British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 2015

Vol. 23, No. 1, 321, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2014.958432

A RTICLE
POTENTIALLY HUMAN? AQUINAS ON ARISTOTLE ON
HUMAN GENERATION
Jos Filipe Silva
Thomas Aquinas (122574) describes embryological development as a
succession of vital principles, souls, or substantial forms of which the
last places the developing being in its own species. In the case of
human beings this form is the rational soul. Aquinas well-known
commitment to the view that there is only one substantial form for
each composite (unicity thesis [UT]) and that a substantial form
directly informs prime matter (diPM) leads to the conclusion that the
succession of soul kinds is non-cumulative. The problem is that this
view seems to entail discontinuity in the process of generation.
Aquinas argues for the continuity of a conceived being by appealing
to the teleological argument at the core of Aristotles embryogenesis
theory: according to Aristotle, embryonic development is a gradual
actualization of the form of the species, potentially present in the
embryo from the outset. Aquinas denies such a gradualist account
due to his metaphysical commitments (UT, diPM), arguing instead
that the embryo prior to the reception of the rational soul is
potentially human only in the sense that the goal achieved by the
process is to belong to the same species as the parents. In other
words, a being conceived by human parents is potentially human
because it is to become human at the terminus of a process, if
nothing hinders its development. I argue that this justication fails
because Aquinas, as with most authors of his time, also accepted the
principle of the divine origin of the rational soul; applying this
principle would mean that the end of the process is beyond the
embryos potentiality. Therefore I claim that the embryo is potentially
human in a weak sense of the term: its aim is to develop a body
appropriate to receiving the rational soul.

KEYWORDS: embryogenesis; identity; plurality of forms

UNICITY VERSUS PLURALITY OF FORMS

Aquinass analysis of human embryogenesis needs to be understood in the
context of the debate over the unicity versus plurality of substantial forms
2014 BSHP

JOS FILIPE SILVA

that took place during the second half of the thirteenth century.1 According
to the unicity view, which Aquinas endorses, there is in any composite only
one substantial form because it is the substantial form that gives it being and
unity.2 The vegetative, sensitive, and rational parts of the soul Aristotle presents in his De anima correspond to the kinds of operations any human soul
performs, without that meaning any real partition within the soul. To claim
otherwise, as the so-called pluralists did,3 would imply the simultaneous
presence of several substantial forms in the human composite. For
Aquinas, such a view leads to the absurd conclusion that any composite
would be many things simultaneously (SCG, II.58, 37). Instead, he
claims that the unity required for a substance is absolute unity, meaning in
the case of human beings, that the rational soul is the only substantial
form and that it informs prime matter directly without any intermediate
forms.4 A human being is, by the same form, human, animal, body, substance, being, and alive.5
Although these two competing theories on the human composite and the
nature of the human soul are based on very distinct metaphysics, they
describe the process of human generation in roughly the same terms: both
accept that, whereas the vegetative and sensitive forms/souls are educed
(eduncuntur) by natural agency from the potentiality of matter,6 the intellective form/soul is created by God and infused in the embryo at a certain stage
of its development.7 The divine origin of the intellective soul and thus the
double origin of the soul is warranted by a passage, in the Latin translation
of Aristotles Generation of animals, where it is said that reason, in virtue of
1
The best overview still is Zavalloni, Richard de Mediavilla et la controverse sur la pluralit
des formes, 247496.
2
Aquinas, Summa Theologiae (hereafter ST), I.118, 2, 5667. See also ST, I.76, 3, 221;
Summa contra Gentiles (hereafter SCG), II.58, 1346; and De principiis naturae (hereafter
DPN), 1, p. 39, lines 434. (I use the Leonine critical edition whenever this is available
and accessible to me; in all other cases, I use the Marietti edition.) For a careful analysis of
Aquinas view, see Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas.
3
One of the most detailed theories is found in Robert Kilwardby. See J. F. Silva, Robert Kilwardby on the Human Soul, 69128.
4
Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae De anima (hereafter Da), q.9, responsio, 7983, especially
81, 23045. Form gives being to matter, which is in potency for substantial being (Thomas
Aquinas, DPN, 1, 39, 213).
5
Aquinas, Quaestio Disputata De spiritualibus creaturis (hereafter DSC), a.3, 44, 3936. See
also ST, I.76, 3, 2201. Aquinas attributes the plurality of forms theory to Avicebron; see, e.g.
In De generatione et corruptione, 232.
6
Notwithstanding their disagreement as to what exactly this educed means. The disagreement is grounded on different understandings of the notion of privation, taken as either
the result of incomplete forms existing inchoately in matter or the natural appetite of matter
towards form. See Nardi, Le dottrine dAlberto Magno sullinchoatio formae, 859.
7
Throughout the article, I use embryo to refer to the living being generated by human parents
until the reception of the rational soul; from that moment onwards, I refer to it as foetus. I
also use intellective soul and rational soul interchangeably, as warranted by Aquinas
himself: see, e.g. ST I.76, 3.

