The Philosophical Significance of Immortality in Thomas Aquinas

THE PHILOSOPHICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF IMMORTALITY IN THOMAS AQUINAS

J. Obi Oguejiofor

University Press of America,® Inc. Lanham· New York· Oxford

Copyright © 2001 by University Press of America,® Inc. 4720 Boston Way Lanham, Maryland 20706 12 Hid's Copse Rd. Cumnor Hill, Oxford OX2 9JJ All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America British Library Cataloging in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Oguejiofor, J. Obi (Josephat Obi) The philosophical significance of immortality in Thomas Aquinas / J. Obi Oguejiofor. p. cm Includes bibliographical references and index. I. Immortality (Philosophy)-History. 2. Thomas, Aquinas, Saint, 1225?-1274. 1. Title. BD421.038 2000 I 29-dc2I 00-048857 CIP ISBN 0-7618-1910-X (cloth: alk. ppr.)

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To the memory of late Archbishop S. N. Ezeanya

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I Contents Contents Preface Acknowledgements Introduction

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CHAPTER I THOMAS AQUINAS AND THE QUESTION OF IMMORTALITY IN THE 13TH CENTURY I 1.1. Immortality and Philosophy in the Early Thirteenth Century 1.2. Doctrinal Impetus to the Discussions on Immortality 1.3. The Example ofS!. Albert the Great 1.4. Some Trends in the Defence of Immortality before St. Thomas 1.5. The Issue of Latin Averroism

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CHAPTER 2 IMMORTALITY AND AQUINAS' CONCEPTION OF THE HUMAN SOUL 33 2.1. The Man of Aquinas 33 2.2. The Human Soul: A Subsistent Form 38 2.3. Body and Soul 50 2.4. Problems ofthe Intellect 55 2.5. The Soul in Activity 62

CHAPTER 3 ARGUMENTS FOR IMMORTALY 3.1. Method and Intention of the Arguments

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3.2. The Arguments: I. In the Scriptum super libros sententiarum II 2. In the Summa contra gentiles 3. In the Questiones quodlibetales 4. In the Summa theologiae 5. In the Questiones disputate de anima 6. In the Compendium theologiae CHAPTER 4 SOME PROBLEMS OF IMMORTALITY 4.1. The Question of Death 4.2. Why are Brute Souls not Immortal? 4.3. The State of the Separated Soul 4.4. Resurrection and Immortality of the Body 4.5. Immortality and the Platonism of Aquinas CHAPTER 5 AQUINAS, IMMORTALITY AND THE SCOPE OF PHILOSOPHY 5.1. Reappraisal of the Arguments for Immortality 5.2. Some Critics of Aquinas: Scotus, Pomponazzi and Cajetan 5.3. Subsequent Trends in the Question ofimmortality 5.4. Immortality and the Scope and Limit ofphilosophy

86 86 98

118 127 139 139 146 151 159 164

175 175

182 192 201

211 215

CONCLUSION BmLIOGRAPHY INDEX

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Preface

107 III Though philosophical discussions on the question of uninterrupted existence of the human soul post mortem is today very few and far between, the doctrine is still a widely held conception about the human . destiny. This fact alone merits the issue of immortality a serious place in the scheme of philosophical endeavours. This is because it is a vaunted characteristic of philosophy not to exclude a priori any aspect of reality from its embrace. That is perhaps why the question of immortality found a place in the philosophy of many epochs. Still a most perfunctory survey of the history of philosophy indicates that debates on the reality of immortality have been uppermost in times of special philosophical awakening. The thirteenth century is in a special way one of the most sigoificant centuries in the history of such philosophical aWakening. The importance of the century in the history of philosophy immediately brings to the fore the relevance of examining the question of immortality in the philosophy of the time, and especially how the most towering thinker of the century, Thomas Aquinas, attempted to show through the power of reason that immortality is tenable. The philosophical reinvigoration of the century encountered many obstacles occasioned by the consequences of the integration of Aristotelian naturalistic philosophy into the then prevalent scheme of thought. Many of the problems arose from the new conception of man and his soul engendered by this naturalism, and its logical implications for the doctrine of immortality. Aqninas played a pivotal role in the eventual triumph of Aristotelian philosophy not ouly in his time, but also much later. This study attempts to explore how he tried to solve the problem of immortality within the context of Aristotelian philosophy. It highlights the importance of the issue in the century, starting from the philosophical forebears of the angelic doctor. It also examines how the question of immortality can be said to be one of the most determinant

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Introduction A remarkable feature of studies on Thomas Aquinas, even those devoted specifically to the question of the soul, is the perfunctory treatment that is given to the question" of immortality. This is partly because the question of metaphysical immortality has in recent times progressively been of very peripheral interest in philosophy in general. This tendency has a lot to do with the growing disinterestedness in religion, coupled with the religious undertone which the whole question of immortality has had since its inroads into philosophical discussions: A consequence of this tendency is that medieval scholarship has very " often also been affected by the desire to work within the mainstream, and to concentrate on themes that are aIdn to the dominant philosophical interests of the age. While such an influence has very positive aspects, it can also have the effect of relegating to the sideline a doctrine which perhaps more than any other was determinant in the shaping of the philosophical movement of the thirteenth century. The relatively few studies of immortality in the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas have other features which are no less remarkable. In the first place, they are mostly published in the form of short artieles, whose amplitude is obviously not enough to allow a comprehensive overview of the issues, let alone determine their importance. Second, most of them take account only of the few arguments outlined in the Summo thealagioe, and consequently, the significance of the theme in Aquinas, as in the general philosophical trend of the thirteenth century pales under this background. Another feature is that the context of the thirteenth century, in which Aquinas worked, and which had enormous influence on his treatment of immortality, is often not given due weight. Vet the question of the immortality of the rational soul detennined more than any other single factor the history of Aristotelianism in that century. Again, due to the style of argument in which most of the discourses of the angelic doctor are couched, those studies have either been aimed at raising problems with regard to the tenability of the

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The Philosophical Significance a/Immortality, in Thomas Aquinas

proof, or at showing in what ways the proof is acceptable as adequate demonstration of immortality; not to mention the current of opinion which seeks to show that Aquinas never intended that his argwnents were rational proof ofimmortality. With this background in view, we have tried in the following pages to provide as much as possible a comprehensive understanding of the issue of the immortality of the human soul in the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, and also to review the importance of the theme in philosophy in general. Our view is that this aim is served better by a more global understanding of the influence of the theme of immortality in the epoch which forms the immediate background of Aquinas' philosophy, and by reference to the thoughts of the authors preceding him on the issue. This will give more insight into the sources of the angelic doctor, while highlighting his originality in the treatment of the age-old problem. A special study of the thought of Aquinas on immortality acquires special importance because of his special position in the reintroduction and integration of Aristotle's philosophy in the West in the thirteenth century. Aquinas was among the first scholastics to accept fully the conception of the soul as form of the body. Tinough the length and breadth of the volumes of his works he argues resolutely for the tenability of this conception and for how it is in consonance with the Christian faith, including the inunortality of the soul. The absence of any clear doctrine of inunortality in Aristotle, and the fact that the Neoplatonic idea of the soul is a much more comfortable background from which to defend inunortality meant that special efforts were needed to wade through the obvious difficulty that is consequent upon the full acceptance of apparently disparate positions. Still there is no doubt that one of Aquinas' most important contributions to philosophy is his conception of the human nature which comes out of these seemingly conflicting backgrounds. Given the influence of the question of immorality in Aquinas' view of man - his nature, his specific activities, and his ultimate aim - to study his philosophy while not adequately taking account of the question of immortality is to neglect one of the most potent influences on his philosophy. In view of this, we will try first to situate Aquinas within the philosophical context of his time by reviewing briefly the emergence of the question of inunortality within the intellectual ambience of the early thirteenth century, the doctrinal factors which made this emergence possible and how some of these factors played in the works' of the thinkers who flourished just before him. Albert the Great is cited as an example of how a conception of the soUf is heavily influenced by the doctrine of immortality. The concern for inunortality, which is a special feature of the first half of the thirteenth century, resulted in the efforts

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of the thinkers of the time to defend the doctrine with diverse arguments. The inconsistencies that are prevalent in their positions,

marked by the juxtaposition of Aristotelian and Neoplatonic doctrines, are indicative of the inadequate internalization of the influx of

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doctrines, which already started in the twelfth century, and the level of their philosophical aWareness. Some sparks of originality, nevertheless, emerge from the efforts of these thinkers to prove immortality On rational grounds: the spinning of doctrines and principles to suit old argwnents, the spinning of new argwnents, the rejection of some older proofs, as well as the grading of demonstrations according to their perceived convincing power. The so-called Latin Averroism is ./ reviewed to show that it -is a factor which the inunediate predecessors

of Aquinas may not have been fully aware of, but which exerted an important influence on Aquinas' discourses on immortality. Aquinas' philosophical anthropology is very much influenced by the doctrine of inunortality. Man is a hylemorphic composite in the best tradition of Aristotle. Though the soul and the body are so intimately united, Aquinas' philosophy of man is not much more than his ideas about the soul. That these are also very much affected by the issue of inunortality is seen by a review of his conception of the soul as a subsistent form, the plurality of forms and individuation in the human composite, as well as the nature of the intellect, the process of intellectual knowledge, and the nature of knowledge itself. These issues are examined in the second chapter with the aim of highlighting the often hidden nuances and slants given to them which can, in the final analysis, be taken as preparation for the defence of inunortality. The study of his view of man and his soul is all the more necessary because most of what he said on immortality is encapsulated in the passages in several of his works where he expressly defends the doctrine with proofs. These proofs are reviewed in chapter three. They are mostly founded on the philosophical presuppositions that had become the patrimony of the thinkers of the period, on the assumption of the accepted principles of the time, and on appeal to the conscious experience of humankind. Thomas follows very faithfully in his argwnents the thirteenth century style of outliuing objections to issues at stake, as well as the contrary position before seeking re_conciliation.

Very often the objections highlight important difficulties in the discussion. Where it is deemed that such objections are of weighty import, they are also analysed, together with the answers given to them where doing so is thought to bring out more clearly the stance of Aquinas in the text concerned. Before then however, there is an effort

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to ascertain the intention of St. Thomas about the proolS in order to settle the contention that he never intended to prove immortality. The review of the arguments fol\ows the established chronological order of the writing of the texts of Aquinas. This is done in order to facilitate the tracking of the evolution of his thought and method on immortality and other issues touching on it. Special efforts are made in the weighing of each of the arguments to throw it back to its immediate sources in the immediate predecessors of the angelic doctor, and also to observe the difference in the employment of the same principles by Aquinas and his immediate predecessors. In al\, the analysis attempts to balance the over-critical stance of total rejection of the proofs without taking account of the import of the project as a whole, with the oversympathetic reading that gives special privilege to some proofs as real\y demonstrative of inunortality without taking sufficient note of the problems involved. This balance will be struck through a broader appreciation of the project of demonstrating immortality, not only in St. Thomas, but also in other thinkers of his time. Our balancing act is not however intended to cloud the presence of some serious problems in the effort to demonstrate immortality in a philosophical manner. There is first the question of death, which in a way speaks against the close-knit hylemorphic unity between the two principles in the human composite. The question of whether animal souls are inunorta\ is also raised by some of the arguments which Aquinas employs, and even where other arguments preclude the immortality of sensitive souls, it is seen that some of such arguments are built on foundations which are very tendentious. The state of the separated soul is not less problematic, especially its ability to know, separated from the body, which has telling implications on the meaningfulness of its existence in act in that state. Aquinas' use of the principles of Aristotelian philosophy to explain the state of separation of the soul from the body links his theory of immortality to the Cluistian doctrine of the resWTection, but the resurrection also implies the inunortality of the body. In wading through all these issues under the context of immortality, Aquinas draws very close to Platonism, notwithstanding that the whole of his anthropology is expressly directed against the philosophy of Plato. We shall examine how closely Aqninas draws to the teaching of the Greek, and how far he succeeded in freeing himself from it, while defending a doctrine which is best defended with the presuppositions of the main principles of Plato's philosophy. The last chapter of the work starts with an overview of the arguments employed to defend inunortality, asking specifically whether he succeeded in proving inunortality in accordance with what we have identified as his intention. The opinions of some of the classical critics

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of Aquinas, John Duns Scotos, Pietro Pomponazzi, and Cardinal de Vio Cajetan, are examined to see some of the reasons why they thought that the issue of inunortality is not one that philosophy can determine with any measure of certainty. This section naturally leads to the continuation of the history of the theme in philosophy by a brief overview of how subsequent major philosophers - Descartes, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Voltaire, Mill and some contemporary thinkers - see the question of inunortality. The general view of philosophical minds about the theme of immortality leads to a brief reconsideration of the place of immortality in the scheme of philosophy in general as well as a reexamination of whether the failure to arrive at generally acceptable proofs disqualifies the topics of immortality from being a candidate for philosophical reflection. . In general we have tried to adopt a critical, historical, contextual and comprehensive approach in analysing the arguments of Aquinas, in determining its place in the whole of his thought, and in arguing for the place of the question of inunortality in philosophy. Given the importance of the theme in any background understanding of Aquinas' philosophy, the paucity of comprehensive works on the theme of inunortality shows a lacuna in a balanced appreciation of his whole philosophy. It is hoped that the following pages will make some contributions in achieving this balance.

Chapter 1

THOMAS AQIDNAS AND THE QUESTION OF IMMORTALITY IN THE 13TH CENTURY 1.1 Immortality and philosophy in the early 13th century The thirteenth century is by all computations a watershed in the history aod evolution of philosophical thought inthe West. There is no doubt that one of the most enduring aod most influential legacies of that century is the philosophical aod theological syothesis of Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas himself was in turn a product of his time, aod of the convergence of factors that ineluctably gravitated towards the reinvigoration of learning. It is perhaps a mere coincidence, but a very consequential one, that the rediscovery of aocient Greek philosophy was contemporaneous with the restructuring of wllversity learning, aod the dissemination of Arab aod Jewish thinkers together with the spectacular work of translators of all these sources. The confluence of all these, aod other factors, not only assured the presence of a new impetus to learning, but also more importantly ensured that what was available was first assimilated, then internalized aod ahnost inevitably exerted indelible influence in the shaping of both philosophical aod theological learning. One prominent feature of the century, which has been described as the century of philosophical revolution, ' is the interest of maoy thinkers in the queslion of immortality. This interest has been noted by historians of the century. 2 However, the importaoce of the theme of immortality in the philosophy of the epoch should be judged more from the influence it

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The Philosophical Significance of Immortality in Thomas Aquinas

had on the reflections of the thinkers of the thne than from the mnnber of pages consecrated to it. Even then, a perfunctory survey of the history of

texts on immortality reveals a spectacular increase in interest on the subject starting from the tum of the twelflh century and going on well into the first half of the thirteenth century and beyond. Most major authors of the thirteenth century devoted pages to the question. The preponderance of texts on innnortality is in fact one of the distinguishing marks of thirteenth century philosophy. As R.-M. Martin pointed out many years ago, neither in Greek nor Latin patrology, nor in the philosophical literature of the high Middle Ages do we find a wide

choice of texts on immortality.3 Augustine's De immortaZitate animae was to wait more than seven centuries for another treatise on the same theme.' Cassiodorns wrote De anima around 540 A.D., but exhibited no appetite for the discussion of innnortality. For him, it was enough that the book of Genesis mentioned that man is created in the image of God, and this would not be possible if the human soul were to perish at dealb.' Like Cassiodorus, such an eminent thinker as Anselm of Canterbury devoted just one cursory paragraph to show that the soul is innnortal.' Gilbert of Poitiers held that only by the grace of God are angels and human souls innnortal,' while Peter Abelard and Peter Lombard said virtually nothing on the subject. Nor did Hughes of St. Victor, Aicher of Clairvaux, William of SI. Thiery and Isaac of Stella, even though the last two wrote treatises such as De natura corporis et animae, and Epislo/a de anima, which would ordinarily be appropriate for the discussion of the innnortality of the soul. Viewed from this background, the preponderance of discourses on innnortality in the thirteenth century stands out prominently. Within the early decades of the thirteenth century, John Blund and Alexander Nequarn wrote treatises in which they argued for the innnortality of the soul.' After them Philip the Chancellor, John of La Rochelle.' Alexander of Hales,1O Odo Rigaldus," Bonaventure," Albert the Greatl' devoted varying lengths of their work to the issue. William of Auvergne wrote the De immorlalilale animae, and gave more than half of his large De anima to the question. I' The structural organization of the universities, which was one of the factors that indirectly engendered interest in the question of innnortality, was accompanied by a change in the content of university learning in general. Before the thirteenth century, theology dominated university study. Philosophy was not much more than logic, and the Neoplatonism that Augustine gave a Christian interpretation determined the fundamental thought structure of the age. This was made all the more

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preponderant because the medieval Church was the sole custodian of acadentic learning. F. Van Steenberghen notes that the preponderance of Augustinian theology retarded the development of philosophy, and that by offering men a vision of the world which satisfied their natural curiosity, the Church obviated the need for any serious quest about man's origin and his destiny, invaluable stimuli towards philosophical research. IS The neat thought-scheme generated by the dominance of Augustine and thinkers of his ilk was to experience a crack with acquaintance with more sources of philosophical learning, especially Aristotle and Avicenna at the begiuning of the thirteenth century. The inroads of such

influence could not naturally go without a fight from more conservative quarters. The ban on the libri naturales of Aristotle in 1210, and its reaffirmation by Robert of Curcon in 1215 is only an indication of the situation on the ground. It is evident that even before the ban, the relationship between the faculty of arts, which was the first recipient of the new influences, and the faculty of theology was not at its best, and the question of the soul is a flashpoint in the discord. John Blund started his De anima written around 1208 with an argument over whose specialty it was to inquire about the nature of the soul. I' For Blund, theologians should occupy themselves with the question of merit and demerit, and what conduces to salvation and what to perdition. The question of the nature and the essence of the soul, to what predicament it belongs, when it is infused into the body, should be reserved to arts

masters. Blund's treatise was the last such treatise written by a notable arts master till Siger of Brabant, well into the second half of the century. Still the theologians who occupied themselves with the question of the soul and its innnortality were not strangers to the arts faculty and the new

sources. They were, thanks to the organization of wrlversity learning, graduates of the arts faculty, and in spite of the repeated ban on Aristotle, these theologians continued to read the new sources and used them in their writings. They were therefore adequately exposed to the doctrinal turns, which regenerated the question of the innnortality of the

soul. 1.2 Doctrinal Impetus to the Discussions on Immortality Most prominent among the sources that exposed the thinkers of the early thirteenth century to new doctrines, and hence to new ways of thinking, was Aristotle. The Stagirite came in a retinue of ancient commentators including Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistius and

