Psychology

Transcript

Psychology The human being is a unity, and this unity would be impaired, were we to suppose a plurality of substantial forms. The name "man" applies neither to the soul alone nor to the body alone, but the soul and body together, to a [comparith?] substance. So Thomas follows Augustine in stressing [Page 2] the unity of the human substance. Clearly therefore the Platonic idea of the relation of soul to body was unacceptable to Thomas. The union of soul and body is not something unnatural: It cannot be a punishment to the soul for sin is a previous state , as origin thought. The human soul [Page 3] has the power of sensation, but it cannot exercise this function without a body; it has the power of intellection, but is has no [Illegible text] ideas and has to form its ideas in dependence an sense re-experience , for which it needs a body ; the soul, then, is united to a body because it needs it, because it is naturally the form of the body. The [Page 4] union of soul and body is not to the detriment, but to the good of the soul. (contrary to Plato's view in the Phaedra). But though St. Thomas emphasized the unity of man, the close union between body and soul, he held that there is a real distinction between the soul and its faculties and between the faculties themselves. Some faculties belong [Page 5] to the soul as such and are not intrinsically dependent on a bodily organ, which others belong to the composition and cannot be exercised without the body; the forms, therefore , remains in the soul even when it is separated from the body. For instance, the rational or intellectual faculty is not intrinsically dependent on the body [Page 6] since the soul is the form of the body want it lease to visit with the dissolution of the body. In other words, is not the [Aristolelism?] doctrine of the orientation of soul to body incompatible with personal immortality. Thomas answers by saying that other soul is indeed the form of the body [Page 7] and it retains its [apitih?] to inform a body ; but it is non the less a rational soul and its powers are not exhausted in informing the body. The soul is incorruptible because it is a subsistent form.