The Providential Structuring of Humanity through the Spiritual Soul’s Relation to the Body
Introductory remark. The present essay is an oral talk given at a meeting of the American Catholic Philosophical Association. I have no plans to rework it for publication, but it represents the fruit of on and off reflection for almost a decade, at the time of writing. As will be clear in the body of the text, I am developing certain themes that emerged (mostly in several footnotes) in my article, “Maritain and the Metaphysics of Sexual Differentiation,” The Things that Matter: Essays on the Later Work of Jacques Maritain, edited by Heidi Giebel (Washington, DC: American Maritain Association / The Catholic University of America Press, 2018), 150–167.
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The subject matter of my remarks today is inspired, at least remotely, by an experience that I had in 2011. If I might be allowed a personal anecdote, I would like to tell this tale, because it will function as something like an experiential basis to open up further analysis of similar, if less striking, experiences. At the time, I was a Benedictine monk, near the end of my time in this state of life. (I was in yearly temporary vows at the time.) For some reason or other, I was quite vexed as I came into vespers. Through the course of the liturgy that evening, my blood pressure rose as I listened to my confreres chant in a way that, to put it mildly, vexed my aesthetic sensibilities. (Like several other musicians and semi-musicians in the monastery, I was perpetually disappointed in the fact that others did not take choral recitation as seriously as I did.)
Well, with frustration, I looked across the way, at the choir stalls on the other side of the apse of the Archabbey basilica. “Look,” I thought, “At these musically incompetent and undisciplined nincompoops…” I had the presence of mind to stop such unchristian thoughts—or at least to put up mental roadblocks against them. However, in a fashion that still strikes me to this day, I looked across the choir and, all of the sudden, it was as though time had stopped. I could see each of my confrères, almost like a representation of a monastery in a painting or stained glass: monks, looking every direction, odd looks on their faces, lacking unity, somewhat like a microcosm of Leo XIII’s epithet regarding the Benedictines, Ordo sine ordine.
But, what was truly striking about this experience was that the overriding sentiment that I had was not my normal, assistant-choirmaster vexation at their inability to chant together or keep pace during the hymns. Instead, it was as though each of the persons before my eyes—each with his eccentricity, and each with the luminosity of one made in the image and likeness of God—was radiant before my eyes with a kind of clarity that shouted out to my whole mind—that is, to my intellect, will, memory, sense appetites, etc.—declaring the unique and irreplaceable reflection of humanity in each father and brother in front of me.
I cannot emphasize how striking this experience was. It was like, looking at unique instantiations of human nature itself, one after another before my gaze. Irreplaceable. Unique. Beloved from eternity…
Humans are not termites, nor dogs, nor North American white oak trees. Granted, when we know one oak tree, we don’t technically know them all. Every spring we are surprised, and sometimes we walk through the forest, all of the sudden to see before our eyes a unique instance of the species Quercus alba. And termites might have a real, surprising, and ruinous ingenuity, and dogs a character that uniquely bonds them to their human masters. Nonetheless, the variety of termite mounds and nests pales in comparison to the variety of domiciles that can populate a single street that is not hemmed in by draconian HOA limitations. Even if we consider but a single and simple style, the American Cape Cod, many books can be written about all of the quite different ways that such houses can be constructed and ornamented. And, to take the example of a dog, the bond that we share with a given animal cannot—if we are honest—equal the intersubjective union we experience when we share in bread and board, in suffering and joy, alongside another human person.
The experience that I had as a young man could be repeated—perhaps, with less luminosity, but still with a contemplative eye—anytime someone desires. When you were in the airport on the way to the conference, did you pause to look around you and see the diversity of humans around you, each with his or her own story and, so to speak, unique humanity? Is it possible to say that each of these person-individuals is, in the ultimate analysis, as replaceable as an individual in the species of some plant or, even, higher animal? Obviously, at a Catholic conference, we will say, “No.” But I would like to ask: what might be the metaphysical foundation for this uniqueness? And how unique does it get?