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Simplicius. Major Moslem thinkers like Algazeli, Alkindi, Avicenna and Averroes had also studied his writings. There was a plethora of pseudoAristotelian works, among them the very influential Liber de causis, which was regarded as the height of the theological expression of Aristotle's metaphysics. Plato was present in the rimaeus, the Phaedo and the Meno. But the omnipresence of his doctrine was assured by a host of Neoplatonic thinkers, among them Plotinus, Augustine, Macrobius, Marius Victotinus and Boethius. To all these must be added the works of Jewish thinkers, the most prominent among which were the Fans vitae of Solomon Ibn Gabirol and the Guide of the Perplexed of Mosche ben Maimon. The influence of most of these sources on the reinvigoration of interest in immortality is indirect. It consists mainly in bringing to the fore certain teachings whose consequences were logically inconsistent with the docttine of immortality. One of Plato's books, widely available in the Middle Ages, the rimaeus. contains a mythical account of creation and immortality. In the rimaeus, the creator gave the gods the power to create men and gave them immortal parts, thus ensuring that if men lived well, they would enjoy everlasting life." The Phaedo and the Meno, in which Plato argued most consistently for immortality, were not widely read in the early 13th century. It still remains a matter for conjecture and disagreement why these dialogues that lend themselves so well to the defence of immortality were hardly used. It is possible, as C. Steel said, that it is because Plato's teachings were already widely known among the medievais,18 and the novelty of Aristotle and his commentators drew attention away from the translation of Heuricus Aristipus made around 1150. G. Wieland also alluded to the scientific development of theology at the time for which Aristotle's system, in spite of its naturalism, was more suitable.19 Still such reasons may not say all, or even much, given that such sources as the Liber de causis, which was mainly Neoplatonic in character, were very widely used both in philosophy and theology in the guise of genuine Aristotle. It would perhaps be beneficial to weigh seriously the influence of limited circulation on the use made of these books of Plato. There are nevertheless some brief references to Plato's Phaedo in the works of Albert the Great and William of Auvergne. Albert in one of his passages on immortality cited Plato's statement that philosophy is the practice of death.'· William cited the third argument of the Phaedo in defence of immortality, but the hesitation he exhibited in the passage {puto hone fuisse intentione Platonis}" indicates that he may not have had direct acquaintance with the two works of Plato. Again, while citing

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the Phaedo, he attributed the argument from motion to the dialogue, an argument found in the Phaedrus. By the turn of the century, Aristotle was no longer known merely as the logician. The prohibitions of his libri naturales indicate that more of his doctrines had become known at the University of Paris. Nevertheless, it must be pointed out that acquaintance with his works did not initially engender disturbing reactions with regard to immortality. Most authors of the early thirteenth century took Aristotle as a defender of immortality, and the difficulty of interpretation latent in his doctrine of the intellect was not initially evident to scholars of the century. Albert the Great cited him as One of the authorities who defended immortality, and in the Summa de creaturis, concluded a section of his discourse with the statement that philosophers have two inspirations, Platonists and Aristotelians, and both agree that the soul is immortal. 22 Aquinas himself would later inveigh against the interpretation of Aristotle's teaching on the intellect in a manner that entails' the mortality of the hwnan soul. William of Auvergne used ad nauseam the phrase Aristoteles et sequaces eius in, his De anima, but when arguing for immortality, he made one direct reference to Aristotle's De anima in cotUlection with the theory of the intellect. William warns about the opinion that Aristotle's words meant that only the intellect is separable from the body, and immortal. For him, there is no sense at all in talking of parts of the soul, since the absence of such parts constitutes one of the bedrocks of his defence of incorruptibility." However, as Aristotle's philosophical theories gradually sipped into the philosophical heritage of the time, disquiet gradually emerged about certain aspects of his doctrine. This fact was compounded by the obvious admiration of most thinkers for him, and was by no means clouded by the repeated ban on aspects of his philosophy. Alexander Nequam praised him in well-chosen hyperboles: Doctor Athenarum, dux caput, arMs honas.24 For Alexander, to try to laud Aristotle is like trying to increase the luntinosity of the sun with torchlight." Albert the Great must have appeared very strident in reminding his contemporaries that Aristotle was a hwnan being, and consequently fallible. 26 There is no doubt that the attitude of these thinkers towards Aristotle prepared the ground for their obvious eclecticism. One of the points in which this eclecticism appeared was in their conception of the soul. At the beginning of his De anima, Joim Blund set out to define the soul, but was immediately presented with the problem of its immortality on the supposition of Aristotle's defiuition. Blund raised a possible objection and problem:

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types of souls is owed to the diversity of matter that enters into their composition. On intellection, he stated in the De anima that the agent

But there is the objection that form gives being. and that matter in itself is imperfect. Hence perfection comes from form. Therefore if the soul is the perfection of an organic body with the potency of having life, the soul is fonn. But no form exists separately from substance. Therefore if the soul is form, it cannot be separated from the body. but perishes with

intellect is responsible for the evolution of the material intellect into the habitual by making material forms intelligible. As the agent intellect is the highest material form, it communicates its intelligibility to other lower intelligibles. Actual abstraction is, of course, carried out by the human intellect, but this act is enabled by the agent intellect conferring on intelligible objects the propensity to be amenable to the abstractive powers of the human soul." In the De intelleetu, the noetic function of the agent intellect was slightly altered. It no longer acts on the potential objects of intellection, but rather on the material intellect itself to endow it with abstractive power. In the De anima, Alexander further identified the agent intellect with God or the first cause of Aristotle, and following Aristotle, enumerated its characteristics as separate, impassable, and unmixed, being completely outside the realm of matter. It is also immortal because it is always in act, and therefore independent of all potentiality. The logical implication of Alexander's exegesis of Aristotle is that the material and the habitual intellects are perishable. He nevertheless asserted a kind of inunortality for man, arising from the identity between the thinking subject and the object of thought. If the object of thought is material form, it is inextricably bound up with matter and is perishable. When on the other hand the object is intrinsically intelligible, and hence

the body.17

Thus Aristotle's definition of the soul hung like an albatross around the neck of most of the philosophers of the thirteenth century. Blund's escape route was to align himself with Avicenna's teaching that the soul is in a substance, but has a specific function of vivifying the body with which it is united, and it is because of this function that it can be called the perfection of the body. Blund therefore had to rally round on the substantiality of the soul in order to preserve its inunortality, while at the same time retaining the definition of Aristotle. Most authors of the thue followed the style of Blund in affirming the substantiality of the soul and its nature as form. Philip the Chancellor did not use the definition, but indicated he was aware of it, and did not raise any objection against it. 28 Albert rejected the definition of the soul as form,29 and we shall see that when he did so, it was essentially in the name of immortality. One was to wait till Thomas Aquinas to see the complete acceptance of the definition of the soul as form, coupled with an effort to justify by argumentation why it is not a normal form, but rather a self-subsistent form. All the members of the early Franciscan School accepted Aristotle's definition in the company of other definitions without making any serious effort to dissipate the inconsistency of an independent substance that is at the same time described as form or perfection of the body. However, if Aristotle's bare definition of the soul proved disquieting to the doctrine of immortality, it is really the interpretation of the details of his theory of the intellect that was to be the touchstone of the discussions of the doctrine of immortality before the time of Thomas Aquinas. One such interpreter who cwiously exerted enormous influence was Alexander of Aphrodisias. In late antiquity the commentary of Alexander on Aristotle's teaching on the intellect elicited reactions from thinkers like Themistius and Philoponus. 30 In the medieval times, Moslem peripatetics allied with Alexander to attest that the separate agent intellect was the source of intelligibility, but parted company with him over the corruptibility of the material intellect. 31 Alexander of Aphrodisias distinguished three types of intellect: the material, the habitual and the active. The soul is a mixture of'the elements that are constitutive of material entities. The difference between

imperishable, the intellect, which is its subject, becomes similar to the

imperishable and becomes immortal. 33 For Moraux, what is actually imperishable is in Alexander's not the human soul, but rather the idea of the divine which the human intellect acquires in its contemplation of the divine.J4 This circuitous theory of immortality did not, however, filter down to the Latin West by the beginning of the thirteenth century. By that thue, the complicated exegesis of Alexander had become very much simplified by Moslem thinkers, and the he was known simply as that philosopher who taught that the intellect arises from the body and dies with it. For Christian thinkers, he became known as the philosopher whose doctrine was most opposed to Christian teaching and to all raison d'litre of religion." The teaching of Alexander had exerted enonnous influence on the thinkers of the early thirteenth century. Auvergne and Albert attacked his teaching on the nature of the soul, not so much for the content of his theory as for the adoring following it was apparently commanding. Albert described them as peripateticos graecos, cuius doctrinam multi de peripateticorum schola sequuntur. 36 For William, Alexander's doctrine would not have merited any reply if not for the disciples that it

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was raking in.

37

Nevertheless, it is not certain that both Albert and William, together with their contemporaries, had any direct knowledge of Alexander's writings. Gerald of Cremona (d.lIS?) translated the De intel/eetu within the second half of the twelfth century, but the De anima of Alexander was not available in Latin till William of Moerbeke translated it in the second half of the thirteenth century. One obvious source of the knowledge of Alexander was Averroes' commentary on the De anima of Aristotle." Averroes took issue with Alexander because of the latter's materialist conception of the huroan intellect. In the process of his criticism, Averroes outlined the essentials of this materialism: that the material intellect is only a corporeal faculty with which it perishes at death. It is mainly on this issue that Auvergne and Albert attacked Alexander. The two schoohnen wrote well after Averroes had been translated into Latin, as it is evident from their knowledge of the Moslem philosopher. William of Auvergne's summary pf Alexander's teachiug about the origin of the soul indicates that he was well aware of the essential content of the doctrine." He employed a host of arguroents against him, but when he came to attack his noetics, he revealed a yawning gap in his understanding of the teachiug of the peripatetic. 40 When Auvergne later outlined arguroents for immoriality, he made no reference to the Aphrodisias, though it is clear that such extreme materialism as Alexander's was the object of his criticism in many passages. On the other hand, Albert left no doubt that his arguroents for immortality in the De natura were directed against Alexander. The passage preceding the

arguments was headed De errore alexandri de statu animae post mortem et dissolutionem corporis. Like William, Albert endeavoured to present both Alexander's teachiugs and the impossible consequences that would result from them. However, it is instructive that Albert gave evidence that there was no other major figure whose thought the Christian thinkers of the early thirteenth century were attacking on the question of immortality when he wrote that only Alexander of all philosophers denied that the soul was immorial.41 Yet there were other philosophical ideas whose implication aroused reactions in defence of immortality. In fact Averroes' De anima from where the Latin West learnt the doctrine of Alexander was not available in Latin translation until around 1225, and other thinkers who attempted to confirm immortality did not mention Alexander nor did they give adequate sign that his theory was a threat to the doctrine. Alexander Nequam, John of La Rochelle and Philip the Chancellor are cases in

Thomas Aquinas and the Question of Immortality in the 13th Century

9

point. It means that other influences were at work, and here we would like to mention the universal hylemorphism of Solomon Ibn Gabirol. The teaching of Gabirol became available to the West through the translation of the Fans vitae by John of Spain and Dominic Gundissalinus in the twelfth century. For Gabirol, God excepted, all beings are composed of matter and form. There is in creation a potential. and universal essence made up of universal form and universal prime matter. Each being is the bringing into actualization of this common essence. While this philosophy was a handy tool with which Christian theologians made a distinction between God and creatures, it introduced a disturbing element into the usual conception of the soul as a simple spiritual substance. In universal hylemorphism, spiritual substances are also composed of spiritual matter and form, which explains adequately the facts ofindividuation and change in them. However, the mingling of spiritual matter in the metaphysical composition of the soul detracts from its simplicity, and any attenuating of simplicity seriously endangers the immortality of the rational soul. Matter is after all the principle of corruption in organic beings because it introduces contraries in these beings. To accept matter as an essential composition of the soul was therefore very uncomfortable. Many authors of the time rejected the theory of Gabiro!. Albert the Great equivocated on the issue and then put forward an alternative theory which amounts to its acceptance. From Odo Rigaldus on, the doctrine was repeatedly . accepted by a succession of Franciscan thinkers. In any case, whether they accepted the theory or not each of the thinkers had to tackle the disjunctions it hrought in connection with the tenet of immortality. John Blund, for instance, was very circumspect lest the doctrine got in the way of consistent defence of immortality. He outlined the arguroent of the proponents of the doctrine as follows: Among the things created by the first cause in effect there are two types of causes, one of which is corporeal and the other spiritual. But it is such in the corporeal that their essence is constituted from matter and fonn. But spiritual essences are even' more constituted. Therefore when the more stable have being, they have this by way of stronger being in effect through spiritual m"atter and spititual fonn. When therefore the soul is one of the spiritual creatures, it will have composition from matter and fonn, and so the rational soul is composed of matter and fonn.42

Furthermore, the objector argues, the soul is a substance, and should therefore contain the requisite composition of substantiality: matter and

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The Philosophical Significance o/Immortality in Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas and the Question of Immortality in the 13th Century

II

definition, relationship to the body, and intellectual capacity was the doctrine of immortality which the system supports so well. 45

form, as every species possesses the defining characteristics of the genus to which it belongs. In reply, Blund raised the possibility of infinite regress if indeed the soul were to be composed of matter and form. The two components must either have life essentially or not. If they have life, their life must come from a soul, and this soul must in turn be composed of matter and form, and if they have no soul, they cannot be alive. However, Blund does not reject Gabirol's theory completely. He asserts that the soul derives its simplicity from its nearness to the first cause in the order of being, and thus that the matter-form composition does not apply to it. Yet universal hylemorphism can be allowed in John Blund with the proviso that the incorruptibility of the soul is not hampered.

1.3 The Example of Albert the Great Moody's conclusion about Auvergne's analysis of the human soul is even more applicable to St. Albert the Great. According to V. Schall immortality is in fact the line that runs through all of Albert's philosophy: The central theme in Albert's philosophy is indeed immortality. Inunortality is to Albert what the One is to Plotinus, the Unmoved is to Aristotle, doubt to Descartes, changelessness to Plato and Augustine. Immortality is the thread that constantly links his thinking into an intelligible whole. 46

And even if there were spiritual matter and spiritual form in the soul. it will nevertheless not be corruptible, since it lacks contraries, which are the cause of corruption.43

We have already remarked that Albert was among the rare figures of the thirteenth century who rejected AriStotle's popular definition of the soul. A fair-minded thinker that he is, he reviewed two definitions drawn from the Stagirite. The first definition, which views the soul as the first act of an organic body with the potency oflife, he accepts with measured reservations. To be the act of the body is, for him, intrinsic to the nature of the soul. However, the definition is an attempt to comprehend the soul from the perspective of its substantial activity. The soul can be understood from two perspectives: from its relationship with the body, in which case it is actus corporis physici. The second way is to take the soul in itself, in its essence as soul. From this second point of view, the soul's relation with the body is secondary or accidental to its essence, even though it is also pennissible to define the soul a posteriori from the point of view of this relation. Albert turned to Avicenna in order to appreciate Aristotle's definition. He borrowed the Persian philosopher's simile of the soul as a mover. Whatever is moved has a mover. A mover can be defined from the point of view of his activity of moving or in so far as it has its proper existence as a substance. The soul considered as a mover has something essential to it over and above its function as a mover. It not only functions in the body, but has also its own existence and activity independent of the body. Albert thus makes a complete turn to Plato's idea of the soul occupying the body as a sailor his ship.47 But his line of argument is not capricious. It has an underlying logic, the logic ofimmortality. The soul viewed as a fonn would not have an independent existence, and that is why Albert refused to accept Aristotle's first definition as adequate,48 The second definition that is regarded as acceptable states that the soul is "principium et causa hujusmodi vitae, scilicet corporis organici."

The attitude of Blund shows that his ulterior concern was the preservation of immortality. That same attitude would mark the philosophical works of most of the thinkers of the thirteenth century, including Thomas Aquinas. Some of the factors we have outlined were not directly seen as posing a problem for the doctrine of immortality, and again they did not have an equal impact on all the authors. There is much to be said about the view that with the rigidly structured university education, and then with the interdependence of the thinkers on one another, a stereotype in the explanation of the soul and the defence of its immortality became quickly widespread. Still the philosophy of the major thinkers was deeply marked by the question of immortality. William of Auvergne strongly rejected any doctrine that would either bring the soul into too close a contact with the body or the world of matter. He thus rejected the theory of abstraction in order to be able to argue that the soul is completely independent in knowledge. Again, in order to preserve its simplicity and consequently its immortality, he rejected the idea that the soul has different types of intellect distinguishable one from ,the other." E. Moody rightly expresses the tailoring of Auvergne's doctrine to fit immortality: The doctrine of inunortality fits fairly easily into William's system; the arguments he advances are like a review of the different topics previously dealt with and they reveal the fact that one of the dominant influences guiding William's analysis of the soul, with respect to its

Il

12

The Philosophical Significance of Immortality in Thomas Aquinas

To say that the soul is the source of life leaves undisturbed ils essential independence of the body. Indeed, f9r Albert, it is first and foremost because the soul is a source of life that it can serve as the life-giver. the first act or the perfection of the body. Thus its essential parts are not sununarized by the function of perfecting the body. This enables Albert to hold that the soul is a separate and independent essence, without denying that it has a basic link with the body. In the De anima"Albert pursued the same argument on the grounds that a higher being embodies the perfection of the lower being. Hence it is impossible that an essence that is not separable from the corporeal should be the subject of a separable essence. On the contrary, operations can flow down from a separate spiritual power to a corporeal being, just as the separated prime mover is the cause of movement in the first mobiles. In the same way, the separable rational soul can perform its normal function in the body while remaining essentially an immortal substance. When he came to the structure of the soul, Albert also reasoned with the logic of immortality as an ulterior intention. For him the soul is a simple substance, and though it is also vegetative, sensitive and rational, all these powers exist in the soul only potentially as a triangle exists potentially in a rectangle. Just as the potential existence of triangles in a rectangle does not compromise the nature of the latter, so the presence in the soul of the sensitive, vegetative powers in the rational soul does not compromise the substantial unity of the soul. In relation to the unity of the soul, Albert distinguished three types of wholeness. The first is tatum universale, exemplified in the universal which applies to many individual, concrete things. The second is tatum integrale, the wholeness of a thing composed of integral parts. None of these two explains the unity of the soul which is rather understood as tatum potentiale, midway between tatum universale and integrale. The soul is completely present in each of its faculties, as it is appropriate for a tatum universale, yet each of these faculties can, in a certain manner, b~ named a soul. The soul carmot also be dismembered; as it is possible Wlth a tatum integra/e, but it is at the same time true that its perfection is not realized completely in any of its faculties. Albert used the analogy of political power to explain the unity between the vegetative, sensitive and rational soul. In a political entity, the highest authority embraces the power of subordinate officials as it is the ultimate unity of power that makes a political entity what it is: Much in the same way, he tried to unite the diverse powers that the soul possesses in one indivisible substantial entity. Isolated, the powers of the soul are no more than accidents, with the impllcation that what