POTENTIALLY HUMAN?

having no connection with bodily activities, enters from outside. Such

conception of nature is essential to understand not only Aristotles (and
later Aristotelians) epistemology and natural philosophy but also political
theory (see, e.g. Miller, Nature, Justice, and Rights in Aristotles Politics).
What a thing is explains how it behaves and what constitutes its perfection.
In the case of a being generated from human parents, its end state is
explained and specied by its proper form, the intellective soul. To question
the internal nature of the principle specifying the beings development, as the
principle of the divine origin of the rational soul (PDO) does, raises the issue
of how Aristotles naturalism is retained by later interpreters, such as
Aquinas, on the issue of generation as in other aspects of thought.
The certain stage of development is when the body has the necessary
organs for the operations a human being is able to perform (Kretzmann,
The Metaphysics, 392). In fact, both sides accept that the vegetative and sensitive are necessary dispositions for the later intellective soul. What they disagree about is what happens after this infusion, whether these dispositions
remain or disappear. I believe this disagreement can be reduced to two possible accounts: (i) a single souls continuous and cumulative development or
(ii) three souls succeeding one another with substantial change taking place
with a new supervening form what Norman Kretzmann has called the
radical replacement hypothesis. Aquinas takes the latter view and the
issue is whether such hypothesis is compatible with the identity, throughout
the process, of the developing being and that is the issue of the following
section.
8

EMBRYONIC DEVELOPMENT AND IDENTITY

Aquinas describes, in the Summa Theologiae, the kind of change that takes
place in the development of the embryo:
We must therefore say that since the generation of one thing is the corruption
of another, it follows of necessity that both in men and in other animals, when
a more perfect form supervenes the previous form is corrupted: yet so that the
supervening form contains the perfection of the previous form, and something
in addition. It is in this way that through many generations and corruptions we
arrive at the ultimate substantial form, both in man and other animals. () We
conclude therefore that the intellectual soul is created by God at the end of
8
Relinquitur autem intellectum solum deforis advenire et divinum esse solum: nichil enim
ipsius operationi communicat corporalis operatio, De generatione animalium, II.3,
736b279, 54. See Aquinas, In Secundum librum Sententiarum (hereafter InIIS), in Scriptum
Super Libros Sententiarum, d.18, q.2, a.3, p. 468. Scholars have been puzzled by this account
of a divine (and immortal) intellect, and the difculties is raises with respect to Aristotles
hylomorphism, but have taken it to mean the intellects independence in its activity from
the body. See, e.g. Bos, The Soul and Its Instrumental Body, 15960.

JOS FILIPE SILVA

human generation, and this soul is at the same time sensitive and nutritive, the
pre-existing forms being corrupted. (ST, I.118, a.2, ad 2, transl. Fathers of the
English Dominican Province)

The text points to some key aspects of Aquinas description of the process of
embryonic development:
(i) Embryonic development consists in a process of successive generations
and corruptions:9 the embryo rst has the vegetative soul as its substantial
form; then the sensitive soul, which corrupts the composite of which the
vegetative soul is the substantial form; nally it receives, from the outside,
the rational soul, which corrupts the composite of which the sensitive soul
is the substantial form. In this sense, the embryo rst lives the life of a
plant, then the life of an animal,10 and nally the life of a human being
(SCG II.89, 1745; ST I.76, 3, 221; DSC, a.3, ad 13, 47). Each new substantial form is a more perfect form, capable of performing the same operations
of the previous form (because a higher power can produce the effects of a
lower one) and others beyond those.11
(ii) Whereas the process of coming into being of the vegetative and sensitive forms is explained by the potentiality of matter and by the action of the
formative power, the rational soul is created directly by God (ST, I.118, 2,
p. 566; ST, I.90, a.3, p. 388). (Let us call this the PDO.)
(iii) The rational soul is infused only when the embryo has reached a
certain stage of development, that is, when its matter is organized appropriately.12 The rational soul can be infused only when certain bodily dispositions are found (ST, I.76, 5, 228; Da, q. 10, ad 1, 92, 2739). (Let us call
it the Proportionality Principle = PP.)
9
Aquinas, Quodlibet I, in Quaestiones de quolibet, q.4, a.1, 184, 847. Only composites are
generated or corrupted (DPN, 2, 41, 907).
10
Aquinas (hereafter DP), q.3, a.9, ad 9; ad 135.
11
Aquinas, Compendium Theologiae, XCII, 1134. See also DSC, a.3, ad 2, 45, 43840; and
Sentencia Libri De anima, Chap. 5, p. 90.
12
SCG, II.71, 1481; SCG, II.88, 17312; and DP, q.3, a.9. As my concern in this paper is with
the metaphysical aspects of human generation, I avoid the moral and legal aspects relating to
the ontological status of the embryo (and the abortion debate, which rests on the moment of
this infusion). However, my interpretation of potentiality in Aquinas has obvious consequences for this debate: if the embryo is not potentially human at any stage the foetus is
unequivocally human then the abortion of an embryo does not qualify as the abortion of
a human being. There is an ongoing discussion about the moment of infusion. Some argue
that it happens at conception (or soon after), while others argue that the embryo only
becomes a member of the human species at a late stage of its development. See Pasnau,
Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature, chapter 4, for references. See also Van Der Lugt, Lanimation de lembryon humain dans la pense mdivale, 246. One of the referees correctly
pointed out that for Aquinas abortion of an unformed embryo, despite not constituting homicide, is morally reprehensible as Amerini notes (Amerini, Tommaso dAquino. Origine e ne
dela vita umana, 211; English translation by Mark Henninger as Aquinas on the Beginning
and End of Human Life. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013). (Thanks to Lidia
Lanza for pointing out this work to me.)