Now, it is here that we come to the general subject of our conference: Male and Female, He Created Them. In the Catholic tradition, there have been authors, who have considered the unique metaphysical status of sex differences, delineating the degree to which we can say that there is a kind of sexed uniqueness in the very humanity of men and women. As I have argued elsewhere (in “Maritain and the Metaphysics of Sexual Differentiation” in the 2018 AMA volume printed by CUA Press), it would seem that the solution offered to by Maritain at least gropes in the correct direction, even if there are certain minor infelicities in elements of his discussion.
We can’t adjudicate all of that here. But, given that the group sponsoring this session is the American Maritain Association, I will take for granted that I can at least buy some rhetorical space to muse à la mode Maritain.
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In a late-life essay “Let Us Make for Him a Helpmate Like to Himself” Maritain considers the possibility that human sexuality marks out a kind of differentiation in the very nature—in the very individualized nature—of the person in question, whether female or male. Using a somewhat clunky metaphor—though, perhaps not as deceptive as certain critics, in the same volume as my aforementioned essay, would have it be—he proposes the idea that in male and female souls, there is a kind of intrinsic differentiation that is somewhat like left and right isomers of molecules, having the same essential structure but marked by a mirroring such that one cannot directly overlap the molecules with each other. Even if metaphor must be avoided in strict argumentation, I agree with Yves Simon that “in the phase of discovery, in the introduction to a subject, nothing is more natural than to use metaphors.”1 And I think that Maritain’s specific metaphor at least inclines the mind in a direction that can be metaphysically grounded.
Key to understanding the argument he presents is an appreciation for the fact that the human soul, precisely as a spiritual soul, is quite unique in both its substantiality and its individuation. It is not for nothing that certain Neoplatonists have spoken of man as a “horizon”: we “psychically” walk on the Earth, yet we “pneumatically” breathe the air of spirit. To see the strangeness of this situation let us consider a contrast between material beings, angels, and human persons.
In the case of material beings, what is subject to individualization is the hypostasis-subject that is a given individual being: this dog, this oak, this termite…. One and the same species-specific life-pattern finds itself replicated in this or that individual. The conditions of environment and physical constitution have an influence on the being in question: certain termites are workers, others soldiers, etc. In the case of dogs, we can likely presume merely accidental—albeit significantly important—differentiation among sub species of breeds. But in the end, in all of these quite varied subspecies, in particular individual animals whether male or female, we find ourselves faced with an individual of the species-specific-life pattern. Specific sameness runs through the individuals, but the individuals are not the species. They condition the finite and contingent particularities in which this or that species is expressed.
By way of contrast—significant contrast and one that relies upon the goodwill of Catholic philosophers gathered here, though animated by a certainty that this is a metaphysically attainable truth—angelic beings cannot (on the Thomist account) be said to be “individuated,” for to be individuated means to be a member of a most specific species, differing only in number from others in this same species. According to Thomist metaphysics, each angel is its own species—indicating an immense difference from angel to angel, as though from one species to another, united at most by a kind of generic unity. This means that specific “sameness” is found only in one angel: Michael lives by Michaelity; Gabriel by Gabrielity; etc.
But human persons are quite unique, standing between these two cases. This is an example of a domain in which Christian thought presses upon the philosophy of the soul and upon metaphysics, requiring development beyond even what was found in the greatest of Greek thinkers. The human soul is not merely soul. It is a spiritual soul. But it is not pure spirit—for men are not angels. Rather, the human soul subsists in itself, as the form of the body.2 The whole expression must be taken seriously. Like the angels, the human spiritual-soul receives existence into itself. But, it does so precisely as connaturally communicating this existence to the body, for which this self-subsistent form is the substantial form. One way that this was expressed by later Thomists (in the background of Maritain’s own account) was to say: the spiritual soul, by its very nature, communicates its existence to the body of which it is the form.
