Thomas Aquinas (II)

This chapter establishes the place of material continuity in Aquinas’s account of the identity between the mortal and resurrected human body, disagreeing with interpretations that imply the sufficiency of the soul in accounting for personal identity. It examines questions of food and cannibalism, and the role of the body’s dimensive quantity, or ‘accidental’ corporeal form, in guaranteeing its material identity. It discusses Aquinas’s account of postmortem bodily continuity, and his treatment of material identity across bodily decomposition. Here, Aquinas tries to rely on Averroes’ concept of a quasi-corpuscular structure in matter, arguing that traces of the body’s quantity can remain to identify its matter across decay. This conflicts, however, with an important Aristotelian principle—the priority of substance to accident. This highlights a fascinating point of tension between tradition and innovation in Aquinas’s thought. The chapter concludes with a focus on Aquinas’s discussions of Christ’s corpse, questioned at Paris.