POTENTIALLY HUMAN?

These are not just any material dispositions, otherwise any living being
could receive a rational soul; on the contrary, they must be specic material
congurations, those that allow for the operations proper to the kind of being
it is (that is, a body with a human shape and the organs which are found in
living human beings).13 Aquinas makes clear the appropriateness of the body
to the human soul in the following passage:
Now, clearly, the body of a man or of any animal is conformed to its own soul,
for its organs are disposed in a manner betting the psychic operations which
are to be exercised by those organs. (SCG, II.88, 11, transl. J. F. Anderson, 298)

The relation between the body and the soul must be proportional because
they relate as potentiality and actuality. The body is potential with respect
to the soul, and the principle of actuality can only be present when the conditions for the operations that are proper to it are present (SCG, II.89, 1740).
The problem is that this idea seems to raise a difculty when confronted with
a fourth aspect of Aquinas theory:
(iv) A substantial form must directly inform prime matter the underlying,
persisting, subject of substantial change14 because there can be only one
substantial form in any composite; otherwise, any supervening form
would be an accidental form. Generation is motion towards form, and the
reception of a substantial form is unqualied generation, that is, something
is made simpliciter in the category of substance (DPN, 1, 39, 4652). At
any of the stages of embryonic development, the supervening of a new substantial form to an existing composite entails its corruption, with a new substance being generated (Quodlibet I, q.4, a.1 [6], 1835; SCG, II.89, 1743;
Forest, La structure, 188, n.1).
Aquinas is very clear in the requirement that a substantial form must
inform directly prime matter if substantial change is to take place. When a
form is received in an already existing substance, it replaces the previous
form if it is a substantial form, or it qualies the substance, if it is an accidental form. In the latter case, the subject enduring change is the composite,
i.e. the individual substance, whereas in the former, it is prime matter. The
question of prime matter in Aquinas has been the subject of a long academic
debate. Among the main difculties in understanding prime matter is how it
qualies for the role of underlying subject in substantial change.15 This is an

13

The body that enters in the denition of human being: not this body, but a specic type of
body (see De ente et Essentia. See also Da, q.8, ad 5, 73, 4704.
14
ST, I.115, a.1, 539; DPN, 1, 41, 747; and Aquinas, In duodecim libros Metaphysicorum
Aristotelis expositio (In M, hereafter), VII, lectio 2, 1286; and VIII, lectio 5. Prime matter is
pure receptivity to any form whatsoever and potential being only, that is, it has no actuality on
its own. See Lang, The Thomistic Doctrine of Prime Matter, 320, n.10 for references.
15
Similar difculties arise for Aristotles conception of prime matter. See Cohen, Aristotles
Doctrine of Material Substrate, 17194; and Graham, The Paradox of Prime Matter, 47590.

JOS FILIPE SILVA

interesting question on its own but I cannot pursuit here. My issue is with the
identity of the conceived being throughout the entire generative process.16
The claim that the intellective soul must arrive only when there is an
appropriate disposition of matter (that is, iii) seems not to square with the
claim that everything which exists in the embryo is corrupted down to
prime matter with the infusion of the intellective soul (that is, iv). Why
have as a requirement for the new form a certain level of material conguration, if that same conguration is corrupted when achieved? It is as if
Aquinas were saying that the making of things requires a certain order in
the making; for example, to make a house, rst we must have a foundation,
then walls, and nally a roof.17 But, when the walls are ready to receive the
roof, the roof comes together with a new foundation and new walls that are
just like (without being numerically the same as) those being replaced. So, if
on the one hand, the form of the species the rational soul completes the
substance, on the other, the form of the species actually replaces that which it
is supposed to complete.
In other words, Aquinass explanation raises the question of the identity of
the generated being based on its continuity throughout the series of generations and corruptions (SCG, II.89, 1743; and ST I.118, 2, 567).18 There
can be identity only in the case that its essential principles matter and/or
form are the same (Da, q. 19, ad 5, 166, 2716). But, form cannot
remain the same because the realization of a new form is the corruption of
the old one; nor can matter because only prime matter remains through substantial change, and prime matter is, on its own, pure potentiality how
could something which is conceived as pure receptivity to form account
for how something remains the same throughout substantial change? This
seems to be a serious problem to Aquinas theory.
In his study of Aquinas Summa contra Gentiles II, the late Norman Kretzmann rephrases the problem in the following way: Let us imagine an
embryo, 3 centimetres long, which is alive, receives nutrition, digests,
grows, moves, and feels. At the moment the embryo receives the rational
soul all the functions previously performed by the sensory soul are now performed by the rational soul. The foetus is a completely new substance in
respect to the embryo, having in common only prime matter; thus, the properties of the foetus cannot be the same with those of the embryo, and, nevertheless, they must be the same. For Aquinas, then, the process of
embryogenesis cannot be a continuous process, because each of these
instances of generation and corruption seem to require an all-or-nothing
16
The conditions that warrant this identity are the focus of Amerini, Tommaso. Amerini reads
Aquinas as supporting the embryo-foetus identity with the identity of the process of generation
(see p. 194). I argue that there is no continuity.
17
See Thomas Aquinas, Commentaria in Octo Libros Physicorum Aristotelis, in Opera omnia,
t. 2, Rome: Ex Typographia Polyglotta, Lectio 13, 3, 93.
18
This conundrum is what some have described as the problem of the continuant see
Kronen, Menssen, and Sullivan, The Problem of the Continuant, 86385.

