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Man more Animal than Anything: The Unity in Human Agency
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Abstract
Owen Flanagan takes his claim that ‘we are animals through and through’ to imply ‘our animal side is our only side’. But ‘Cartesianism’ is not the only alternative available: Aquinas’ view of the human soul as a spiritual reality that is essentially the form of the body means that animality characterizes humans in an especially intimate way.
Aquinas recognizes degrees of unity. Homogeneous inanimate substances have an accidental unity; living organisms are essentially one: the self pervades the whole, and the form is closely related to this particular matter. The human soul communicates to the body the being the soul possesses, hence it is more intimate to the body than any bodily quality, while the body is more intimate to the soul than any of the soul's powers. In isolation from the body the soul cannot exercise its own proper activity, which is to know sensible reality.
This high degree of metaphysical unity is manifest at the level of action and experience. Robert Sokolowski's account of speech as a defining feature of human beings illustrates how bodiliness is needed for the soul's intellectual activity. Syntactical speech is formed by and expressive of intelligence as embodied and temporally conditioned.
The human being's superior ontological unity is not refuted by experiences of disintegration. Our soul, in its simplicity, needs to originate a unique gamut of powers; hence the human being can go wrong in many ways. The tension among our powers is experienced acutely because it is within the one soul. Human death is not really unnatural, but is more violent than in the case of the other animals. However, as a final mortification it allows us to offer our selves in conformity to Christ.
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References
1 The Problem of the Soul (New York: Basic Books, 2002), xiv-xv.
2 ‘Humans possess no special capacities, no extra ingredients, that could conceivably do the work of the mind, the soul, or free will as traditionally conceived’ (xii). Also xiii-xvi.
3 xii.
4 Summa Theologiae I, qq. 75-6 (hereafter, STh.); Quaestiones disputatae de anima, qq. 1-2 (hereafter, Disp. de anima); Quaestio disputata de spiritualibus creaturis, a. 2 (hereafter, De spir. creat.); Summa contra Gentiles II, c. 68 (hereafter, ScG). For studies, see Pegis, Anton, St. Thomas and the Problem of the Soul in the Thirteenth Century (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1976)Google Scholar; At the Origins of the Thomistic Notion of Man (New York: MacMillan, 1963). Also Vanni-Rovighi, Sophia, L'Antropologia filosofica di San Tommaso d'Aquino (Milan: Societa editrice vita e pensiero, 1972)Google Scholar; Luyten, Norbert, ‘L'homme dans la conception de S. Thomas’, in L'anthropologie de saint Thomas, ed. Luyten, N. (Fribourg, 1974): 35-53Google Scholar; Bazan, B. Carlos, ‘The Human Soul: Form and Substance? Thomas Aquinas's Critique of Eclectic Aristotelianism’, Archives D'Histoire Doctrinale et Litteraire du Moyen Age 64 (1997): 95-126Google Scholar; Stump, Eleonore, Aquinas (London: Routledge, 2003), Part IIGoogle Scholar; Brock, Stephen, ‘The Physical Status of the Spiritual Soul in Thomas Aquinas’, Nova et Vetera 3.2 (2005), 231-258Google Scholar.
5 ST, I, q. 11, a. 1.
6 ‘Non autem minus est aliquid unum ex substantia intellectuali et materia corporali quam ex forma ignis et eius materia, sed forte magis: quia quanto forma magis vincit materiam, ex ea et materia efficitur magis unum.’ Translations are my own, unless otherwise noted. I translate forte here as ‘as it happens’, which seems more appropriate, given the context, than James Anderson's ‘perhaps’. See Summa Contra Gentiles. Book Two: Creation, Trans. James Anderson (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), p. 205. Thomas immediately gives a universal reason for his claim, which makes it unlikely that he would express the claim itself tentatively. This is the only passage I know of in Thomas's corpus that explicitly affirms human hylomorphic unity as greater than the unity of other composite substances.
