Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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
Ill
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
Fig. 2
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
IV
VI
VII
VIII
IX
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.
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