ST.

THOMAS ON THE INCORRUPTIBILITY

OF THE HUMAN SOUL: A REASSESSMENT
OF HIS ARGUMENT FROM NATURAL DESIRE
EIKE-HENNER W. KLUGE

of the first part of his Summa Theologica,

I n QUESTION 7 5 , ARTICLE 6
St. Thomas asks “whether the human soul is incorruptible.” After
considering various arguments pro and con, he answers in the
affirmative as follows:
[E]ach thing naturally desires its own manner of being. Now, in
things that have knowledge the desire follows the knowledge. A
sense, however, does not know being except as here-and-now. By
contrast, the intellect apprehends being in an absolute sense and in
respect of all time. It follows that all things that have an intellect
naturally desire to exist always. However, a natural desire cannot be
in vain; consequently an intellectual substance is incorruptible.*1

Historically, this argument has been extremely negatively

evaluated, most famously perhaps by John Duns Scotus who said:
Every argument based on natural desires seems to be inconclusive,
for to construct an effective argument it would be necessary to show
either that nature possesses a natural potency for eternal life, or that
the knowledge which immediately gives rise to the desire . . . is not
erroneous but in accord with right reason. The first alternative is the
same as the conclusion to be established; the second is more difficult
to prove and is even less evident than the conclusion.2

I believe that Scotus’s critique may not be as telling as traditionally

has been thought. Specifically, I believe that the ontological grounding
of the intellective soul’s capacity to apprehend being—which

Correspondence to: Eike-Henner W. Kluge, Philosophy Department,

University of Victoria, P. O. Box 3045, Victoria, BC, Canada V8W 3P4.
1Summa Theologica I, q. 75, a. 6.
" Ordinatio, IV, dist. 43, q. 2 (Opera Omnia [Vatican City: Typis Polyglottis
Vaticanis, 1950-2013]); translation following Alan B. Wolter. John Duns Scotus:
Philosophical Writings (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1962). For another famous
rejection, see Pietro Pomponazzi, Tractatus de immortalitate animae:
Abhandlung uber die Unsterblichkeit der Seele, ed. Burkhard Mojsisch
(Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1990).
The Review of Metaphysics 68 (June 2015): 741-57. Copyright © 2015 by The Review of
Metaphysics.
742 EIKE-HENNER W. KLUGE

distinguishes it from nonintellective souls—plays a much more

im portant role in Aquinas’s argum ent than Scotus appears to
acknowledge, and that when this ontological grounding is granted and
analyzed in term s of the A ristotelian m etaphysics of substantial forms,
St. Thom as’s argum ent is different from and m uch stronger than Scotus
thinks. I also believe th at if the notion of natural desire is understood
in ontological term s—and I shall give reasons for saying th at St. Thomas
understood it in that fashion—Scotus’s dismissal of its role may have to
be reexamined. Finally, I believe th at if St. Thom as’s argum ent is
unpacked as an enthymeme th at assum es the reader’s familiarity with
Aristotle’s discussion of the soul in the De anima, w hat em erges overall
is an argum ent th at is quite different from how it has traditionally been
understood.
In w hat follows, I shall reconstruct St. Thom as’s argum ent using
contem porary conceptual tools, and I shall make three assumptions:
first, th at the w ord “follows” (sequitur ) used by St. Thomas to relate
incorruptibility to natural desire should be understood in a logical,
rather than a causal sense; second, th at the notion of a natural desire
should be understood in an ontological rather than a subjective
psychological sense; and third, th at the claim about the relationship
betw een natural desire and incorruptibility should be seen as a claim
about w hat is entailed by the ontology of hum an souls as substantial
forms, not as a claim about the validity of natural desires in
psychological term s. These assum ptions will be defended either by
reference to St. Thom as’s own words or by relating them to conceptual
features inherent in the theories of Aristotle to which St. Thomas
subscribed.

