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Contextualizing Aquinas's Ontology of Soul: an Analysis of His Arabic and Neoplatonic Sources Nathan Mclain Blackerby Marquette University

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Contextualizing Aquinas's Ontology of Soul: an Analysis of His Arabic and Neoplatonic Sources Nathan Mclain Blackerby Marquette University Marquette University e-Publications@Marquette Dissertations (2009 -) Dissertations, Theses, and Professional Projects Contextualizing Aquinas's Ontology of Soul: An Analysis of His Arabic and Neoplatonic Sources Nathan McLain Blackerby Marquette University Recommended Citation Blackerby, Nathan McLain, "Contextualizing Aquinas's Ontology of Soul: An Analysis of His Arabic and Neoplatonic Sources" (2017). Dissertations (2009 -). 725. https://epublications.marquette.edu/dissertations_mu/725 CONTEXTUALIZING AQUINAS'S ONTOLOGY OF SOUL: AN ANALYSIS OF HIS ARABIC AND NEOPLATONIC SOURCES By Nathan M. Blackerby A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School, Marquette University, in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Milwaukee, Wisconsin August 2017 ABSTRACT CONTEXTUALIZING AQUINAS'S ONTOLOGY OF SOUL: AN ANALYSIS OF HIS ARABIC AND NEOPLATONIC SOURCES Nathan M. Blackerby Marquette University, 2017 Contemporary scholarship has generally focused on two major influences that have shaped Thomas Aquinas’ account of the soul. The first set of scholarship focuses on how doctrinal concerns and the Augustinian and Scholastic traditions defined the central issue that Aquinas faced, viz., explaining how the soul can be treated as an individual substance that has an essential relationship to a body. The second set of scholarship focuses on Aquinas’s employment of Aristotle’s works in his attempt to resolve the issue. Contemporary assessments of Aquinas’s theory of the soul-body relation therefore take Aquinas to be offering a solution that follows directly from Aristotle’s hylomorphism and Aristotle’s remarks about human psychology. However, this provides an incomplete picture of Aquinas’s ontology of soul and its relationship with the body. Aristotle’s remarks about form, the form-matter relationship, the role of intellection in human psychology, and the status of the soul as form in light of its intellectual activity require significant interpretation on the part of the reader. Aquinas often turns to the works of Avicenna and Averroes for guidance in how to read Aristotle. Moreover, Avicenna’s own understanding of Aristotle’s view of the soul is heavily influenced by important conceptual changes to the notion of form in the Neoplatonic commentaries on Aristotle. Aquinas selectively follows interpretations or adopts principles found in the works of Avicenna and Averroes when presenting his own account of the soul. This is important, because these principles differ in important ways from Aristotle’s own views or from alternative interpretations of Aristotle’s remarks. Consideration of Aquinas’s Arabic/Islamic and Neoplatonic sources is therefore indispensable for a complete account of Aquinas’s conception of the soul as both a subsistent substance and substantial form. TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS..................................................................................................i CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION – CONTEMPORARY INTERPRETATIONS OF AQUINAS ON HUMAN CONSTITUTION......................................................................1 1.1 Two Recent Approaches to Aquinas's Philosophical Anthropology.........................2 1.2 The “Latin Christian Interpretive” Approach............................................................3 1.2.1 Anton Pegis........................................................................................................3 1.2.2 Richard Dales....................................................................................................8 1.2.3 B. Carlos Bazan...............................................................................................12 1.2.4 Summary Remarks on the “Latin Christian Interpretive” Approach...............15 1.3 The “Aquinas as Aristotelian” Approach................................................................16 1.3.1 Robert Pasnau..................................................................................................16 1.3.2 Eleonore Stump...............................................................................................18 1.3.3 Anthony Kenny................................................................................................20 1.3.4 Summary Remarks on the “Aquinas as Aristotelian” Approach.....................21 1.4 “Source-Based Contextualism”...............................................................................22 1.4.1 A Brief Sketch of the Coming Chapters..........................................................25 CHAPTER 2: AQUINAS'S INTERPRETIVE CONTEXT – NEOPLATONIC AND ARABIC-ISLAMIC INFLUENCES.................................................................................27 2.1 The Form-Essence Distinction In Avicenna's Metaphysics.....................................31 2.1.1 The Form-Essence Relation In Aristotle's Metaphysics..................................36 2.1.2 Relevance to Thomas Aquinas........................................................................38 2.2 Avicenna, The Neoplatonic Commentary Tradition & Separate Souls as Perfections of Body..........................................................................................................................41 2.2.1 Some Hermeneutical Problems Connected to Aristotle's Use of Entelekheia.42 2.2.2 Wisnovsky on Alexander, Themistius, and the Expanded Meaning of Teleiotēs ..................................................................................................................................49 2.2.3 Teleiotēs in the Neoplatonic Commentary Tradition.......................................52 2.2.4 Aristotle's View of Hylomorphic Form and Separate Substance.....................56 2.2.5 Relevance to Aquinas......................................................................................57 2.3 Averroes on Potentiality in Separate Substances.....................................................58 2.3.1 The Potential Intellect In Aristotle's De Anima: What is it?............................59 2.3.2 Averroes: incorporeal potentiality is a Fourth Kind of Being.........................61 2.3.3 Simplicity vs. Complexity of Thought and Distinctions Among Intellectual Substances................................................................................................................69 2.3.4 The Hierarchy of Intellectual Substances........................................................75 2.3.5 Abstraction Requires Bodily Activity..............................................................78 2.3.6 Relevance to Aquinas......................................................................................79 Chapter 2: Summary.....................................................................................................82 CHAPTER 3: HUMAN CONSTITUTION IN AQUINAS'S EARLY WORKS...............85 3.1 Aquinas’s Conception of Form in De Principiis Naturae........................................85 3.1.1 Form as “Giver of Esse”..................................................................................86 3.1.2 A Comparison of Form as “Giver of Esse” and the Ammonian Conception of Soul...........................................................................................................................90 3.2 The Form/Essence Distinction and the Communicability of Being Doctrine in the Commentary on the Sentences......................................................................................96 3.2.1 The Form/Essence and Quod Est/Quo Est Distinctions..................................96 3.2.2 The Communicability of Being Doctrine as a Response to Aristotelian of Objections...............................................................................................................100 3.3 The Form/Essence Distinction and Incorporeal Potentiality in the De Ente et Essentia.......................................................................................................................104 3.3.1 The Form/Essence Distinction......................................................................105 3.3.2 Incorporeal Potentiality and the Place of the Human Soul in the Hierarchy of Intelligences............................................................................................................109 3.3.2.1 The Reality of Incorporeal Potentiality, against Universal Hylomorphism ............................................................................................................................110 3.3.2.2 The Place of the Human Soul in the Hierarchy of Intelligences............116 3.4 The Communicability of Being Doctrine and Incorporeal Potentiality in Summa Contra Gentiles, Book 2.............................................................................................125 3.4.1 The Communicability of Being Doctrine and the Soul as Formal Cause.....127 3.4.2 The Body is Essential to the Operation of the Potential Intellect..................131 3.4.2.1 Implications for the Ontological Position of the Soul...........................133 3.4.2.2 Implications for the Specific Difference of Human Nature...................133 3.4.2.3 Implications for the Soul Conceived as Form.......................................138 3.5 Concluding Remarks.............................................................................................142 3.5.1 A Note on Bazan............................................................................................145 CHAPTER 4 : HUMAN CONSTITUTION IN AQUINAS’S MATURE WORKS.......148 4.1 The Arabic-Islamic and Neoplatonic Influence
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