Some suggested Paper Topics

(more forthcoming)

1. In his understanding of the human soul, Aquinas comes to assert that the human soul can exist separate from the human body but that when it exists separate from the human body it is not a complete person.  This is a very interesting topic that can be approached in several intriguing ways. One way would be consider what means and what are the implications of asserting that the human soul exists after the death of the body? What might be the metaphysical presuppositions or prior arguments that underlie this doctrine? Is it really an issue of theology and not philosophy?

In 1987 Joseph Owens published a paper in which he discussed the issue and concluded that while Aquinas has a proof for the continuing existence of the soul after death, he does not prove that the existing soul is alive or has vital operations.  (Owens, “Aquinas on the Inseparability of Soul from Existence,” The New Scholasticism 1987)

Gyula Klima published “Aquinas on the Materiality of the Human Soul and the Immateriality of the Human Intellect,” Philosophical Investigations 2009, in which he discussed related issues.

This is a fascinating topic that connects with some of the Avicennian teachings taken and adapted by Aquinas and generally the issue of separability and its metaphysics.

2. 2.How Aquinas developed his conception of the soul in the Commentary on the Sentences from the De Anima and Metaphysics of Avicenna. (The text of Avicenna’s De Anima is available in translations in French from Arabic, Latin from Arabic. It is also available in the Arabic.)
   

3. 3.In the Summa contra gentiles Aquinas tries to explain the way immaterial rational soul can move, touch, affect, etc. the body. (This obviously has some affinity with the problem of Descartes as to how what is immaterial can move what is material. Aristotle too deals with the issue of how intellect can move body in the later chapters of De Anima book 3.) There are several ways to approach this issue. One would be to do a critical analysis of the account in the SCG and to explain just what he rejects and what he accepts there and to explain his own doctrine in detail. But in this case it would be good to consider whether his account still makes any sense to us today. As I said in class, all the various forms of touch and causing of movement from a distance which he discusses as helping by analogy to explain how immaterial soul can move body are from his own imperfect conception of science and the heavens. Today we would say that all his examples are instances of causation among material things and, it would seem, all those examples fail to show how something immaterial can move something material.
   

4. 4.Aquinas deals with the question concerning the kind of body that the human soul deserves in several places (Commentary on the Book of Sentences II, d. 1, q. 2, a. 5; Summa contra Gentiles II, ch. 90; Disputed Questions on the Soul, q. 8; Summa Theologiae I, q. 76, a. 5 and q. 91, a. 1 and a. 3; Commentary on Aristotle’s Treatise on the Soul I, 8). According to Carlos Bazán, Aquinas’s argumentation is difficult to follow and it is not clear enough whether it makes sense or not given that he has to reconcile the principles of natural philosophy and his theological concerns. Would you suggest an interpretation of Aquinas trying to solve the difficulty stated by Bazán?
   

5. Make a comparison on the way in which Avicenna, Averroes and Aquinas explain the origin or creation of the soul. Show the influence of Avicenna and Averroes on Aquinas’s conception of the soul.

6. In some of our discussions we mentioned how ambiguous and problematic seem to be Aquinas’s use of the notion of “participation.” However, in S. Th. q. 75, a. 5, ad. 4, Aquinas spells out the metaphysics of participation and he explains that participation is by efficient causality. Do you think that a metaphysics of participation is necessary for Aquinas in order to clarify the nature of the soul?