II

To begin with the w ord “follows.” The w ord that St. Thomas uses,
sequitur , has several m eanings in medieval Latin. One is to associate
two states of affairs in a sequential tem poral relationship, w here one
succeeds the other in time; another is to relate states of affairs in causal
term s, w here one m em ber in the sequence is causally dependent on the
other; and a third is to associate the relata in logical term s, w here w hat
“follows” is logically implied by and derivable from the other.
THE INCORRUPTIBILITY OF THE SOUL 743

The relationship when the term is understood in the first two

senses is fundamentally different from the relationship as understood in
the third sense. Both the first and the second type of relationship
depend, so to speak, on the laws of nature. If the laws of nature were
different, neither relationship would hold. Since the laws of nature are
not logically necessary—no logical contradiction would be involved in
denying them—the relationship between the entities that follow each
other in either of the first two senses of “follow” is contingent in nature.
By contrast, the only way in which one could legitimately say that
the relationship of “following” as understood in the third sense is
deniable would be if the nature of the subject of the protasis did not
logically entail the nature of the subject of the apodosis. Thus, being a
swan does not follow from being a bird, and being female does not
follow from being a human being, whereas being risible would follow
from the premise of being human since being human logically contains
the characteristic of risibility.
What I am suggesting, therefore, is that St. Thomas’s claim that
“desire follows . . . knowledge” should be understood as a claim about
the logic of desire and the logic of knowledge as grounded in the
ontology of the substantial form of human beings as intellective agents,
and that it is not a claim about any sort of temporal or causal
relationship.
To further explain the implications of understanding the argument
this way I shall begin by showing that a failure to take the subtleties of
St. Thomas’s analysis of the ontology and logic of substantial forms into
account will lead to a serious misunderstanding of the “following”
relationship and thus of the argument itself. I shall then offer a more
nuanced interpretation and show how, understood in the proposed
manner, it completely changes our understanding of what St. Thomas
was saying in the above passage and leads to a different assessment of
his argument.

Ill

According to the usual interpretation of St. Thomas on substance

and substantial forms, he construed material substances as ontological
complexes consisting of a substantial form and a material substratum
744 EIKE-HENNER W. KLUGE

or stuff in which the substantial form is instantiated. Further, he

understood a substantial form as the essence of a substance; that is, as
the principle of structure that makes a thing the kind of thing it is and
that places it into a specific species. On this understanding, substantial
forms are shared by all members of the same species, whereas the
substrata of the individual members of a species are unique to each
member respectively.
Further, St. Thomas is usually understood as holding that
substantial forms are themselves ontologically complex in the sense
that they are constituted of the various properties that a substance must
have in order to be a member of the relevant species. These latter
properties are called the essential properties of the members of the
species. Thus, the substantial form of humanity is constituted of
animality, bipedicity, rationality, risibility, and so on; the substantial
form of equininity is constituted of quadrupedicity, having a mane, a tail
consisting of hair, being an ungulate, and so on. By contrast, accidental
properties are properties that a substance may have but need not have
in order to belong to a particular species. Thus accidental properties of
human beings are their particular skin color, their specific height and
even the particular thoughts that they might have at a given moment;
the accidental properties of horses include such things as the specific
color of their coats, whether they are fast or slow runners, the particular
size of their hooves, and so on.
At first glance, this suggests that St. Thomas’ general ontological
assay of a material substance of a particular species would be
symbolised as follows:

Fig. 1
E= [S {(<&, V , . .. Q ...) a, p, . . . )}]

where E stands for the substance and S stands for the substratum that
instantiates the substantial form and the relevant accidental forms; the
uppercase Greek letters between the round brackets stand for essential
properties that make up the substantial form and the lowercase Greek
letters stand for accidental properties of the substance.
However, this understanding of St. Thomas’s metaphysics of
substance can be seriously misleading because it may give the
impression that the ontological constituents of substantial forms are
THE INCORRUPTIBILITY OF THE SOUL 745

