St. Thomas Aquinas' Anthropological Theory: Soul and Body

St. Thomas Aquinas' Anthropological Theory of the Middle Ages

**Life and Works of St. Thomas Aquinas**

St. Thomas Aquinas was a Christian theologian, the main representative of the scholastic tradition, and founder of the Thomist school of theology and philosophy. He wrote numerous works, among which are his commentary on Aristotle's thought and theological works such as Summa Theologica, Summa Contra Gentiles, and De Ente et Essentia.

**The Conception of Man in St. Thomas Aquinas**

The conception of man in St. Thomas is based on Aristotle's conception. But, as with the other aspects of his thought, it must be reconciled with the basic beliefs of Christianity: the immortality of the soul and creation. The human being is a substance composed of soul and body, representing the soul and body as the subject of the substance. Contrary to the assertion of some of his predecessors that human beings exist in several significant ways, such as the vegetative and sensitive, the Italian hylomorphic tradition affirms the unity of human beings. This unity constitutes a unit in which there is a substantial one, the rational soul, which reports directly to the immediate and raw materials constituting the composite "man."

Just as Aristotle had conceived the existence of a single human soul, which includes vegetative and sensitive functions, St. Thomas says that one soul is the one that regulates all functions of the "man" and determines its corporeality.

**The Soul as a Vital Principle and Principle of Knowledge**

The soul is conceived, therefore, as a vital principle and a principle of knowledge. However, he rejects the Platonic interpretation of the relationship between soul and body, meaning that Plato had attributed to the soul and not the human being these vital and cognitive functions. In contrast, the hylomorphic interpretation of St. Thomas allows you to allocate these functions to the "man": the human being, the individual, lives and knows, understands, reasons, imagines, and feels. This is impossible without a body, so it must belong to the "man" with the same right that it belongs to the soul.

**The Relationship Between Soul and Body**

The relationship between the soul and the body is a natural relationship. We have a classification similar to the Aristotelian, but there are not three types of soul, but three faculties of the rational soul itself:

• Vegetative functions: The soul covers everything related to nutrition and growth.
• Sensory functions: The soul regulates everything related to the operation of the external senses.
• Rational functions: St. Thomas distinguishes rational functions as powers of the soul, the intellect, and the will.

**The Immortality of the Soul**

St. Thomas defended the immortality of the soul by relying on its immateriality and the human desire for immortality—a desire implanted by God that cannot be in vain.