If the metaphysics of this seems questionable to you, as a kind of covert dualism or Platonism, consider the human soul in the state of “separation,” in which the soul will exist as soul without a body.3 Although the spiritual soul is an (imperfect4) person-subject, nonetheless, it is indeed an existent subject capable of exercising acts of knowledge and love. However, even as a subject of such operations, the human subject exists now as a “pure form.” But, unlike the angel, this spiritual subject, this pure form which has received its existence into itself as a form, has a condition of individuation that is not found in the angel: the (transcendental5) relation of the soul to its body (i.e., to the individuating conditions of materiality, quantified and diachronically conditioning the human person’s existence “in the flesh” over the course of a lifetime) in some sense leaves its “trace” upon the spiritual soul, such that this individual soul is in some way—as a soul—different from other “separated” souls. In other words, each individual soul, without departing from the commonality of human nature, nonetheless is marked, precisely as a soul-form, by the conditions of materiality. That is, each individual spiritual soul is intrinsically differentiated as a formal act-principle, in a way that differentiates this soul-form from that soul-form in a way that is wholly unique—different from the differentiation of this individual from that individual (the case of purely material beings) and from the differentiation of species-form from species-form (as is the case for purely spiritual beings).
It was this difference in individuation which undergirded Maritain’s insight regarding the relationship between male and female sexes:
Masculine or feminine typicity is not a mere functional or genital typicity. It is a typicity of nature (of individual nature) ordered to the temporal and spiritual progress of the human species toward its end, and implying a differentiation in the qualities of the soul, and which includes as one of its properties, however necessary it may be, the genital function related to human animality.6
I suspect that at this point Maritain might seem radical to those who are not disposed to this sort of analysis. I apologize for the fact, however, that I’m going to become even a bit more radical. I think, in a sense, Maritain does not go far enough. I think he makes a very important point regarding the differentiation of the human-form in view of sexuality, which essentially conditions so much of the materiality of our organismic constitution—not merely in chromosomal configuration, but (with all sorts of nuances, both physically necessary and also contingent) all throughout the period of gestation and later development and organismic life of the human person.7 However—to return to what is functioning somewhat as a principle of my demonstration today—our “separated” souls are not differentiated from each other by sexuality, as essential as that might be; they are differentiated by the whole material conditioning of our particular life as embodied beings, by the fact that this spiritual soul subsisted in this matter, over the course of these changes and operations (and hence, over the course of this or that temporal duration). That is, I propose: each human nature is not only differentiated as male and female but as human existing in this or that time, in this or that situation, etc. To put it in a more explicit theological register, we could say: each human nature is marked by the unique providential calling of this or that person, metaphysically realized in a particular materiality. That is, just as the human soul-form is—in a fundamental and important sense—profoundly and intrinsically structured in its formal virtualities by the host of material conditions and structuring that makes each person male or female, so too, and even more deeply,8 the human soul-form is intrinsicallystructured in the formal virtualities it exercises, uniquely expressing some virtuality of human nature that—not quite animal, not quite angel—is uniquely fitted to the vocation that each given person has to be a member of Christ’s mystical body.