first-order properties. Not only would this be incorrect, it would also

obscure the logic of St. Thom as’s entire train of reasoning in the passage
under consideration. That is to say, the analysis would be correct
insofar as St. Thomas believed th at substantial forms are not
ontologically simple but complex, and therefore the symbolization in
Fig. 1 would be correct insofar as it would capture this fact. However,
it would obscure the fact th at as far as St. Thomas was concerned, the
properties that individual substances actually have as numerically
distinct and unique entities are never general properties. They are
always particular.
That is to say—and to continue w ith the exam ple of horses—the
essential properties of a horse are qualities like being quadruped, being
an ungulate, having a flowing mane, and so on. All m em bers of the
species horse share in these properties, although they generally differ in
how they express them. Thus the proportions of their legs and their
precise m usculature and placem ent, the exact constitution of their
hoofs and their size and color, and so on, differ from horse to horse.
With due alteration of detail, the sam e thing is true about the accidental
properties of horses. Although all horses will have accidental properties
like being in a certain place, having a certain age, or being fat or
em aciated, they all differ in the particular way in which they have these
properties.
Therefore the properties th at are represented in Fig. 1 really are
second-order properties, and Fig. 1 could not possibly be a correct
representation of St. Thom as’s ontology of an individual substance
unless the properties of individual substances w ere second-order
properties. And that, as was said a m om ent ago, is not the case. They
are always first-order properties.
Probably the sim plest way of capturing this point is to say th at St.
Thom as distinguished betw een an ontological analysis of a type of
substance and an ontological analysis of an in d iv id u a l substance. The
proper way of symbolically representing St. Thom as’s ontological assay
of a particular type of (material)'3substance would then be as follows:

3 Henceforth the qualifier “material” will be understood, since this

discussion does not deal with St. Thomas’ analysis of separate substances such
as angels.
746 EIKE-HENNER W. KLUGE

Fig. 2

E = [S {(<b‘ ", W1 ",... Q1 •"...) a 1"”, p1 ", ...))]

w here the uppercase Greek letters stand for essential properties but
their superscripts make it clear th at the properties are second-order
properties, and the low ercase Greek letters with their superscript
ranges indicate a similar thing for the accidental properties.
As will becom e clear a little later, this distinction is important.
However, to continue sketching St. Thomas on substances, his claim
that individual m aterial substances are particular entities with quite
specific properties is also apt to be misleading unless it is carefully
explained, because it glosses over the fact th at the notion of
particularity itself can be understood in tw o ways. U nderstood in one
way, it refers to being particularized to the greatest degree possible as
that particular kind of property. Thus, blue is a general property,
w hereas a particular shade, intensity, and saturation of blue, w here no
further specification is possible, is the m ost particularized possible way
of being blue. In his De ente et essentia, Aquinas characterized this
difference as the distinction betw een w hat he called a “determ inable”
on the one hand and a “determ inate” on the o th e r.4 In th at sense, being-
blue is a determinable, w hereas the particular shade, intensity, and
saturation of being-blue is a determinate.
A second way of understanding the notion of particularity is in
reference to m atter. Aquinas considered m atter to be the principle of
individuation. Consequently, every m aterial substance is numerically
unique because of its m atter, and every form th at is instantiated in a
m aterial substratum is numerically unique qua instantiated fonn or
instance.
Given these distinctions, one can then express Aquinas’s position
on the ontological nature of substantial forms m ore accurately by saying
that substantial forms are com plexes or m atrices of second-order
properties,56w here each of the latter determ ines a range of first-order

4 St. Thomas Aquinas, De ente et essentia, 1.42 and following. The

discussion in De ente 2 amplifies on this.
6The questions why and how they are united into a complex or matrix will
be addressed later, when dealing with the logical interrelationship between the
second-order properties that make up a substantial form. Arguably, and as an
aside, in his analysis of this phenomenon Aquinas is here anticipating Leibniz’s
notion of compossibiity.
THE INCORRUPTIBILITY OF THE SOUL 747

properties, and where the properties that an individual member of the

species actually has are particularized in both the first and the second
sense of that term. They are particularized in the first sense because the
properties that an individual substance has are always qualitatively
absolutely specific; and they are particularized in the second sense
because they are instantiated in the particular individual substratum of
that particular individual substance.
Consequently the ontological structure of an individual particular
substance that actually exists would be symbolized something like this:
Fig. 3
E = [S. {(fc™1"*, W j ", • • • ...) amaL", (3ma, n, ...)}]

where Sa stands for the substratum that is numerically unique to the

individual substance E, and the subscripts of the Greek letters
characterize the relevant second-order property as a particularized
property in both of the above senses of “particularized.”