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13

affecls the accident leaves the substance intact. By so doing, Albert prepared the ground for the rational defence of the immortality of the soul at the disintegration of the body. If the soul is an indep·endent substance and substance, in the best tradition of Aristotle, is composed of form and matter, what of the composition of the soul? Some thinkers of Albert's time accepted the universal hylemorphism of Ibn Gabirol as a convenient way of explaining substantial composition in the soul conceived as substance. Alberi rejected the doctrine without reservation. In the Summa de creaturis, he argued that beings that are subject to generation and corruption are composed of matter arid fann. Man, for instance, is composed of body and soul. The soul is the form of the body, but in the state of composition, the soul plays an additional role. It delineates the common nature of the composed substance: the nature of man. It is as though another form emerges over and above the form that is called the form of the body in hylemorphic composition. This is the form of the human being. Albert named this form the forma totius. He agreed with Boethius that spiritual beings must be composed in some manner to distinguish them from the Creator, who alone is absolutely simple. But the composition present in spiritual beings carmot be that of matter and fann, rather it is the composition arising from potency on account of the privation in their being. He explained this special composition as that between the suppositum andforma totius. Theforma totius of the solil is rationality. The soul is thus a substance in the Aristotelian sense because it is a subject (suppositum) determined by rationality (forma tolius). This special composition is not hylemorphic because there is no presence of matter of any kind. On the contrary, the subject that is determined by rationality is a simple subject. Albert understood this composition in terms of the quod est and quo est distinction. Quo est is equivalent to the determining characteristic of the subject. In man, it is rationality. In spiritual beings this determining quality or principium intelligendi is equivalent to form in material composition. It means that because of the absence of matter in spiritual things, their forma totius is not distinguishable from their substantial form, contrary to what is found in corporeal beings. Needless to say, Albert's new type of composition does not lay to rest the problem raised by universal bylemorphism, and by the mere avoidance of the description, spiritual matter, does not seem to do away with Ibn Gabirol's theory completely. It has been pointed OU~50 for instance, that whatever name that is given to the suppositum of Albert, it plays exactly the same role as Ibn Gabirol's spiritual matter. Still, it is remarkable that Albert was led by the concern for immortality to

14

The Philosophical Significance of Immortality in Thomas Aquinas

propound what to him is a new theory about the metaphysical composition of spiritual beings. To introduce the nebulous concept of spiritual matter would somehow introduce contraries into the soul, and contraries are the cause of corruption. Like all the authors of his time, Albert believed that agere sequitur esse, and therefore if the soul is immortal, this must clearly be shown in its operation, especially in its principal act of knowledge. In Albert's system, knowledge results from the coordinated working of the possible and the agent intellects. Heavily influenced by Islamic thinkers, he taught the process of the transmutation of the possible intellect from pure passivity (hylealis), to the stage where it gains the power of knowing principles (habitus prineipiorum), and thus becomes intelleetus in habitu. Actualization of this power makes the intellect intel/eetus in effeetu, and when the acquired knowledge is applied in operations, it reaches the highest possible level of its capacity to become intelleetus speculativus. For Albert, the agent intellect is part of the SOul,51 and in fact the agent together with the possible intellect constitute, strictly speaking, the whole intellectual soul. In spite of his theory of the intellects however, Albert could not extricate himself from almost extreme Platonism. Man as man, he says, is the intellect (homo secundum quod homo solus intelleetus sit). The mixture of this intellect with corporeal powers shrouds its contemplation of the truth. Still Albert's theory of abstraction is almost the one that will become classical in Thomism. Abstraction is necessary in intellectual knowledge because all that is understood must be simple and devoid of matter. Albert distinguished two types of matter: matter that is subject to motion and matter that is not. The former is the matter of each thing which in hylemorphic composition is perfected by the form of that thing. The latter is the matter described as materia substans universali. The intellect abstracts from matter that is subject to motion. It is matter in the sense of forma totius, that is the rationality of a thing, and is not therefore subject to abstraction. Man, for example, can be abstracted from the idea of this particular body, but not from the idea of the body in general" because the body enters into the very idea of man. All natural knowledge begins from the senses. This beginning can either be mediate

or immediate. When we perceive sensible fann, we have an immediate knowledge of the subject of that form. On the contrary, we can know the subject of motion through the perception of motion, but only mediately. It is in the mediate manner that the human intellect comes to know God who is infinitely distant from the sensible. That is why such knowledge i~ imperfect. Knowledge from abstraction goes from experience received from the senses to memory, and from there to the nniversal. The

Thomas Aquinas and the Question of Immortality in the 13th Century

15

possible intellect that has reached the level of the universal becomes intellectus adeptus, which, being the repository of pure knowledge, is immortal and perpetual. The possible intellect which is mixed up with the sensible, inasmuch as it makes use of reminiscence, is corruptible. But considered as a part of an indivisible soul, it is incorruptible. However, it is the state of intellectus adeptus, with its possession of perfect knowledge and contemplation, that is the root of inunortality. It is in that state that the soul is able to obtain felicity post mortem. 53 For Albert, the agent intellect, as the efficient cause of knowledge, makes what is potentially intelligible to be actually so. In its process of perfection, the possible intellect continually receives the light of the agent. Abstraction involves the continuous illumination of the' possible intellect by the agent. This illumination, which takes place within the soul, is made possible because the agent intellect is pure intelligibility, having in itself the ideal form of all things. Indeed the real nature of the agent intellect is no more than the totality of all these forms. In a way, therefore, the illumination of the possible by the agent intellect is not much more than the reception of the agent by the possible. Only when the reception is total, that is to say, when the possible becomes the agent S4 intellect can the latter become adeptus and at the same time become the ground of inunortality. Why then did Albert say that all natural knowledge begins from the senses if indeed the agent intellect possesses a priori the ideal forms of all things? The answer is that for Albert these fonus do not exist in a distinctive manner in the agent intellect, and the phantasms are therefore necessary for their detennination; otherwise, these forms will be received as undifferentiated by the possible intellect. The mainly Aristotelian noetics that is outlined above is very much tempered when Albert later emphasized divine intervention in the knowledge of supernatural objects," and also the insufficiency of the light of the agent intellect in abstraction." But from the brief outline of some of the theories we can see that Albert's philosophy, especially his philosophical psychology, can be described as a seam of different doctrines, which on completion naturally grows into the immortality of the soul. His explanation of the metaphysical structure of the soul, his theory about the perfection of the intellect, and also his statement that man as man is in fact only the intellect are all geared towards the defence of the doctrine of immortality. 1.4 Some Trends in the Defence of Immortality before St. Thomas

Albert's quest for doctrinal consistency in his philosophy is mirrored by all the prethomistic writers of the thirteenth century in their defence

16

The Philosophical Significance of Immortality in Thomas Aquinas

of immortality. That they sought doctrinal consistency indicates. that they all intended to pursue their discourse and their ar~ent on rat~onal grounds. That is why their philosophy was in gm:eral ~allored ~o swt the philosophical defence of the doctrine. While therr attitude powts to the growing recognition of the philosophical method, or what one would generally regard as arguments of reason, it also shows that they were aware of the fact that the challenges to immortality did not arise from other sources than from philosophical doctrines and their ~nfluen~es. They attempted to challenge the perceived dangers on philosophical grounds. It is therefore not surprising that hardly any ~uthor of the ear~y thirteenth century drew direct conclusions from scnptural sources m support of immortality. Odo Rigaldus :","S amon~. the rare fi~es who referred to the Scripture while enumerating authontles that are m support of the doctrine. 57 Albert the Great, the only writer who followed Rigaldus in giving simple and unargumentative. enumer~tion of authorities (autorititates philasophorum) in support of unmo~ahty, e~en avoided notable Christian writers on the subject. The ten phil~so~hical authorities he named did not include Augustine. But Albert mdicated that his avoidance of Christian writers was far from oversight when he stated that the saints said everywhere (saneti ubique dicunt) that the soul is immortal." Consequently, he did not feel the need to enumerate them as well. Aristotle is named five times; Algazelli, Avicenna, Averroes and Plato are mentioned two times each. Authors mentioned once include Constabulus, Pythagoras, Ptolemaeus, and Macrobius. William of Auvergne on his part priced what he ca!Jed the theo~ogical. ar~ents as having stronger convincing power. Yet neIther m his De immortalitate nor in his De anima did he give them any pride of place. The authorities cited both by Rigaldus and Albert would be taken as a clear indication of the sources of the thinkers. In this regard, it is remarkable that St. Augustine's arguments for innnortality in th~ De immor/alitate and the Soli/oquia were not repeated, and there IS no evidence to suggest that the reasons for the absence. of these ,,:orks were difficulties inherent in the arguments used by the BIshop of HIppo. The same could be said of the arguments of Plato in the Phaedo, and the Meno, although it must be added that in spite of what w~ ~ave called ~e possible accidents of circulation, the doctrine of renumscence, .which Plato's discourses on innnortality presupposes, would be reprehensIble to the Christian writers. There are sigus that some of the proofs of the Enneads of Plotinus60 were used; for instance, the arguments drawn from the simplicity of the soul, and the conception ?f the ~oul a~ the .source of life. But it is most surprising that despite AVlcenna s obvIOUS Influence,

Thomas Aquinas and the Question of Immortality In the J3th Century

17

his highly metaphysical proof of innnortality was used only by Albert, who virtually copied the argument and designated it as a necessary argument in defence of innnortality. It is possible that the sophistication and obscurity of the argument precluded an easy addition of it in the plethora of arguments outlined. One example of Avicetma's proofs61 states that whatever is destroyed possesses the potentiality of corruption, and before this corruption is effectuated, the actuality of persistence. Corruption and persistence cannot be simultaneously in one and the same thing because the two concepts are contradictory. However, in beings that are composed, the actuality of persistence can exist with the potentiality of destruction, but in silnple separate entities, this is impossible. Strictly speaking, the actuality of persistence and the potentiality of destruction cannot coexist in a being which has a urdtary essence, because anything which persists with the potentiality of corruption has persistence in potency only, since its persistence is not

necessary. When the actuality of persistence and the potentiality of destruction exist in one entity, they do not thereby become the same reality, since the actuality of persistence is the same thing that occurs to a being with the potentiality of existence. The usual consequence is that a

being that has the two qualities must also have at least two components, from one of which it derives actual existence. It can thus be said that if the soul is not composed it will not admit of corruption, since it will not possess the actuality of persistence together with the potentiality of destruction. In beings that are composed, the potentiality of corruption is due to their material component and not to their substance as such. Therefore the assertion that all that is generated is subject to corruption due to its finltude is applicable only to beings composed of matter and fonn. Of course, the kernel of Avicennats argument is found here and there

in many writers, especially in the fonn of the assertion that the soul has no material component, and that destruction is due to contraries in matter.

Again, Avicenna's famous example of disembodied man was

dear to such thinkers as William of Auvergne. But no one went into any detailed explanations of Avicenna, leaving the bland assertion of incorruptibility on account of matter with the uncertainty of its origin.

Avicenna's argument presupposes the simplicity of the soul which he argued for before arguing for its immortality. With the exception of Blund and Albert, authors of the early thirteenth century did not provide any prior proofs of the soul's simplicity. They argned straight for its innnortality with some of the arguments which other writers, including Avicenna, employed in favour of simplicity only, in most cases with the

18

The Philosophical Significance of Immortality in Thomas Aquinas

presupposition that the simple must be incorruptible, lacking the principle of destruction - matter. Most of the arguments were taken from thinkers of previous times. There were arguments from the conception of the soul as an incorporeal and spiritual substance;62 from the idea of an ontological order of being which is linked together like a chain, and whose most important link is

assured by the hwnan soul;63 from the soul as imago dei/4 as an unceasing source of life (fans vitae), and of motion." They also argued for immortality from the operation of the soul in knowledge. The soul is a receptacle of knowledge that is universal and imperishable;" it shows its natural distaoce form the perishable through abstraction;" it has an uniimited desire to acquire knowledge;" it is self:knowing, knowing itself as simple and uncomposed;" it can becolI!.e all things in knowledge. Again the soul has by nature the desire for the most comprehensive knowledge and infInite happiness,70 and nothing in nature is futile. Many of the arguments were repeated, and their underlying ideas used to fashion new arguments. What the early thirteenth century owed their sources was not so much ordered arguments as principles, the consequences of which were drawn in an attempt to prove immortality. Generally such principles were not demonstrated because they were either assumed to be acceptable to all or to be supported by authorities which needed no further justification. Such for instance is the saying that whatever is received is received in accordance with the nature or condition of the receiver; or that the intellect is self-knowing (Aristotle), and again that one needs a ship to reach a port but does not need one to stay there (Augustine). The immediate prethomistic authors exhibited individual originality in their dexterity in applying such principles. Such for example is the use made by Philip the Chancellor of the well known golden chain of being to fashion many arguments for immortality. Many of the discourses were lifted from previous authors. La Rochelle's arguments are almost all to be found in the Summa de bono of Philip and the Quesliones of Alexander of Hales. Alexander Nequarn aimost copied word for word the argument of Robert of Melun. It is not to be forgotten that through the renewal of learning and also the restructuring of the seats of learning, there came to develop more communication between intellectuals, and more exchange of written sources. And again, the question of plagiarism had another meaning and implication for men of the time. Still it is within such circumstances that some sparks of originality emerged and left in their wake a host of new arguments for

Thomas Aquinas and the Question of Immortality in the J3th Century

19

inunortality, even though most of them cannot withstand serious criticism. 'Joim Blund is adept at drawing out the logical implication~' of supposedly accepted principles. He contrived an argument with the meaning of death and the idea of corruption (Mars sit corruptio, et corruptio sil mulatio). For him the fact of change requires that a substratum remain when the process is completed. It means that change does not imply reduction to nothingness. Thus if there is no subject on which change would inhere, then there cannot be any change. If deatlf; understood as a type of change in the soul, then there will be an impasse as to what remains after the soul has died, or changed. 71 Presupposed, 'of course, in Blood's reasoning is the idea that the soul is an indepen4,~nt substance, and a simple substance, a conception he had earlier attempie.d to argue for in his De anima. Alexander of Hales, whose discourse on immortality is. not extraordinary, spectacularly rejected the argument very dear to William of Auvergne that the soul is the source of life (fons vilae), and therefore immortal. 72 For him, if indeed the argmnent were correct, then there is no reason why the same principle should not apply to vegetative and sensitive souls. In Alexander we find one rare instance of rejecting an argument already used for immortality. His position would in effect imply a rejection of all considerations of the soul as a substance the nature of which is life, as found in st. Augustine, in St. Albert, and also to a large extent in St. Thomas Aquinas. However, Alexander also used a peculiar proof. He combined the presence of the instinct of selfpreservation with what he takes to be the demand of the virtue. of fortitude to prove that there must be immortality. The instinct of selfpreservation entails that no mortal creature desires its own death, and the virtue of fortitude enables individuals to accept death willingly. If then the will to die is an endowment of fortitude, it follows that by virtue of self-preservation such death cannot be the end of the soul as well, otherwise the lie is given to the natural instinct 73 Alexanderts reasoning here is reminiscent of Plato's statement that philosophy is preparation for death, and is also evocative of Socrates' acceptance of death on account of an unjust judgement. Still this reasoning does not hold much water, as Alexander's understanding of fortitude is not defensible. Fortitude enables the individual in extreme circumstances to accept death instead of compromising fundamental religious or human principles. Whether this can be in any guise described as desire for death is to say the least very questionable. La Rochelle devised another peculiar argument from the comparison of prime matter with the rational sou1. 74 According to him, prime matter,

20

Thomas Aquinas and the Question of Immortality in the 13th Century

The Philosophical Significance a/Immortality in Thomas Aquinas

21

arguments. Auvergne, of course, following Gundissalinus, mentioned that he was following Aristotle's arguments because of the weakness of Plato, but he did not prove to have understood the teachings of any of these Greeks. La Rochelle was the first to distinguish the arguments into

which is the ultimate matter, is incorruptible, and so must its opposite in the realm of forms, or perfection - the rational soul. Prlme matter being susceptible to every corporeal form, and the soul being receptive to all intelligible and spiritual forms attests to this correlation. The kernel of John of La Rochelle's argument is found in Philip the Chancellor" where it is used to establish a parallelism between prlme matter and rational sou~ and to show why prlme matter should be a correlate of the rational soul. However the two arguments do not seem to go far enough in sorting out the right correlates. If prime matter is in fact understood as pure potentiality, which is in any event conceptual, there is no reason why its correlate in the realm of forms should not be pure actuality, lacking all potentialities, which is not the case with the rational soul. The two writers were of course referring to the order of nature alone. But here again, why not extend the correlation to the universal chain of being which at least Philip the Chancellor used to good effect in his discourse? Our emphasis, however, is the ingenuity of the eclectic early thirteenth century writers who attempted to use all the resources at their disposal to argue for inunortality. Albert, for example underlined the phenomenon of human culture and religion as indicative of immortality.76 For him, there is an essential affinity between the subject and its object of quest to make natural attraction possible. Honourable things are naturally attractive to man, and so is religion which is the worship and care for the divine. Such tendencies, according to Albert, are not found in beings, unless the object perfects them, and unless they have a certain affinity with the object of their desire. Again the love and quest for the honourable and the religious is not owed to the body, which is naturally directed towards the material and cannot rise above it. If

what he called rah'ones commune and rationes proprie, but was silent on the criteria for his grouping and on the relative weight he assigned to each of the groups. Only Albert the Great made clear distinctions on the convincing power of his arguments. In the Summa de creaturis, he named autoritate philosophorum, and later divided his arguments into signs (signa) of immortality, probable, and necessary arguments. In the De natura, his discourse is merely entitled "Necessary arguments in defence of immortality." It is instructive that many of the proofs designated as signum and as probable arguments are used by other writers of his rlme without any specific designation. Thomas Aquinas was not to follow Albert's innovation in this matter, but we are to see that some of the trends we have seen in the defence of immortality in the early thirteenth century are abundantly replicated in his own philosophy. 1.5 The Issue of Latin Averroism The above trends do not indicate· that the prethomistic thirteenth century masters had any interest in explaining what type of inunortality they were talking about. There is hardly any single author of the time who as much as tried to define the term inunortality, nor tried to show even obliquely how the term is to be understood in relation to the human soul. The need was to show that the soul must be inunortal, and the understanding and reception of new theories were tailored by this need. It was therefore enough that there was any sign, any believable inflection of doctrine which would add to the conflrmation of this doctrine already taken to be certain on grounds of Christian religious convictions. The question of which type of inunortality that answers the need of philosophical proofs would be more clearly raised in the second half of the century, and it would be a question which not only affected profoundly the academic community, but also Aquinas' treatment of the question of the soul, and specifically its immortality. The problem arose in the context of the upsurge of the movement which has come to be known as Averroism. 77 The background to the problem of Averroism in the thirteenth century is the continued assimilation of the new sources of learning. In spite of the fact that the ban of 1210 was not lifted a host of thinkers both in the faculties of arts and theology continued the utilization of the available works of Aristotle including the libri naturales. A prominent thinker

indeed such tendencies were corporeal, other animals would also possess them. It follows that whatever pines for the honourable and the material does not depend on the body. Consequently the rational soul does not depend on the body and does not perish. The obvious weakness of some of these proofs points to the state of the philosophical development of the age, and the failure of the thinkers to resolve conflicting theories into a coherent system. Their discourses especially their arguments, are not however to be taken in isolatio~ because the authors did not seem to have taken them as such. Their method was rather to call to witness any conceivable principle, theory Or saying deemed to be generally acceptable, and to draw from such the conclusions that could be shown to speak for immortality. This is why most of the authors did not weigh the strength or weakness of the