I would perhaps not make this bold of a claim, if it were not for the fact that I am buttressed—with a truly probable certainty founded upon an authority who has long proved his worth—by the observation made by Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange in Le réalisme du principe de finalité:
[Thomas even] admits that there is a kind of inequality among human souls, despite their specific identity. For example, the soul of St. John is superior to the soul of this or that other man. From what does this inequality arise? St. Thomas explains it from the perspective of material causality, by saying, “When, by way of generation, the body is better disposed, the soul is better.” However, the holy Doctor also holds that, given that matter is for the sake of form, in the order of final and formal causality, the body is better disposed inasmuch as it is ordered from all eternity by Providence to a more noble soul. 9
Now, I think that Thomists perhaps all too quickly are tempted to think: a better body leads to a better intellect. No doubt such a claim is in the background. But what I’m most concerned with is on a slightly different register, one that has important repercussions for philosophical anthropology (especially in relation the implications of Providence upon theological anthropology): the soul-formality of each human person is shaped providentially by the material-temporal conditions of that person. The same basic materiality, the same root “prime materiality,” remains in some way in the supposit throughout its existence,10 yet also, this materiality is the root of all the other conditions of motion and potency that will mark the activity of the human person11—even, in a way, causing the discursive nature of our intellection and willing.12
Again, it is important to recognize that all of this is being said at the level of individual human natures. Specific unity remains for the case of man, because we are not purely spiritual persons like the angels, at best generically united, but, rather, are individuals in a species, although a very peculiar species for which the very form of life which each member lives in some way is intrinsically modified not only by one’s sex but, more profoundly, by all the particularities of that person’s historical vocation.13
But what is this sort of difference between human souls? It would be something that is substantial (in so far as it pertains to the very substantial life of this or that person). However, it must in some sense be accidental, for it does not pertain to human nature as such that it be Cyril, or Vera, or Anthony. But, such an accident is not an accident in the sense of being an inherent accident (in one of the non-substance categories). It is not, as the jargon goes, an accident in the sense of being a particular kind of “predicament” (i.e., one of the nine predicaments (or categories) that are inherent accidents.
Instead, we should understand this as being a case of an accident-predicable, as an accidental difference that designates something outside the essence in question and not properly belonging thereto. This is the case of accident-predicable that is parallel to the case of property-predicable where the property in question is not necessarily a proper-inherent-accident-predicament. For example, man is a cultural animal, a religious animal, a political animal. These are all properties flowing from the essence of man, but not inherent powers, habits, acts, etc. (Admittedly, such inherent properties also exist, such as our will, intellect, etc. But for the purposes of this paper, I am setting aside this point.)14 Each of the aforementioned properties (cultural, religious, political) are substantial properties; they indicate something properly belonging to the nature of man as a substance.
It is similarly along these lines that the providential character making one soul differ from another would be a kind of accidental substantial perfection15 marking each soul uniquely, such that in the line of formal causality each person would manifest a unique vocation to make known some particular refulgence of human nature’s amplitude, an amplitude whose formality is itself modalized by the conditions of materiality, of placement “in”16 time.17
And so, I think that this does justice to the insight with which I opened this talk. As I looked across the choir at St. Vincent Archabbey, I saw before my eyes some small flicker of the unique humanity refulgent in each of these men, a certain radiance of human-form itself, manifested in each with a distinctive note and modality, accidental to humanity as such, but functioning like a substantial perfection that colored all that flowed from each one’s essence, all his powers, habits, and acts.
I believe, at least in a groping way, that this provides some metaphysical undergirding for my insight, and I will be interested to see where our shared discussion now takes us.
Yves R. Simon, Work, Society, and Culture, edited by Vukan Kuic (New York: Fordham University Press, 1971), 168.↩︎
By far, the best meditation that I know of concerning this matter can be found in Anton , At the Origins of the Thomistic Notion of Man (New York: MacMillan, 1963).↩︎
I am here setting aside relatively recent debates concerning whether the separated soul is, in some way, a person.↩︎
Again, I am setting aside the contemporary debates. I take it that even if the separated human soul cannot be considered a person in a perfect sense, nonetheless, it is clearly not a kind of “mere form,” for it receives its existence in first act and is capable of eliciting acts of cognition and love even in this imperfect state.↩︎
I am aware of the difficulties involved in this issue. See Anton Krempel, La doctrine de la relation chez saint Thomas: Exposé historique et systématique (Paris: Vrin, 1952). For responses to Krempel, see John N. Deely’s remarks in John Poinsot, Tractatus de Signis: The Semiotic of John Poinsot, 2nd ed., ed. and trans. John Deely and Ralph Austin Powell (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2013), pp. 462, 473n114, 477–78n119, 499, and 500n139.