IV

With this as background, let us now turn St. Thomas’s distinction

between the senses and the intellect and their respective manners of
apprehension.
St. Thomas followed Aristotle’s analysis of sensation and
understanding in that he considered both as modes of apprehension,
where to apprehend something is to have the form of what is
apprehended in the sense or the intellect respectively. If one were to
put this in modern terminology, one would say that a form is a principle
of structure; that an apprehending agency is an entity that has a higher-
order form or structure which as such is indeterminate with respect to
a range of more specific or lower-order states that it can instantiate; and
that to apprehend something is to have this range of states
particularized to a specific state by acquiring the form of what is
apprehended.6
This does not mean that when the senses apprehend a fragrant
green pine tree they literally become a green, hard, scented tree. After

6 See St. Thomas Aquinas, ST I, q. 14, a. 2, ad 3, and Quaestiones

Quodlibetales: Quodlibetum V, q. 5, a. 2, ad 3; and so on.
748 EIKE-HENNER W. KLUGE

all, once again following Aristotle, Aquinas m aintained th at “the form is

in the receiver after the nature of the receiver.” Rather—and putting the
point by using St. Thom as’s terminology—it m eans th at the
determ inable which is the sense is (qualitatively) determ ined to a
particular state th at is formally the sam e as th at of the sensed object.
With due alteration of detail, the sam e schem a applies to the intellect.
The intellect th at apprehends is a determ inable th at is determ ined to a
particular determ inate state by instantiating the relevant form; th at is, it
is a particularization of the higher-order form th at is the intellect by
instantiating the relevant form of w hat it u n d erstan d s.*7 In other
w ords—and this becom es im portant later—this m eans th at the general
schem a of apprehension is th at w hat is apprehended becom es formally
part of the apprehending entity but in a m anner sui generis.
Which brings the argum ent to the ways in which senses and
intellect respectively apprehend. While the schem a of w hat happens in
sensible and intellectual apprehension is similar, the results in term s of
aw areness are different because of the difference in natures of sense
and intellect themselves. Both instantiate the forms of their objects, but
in different ways because each has a different nature in relation to
m atter, and each captures a different aspect of the ontology of sensible
forms. This difference has many param eters, b u t for p resent purposes
the im portant difference is characterized by St. Thomas as follows: “A
sense, however, does not know being except as here-and-now. By
contrast, the intellect apprehends being in an absolute sense and in
respect of all tim e.”8 If one translates this into the vocabulary and uses
the distinctions th at have ju st been sketched, one can p u t this by saying
th at St. Thomas is here claiming a difference betw een sense and
intellect not in term s of their qualitative natures as to sensible and
intellective “content” b u t in term s of the logic of these m odes of
apprehension relative to the nature of being.

' ST I, q. 14, a. 2, ad 3: “Intellectus noster non potest intelligere, nisi per

aliquam speciem informetur.”
8ST I, q. 75, a. 6: “Sensus autem non cognoscit esse, nisi sub hie et nunc;
sed intellectus apprehendit esse absolute, et secundum omne tempus.”
THE INCORRUPTIBILITY OF THE SOUL 749

