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aristotelian synthesis
[ 95 ]
with each option. If the rational soul were the form of the body but not a sub-
stance in its own right, then it would be difficult to explain how it could survive
the death of the body. But it was difficult to see how the rational soul, which is
form without matter, could be a substance. And on the assumption that the
rational soul were a substance, it was difficult to see how one could then account
for the unity of the person. A host of thirteenth-century thinkers—John Blunt,
Alexander Nequam, William of Auvergne, Alexander of Hales, Anonymous
Vaticanus, and Philip the Chancellor, among others—suggested a variety of
“solutions” to this problem, none of which was particularly attractive. 1
Philip the Chancellor (1170?-1236?), one of the most influential thinkers of the
early period in which Christian philosophers were trying to assimilate
Aristotle,
suggested that the soul, which is compound, is composed of a hierarchy of forms,
each of which is a substance. The vegetative soul appears first and then materi-
ally determines the subsequent appearance of the sensitive soul. These two, he
claimed, are merely preparatory to the later arrival of the rational soul, which
alone is the human soul. How, then, to explain each human’s unity? The answer,
in Philip’s view, is that these three souls fuse into one. Philip said that as the light
from
two temporary fires and from the sun may fuse into one source of light,
“thus it is in souls.”2 But the fusion is temporary. The vegetative and sensitive
souls die with the body, while the rational soul continues. Philip drew inspira-
tion for his theory of human unity from the dogma of the Trinity.
Robert Grosseteste (c. 1168-1253) drew inspiration for his theory from the
dogma of the Incarnation. In his view, just as when God joined with Jesus, the uni-
fied person of Christ was formed, so when the human soul joins with the human
body, a unified person is formed. But where in the body do soul and matter join?
Nowhere, he replied, or everywhere. As God is wholly present everywhere in the
universe, without being in any place in particular, so the human soul is wholly pres-
ent everywhere in the body without being in any place in particular. How can a
rational soul that is nowhere in particular move a body? Grosseteste answered that
the rational soul, while in the body, operates the processes of human life—the
nerves, muscles, and so on—by means of light, the corporeal substance closest to the
spiritual.
3
But is light nowhere in particular and, even if it were, how, exactly, would
the soul affect light, and light run the body? To answer such questions, as well as
many others, Grosseteste provided a physical cosmology and experimental science
of light, which had an enormous impact on the development of medieval science.
Even so, to the question of how an incorporeal soul could affect a fine corporeal
substance such as he took light to be, he could provide no satisfactory answer.
Peter of Spain (1205?-1277), on the other hand, distinguished between two
kinds of form. One kind gets all of its powers to act and to be acted upon from its
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