POTENTIALLY HUMAN?

state of affairs (DP, q.3, a.9, ad 9, 67; q.3, a.12, 77; SCG, II.89, 1740) the
generation of a new composite with the reception of a new substantial form
and the corruption, down to prime matter, of the previous composite.19 And
somehow, it cannot but be the development of the same being; otherwise one
would end up with three completely unrelated beings succeeding one
another.
Normann Kretzmann nds this position, if understood radically, difcult
to hold, as it seems misleadingly strong (Kretzmann, The Metaphysics of
Creation, 392). Robert Pasnau, dealing with the same problem, also takes
it to be misleading and states corruption does not actually mean destruction
but more like reconstitution within a different substance (Thomas Aquinas,
128). Pasnau probably means that the newly generated substance retains all
properties of the just corrupted substance; the problem, however, is what
kind of change this reconstitution could be: certainly not alteration, or
local motion, or quantitative change it must be substantial change. But
then this reformulates the problem instead of solving it. Both authors are
charitably trying to account for what seems to be an incompatibility
between the metaphysical discontinuity implied by the succession of souls
(with the associated substantial change) that is, a series of top-down corruptions and the apparent (and required) physical continuity in the development of the conceived being (Thomas Aquinas, 125). Kretzmann argues
against understanding Aquinas theory as implying radical discontinuity,
claiming instead that, although each new superseding substantial form
results in substantial change in the developing embryo, this all-or-nothing
state of affairs is none the less, arrived at gradually (Kretzmann, The Metaphysics, 402).20
A gradualist approach explains the continuity of embryonic development
prior to the substantial change, but it does not account for what happens once
it gets there. That the substantial change is preceded by alteration or augmentation,21 that is, that the embryo goes from being less red to being more red or
from weighing 199 grams to weighing 200 grams, bears no difculty; what is
problematic is that when the developing being ceases to be an embryo and
comes to be a foetus, the being is an entirely new substance from what it
19

Aquinas rests his argument on Aristotles conception of generation and corruption. According to Aristotle, there is generation when a thing changes, from this to that, as a whole, that
is, when nothing perceptible persists in its identity as a substratum, and the thing changes as a
whole. The this out of which the thing comes to be (in an unqualied sense) must be something which potentially is, but actually is not (On generation and corruption I.2, 317a202,
and I.4, 319b145, respectively).
20
Kretzmann himself recognizes that Aquinas might not see it this [i.e. Kretzmanns] way
(402, n.81).
21
In De mixtione elementorum, Aquinas argues that a substantial form requires a certain disposition in matter through which matter is receptive to form; thus, alteration must precede generation and corruption (in Opera omnia (Rome: Editori de San Tommaso, 1976), t. 43, 155).
See also DP, q.3, a.9, ad 9.

10

JOS FILIPE SILVA

was before; at the same time, it seems to have all the properties it had before
going through substantial change (weight, height, sensory powers, and so
on). The problem concerns not how the required level of development
the material organization necessary for the new form is achieved, but
what happens when it is achieved, the generation of a new substance and
the corruption of the previous one. (In the same way, this quandary is not
about the continuous change any individual substance undergoes over
time by losing and incorporating matter and nevertheless retaining its identity.) The difculty is in seeing how foetus and embryo are (two stages of)
one and the same being, if they share neither the stuff out of which they
are made nor the substantial form which makes them what they are
(except perhaps in a loose and popular sense).22 They do have in
common prime matter but prime matter, as we have seen, cannot by itself
justify the identity of an embryo or foetus.
One way to avoid this problem is to deny (iv) and to claim instead that
some informed matter that is, some basic kind of stuff remains
through substantial change.23 What can this informed matter be? In his
Commentary on Aristotles Metaphysics, Thomas Aquinas ascertains that
the matter of a living body consists of what results from the mixture of the
elements.24 Although this idea does not solve the problem with respect to
bodily organization, it softens the radicalism of the down to prime
matter corruption it would allow a better understanding of the continuing
identity between embryo and foetus because at least some of the matter of the
former would be present in the constitution of the latter. In the same way as
the substantial forms of the elements cannot be actually present in a mixture
but only (virtually) through their powers or qualities, neither the elements
nor the mixture which results from them can as such be present in a
human body (De mixtione elementorum, 156; ST I.76, a.4, 224). Aquinass
thesis that a body is ultimately resolved into the elements means not that
elements are actual constituents of the living body but that they do play a
role in the constitution of the body: When mixed, they lose their substantial
forms but retain their qualities.25
22