At this point there enters another distinction th at is crucial to

understanding St. Thom as’ argument. It, too, is an integral feature of
Aquinas’ m etaphysics and indeed in some quarters has been considered
defining. However, once again it is n o t explicitly enunciated or even
referred to in the argument. It is merely implicit or understood.
Following the lead of al-Kindi, Al-Farabi, and Ibn Sina, Aquinas
distinguished betw een essence and existence: betw een qualitative and
existential aspects of reality, w here the form er refers to how something
is w hereas the latter refers to its existing or being. Being, for Aquinas,
is not a form or qualitative aspect of reality. A fortiori, therefore, it is
not a sensible qualitative aspect of reality. The senses, however,
apprehend only qualitative aspects of reality. This m eans that being
cannot be apprehended by the senses. And because the senses
apprehend only the sensible content of sensible properties, qualities, or
forms, sensible aw areness is exhausted by these qualitative aspects. In
other words, as St. Augustine had already p u t it,9 aw areness is in an
“unextended” now. That is why Aquinas, who is in agreem ent with St.
Augustine on this point, states th at sensible aw areness “does not know
being except as here-and-now.”
Now, even though St. Thomas stripped forms of their existential
power, he accepted th at forms, as ontological principles of structure,
m ake w hat they inform to be in a certain way. In other words, while
they are not principles of sein, they are principles of sosein: of being-in-
a-certain way. Therefore the intellect, being constitutionally incapable
of a sensible m ode of aw areness, cannot apprehend w hat it apprehends
in a sensible m anner as sensibly qualitative and thus as having, so to
speak, a certain sensible qualitative content. Instead, it apprehends
w hat it apprehends intellectually as having being-in-a-certain-way.

VI

However—and here one again has to unpack Aquinas’s

enthym em atic argum ent—one cannot intellectually apprehend
som ething as having being-in-a-certain-way unless w hat does the

St. Augustine, Confessions, bk. 11.

750 EIKE-HENNER W. KLUGE

apprehending is capable of apprehending being, any more than one can

intellectually apprehend something being-colored-in-a-certain-way
unless one can apprehend being-colored.
Once again, however—and this again is unstated in St. Thomas’s
argument but understood—being does not have what might be called a
temporal metric. That is to say, being does not have a before or after
timeline. Ontologically, it is atemporal. It is the changes in and the
relationship between entities that have being that gives rise to time.
That is why Aquinas, following Aristotle on this point, sees time not as
something inherent in entities but as what happens to entities: Time is
the “measure of change.”10
Therefore if the intellect apprehends its object as having a mode-
or way-of-being, and if intellectually apprehending something as having
a mode-of-being requires apprehension of being, then the intellect, by
its very nature, is capable of apprehending “being in an absolute sense
and in respect of all time.” This does not commit St. Thomas to the
thesis that when the intellect apprehends a substance it has two distinct
apprehensions: one of a mode-of-being and another of being. It simply
means that intellectual apprehension of a mode-of-being is also, and at
the same time, an apprehension of being, just as an intellectual
apprehension of being-blue is also and at the same time an apprehension
of blue as a mode of being-colored.

VII

Now, sensible awareness and intellective awareness are not

unrelated in Aquinas’s epistemology. For St. Thomas, sensation
provides the raw materials for intellectual apprehension in that the
sense images are acted on by the active intellect through abstraction,
which latter removes the particularizing parameters of the forms as
instantiated in the sense images and gives the abstracted forms to the
intellect. How precisely this occurs is unimportant in the present
context. What is important is that the abstracted forms as instantiated
in the intellect are concepts. All other things being equal, therefore—
the reason for this qualifier will become apparent in a moment—
abstraction is the source of the intellect’s concepts.

10See ST I, q. 4, a. 2; I, q. 10, a. 6; and so on.

THE INCORRUPTIBILITY OF THE SOUL 751

However—and this is where the qualifier enters in—another

crucial aspect of the whole argument that is not explicitly stated is that
St. Thomas is forced to say that abstraction cannot provide the intellect
with an apprehension of being as such, because as far as he is
concerned, while particular properties are ways-of-being and thus
forms, being is not a form. Since abstraction provides the intellect only
with forms, this means that abstraction cannot provide the intellect with
an apprehension of being itself.
It follows that if sensible apprehension cannot give rise to an
apprehension of being through abstraction, then the intellect’s
apprehension of being must have its origin in something else. Here
there are only two possibilities: either the apprehension of being enters
the intellect, so to speak, from the outside; or it finds its ground in the
constitution of the intellect itself—that is, it is part of its ontological
make-up. The first would require that there be some agency other than
the senses that provides the intellect with concepts. For St. Thomas,
absent divine intervention, there is no such external agency. That leaves
only the second alternative. Given that what is intellectually
apprehended is an ontological constituent of the intellect that does the
apprehending, it follows that if an intellect is aware of being, that
awareness of being must be part of the ontological constitution of the
intellectual awareness that has the apprehension of being . 11