7 ScG, II, c. 72; ST, I, a. 77, a. 2.
8 This presence of substantial form in the whole and in all the parts reveals natural beings as greater unities than artifacts, wherein the form of the whole (like a house) only arranges, and does not actualize the parts as such. See ST, I, q. 76, a. 8; V Metaphysicam, lect. 7, n. 851; X Metaphys., lect. 1, nn. 1922, 1926. Thomas develops this notion of natural unity into an articulation of substantial form as wholly present in the whole body and in each part. He calls this a totality, or wholeness, of essential perfection, e.g., the wholeness of a substance as possessing its proper form and matter. Such wholeness is distinguished from wholeness of quantity and of power. See Disp. de anima, q. 10; De spir. creat., a. 4; ScG II, c. 72. This essay owes much to Thomas's discussions in these texts.
9 The terms ‘continuum’ and ‘whole’ as I use them in this paper are originally suggested by Aristotle in Metaphysics V. See Thomas's commentary in V Metaphys., lect. 8, nn. 870-71; X Metaphys., lect. 1, nn. 1922-28; Disp. de anima, a. 10, resp.; De spir. creat., a. 4, resp.
10 V Metaphys., lect. 8, nn. 870-71. Using Thomas's geometrical examples, we could say that the living organism (the whole) is more like a circle, which is complete and lacks nothing; while the non-living substance (the continuum) is more like the straight line, which can be extended indefinitely.
11 The distinction between what I call continuums and wholes is insightfully discussed by Jonas, Hans, ‘Biological foundations of individuality,’ in Philosophical Essays: From Ancient Creed to Technological Man (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1974)Google Scholar. Jonas emphasizes the self-actualization of living organisms.
12 Plants and certain animals like worms, as Thomas notes, possess a trace of the homogeneity proper to non-living substances, since various forms of sheerly quantitative division can entail new instances of the same substance. Still, the fact that prior to such division a single soul is at work indicates that the homogeneity present in these organisms is more of a merely potential sort than it is in non-living substances. See De spir. creat., a. 4, ad 19.
13 Before arguing for God as supremely one, in ST, I, q. 11, a. 4, Thomas argues that God is one, i.e., that there is one God, in a. 3. Here Thomas is showing that nothing like continuity or commonness exists in the Divine Nature. The Divine cannot be present in pieces or in instances. Compared to their Creator, all creatures possess something resembling continuity, since they all participate (analogously) in being (esse). They are all instances (analogously) of being (ens). Bodily living creatures, while instances of a kind, are at least not pieces.
14 See Disp. de anima, q. 8, ad 11.
15 Ibid., q. 10, resp.; De spir. creat., a. 4, resp.
16 ST, I, q. 75, aa. 1, 2, 5; q. 76, a. 1.
17 Disp. de anima, q. 14, resp.
18 De spir. creat., a. 4, ad 17; ScG II, c. 49, n. 2.
19 Quaestiones disputatae de potentia dei, q. 10, a. 5, obj. 6, ad 6 (hereafter, De potentia); ST, I, q. 14, a. 2, ad 1.
20 ScG, III, c. 46, n. 2: ‘Ipsa autem anima semper sibi adest actu, et nunquam in potentia vel in habitu tantum.’
21 Quaestiones disputatae de veritate, q. 1, a. 9, resp.: ‘…illa quae sunt perfectissima in entibus, ut substantiae intellectuales, redeunt ad essentiam suam reditione completa: in hoc enim quod cognoscunt aliquid extra se positum, quodammodo extra se procedunt; secundum vero quod cognoscunt se cognoscere, iam ad se redire incipiunt, quia actus cognitionis est medius inter cognoscentem et cognitum. Sed reditus iste completur secundum quod cognoscunt essentias proprias…’ (hereafter, De veritate).
22 De spir. creat., a. 1, ad 12.
23 Jonas discusses the centrality of selfhood to living organisms in ‘Biological foundations of individuality’ and in his essay ‘Is God a Mathematician?’ in The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology (Northwestern University Press, 1966), pp. 64-98.
