Ontology of the human soul

Abstract

The human soul is a concrete reality: it animates human is... aliquid snout. This is the thesis with which the first article of the Quaestiones disputatae de anima (De An) opens the debate on the being and nature of the human soul. To a contemporary of ours, accustomed to the scientific method used to know physical and material things, the expression "a concrete reality" applied to the soul may seem thoughtless and risky: especially if one is convinced that any reality should be given through observation and experimentation; and no scientist has been presented with the "reality" of the soul at the tip of a scalpel or on the lens of a microscope.

And yet the Aquinate considers the soul to be a concrete reality. This thesis decides the following lines of his treaty. Now, he was always aware that it is not easy to dely into the study of the soul: cognoscere quid sit anima difficillimum est.1 But he was also convinced that man does not get to estimate what he knows about the things around him until he knows himself. He begins from the certainty of his own existence – of his self, of his soul – attested in the concrete and present exercise of life 2; and the arduous and difficult task of knowing the essence of the soul is available. Analyzing the contents of this spontaneous vital exercise, the Aquinate sees that they are as signs and properties of a concrete and unitary reality, through which it will progressively know its nature. Therefore, "the science of the soul is totally true because each one experiences in himself the possession of the soul and the presence itself of his deeds".