Thomas Aquinas on Bodily Identity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonia Fitzpatrick
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Substantial Form ◽  
Fundamental Conception ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Mendicant Orders ◽  
Over Time

This is a study of the union of matter and the soul in human beings in the thought of the Dominican Thomas Aquinas. At first glance, this issue might appear arcane, but it was at the centre of Catholic polemic with heresy in the thirteenth century and of the development of medieval thought. The book argues that theological issues, especially the need for an identical body to be resurrected at the end of time, were vital to Aquinas’s account of how human beings are constituted. The book explores how theological questions shaped Aquinas’s thought on individuality and bodily identity over time, his embryology and understanding of heredity, his work on nutrition and bodily growth, and his fundamental conception of matter. It demonstrates how Aquinas used his peripatetic sources, Aristotle and Averroes, to further his own thinking. The book indicates how Aquinas’s thought on bodily identity became pivotal to university debates and relations between rival mendicant orders in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, and that quarrels surrounding these issues persisted into the fifteenth century. Not only is this a study of the interface between theology, biology, and physics in Aquinas’s thought; it also fundamentally revises the generally accepted view of Aquinas. Aquinas is famous for holding that the only substantial form in a human being is the soul; most scholars have therefore thought he located the identity of the individual in their soul. This book restores the body through a thorough examination of the range of Aquinas’s works.

Richard Knapwell

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
M.V. Dougherty
Keyword(s):  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Substantial Form ◽  
Robert Kilwardby

The English Dominican friar and theologian Richard Knapwell (Clapwell) (fl. 1284–1286) is best known as an early defender of Thomas Aquinas. He was the first to respond to William de la Mare’s Correctorium fratris Thomae (Correction of Brother Thomas), a Franciscan attack consisting of 117 articles identifying purported errors drawn from several of Aquinas’s major writings. Knapwell’s detailed riposte, composed in the early 1280s, was the earliest and most extensive of a series of polemical Correctoria corruptorii fratris Thomae (Corrections of the Corruptor of Brother Thomas) that would appear, and Knapwell’s contribution is known as the Correctorium “Quare.” Knapwell’s commitment to Aquinas’s writings, however, was not fully evident in his earlier work, as Knapwell had lectured on the Sententiae of Peter Lombard at Oxford sometime between 1269 and 1277, and his surviving notes or Notabilia exhibit an admixture of views taken from Aquinas and Augustine. After writing the Correctorium “Quare,” Knapwell incepted as a master in theology at Oxford in 1284–1285, and not long afterward he produced the De unitate formae (On the unity of form), a disputed question that brought about his condemnation. In that work, Knapwell asserted the theological neutrality of the Aristotelian metaphysical thesis that there is a single substantial form in human beings. The unity of form thesis was opposed by those who posited a plurality of forms, believing that the unity of form thesis was incompatible with a host of theological issues such as whether Christ’s body in the tomb was numerically identical with the body of the living Christ. In October 1284 the Franciscan archbishop of Canterbury John Pecham had renewed the prohibitions of 1277 concerning the unity of form thesis previously set by his Dominican predecessor, Robert Kilwardby. On the basis of Knapwell’s defense of the unity of form in De unitate formae, Pecham excommunicated Knapwell in April 1286. Knapwell traveled to Rome to argue his case before the pope, but the newly elected Franciscan pontiff Nicholas IV responded by silencing him in 1288. Nothing definite is known about his later activities. The extant works of Knapwell (beyond the abovementioned Notabilia, Correctorium “Quare,” and De unitate formae) include six additional disputed questions that pertain mostly to issues of human and divine cognition, and one short Quodlibet of twenty-nine questions on a variety of topics.

Thomas Aquinas (I)

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonia Fitzpatrick
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
The Body ◽  
Entire Study ◽  
Substantial Form ◽  
Bodily Resurrection ◽  
Whole Person ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Structure Of Matter

This chapter restores the place of the body within Aquinas’s theory of the composition of human nature, explaining his account of the body’s autonomy relative to the soul. The central arguments of the entire study are elaborated: theological problems, particularly the bodily resurrection, led Aquinas to emphasize the body’s goodness; Aquinas thinks that the individuality of the whole person had its origins in matter; the individual body’s autonomy is underpinned by its unique ‘dimensive quantity’—a corporeal form, but an ‘accidental’, not a substantial form, which individualizes the body’s matter. These arguments are established through attending to: essence and its relationship to the individual; the beauty of the human body; embryology, heredity, and the structure of matter; and individuation. A theme running through the chapter is Aquinas’s radical remodelling of Peter Lombard’s concept of the ‘truth of human nature’, i.e. that from which the resurrected body will be constituted.