In Roderick Chisholms sense, as a referee suggested, meaning that there is structural continuity (see The Loose and Popular and the Strict and Philosophical Senses of Identity, 82
106).
23
Some late medieval authors, such as Duns Scotus and William Ockham, were critical of
Aquinas conception of prime matter as pure potentiality. They argued instead, in the constitution of any composite substance, for the existence of a form (of corporeity) other than the
intellective soul which organizes matter into a body. See, e.g. Cross, The Physics of Duns
Scotus, 1333; and McCord Adams, William Ockham, 63369.
24
In M, VIII, lectio 4, 1752. See also Aquinas, Super Boetium De Trinitate, q.5, a.3, pp. 148
9. See Farmer, Matter and the Human Body, 142. Elements are the rst substantial forms to
inform prime matter (SCG, II.90, 3; DPN, 3, 43, 935).
25
See Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought, 34653; and Toner, Emergent Substance,
28197.

POTENTIALLY HUMAN?

11

Taking the above account into consideration, Aquinas must be understood

as expressing that the organization, by the fathers soul through the action of
the formative power, of the embryos matter is continuous and becomes progressively more complex from blood to highly complex organs (SCG,
II.88, 1743).26 When the organs for the operations proper to the sensitive
soul are ready, the embryo becomes an animal. To make Aquinas view
clear, one should stress the on-going, continuous nature of the process,
which is completed with the infusion of the rational soul, instead of taking
the status of the transitory generic forms as the core of the explanation.
This is why Kretzmann claims that it is misleading to argue for the radical
replacement of the entire embryo when it becomes informed by the sensitive
soul, because the embryo continues to be everything it was only it becomes
something more. It should be said, however, that these intermediary transitory forms should not be read in a cumulative way, otherwise they would
question the unicity thesis (UT). It means only that there is a succession
of them throughout the process of generation in which a certain stage of
organization must be achieved for the next level to be completed.
The accidental material dispositions (size and shape) common to the
foetus and embryo are the same not numerically but in species.27 In a
similar way, no perfection that precedes a supervening substantial form
remains numerically the same (InIIS, d. 18, q.2, a.3, ad 4, 4712). Neither
an accidental material disposition nor a perfection can be numerically the
same form that develops into successive stages, that is, the vegetative developing into the sensitive and then into the intellective (SCG, II.89, 1740).
The process of embryonic development is better described in terms of specication: the embryo prior to the reception of the rational soul is an imperfect being on the way to completion, that is, becoming a member of the
human species (DP, q.3, a.9, ad 10). Generation must, hence, be conceived
of as being on the way to completion, as that which is achieved at its end. It
is precisely this idea that Aquinas points out in his commentary on Aristotles On Generation and Corruption:
Form, however, is of two kinds: one is perfect and completes the species of a
natural thing, as in the case of the form of re or water or man or plant; the
other is an incomplete form which neither perfects any natural species nor
is the end of the intention of nature, but is something on the road to generation
and corruption. For it is plain in the generation of composites, for example, of
an animal, that between the principle of generation, which is the seed, and the
ultimate form of the complete animal, there are many intermediate generations
(as Avicenna says in his Sufciency) which have to be terminated to certain
forms, none of which makes the being complete in species, but rather an
26

Aquinas identies three stages of embryonic material organization; on this see Taylor,
Human Generation.
27
Quodlibet I, q.4, a.1, 184, 8791. They cannot be numerically the same because the subject
is not the same (DSC, a.3, ad 19, 48, 6325).

12

JOS FILIPE SILVA

incomplete being which is the road to a certain species. (In De generatione et

corruptione, lectio 8, 227, transl. R. F. Larcher and P. H. Conway, No. 60, 27)

There is form that completes the species of a natural kind and a form that is
an incomplete form which neither perfects a natural species nor is the end of
the intention of nature.28 Aquinas conceives the process of embryonic
development not as a series of generations and corruptions in a strict
sense but as a continuous series of generations and corruptions in a loose
sense: since the intermediate forms in this process do not complete the
species of the developing being, these incomplete forms do not count as
terminal substantial forms but as being on-the-way to the ultimate end of
the process, which is generation simpliciter (and corruption simpliciter).
The same principle that explains how the conceived being does not remain
the same throughout the process by being a multi-layered process also
explains how the process is of one and the same being. The process of generation is a series of generations from the form of the elements to the form of
the species (SCG, II.89, 1743); the transitory vegetative and sensitive souls
exist for the sake of what the being will become, that is, they congure
matter in such a way as to receive the form of the species:29
Nor it is inconsistent if the generation of an intermediate form takes place and
then at once is interrupted, because the intermediate forms lack specic completeness, but are on the way toward the end. Thus, the reason why they are
generated is not that they remain in existence, but that the ultimate term of
generation may be attained through them. (SCG, II.89, 10, transl. J. F.
Anderson)