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The Philosophical Significance of Immortality in Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas and the Question of Immortality in the 13th Century

like Albert the Great was to declare his intention of making all the works of Aristotle intelligible to the Latins. There was no donbt thet the ban on Aristotle was a rule kept in the breach, and even with the confirmation of the ban, together with the statutes of the University of Paris in 1263 by Pope Urban IV," none was left in doubt that the ban had become an anachronism. In 1252, the English nation at Paris included in its programme required reading of Aristotle's De anima,79 which Roger Bacon had been reading years before then. When therefore the remodelled programme of arts imposed all the known works of Aristotle as obligatory reading in 1255, it was not doing more than confirming the facts that were already on the groWld. 80 It was obvious thet the more conscious and reactionary tendency in the university was losing out to

the more innovative, ebullient and audacious tendency. The presence of Aristotle was, however, not so important as the honour with which he was handled. He remained the philosopher to all, including Aquinas. His works had not yet been completely Wlderstood, and the obvious laCWla, which existed, was filled in by a host of pseudoAristotelian Neoplatonic sources and the commentaries of Avicenna and Averroes particularly. The legalization of Aristotle's work and the preeminence given to his De anima ori wlita propter mehus arumae, SI ~eJus tntelhgeret corpori Wlita quam separata; sed hoc esset solum propter mehus corporis: quod est irrationabile, cum materia sit propter formam, et non e converso." 39 A. C. Pegis, "The Separated Soul and its Nature in St. Thomas," in St. Tho,!,as AqUinas (1274·1974): Commemorative Studies (Toronto: Pontifical J:,'stltute of~ediaeval Studies, 1974), vol. 1, p. 137. .F.or Pegls, the change of doctrine about the separated soul has a very deCIsive consequence. He draws this consequence from his conviction that the change is defmite: "The introduction of the intellectual nature of the Soul as the essential factor in dealing with the way in which the soul knows is a de~isive chan~e in St. Thomas' .attitude towards he separated souL" p. 137. This lea,ds PegI~ to s~ggest dates tn the works of Aquinas taking accoWlt of this change m dO"?,,,e WIth ';he belief that it is not likely that Aquinas goes back to the. old doctrine after hIS change of attitude. He thus argues against all the datmgs that ,:"ould make ",:,y of the work in which Aquinas holds the pre;}'istotehan vIew to be later m writing. Cf. esp., pp. 150 _ 158. S. C. G., 81, 12. 42 .Ib~d., .81. 12: 'V~?e et, quando totaliter erit a corpore separata, perfecte ~slmIl~bltur substant~ls separatis quantum ad modum intelligendi, et abunde tnfiuentlam eorum reclpiet." 43 S. T., la, 89, 1. obj. 2, 3, 44 Ibid. 89, 1, resp.: "Unde modus intelligendi per conversionem ad phantasmata est animae naturalis, sicut et corpori uniri: sed esse separatum a corpore. est praeter rationem suae naturae, et similiter intelligere sine converSlOne ad phantasmata est ei praeter naturam. Et idoe ad hoc unitur corpori, ut sit et operetur secWldum naturam suam." " Ibid, 89, 1. resp.: ''Et ideo ad hanc difficultatem tollendam considerandum est. quo.d, cum .nihil ,operetur nisi inquantum est aetu, ~odus operandi lUl1USCuJusque rei sequitur modum essendi ipsius. Habet autem anima alium modum essendi ~um unitur corpori, et cum fuerit a corpore separata, manente tamen .eadem ammae natura; non ita quod uniri corpori sit ei accidentale, sed per rationem suae naturae corpori unitur; . . . Animae igitur secWldum illum modum ~ssendi quo corpori est unita, competit modus intelligendi per conversatlOnem ~d phantasmata corpororum, quae in corporeis organis sunt: cum aute.m fuent a corpore separata, competit ei modus intelligendi per conversatlonem ad ea quae sunt intelligibilia simpliciter sicut et aliis substantiis separatis." , 46 Lo 't "M ., C. Cl .: anllestum est autem inter substantias intellectuaies secundum naturae ordinem, infirmas esse animas humanas. Hoc autem perfec~io Wliversi

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exigebat, ut diversi gradus in rebus essent. Si i~tur an~e hum~.e sic ess~t institutae a Deo ut intelligerent per modum qUI competit SubStantIlS separatls, non haberet cognitionem perfectam, sed confusam in conununi. Ad hoc er~o quod perfectam et propriam cognitionem de rebus h~bere p.os~ent, SIC naturaliter sunt intitutae ut corporibus uniantur, et SIC ab IPSIS rebus sensibitibus propriam de eis cognitionem accipiant; sicut homines rudes ad scientiam induci non possunt nisi per sensibilia exempla. Sic ergo p~tet quod propter melius animae est ut corpori uniatur, et intelligat per convers.ation~ a~ phantasmata; et tamen esse potest separata, et alium modum mtelhgendl habere." 47 Cf. Ibid., 89, 2 - 4. 48 Ibid., 89, 2, ad. 3: " ... in cognitione substantiarwn. sep~atum. non quanuncumque, consistit ultima hominis felicitas, sed sohus Del, qUi non . . . " potest videri nisi per gratiam." 49 This is the position that A. C. Pegis defends m hiS article The S.epara~ed Soul and its Nature.... " Pegis believes that in this question we are W1tnessmg with a major change in position about an important. is~ue (151),. and that consequently St. Thomas having arrived at the naturalIst Interpretation of the separated so~l, he could not have gone back in works like ~~ Qu'!'!libet, said to be written after part one of the Summa theologiae. Pegts position IS very much supported by the improbability of Aquinas returning to the old doctrine, but it may wen be that Aquinas does not see the change as senously as Pegls sees it and the presence of the two modes of explaining the soul in separation which 'we have alluded to may have nudged him. even as a slip to put again the position of the Contra gentiles in the Quodlibet. so S. C. G. IV, 79, 4. 51 S.T. 3a, 56, 1. " S. C. G. IV, 79, 10 : "Ostendum est enim in Secundo (c.79) animas hominum immortales esse. Remanent igitur post corpora. a corporibus absolutae. Manifestum est etiam ex his quae in Secunda (cc. 83, 68) dicta s~t, quod anima COlpori naturaliter uniter: est ~im secundum suam essentl.~ corporis forma. Est igitur contra naturam antmae absque corpore esse. Nih~l autem quod est contra naturam, potest esse perpetuum, Non igitur perp~~o ent anima absque corpore. Cum igitur perpetuo maneat, oportet eam carpon I~erato caniungi: quod est resurgere. Immortalitas igitur animarum exigere vldetur resurrectionem corporum futuram." " I ad Corinthios, 15 L 2. . 54 S.C.G., IV, 79, 11 "Ostensum est supra, ... naturale hominis desiderium ad fe1icitatem tendere. Felicitas autem ultima est felicis perfectio. Cuicumque igitur deest aliquid ad perfectionem, nond~ habet felicitate~ pe~ectam quia nondum eius desiderium totaliter qUletatur: omne emm Imperfectum perfectionem consequi naturaliter cupit. Anima autem a corpor~ separata. est aliquo modo imperfecta, sicut omnis pars extra suum totum eXlstens: anona enim naturaliter est pars humanae naturae. Non igitur potest homo ultimam

173

felicitatem consequi nisi anima iterato carpori conhmgatur: praesrtim cum ostensum sit ... quod in hac vita homo non potest ad felicitatem ultimam pervenire." p. 8 "S6 A. C. Pegis, "Between Immortality and Death" ' M. Brown, The Romance 0/Reason, pp. 79 ~ 80 57 S. T., 1a 2ae 85, 6 resp.: "corpus humanum est materia electa a natura quan~. ad hoc quod est ..temperatae complexionis .... Sed quod sit co~ptIbtle, hoc est ex conditione materiae. Nee est e1ectum a natura; quin PsotlUS natura eligeret materiam incorruptibiIem, si posset." H A. C. Pegis, "Between Immortality and Death" ' p. 13 . R. Reyna, "On the Soul: A Philosophical Exploration of the Active Intellect in Averroes, Aristotle, and Aquinas," The Thomist 36 (1972), p. 145. 60 H. ~ G., Gadamer, "Die UnsterbIickkeitsbeweise in Platos Phaidon," in ~esammelte Werke (TObingin: J. C. B. Mohr), v. 6, 1985, p. 187. D. A. Rees, "Platonism and the Platonic Tradition," in Encyclopaedia of ;hilosophy, P. Edwards, ed. (London 1967), vol 6, p. 334. 2 Phaedo,67e OJ S. T., la, 12, 11.

~ Ibid., la, 75, a 2 ad 2: "Potest igitur dici quod anima intelligit, sicut oculus Vldet; sed magis proprie dicitur quod homo intelligit per animam " "Ibid,la,81,2ad2.. . 66 That is, the view that is presented in the S. C. GIl, 81, Commentary on the Sentences, ill, d, 5, q. 3, a 2; De veritate' 19 • and Quodlibet III , q • 9 , a• I • 67 S. T., la, 75, 3, ad. 1: "Unde manus potest dici ,,hoc aliquid" primo modo sed non .s~cundo I?o~o. Sic igitur, cum anima humana sit pars speciei humanae, p.otest. dlCl hoc abqwd promo modo, quasi subsistens; sed non secundo modo, c emm co~positum ex anima et corpore elicitur "hoc aliquie." See for mstance F. C. Copleston, Aquinas, p. 160; F. D. Wilhelmsen, "A note on Contranes ad the Incorruptibility of the Human Soul in St. Thomas" p

:i

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n~

69 As we have already mentioned above, we are using Platonism in the very broad sense an~ w,e are not gOin,g into the details it s influences on Aquinas. M.uch of PlatoDlc mfluence on him came through Augustine, who was till the thlrt,eenth century and much beyond the most influential theologian of Chnstendom. Concerning his influence on Aquinas M.-D. Chenu wirtes' "1'evolution du climat realiste de la doctrine augustinienne doit nous mettre e~ garde contre la maladressed de qui, commentant saint Thomas n'observerait pas , ~e tre~ pres,. dans la Somme, cette acceptation integral; de 1'homme chretien d ,A~gustm, sous pretexte d' etre fid61e la plus aristotelicienne analyse theonque de la na~ humaine." Introduction ['etude de saint Thomas d·Aquin (paris: J. Vrin, 1950), p. 272.

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Chapter 5 AQIDNAS, IMMORTALITY AND THE SCOPE OF PIDLOSOPHY

5.1 Reappraisal of the Arguments for Immortality

Most of the issues discussed in Chapter 4 are problems that can bedevil the project of demonstrating immortality from a philosophical standpoint alone. It is difficult, if not impossible, to understand the inevitable presence of death if the soul is immortal and has by nature the closest union with the body. Animal souls may not be mortal if one follows strictly the implications of some of the arguments without necessarily giving concession to the hwnan soul at the sight of every difficulty. The state of the separated soul creates a huge problem from the background of Aquinas' acceptance of Aristotelian philosophy. Our attention here will concentrate more on the imports of the arguments themselves, some criticisms of the project of proving immortality, subsequent development on the question, and the general implication of the whole question for philosophy, its nature, scope and limit. Before then however, it is necessary to note that in arguing for immortality, and resolving some problems that are concomitant with it, Aquinas arrives at some conclusions which, if not revolutionary, would at least be startling to the ntinds ofhis time. It has been said already that in arguing for immortality, he inserts himself in the tradition that became particularly strong in the thirteenth century. He takes all his arguments from his predecessors, and does not show any inventiveness

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so long as the demonstrations themselves are concerned. What marks him out is an Aristotelianism which, though not completely pure, goes far beyond what most thinkers of his time could subscribe to. Still, he retains a mainly Platonic conception of the soul in viewing it as selfsubsistent and immortal, while attempting to explain its natural operations purely in terms of the philosophy of Aristotle. That is why Owens describes him as attempting to have the best of two worlds, and why his attempt can also be described as a mediation betwee.n Platonism and Aristotelianism. How far he succeeds in tltis attempt IS very debatable. He follows to its ultimate conclusion the naturalistic philosophy of Aristotle in explaining the relationship of the soul and the body, where the two are so united as to have one existence,' and where the soul is so conditioned by tltis union that it must derive all its 2 knowledge, its perfection, through the senses. It is remarkable however that the issues about which Aquinas adopts unmitigated Aristotelianism are those that do not have a direct bearing on the question of immortality. When he argues for subsistence, however, supported by the conviction that the rational soul is the source oflife of the composite, he appears to make a clean slide from Aristotle to Plato. The move to Platonism is preparations in view of the subsequent affirmation of the survival and immortality of the soul independent of the body. The soul that survives is in one respect very much like that Platonic soul which has escaped from its prison. But in another respect, Aquinas makes a big concession to the naturalism of his Aristotelian inspiration by affrrming that the soul derives its natural fulfilment from the body. Even though one can quite rightly say that the mediation he seeks between Plato and Aristotle does not succeed in completely reconciling the two, he is well ahead of the thinking of his time by insisting unequivocally that the soul that is independent of the body is somewhat like a square peg in a round hole. It means in fact that the soul that has left its body, even with the Christian belief in after-death bliss in paradise, is not yet at its resting state, and the natural yearning for the body still remains with it. Of course, there is the question of God providing the vision of his presence to the blessed ones, but even that does not assuage the yearning for union since tltis is part of the soul's mode of being. While his position is completely different from the general tltinking in his time, it also logically does away with such arguments for immortality as those based on the immediate reward after death for good work which was not or could not be rewarded here on earth: an argument which Aquinas himself also employs in his demonstration of immortality. The point such an argument makes can of

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course be extended even to the point of resurrection, which Aquinas connects ingenuously with immortality, but doing so would be putting too much thought in the minds of several thinkers who use the argument. It must be said however that the discomfort about the status of the soul as separated substance in a system, the major inspiration of which is Aristotle, is not completely laid to rest. We have mentioned that thomistic scholars very often apply the parenthetical term incomplete substance to describe its state of being outside the body. 3 This description would have no problem in so far as the soul is thought of with reference to the composite, man, and a part is always incomplete with r~ference to the whole wherein it is a part. It is nevertheless important to ask in what sense the separated soul is a part, and in what sense it is incomplete. In the Summo thea/agioe, Aquinas uses the human hand that is separate from the body as an example of the way in which the soul is a part. But apparently, subsequent descriptions of the soul make the example of the hand appear somewhat unsuitable. The hand that is sliced off from the body is a substance only in the sense that for some time, it can be separate; an entity apart from the body, and not inhering in anytlting else. Such existence is no doubt very much akin to the existence of the human body that has lost its form, its soul, which is often used to show that it is the soul which, as form, is responsible for the existence of the body. The body begins to disintegrate in such "formless" existence, and is, strictly speaking no longer the human body. It is the same with the hand that is no longer joined to its body. Only in a qualified sense can it still be called the human hand, and if it can be said to be subsistent, the word can be used in a reductive sense only. Not so with the rational soul, which not only can exist, since it has life intrinsically, but can also carry out its perfecting activity, irrespective of the difference between tltis activity and the one it carries out when in union with the body. On tltis G. F. Kreyche says, "to say that the soul subsists although incomplete in its specific nature and to say that the hand subsists although incomplete in its own nature is to say something very different. ,,4 If therefore a substance is understood in the Aristotelian sense of that which, unlike the accident, can· exist on its own, without needing to inhere in something else, it must be said that the soul, separated from the body, is a substance. From tltis perspective, it would seem that with some attenuation which is a testimony to his genius, Aquinas' position on the status of the soul is not, strictly speaking, different from that of his immediate predecessors who expressly designate the soul as a substance, and use that as a basis to

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argue for its immortality. We have seen that the tenn incomplete substance is often used in such a way as to suggest a sort of intennediate existence between complete substance and accident. S The soul's seeking for union with the body in separation, and for return to its natural habitat (which is very often cited as an indication of its incompleteness as a substance) may not be much different from the quest in a finite being for something else. This quest, which is actualized by drive in different directions of existence, is more of an expression of finitude, and does not indicate that finite beings are incomplete substances. To Aquinas, the question of what type of immortality applies to the soul is also a very important matter. Its importance is not only seen from his slim treatise against the proponents of the unicity of the intellect, but throughout the course of his discussion of immortality, the significance of the matter to his project comes out clearly either in the text on immortality itself or in the placement of the discussions on the question of the unicity of the human intellect.' His basic position is that the right interpretation of Aristotle would lead to the support of personal immortality, even though it is generally accepted that Aristotle nowhere subscribes openly to this theory. All chronologies of the work of Aquinas show that this concern is quite early in his thought, starting as far back as his commentary on the Books of Sentences. It points to 7 the commencement of a fresh understanding of the work of Averroes in the thirteenth century, and another direction in the whole issue of immortality. Before Thomas, there was hardly any attempt (except perhaps in st. Albert's De unitate) to reflect on what type of immortality was acceptable to their project. It must be noted however that hardly any of the earlier authors of the century who wrote on immortality understood the consequence of the so-called collective immortality, and would conceivably have rejected it if it ever became a point of contention. We also said earlier that Aquinas believed in the cumulative effect of the many arguments which he marshalled for immortality to achieve convincing effect, notwithstanding that this can be said more specifically of the Contra gentiles, due to the circumstances surrounding the origin of the work. The method of enumeration is what most authors before st. Albert followed. It consists in simply calling to witness all sorts of possible evidence in support of immortality, with the apparent conviction that, taken separately, these pointers to the rationality of the doctrine may not possess enough convincing power. Very often absurd statements are made in this regard, for example,

