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What is different about a fetus at this later stage to deserve a rational soul?

Guilherme de Souza
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    A's often cited discussion about the formation of foetus is [*Historia Anumalium*, book VII, part III](http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/history_anim.7.vii.html) but it seems to me that there is no discussion about *soul* there. – Mauro ALLEGRANZA Dec 05 '22 at 11:01
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    Adding sources for the alleged claims would help. – Philip Klöcking Dec 05 '22 at 11:48
  • See the relevant passage *Generation of Animals* II.3.736a30-736b3: "concerning the soul in virtue of which an animal is so called (and this is in virtue of the sensitive part of the soul)—does this exist originally in the semen and in the embryo or not, and if it does whence does it come? For nobody would put down the embryo as soulless or in every sense bereft of life (since both the semen and the embryo of an animal have every bit as much life as a plant), and it is productive up to a certain point. – Mauro ALLEGRANZA Dec 05 '22 at 15:43
  • That then they possess the nutritive soul is plain (and plain is it from the discussions elsewhere about soul why this soul must be acquired first). As they develop they also acquire the sensitive soul in virtue of which an animal is an animal, . . . For e.g. an animal does not become at the same time an animal and a man or a horse or any other particular animal. For the end is developed last, and the peculiar character of the species is the end of the generation in each individual. – Mauro ALLEGRANZA Dec 05 '22 at 15:44
  • Hence arises a question of the greatest difficulty,which we must strive to solve to the best of our ability and as far as possible. When and how and whence is a share in reason acquired by those animals that participate in this principle? It is plain that the semen and the embryo, while not yet separate, must be assumed to have the nutritive soul potentially, but not actually. And it is clear that we must be guided by this in speaking of the sensitive and the rational soul. For all three kinds of soul,not only the nutritive, must be possessed potentially before they are possessed in actuality. – Mauro ALLEGRANZA Dec 05 '22 at 15:46
  • And see the dissertation of Melissa Rovig Vanden Bout: [Thomas Aquinas and the Generation of the Embryo (2013)](https://dlib.bc.edu/islandora/object/bc-ir:104090/datastream/PDF/view). – Mauro ALLEGRANZA Dec 05 '22 at 15:48
  • Preconfigures a well-worn principle, sharpened to a point that can presumably kill ... hopefully you won't feel it. – Agent Smith May 24 '23 at 13:05

3 Answers3

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Aristotle believed in a tripartite soul, with 'vegetable' souls and animal souls, supporting only in humans, the intellective soul.

So you would have to think a baby had not begun to have an intellective soul until some stage of development. For Greeks pneuma, breath, was often regarded as spiritual. Children could have survived at several months premature. I would expect some kind of link there. But I don't think the explicit derails are there in their texts.

See this similar discussion for direct quotes of relevance: Did Aristotle believe in an immortal soul?

CriglCragl
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Historically speaking, most cultures held that a child becomes 'alive' at the quickening of the fetus — when the woman can begin to feel the fetus move within her — which occurs roughly halfway through pregnancy. Religions that posit a soul usually placed its entry at that time. This is (interestingly) why most abortion laws limit abortions to the first trimester; they are trying to respect religious sentiments.

The idea that the soul enters the body at conception is a recent phenomenon, developed within US Christian fundamentalist and evangelical churches to oppose permissive abortion policies that followed Roe v Wade. It has no real historical or biblical roots, but is a typically hyperbolic assertion made for political advantage. That's not trying to suggest that it's right or wrong, merely that it is motivated by something other than scientific or philosophical reasoning.

