Poodles have Souls???
Children sometimes have a way of making you feel
stupid. Once I was giving a presentation
at a middle school and made a comment that we humans are special because man is
the only creature with a body-soul composite.
Immediately, a little sixth grader's hand shot up. “That’s not true!” he said. “Dogs have souls! Pope Francis said dogs have souls!” The teacher quieted the student because he
interrupted my presentation. But I later
learned that the boy was actually right.
And I
was wrong.
How
can this be? Where does this idea that
dogs have souls come from? To answer
that, we first need to understand the concept of hylomorphism by Thomas Aquinas. Don’t be scared if this is a new word for
you. Put simply, hylomorphism states
that the world is filled with different things.
Aquinas referred to these things as “substances.” For example, gold is a substance. Each substance is composed of two principles:
form and matter.[1] The form is what gives the matter shape,
existence, and powers. Neither principle
is a thing on its own. The form is not a thing. Only by coexisting together do form and
matter make up a thing (substance).
Okay,
so if the world is filled with substances, then what are living beings? Aquinas explains living beings as ensouled
things (substances). Under this
definition, not only do humans have souls but animals and plants as well. The soul is simply the form of the body. Like all
forms, the soul gives the body shape, existence, and powers. Religion is not necessary to define the soul
in this sense, but only a biological understanding of what is meant by a living
being.
Plants, animals, and humans
all have souls. But is a flower soul the
same as a poodle soul? Or is a hamster
soul the same as your teacher’s soul? No,
experience shows that not every soul (form) is the same. We see evidence of this by observing the
differences in the powers the souls enable.
Like plants, humans have vegetative powers to act materially on a
material object. I mean that by direct
contact, we can achieve nutrition, growth, and reproduction. For example, I can eat an apple pie and
assimilate it into my body. However,
human beings are different from plants because we possess sensitive powers that
allow us to attain an immaterial awareness of a material object by a material
organ. For example, I can smell the
apple pie outside of direct contact with it and intuit that it is instinctively
good. Animals have these same sensitive
powers.
We can’t stop there
though. Human beings differ from animals
in that we are rational. We are able to
gain an immaterial awareness of an immaterial object by an immaterial power:
the intellect. For example, I smell the apple pie and reason
that my mother spent hours making it for Thanksgiving dinner and therefore I
should hold my appetite. My
understanding of the pie is not just that it is “good” but that it contains
certain ingredients and has special value to my family. By observing reality as it is, man is able to
understand universal concepts and abstract the form from the matter of
things. The notion of our immortality,
our free will, and more come from the fact that as a rational being, man transcends
physical laws because our intellect is immaterial.
I’m grateful to that smart
little kid for challenging me. I was
wrong. But I was comforted to know that
people much smarter than me have spent a long time thinking about these big
questions. The Catholic faith is in no
way opposed to reason and scrutiny. So
if you have questions, good. Seek and
you shall find.
#
Written by Joey Martineck
Beautiful Things
Bibliography:
This post was pulled from
a paper in Fall 2015 Human Nature class taught by Dr. James Jacobs at Notre
Dame Seminary New Orleans, LA. Ideas discussed came primarily from class
notes.
1. Jose
Lombo and Francesco Russo, Philosophical
Anthropology: An Introduction (Midwest Theological Forum: Downers Grove,
Illinois).
2. Poodle
graphic: http://pixdaus.com/a-cute-poodle-animals-dog-cute-dog/items/view/509554/
[1]
Jose Lombo and Francesco Russo, Philosophical
Anthropology: An Introduction (Midwest Theological Forum: Downers Grove,
Illinois), 19.
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