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when William of Auvergue writes that even vice, which can be said to be the disease of the rational soul, does not lead to its demise, but that vicious inclinations of souls are even strengthened the more they are 8 steeped in vice. This for William shows that the soul does not die, otherwise its life would have been reduced by vice which is like ill health in the rational soul. With Albert, there is a marked discernment, which consigns some proof to mere signs, and others to probable arguments. His handling of the question may have also been helped by La Rochelle's grouping of proofs into rationes propriae and rationes commune in the question of immortality, and by Alexander of Hales who completely, and for the first thne, rejects an argument which some authors use in favour of immortality. It must be conceded that in this respect, Aquinas does not seem to have in any clear way risen to the challenge set by some of his immediate predecessors. However, the issue of neglecting important weighing of the argument by his predecessors should not be overemphasized. An aspect of Aquinas' argument for immortality that has not been adverted to is the motive for his selection of arguments. Though there is no single argument for immortality that is not traceable to his immediate predecessors, it is easy to neglect that he does not make use of all the arguments that are available in the sources present to him. Two examples are enough to prove this point. First, there is the argument from the creation of man in the image of God (imago dei). The argument is generally presented in the fonn of the affirmation that man is made in the image of God, and this would be false if indeed man were to be mortal. It is found almost everywhere in the long tradition of discussions on immortality among Christian writers beginning from the patristic period. Cassiodorus, Hughes of St. Victor, Aicher of Clairvaux, William of Auvergue, Alexander of Hales and Odo Rigaldus etc mention it. Thomas, on the other hand, makes just one obvious reference to it in a sed contra in the De anima. The preponderance of the argument in the. thirteenth century makes it very unlikely that he is unaware of its presence. Again the part that the doctrine of man as the image of God plays in his thought on man is very well known" Why then does he not make any serious use of it? One possible reason is that Aquinas intended to prove immortality from the philosophical standpoint alone. As Copleston says, he is very strongly convinced that the power of reason can lead to an acceptable demonstration of the teaching. to Given that the ultimate support of the imago dei argument is a direct reference to the passage on creation in the Genesis, it is reasonable to suppose that this argument does not fit very well into the

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project of demonstrating immortality without recourse to religious dogmas. Still, he is not averse to proclaiming the concordance of the doctrine of immortality to the Christian faith. There are, of course, other arguments which have no stronger foundation than the one under consideration - the argument from contemplation as the ultimate end of the rational soul for instance - but it is remarkable that the authority behind contemplation is Aristotle, and not the Holy Scripture. Another argument whose absence is spectacular in Aquinas is the one from the order of being. Like the imago dei argument, this too has had a long history. The idea of the golden chain of being is traceable to Homer's Iliad, to Macrobius' s Commentary on the Somnium Scipionis," and down to Isaac of Stella" who seems to have called the attention of the later scholastics to the chain as providing a structure that guarantees the flow of being from the highest member of the order (God himself) to the lowest creature. It is not certain when the golden chain began to be used as an argument for immortality. Gundissalinus makes use of it in the De immortalitate animae. It is however most priced by Philip the Chancellor and Albert the Great in the thirteenth century. Philip traces the idea of the golden chain of being to Pythagoras, and basing it on the use of the argument by Gundissalinus goes on to draw many corollaries from it in defence of immortality. The fundamental idea behind the employment of the aurea catena as proof of immortality is that there exists .in nature an order of gradation in being, in which the members of the different levels are linked with one another, and like nature which abhors a vacuum, permits no gap between the different levels of the universal order. Man as a spiritual and corporeal being is well placed to link the material and the spiritual levels of this order of being. Ifhe is to serve this purpose efficiently, he must possess important characteristics of the two major divisions: material and spiritual. His body is corruptible, like all material beings, and his soul must therefore be incorruptible to speak for the spiritual side of the order. The idea of a universal chain of being is one of the mainstays of Philip's arguments for immortality. \3 In Albert the Great, it is the foundation of the three different proofs that he calls rationes probabiles .14 Philip the Chancellor is one of the most influential thinkers of the early part of the thirteenth century. His literary and doctrinal influence has been noted by scholars, especially with the publication of the edition of his Summa de bono. IS Albert's influence on Aquinas his student is also very well known. Given these circumstances, it is very unlikely that Thomas is imaware of the arguments for immortality from

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the idea of the order of being. Furthermore, Aquinas in many sections of his work dwells on the doctrine of the universal order of being. lo Why then does he not use the idea as an argument for immortality? Barring any ctear rejection of the argument in Aquinas' works, one can only infer the reason from a reading of his major arguments. A general survey of the arguments that Aquinas uses shows clearly that they are all either derived directly from the phenomenon of knowledge in the rational soul or they refer back to the same phenomenon. This practice is maintained whether he uses the presence of contraries, or the desire for immortality, or the question of universals, abstraction or the process of knowledge itself. It is noticeable that the argument from the order of being is not one that can ill any direct way be hinged back to the issue of knowledge in man. The impossibility of a direct link to knowledge could be a possible reason why it is deemed unsuitable as a major argument for immortality. It does not say all however, because, given what we have described as his method of basing the convincing power of his arguments on their cumulative effect, the arguments could in fact be given even a subsidiary place without any obvious harm to his project. Viewed from this perspective, it could be that having accidentally omitted the argumerit in his earlier works, he does not go back to search for more proofs from his predecessors. Be that as it may, the absence of such a proof, and the secondary position given to otherwise age-old ones like that from the imago dei point to some selections or unexpressed grading of the arguments. There is nowhere in his works where Aquinas expresses dissatisfaction with any argument for immortality. However, a closer reading points to the direction that he does not consider all of them to be equally acceptable and convincing. Given that Aquinas is convinced that immortality could be demonstrated by reason alone, it is important to ask whether the arguments he puts forward do in fact prove that the .human soul is immortal. The answer to this question must in some way remain subjective, depending on what standard of proof that is required, and whether one is ready to accept some of the major premises on which subsistence and incorruptibility of the soul are based. We have in the course of the previous chapters referred to commentators, some of whom are very critical, and others who are less so. It may be claiming too much to say, as St. Hilaire does that "we nearly all accept his arguments,,,11 while Wilhelmsen's effort to show that the existence of "either-or" situations in the mind argues for its lack of contrary and implicitly for its immortality is very tenuous.18 Pegis' position may be

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more defensible, for, according to him, "the philosophy created by St. Thomas could not possibly exist anywhere but on Christian soil, and ... could not live but in the mind of a theologian."'· But even the theologian must resolve the choice which Culhnann poses between resurrection and inunortality, and his conclusion that "the teaching of the great philosophers Socrates and Plato can in no way be brought into consonance with that of the New Testament."'· For Culhnann, the emphasis on inunortality is only one of the trappings of Hellenism, and the specific Christian hope is for the resurrection, not just of body, but also of the whole man. There is no doubt that, taken separately, most of the arguments for immortality are tlunconvincing," as Kenny says.21 However, there are others, which may not be very much so if the premises that are there points of departure are accepted. Most of such premises are interconnected, like the hypostatization of knowledge, the sense in which universals are infinite, and the question of giving special status to the soul as form based again on these premises. We have indicated that these premises, which Aquinas clearly takes for granted in the course of his arguments about the soul and its inunortality, are not without serious problems, and any weighing of the convincing power of the arguments for immortality must take full account of the problems. Nevertheless, we are to argue presently that the philosophical import of the effort to prove inunortality by Aquinas and thinkers of his ilk cannot be sununarlzed by the judgement of the convincing powers of these arguments. 5.2 Some Critics of Aquinas: Scolus, Pomponazzi and Cajelan Many followers of Aquinas in the philosophic tradition do not accept the premises on which the arguments are founded, and consequently, cannot accept the arguments themselves. The rejection of the project of proving inunortality started ahnost unwittingly well before the time of Aquinas. The increased effort to demonstrate the truth of the doctrine, which is a consequence of philosophical awakening of the century, did not last long before doubts or aspersions started being directed either at the project as a whole or at the arguments used in the demonstration. It would in fact be a superficial reading of the history of the question of immortality in the later Middle Ages to think that it is only with John Duns Scotus, as though out of the blue, that doubts started being raised about the project of proving inunortality from the point of view of philosophy. When William of Auvergne asserted that theologically arguments for immortality are more convincing based, as they are, on

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the authority of God himself, he was directly implying that philosophical demonstrations lack the effect found in those proofs he terms theological. Alexander of Hales' rejection of the argument from the conception of the soul as the source of life seems to introduce a more critical look into the logic of the arguments, a perception that also carries with it the possibility of rejecting at least some of them. And when Albert the Great grouped the arguments into signs of inunortality, probable and necessary arguments for inunortality, he seemed to have taken to a more developed level an innovation that is incipient in Hales. These would appear to have prepared the ground for the complete rejection of the arguments as found in later authors. It must be noted however that such writers as, William of Ockbam, Dons Scotus, Pietro Pomponazzi and the later Cajetan never doubted whether the soul is mortal. What unites them is the refusal to make it a doctrine that is sustainable purely from the point of view of philosophy. A sununary of the positions of three of these thinkers will illustrate this point of view adequately. John Duns Scotus (1270 - 1308) is no doubt one of the greatest thinkers of the later Franciscan School. He was only a few decades removed from being an inunediate contemporary of Thomas Aquinas. While the zeitgeist within which the two scholastics lived and worked is more or less the same, their positions on the question of demonstrating immortality are poles apart. Scotus, unlike Aquinas, does not consign the distinctions or grading of the arguments for inunortality to neglect, but, like Aquinas, he groups all together as probable arguments in an implicit scale which hypothetically contains other levels. Thus for Scotus, there are reasons to think that the soul is immortal. But the fact of its inunortality is not demonstrable. For Scotus, the attempt to prove inunortality by rational arguments is bedevilled by a multiplicity of factors. The very conception of being, the question of creation and even the authority of philosophers do not provide any comfortable ground from which to argue for inunortality. On the authority of philosophers, especially Aristotle, on which Aquinas relies so much, and in reference to which he wrote his De unitate against Averroes, Scotus seeks to find out exactly what we can learn from his philosophy about inunortality. In his view, Aristotle speaks differently in different places, and one finds in him principles, which are supportive of inunortality, and others beside these which are squarely against it. If therefore philosophers have outlined arguments for immortality, it is not for that reason that the soul should be taken to be inunortal, and if they have, on the contrary, tried to show that the

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soul is mortal, it does not also imply that they have proved this by their arguments. It is not possible to demonstrate that the soul is immortal; what can be shown is that it is possible that the soul is immortal. The authority of philosophers does not therefore lead to any measure of certainty because they do not always give rational demonstration of everything they regard as true. 22 They are more often than not satisfied with reasonable probability, when they are not altogether allied with the popular tenets of their philosophic forebears." As regards the nature of the soul, Scotus believes that it should be melted into the same pot as the angels. If therefore it is not possible to have several angels belonging to the same species (as indeed Aquinas holds), there should also be no defensible reason to think that diverse souls should belong to the same species. Souls are pure forms, just as angels are pure forms. With reference to Aquinas' position to the effect that the union with the body gives the soul its individuation, and an inclination which makes it naturally bound to the body, Scotus objects that it is not the inclination in a being that constitutes its nature. It is not because the soul has a certain inclination towards the body that it is this or that soul, but because it is this or that soul that it is inclined towards the body. Mere inclination cannot make a being a separate being or entity. An inclination presupposes the being to which it inheres much 24 like an accident, which belongs to a substance. The foundation of Scotus' argumentations against the possibility of demonstrating immortality is, as seen from above, his conception of being, which is also linked with his theory of creation. To say that the soul has its own life independent of the body would entail that it was created directly in itself and for itself. If therefore it can be demonstrated that the soul is immortal, one would be in a position to know that it can exist without the body, from where it can also be concluded that it was created in itself, and not as form of the body. However, it is not possible for a philosopher, uulike the Christian, to imagine how God can create the soul as a being completely independent of the composite. The point of divergence between the philosopher and the Christian is that for the former, given that the soul is the act of the body, it cannot have been created apart, with a separate destiny and being, while for the latter, this is a real possibility. Scotus thus rejects what we have called the Platonism of Aquinas, the foundation of which is the conception of an act of being which the soul can exercise on its own and which it can communicate to the body. If this idea of being were granted, then there would be nothing to prevent the soul from having a being that cannot be destroyed with the destruction of the

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body. For the Franciscan, there is no special act of being by which an essence would be constituted into a being (an entity). In his view, the primary reference of being is to the real substance distinct from its cause and outside its mental conception. Only in a secondary and reductive sense can a part be called a being. It is not therefore possible that the soul would communicate its being to the body, since the being of both the soul and the body is not different from' the being of the

composite. 2s Such a soul contains, for Scotus, indications, which can lead to the affmnation of the possibility of immortality. Here he goes back to one of the basic principles by means of which Aquinas tries to prove both the spirituality and immortality of the soul, i.e. the fact of intellectual knowledge. It is clear to all that the human being can understand, and because it is on account of his form that man can carry out this activity it constitutes a formal principle of the composite of his being. Human beings everywhere know that they have the capacity to know and that this activity is one that does not require the use of any material organ, uulike all the operations of sensible knOWledge. Intellectual knowledge is always about universals, and concerns the apprehension of the most common principles of being. It is on account of this that the science of metaphysics is possible, because the type of knowledge that the rational being is capable of acqniring makes it possible for the science to have a specific object. That human beings are capable of exercising the operations involved in intellectual knowledge is because there is something in their nature which is capable of receiving such knowledge, and such a receptor cannot have in its nature anything associated with corporeality. The receptacle of knowledge can either be the soul or the human being as a whole by means of its soul, and if this operation is formative to man as rational being, it means that the rational soul must be the form of the human being. For Duns Scotus,it is very reasonable that the soul that is capable of such an operation should be immortal, or in fact that it is immortal. Nevertheless, one cannot prove this by force of an argument from the point of view of philosophy. To support his conclusion, Scotus reviews one of the arguments, which have been used to defend immortality - the argument from the desire of everlasting being. Our review of the argument from desire shows that, first, Aquinas seems to take it as a sign of immortality, at least in the Summa thealagiae, and not as an indepehdent argument. Again, wherever he states the argument, he links it with knowledge of rational beings as such, distinguishing it from the desire of brutes for self-preservation,

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and the preservation of their own species." For Scotus, the desire for everlasting existence is not different from the inclination towards a particular act. This inclination is equivalent to the tendency for selfpreservation which Aristotle hhnself attributes to all beings, e~dowed as they are with natnral striving to remain in existence so far as .t d,:"ends on them. That this desire is not fulfilled is seen in the corruption of composites. In any case, there is no certainty that what living beings desire is eternal existence as inunortal souls, or that what they actually desire is not to continue to exist as they are. Even if it is admitted that man has the natnral desire for inunortality, it is possible that he desires the impossible. Where the onus of proof lies is to prove first that man is inunortal, and not whether he desires inunortality. It is remarkable from the above that Scotus does not take account of Aquinas' linking of the argument from desire with the ~owle~ge of infinite or everlasting being, which seems necessary to d.stmgmsh the human desire from the desire of brute animals which are not immortal in Aquinas' system. Again, Aquinas takes due account of the general tendency of forms to persist in being, and adds that it is on account of the contrariety of composition that other forms perish, and that human souls are spared that fate because they are themselves the ve'!' s.ource. of their being and do not depend for their being on the compos.te m which they are found. 21 It seems obvious from what we have seen that the basis of these exceptions is not acceptable to Scotus, but because of the failure to take account of these, he ranges the rational soui in the same category as brute souls. Referring to Aristotle's affIrmation that natnre always desires what is better, he asserts that inunortality is better than corruptibility, and consequently, man must desire the inunortality of the soul. Even then, it does not follow that each particular soul must be inunortal for natnre can very well achieve its desire by according inunortality to the species through the process of generation and corruption, which assures the perpetuity of the species, but not of the individual." In fact, for Scotus, the argument from the desire of being is not only ineffective in proving inunortality (omne. medium ex desiderium naturali videtur inejjicax), it can also be srud to beg the question at issue. Since the point in dispute is to prove inunortality, one 29 cannot go from the desire for it to its afftrmation. Hence the type of incorruptibility that Scotus is ready to consider for rational souls on philosophical grounds is the type that Aquinas accept~ for .b,:"te ~ouls because of their inability to know being as such, which d.sttngmshes them from intellective souls.

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By the time Piettro Pomponazzi wrote, a hundred years later than Scotus, the highest point of scholasticism had been overtaken and the all too monop~listic co~centration on Aristotle had been tem~ered by the r~newed mterest m Platonism in Italian renaissance, marked especially by the work of Marcellio Ficino. Ficino's Platonism infl.ue~ced Pompo~ a great deal, but he can in no way be said to be a d~s~.ple of Plato Wlthout strong qualification. In reality Pomponazzi's pos.tion on the natnre of the soul is allied to that of Alexander of APID:0disias. The Aristotelianism of the thirteenth century was still hol~mg sway, and the fame of St. Thomas was still recognized by all in the mtellectual world of the time. Even though Pomponazzi's treatise De immortalitate. animae is ,mainly a critical review of the position of St.