VIII

More of this later. The next step in unravelling St. Thomas’s

argument centers on the notion of natural desire.
Scotus and later commentators apparently understood the notion
of natural desire in epistemological terms and therefore rejected
Aquinas’s inference. However, as was suggested in the beginning of this
analysis, this is to misunderstand St. Thomas, and the preceding
analysis has laid the groundwork for showing why (and how) this is the
case.

As will be explained in a moment, this does not commit St. Thomas to

saying that intellectual substances necessarily exist because they contain being
in their ontological make-up.
752 EIKE-HENNER W. KLUGE

What Scotus and other commentators appear to have overlooked is

that Aquinas does not simply claim that a natural desire cannot be in
vain. He introduces his whole argument with the assertion that “each
thing naturally desires its own manner of being” (quod unumquodque
naturaliter suo modo esse desiderat). This is not an idle locution, and
the logic of this statement is significant. It is a universally quantified
proposition that contains no exceptive clauses. It therefore applies to
all things—unumquodque or anything whatsoever—which in turn
means that it applies irrespective of whether the entity in question has
a mind. Entities without minds cannot have desires in any epis­
temological or psychological sense. This immediately entails that the
notion of a natural desire as used by Aquinas in this argument cannot
legitimately be understood as a claim about desire in an epistemological
or psychological sense because not all things have minds. Therefore it
must be understood in a nonepistemological or nonpsychological sense.
This would be in keeping with the Aristotelian notion that rocks fall
because they seek or desire—in a non-psychological sense—to attain
their natural resting place.
The next thing to note is that St. Thomas uses the qualifier
naturaliter (“naturally” or “by [its] nature”) to modify the verb
“desires.” This implies that the notion of desire understood in this
nonepistemological or nonpsychological sense and the notion of nature
have to be understood as being connected.
The clue for how to understand this lies in Aquinas’s position on
the nature and role of substantial forms. As was pointed out in the
introductory part of this discussion, Aquinas maintained that each thing
has the nature it has because of its substantial form, where the
substantial forms of different kinds of substances differ in their
respective ontological constituents. If what was suggested in that part
of the analysis is correct, then the constituents of substantial forms are
higher-order properties that determine the ranges of the first-order
properties of the individual substances whose substantial forms they
are.
THE INCORRUPTIBILITY OF THE SOUL 753

IX

At this juncture it becomes important to consider an aspect of the

nature of forms that so far has played no role in the discussion. Once
more, it is an aspect that is not explicitly stated by Aquinas but is taken
by him to be understood because it is part and parcel of the overall
Aristotelian position on the metaphysics of forms. It concerns the logic
of properties or forms. As principles of structure, properties or forms
have both a qualitative nature or content and a logic, where the two are
functionally related. Thus, being-blue (where blue is short for the range
of first-order forms or properties that can all be called “blue”) differs
from being-sour (which is short for the range of first-order fonns or
properties that can be called “sour”) not only in its content but also in
its logic. To illustrate this by way of example, being-sour cannot replace
being-blue in the ontological constitution of a substance, and vice versa,
because their logics are different. With due alteration of detail, the same
is true for all other properties or forms irrespective of whether they are
first- or higher-order. Since the logic of a complex of properties is
functionally related to the logic of its constituents, every kind of
substantial form differs from every other in its very logic as an
ontological complex. It presents, so to speak, a distinct and different
ontological matrix because its ontological constituents are logically
different.
Now, it is a general but unarticulated thesis in Aristotelian
metaphysics that in order for a substance to exist, it has to satisfy what
may be called the requirement of ontological completeness; that is, it
has to have a particularized instance of each of the higher-order
properties that are constitutive of its substantial form. Moreover, a
specific substance can vary in the particularized instances of its higher-
order properties only in the sense that the former, as instantiations of
the higher-order properties, can be replaced by particularized
instantiations within the relevant ranges that are the higher-order
properties that make up the substantial form. Thus, to take a material
substance like a rubber ball as an example, the specific particular shape
that a rubber ball has can be altered or replaced, but only by another
shape. One could not replace it with a sound or a taste. Moreover, and
perhaps more importantly for the present context, a rubber ball has to
have some shape or other if it is going to exist. While it may be possible
754 EIKE-HENNER W. KLUGE

