterial in the same regard (Thomas and Hood, 2002). Aquinas is overt about this idea when he justifies the immaterial nature of the human soul in his Summa Theologiae. He says that the human soul is immaterial in merely a similar way that any form is immaterial. However, in the second way, immaterial relates to subsistent forms, those that subsist in the absence of matter such as angels as well as spiritual substances in generality (Thomas and Hood, 2002).
Aquinas refuted ancient materialists that the soul and the body are not one, but the soul is incorporeal. For example, he proved that the soul of a human is a subsistent for the fact that it has an activity, which pertains to it without using a corporeal organ-the activity of comprehending in intellect. In addition, he proved that souls of other animals, unlike that of humans, should not be considered to be subsistent since they lack an operation, which does not engage the corporeal organ (Davies and Stump, 2012). Aquinas also proves that the man is not the soul. He argues that a man has important activities, which entail the life of a live animal such as reproduction, nutrition, and sensation among others, which as not distinctive of the soul as intellect as in the case of humans. The man and the soul are not one because the named activities are of the man and not the soul. It means, therefore, that the animal soul of an individual fails to be subsistent. It also points to the possibility of the existence of two souls within a human, one belonging to the animal and the other the intellectual soul. Therefore, Aquinas manages to prove that the intellectual soul of humans is immaterial in the same way as the souls of other animals. In conjunction with other justifications, it follows that the soul of a man is an immaterial subsistent and that the souls of other animals are not considered immaterial subsistence.
Going by what Aquinas proved in his works, it is possible, therefore, to argue that the soul of a human is an incorporeal subsistent, which does not stop to exist following the death of the body. The result also indicates that a soul is a subsistent form, with the capability to exist in the absence of out matter. The soul is now perceived to be a subsistent that is immaterial in the later sense as described above, and not just the first one. Therefore, immaterial is a characteristic of the mode of existence of the soul, not merely the negative idea that it is immaterial just like any form is immaterial. It means that the difference between the intellectual soul of humans and the souls of humans is that even when they are both immaterial, the intellectual soul of humans exists an immaterial subsistent while the souls of other animals do not exist as immaterial subsistence.
In conclusion, even though Aristotle provided the foundation to the theologian of Aquinas, his simple argument that the soul and the body are one fails to distinguish the intellectual souls of humans from those of other animals. However, Aquinas’ approach is plausible and should be more acceptable in theology because it esteems the nature of the intellectual human soul. The belief in theology that there is life after death does not apply to the souls of other animals and applying Aristotle’s ideology would mean that souls of both humans and other animals do not have a life after death because they cannot exist outside their bodies. However, having an approach that explains the difference between the souls of humans and that of other animals is a huge step in explaining the belief of life after death for human souls.
References
Davies, B., & Stump, E. (2012). The Oxford Handbook of Aquinas . OUP USA.
Lambert, R. T. (2007). Self-Knowledge in Thomas Aquinas: The Angelic Doctor on the Soul's Knowledge of Itself . Author House.
Thomas, S., & Hood, J. Y. (2002). The Essential Aquinas: Writings on Philosophy, Religion, and Society . Greenwood Publishing Group.
