St. Thomas and the Concept of Soul in Thirteenth Century
S t. Thomas Aquinas lived in the golden ages of the mediaeval period which includes the long historical period from the fall of the Roman Empire until the beginning of modern times.[1] Since the mediaeval philosophy focused mainly to explain the Christian faith in a rational way, Thomas too, being a Christian philosopher,[2] dedicated his life at the service of the Church. Therefore, he like any other Church fathers tried his best to explain and defend the doctrines of the Church on human soul, but not free from the influence of the early Greek thinkers.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
With the rise of Christianity in the history, Western Philosophy developed more as a part of Theology than as an independent branch of enquiry.[3] Independent thought was extremely rare even in theology, because the theology itself remained under the long shadow of St. Augustine.[4] Since Augustinian philosophy was based on that of Plato, all the Church fathers of the early Middle Ages alienated other philosophical ideas, including Aristotelian philosophy from the realm of Christian thinking. From about 1100 to 1400, it was scholasticism, a system of thought, which dominated the mediaeval philosophy.[5] During this period, the increasing contact with the Arab and Byzantine civilizations brought back much learning that had been lost to Europe since the end of Roman Empire and the scholars translated Greek and Arabic writings from these civilizations into Latin and studied their meanings.[6] Most of these came through the works of the Arabic philosophers Avicenna and Averroës. It is rightly said, therefore, if Aristotle entered the West as the Philosopher, Averroës followed him as his Commentator,[7] but his commentaries often altered the meaning of the original ideas.[8] The scholars argued whether Aristotle’s teachings opposed those of the Church, and it was from these discussions and writings the Scholasticism grew.[9]
St. Thomas too came into came into contact with the ideas of Aristotle especially through his master St. Albert the Great,[10] another Dominican Doctor of the Church. For Thomas, the greatest among the scholastics, Aristotelianism was an instrument of theological and philosophical analysis and synthesis.[11] Thus Thomas preferred to choose the Aristotelian principles to explain the doctrines of the Church, without denying the Augustinian explanations of the dogmas. Therefore, Thomas’ philosophical position was the doctrine of Aristotle rethought by a powerful mind in the service of Christian theology.[12] He found Aristotelian principles better to explain the nature of human soul and human person than Platonic views.
CONCEPT OF SOUL AND ITS DEGREES
Platonic school taught soul as a separate substance, as something other than the body and that it animates and thus as something that lives on after bodily death.[13] Following Plato, Augustine had defined man as a rational animal which makes use of a mortal body whereas Thomas found the autonomy of soul from the body unacceptable.[14] Thomas taught that the soul and the body make up one single being and that they have not each a distinct being,[15] the teaching which was similar to that of Aristotle.[16]
According to Aristotle, there were three degrees of souls: vegetative soul, sensitive soul and rational soul. Vegetative soul present in the plants has vegetative powers which include life, growth and reproduction, and the sensitive soul of the animals has the sensory powers such as self motion, sensation, memory and various emotions, whereas the rational soul of man, the highest degree of soul, has the intellect and the will; higher forms of soul possess not only the specific powers distinctive of their own level of being but also the powers that lower order souls possess, yet they possess them in their own distinctive way.[17]
ENSOULMENT
Many of the early philosophers believed that the soul was not infused into the body at the very moment of Conception, but later on. This idea was still prevalent in the thirteenth century that the human soul was not infused into the foetus until 40 or 80 days after its conception.[18] At least in one place Aquinas follows it saying that the rational soul is infused at 40 days for males and at 90 days for females. The main basis for this concept was in the Aristotelian view that the menstrual blood provided by the female is nonliving and relatively lacking in organization or differentiation.[19]
For St. Thomas, the soul is either created by God directly (which is the current position of Catholic Church) or, if it were produced by transplanting, it would be derived from the father rather than from the mother, following the teaching of Aristotle that the male gives the soul and the female the body.[20] The main question he faced was that of how the male causes the generative process which occurs in the body of the female. For this, he follows the Aristotle’s solution that the male is the principle active cause of the generative process, but this cause acts through a medium, the semen, which is the instrumental cause. There is a (vital) spirit in the semen which is frothy, as is attested by its whiteness.[21] “And after the sensitive soul, by the power of the active principle in the semen, has been produced in one of the principle parts of the thing generated, then it is that the sensitive soul of the offspring begins to work towards the perfection of its own body, by nourishment and growth.”[22]
CONCLUSION
The teachings of Aristotle had influenced Thomas to a great extent that he always referred him ‘the Philosopher.’ In some matters like the embryonic science and Ensoulment Thomas had no other choice than to depend upon ‘the Philosopher’ who had written on the matter, since, for Thomas, he was more scientific than Plato. These ideas were there behind the philosophical ideas of Thomas.