conceptually to imagine a rubber ball w ithout any shape,1' it could not

be something that actually exists because it would be ontologically
incomplete.
Taken together, these points provide an ontological interpretation
of the notion of natural desire. The very logic of a substantial form
entails that, qua ontological complex, if one of its ontological
constituents is replaced, it m ust be replaced by a constituent having the
same general logical form as the property that it replaces. To put it
differently, the first-order property th at does the replacing has to be an
instance of the second-order property of which the initial first-order
property also was an instantiation. Moreover, if a second-order form is
replaced by another second-order form, it can be replaced only by a
second-order form th at has the sam e logic. Finally, not to replace it is
to leave the original com plex incom plete and thereby to bring about its
nonexistence.
M etaphorically speaking, this m eans th at a substantial form
presents w hat might be called a logical resistance to any modification
of its nature. This is a “natural” resistance because it is grounded in the
very nature of the substantial form as th at substantial form. As we have
seen, w hat follows from the nature of an entity is something th at is
desired by th at entity in the nonpsychological sense of that term
indicated above. Therefore it presents a “resistance” to m odifications
or changes in this regard. Arguably, it is in this sense th at every
substance as such naturally desires its own m anner of being in keeping
with the nature of its substantial form.

It rem ains to connect the intellective soul’s natural desire for its
own m anner of being, and its aw areness of being, to incorruptibility.
If the distinctions th at have been outlined in the preceding
discussion are correct, the reasoning on this point is fairly
straightforward. It hinges on the fact that a substantial form cannot be
instantiated unless all of its ontological constituents are instantiated.

12 “Without a shape” does not mean having an amorphous shape. An

amorphous shape is a complicated shape that does not fall into any particular
shape category; a truly shapeless substance is a substance that lacks all
possible spatial determination.
THE INCORRUPTIBILITY OF THE SOUL 755

This means that because it is integral to an intellective soul that it can

apprehend ways or modes of being, it cannot exist unless it has the
capacity for an awareness of being as an ontological constituent.
However, that capacity cannot be a mere capacity because then it would
be an unactualized potential, and this is something that Aquinas, as an
Aristotelian, would have rejected, because then the soul would not be a
completely actualized substantial form. Further, as Aristotle had said
in the De anim a, the soul is always in a state of actuality with respect
to knowledge, whether employed or possessed—where that distinction
refers to the difference between the soul as actually thinking as opposed
to merely sleeping.13
Therefore Aquinas would assume that anyone who was familiar
with the De anim a would not need to be told that an intellective soul
would always contain, as ontological constituents, actual thoughts of
modes-of-being, whether these be merely had, as in sleeping, or be
actually thought, as in a waking state; and, moreover, that it would have
a thought—be aware—of being in either of these ways. Therefore, by
parity of reasoning, the intellective soul, no matter what its state, also
contains being as an ontological constituent.
Furthermore, since, as was explained above, being cannot enter the
intellect through abstraction yet the intellect is aware of being; and
since to apprehend intellectually or be intellectually aware of something
is for that something to be an ontological constituent—sui generis, of
course, but an ontological constituent nevertheless—it follows that an
intellectual soul will always contain being as one of its ontological
constituents since otherwise it would be ontologically incomplete and
hence could not exist. And given the ontological explanation of the
notion of natural desire that was suggested above, it follows that an
intellective soul will have a natural desire to resist this. Finally, it
follows from this on purely ontological grounds that the intellective soul
will be naturally incorruptible, and that once having come into being, it
will cease to exist only if it is destroyed by an external agency. In other
words, it follows that once an intellective soul has come into existence,
and barring an external force or agency that dirempts its ontological
constitution, it will exist forever.
It is important to note that this interpretation does not commit St.
Thomas to the thesis that an intellective soul will exist by its very nature.

