Phil 312

Aquinas on the union of body and soul (ST qq. 75 and 76)
I. Background
a) Objectives.
Aquinas wants to establish the following:
a) The intellectual soul must be immaterial and subsistent and capable of
continued existence after death.
(Note: “the intellectual soul” or “intellectual principle” is used to refer to the
entire human soul, just as ‘the sensitive soul’ refers to the animal soul – and in
general, each type of soul is named by its highest power.)
b) The entire unified soul is nevertheless the substantial form of the body.
(Aquinas rejects any type of dualism: for instance, that body and soul are two
substances, or that the soul is divided into substantial parts. He also rejects the
idea of a single intellect shared by everyone.)
c) There is no incompatibility between a) and b).

b) Thumbnail sketch of Thomistic psychology.

The fundamental idea in acquiring knowledge is somehow to isolate the universal
element in things, i.e., their form. The process involves three steps:
Step 1: Sensation. Corporeal things act upon the sense organs, making a
physical impression. For example: the form of rabbit is taken in by the eye or
other sense organs ‘without the matter’, but still united to the matter of the sense
organ. Sensation is completely passive. Sensible species are too wrapped up with
matter to be intelligible.
Step 2: Imagination. These forms are “sensible species”. The representations
of the five senses are co-ordinated in the “common sense” and stored in a kind of
internal sense organ (which is still material): the imagination. Here, they are
preserved as images or phantasms.
Step 3: Abstraction. The intellect has two parts or aspects: an active part (the
agent intellect) and a passive part (the possible intellect). Abstraction occurs
when the agent intellect ‘turns towards’ the phantasms to produce intelligible
species in the possible intellect.

II. ST I, q. 75 a. 2: The human intellectual soul is immaterial and subsistent

Subsistent = an individual substance [unlike accidents] or, as Aquinas

explains, a part of a substance
Aquinas’ position: The ‘intellectual principle’ is both incorporeal (as just proved) and
subsistent.
A. The intellect is incorporeal
 (1) The intellect can have knowledge of all corporeal things. (Premise)
(2) If the intellect has the capacity to know some type of thing, then the intellect
must not by nature involve or be composed out of this type of thing.
(2a) To each type of thing belong one or more determinate forms.
(2b) Whatever forms pertain to the intellect by nature are always present
in it.
(2c) Determinate forms present in the intellect limit its capacity for
knowledge (for example, by preventing the simultaneous presence of
contrary forms). [The analogy here is with a tongue affected by a “bitter
humour” and unable to taste sweetness.]
(2d) Hence, if the intellect is able to know all members of some class, it
must not contain any of them as a constitutive principle.
(3) Hence the intellectual principle does not contain the nature of a body (from
(1) and (2)), nor can it understand by means of a corporeal organ [here the
analogy is with a coloured vase].

Comment: If we accept (1), and (3) follows from (1) and (2), where does the
argument go wrong? The culprit is (2c), which draws heavily on the analogy
between understanding and perception. Behind the mistake is the idea that
understanding is based on resemblance between the form in the intellect and the
form in reality. But if instead understanding is based on representation, there is
no reason why a sufficiently complex material organ would be limited (though we
might have to shade (1) somewhat, due to the limitations of the organ).

B. The intellect is subsistent

By part A: it has an operation that is independent of the body, or any bodily

organ, and hence an operation per se (of its own nature). But that is only possible
for an independent or subsistent substance.

III. q. 76 a 1: the intellectual soul is the form of the body.

Comment: Nobody can say Aquinas is unaware of the difficulties of his position. His
main argument is somewhat frustrating, though, in that the appeal is primarily to general
Aristotelian principles about the soul. His main argument: the only way to explain how
“this action of understanding is the action of this particular man” is if the intellectual soul
is the form of the body.
Four arguments (see lecture notes).

Aquinas’ position

1. The soul is that by which we primarily act (any vital action: thinking, being
nourished, sensing, etc.). And that by which anything primarily acts is its substantial
form. Hence, the (intellectual) soul is the human substantial form: the form of the body.

