Transhumanization, Personal Identity, and the Afterlife: Thomistic Reflections on a Dantean Theme

Abstract

AbstractTaking Aquinas's metaphysics of human nature as my point of departure and taking inspiration from Dante's concept of transhumanization, I sketch a metaphysics of the afterlife according to which a human person in the interim phase between death and resurrection is not a mere disembodied soul. I offer some theological reasons for thinking that our bodily human nature is essential to what we are and for thinking that we can survive the destruction of our bodies at death. I argue that these claims are consistent, provided we hold that our bodily human nature, while essential to what we are, is not necessary to what we are. I argue for this distinction between essence and necessity. I then raise a mereological puzzle about the relation between a disembodied soul and the person whose soul it is, and argue that, if we are to avoid the Cartesian conclusion that this relation is identity, we must hold that a human person, even in the interim phase, is composed of a soul and something else. Drawing on Dante's concept of transhumanization, I argue that this something else is God himself or some specially created divine grace or energy.