Thomas Aquinas on Separated Souls as Incomplete Human Persons

Abstract

Thomas Aquinas on Separated Souls as Incomplete Human Persons Daniel D. De Haan and Brandon Dahm IN RECENT YEARS an old Thomistic debate on the separated soul has been resurrected. All parties to the debate agree that, for Thomas Aquinas, the separated soul (anima separata) designates the rational soul of a human person which survives the death of the human, and that, 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.1 Corruptionism is the exegetically stronger [End Page 589] 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 article, 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.2 We show that Aquinas’s metaphysics of personhood is framed by his quixotic metaphysics of the rational soul as an incomplete hoc aliquid. Because he holds that the separated rational soul is an incomplete hoc aliquid and is part of an entity that performs rational operations, his metaphysical principles entail that the entity constituted by the separated rational soul is an incomplete person. Consequently, our position has the fortuitous result that the views presented by corruptionists and survivalists are both partially correct, but [End Page 590] 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 article we identify and explain Aquinas’s three criteria for person-hood: 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.”3 The subsistence criterion requires that a person be a per se subsistent individual. The rationality-of-the-supposit criterion requires that 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 article, 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. I. Criteria of Personhood We find in Aquinas three criteria that a being must satisfy to be a person: a person must have per se subsistence, have the rationality of a supposit, and be complete. Our explanation of these criteria requires situating Aquinas’s account of personhood in the context of his multifaceted metaphysics. We include many details, both textual and conceptual, for two reasons. First, Aquinas’s view is complex and an adequate understanding of his account of personhood requires the details. Second, at times the debate between survivalists and corruptionists has operated within a limited reading of Aquinas’s metaphysics; for instance, many scholars emphasize matter and form composition to the [End Page 591] exclusion of other orders of act-potency composition.4 Our detailed explication of Aquinas’s metaphysics of the person corrects the sometimes truncated presentations of Aquinas’s views. A) A Person Is a per se Subsistent Individual In this section we explain Aquinas’s subsistence criterion for personhood by examining his account of person as an individual substance. Aquinas’s account of personhood in the Prima pars of the Summa theologiae distinguishes two principal meanings of the term “substance” (substantia); it is the second that pertains to his...