Thom.as on ~ortality, he shows deference to the Dominican, by asserting that his attempt to review Thomas' position comes not from hi.s own certainty, but doubt, and expresses hope that his e~gagement Wlth the learned Thomas will reveal the truth to him. The circumstances sun:o.unding. the co~position of the treatise is a critique of Thomas' pos.tion on nnm~rtahty, which critique resulted in one ofPomponazzi's students demanding a lectnre from him on immortality based on the authority of reason and not of faith.'· The problem of Pomponazzi is therefore not whether the soul is immortal or not. This, for hhn, is ~learly s~ttled by the Holy Scriptnre and by faith, which support the .mmort:,hty of the soul. The problem is whether philosophy or reason can on .ts own demonstrate that the soul is inunortal. Pomponazzi .hhnsel.f accepts the age-old view that man is of multiple n:'tiJres, occuPy?,g an mtermediate position, which makes it possible for ~ to b~ cons.d~red as both mortal and immortal. The diffIculty for thinkers .s ~o delmeate what these two qualities mean in man, i.e., in wh~t. sense .t ~ be said .that man is mortal or inunortal. The possible ~os.tions, whic.h. he o~t1mes and attempts to weigh in his treatise, mclude ~e pos.tion attributed to Averroes, according to which there is ?n1y one nnmortal soul which all human beings share. Another position .s that of Plato who states that there are two souls in man - one mortal d the other ~ortal. Pomponazzi rejects all such views, but he also reJ.ects the pos.ti?n of Thomas according to which the human soul is of uruq~e ~tnre,. snnple and absolutely immortal. For Pomponazzi, no c~nvmcmg eVldence can support the absolute immortality of the soul. L.ke Duns Scotus, he doubts that such a doctrine can be defended from the teaching of Aristotle and that reason alone can defend immortality if it does not call faith to witness.31

m:

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The position, which he vouches for, is the one attributed to Alexander of Aphrodisias, and which, according to Pomponazzi, is more in accordance with the teaching of Aristotle. It states that the soul has just one nature, is absolutely speaking mortal, and only in some respect, in some reductive sense is it inunortal. That the sonl should be considered corruptible is supported clearly by the fact that it does not have any way of knowing without recourse to the senses.32 These characteristics distinguish it from the angels or pure intelligent beings, which are absolutely inunortal. But the soul is in a sort of via media between the spiritual and the material, and while it must depend on the senses for its activities, it is not like the souls of brute animals which have matter, the body, as their subject. In this sense, according to Pomponazzi, it may be said to participate in some way in inunortality." Even then, this position has no status of certainty; it is only a probability, which is more defensible from the philosophical viewpoint than other rival positions, and more than them is in accord with the teaching of Aristotle. Pomponazzi takes on the argument drawn from Aristotle's statement in the Ethics that contemplation is the highest end to which man can aspire, and that this highest aspiration is unattainable without inunortality. In St. Thomas, it does not appear in any prominent way as a demonstration of immortality, and is seen only once in the texts we have reviewed. Pomponazzi rejects the theory that the ultimate end of man lies in contemplation. This end should be sought in the practical reason with its perfection by moral virtue, which every human being can attain. He tries to support this position by recourse to the normal experience of human beings. Man has three types of intellect: speculative, practical and technical intellects. The first of these is the exclusive preserve of only a few human beings; everybody shares the second, while the third is attainable both by human beings and brutes. What should characterize human beings should neither be what they have in common with brutes, nor what only II few of their members can attain, but that which all human beings and only human beings share. That this is so is seen to by the fact that human beings are called either good or bad, not in reference to the tendency of their speculative or technical intellect, but to the practical intellect, which is the subject of vice and virtue which make people either good or bad. A good philosopher (speculative intellect) and a good engineer (technical intellect) may not necessarily be good men. That is why people would not mind so much if they were called bad philosophers or bad engineers, but would feel differently if they were called unjust, for

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example. It seems then that for Pomponazzi, the defining characteristic of all men is the endowment of the practical intellect, which everyone can attain, and not that of the speculative and technical intellect, which is not always within their capability. The highest end of man must therefore be defined in line with his most basic characteristic, which is linked with the practical intellect. To foist the fulfilment of the speculative intellect (or technical intellect) as the ultimate aim of man is to imply that all men should strive to attain these aims, but it is neither necessary nor desirable that all men should strive to be philosophers or engineers.34 Pomponazzi also reviews the theory that God would be unjust if he does not provide some reward for virtue and punishment for evil committed on earth. From human experience, such rewards and punishments are either not available, or even worse, the wicked are rewarded and the just punished. Again, this argument, though found in Aquinas, is, like the foregoing, a very peripheral one. Pomponazzi's answer to the objection is based on Plato's theory that the reward for virtue is found in virtue itself, and the punishment for vice is embedded in the vicious act and state. There is therefore no grave consequence if it seems that vice is not met with appropriate punishment and virtue by reward, since these states contain their own reward or punishment. Pomponazzi adds another consideration, which seems to be more effective than the ethical theory of Plato. To act in expectation of reward is less noble and less virtuous than to act without an eye on any recompense for ones act. If therefore one were not externally rewarded by one's virtuous act, it would appear that one even receives all the greater reward in the end. In the same way, the wicked, who seem to escape punishment are all the more punished because the inherent punishment in their acts is made more painful by their apparently going scot-free." The reasoning of Pomponazzi here is remarkable in view of the deep-seated belief that inunortality is a necessary postulate for the rationality of morality. It is a presupposition that is not only commonly believed among many religious people, but one, which finds strong support among philosophers. For Kant, immortality will become a postulate of practical reason in order to make way for morality. Aquinas himself projects the question of morality as one of the reasons why he is angry with the followers of Averroes. 36 Pomponazzi takes the whole presupposition to task by insisting that those who have high moral standards are attracted to virtuous act by the beauty of the act itself, and are repelled from vice because of the nature of vice not because of the

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fear of possible consequences that may follow the vicious act. Thus he rejects completely the view that morals can only be maintaioed with the presupposition of inunortaiity. His view seems, as Krysteller says, "far superior to those contrary opinions that are often expressed and propagated even in our days, and that usually go unchallenged."" The conclusion of Pomponazzi as regards the question of inunortality is that the matter is neutral so long as philosophy is concerned. He does not however question the reality of inunortality. hnmortality is a religious belief and must be admitted on the grounds of faith alone. God himself has shovm beyond reasonable doubt in the Bible that the soul is inunortal, and this must be accepted as such as an article of faith. It follows that any attempt to prove the contrary must be false and unacceptable. However, going on the strength of reason alone, and in spite of the efforts of philosophers, there is no argument convincing enough to show that the soul is immortal. 38 Thomas de Vio Cajetan, the great commentator on St. Thomas Aquinas, concludes his philosophic life by affirming basically the same position as his contemporary, Pomponazzi. But given his diametrically opposed positions about the provability of immortality, we shall distinguish the two periods of his life by naming them first and second Cajetan. The first Cajetan, the faithful defender of Thomas Aquinas' position, at times seems to go farther than his master in affirming, in a more Wlequivocal manner, positions, which Aquinas asserts with a measure of nuance. An example of this is the nature of the soul, in union and in separation from the body. The soui for him is naturally united to the body as form, and this union is effected propter melius because of the soul's special way of knowing by reverting to the phantasms. Even though the mode of knowledge by receiving species from separate, non-sensible being is superior in itself, it is not so to the soul because of its nature (est nobilius et melius simpliciter, sed non animae). Such knowledge that is effectuated by a direct infusion of species from spiritual being is for him not against nature, but lies above the nature of the soul. The inunortality of the soul is demonstrable and this truth is, to the first Cajetan, so clear that in obvious reference to Pomponazzi's conclusion that inunortality is problema neulrum, he poured invectives on anyone who is against the possibility of demonstrating its truth." In keeping with such a diatribe, he goes on in his writings and commentaries to defend the immortality of the soul. All the arguments he uses in defence of immortality are the usual ones knovm to the scholastics, even though he employs different illustrations to make the same point. In a sermon delivered before Pope

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Julius II in 1503, he refers to the contention that the soul cannot have in its being the form of any of the things it is capable of knowing in order to show its independence from the material, and hence its inunortaiity. For the first Cajetan, the soul is like a judge who must not be sympathetic to any of the positions that are presented before him ifhe is to judge properly. In the same way, the rational soul must not share the nature of the things it knows, but must be spiritual to know the way it 40 does. He also calls the presence of natural desire in man to the defence of inunortality.41 But for him, its power of demonstration depends on the soul not being fixated on a mere wishful desire or unreal imagination, but rather that the nature of the knOwing soul strives towards the absolute. Such a desire would not be vain because natural striving is never in vain. In his commentary on" Aristotle's De anima, he asserts that the position of Aristotle on the problem of immortality is not unequivocal, and seeks to clarify what he intended to say about the issue, especially with reference to the famous passage of Aristotle in Book Three of the De anima. For him, that Aristotle supports immortality can be read from what he says at the begirming of the treatise to the effect that if indeed the soul has some operation on its ovm independent of the body, it would also be able to exist without it." In the same way, he tries to derive from the teaching of Aristotle principles and statements from which the immortality of the soul can be concluded. In the De anima, as well as in his commentary on Aquinas' Summa theologiae, he describes the human soul as a forma media,43 a form that is endowed with such being that it is independent of matter, and can, at the same time, form a composite with matter. The human soul is, as such, the lowest being in the ladder of spiritual beings, and as a result of this is subsistent, as distinct from material forms that are bound with the matter with which they are united. These teachings are all not more than the elaboration of Aquinas' views but the second Cajetan appears to revoke them in his last writing. While the first Cajetan is ready to pour invectives on anyone who would describe the problem of inunortality as philosophically neutral, the second clearly expresses doubt about the ability of reason to demonstrate that the soul is immortal. In the commentary on Paul's letter to the Romans he states his conviction that one truth cannot be against another truth, but still that he does not know how to unite divergent positions about matters such as the freedom of the will and the providence of God, just as he is ignorant about the mystery of the Trinity, the immortality of the soul and the incarnation of the word of

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God. Nevertheless, the faith of the second Cajetan in these doctrines remains firm. 44 Again in the commentary on the Ecclesiastes, he refers to the doubt expressed by the writer of the book about the truth of the immortality of the soul. He adds that till now, no philosopher has been able to prove the immortality of the soul, that there is no effective demonstration for the doctrine, and that we must take it as true only on grounds of faith. Cajetan's expressed exasperation at his inability to reconcile the failure to prove immortality with his faith in the truth of the doctrine brings up the contentious issue of double truth, according to which a theory can be false in philosophy and true in respect of faith. The doctrine of double truth was supposed to have been held by the Averroists of the thirteenth century who are said to have arrived at conclusions in conSOnance with Aristotle and the Commentator, while also acknowledging the divergent stand of faith on the same issue. Hence, they are said to have given rigorous and logical validity to Aristotelian arguments while at the same time conceding the last determination of the truth of the matter to the Christian faith. It has been shown that none of the thinkers of the thirteenth-century, not even Siger of Brabant himself, held such a view that would be rightly described as double truth. 45 The three thinkers we have seen in this section are clear in their position as to exclude any confusion in this regard. They all assert the belief in immortality as true, but as a matter of fuith. They do not share with Aquinas the conviction that right philosophy must lead to the same conclusions as faith. Their position is more of an indication of the limit of philosophy. On the question ofimmortality, their conviction is that philosophy is not able, or has not been able so far, to demonstrate convincingly that the soul is immortal. Still if this is the case, it is also true that they do not try to show that philosophy proves the opposite to be true, that the soul is mortal. To do so would have confirmed them as holders of double truth. What they indicate is the limit of philosophy on the issue, while leaving free the actual determination of the matter as an article of faith. 5.3 Some Subsequent Trends in the Question of Immortality. The critical spirit towards the question of immortality of the soul in philosophy continued to grow with the passage of time. The renaissance movement, as well as the subsequent enlightenment, ensured a degree of independence of philosophical engagement from faith that one could hardly expect at the epoch in which Aquinas lived. This, not

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surprisingly, means that there were not only thinkers who were willing not only to disparage the possibility ofphiiosophy proving immortality, but others who were ready to deny the fact of the matter itself. Still it must be noted that through the changes in spirit occasioned by the passage of time, there still remained a host of serious philosophers for whom the immortality of the soul is demonstrable by unaided reason. The growing independence of philosophy as a science in the modern epoch was accompanied by the progressive strides in the physical sciences and mathematics which had enormous influence on the evolution of philosophy. With Euclid's geometry and Newton's physics foisted on the consciousness of thinkers as the epitome of scientific progress, the reaction of many philosophers was to replicate the type of progress realized in these fields in philosophy as well. While Hume inveighed against metaphysics as a science in his book burning campaign,46 Kant wanted to review the whole fabric of speculative philosophy in order to determine how far it was possible as a science. The effort to bring into philosophy the method and evident progress of the natural sciences is traceable in most major thinkers of the modern period. Descartes' quest for certainty led to his methodic doubt, while the Ethics of Spinoza is a testimony to the effort to construct a philosophy loaded, as in geometry, with axioms, definitions and propositions. Descartes seems to have initiated the quest for certainty with his decision to put into doubt all the data of the senses because of their latent possibility to deceive. In the end, he adopted a radical dualism of mind and matter, a dualism so strict that it becomes almost impossible to see how the two can act together as one being. Even though Descartes lived and worked within the shadows of scholastic philosophy,'7 his dualism and anthropology speak more of Platonism than the hylemorphic relationship between soul and body, which was the hallmark of scholastic anthropology. On the question of immortality, Descartes was more concerned about the moral effect of the tenet that after this present life, we have no more to hope for than flies and ants. Outside the denial of the existence of God, there is nothing more susceptible to turn weak characters from the pursuit of virtue than such teachings. In his view, an understanding of how different the other lower creatures are from us helps us to better appreciate the arguments that seek to prove that the soul is totally independent of the body and does not perish when the body perishes. In addition, since outside the destruction of the body, we are not able to find any other possible cause of its destruction, we must come to the conclusion that the soul is

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immortal.48 Other rationalists like Spinoza outlined a radically monistic philosophy in which the human being is but a mere mode in the attribute of the infinite. Such metaphysics does not give any ground for immortality, at least, not in the sense in which it is personal, and in which it encourages the quest for virtue sought by Descartes. Most empiricists adhere very strictly to Aristotle's and Thomas' view about the origin of knowledge, but they generally differ widely from them as regards the extent and nature of thought, the nature of the soul, and the statns of universal knowledge. While Berkeley defends traditional ideas about the nature of the soul and its immortality, Hume makes the most scathing critique of not only the arguments for immortality, but also the fact of immortality itself. Berkeley explains that the natural immortality of the soul does not entail that it is incapable of being annihilated even by the creator. Inunortality only means that the soul is not liable to be destroyed by the usual law of nature. In his view, bodies are merely passive ideas in the mind, and are so different from the nature of the mind as light is from darkness. Berkeley does not spend many words in fashioning demonstrations for immortality. It suffices that he has shown that the soul is indivisible, incorporeal and unextended to draw the conclusion that it is immortal. The usual experience of men bears witness to this conclusion, since nothing can be more evident than that motion, decay, dissolution and similar changes for which bodies are known cannot affect a simple substance such as the soul, which must be immortal by virtue of its nature. 49 Hume's essay "Of the Immortality of the Soul" follows the general sceptical slant of his philosophy in which the soul is regarded as an aggregate of impressions. so He delineates the arguments for immortality into three - the metaphysical, the moral and the physical - and tries to show that from none of these can the soul be demonstrated to be immortal. On the metaphysical grounds, he asserts that experience is our only source of knowledge about substance, and what experience teaches us is that substance is "an aggregate of particular qualities inhering in an unknown something. ,,51 Matter and spirit consequently remain fundamentally unknown to us, and we cannot, through abstract reasonlng, arrive at any conclusion about fact or experience. He further avows that what is incorruptible must also be ungenerated, and if the soul is immortal, it must have existed at all times. If its existence before this life does not concern us, there is no reason why its future existence should be our concern. On the moral arguments for immortality, he takes on the supposition of God's justice as the grounds of immortality.

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The arguments from God's justice are, for him, grounded in the supposition that God has other attributes than the ones that we are able to learn from this universe. Hume is of the view that if we are to judge by reason alone, the capacity of man is limited to the present life, and the fear of the future in many people is a result of precepts and education artificially maintained to ensure a livelihood for those who teach them. 52 Concerning the question of reward and punisinnent, he uses the principle of the chain of causality (even though he rejects the principle in his own philosophy): if everything that happens must have a cause, and this line of causality goes on to the ultimate cause, it means that everything that happens is ordained by this cause, and cannot at the same time be the object of its punisinnent. If for the sake of the argument we concede the reality of such reward and punisinnent, more difficulties will follow. The range of human merit is wide. For which of these merits should we expect perpetual reward? Our idea of rightful punisinnent is that it must have a proper end, and no end can in addition be served by punisinnent "after the whole scene is closed." Again, proportionality of punisinnent to the offence is in accordance with the human conception of punisinnent. If so, it is incomprehensible to erect eternal punisinnent for temporary offence. 53 The concentration of the above on moral arguments for immortality seems to be in consonance with the trend of the epoch in which much was made of the moral implication of the supposition of the mortality of the soul. For Descartes as well as for Berkeley, a strong reason which recommends the immortality of the soul, is its effect on morality or virtue. From what we saw in Aquinas, the question of morality is in fact a peripheral consideration in the question of immortality. Hume's effort is to bring the moral defence of immortality under the judgement of his sceptical philosophy, taking as given the conclusions of this philosophy. Thus, for him, the origin of our moral distinction is the human sentiment, and the main source of moral ideas is the consideration of the benefit of human society, and such benefit cannot be so consequential that it should be safeguarded by eternal punisinnent. What Hume calls the physical arguments are indeed his argument for the mortality of the human soul. These are in his view the only philosophical arguments, which merit our acceptance. Only a few of these are worth recalling here. The first is the demonstration from the analogy from nature: when two things are so closely united that whenever there is an alteration in one, there is also a proportionate alteration in the other, it is reasonable to conclude that when a greater alteration occurs in one of them, it must be accompanied by an equally

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proportionate alteration, and a dissolution of one of these will entail a dissolution of the other. The closeness between the body and the soul enables us to conclude that the destruction of the one will lead to the destruction of the other. The same analogy of nature leads him to assert that beings do not survive in situations completely different from the one in which they originate, and in which they flourish. Trees do no survive in water, nor do fishes survive in the open air. Following from this analogy there is no reason to suppose that the alteration occasioned by the demise of the body and the subsequent loss of the senses and other organs would still leave the soul with its usual life. 54 In clear reference to the argument from the desire for eternal existence, he attempts to turn the argument on its head by stating that if the horror of destruction does not arise from our love of happiness, it would be a point to prove that the soul is, mortal, for following the principle of nature not acting in vain, nature would not put in us such a horror for something that is not real. 55 The aversion from death serves the purpose of preserving the human species, because it is that aversion that leads us to avoid death by all possible means. Voltaire, another philosopher with a strong empiricist inclination, also takes issue with the question of desire for perpetual existence. Unlike Hume, he expressly defers to the possibility of God making the soul immaterial and inunortal. For him to do so would be just as possible as his creating many more worlds in addition to the one he has in fact created. But placing himself in the hypothetical position of a stranger from another planet, whose only means of knowing is his senses, Voltaire holds that if indeed God has created these things, for us to believe that he has in fact done so, we need to have seen them. What it means is that there is no way one can prove the immortality of the soul, if the only way of affirming truth is by seeing the object of our affrrmation. It is unreasonable to hold that there is something eternal in man, while denying all other earthiy creatures the same quality simply on the ground that man desires immortality. Such a desire for continued existence can be a pleasant consolation in the face of the misery of this life, but the probability of such an existence is very far-fetched. Voltaire avows to his inability to furnish proofs against the spirituality and the immortality of the soul, but adds that all the odds are weighed against it, and, in any case, "it is equally unjust and unreasonable to demand proof from an enquiry in which only conjectures are possible."" It means that the question of inunortality and, in general, the whole issue of the nature of the soul cannot be taken as a real subject of philosophical inquiry.

