Soul's Relation to the Body Despite the Dualistic Aspects of His

CHAPTER TWO Soul’S RELATION TO THE BODY Despite the dualistic aspects of his conception of the nature of the soul, Olivi emphasises that a human being is a composite of the soul and the body and that the body is a substantial part of a human being: “Who could define a human being without mentioning the human body, not only as a correlative but also as an essential part of a human being? Only some- one who would say that a human being is nothing but the soul of the human body.”1 In the Middle Ages the idea that a human being could be equated with the soul was known as a Platonic and Manichaeist doctrine, and it was commonly rejected as heretic, mainly because medieval authors believed in the Catholic doctrine of the resurrection of the body on Judgement Day. A human being was thought to be a combination of a soul and a body.2 It is to no surprise, therefore, that Olivi also repeatedly emphasises that humans are essentially bodily beings. Yet, there is a certain tension within Olivi’s conception of the spiritual nature of the soul and his emphasis on the importance of the body. How can the soul be a spiritual entity and still be substantially united to a cor- poreal body? Olivi’s theory of the relation between the soul and the body can be seen as an attempt to reconcile the following two ideas: 1 “Alias quis posset definire hominem nulla facta mentione de corpore humano, non solum per modum correlativi, sed etiam per modum partis hominis essentialis? Nonnisi qui diceret quod homo non sit aliud quam anima corporis humani.” (Summa II q. 16, 336.) See also ibid., q. 50 app., 55 & 132. The question of whether the human body enters the definition of man arises with respect to Aristotle, who in Met. 7.10 seems to answer in the negative. Medieval authors usually opposed this interpretation and argued that Aristotle’s intention is not to exclude the body from the definition of man. By contrast, Olivi argues that Aristotle excludes the body but errs in doing so. It has been suggested that Olivi is opposing Albertus Magnus in the cited text. See Catherine König-Pralong, “Olivi et le formalisme ontologique. Lectures d’Aristote, d’Averroès, et critique d’Albert?” In Pierre de Jean Olivi, ed. C. König-Pralong et al., 135–65. 2 Although the heyday of Manichaeism was in Late Antiquity, thirteenth-century Latin authors had more recent ideas in mind, for they considered Cathars as one kind of Man- icheans. See Steven Runciman, The Medieval Manichee: A Study of the Christian Dualist Heresy (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1982 [1947]); John Inglis, “A Rationale for Material Ele- ments of Christ’s Human Cognition: Reading Aquinas Within His Dominican and Political Context,” Traditio 58 (2003): 262. For an extensive analysis of the medieval discussions concerning the resurrection of the body, see Caroline Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200–1336 (New York: Columbia UP, 1995.) 44 chapter two 1. The incorporeality of the intellectual soul (which is a requirement for immortality, freedom and intellectuality). 2. Substantial unity between the intellectual soul and the body. Olivi’s intention is not original. Rather, he tries to uphold the most fun- damental ideas concerning the metaphysical structure of a human being current in his time. Yet he thinks that earlier attempts have not been successful. He develops his view with an eye to two positions, which he finds unsatisfactory in this respect. According to the first position, the soul (or the intellectual part of the soul) is a hylomorphic form of the body. The most well-known proponent of this view is Thomas Aquinas, but it was defended also by many authors who rejected the Thomistic idea that human beings have only one substantial form. The other problematic position is posed by the so-called Latin Averroists, who argue that the intellectual soul is not at all a substantial part of a human being but a separate substance. Olivi thinks that the former position fails to safe- guard the incorporeality of the soul, whereas the Averroist view—quite obviously—does not succeed in accounting for the substantial unity. Olivi’s own solution, which is an attempt to find a middle ground between these two positions, is based on the doctrine of the plurality of substantial forms. He thinks that the body is informed by several substantial forms in addition to the soul and that the soul in itself is composed of several forms. As the intellectual form cannot be a form of the body, the substantial unity of a human being is caused by the sensitive form, which is united to the body as its form. Olivi argues for this kind of complex structure because he thinks that it is the only way to secure the two afore- mentioned ideas—the only way to reject the idea that the intellectual part of the soul is the form of the body without falling into the pit-hole of Averroism. I shall proceed as follows. In section one I shall shortly discuss the pas- sages where Olivi avows the importance of the body. Section two deals with Olivi’s argumentation against the hylomorphic union between the intellectual part of the soul and the body, and it explores his understand- ing of the plurality of substantial forms. Section three analyses Olivi’s view on the metaphysical relation between the soul and the body. Finally, section four is devoted to analysing the concept of colligantia. Olivi accepts the Augustinian ontological superiority of the soul and denies the pos- sibility of a direct causation from the body to the spiritual soul. His view seems to lead to a problematic consequence that, say, the perception of heat cannot be caused by the rise of the temperature in the body. The .

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