24 One way to see the irrational animal's subjection to continuity is in its generation, through which the whole being, substantial form and matter, is brought forth by way of physical separation from parents. In human generation, only the material principle is so divided. See De potentia, q. 3, aa. 9-11.
25 ScG, II, c. 68.
26 De spir. creat., a. 2, ad 8.
27 Disp. de anima, q. 9.
28 ‘Hoc autem convenienter diceretur si eodem modo illud esse materiae esset sicut est substantiae intellectualis. Non est autem ita. Est enim materiae corporalis ut recipientis et subiecti ad aliquid altius elevati: substantiae autem intellectualis ut principii, et secundum propriae naturae congruentiam.’
29 ‘…inter omnia, esse est illud quod immediatius et intimius convenit rebus, ut dicitur in Lib. de causis; unde oportet, cum materia habeat esse actu per formam, quod forma dans esse materiae, ante omnia intelligatur advenire materiae, et immediatius ceteris sibi inesse’ (Disp. de anima, q. 9, resp).
30 ‘Corpus autem quod est in genere substantiae, habet formam substantialem quae dicitur corporeitas, quae non est tres dimensiones, sed quaecumque forma substantialis ex qua sequuntur in materia tres dimensiones; et haec forma in igne est igneitas, in animali anima sensitiva, et in homine anima intellectiva’ (De spir. creat., a. 3, ad 14); ‘…licet anima non habeat corporeitatem in actu, habet tamen virtute, sicut sol calorem’ (ad 16).
31 Thomas remarks that the human soul gives not simply actual being to the body, but being of a certain sort, namely, life, and life of a certain sort, namely, in an intellectual nature. De spir. creat., a. 11, ad 14.
32 Disp. de anima, q. 1, resp., ad 3; q. 8, resp.
33 ‘…intelligere est propria operatio animae, si consideretur principium a quo egreditur operatio; non enim egreditur ab anima mediante organo corporali, sicut visio mediante oculo, communicat tamen in ea corpus ex parte obiecti; nam phantasmata, quae sunt obiecta intellectus, sine corporeis organis esse non possunt’ (Disp. de anima, q. 1, ad 11).
34 De veritate, q. 1, a. 9, resp.; q. 8, a. 6, resp.; ST, I, q. 55, a. 2, resp.
35 Disp. de anima, q. 10, ad 1: ‘Et propter hoc totum corpus, cui respondet principaliter anima ut forma, est organum…’
36 ST, I, q. 84, a. 7, resp.; q. 85, a. 1, resp.
37 For an excellent discussion of the human intellect's natural partnership with the physical realm, see Brock, ‘The Physical Status of the Spiritual Soul.’
38 See Sokolowski, , The Phenomenology of the Human Person (Cambridge University Press, 2008CrossRefGoogle Scholar). I focus on Sokolowski because he offers a recent, very readable attempt to recapitulate and develop major strands of the phenomenological tradition. Sokolowski looks primarily to Husserl and his focus on the categorial dimension of properly human activity (e.g., Phenomenology of the Human Person, 215).
39 Disp. de anima, q. 9, resp.
40 ST, I, q. 77, a. 2. Alongside wholeness of quantity and wholeness of essence, Thomas distinguishes wholeness of power (Disp. de anima, q. 10, resp.). Considered in terms of power, the substantial form of an organism is wholly present only in the organism as a whole; it is partially present in the eye, via the power of vision, and partially present in a different way in the ear, via the power of hearing, and so on.
