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Aristotle, Aquinas, and the natural postmortem subsistence of the rational soul
In a previous post, I claimed that if Aristotle believed the intellect to be separable from the soul of the human person, this viewpoint would more than likely have its root in Aristotle’s cosmology, not his “philosophical anthropology,” his “philosophy of human nature.” In other words, if Aristotle held that once our bodies perish, our human participation in the divine intellect loses its individual participatory existence, this belief is not logically consequent upon his analysis of human nature. Why? Because an Aristotelian analysis of the human being as body-soul composite is not opposed to the Thomistic portrait of the soul, according to which the soul is naturally capable of an individual (but no longer human) postmortem existence.
Before exploring such a portrait, let us first take a look at the antecedent of the above conditional. Does Aristotle think that the intellect is separable from the soul of the individual? This is not an easy question, for as John Deely notes in Four Ages of Understanding, pp. 113-14, “The question raised by his philosophy was not what is the state of the soul when separated from the body, but whether the [intellectual] soul is capable of surviving the body’s corruption; and even to this question he did not leave an unequivocal reply.” Nonetheless, there are several Aristotelian texts that support an affirmative answer to this latter question. First, we have Aristotle writing in Metaphysics XII.3.1070a24ff that “we must examine whether any form also survives afterwards [after its matter]. For in some cases this may be so, e.g. the soul may be of this sort-not all soul but the reason; for doubtless it is impossible that all soul should survive.”
Second, in On the Soul, III.4.429a10, Aristotle claims that the intellect is the “part of the soul with which the soul knows,” and at III.5.430a13-14 remarks that the (possible and agent) intellect “must…be found within the soul.” Thus, if the intellect does persist postmortem, it must do so as a distinct subsistent participation in the divine intellect, and not as identified therewith. On this latter passage, Aquinas will later comment that “human beings would not have been adequately established by nature if they did not have in themselves principles by means of which they carry out their operation, which is to cognize intellectively. This operation, of course, can be achieved only by means of possible intellect and agent intellect. That is why the fulfillment of human nature requires that each of them be something in a human being.”
Lastly, and perhaps even more tellingly with respect to the last point, at Nicomachean Ethics X.7.1178a1ff. Aristotle identifies man with his intellect: “This would seem…to be each man himself, since it is the authoritative and better part of him. It would be strange, then, if he were to choose not the life of himself but that of something else. And what we said before will apply now; that which is proper to each thing is by nature best and most pleasant for each thing; for man, therefore, the life according to intellect is best and pleasantest, since intellect more than anything else is man.”
Suppose I am mistaken, and that the Muslim commentator Averroes rightly denied that, for Aristotle, the (agent) intellect is a faculty proper to individual human nature. Enter Aquinas. In On the Unity of the Intellect against the Averroists, he argues to the effect that since human nature in its intellectual acts exhibits the ability to apprehend objects that do not possess the spatiotemporal restrictions characteristic of material objects as such (e.g., being), the individual soul must itself have an immaterial component which is not tied to or educed from the potency of matter and is thus indestructible and capable of surviving the corruption of the body. Is there anything anti-Aristotelian in this argument? Not that I can tell.
Consider also Aquinas’s succinct (Aristotelian!) argument in his Summary of Theology I.75.2. There he argues that because the intellect can (in principle) know all corporeal things, it cannot have corporeality in its nature, for “that which is in it naturally would impede the knowledge of anything else,” since every corporeal nature is determinate. Neither can the human intellect understand by means of a bodily organ, for “the determinate nature of that organ would impede knowledge of all bodies; as when a certain determinate color is not only in the pupil of the eye, but also in a glass vase, the liquid in the vase seems to be of that same color.” Ergo, the intellect’s operation must be intrinsically incorporeal. Here Deely returns to join Aquinas in offering us a related consideration: “In self-reflection, the mind’s activity of thinking and the object of thought coincide. This would not be possible if thinking were, like perception, intrinsically involved with matter. It would be a case of a finger scratching its own tip” (Four Ages, p. 300).
Aristotle hinted at the postmortem persistence of the rational soul, but did not delve into the nature of its knowledge. Indeed, it seems to be for this reason that Aquinas (in his commentary on Aristotle’s On the Soul) does not claim that Aristotle maintains some kind of individual postmortem knowledge, instead leaving open the possibility and elaborating his own views on the subject elsewhere (e.g., in his Summary). Aquinas goes farther than Aristotle in his analysis of human nature, but there is no evidence that he goes contrary to the Aristotelian method in his elaboration of the nature of the ontologically separated intellectual soul. (He follows Aristotle in arguing from acts to powers.) So I stand by my earlier conviction (see my previous post) that when it comes to our analysis of human nature, if we are good Aristotelians like Aquinas, we shall look to what is necessary to human nature as capable of a distinctively intellectual formation of concepts (in contrast to the formation of merely perceptual conceptus or species expressae we share in common with all other animals). ‘Nuff said.
