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Thomas Aquinas OP: “The human soul as source of our intelligence
cannot decompose. Because it is self-subsistent, it doesn’t perish with the
body. Subsistent forms cannot lose themselves”.
Brian Davies OP: “Life after death is possible but we have
seen no decisive philosophical reason for believing in it”.
The Position of Aquinas S.T. !,75, 5,c, & 6, ad 1
articuli V & V1. Utrum anima sit composita ex materia et forma &
Utrum anima humana sit corruptiblis. (trans by T.McDermott pp.108-112. 5-7.
What is Man & Man’s Soul is Immortal).
(1). What it is to be human.
“Individual men are not
simply souls but composed of body and soul. This particular man comprises
this soul in this flesh and these bones; and man as such comprises soul.
flesh and bones, for whatever is essential to every member of a species is essential to the
species. My soul is only a part of my nature, and no more a person than my
hands or my feet are”. (NB. Aquinas identifies ‘form’ (forma) in the case
of human beings with mind (intellectus) and with soul (anima), though each
has its own particular meaning. “Mind is the form of man’s body.....
Whether we call our primary source of understanding mind or soul, it is the
form of the body”).
(2). What the human soul is.
He proceeds to work out what
the human soul is from its activity (on the principle that ‘actio sequitur
esse’); and draws his conclusions
from the activity of knowing. ‘Matter individualises forms” but
“minds know forms as such” and therefore “are not composed of matter and
form” (this is an absolutely crucial building-block of his philosophy.
Understanding it is a sine-qua-non). Therefore, argues Aquinas, employing
Aristotle and Averroes (Ibn Roschid),
“the human soul is not a body. For the mind understands all physical
things..... Mind has an activity of its own in which the body has no part
(by which he means it is an activity which matter qua matter cannot perform
because matter is individual). Now to act on its own, it must exist on its
own, since the way a thing acts depends on the way it exists. So the human
soul or mind though non-bodily must be self-subsistent”.
(3). The human soul is incorruptible/immortal.
“The human soul, then, as
source of our intelligence (intellectivum principium) cannot decompose.
Because it is self-subsistent, it doesn’t perish with the body as the souls
of other animals do; but neither can it decompose itself. For forms are
precisely what make things actual and give them existence. Material things
come to be precisely by being formed and they perish when they lose their
form. (I here include the line
which McDermott left out) But it is impossible that a form should be
separated from itself (Impossible est autem quod forma separatur a seipsa).
Hence subsistent forms cannot lose themselves (impossible est quod forma
subsistens desinat esse) (which could also be translated more graphically
as: ‘there is no end for us. We go on for ever and ever. From the moment of
conception we just are -forever’ –a thought which must disturb or agitate
us all one way or the other. Employing
John Clare, the Northamptonshire poet “we are wed to one eternity”.
This then is the Aquinas argument: Because we know in the sense of knowing
essences or forms or universals, our souls are immaterial, are therefore
subsistent, are therefore immortal. There is an afterlife. It is a philosophical
or rational matter, not a matter of
religious faith.
(5). Knowledge creates desire. The Creator cannot deceive.
Aquinas then takes the argument an
important step further. Knowledge of God creates desire. “There is no way
in which minds can decompose. An indication of this is the special way in
which we manifest the general natural desire for survival. In things which
possess awareness this desire reflects that awareness. Now, whereas the
senses are aware only of here-and–now existence, mind grasps existence as
such, whenever and wherever, and as a result things with minds naturally
desire to live for ever (omne habens intellectum naturaliter desiderat esse
semper) A drive of nature, however, cannot be pointless (Naturale autem
desiderium non potest esse inane)”.
Compare John Clare: ‘In falsehood’s enmity they lie Who sin and tell
us love can die” and Augustine Conf. 1.1)“Thou hast made us for thyself, O
Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee” .
(6). An illustration ‘Lavengro’. By George Borrow, here the
narrator.
In the context of his
wanderings, he meets Jasper Petulengro the gypsy chieftain. “I now wandered along the heath until I
came to a place where, beside a thick furse, sat a man, his eyes fixed
intently on the red ball of the setting sun. “That’s not you, Jasper?”
