Thomas Aquinas on Bodily Identity

Antonia Fitzpatrick

Fundamentally revises the notion of Aquinas's philosophy of human nature that is generally accepted, restoring the significance of the body, as opposed to the soul, for the individuality and identity of a person
Illuminates philosophical debates central to late thirteenth and early fourteenth-century thought, and highlights their ongoing interest to modern thinkers
Brings central ideas in medieval thought into contact with theologians' polemic with heresy, and the institutional histories of the medieval university and religious orders

Thomas Aquinas on Bodily Identity

Antonia Fitzpatrick

Description

This is a study of the union of matter and the soul in the human being in the thought of the Dominican Thomas Aquinas. At first glance this issue might appear arcane, but it was at the centre of polemic with heresy in the thirteenth century and at the centre of the development of medieval thought more broadly. The book argues that theological issues, especially the need for an identical body to be resurrected at the end of time, but also considerations about Christ's crucifixion and saints' relics, were central to Aquinas's account of how human beings are constituted. The book explores in particular how theological questions and concerns shaped Aquinas's thought on individuality and personal and bodily identity over time, his embryology and understanding of heredity, his work on nutrition and bodily growth, and his fundamental conception of matter itself. It demonstrates, up-close, how Aquinas used his peripatetic sources, Aristotle and (especially) Averroes, to frame and further his own thinking in these areas. The book also indicates how Aquinas's thought on bodily identity became pivotal to university debates and relations between the 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 mind; it also fundamentally revises the view of Aquinas that is generally accepted. Aquinas is famous for holding that the one and only substantial (or nature-determining) form in a human being is the soul, and most scholars have therefore thought that he located the identity of the individual in their soul. This book restores the body through a thorough and critical examination of the range of Aquinas's works.

Thomas Aquinas on Bodily Identity

Antonia Fitzpatrick

Thomas Aquinas on Bodily Identity

Antonia Fitzpatrick

Author Information

Antonia Fitzpatrick, Departmental Lecturer in Medieval History, St. John's College, University of Oxford

Antonia Fitzpatrick is Departmental Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Oxford's History Faculty and St. John's College. Prior to this, she was a Junior Research Fellow at St. John's, a doctoral and masters student at University College London, and an undergraduate at Wadham College, Oxford. Thomas Aquinas on Bodily Identity is her first book. She is researching a second monograph on Dominican and Franciscan intellectual traditions in the Late Middle Ages, and separately examining notions of harmony in medieval thought. Antonia is trained in Philosophy as well as History, and in addition to articles on Franciscan and Dominican debates about individuality and bodily identity, she has published on the relationship between modern historical modes of argumentation and formal logic.

Thomas Aquinas on Bodily Identity

Antonia Fitzpatrick

Reviews and Awards

"Fitzpatrick has produced a study as fascinating as it is important, shedding considerable light on an understudied aspect of Aquinas's teaching on human nature and bodily identity." - Franklin T. Harkins, Speculum 96/3

"Fitzpatrick's book shows how vitally important it is to take Aquinas's theological commitments seriously when attempting to spell out his metaphysics. I am sure that Thomas Aquinas on Bodily Identity will be an important reference point for future research on the complex topic of the body in Aquinas." - Can Laurens Löwe, Archa Verbi: Yearbook for the Study of Medieval Theology

"Antonia Fitzpatrick has provided us in this book with a highly detailed and well-constructed study in which, as she justifiably claims, Aquinas can be shown in fact to have developed an account of our continuing identity in terms of the body rather than the soul. It is a book that should be of interest to Thomists, as well as theologians more generally, and students of medieval philosophy will certainly find it a very helpful study." - Oliver Davies, The English Historical Review