13Aristotle, De anima 2.1.

756 EIKE-HENNER W. KLUGE

That would be true if and only if he had claimed that the substantial
form of an intellective soul is internally necessary—that is, if and only
if he argued that all ontological constituents of an intellective soul
necessarily entail each other. In th at case, intellective souls would
require no external existential ground but would exist of their own
nature. However, he did not say that, nor does this follow from w hat
has been sketched. The ontological constituents of an intellective
soul—to wit, rationality, will, and so on— do not logically entail each
other but are contingently related. Hence their “coming together” is not
inherent in their logic but has to be effected by an external agency. In
other words, the lack of logical entailm ent betw een the ontological
constituents of an intellective soul entails their existential dependence.
It is merely that, barring external agency, once they have com e into
existence they will naturally continue to exist.

XI

Two questions remain. First, if the preceding analysis of St.

Thom as’s argum ent is correct, why did Scotus not see this? Second,
w ould St. Thomas recognize the argum ent as I have presented it?
As to why Scotus did not see this, part of the answ er may lie in the
fact that Scotus did not accept St. Thom as’s essence-existence
distinction.14 If one does not accept that distinction, and if one retains
the traditional notion of abstraction, then abstraction can yield a
concept of being that is formal in nature. That would undercut any
attem pt to locate being in the nature of intellectual apprehension as a
constituent sui generis, and would rule out an ontological interpretation
of the notion of natural desire. With that, the whole argum ent would
collapse.
As to w hether St. Thomas would recognize the argum ent as I have
tried to explain it, I think th at if St. Thomas had spelled his argum ent
out m ore fully, rather than leaving it as an enthymeme, and if he had
expressed it using m odem terminology, he would not have shied away
from talking about first-, second-, and higher-order properties, and so
on. After all, this is merely a more precise way of talking about
determ inables and determ inates: term s he him self expressly used and

14Opus Oxoniense 1:3:1-2.

THE INCORRUPTIBILITY OF THE SOUL 757

with which he was already familiar from Aristotle. Likewise, I see no

reason for saying that St. Thomas would have rejected talking about
ontological completeness or that he would have rejected the claim that
being is not a form and that therefore abstraction cannot yield an
awareness of being.
I am further encouraged in this opinion by the fact that when the
vocabulary is suitably adjusted, the above interpretation fits rather well
with what he taught about the resurrection of the body. That is to say,
St. Thomas taught physical resurrection. If what I have said about the
underlying ontology of substantial forms in general and about human
souls in particular is correct, this analysis allows one to understand why
(doctrinal reasons aside) St. Thomas would also have wanted to say that
physical resurrection is necessary if there is resurrection at all. The
human soul qua substantial form requires different types of properties
for its completion. Included here are higher-order properties that can
be instantiated only through material first-order properties. Among
other things, sensation is implicated, as are the emotions. In the
language of St. Thomas, this means that the human soul as the
substantial form of a human being by its very nature desires material
properties as a matter of ontological completeness. And this, in turn,
entails that the human soul naturally desires a body. Accordingly, by
their very nature, human beings have an ontological drive for embodied
existence. Therefore if one assumes that St. Thomas had a consistent
and integrated ontology, the fact that this interpretation allows one to
tie together various aspects of his position should count in its favor.

University of Victoria, Canada

Copyright of Review of Metaphysics is the property of Philosophy Education Society, Inc.
and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without
the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or
email articles for individual use.