The process of generation is a succession of generations and corruptions

(DSC, a.3, ad 13, 47, 56871; DP, q.3, a.9, ad 9), a succession that is discontinuous from the point of view of the change it implies but continuous from
the viewpoint of the end of the process.30 This is in fact Aristotles solution:
the end of the process explains its continuous nature, that is, generation is a
motion, and motions exist for the sake of their goals (Physics II.8).
The discussion above shows that there are some difculties in Aquinas
theory of substantial change, due to his radical understanding of UT. The discussion also shows that the continuity of the process can be safeguarded if
the end rather than the process itself is stressed, in other words that the
28

What is the ontological status of an incomplete form for an author that did not accept gradation of substantial form remains unclear for me. Amerini argues that the process comprises the
acquisition of four different species (Tommaso, 100).
29
In that sense, semen and menstrual blood are potentially human as well (DPN, 1, 39, 101).
30
The intermediaries are generated precisely to be transitory (see SCG, II.89, 17434). The
problem is that on its own the on the way to perfection says nothing about the ontological
status of the being that is in motion; thus, it does not constitute an argument for the unicity
of substantial form.

POTENTIALLY HUMAN?

13

whole process with all its transitory steps is directed to the specication
of the foetus into the human species. This makes the embryo of human
parents to be potentially human. It is to this issue that now I turn.

POTENTIALLY HUMAN
Norman Kretzmann has convincingly demonstrated that Aquinas denies an
account of embryogenesis resting on the conception of a single souls continuous development, and this is due to Aquinas commitment to PDO and
to UT, which implies substantial change at the supervening of a new soul.
This left Aquinas with the problem of justifying the continuity of the
process of embryonic development, and I have argued in the previous
section that Aquinas justies it with the end of the process: the embryo of
human parents is on the way to the human species. This teleological argument is supposed to demonstrate that the developing being is, from the
start, potentially a human being. I take the embryos potentiality for being
human to be problematic in face of PDO, in that the divine origin of the specifying and completing rational soul raises the issue of how the goal of the
embryo can be internal to the embryo, as should be the case for something to
be potentially something else. The problem is not in the action of the external
agent because that is common to all instances of generation, but in the potentiality that must exist in the thing to be changed. What is the potentiality
present in the embryo that is actualized by the external agent? Before
answering this question in Aquinas, it might be helpful to understand what
it means for Aristotle.
According to Aristotles embryogenesis theory that for the most part
Aquinas follows, the father via the seed is the efcient cause, and the
beings essence is the formal cause, whereas the mothers menstrual blood
is the material cause.31 The male acts in the conceived being by the power
that exists in the semen from the beginning (GA II.1, 734a134), in much
the same way as a carpenter imparts the shape to the material by means
of the motion he sets up (GA I.21, 730b922). The father is in actuality
what that out of which the offspring is made is in potentiality (GA II.1,
734b356), in the sense that the form of the new being is caused by the
31

Aristotle, Generation of animals I.2, 716a57 (hereafter GA); Metaphysics VIII.4,

1044a32-b1. All Aristotles texts are quoted from The Complete Works of Aristotle. Aristotles
theory of embryogenesis (and Aquinas reading of it) has recently received renewed attention,
with scholars making use of their metaphysical principles while updating their conception of
embryonic/foetal development in face of contemporary scientic understanding. See, among
others, Ford, When Did I Begin?, especially chapter 2; Meyer, Embryonic Personhood,
Human Nature, and Rational Ensoulment, 20625; Haldane and Lee, Aquinas on Human
Ensoulment, Abortion and the Value of Life, 25578; Donceel, Immediate Animation
versus Delayed Hominization, 76105; and Eberl, Thomism and the Beginning of
Personhood.

14

JOS FILIPE SILVA

form of the father, which exists in actuality such that the movement
imparted by the male will make the form of the embryo in its own likeness
(GA IV.3, 767b167; Parts of Animals I.1, 640a257). This idea applies to
all soul-kinds, as all the three kinds of soul, not only the nutritive, must be
possessed potentially before they are possessed in actuality (GA II.2,
736b145).
A natural process such as human generation is goal-oriented in the sense
that the goal of the process is the generation of a human being. The end of
each individuals generation is the species (GA II.3, 736b23). The
embryo is potentially human only if it has in itself the principle/form that
will be the end term of its development process (Aristotle, Parts of
Animals I, 640a109. See Code, Soul as Efcient Cause in Aristotles
Embryology, 519). The argument rests on the idea that a natural process
is for the sake of a certain goal and that this goal is the consequence of a
things nature (Physics II.2, 194a2831; Metaphysics V, 4), which exists
in the embryo potentially from the outset (Gotthelf, Understanding Aristotles Teleology, 80). In the case of an embryo from human parents, the end
is the rational soul that makes it a member of the human species. The being
becomes one thing because it is of a certain kind (GA V.1, 778b26), and it is
for the sake of what it is and what it is to become that its parts are made in
such a way and order.32
Having rejected, due to his radical interpretation of UT, the notion of
latent potentiality that would have granted the continuity of the process,
Aquinas tries to meet this point directly, in the Summa contra Gentiles, by
placing all the emphasis of bodily conguration on the formative power.
After having accepted that the body must be congured according to the
soul, Aquinas says that it is the soul of the father, through the action of
the formative power (transmitted via semen), and not the form of the generated being, which is responsible for the formation of the body (SCG, II.89,
1742; Kretzmann, The Metaphysics, 3901).
It is the fathers soul which is the principal agent, not the soul of the conceived being because the soul (vegetative or sensitive) of the embryo cannot
have the power to organize the matter of the body for the superseding form;
otherwise the soul would bring about effects which are superior to itself
that is, the vegetative soul, for example, would be responsible for making
the necessary dispositions for the sensitive soul, which is ontologically
superior. And the generator, as the efcient cause, acts in view of the nal
cause because, as Aquinas says, the nal cause is the cause among causes.
The formal cause is, according to Aquinas following Aristotle, the essence
of the being, that which is signied by its denition; the nal cause is precisely the goal of the process, that is, the species. In that sense, nal and
... a man has such and such parts, because the essence of man is such and such, Aristotle,
Parts of Animals I.1, 640a335. See also Physics II.8, 199a133.