Ted Wrigley
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    Who has argued against abortion based on when the soul enters the body? I don't think I've ever heard that argument. – David Gudeman Dec 06 '22 at 06:00
  • @DavidGudeman: I don't know that anyone ever explicitly (formally) argued that, but there is no other reason to set the conventional first trimester limit except that it conforms to the 'quickening' of the fetus. Law isn't philosophy, and law-makers often rely on intuitive cultural norms in place of proper reasoning. – Ted Wrigley Dec 06 '22 at 06:12
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    The arguments I've seen are based on the claim that after conception, the fetus is a unique and distinct human life. Also, I don't know why you picked out evangelicals as sources of this belief when the Catholics are more radical, disallowing even birth control. – David Gudeman Dec 06 '22 at 07:00
  • @DavidGudeman: The Catholic understanding is pre-scientific, stretching back into the first millennium. The Evangelical understanding is pseudoscientific, trying to use modern precepts of biology to assert a religious proposition for political gain. The presumption that the meeting of two gametes creates a unique life is indefensible; we could say the same about every virus and bacteria which we happily kill by the billions. – Ted Wrigley Dec 06 '22 at 16:34
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    @TedWrigley, you have entirely misunderstood the argument. The argument is not that the fetus should not be killed because it is a unique life but because it is a unique *human* life. There is nothing pseudo-scientific about it. – David Gudeman Dec 07 '22 at 15:18
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    @DavidGudeman: No, I'm not. To say that something is a unique *human* life merely because it has the correct number and kind of genes would mean that every single cell in one's body is a unique human life, so that we would be committing mass murder every time we cut ourselves, drank a beer, sneezed, or otherwise damaged tissues. Humanity is not determined by mere genetics; the human soul is not a quality of flesh and bone. – Ted Wrigley Dec 07 '22 at 19:44
  • @DavidGudeman: The pseudoscientific component here is precisely that: the presumption that something is a unique human life simply because it has the genetic precursors of a uniquer human body. That assertion is somewhere between tendentious and nonsensical. – Ted Wrigley Dec 07 '22 at 19:45
  • "This is (interestingly) why" Can you point to any evidence for that? The quickening is also linked to raising of activity of the neutral system, & so capacity to suffer. My understanding is that it was this medical basis that the US timeframe was based on – CriglCragl Dec 07 '22 at 22:52
  • Does somebody want to explain to me why the putative dishonesty of modern American protestants has *any relevance whatsoever* to this question about the reasons why a man who died 2344 years ago believed anything? Or for that matter why the assertion that most religions believe(d) that the soul joins the body around day 140 is relevant in the slightest to the the reasons why Aristotle (apparently) believed that the soul reaches its final development around day 40-80? – g s Dec 09 '22 at 00:23
  • @gs:I can't speak to Aristotle, whose conception of a 'soul' was different from the modern conception. Aristotle is often invoked by Christians, but not (I think) in ways that Aristotle would have agreed with or approved of. However, the fact that someone is asking a question about Aristotle and Aquinas framed in terms of modern Evangelical beliefs is sufficient to prove relevance. Aristotle is just another one of those things that modern Evangelicals are (putatively) dishonest about. – Ted Wrigley Dec 09 '22 at 01:05
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    @TedWrigley, the fertilized egg cell, if all goes right, will develop into a human being. This fact reasonably justifies the claim that the cell is a unique human life, and there is no scientific fact that opposes this assertion. Your use of "pseudo-scientific" in this context is purely political rhetoric, not philosophy (or science). – David Gudeman Dec 09 '22 at 04:08
  • @DavidGudeman: Ok, let's try this again. The problem with this logic (which I'm sure you're aware of), is that the phrase "if all goes right" is that a woman must sacrifice 9 moths to 18 years of her own life for 'all to go right'. Great if a woman chooses to do that; not great if she doesn't. I could as easily say that a patch of land can become a productive farm "if all goes right", but if things 'going right' means that I manage to capture slaves and beat them until they work the land for me... Well, is that what we mean by 'right'? – Ted Wrigley Dec 11 '22 at 15:12
  • @DavidGudeman: Your argument only works if you accept that some women must be forced to be slave to some fetus. Is that your belief? – Ted Wrigley Dec 11 '22 at 15:15
  • @TedWrigley, you seem to be under the impression that I am arguing that abortion is wrong. If I had been making that argument, then I agree that my reasoning would have been inadequate. However, I was not making that argument. All I was doing was correcting your strawman reconstruction of someone else's argument about the significance of conception. – David Gudeman Dec 12 '22 at 06:58
  • @DavidGudeman: I have no idea what you are *doing*; I only see what you are *saying*. Logic doesn't depend on intention (though it certainly can be influenced by it). What you are *saying° — while perfectly adequate as a belief, I suppose — specifically implies a contest of rights between a (speculatively human) fetus and a (demonstrably human) woman. Even if one believes that a fetus is fully human, it does not (as a human) have the right to enslave another human. Or do you disagree? No one sheds a tear when a slave kills a slave-owner; why is this different? – Ted Wrigley Dec 12 '22 at 15:16
  • @TedWrigley, yes, if a fetus is a unique and distinct human life, then that opens up a set of important moral issues (at least for moral realists); however, I don't intend to debate those issues in a comment section. – David Gudeman Dec 13 '22 at 06:35
  • @DavidGudeman: Cool. I just wanted an acknowledgement that there was an actual moral quandary here, not some absolute moral dictate. – Ted Wrigley Dec 13 '22 at 17:36
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"Delayed hominization" is a particular case of the larger problem plurality of forms vs. the unity of substantial form:

Ariew, Descartes among the Scholastics (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2011), pp. 83-84:

  • St. Thomas Aquinas: Man is a unity of single form (the rational soul).5
  • Duns Scotus: Man is a composite of a plurality of forms (rational, sensitive, and vegetative souls)6
  1. Aquinas Summa Theologica, I, quaest. 76, art. 3.
  2. Scotus Opera Omnia, Opus Oxoniense, IV, dist. 11, quaest. 3.

Ariew, Descartes and the Last Scholastics p. 21 fn. 28:

the Augustinian and Franciscan doctrine [was] the plurality of substantial forms. John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham held the thesis that man is a composite of forms (rational, sensitive, etc.), a thesis previously rejected by Thomas Aquinas, who argued that there is just one form or soul in man (the rational soul), which performs the functions that the other souls perform in lower beings.

St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I q. 76 a. 3 co.:

an animal would not be absolutely one, in which there were several souls. For nothing is absolutely one except by one form, by which a thing has existence: because a thing has from the same source both existence and unity; and therefore things which are denominated by various forms are not absolutely one; as, for instance, "a white man." If, therefore, man were 'living' by one form, the vegetative soul, and 'animal' by another form, the sensitive soul, and "man" by another form, the intellectual soul, it would follow that man is not absolutely one.

Geremia
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