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This interpretation of Voltaire's view wonld link him obliquely to Kant's critical philosophy, which subjects the issue of the soul and its immortality to the general critique of speculative philosophy. Kant's basic tenet is that our synthetic a priori knowledge is mediated first by the sensory intuitions of space and time, and then by ideas or concepts which must be schematized by reference to experience if they are not to give rise to the illusions of metaphysics. Such illusions of metaphysics arise from the tendency of reason to seek the unconditioned in every condition, a tendency that is regulative and not constitutive. 57 They are regulative in the sense that they are principles that are necessary for the conduct of thought or inquiry. It is the attempt to apply this tendency in a constitutive manner, that is, as a means of getting knowledge of the object of the unconditioned that leads metaphysics to apply the unschematized categories to supposed objects of knowledge." As regards the soul, this illusion gives rise to paralogisms. The origin of these paralogisms is the idea of the self that must accompany all our representations in the transcendental unity of apperception. According to Kant, it is, thaIiks to the presence of the "I tbiIik" that I can call all my representations mine. In ratioIial psychology, the "I" in the "I tbiIik" is thought of as a simple SUbstance. But the soul, viewed, as a simple substance, is not given under Kant's stated condition for the knowledge of substance. It is not, for instance, given in time. A statement about the substantiality of the soul that is not given in time cannot be a valid synthetic a priori judgement. Only from the supposition that the soul is a substance can the demonstration of its immortality proceed. Kant goes on to argue against the demonstrations for immortality, especially against M. Mendelsohn's proofs in his Phaedo (cf. B. 414 ff., also A 443 -B 471). Kant however asserts that his critique of the arguments for immortality does not obviate the necessity or even the right to postulate a future life "in accordance with the principles of the practical employment of reason."" Accordingly, in the Crique of Practical Reason, he argues for the immortality, which he had rejected, in the first critique on the grounds of the moral imperative. The moral imperative enjoins that man be perfect, but no material being can attain this state of perfection. Still before God, a continuous and endless march towards perfection is the same thing as perfection in the distributive justice of the highest good (summum bonum). Such continuous and endless progress is possible only on the assumption of the soul's immortality. Hence the moral imperative can be realized only if the soul is also endless in its being, i.e. if it is immortal. The person being who accepts

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this imperative for himself must also suppose himself to be immortal.60 It is clear that following Kant's theories in the first critique, all his talks of endless perfection would not be meaningful since the soul, to which they apply, is, without the body, atemporal, and outside the scope of a synthetic a prairi knowledge. J. S. Mill, the English liberal philosopher, is a rare case of a thinker who takes the onus of proof to the doorstep of the opponents of immortality. Voltaire had exclaimed that he has no way of proving that the soul is mortal since on the issue only conjectures are possible. Against the position of Hume, Mill asserts that his rejection of the arguments of Plato only amounts to defect of evidence, and that "they afford no positive argument against immortality." He warns against the attempt at "giving a priori validity to the conclusions of an a posteriori philosophy. ,,61 His view is that science has no positive evidence against the immortality of the soul, and that the only thing available is negative evidence, which lies in the absence of evidence in favour of what is to be proved. For Mill, the negative evidence is not even as strong as negative evidence can be, for instance, against witchcraft. One can in fact argue successfully that the soul does not have an existence somewhere on this earth. "But that it does not exist elsewhere, there is absolutely no proof.,,62 With reference to what Hume has called analogy of nature, Mill reviews why the general natural condition should not apply to man. For him, there are enough grounds to demand the exception for man, since feeling and thought are at the opposite poles of existence, no analogy from one can rightly apply to the other. Mind is, the thing that is most intimately known to us, it is the only reality of which we have real evidence, and no other reality should be compared to it. Even if this is true, this is still no evidence that the soul is immortal. It only means that those who claim exception for the soul in the general order of nature have some reasons to do so. Indeed, the theme of immortality is, for Mill, a rare case in which there is a total lack of evidence on either side, and one in which the absence of evidence for the affirmative position does not nudge us to the tenability of the opposite view'" From the above, it can be said that the attitude of Mill about the arguments for immortality is ambivalent; still he says that the belief in immortality is grounded in tradition and in the discomfort of giving up existence. Mill examines the argument for immortality from the desire for eternal existence, and affirms that what is called the desire for eternal life is not more than the desire for life. To hold that the desire for life guarantees endless life to the subject of the desire is the same as

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holding that the hunger for food assures us of an inexhaustible stock of food for all eternity. As to what he calls natural theology, he also asserts that there is no evidence from that source convincing enough to show that the soul must be immortal. It is remarkable from the foregoing that in more recent times, the strongest considerations on which Aquinas and men of his time based their arguments for immortality were almost completely abandoned or given a very peripheral place. The whole issue of knowledge is practically forgotten while attention is shifted to desire for endless life, the moral implication of immortality, and especially the question of reward or punishment. Bringing these secondary factors to the fore is seen both in the opponents and the advocates of demonstration for immortality. It can be interpreted as a sigu of a shift in emphasis in philosophy in general. Additional evidence of that shift is all the more apparent as we come closer to contemporary times. Within the twentieth century, the strong emphasis on the empirical and the spectacular advancement in the natural sciences and technology decidedly influenced a change in the perennial concern for immortality. Most philosophers who believe in immortality do not feel the necessity as in the past era to show that immortality must find a comfortable home in their philosophy. The effort to prove immortality has not completely petered out. Maritain, for example, outlines proofs of immortality, but what he presents are merely a paraphrase of the arguments of Aquinas' Summa thealagiae. William James's lecture on immortality is a potent advocacy for the belief in the doctrine, but it is clear that his postulation of a stream of consciousness from which the individual consciousness is derived and to which it returns at death is very far from the usual attempt to present a logical demonstration of the doctrine. The same can be said of the thundering outburst of Miguel de Unamuno in favour of immortality. In all, Swinburne was right when he says that the "arguments to the natural immortality of the soul are very unappealing today.,,64 That does not however mean that the interest in the question of immortality has abated. In fact it would seem that the focus of debate has tilted to the nature of the soul, which is in fact more ftmdamental than the question of its immortality, and which prepares the ground for the philosophical treatment of the matter. It appears therefore that just beneath the veneer of the contemporary discussions on the nature of the soul or mind lies the question ofits immortality. It is not to be supposed that when a scholastic like Aquinas speaks about the soul, and contemporary philosophers argue about the mind, they all mean one and the same thing. Still the common ground between

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the two concepts is that whether the soul or mind is employed, it is understood as that extra thing which makes intellectual knowledge possible; on account of which man is termed rational; and which (if one subscribes to its subsistence) constitutes the subject of inunortality. In spite of many tendencies to the contrary, many thinkers continue to defend traditional dualism. But many contemporary defenders of dualism still tend to pay special deference to materialism by, in effect, making the mind inconsequential in the human system. Such could be the ultimate implication of epiphenomenalism, which while asserting the reality of the mental, still holds that the mental is completely dependent on the physical that alone has causal powers. os Against these, there is the now popular position that the very concept of the soul is an unnecessary assumption. Such a view gives rise to the type of neutral monism defended strongly by Russell at one stage of his ever-changing philosophy. In neutral monism, there is no distinction between mind and matter, since the two are made of the same primitive stuff." A furtherance of the same intent to do away with the soul altogether led to the conception championed by Gilbert Ryle that the assumption of another reality over and above what is observable in human operation is ·I·ak·' a categona trust e. In spite of some of these recent slants in the philosophical discussions about the soul, a lively interest is still shown in relation to the supposed extra-material side of the human person, although in deference to the popular materialist inclination of the present age, this appears in terms of quest for empirical evidence. Hence such phenomena as reincarnation, extra-sensory perception, out-of-body experience like astral projection and in near-death and after-death experience continue to elicit serious attention in many quarters'" It seems to indicate the presence of a conviction in the continued existence of some important aspects of the human entity. Given the background of the general shift towards the materially demonstrable, the effort to collate such experiences seems to indirectly point to the same direction that all the effort to prove the permanence of the soul has been pointing in past ages. Despite the observable shifts, and the new turns given to the question of the soul that fundamentally remains the same, it is remarkable that in terms of arguments aimed at proving immortality, subsequent generations did not go beyond the points raised by the epoch of Thomas Aquinas. The nature of mind, and of thought, the status of knowledge, the distinction between mind and matter are still very intractable problems in philosophy. We have pointed out that these questions are

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strongly related to the issue of inunortality and the effort to prove it through rational argumentation. If such questions remain central in philosophical inquiry, there is no doubt that they, by and large, raise the issue ofimmortality of the soul. 5.4 Immortality and the Scope and Limit of Philosophy If Aquinas and the thinkers of his time were convinced in the ability of reason to prove the inunortality of the soul without recourse to religious dogmas, their efforts have a lot to say about their understanding of philosophy, its scope and limits. Theirs was an epoch when philosophy was still in the pangs of asserting its independence from theology as a field of human knowledge. Our review of the several attempts of the angelic doctor to prove immortality shows that many of his fundamental assumptions are beset by problems. Some of the assumptions that are the statting points of his demonstrations are not what subsequent thinkers would subscribe to uncritically. Again, some of his conclusions were drawn without sustained weighing of consequences. If however the global outcome of the effort of Aquinas is best described as problematic, thought should be given to the fact that subsequent effort to engage the same issue also ends at more or less the same level of consistency in reasouing, not to talk of those who fall back to the bland assertion of natural desire and the demands of morality as grounds for inunortality of the soul. If this is the reality of much of the effort to prove inunortality, and if it seems that except for fresh empirical evidence, the whole concern to prove immortality turns around the same basic points, does that age-long effort not hit a deadend? If this is so, is .the question of inunortality not a fruitless theme to tinker with in the philosophical engagement? P. Boduntin describes the question of inunortality as arational, meaning that the issue of inunortality should not be considered from the point of view of whether it is rationally right or wrong, but rather that it is not the type of issue which philosophy should deal with in the first place, at least not in terms of whether it is true or false. Boduntin's view can be seen as an expression of what Swinburne regards as the aversion of the time to prove the natural inunortality of the soul from rational argumentation. Such an aversion would effectively consign many centuries of philosophical consideration of inunortality to the dustbin of philosophical history, given that almost all attempts to discuss immortality were codified in terms of proofs. That it is so is nevertheless very much in consonance with the general trend in the

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histol)' of philosophy. The vaunted reliance on the power of reason in philosophy appears to have had as side effect, the attempt to settle most controversial issues by arguments that are meant primarily to convince even imaginary opponents. This characteristic is strongly seen in Plato, who incidentally is the first to present a systematic defence of immortality. Plato's method casts a long shadow on subsequent discourses on immortality. The scholastics ally themselves with this tradition, which is all the more reinforced by the sic el non method of treating all issues, be they theological or philosophical. In the specific area of philosophy,. however, we see already from the scholastics the long tradition of the pretension to present issues to pure and unaided reason, which continues beyond their time up until the modern hermeneutical movement starts to take more seriously the unconscious presumptions in man's supposedly pure reasoning. It is remarkable that just as in the case of immortality, the long tradition of proof in philosophy does not appear to have achieved much in outlining arguments that would be acceptable to all. Much of the evolution of philosophy is the attempt to lead reason to its utmost limit by engaging particular problems: man, the world, society, God, etc. Hardly any of the solutions arrived at by anyone thinker or in anyone epoch ever gains general acceptability. Such solutions, usually presented in the form of arguments designed to convince the other, are based on the general assumption of the era in which they are thought out. This partly explains why they are almost always overturned by subsequent generations of thinkers intent on giving definitive answers to problems that had been the preoccupation of their forebears. One would think that such a characteristic is prominent in the more abstract and recondite aspects of philosophy as metaphysics, epistemology and philosophy of the mind, but that is far from being the case. In political philosophy, for example, the question of who should rule has been a most contentious issue. The giants of Greek philosophy, Plato and Aristotle ascribe to aristocracy as the best form of government while castigating democracy as the rule of the mob. Coming vel)' near to them, Thomas Aqninas subscribes to monarchy, understood in the sense of a kingly ruler whose aim is the weB-being of his subjects. Hobbes teaches that the only means of securing peace in the polity is the enthronement of a leviathan endowed with absolute power, while Jolm Locke spends his ink defending representative government. Today, it is almost inconceivable that a philosopher or any social scientist for that matter would write a text that does not sanction democracy as such, irrespective of the specific form it takes .. One would thus think that in

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our thne, as far as philosophy is concerned, the inquiry on who sbould ideally take the mantle of leadership has been given a definitive answer in the emergence of liberal democracy. It is important to remember that thinkers like Aqninas and Hobbes are as convinced about the systems of government they advocate as Francis Fukuyama is in our time about the virtues of liberal democracy. It is not being suggested that it is impossible to arrive at any general agreement in the philosophical enterprise. The point is that from the perspective of what is proved as generaBy acceptable, the whole enterprise of philosophy is indeed threadbare. In moral philosophy, Alasdair MacIntyre's statement to the effect that ethical concepts are constantly changing leads G. J. Warnock to write The Objecl of Morality. Warnock argues persuasively that in whatever socio-politicalethical system one chooses to operate, such virtues as truth, nondeception, non-malevolence and justice must be prerequisites for the proper working of the system. Such a broad theol)' is not difficult to accept. What philosophers would take as the detailed understanding of social virtues is a much more intractable problem. Is justice to be limited to giving to each person what is his due, or is it better served by Jolm Rawls' dual principles? How- does the whole question of ownership of means of production, and of inheritance touch on justice? If the evolution of philosophy serves as a guide, there is no reason to believe that such issues wiB cease to be points of contention for philosophic minds. The inconclusive arguments that seem to bedevil all philosophical endeavour are, to say the least, nauseating to philosophers. It is perhaps the unconscious antipathy to the inconclusiveness that helps to explain the emergence of the sic el non method which, initiated by Peter Abelard, guides much of medieval philosophical discussions. That method manifests the desire to present every issue as though it has clear-cut answers. Much later, the whole project of modern philosophers initiated by Rene Descartes, and exemplified by the efforts of Hume, Leibniz, Locke, Spinoza and Kant to transfer the perceived certainty in mathematics and natural sciences to philosophy appears to be aimed at arriving at certainty. It seems to be driven by a latent misunderstanding of the nature of philosophy, or by the unexpressed wish that its nature is otherwise than it actually is. In more recent times, RusseB's project to build a scientific philosophy that wiB be at once general and a priori, as weB as the progranune of the Vienna circle to . restrict philosophy as much as possible to the analysis of concepts

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would seem to be an attempt to avoid the problem by limiting the scope of philosophical ioquiry. We cannot bui conclude that the ioberent ioability to arrive at definitive answers speaks much more about the intriosic nature of philosophy than the few certainties it can lay claim to. It means that while much of the history of philosophy is cluttered with unsuccessful attempts to fashion convinciog proofs or arguments, general acceptability should by no means be upheld as the major criterion for relevance in philosophic engagement. In any case, the failure to arrive at acceptable proofs with regard to any theme is no reason to banish it from the ambit of philosophy since doiog so will io fact consign philosophy itself to only narrow and irrelevant corners. Philosophy is the engagement of human reason io the exploration of human problems and perplexities. It starts, as Aristotle says, with wonder. The wonder tbat seems to lie at the begimting of philosophy does not however disappear with advancement in the enterprise. That is why it is inherently accompanied by the absence of conclusive answers, which makes it possible for future generations to try agaio. While that characteristic can be viewed as negative, a more positive perspective would see that as a constant invitation to a display of the congenital fecundity of human reason. Philosophical insights iovite their offspring to juggle all over again with age-old problems. They will perhaps do so with more determination and confidence but also with the certainty that their solutions will be abandoned by the coming generation. It is io ibis attempt to engage reason with all its accretions that philosophy almost in an uncanny manner purveys its enlightemnent; its ability to offer some possible explanations, opening new vistas with regard to otherwise hackneyed issues. But it does so with the grim realization that its solutions and poiots of views are far from beiog final. If reason is the most characteristic quality of man, it means that ibis effort of reason called philosophy should be all embraciog: encompassing all that is of concern to the human being. It is therefore not right to categorize the problem of immortality as arational. If philosophy should continue to retaio some relevance io the human scheme, it should not shy away from problems or concerns that are properly human. And in a world where sciento-technology is registering more progress than. ever io human history, a philosophy that will be taken into account is not one that avoids issues relevant to man because . of the absence of the fioality of answers or solutions. The hunger for immortality in the human being, as Edwards says, is marched by the hunger to possess evidence. If ibis hunger is human, philosophy

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weakens itself by excludiog a priori the exploration of evidence for its reasonableness. Still such exploration so long as philosophy is concerned, should not set out with the undue expectation of arriviog at answers that are unCommon io the philosophical enterprise. It is our conviction that philosophical consideration of immortality must not necessarily issue io proofs iotended to withstand all the scrutioy of critiques. Still the repeated attempt to demonstrate the hnmortality of the soul io St. Thomas Aquioas and other thinkers of his ilk is a richer recognition of the nature of philosophy than the exasperation of other thinkers who would prefer to consign the subject to the realm of the arationa!.

NOTES I

2

Cf. S. C. G., II, c. 68 Cf. ST. la, 12. 12; 79, 3; 88, I & 3, De veritate, 2, 2. For more details about

human knowledge in Aquinas, see Anthony Kenny, Aquinas on Mind, especially chapters 7 - 10. Kenny·s book explores Aquinas' philosophy of mind by commenting on the relevant passages in the first part of the Summa Theologiae. a short but more systematic treatment is found in L. Elders, The Philosophy ofNature ofSt. Thomas Aquinas, ch. 8, pp. 287 - 311. 3 See for instance, F. C Copleston, Aquinas, p. 166; F. D. Wilhelmsen, "A Note on Contraries and the Incorruptibility of the Human Soul in st. Thomas Aquinas," p. 336; for Oscar Cullman's use of the term in his book Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Body? (London: Epward Press, 1958), see F. J. Crosson, ''Psyche and Persona: The Problem of Personal Inunortality," [nternational Philosophical Quarterly, 8 (1968), pp. 164 - 165; G. F. Kreyche, "The Soul-Body Problem in St. Thomas" The New Schosticism, 46 (1972), p.

476. 4 "The Soul-Body Problem in St. Thomas", p. 477: "Without taking these differences into account, he moves quickly to his conclusion affirming the substantiality of the soul. The question may be raised as to the legitimacy of this, for the example of "hand" argues to substance in one meaning (a purely reductive one), whereas his notion of "soul" as substance in the argument given takes on a different and non-reductive meaning. Is this warranted, or did St.

