Back to Aquinas Arguments

Anthropology

The soul as form of the body

The human person is one substance composed of body and rational soul; the soul is subsistent but naturally united to the body.

Guiding question

How can human beings be bodily and rational without splitting into two complete substances?

Why it matters

This hylomorphic anthropology grounds Aquinas's accounts of life, knowledge, death, resurrection, and moral agency.

The argumentative movement

  1. 1Living bodies act through powers that require an organizing substantial form.
  2. 2The rational soul is the form of the human body and explains one living human substance.
  3. 3Because intellective operation is immaterial, the soul subsists, though it remains naturally ordered to bodily union.