2. Problem: Why couldn’t the human soul have two parts, one that takes care of the
lower functions (and is the form of the body) and one that looks after thinking?
So the initial problem is to deal with the objection: might not the intellect be a part of
me, like the eye. And indeed, Aquinas made use of this analogy in the first question!
To say “I sense” means “I sense by virtue of a part” (an eye). And the eye is not the form
of the body. So perhaps the intellect is also a part, in some way united to the body.
Aquinas agrees that the intellect is a part of the person (though he won’t agree that it’s
part of the soul)! The intellect is not the whole of a person (view ascribed to Plato),
because that makes it impossible to explain why it is Socrates who senses.
3. Two rejected models for the mind-body relationship:
a) Dual-subject theory (Averroes). United through the intelligible species.
“Rabbit” is present in a (disembodied) possible intellect of Socrates, at the same
time as “rabbit” is in the phantasms in the (corporeal) imagination of Socrates.
Objection: This does not explain how the act of the intellect is the act of Socrates.
b) Intellect as mover. United because the mind somehow moves the body.
Aquinas offers four reasons to reject this idea, but the basic problem is that this
model again fails to explain how the act of understanding can be attributed to
Socrates – how Socrates is really the agent who understands.
*4. Aristotle’s position: this man understands because the intellect is his form.
- does account for the particularity of the understanding
- also repeats the earlier argument: the nature of each thing is shown by its proper
operation, and that is understanding in the case of humans
But all of this does not explain “how possibly”, so Aquinas provides a final
analogy:
The forms of mixed bodies (compounds of E, A, F, W) can have
operations (e.g., growth) that go beyond the elemental qualities (the
vegetative powers exceed inorganic properties); similarly, the animal soul
has a power (sensation) that exceeds anything provided by vegetative
forms. Analogously, the human soul could have a power that exceeds all
powers of matter.
Comment: In each known case, the power is still limited by matter. Why not
argue (by analogy) that every power of a corporeal being is limited by matter?

IV. q. 76 a 2: there is not just one shared intellect.

Aquinas’ position

Aquinas’ objections are independent of his particular theory of mind-body union. He

tries to show that no credible option allows for a single shared intellect.
a) Platonic view: the only essential part of a human is the mind or intellect. The
intellect cannot be shared, else two individual humans would only be
distinguished by some accident.
b) Aristotle: the individual is a composite of form (soul) and matter; the intellect is one
power of the soul. The intellect cannot be shared, since any two distinct
individuals have distinct forms.
c) Theory-independent arguments.
i) The intellect is the highest power humans have. If Plato and Socrates share an
intellect, we have to say that there is just one man: one agent and one action.
[We can understand two or more agents using a single instrument (e.g., a pulley).
But we can’t think of the intellect as an instrument being used by two independent
agents. For who could be the agents in such a case – what would constitute them
as agents?]

ii) Different phantasms can’t account for the distinguishing between Socrates’ and
Plato’s intellectual operations if there is one common intellect. For phantasms are
corporeal, and NOT yet in the intellect; there would still be just one intelligible
species or form, and hence just one act of understanding.

One Objection

Objection 2: What happens after death? What keeps the multiple souls apart?
Reply: By nature, the intellectual soul is united to the body as its form; after death, it
retains its own being. Hence the multiple souls remain multiple. [Not too
satisfactory]

V. q. 76, a. 4: There are no forms besides the intellectual soul.

Aquinas is talking about another substantial form that ‘precedes’ the intellectual soul.
This would be another kind of dualism: the body together with this lesser substantial
form would already be one substance, and the soul would be another.

Aquinas’ position

1. The contrast between substantial and accidental forms: only the former constitute a
thing and make it be (without qualification); the latter only make something be such. The
coming to be of the S.F. corresponds to the generation of the substance.
2. If there were a pre-existing substantial form that already made Socrates a being, the
intellectual soul could not be Socrates’ substantial form.
3. Positive picture: each type of soul “virtually contains” all the inferior forms (right
down to the forms of elementary matter: earth, air, fire and water). In replying to the
objections, Aquinas explains why these forms are cannot be actually present.