On the importance of this notion for understanding the “relativity” (secundum dici) of the soul to the body, see Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, The Order of Things: The Realism of the Principle of Finality, trans. Matthew. K. Minerd (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2020), 328n15: “Thus, the spiritual soul, when separated from its body, remains individuated according to St. Thomas, by its transcendental relation to this body which it will one day regain. Given that a transcendental relation is identical with the very nature of the subject wherein it is found, it subsists even when the terminus no longer exists.”↩︎
Jacques Maritain, “Let Us Make for Him a Helpmate Like to Himself,” in Untrammeled Approaches, translated by Bernard Doering (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), 151–64 (here, 159).↩︎
Various works could be cited by Prudence Allen, Simon Baron-Cohen, Louann Brizendine, Charles Murray, Stephen Rhodes, and others.↩︎
Though, it goes without saying, that this holds true without annulling the clear and multitudinous effects of gender bifurcation that are also part of this conditioning. That is not, however, the primary concern of this paper.↩︎
Garrigou-Lagrange, The Order of Things, 327–8.↩︎
Thus, a traditional definition of material causality: “That from which something comes to be and which remains therein.” See St. Thomas, In II Phys. lect. 5.↩︎
I’m not prepared to consider this in detail, but I suspect that there are connections here to the Thomist position that humans are individuated not merely by matter but by matter as designated by quantity.↩︎
This is well formulated in Pegis, At the Origins, 47 and 52:
↩︎If man is a historical sort of being, indeed the only being in the universe that is historical by nature, this trait belongs to the soul before it belongs to man. History is the signature of the soul’s intellectuality, for the human soul is an intelligence living by motion at the level of intelligibility found in matter. That is why it is a man, temporal spirit, engaged in an incarnated intellectual life…
The human soul, which is a spiritual substance as the form of matter, is an intellectual creature destined by nature for a historical existence, for an incarnate and therefore temporal duration, in order to express and to realize the intellectuality proper to it. The human soul, in other words, is in an entirely unique way an intelligence that can be itself only by enacting within itself a personal history; it is the only intellectual creature that needs to experience a duration subject to time and motion in order to find and to build its very nature.
And hence, Maritain himself draws this connection in his own reflections. See Maritain, “Let us Make,” 157:
↩︎But there is another and far higher end which the Ancients did not mention here because the dimension of time and of historical progress was not sufficiently clear and operative in their thinking. What humanity was created for was to advance here on earth, to lead here an ever higher temporal and cultural life and at the same time an ever higher life of the spirit, and finally to enter into the Kingdom of God and of the beatific vision. . . . It is to better assure the progress of the human species toward this end that from the very beginning human nature was divided between two distinct subspecific types complementing each other. And this is precisely why from the creation of Eve it was necessary that the qualities which distinguish femininity from masculinity be different and complementary.
The distinction here broadly maps onto the distinction between metaphysical properties and physical properties. I cannot hear develop this theme, which does deserve attention among Thomists (though, no doubt cleansing it of some of the aftershocks of the nominalist obsession with the potentia absoluta Dei seemingly connected to this distinction).↩︎
See Garrigou-Lagrange, The Order of Things, 328n15: “One soul is nobler than another by an accidental substantial perfection, which is an accident, not a predicament but a predicable, in the sense that it may or may not belong to the human species. It is the same with the relation of this soul to this particular body.” See Minerd, “Maritain and the Metaphysics of Sexual Differentiation,” 162n38.↩︎
One is not “in” time as in a container but, rather, as being subject to a kind of successive measurement in one’s mobile being.↩︎
No doubt, also, one could extend this in the order of the universe of grace and redemption, as an application to the unique status of each person in the Mystical Body of Christ. But that would be much to do in an exploratory paper!↩︎