scholarly journals La salute dell’uomo tra scienza medica e filosofia La medicina estetica nell’assistenza olistica

2007 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Teresa Iannone
Keyword(s):  
Subjective Experience ◽  
The Body ◽  
Health Staff ◽  
Ethical Behaviour ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Scientific Culture ◽  
Ethical Practice ◽  
Aesthetic Medicine ◽  
The Individual

La Bioetica ci insegna quanto sia importante che la Medicina sia disposta a guardare e a trattare l’uomo che soffre nella sua interezza spirituale e corporea, opponendosi a quella cultura scientifica che ha perso il senso della unità dell’individuo, curando la patologia e non il malato. La prospettiva olistica è quella che meglio comprende il concetto di salute, in quanto definisce la salute come abilità di conseguire gli scopi vitali riferendosi all’uomo nella sua interezza. In questa modalità di affrontare l’uomo nella sua globalità, entra in gioco la corporeità, base necessaria per la relazione con i propri simili. La Medicina estetica si basa sull’intuizione che individua come il malessere del corpo possa andare ben oltre il corpo; ricorrervi deve significare rispettare l’umanità che è in ognuno di noi nella ricerca di un equilibrio psico-fisico che richiama ad una duplice moralità: quella del medico che deve prestare la sua opera senza tradire gli scopi dell’arte medica e quella dell’utente che deve rispettare la sacralità della sua persona. Affrontare una diagnosi di malattia è difficile; il malato vaga in una condizione di incredulità e sgomento che possono far dimenticare che c’è un viso che “chiede” e un corpo che “parla”; l’attenzione alla componente estetica della nostra persona nei percorsi di malattia può aiutare a riportare l’attenzione e assumere la corporeità al centro dell’interesse del paziente. Ciò non comporta alcun riduzionismo soggettivista, tutt’altro: permette di non mistificare l’esperienza soggettiva mettendo in luce il ruolo della dimensione della malattia nella definizione delle nostre più intime esperienze. In questa particolare situazione, in un contesto condiviso e supportato dall’intero staff sanitario, la Medicina estetica può portare un contributo per interagire con un corpo che può desiderare di essere riscoperto: il suo apporto, in un approccio integrato al paziente, tende a far sì che la cura del paziente possa operare su tutte le quattro dimensioni della salute, organica, psichica, socio-ambientale, etico-spirituale, ognuna delle quali investe tutta la sua persona: per far sì che, se esistono malattie inguaribili, non debbano mai esistere malattie incurabili. ---------- Bioethics teaches us the importance of Medicine being open to consider and treat suffering people in their spiritual and corporeal wholeness, thus opposing a scientific culture which has lost the sense of unity of the individual, as it deals with the treatment of organs or pathologies rather than of patients. The holistic perspective interprets the concept of health in the best way, in that it defines health as the ability of achieving vital goals, and refers to the human being as a whole. This way of dealing with the total human being implies a role for corporeity, intended as a necessary basis for inter-individual relationships. Aesthetic Medicine is based on the intuition according to which it is possible to identify how physical discomfort may extend well beyond the body itself; therefore, resort to it must mean respect for the human beings we all are, and continuous search for psychic and physical equilibrium, which implies two aspects of morality, i.e., ethical practice by physicians, who must dispense their services without failing in the aims of the art of medicine, and ethical behaviour by users, who must respect the holiness of their own persons. It is difficult to face a diagnosis of disease; sick persons fall a prey to feelings of disbelief and dismay such that they may be induced to neglect their own “asking” faces, and their own “talking” bodies. So, the attention to the aesthetic component of our persons during the course of the illness may help to focus again both the attention and the interest of patients on corporeity. This does not imply any sort of subjectivist reductionism, quite the contrary. Rather, it allows to not mystify the subjective experience, by emphasizing the role played by the importance of the disease within the definition of our most intimate experiences. Then, in the particular situation herein referred to, that is, within a context which is shared and supported by all the health staff, Aesthetic Medicine can make its contribution to interact with a body which it is really possible to rediscover. The contribution of Aesthetic Medicine – within a patient- focused approach – is intended to allow that patients’ care may act for all four aspects of health, i.e., organic, psychical, socio-environmental, and ethical-spiritual ones, each of which concerns their whole persons. And this, so that – even if non-healing diseases exist – “not curable” diseases shall never exist.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonia Fitzpatrick
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Source Material ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Substantial Form ◽  
The One ◽  
Over Time

This Introduction expresses the intent of this study to re-examine the place of the body in Thomas Aquinas’s thought on the composition of the human being and its identity through time. Aquinas is famous for holding that the soul is the one and only substantial form in a human being. The generally accepted view is that Aquinas accounted for the identity of the person almost exclusively with reference to their soul. This study will restore the significance of the body by placing Aquinas’s thought in its theological and social context: principally, his concern for the earthly and resurrected body to be identical and his polemic against heretics. The Introduction goes on to survey the source material from Peter Lombard, St. Augustine, Aristotle, and Averroes with which Aquinas would construct his account of the body, its identity over time, and its autonomy relative to the soul. It briefly outlines that account.