“Indeed, brother”.
“I’ve not seen you for
years”.
“How should you, brother?”
:“What is your opinion of
death, Mr. Petulengro”, said I, as I sat down beside him.
“My opinion of death,
brother, is much the same as that in the old song of Pharaoh: When a man
dies, he is cast into the earth and his wife and child sorrow over him and
there is an end of the matter”.
“And do you think that is the
end of man?”
“There’s an end of him,
brother, more’s the pity”.
“Why do you say so?”
“Life is sweet,
brother”.
“Do you think so?”
“Think so! There’s night and
day, brother, both sweet things: sun, moon and stars, brother, all sweet
things; there’s likewise a wind upon the heath. Life is very sweet,
brother; who would wish to die?”
“I would wish to die...”
“Wish to die indeed! A Romany
would wish to live for ever”.
“In sickness, Jasper?
“There’s the sun and the stars, brother”.
“In blindness, Jasper”
“There’s the wind on the
heath, brother. If I could only feel that, I would gladly live for ever”.
Somewhere in his writing, I
cannot recall where, Aquinas says that the first and the last instinct of
every living thing is to cling on to life. Jasper Petulengro says that just
to have sight of the sun, moon and stars in the sky or to experience the
wind blowing upon the heath creates the desire to live. Aquinas has his own
angle. “God is the prototuype of everything.... God’s goodness is the goal
of everything ..... God is the ultimate goal sought, for nothing is good
and desirable except by having some likeness to God” (8.44.1. McD. pp
84-85). Knowledge of God, attainable by unaided reason (Vat. Council 1
& Catechism 47) arouses unspeakable desire. And as it is God who is
both the creator of the intellect and the object of the knowledge he makes
possible, there cannot be ‘pointlessness’ (inanitas).
Brian Davies (Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion 1993
Chap 11).
700 years later, following a
very different philosophy and subject to very different cultural
influences, Aquinas’s fellow Dominican, thinks otherwise.
1. He
examines the dualism of Descartes (amplified by H.D. Lewis and R.
Swinburne) ie. a human being is not identifiable with his/her body and
essentially is his/her mind. He concludes it is extremely difficult to
defend that position. Survival as a disembodied self is not provable.
2. He
examines the notion of bodily survival, discussing ideas from John Hick and
Locke; concludes that there is no
conceptual barrier to suppose people can be resurrected; but finds no
proof.
3. He
examines Kant’s idea that the realisation of the Highest Good in the world
is the necessary object of the will determinable by the moral law and that
the Highest Good is only possible on the supposition of the immortality of
the soul and Davis reformulates
this notion by considering, and dismissing, the argument that ‘morality is really pointless if there is
no life after death’. He considers the argument that ‘if God exists, being
powerful and benevolent, he would surely not leave us with nothing but the
prospect of extinction’, and
replies ‘These arguments are also very weak’. The ‘philosopher’ in
Davies says that morality can make perfect good sense without an afterlife;
and that the existence of God does not guarantee the inevitability of life
after death because ‘we do not have to think of God as a moral agent at
all’. As Davies does not deal at all with the arguments Aquinas puts
forward for human immortality but deals only with those of Plato,
Descartes, Locke, Kant and Hick, we must assume he does not think they
merit discussion.
4. Davies
concludes that none of what he calls the ‘classical’ philosophical
arguments for life after death are convincing. Therefore, he says “Perhaps
we can conclude on an agnostic note. Life after death is possible, but we
have seen no decisive philosophical reason for believing in it”. He states
that it is a matter ‘of religious faith involving questions about
revelation and religious doctrine’.
Conclusion..
The differences between the
philosophies represented by Aquinas and Davies are as fundamental as they
come. The logic of Aquinas, arguing deductively from the empirically
experienced nature of knowledge and consciousness, is that there is a
non-material and spiritual principle in man without which religiosity is
impossible. The modern schools Davies represents repudiate that
understanding of knowledge and the logic; he therefore has no rational
grounds for an afterlife, hence for the existence of God, hence for
religion.
Unless the metaphysics, primarily the
epistemology, of the human being are right, we build on sand.
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