Autor: Thomas Aquinas

Buch: Summa Theologiae: Man 1a. 75-83

Titel: Summa Theologiae: Man 1a. 75-83

Stichwort: Seele, Unsterblichkeit 1: bis Thomas (Bibelstellen, Plato, Augustinus, Anselm); Aristoteles: Syllogismus, Harmonie; Averroes ("äußere" Vernunft, sterbliche Seele)

Kurzinhalt: This is to say that Christian thought rejected the most original and the most constant theses of ancient metaphysics.' This was particularly true in the field of anthropology... The upshot in Averroes was a radical dichotomy between an external agent ...

Textausschnitt: IMMORTALITY
(1a. 75, 2 & 6)

257a Plato's demonstration (as distinct from his conviction) of the soul's immortality is far less clearly etched than the current use of 'Platonist' would suggest. Aristotle, while still at the Academy, reduced it to a syllogism: 'Harmony has a contrary, namely, disharmony; but the soul has no contrary; therefore the soul is not a harmony,' i.e. not a material form. This syllogism, as Jaeger remarks, implicitly presupposes that the soul is a 'substance' in the technical sense,1 and hence Plotinus, who used Aristotle's Eudemus, was justified in reducing this argument to the form, 'the soul is a substance, but harmony is not'.2 Plotinus expands this in the same context by explaining that the soul does not possess being because it is the form of something; on the contrary it is substance, ousia. Now it appears that popular Greek mythical thinking, whence Plato and Aristotle drew much of their technical vocabulary in these matters, confused the problem of immortality with that of pre-existence, 'Orthodox Christian thought', writes Tresmontant3 'in the first centuries selected in Greek philosophy those elements which appeared to it to be capable of being turned to account, and rejected those metaphysical theses which seemed to it to be incompatible with its own principles and requirements. This is to say that Christian thought rejected the most original and the most constant theses of ancient metaphysics.' This was particularly true in the field of anthropology.4 The Christian Fathers refused to admit the soul's pre-existence, even though Origen gave this typically Greek notion wide currency. Nevertheless early Christian thought broadly speaking held to a Neoplatonic conception of the soul as a complete substance in its own right, and replaced pre-existence and recollection with the notion of divine illumination. (Fs; tblStw: Seele) (notabene)

257b Israel's prophetic preaching did in fact bring pressure to bear against the doctrine of the soul as a separate substance in its own right, while endorsing belief in immortality. With the Maccabee rebellion the doctrine of the resurrection of the body came out into Jewish thought, accompanied by an adoption of Greek soul-body talk: I suffer grievous things in body but in soul am well content.5 The doctrine of the resurrection of the body plainly involved the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, and raised the question of whether the soul is conscious in some way between death and resurrection. These questions were answered, not long before the time when Cicero was discussing immortality, by Wisdom, which uses the Greek words soul (psyche) and immortality (athanasia): The souls of the just are in the hand of God, they are in peace. For if before men, indeed, they be punished, yet is their hope full of immortality.6 This is the background for the New Testament writers, for instance Matthew 10, 28,1 Cor. 15, 53-4, though it had to jostle with the rhetorical opposition of spirit and flesh (cf. 1 Cor. 5, 3) and the tripartite division of man into body-soul-spirit (1 Thess. 5, 23). (Fs) (notabene)

258a After reading Augustine's polemic against the Platonic and Origenist anthropology in the City of God,7 it is strange to reflect how he is often spoken of as the arch-Platonizer of Christian thought. Steadied by the controversies regarding the Incarnation, where the orthodox Fathers had insisted on the integral soul-body completeness of Christ, and in so doing had outlined a philosophy of man almost without noticing it, he sought to formulate the unity of soul and body as a natural unity.8 At the same time, the cult of the saints and prayers for the faithful departed presupposed their existence and consciousness, even though disembodied. From Augustine on, consequently, it became a much bigger matter to prove the soul's future immortality, including the interval between death and resurrection, though it would be a mistake to treat his rapid intuitions as strict proofs, even in the Soliloquies and the De immortalitate animae. (Fs) (notabene)

258b Anselm, in this as in so much else, represented the culmination of the Augustinian tradition. His approach to the proof of the soul's immortality (Monologium, 66-74) cannot be extricated from his ontological proof of the existence of God. Just as it is impossible to conceive the non-existence of God, so it is impossible not to desire to possess him eternally once it is conceived, and impossible that God should disappoint this desire. (Fs)

258c To this point, Christian tradition in both East and West had proceeded without regard for Aristotle's analysis. Having given the middle-Platonic mood its most vigorous formulation, he proceeded to criticize and largely abandon the weighty arguments touching immortality which had been accumulated from the religious beliefs, myths and rites of all nations, on the ground that the essential principle in human psychology is the hylomorphic soul-body unity. (Fs)

258d The later Peripatetics of antiquity adopted the analysis of Alexander of Aphrodisias, which refuted the Platonic proof of the Eudemus and the Phaedo by pointing out that form in matter has privation as its opposite or contrary. His outlook was adopted with modifications by subsequent Arabian philosophers. The upshot in Averroes was a radical dichotomy between an external agent intellect which subsists, and the body-informing soul of man which dies, and also, consequently, between philosophy which disproves individual immortality and faith which counts on it. (Fs)