Thomas Aquinas On Soul

Thomas Aquinas's theory of Soul may be seen as one of the most outstanding theory in the Medieval Ages. His theory concerned a hotpot question that whether theology and philosophy or faith and cognition were compatible with each other. And he did this work on the basis of criticizing the thoughts and works of predecessors including philosophers and theologists. Thomas benefited a lot from the argument with his fellows. The theory of soul could be dated from the thoughts of Platonism and Aristotelianism. There is a complex relationship about faith and cognition between the two traditional theories. As we know, it is useful to take the two traditions into account so that we may know much about Thomas's theory. There are two branches which could be inferred from Aristotle's works. One is Averroism and the other one is Thomism. But Thomas deepened his understanding on soul while he made some critique on the former one.Thomas's theory on soul could be divided in two main parts. The first one concerned the soul itself. All most all of the people in Medieval Ages believed that it was true that Man was composed of soul and body. But they couldn't agree on the relationship between them. So Thomas followed Aristotle's thoughts of form and material to illustrate the relationship between soul and body. Then he made a clear explanation about the immortal soul through clarifying the definition of the substance of soul. After that, Thomas made a detailed research between act and potential and being and essence, so he claimed that the powers of soul couldn't be equated with soul itself. From what he said above we might know that in human nature there was only one soul which includes the inferior powers of sensitive and living. The other one is that Thomas put his objections to Averroes's "there being only one intellect" according to Aristotle's theory about intellect. Thomas agreed with Aristotle that the intellect was separate with other parts of soul because of the different powers, but not in Averroes's way. And the difference between immortal intellect and corruptible parts of soul couldn't support the idea of there being only one intellect in human being. And they also made a mistake when they talked about that soul was not the form of body, because they overstated the difference between intellect and the other parts of soul. According to Thomas's standpoint, the theory of "there being only one intellect" not only betrayed the intellect pattern that it claimed one subject, but also it did harm to the faith.Thomas was first a Catholic and then a disciple of Aristotle. So he believed that faith was super over cognition. If there was something in faith that the cognition couldn't get the knowledge then we should resort to the revelation given from God. Given the new conditions and environment, Thomas found that Aristotle's theory could help them to refute the false thoughts dated from Averroes and other people, and there was something true in Aristotle's works that could be used for the demonstration of faith.