Uploaded October 2025 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
From "Disputed Questions in De Anima" (1269) as presented in "Thomas Aquinas: Selected Philosophical Writings" (Oxford 1993), "Passage 18: Soul in Human Beings."
The question is how Aquinas, as an Aristotelian who therefore thinks the mind is the form of the body, can agree with the Christian doctrine that the soul exists after death. The answer is surprisingly weird: The body-less soul is incomplete, so we'd need to have the end-of-times full-bodily-resurrection of all the good people in order to have a truly satisfactory heaven.
Read along with us: partiallyexaminedlife.com/wp-content/uploads/Aquinas_on_Soul.pdf. The Aristotle chapter from "De Anima" (Part III, Ch. 5) is here: antilogicalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/aristotle_anima_final.pdf, PDF p. 41.
Get more Closereads: Philosophy with Mark and Wes at closereadsphilosophy.com. Get all of our discussions at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy. Note that any ads here are inserted by YouTube, with no money going to us. Everything on our Patreon page is ad free.
From "Disputed Questions in De Anima" (1269) as presented in "Thomas Aquinas: Selected Philosophical Writings" (Oxford 1993), "Passage 18: Soul in Human Beings."
The question is how Aquinas, as an Aristotelian who therefore thinks the mind is the form of the body, can agree with the Christian doctrine that the soul exists after death. The answer is surprisingly weird: The body-less soul is incomplete, so we'd need to have the end-of-times full-bodily-resurrection of all the good people in order to have a truly satisfactory heaven.
Read along with us: partiallyexaminedlife.com/wp-content/uploads/Aquinas_on_Soul.pdf. The Aristotle chapter from "De Anima" (Part III, Ch. 5) is here: antilogicalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/aristotle_anima_final.pdf, PDF p. 41.
Get more Closereads: Philosophy with Mark and Wes at closereadsphilosophy.com. Get all of our discussions at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy. Note that any ads here are inserted by YouTube, with no money going to us. Everything on our Patreon page is ad free.
