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Full Idea
A human being has no substantial form other than the intellective soul alone, and it contains the sensitive and nutritive souls, and all lower forms, and it alone brings about whatever it is that less perfect forms bring about in other things.
Gist of Idea
Humans only have a single substantial form, which contains the others and acts for them
Source
Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologicae [1265], Ia Q76 4c), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 25.1
Book Ref
Pasnau,Robert: 'Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671' [OUP 2011], p.575
A Reaction
He says brutes and plants also have a single soul. Pasnau says this is Aquinas's most distinctive doctrine, because other thinkers postulate a whole hierarchy of substantial forms.
16109 | Things are a unity because there is no clash between potential matter and actual shape/form [Aristotle] |
16088 | Aristotle's solution to the problem of unity is that form is an active cause or potentiality or nature [Aristotle, by Gill,ML] |
16104 | Unity of the form is just unity of the definition [Aristotle] |
13277 | The 'form' is the recipe for building wholes of a particular kind [Aristotle, by Koslicki] |
16766 | One thing needs a single thing to unite it; if there were two forms, something must unite them [Aquinas] |
16765 | Humans only have a single substantial form, which contains the others and acts for them [Aquinas] |
16614 | Matter and form give true unity; subject and accident is just unity 'per accidens' [Duns Scotus] |
16780 | Partial forms of leaf and fruit are united in the whole form of the tree [Suárez] |
16758 | The best support for substantial forms is the co-ordinated unity of a natural being [Suárez] |
12700 | Form or soul gives unity and duration; matter gives multiplicity and change [Leibniz] |
16748 | Aquinas says a substance has one form; Scotists say it has many forms [Pasnau] |