32

POTENTIALLY HUMAN?

15

formal causes are numerically the same, as the goal of a mans generation is
his soul.33
A question that immediately arises from the passage just quoted is in what
sense does the formative power work in the making of that which is specically like the generator, and how can the formal cause be in the embryo from
the outset, since for Aquinas the rational soul the soul which makes the
embryo specically human is created by God? The answer is clear:
a human being generates another one like itself in so far as by means of its
semen [that is, the formative power in the semen] it disposes matter to the
reception of such a form [that is, the rational soul]. (ST, I.118, a.2, 566, my
translation; See also Kretzmann, The Metaphysics, 395)

The general principle that [t]he act extracted from the potentiality of matter
is nothing other than something which was previously in potency, to become
actual (ST, I.90, a.2, 386), cannot be applied to the rational soul due to PDO.
The formative power, as a material power, cannot bring about an effect
superior to it, an immaterial form (InIIS, d. 18, q.2, a.1, 45960). The inevitable conclusion is that the generation of the like by the like is, in the case of
human beings, limited to the action of the soul of the father, via the formative
power, to dispose the body for the reception of the rational soul.34 Whereas
in Aristotle, human generation is explained through a purely naturalistic
account the nature (form or essence) of a thing is the internal cause of
the things development Aquinas introduces a divine element to explain
precisely what is human in this process. By doing so, Aquinas ends up
ruling out the possibility of explaining how an embryo generated from
human parents is potentially human with the goal to be attained by such a
process. In other words, Aquinas tries to explain the discontinuous series
of generations and corruptions by appealing to the terminus of the
process; however, because God creates the rational soul, the goal of the generative process lies beyond the generated beings potentiality.
From a strictly Aristotelian understanding of generation, Aquinas would
have to say that the appropriate organization of the body is the result of,
rather than the condition for, the (presence of the) rational soul. For Aristotle,
the embryo becomes human because it is from the beginning potentially
human in the sense of having its own principle of development; the organization of matter that is, organ disposition, types of organs and limbs,
Commentary on Aristotles Metaphysics VIII, lesson 4, n.1737, 574. In fact, the nal,
formal, and efcient causes coincide in what concerns the end of generation (not the end of
the generated thing). See DPN, 4, 434.
34
InIIS, d. 18, q.2, a.1, ad 4, p. 461. See also Quaestiones disputatae: De veritate 3.9, ad 9. As
Amerini (Tommaso, 90) rightly, and clearly, points out, the formative power is necessary to
explain the formation but not the functioning of the embryos body. On the difculties of
establishing the nature of this power and its relation with the soul of embryo, see Amerini,
Tommaso, 10925.
33

16

JOS FILIPE SILVA

and so on is the result, and not the cause, of the form proper to the kind of
being the thing is. As Aristotle says, the being becomes a certain way
because it is a certain way (GA V.1, 778b26), rather than it being a
certain way because it becomes a certain way. The soul is the actuality of
a body of a denite kind, which is potentially that which the soul actualizes
(De anima II.2, 414a1628). It is not potentially human because it has the
shape of a human body or due to the disposition of the bodily parts; rather
it is human because it has the internal principle that, nothing impeding his
development, will develop it into a human being.35 In Aquinas case,
however, that which makes this being a potential human being is not
from the outset in the being itself; therefore, to be potentially a human
being here means nothing other than to be able to develop the material dispositions necessary to receive the rational soul. Potentiality here is not just
possibility or capacity because if anything, the embryo of human parents
becomes a human being (and not a cat). The embryo conceived by human
reproduction is thus potentially human in the sense of having the potentiality
to develop in such a way as to have an organic body that is the appropriate
recipient of an individually created rational soul (ST, I.118, a.2, 567). The
embryo has the potentiality for becoming a fully developed organic body
with a human shape and not the potentiality for becoming a full-edged
member of the human species. If that is the case, then, Aquinas argument
is in sharp contrast with Aristotles: for Aristotle the shape is the result of
what the thing is, whereas for Aquinas, the shape allows for the reception
of the rational form. (Allows for must be understood as meaning that it
gives the necessary conditions for God to freely create the rational soul.)
In fact, this seems to be Aquinas own understanding of the question, one
which seems to have been overlooked.36 In DP he claims that
(1) a human being generates a being similar to himself in species, through
the generative and formative powers (DP, q.3 a.9 ad 5);
(2) to generate one similar to himself in species is for the generator to act in
such a way as to make the conceived being participate in the generators
species (DP, q.3 a.9 ad 6.);
(3) but, as the form of the species in the case of human beings is the rational
soul, which is of divine creation, to make one similar in species means
only to be the cause of the union of the soul and the body;
Aristotle, Metaphysics IX.7, 1049a138. This point is nicely put by P. J. der Eijk: Thus the
soul is not just the life force, but also the dynamic structure and the organizational pattern
according to which, and for the purpose of which, the physical body is shaped, constituted,
and internally arranged (Aristotles Psycho-Physiological Account, 63). According to
S. J. Heaney (Aquinas and the Presence, 32), for Aquinas the soul is the cause of the
shape of the body.
36
One exception is Taylor, Human Generation, 1423, who hints at but does not develop this
point.
35