41 Hereafter, PHP.
42 PHP, 1.
43 Ibid., 3.
44 PHP, 62. Thomas does not tend to put things this way, though such a description may be in conformity with his principles. Certainly Thomas holds that human thought always involves phantasms and always involves words, though the exterior word, while better known to us, is consequent upon the interior word in the act of understanding itself; see ST, I, 85, a. ad 3; De veritate, q. 4, a. 1, resp.; a. 2, ad 4. In ST, III, q. 60, ad 6, Thomas states that by means of words we can express our thoughts with greater precision, implying that speech (vocal or written or silent) is a human telos. He gives a kind of priority to words received from others in DV, q. 11, a. 2, ad 11, while comparing knowledge received through teaching to knowledge acquired directly from things. See also I Peri hermeneias, lect. 2, where Thomas discusses the social dimension of man's rationality and the priority of vocal over written words. Helpful discussions, with bibliography, of the role of words in Thomas are Hochschild, Joshua, ‘Mental Language in Aquinas?’ in Intentionality, Cognition, and Mental Representation in Medieval Philosophy, ed. Klima, Gyula (New York: Fordham University Press, 2015), pp. 29-45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Sokolowski, PHP, 286-303.
45 Thomas distinguishes human action, properly speaking, from any action of a human, where the former refers to an action sourced in conscious, free agency, while the latter refers to something that happens in one, or to one, or in some way as proceeding from one, but in less than human fashion. See ST, I-II, q. 1, a. 1. Human persons, thanks to their spiritual powers, are characterized by the ability to act of themselves, deliberately. Still, a human action, while spiritually informed, is not the act of a spirit. Thomas insists equally on the intellectual act as spiritual, but also on the agent of the intellectual act as the human person, soul and body. The experiential cornerstone for his entire philosophical analysis of the human being is Augustine's simple observation that “I understand myself understanding”: Intelligo me intelligere (ST, I, q. 76, a. 1; q. 87, a. 3, sc; Disp. de anima, q. 2; De spir. creat., a. 2). Augustine's observation is the sort of statement that nicely exemplifies the “return to self” characteristic of human wholeness; it is a perfect example of Sokolowski's first-person declarative. Thomas employs Augustine's observation as evidence for his own argument that the spiritual soul is indeed the form of the body. Thus, the ‘I’ who experiences ‘myself’ as understanding is body and spirit. Human action, while specifically differentiated by the dimension of personal agency, essentially possesses a bodily dimension. Through his own interpretation of Augustine's reflection, Thomas offers a phenomenological principle of fundamental importance and fruitfulness. The latter part of this essay is an exploration of that principle, focusing on the fact that the ‘I’ who experiences itself understanding is bodily even within the experience of itself as understanding.
46 PHP, 35-41.
47 Ibid., 14.
48 Ibid., 9.
49 Ibid., 18-19.
50 Ibid., 31-34, esp. 34.
51 PHP, 55-58. See also Braine, David, The Human Person: Animal and Spirit (London: Duckworth, 1993) pp. 440-445Google Scholar.
52 PHP, 55-58.
53 ST, I, q. 85, a. 5, ad 3, where Thomas notes the similarity between the unity of a predication and of a hylomorphic composite. Also I Peri herm., lect. 2, which discusses speech as signifying the conceptions of the intellect.
54 Human practical activity is syntactical in its ‘ability to do this in view of that […] It is only because the agent has entered into linguistic syntax that his other practices can become syntactical as well.’ Thus, the ‘eponymous use of reason’ is speech, and ‘[o]ther rational activities are analogous to speech’ (PHP, 101). See also pp. 238-270.
55 ST, I, q. 77, a. 2.
56 ST, I-II, q. 9, a. 2.
57 Ibid.; ScG III, c. 6, n. 8.
58 See also Disp. de anima, q. 8, ad 7. At the end of the respondeo to q. 11, Thomas notes that one piece of evidence for the unity of vegetative, sensitive, and rational soul is the fact that the operation of one power, when strong, can overwhelm that of another.
59 Ibid., q. 1, ad 14; q. 8, resp.
60 c. 41.
61 Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation 2.7, Ed. Mary Gottschalk (Princeton: Scepter, 1998), 104-105. In this passage More refers to the spiritual classic Imitation of Christ, by Thomas à Kempis.