Fully Human Being

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jake Poller
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Aldous Huxley ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Mahayana Buddhism ◽  
Perennial Philosophy ◽  
Utopian Community ◽  
Mahāyāna Buddhism

In Island (1962), Aldous Huxley presents a utopian community in which theinhabitants aim to become "fully human beings" by realizing their "potentialities."I demonstrate how Huxley's notion of the "human potentialities" havebeen misrepresented, both by scholars and by the founders of the Esalen Institute.Huxley's focus on human potentialities arose from a shift in his thinkingfrom the other-worldly mysticism of The Perennial Philosophy (1945) to thelife-affirming traditions of Tantra, Zen and Mahayana Buddhism. In Island,the population attempt to realize their human potentialities and engage in anexperiential spirituality that celebrates the body and nature as sacred throughthe use of the moksha-medicine and the practice of maithuna. I argue thatwhereas Tantric adepts practised maithuna as a means to acquire supernormalpowers (siddhis), in Island the Palanese version of maithuna is quite differentand is used to valorize samsara and the acquisition of human potentialities.

Pedagogic Theories

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juha Hämäläinen
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Cultural Development ◽  
Theory Building ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Teaching Learning ◽  
Pedagogic Theory

“Pedagogue” (παιδαγογος) was originally a term for a slave who was responsible for the care of children in the household. Later the meaning of the word expanded to mean educator and teacher. A pedagogic theory deals with the nature and structure of educational action, teaching, and upbringing. Pedagogic theories are connected with belief and value systems, concepts of man and society, and philosophies of knowledge and political interests. Thus, it is rather difficult to define a pedagogic theory exactly. In general, the concept of pedagogy refers to a systematic view of organizing education. It discusses the issues of how to educate and what it means to be educated. In this sense, a pedagogic theory is a theory of educational action, or a systematic view and reflection of pedagogic practice. Pedagogic theory is a systematic conceptualization of the process of education and conditions of human development in both the individual and the societal life sphere. It deals with processes of upbringing, teaching, learning, and social and cultural development. Aims and means, values and norms, and objectives and methods of education are systematically reflected therein. Pedagogic theory building starts with two fundamental anthropologic questions: What is a human being, and what should he or she be? Combining these questions, pedagogic theory examines educational aims and means of helping human beings to develop toward what they should be. Pedagogic reflection and theory building are based on the idea that—in the words of Immanuel Kant—a human being can become human only through education. Studying childhood from the vantage point of pedagogic theories focuses on the development of a pedagogic way of thinking over the course of time.

The Gentle Loving Rehab of Yoga,with Ayurveda

2002 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-43
Author(s):  
Patricia Hansen ◽  
Hansa Knox
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Therapeutic Application ◽  
Yoga Therapy ◽  
Vast Array ◽  
Structural Problems ◽  
Whole Person ◽  
Therapeutic Assistance ◽  
The Individual

People seek the benefits of private Yoga sessions for many reasons, including structural problems, stress,mental, emotional, and spiritual concerns, or a preference for one-on-one instruction. Others seek to deepen their Yoga experience because something has awakened during a yogâsana class. This is a natural unfoldment of the individual in the context of the classical darshana(system) of Yoga. Yoga is an ancient tradition that has been used by human beings for centuries to experience wholeness and health on every level of their being, and these individuals are seeking therapeutic assistance from Yoga, also known as yoga-cikitsâ, or Yoga therapy. The intention of this paper is to present an overview of the vast array of tools available through the traditions of Yoga and Ayurveda to support the individual therapeutic application of Yoga. Yoga-cikitsâ encompasses every level of the body-mind, and we feel that Yoga teachers and therapists need to integrate all of the available tools to best work with the whole person.

What is a Psychological Unit?