POTENTIALLY HUMAN?

17

(4) to be the cause of the union of the body and the rational soul is to
organize (or, dispose) matter in such a way as to be appropriate for
the rational soul to be infused (DP, q.3 a.9 ad 6; see Amerini,
Tommaso, 1256).
The end term to which the road of generations and corruptions leads is matter
organized in such a way as to be ready to receive the rational soul, not to be
informed by the rational soul. The embryo of human parents is potentially
human in this weak sense of the term, that is, as the lower kind of potentiality. Whereas for Aristotle the embryo of human parents is potentially human
in the sense of a second potentiality the possession of the capacity which
needs to be actualized37 for Aquinas the embryo of human parents is potentially human in the sense of a rst potentiality, that is, it has the potentiality
to become potentially human by developing a body which is appropriate for
the reception of the rational soul. As the form proper to the human species is
received from the outside rather than developing from the embryos internal
principle, the embryo from human parents cannot be said, except by
reduction, to be potentially human.
In other words, according to Aquinass account, the human embryo is
potentially human in the sense (and at the moment) of having the material
organization necessary for the reception of the rational soul, which is
created by God. The human embryo is not potentially human in the sense
of having the principle of its terminal development (with)in itself from the
outset. The being generated by human parents gives the embryo the
(high) probability of, God wishing, becoming a full-edged human being
at the end of the process of development; but (high) probability means
very little in metaphysical terms.
Aquinas cannot go farther than that without entering into theological difculties. He could argue that an embryo generated from human parents and
having an appropriately disposed matter cannot but receive from God the
rational soul; but this would entail the necessity of Gods creation of individual rational souls. Material disposition and paternity make it possible for the
reception of the rational soul but do not make it necessary. By stressing the
appropriate disposition of matter to the reception of the rational soul, what
Aquinas does is point out that nature fulls its part of the deal, that is, it provides the necessary conditions. However, this cannot mean God could not do
otherwise. The problem is that the teleological argument rests on the necessity of this creation.
An alternative and more friendly reading would be to claim that the action
of nature in the generative process is the instrument of Gods action.38
A point clearly made by G. Aubry in Capacit et Convenance: La notion depitdeiots dans
la thorie porphyrienne de lembryon, in Lembryon, 1436, especially 145.
38
ST, I.118, a.2, 567; InIIS, d.18, q.2, a.1, ad 5, 461. See Donceel, Immediate, 85. A further
argument for this reading, suggested by an anonymous referee, is Aquinas claim that even in
37

18

JOS FILIPE SILVA

Aquinas himself seems to argue for this when he insists that God and nature
operate in generation as if through an almost continuous action: whereas
nature (which includes the action of the formative power) acts by making
the appropriate body (DP, q.3, a.9, ad 21), God creates the rational soul.
The whole natural process of generation is made to be such by God with
the purpose of developing an appropriate body to receive the rational soul.

CONCLUSION
The non-cumulative succession of substantial forms/souls (in obedience to
UT and diPM [directly informs prime matter]) raises serious difculties for
Aquinas account of human generation. Aquinas tries to solve the problem
of the embryo-foetus identity and the continuity of the process of development
by adopting Aristotles teleological argument, according to which to become
human is the terminus of the embryos internal process of development. But
PDO seems to entail that the terminus of the process of generation goes
beyond what can be achieved on its own by the embryo of human parents.
Aquinas solution is to take all the intermediary instances of substantial
change as on the way to the end state the specication of the embryo by
the intellective soul and to qualify the claim that the embryo is potentially
human as it having the potentiality to develop a body that is suitable to rational
ensoulment (rather than having the potentiality to produce on its own a rationally ensouled body). Whether this sufces to comply with the original Aristotelian argument remains open to debate. Still another way to understand this
continuity is from the point of view of divine agency, which directly creates
the individual rational soul and is indirectly through the action of nature
responsible for the processes of embryonic development.39
Submitted 11 June 2014; revised 28 July; accepted 22 August
University of Helsinki

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39
I have beneted greatly from comments and suggestions from the editor, associate editor and
an anonymous referee for the journal. Many thanks also to Miira Tuominen and Alejandro
Lorite Escorihuela for commenting earlier drafts of this article.

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