Routledge History of Philosophy Volume III: Medieval Philosophy (Vol. 3) by John Marenbon

Author:John Marenbon
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780415308755
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2003-05-02T04:00:00+00:00

(Summa theologiae, Ia, 75, 1)

In other words, if bodily things are alive just because they are bodies, all bodily things (e.g. my alarm clock) would be alive, which they are not. So what makes something a living thing cannot be a body.

But why say that the human soul is something subsisting? The main point made by Aquinas in anticipating this question is that the human animal has powers or functions which are not simply bodily, even though they depend on bodily ones. For example, people can know and understand, which is not the case with that which is wholly material. As Aquinas puts it, people enjoy an intellectual life and they are things of the kind they are (rational animals) because of this. Aquinas calls that by virtue of which people are things of the kind they are their ‘souls’. So he can say that human beings are bodily, but also that they are or have both body and soul. The two cannot be torn apart in any way that would leave what remained a human being. But they can be distinguished from each other and the soul of a human being can therefore be thought of as something subsisting immaterially.

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