1995 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 98-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vicki L. Lee
Keyword(s):  
Daily Life ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Individual Human

This paper considers the question “What is a psychological unit?”. The ubiquity of units in daily life and in science is considered. The assumption that the individual human being or animal is the psychological unit is examined and rejected. The units represented by the data collected in operant laboratories are interpreted as a subset of the well-defined changes that individual human beings or animals can bring about. The departure of this interpretation from the traditional interpretation in terms of the behaviour of the organism is acknowledged. The paper concludes by noting the relation of the present interpretation of operant research to the problem of identifying psychological units.

scholarly journals Modernitetens modsigelser. Konfigurationskonflikter og samfundstænkning i Grundtvigs »Om Mennesket i Verden«

1998 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 142-156
Author(s):  
Henning Eichberg
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Life ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Time Space ◽  
The World ◽  
The One

Contradictions of Modernity. Conflicting Configurations and Societal Thinking in Grundtvig's »The Human Being in the World«A Worm - a God. About the Human Being in the World. Ove Korsgaard (ed.). With contributions of Niels Buur Hansen, Hans Hauge, Bosse Bergstedt, Uffe Jonas and Knud Bjarne Gjesing. Odense Universitetsforlag 1997.By Henning EichbergIn 1817, Grundtvig wrote »Om Mennesket i Verden« which can be regarded as a key to the understanding of his philosophy and psychology, but which is difficult to place in relation to his later folkelig, societal engagement. A recent reedition of this text together with some actual comments by Grundtvig researchers is an occasion to quest deeper about this relation.However, it is not enough to ask - as Grundtvig research has done for a long time - what Grundtvig wanted to say, but his text can be regarded as a document of how modem orientation in the world is characterized by conflicting linguistic and metaphorical patterns, which sometimes may tell another story than intended.On the one hand, Grundtvig's text speaks of a lot of dualistic contradictions such as life vs. death, light vs. darkness, truth vs. lie, God vs. devil, human fall vs. resurrection, body vs. spirit, nature vs. history and time vs. eternity. In contrast to the author's intention to produce clarity and lucidity - whether in the spirit of Christianity or of modem rationality - the binary constructions give rather a confusing picture of systematical disorder where polarity and polemics are mixed, antagonism and gradual order, dichotomy and exclusive either-or, paradoxes and dialectical contradictions. On the other hand,Grundtvig tries again and again to build up three-pole imaginations as for instance the threefold human relation to time, space and truth and the three ages of spiritual seeing, feeling and conceptualization resp. of mythology (childhood), theology (youth) and history (adult age). The main history, Grundtvig wants to tell in his text, is built up around the trialectic relation of the human being to the body, to the spirit and to itself, to the living soul.The most difficult to understand in this relation seems to be what Grundtvig calls the spirit, Aanden. Grundtvig describes it as Aandigt Samfund mellem Menneske og Sandhed, »the spiritual community between the human being and the truth«, and this may direct our attention towards samfund, meaning at the same time association, togetherness and society. Aanden is described by threefold effects - will, conscience and faith, all of them describing social relations between human beings resp. their psychological correlate. The same social undertone is true when Grundtvig characterizes three Aande-Livets Spor (»traces of spiritual life«): the word, the history and love. If »the spirit« represents what is larger or »higher« than the single human being and what cannot be touched by his or her hand, then this definition fits exactly to society or the sociality of the human being. Social life - whether understood as culture, social identity or folk (people) - is not only a quantitative sum of human individuals, but represents another quality of natural order. Thus it has its logic that Grundtvig places the human being in between the realms of minerals, plant and animal life on the one hand and the »higher« order on the other, which can be understood as the social existence.In this respect, the societal dimension is not at all absent in his philosophy of 1817. However, it is not enough to state the implicite presence of sociality as such in the earlier Grundtvigian thinking before his folkelig break-through. What was the sociality, more concretely, which Grundtvig experienced during the early modernity? In general, highly dichotomous concepts are dominating the modem discourse as capitalism vs. feudalism, materialism vs. idealism, modernity vs. premodemity, democracy vs. absolutism or revolution vs. restoration; Grundtvig was always difficult to place into these patterns. Again, it might be helpful to try a trialectical approach, transcending the dualism of state and market by civil society as a third field of social action. Indeed, it was civil society with its farmers' anarchist undertones which became the contents of Grundtvig's later folk engagement.

International Criminal Law

1985 ◽  
Vol 20 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 206-242 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yoram Dinstein
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Legal System ◽  
The State ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Corporate Entity ◽  
The Veil ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Individual Human

The individual human being is manifestly the object of every legal system on this planet, and consequently also of international law. The ordinary subject of international law is the international corporate entity: first and foremost (though not exclusively) the State. Yet, the corporate entity is not a tangible res that exists in reality, but an abstract notion, moulded through legal manipulation by and within the ambit of a superior legal system. When the veil is pierced, one can see that behind the legal personality of the State (or any other international corporate entity) there are natural persons: flesh-and-blood human beings. In the final analysis, Westlake was indubitably right when he stated: The duties and rights of States are only the duties and rights of the men who compose them.That is to say, in actuality, the international rights and duties of States devolve on human beings, albeit indirectly and collectively. In other words, the individual human being is not merely the object of international law, but indirectly also its subject, notwithstanding the fact that, ostensibly, the subject is the international corporate entity.

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