Before exploring such a portrait, let us first take a look at the antecedent of the above conditional. Does Aristotle think that the intellect is separable from the soul of the individual? This is not an easy question, for as John Deely notes in Four Ages of Understanding, pp. 113-14, “The question raised by his philosophy was not what is the state of the soul when separated from the body, but whether the [intellectual] soul is capable of surviving the body’s corruption; and even to this question he did not leave an unequivocal reply.” Nonetheless, there are several Aristotelian texts that support an affirmative answer to this latter question. First, we have Aristotle writing in Metaphysics XII.3.1070a24ff that “we must examine whether any form also survives afterwards [after its matter]. For in some cases this may be so, e.g. the soul may be of this sort-not all soul but the reason; for doubtless it is impossible that all soul should survive.”
Second, in On the Soul, III.4.429a10, Aristotle claims that the intellect is the “part of the soul with which the soul knows,” and at III.5.430a13-14 remarks that the (possible and agent) intellect “must…be found within the soul.” Thus, if the intellect does persist postmortem, it must do so as a distinct subsistent participation in the divine intellect, and not as identified therewith. On this latter passage, Aquinas will later comment that “human beings would not have been adequately established by nature if they did not have in themselves principles by means of which they carry out their operation, which is to cognize intellectively. This operation, of course, can be achieved only by means of possible intellect and agent intellect. That is why the fulfillment of human nature requires that each of them be something in a human being.”
Lastly, and perhaps even more tellingly with respect to the last point, at Nicomachean Ethics X.7.1178a1ff. Aristotle identifies man with his intellect: “This would seem…to be each man himself, since it is the authoritative and better part of him. It would be strange, then, if he were to choose not the life of himself but that of something else. And what we said before will apply now; that which is proper to each thing is by nature best and most pleasant for each thing; for man, therefore, the life according to intellect is best and pleasantest, since intellect more than anything else is man.”
Suppose I am mistaken, and that the Muslim commentator Averroes rightly denied that, for Aristotle, the (agent) intellect is a faculty proper to individual human nature. Enter Aquinas. In On the Unity of the Intellect against the Averroists, he argues to the effect that since human nature in its intellectual acts exhibits the ability to apprehend objects that do not possess the spatiotemporal restrictions characteristic of material objects as such (e.g., being), the individual soul must itself have an immaterial component which is not tied to or educed from the potency of matter and is thus indestructible and capable of surviving the corruption of the body. Is there anything anti-Aristotelian in this argument? Not that I can tell.
Consider also Aquinas’s succinct (Aristotelian!) argument in his Summary of Theology I.75.2. There he argues that because the intellect can (in principle) know all corporeal things, it cannot have corporeality in its nature, for “that which is in it naturally would impede the knowledge of anything else,” since every corporeal nature is determinate. Neither can the human intellect understand by means of a bodily organ, for “the determinate nature of that organ would impede knowledge of all bodies; as when a certain determinate color is not only in the pupil of the eye, but also in a glass vase, the liquid in the vase seems to be of that same color.” Ergo, the intellect’s operation must be intrinsically incorporeal. Here Deely returns to join Aquinas in offering us a related consideration: “In self-reflection, the mind’s activity of thinking and the object of thought coincide. This would not be possible if thinking were, like perception, intrinsically involved with matter. It would be a case of a finger scratching its own tip” (Four Ages, p. 300).
Aristotle hinted at the postmortem persistence of the rational soul, but did not delve into the nature of its knowledge. Indeed, it seems to be for this reason that Aquinas (in his commentary on Aristotle’s On the Soul) does not claim that Aristotle maintains some kind of individual postmortem knowledge, instead leaving open the possibility and elaborating his own views on the subject elsewhere (e.g., in his Summary). Aquinas goes farther than Aristotle in his analysis of human nature, but there is no evidence that he goes contrary to the Aristotelian method in his elaboration of the nature of the ontologically separated intellectual soul. (He follows Aristotle in arguing from acts to powers.) So I stand by my earlier conviction (see my previous post) that when it comes to our analysis of human nature, if we are good Aristotelians like Aquinas, we shall look to what is necessary to human nature as capable of a distinctively intellectual formation of concepts (in contrast to the formation of merely perceptual conceptus or species expressae we share in common with all other animals). ‘Nuff said.