Thomas beg the question in his haste to aUy philosophy with theology?" Kreycbe's critique is correct, but in fairness to St. Thomas, it should be said

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that his reason for enumerating different ways of being substance is in fact intended to show that the meaning of substance when applied to the soul

should not be taken as the normal sense of a whole being a substance, since the soul is only part of the composite. Even if the end-result in fact succeeds in making the soul a substance as other substances, in the passage, which Kreycbe refers to, the intention of Aquinas is very different. 5 ht some passages, Aquinas clearly states that the soul is a spiritual substance without much qualification. See for instance De sprit. creal, II, ad 4: " ... dicendum quod anima secundum suam essentiam est fonna corporis, et non secundum aliquid additum. Tamen in quantum attingitur a corpore, est forma; in quantum vero superexcedit corporis proportionem," dicitur spiritus, vel spiritualis substantia." 6 In works such as the Commentary on the Sentences, etc., he tackles the issue within the text on immortality. In the Summa and Contra gentiles, it is given separate sections, while in Compendium and the Quodlibet, he prefers to deal with the issue inunediately after arguing for immortality. In all cases however the cotulection with immortality, as in the De unilate, is clearly attested to. 7 B. H. Zedler argues that Averroes never denied personal immortality, and that the attacks against him and the distortion of his thought is due in fact to a prejudice derived from Christian religious belief. "Medieval Christians have attributed to Averroes a position that he should perhaps have had. They have done him the honor of assuming that his thought was fully coherent, consistent, and well integrated. Logically, they thought, he should have denied the doctrine of personal inunortality. Such a denial might have been more consistent with his total position than an acceptance of the possibility of the doctrine. But Averroes may not have been the logical well-integrated thinker he was believed to have been." Cf. "Averroes and Immortality," The New Scholasticism, 28 (1954), pp. 438 - (453) 8 The principle that leads William to such an absurd conclusion is stated as follows: ''Non enim est possibile substantiam debilitari quantum" ad esse ex quacumque dispositione cum ex ilia, invalescat in operatione ipsius." (De anima, V. 25, p. 153a.). Elsewhere he uses the positive effect of ill health on vice t~ argue or the same point: drunkenness can be forgotten in times of serious ill health, and thus the soul is burdened with less vice, which means more life for it (Cf. De anima, VI, 5, p. 165a) 9 See for instance chapter 3 of B. Mondin's book St. Thomas Aquinas Philosophy in the Commentary on the Sentences ofPeter Lombard, pp. 58 -74 which is entitled "An Anthropology of Imago die." 10 F. C. Copleston,Aquinas, p. 174 II Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis, 1, 14. 15. 12 Cf. Epistolade anima, Migne (p. L., 194), 1885. \3 Cf. Summa de bono, 265, 10 - 266, 109. 14 See Summa de creaturis, q. 59, a. 2, 21, pp. 524a - 525a: Before outlining the probable arguments, Albert states the main principle of the order of being

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as follows ''Ubique contingit invenire duo extrema inter res naturae, contingit accipere medium. Hoc probatur per id quod habetur in libro de Animalibus, ubi dicit Aristoteles, quod natura non venit de marino ad agreste, nisi per gradus: nec venit a vegetabili ad sensibile, nisi per gradus: et ideo inter animal hebens sensum unum et animal hebens sensus omnes, sunt plura media. Et hoc est quod dicit Dionysius, quod lex divinitatis est per propria media, et per media ultima adducere." IS See O. Lottin. "L'influence litteraire du Chancelier Philippe sur les theologiens prethomiste," RTAM, 2 (1930), pp. 311 - 326. See also Wichi's introduction to his edition of the Summa de bono. Until the edition of this treatise of Philip, the Franciscan Alexander of Hales was taken as the first thinker of the thirteenth-century to elaborate the doctrine of the transcendals. However, Wichi's work has completely revised this claim, and it is uudoubtedly Philip from whom the first outline of the transcendals originated. For more on the doctrine of transcendentals, see Jan Aertsen. Medieval Philosophy and the Transcendentals (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996) (especially the chapter on the beginning of the doctrine of transcendentals with Philip the Chancellor, pp. 25 - 40) 16 Cf. S. T., la,47, I & 2; S. C. G., U, 45. 17 G. SI. Hilaire, op cil., p. 343. " F. D. Wilhelmsen, op. ci!., 337 - 338. 19 A. C. Pegis, At the Origins of the Thomistic Notion of Man (New York: Macmillan), 1963, p. 49. 20 O. Cullmann, Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Body,? p.60. 21 A. Kenny, op. cil., p. 175 22 Reportata. Parisiensa, Opera omnia XI, (repr. Hildesheim, 1969) I. IV, d. 43, q. 2, n. 17: ''Dnde non oportet quod onme quod dicit philosophus, sit demonstratio, quia multa dixenmt philosophi quae acceperunt a prioribus philosophis, persuasi per rationes probabiles eorum et non semper per demonstrativas." 23 Opus oxoniense, I. N, d. 43, q. 2, n, 16: ''frequenter non habebant nisi quasdam probabiles persuasiones vel vulgarem opinionem praecedentium philosophorum. " 24 Ibid., I. U, d. 3, q. 7, n. 4; I. U, p. 279. " Cf. Quodlibet, Opera omnia, XU (repr. Hildesheim, 1969) q. IX, n. 17: "Isto modo compositum perfectum in specie dicitur esse, et solum illud; pars autem ejus dicitur esse per accidens tantummodo, vel magis proprie participative isto esse totius; sic igitur solum compositum est per se ens, accipiendo esse secundo modo; anima autem intellectiva non dicitur subsistens nisi improprie et secundum quid, Beet dicatur ens, et per se ens primo modo accipiendo esse." 26 See above Chapter 3, section, pp. 27 Cf. S. T., la, 75, resp., see above Chapter 3, section pp. 2S Rep. par. I, IV, d. 43, q. 2, n. 15; Rep. par.!. IV, d. 43, quo 2, n. 26.

208

29

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Scriptum in IV libros Sententiarum, in Dons Scotus, Philosophical Writings,

ed Wolters (Edinburgh: Nelson, 1962), p. 158: "planum es~ quod non potest probari desiderium naturale ad aliquid, nisi primo probetur possibilitas in natura ad illud, et per consequens e converso arguendo est petitio principi." 30 Cf. O. Kristeller, Eight Philosophers of the Italian Renaissance (Stanford: Stanford University Press., 1964), p. 79 31 Pomponazzi, De ;mmortalitate, in Abhandlung tiber der Unsterblichkeit der Seele, ed.& tr. B. Mojsiseh (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1990), p. 52: "De veritate quidem huius positionis apud me nulla prorsus est ambiguitas, cum scriptura canonica, quae cuilibet rationi et experimento humane praeferenda est, cum Deo data sit, hane positionem sanciat. Sed quod apud me vertitur in dubium, est, an ista dicta excedant limites naturales sic, quod aliquod vel creditum vel revelatum praesupponant, et confonnia sint dictis Aristotelis, sicut ipse Divus Thomas enuntiat." 32 The problem of the knowledge of the separated soul has also be raised in another treatise where Pomponazzi tried to answer the question "utrum anima sit mortalis." He raises essentially the difficulties which we have seen as accompanying the theory of the soul existing apart from the body, but tries to answer it in line with Thomas in obvious consideration of the reaction of the teaching of the Church on the subject, especially as expressed by the fifth Lateran council. On the knowledge of the separated soul he writes: "Altera difficultas est quod operetur anima a corpore separata: Si nihil, anima erit frustra; nihil autem videtur operari, quia hoc maxime esset intelligere, quia anima per phantasmata intelligit, quae sunt in corpore. Si autem non habet intelligere, nec habet velIe. Dico quod anima, cum est separata, non intelligit per phantasmata, sed per species infusas a Deo; anima enim habet duas operationes; prima est intelligere cum phantasmate, secunda intelligere sine phantasmata quando est separata, sed me remitto Ecclesiae, et notetis quod de inferno et paradiso, non tantum meminit Ecclesia,sed etiam Plato et philosophi. praeter sceleratwn Aristotelem." (Questiones in libro De anima, cited in O. Pluta, op. cit, p. 57) 33 De immortalitate, op. cit., p. 78: "Cum itaque primus modus ponens intelIectivum realiter distingui a sensitivo in mortalibus secundum omnes impugnatus sit modos et secundus ponens, quod intellectivum et sensitivum sunt idem re et tale est simpliciter immortale et secundwn quid mortale, sit valde ambiguus nee convenire videatur Aristoteli, reliquum est, ut ponamus ultimwn modum, qui ponens sensitivum in homine identificare intellectivo dicit, quod essentialiter et vere hoc est mortale, sed secundum quid inunortale." 34 Cf. Ibid, pp. 168 - 174. 3S Ibid., p. 194: "Quare magis essenialiter praemiatur, qui non accidentaliter praemiatur, eo, qui a accidentaliter praemiatur. Eodem quoque modo qui vitiose operatur et accidentaliter non· punitur, minus reditur puniri eo qui accidentaliter non punitur; nam poena culpae maior et deterior est poena

Aquinas, Immortality and the Scope 0/Philosophy

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damni; et cum poena damni adiungitur culpe, diminuit culpam. Quare non Eunitus accidentaliter magis punitur essentialiter eo, qui accidentaliter punitur." 6 Cf. Aquinas Against the Averroists, op. cit., p.1 37 O. Kristeller, Eight Philosophers o/the Italian Renaissance, p.84. 38 Cf. Pomponazzi, De immortalitate., pp. 228 - 236. 39 T. de Vio Cajetan, Opuscula, cited in B. Hallensleben, Communicatio: Anthropologie und Gnadenlehre be; Thomas de Vio Cajetan, (MOOster: Asehendorfliehes Verlag, 1985) p. 194 : "si ratione investigata et ad sensum usque explorationem deducta humanae sententiae quietem tribunt ineruditi problem~ indocilis. tardi, hebetis, stupidique est immortalitatem animorum revocare neutram." 40 Ibid., p. 193: "sit qui iudicat, a rebus iudicandis alienus: nam si illanun aliqua inhaeresit, aut totum sibi iudiciwn inflectit, aut falsam fecit aliarum afferre censuram." 41 • L~c. cit., "His autem iunctum si fuerit, quod intellectualis spiritus desldenum tendat ad esse, non hac aut ilIa aetate conclusum, sed ab ornni tempore elevatum (quoniam intellectu apprehensum solwnmodo cupit bonum, quod ab omnium temponun differentiis, quia universale est, constat esse ab~olutum) consequens est ut is, quo intelligimus et sapimus, animus, in unlVersum tempus effusum habeat vivendi desiderium cum pari tobore, evadere quippe quia non potest, quin aut certo tempore, aut semper esse desideret, cum definito non subsit tempori, reliquum est, ut ad sempitemwn se extendat ." a De anima, 403a 8. 43 "inter fonnas materiales (quae sciliCet educuntur de potentia materiae, ac per hoc dependent secundum esse a materia utpote eanun causa) et fonnas separatas. omnino a materia (quae in seipsis subsistunt, sine onmi commumcatione sui esse in materia, quas angelos dicimus) rationabile medium ponitur fonna secundwn esse independens a materia et tamen conununicans secundum esse in materia (quae ex independentia habet quod non est educta de potentia materiae, et ex corrununicabilitate quod in materia sit et quod materia partieipet esse illius." (Cited in B. Hallensleben, op.eit., p. 197) 44 Zu Rom, 9, 23 in Ibid., p. 200: ''Respondeo me scire quod verum vero non est contrarium. sed nescire haec iungere: sicut nescio mysterium trinitatis sicut nescio animam irrunortalem, sicut nescio verbtun caro factum est. et si~ilia, quae tamen omnia credo." 4S Cf. E. Gilson, History a/Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages, pp. 397:;9; F. Van Steenberghen, La philosophie au XIlIe siecle, 1966, p. 388-391. D. Home, An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, ed. C. W. Hendel (New York: Liberal Arts, 1955), p. 173. 47 See E. Gilson, Etudes sur Ie role de la pensee medievale dans la/ormation du systeme cartesien (paris: J.Vrin, 1951). 48 R. Descartes, Discours de la Methode, sect 5 in Oeuvres de Descartes v. 6 (paris: J. Vrin, 1965), p. 59. '

u:

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The Phqosophical Significance o/Immortality in Thomas Aquinas

G. Berkeley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, ed. C. Turbayne (New York: Liberal Arts), 1957, sec. 141, p. 94 - 95. 50 Cf. D. Hwne, A Treatise 0/ Human Nature (London: 1. M. Dent & Sons, 1951) bk. 1, pt. 4, sec 6, pp. 238 - 249. 51 "Of-the Immortality of the Soul," in D. Hwne, &says, ed. T. H. Green & T. H. Grose (London: Longman, Green and Co., 1907), vol II, p. 399, " Ibid., pp. 400 - 401. " Ibid., p. 402. " Ibid., pp. 43 - 44. ss Ibid., p. 45. 56 Voltaire, Traite de metaphysique, ch. 6, in P. Edwards, ed., Immorta lty (London: Prometheus, 1997) pp. 141- 147. . " Kant, I., Critique of Pure Reason, tr. N. K. Smith (London: Macnullan, 1929), B.222 - B224 " Ibid., B 186 -187; A 147. 59 Ibid., B 424. • 60 Our presentation of the argument here follows L. W. Beck s cle~er restatement of it in his book A Commentary on Kant's Critique of Pracflcal Reason (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1960), pp. 267 - 269. 61 J. S. Mill, "Immortality," in Three Essays on religion, (1878) (repr. London: Greg. International, 1969), p. 199. 62 Ibid., p. 201. 63 lbid.,203. 64 R. Swinburne, "Nature and Immortality of the Soul," in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, v.9, 1998, p. 46. . . os Cf. K. Campbell, Body and Mind (Notre Dame: Notre Dame Umvers>ty Press 1984)' J. Lacks, "The Impotent Mind," Review of MetaphYSICS 17 (1963), pp. i87 - 199; F. Jackson, "Epiphenomenal Qualia," Philosophical Quarterly, 32 (1982), pp. 127 - 136. . 66 See B. Russell's Analysis of Mind (London: Allen and Unwm, 1921), pp.

49

Conclusion

r

100 _ 117; For a critique of Russell's position

cr. W. T. Stace, IIRussell's

Neutral Monism," in The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell, Shilpp, P. A., ed.(New York: Tudor, 1951) See also J. Ognejiofor, Has Bertrand Russell Solved the Problem of Perception? (Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang, 1994), pp. 84 - 87. 67 See The Concept 0/ the Mind, (London: Hutchinson University Press, 1963), pp.1l-24. 68 For a critical discussion of the belief in and the evidence for some of these "experiences," see Paul Edwards (ed.) Immortality, mtroducticin, pp. 1- 70.

The doctrine of immortality, includiog the effort to provide philosophical demonstrations for it, is a pivotal aspect of thirteenth centwy philosophical engagement. It is one of the most detenninant factors in the reception given to the influx of various new doctrines, especially those of Aristotle and his Moslem and Jewish commentators. Its influence is as determinant in Aqninas as in many of his innnediate predecessors and contemporaries despite his spectacular wholehearted acceptance of Aristotelianism, and his efforts to make it accord with the basic tenets of the Christian faith. The acceptance of Aristotle as his philosophical mentor does not therefore hinder his effort to defend immortality from a mainly philosophical standpoint, even though a Platonic background makes such a defence much more consistent. A comprehensive understanding of this aim starts with the reading of Aquinas conception of man, the relationship between soul and body, the nature of the soul and its cognitive activities. Read with innnortality in view, it is clear that Aquinas' major positions with regard to these doctrines can be viewed as a dress rehearsal for the defence of innnortality. Aquinas depends very much on his immediate predecessors in his effort to defend immortality. Even though his Aristotelianism by far surpasses that of any of the thinkers who preceded him in the thirteenth centwy, all the argnments he uses to prove innnortality are traceable to early thirteenth centwy authors. Among the major argnments he employs through the length of his texts include the phenomenon of selfunderstanding in the rational soul; the soul's ability to understand all sensible forms, on account of which it must not have in itself any

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sensible fonn; the desire for endless happiness; the intellects' grasp of immaterial universal, which is a pointer to the nature of the soul itself; the whole process of knowledge, which confirms all the more the spiritual nature of the soul. Through the dependence on his predecessors, Aquinas exhibits some remarkable originality and independence in the use of the principles of the old proofs. One therefore sees SOme progress and evolution in the employment of these arguments. The fact that throughout the six texts on immortality, the argument from God's justice, and that from the implications of contemplation for immortality are used once each indicates a measure of discrimination among the plethora of proofs at his disposal. Even though the absence of any gradation of the arguments would seem to suggest that Aquinas does not reach the level of discrimination attained by Albert the Great or even Alexander of Hales, that there is some sort of selection among the available proofs would speak for the opinion that all the points he makes for immortality are not intended to have equal convincing powers. That would explain why relatively very few arguments are employed in the voluminous Summa theologiae, which is the most mature and most comprehensive of all his works. The curious omission of the popular argument from the order of being can also be explained as a consequence of Aquinas' silent weighing ofthe arguments. Aquinas links all his major arguments to the phenomenon of knowledge. Despite his Aristotelian epistemology, intellectual knowledge is hypostatized in the fonn of universals, and this serves as an independent standpoint to prove immortality. But such arguments as those from the desire for endless existence and the presence of contraries are so linked with the ability of man to know as was never found in any of his predecessors. Thus it is not just that man by nature desires to live forever, but it is his ability to apprehend what he desires that makes the fulfihnent of this desire reasonable and necessary. In outliuing these and other arguments, Aquinas intends to demonstrate convincingly that the rational soul is by nature endowed with immortality. There is no strong reason to doubt that he believes that the project achieved its intended aim. Over and above the specific problems linked with the proofs, the phenomenon of death, the refusal to consider brute souls as candidates for immortality of any type, the state of the soul after its separation from the body, as well as the fact of resurrection and immortality of the body are general problems that follow on the heels of the philosophical reflection on immortality. The solutions to some of these problems, like that of death and resurrection,

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naturally lead deep into the preserves of theology, bUlhe views this fact as making even more comprehensible the reflection on immortality. Our analysis of the arguments indicates that there is none of the major arguments without serious problems. The critique of the details of the arguments does not however lead to the rejection of the relevance of the grand project of reflecting on immortality, both in the context of the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas and in philosophy in general. Aquinas uses the method of enumeration of as many favourable points as possible in support of immortality. The reason behind the employment of this method is the latent belief that the cumulative effects of all these points have more convincing power than the force of any single consideration. This method also goes in consonance with his predecessors with the single exception of Albert the Great. Our review of the earlier critics of Aquinas, Scotus, Pomponazzi and Cajetan shows that none adequately takes notice of this method. Thus they judge the whole project of proving immortality on the strength of individual arguments, especially the argument from desire and the moral consideration of rewarding virtue in an after-life. Many modem thinkers like Descartes, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Voltaire and Mill also concentrate more on the implications of immortality for morality. In all, whether they speak in support or against it, their reflections on the theme are much less rigorous than that of Aquinas and the thinkers of his time. Among these, J. S. Mill appears to be the only person who even as much as refers to the fact of intellectual knowledge in relation to immortality. This lack of rigour overflows into the contemporary epoch where the combined forces of secularization as well as the spectacular progress in empirical science and technology appear to effectively shunt the theme of immortality off from the mainstream of philosophical investigation. Though the character of mind in general continues to be a potent object for contention, in which there is hardly any hope of arriving at any general agreement, it is not surprising that some have, like materialists through the history of philosophy, come to question the reasonableness of erecting an extra category called the soul or the mind over and above the matter of which the body is composed. Despite the various turns in Aquinas' discussion of immortality, the issue remains vital for a balanced understanding of his philosophy, and ~or explanations of the reasons for the positions he takes on particular Issues. Even though these texts on immortality are all in the fonn of proofs, following the tradition of his time, the importance of the theme of immortality should not be consigned to the judgement of how much the proofs are acceptable to the minds of today. The nature of philosophy, in which hardly any issue is settled definitively, should also

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speak for the continued exploration of the subject so long as it remains an important factor in human life. It is in the repeated attempt to return to human concerns and human problems, attempts that ironically never arrive at generally acceptable solutions, that philosophy brings forth its fruit.

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