Aquinas, Plato, and Aristotle on the Soul's Nature
This paper examines Thomas Aquinas's conception of the human soul in dialogue with the philosophical traditions of Plato and Aristotle. It traces how Aquinas synthesized Aristotle's hylomorphic view of the soul as the form of the body with Platonic ideas about the soul's capacity to survive death. The paper addresses key questions about the soul's nature, its relationship to the body, its immortality, and its status during the interim period between death and resurrection. It also surveys debates between corruptionists and survivalists regarding personal identity after death, and considers how Aquinas navigated these tensions to produce a conception of the soul consistent with Christian doctrine.
- Introduction: Greek and Christian Foundations of the Soul: Greek and Christian roots of soul theory
- The Nature and Existence of the Soul: Comparing Aristotle, Plato, and Aquinas on soul's nature
- The Soul Is Immortal: Arguments for and against the soul's immortality
- Conclusion: Aquinas's Synthesis of Plato and Aristotle: Aquinas blends Platonism and Aristotelianism on the soul
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper consistently triangulates three major thinkers — Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas — keeping the comparative framework clear throughout.
- It grounds abstract metaphysical claims in concrete analogies, such as the captain-and-ship comparison and the slave-boy mathematics example, making difficult concepts accessible.
- The discussion of corruptionists versus survivalists demonstrates engagement with secondary scholarly debates, not just primary philosophical positions.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates philosophical synthesis: it shows how Aquinas did not simply choose between Plato and Aristotle but selectively drew on each tradition to fill the other's gaps. This is modeled through careful attribution — noting, for example, that Aristotle offers no clear post-mortem solution, which compels Aquinas to turn to Platonism. This technique of identifying a thinker's limitations and explaining why a successor supplements them is a hallmark of rigorous philosophy writing.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a brief introduction establishing the Greek and Christian background of soul theory. The body divides into two main sections: the first explores the nature and existence of the soul across all three thinkers, including debates about individual versus universal forms, survivalism, and substance dualism; the second focuses specifically on arguments for the soul's immortality. A concluding paragraph synthesizes Aquinas's integrative approach before the bibliography.
Introduction: Greek and Christian Foundations of the Soul
The Greeks believed that the soul is an essential part of the body since it gives it life. The soul thinks, feels, and chooses. The interaction between body and soul influences each other, giving rise to the concept of dualism. They also viewed the soul as a simple form without any parts. Plato postulated that the soul is separated from the body, and while the body degenerates, the soul departs to form another life at death. Contrastingly, Aristotle considered the soul as a "form" that cannot exist without the body. The following study explicates Aquinas's views of the soul whilst appreciating the contributions of Plato and Aristotle on the topic.
Christian theology subscribes to the concept of life after death, and it was therefore natural to adopt Plato's idea of the soul. However, St. Thomas Aquinas was keen on developing a conception of the soul based on Aristotle's concept while accommodating Christian doctrine. According to Aquinas, the soul was indeed a form, but a special one that could exist briefly without being embodied. In his postulation, human beings are made of body and soul, matter and form, and death entails the separation of the body from the soul. Therefore, the human body ceases to exist while the human soul survives and continues to exist after death. Aquinas described the human soul as the substantial form — unique among the forms of material substances — because it can survive in separation from the body, as it does after death and before resurrection.
Modern views on the soul hold that human beings have souls as an essential part of the body, yet the soul can also be separated from it, as depicted by Aquinas and Plato. However, Aristotelianism argues that humans do not have souls in that sense, and are instead complex beings possessing properties absent in inanimate things. Conceptualizing the soul as something separable from the body therefore implies that it ceases to exist at death once the body stops functioning — a conclusion Aquinas sought to resist.
Bibliography
Fisher, Kendall Ann. "Thomas Aquinas on the Metaphysical Nature of the Soul and its Union with the Body." PhD diss., [University], 2017.
Klein, Terrance W. The Nature of the Soul: The Soul as Narrative. Routledge, 2016.
Melchert, Norman. The Great Conversation: A Historical Introduction to Philosophy. 7th ed. Oxford University Press, 2014.
Nevitt, Turner. "Survivalism, Corruptionism, and Intermittent Existence in Aquinas." History of Philosophy Quarterly 31, no. 1 (2014): 1–19.
Potter, Del, and Richard G. Howe. "The Heart and Soul of Christianity: Does Any 'Body' Know?" (2015): 1–20.
Spruit, Leen. "The Controversy over the Immortality of the Soul." Routledge Companion to Sixteenth Century Philosophy (2017): 225.
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