Survivalism versus Corruptionism

Whose Nature?Which Personality?

Turner C. Nevitt
University of San Diego

I. Introduction

Contemporary interpreters are in the midst of an ongoing debate about

Aquinas’s view of the status of human beings or persons in the interim
period between death and resurrection. Everyone agrees that, for Aquinas,
death is the separation of the soul from the body; the human body cor-
rupts and ceases to exist, while the human soul survives and continues to
exist. The disagreement is about Aquinas’s view of what happens to the
human being or person—­to Socrates, for example. According to corruption-
ists, Aquinas thought that human beings or persons corrupt along with their
bodies—­that is, they cease to exist at death and only begin to exist again
when their souls are reunited with their bodies at the resurrection.1 Survival-
ists, on the other hand, deny this. According to them, Aquinas thought that
human beings or persons survive death along with their souls—­that is, they
continue to exist immediately after death, when their souls are separated
from their bodies.2
The debate between corruptionists and survivalists has tended to focus
on specific things that Aquinas says about human beings or human souls
in the interim period between death and resurrection. For example, Eleon-
ore Stump, a leading survivalist, defends survivalism by noting a number of
things that Aquinas says about the interim period—­that separated souls pray,
for example, and that people are punished for their sins immediately after
death—­that, she argues, would not make much sense unless Aquinas thought
that human beings or persons continued to exist along with their souls imme-
diately after death.3 On the other hand, Patrick Toner, a leading corruptionist,

1
For standard defenses of corruptionism, see Turner C. Nevitt, “Aquinas on
the Death of Christ: A New Argument for Corruptionism,” American Catholic Philo-
sophical Quarterly 90 (2016): 78n2.
2
For standard defenses of survivalism, see ibid., 78n3.
3
Eleonore Stump, “Resurrection, Reassembly, and Reconstitution: Aquinas on
the Soul,” in Die Menschliche Seele: Brauchen wir den Dualismus?, ed. B. Niederbacher and
© Turner C. Nevitt, Quaestiones Disputatae, Vol. 10, No. 2 (Spring 2020)
128 Survivalism versus Corruptionism

defends corruptionism by noting other things that Aquinas says about the
interim period—­that the separated soul is not a person, for example, and that
when we pray to the saints by name, we are only using their names to refer to
their separated souls by synecdoche—­that, he argues, would not make much
sense unless Aquinas thought that human beings or persons ceased to exist
along with their bodies at death.4
Jeffrey Brower laments that the debate between survivalists and corrup-
tionists has had this focus on specific things that Aquinas says about the
interim period between death and resurrection rather than proceeding on
the basis of broader and more systematic metaphysical considerations.5
Indeed, I think that the previous focus of the debate has obscured what are
in fact much deeper and more problematic disagreements between surviv-
alists and corruptionists about how to understand some of the most basic
principles of Aquinas’s metaphysics—­principles such as essence, nature,
form, matter, and personhood. In this paper, I want to begin to focus
on these deeper disagreements. Of course, I do not expect to be able to
settle these disagreements in this paper. But I do hope at least to iden-
tify where some of these deeper disagreements really lie and to begin to
advance some more systematic reasons for thinking that corruptionists are
right and survivalists are wrong—­both about how to understand the basic
principles of Aquinas’s metaphysics and about how to apply them to the
question about the status of human beings or persons between death and
resurrection.

II. Human Nature

I want to begin by stating a metaphysical argument for corruptionism that

will help structure my discussion of the deeper disagreements between sur-
vivalists and corruptionists:

E. Runggaldier (Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag, 2006), 151–­71; Eleonore Stump, “Resur-

rection and the Separated Soul,” in The Oxford Handbook of Aquinas, ed. Brian Davies
and Eleonore Stump (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 458–­66.
4
Patrick Toner, “Personhood and Death in St. Thomas Aquinas,” History of
Philosophy Quarterly 26 (2009): 121–­38; Patrick Toner, “St. Thomas Aquinas on Death
and the Separated Soul,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 9 (2010): 587–­99.
5
Jeffrey E. Brower, Aquinas’s Ontology of the Material World: Change, Hylomor-
phism, and Material Objects (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 282n7,
304n37.
 Turner C. Nevitt 129

1. The essence of natural substances includes both form and matter.

2. Human beings or persons are natural substances.
3. Thus the essence of human beings or persons includes both form
and matter.
4. A natural substance cannot exist without the parts of its essence.
5. Thus human beings or persons cannot exist without both form and
matter.
6. But human beings or persons lose all their matter at death.
7. Thus human beings or persons cease to exist at death.

I believe that Aquinas endorsed each of these premises and the inferences they
express. In fact, this argument is the main reason that I have always thought
Aquinas was a corruptionist. But of course, survivalists disagree. They believe
that Aquinas rejected (or given his basic principles, should have rejected) at
least one of these premises or inferences. Yet different survivalists take issue
with different parts of the argument. As we shall see, survivalists do not even
agree among themselves about how to understand the basic principles of
Aquinas’s metaphysics.
Let me turn, then, to the first inference:

1. The essence of natural substances includes both form and matter.

2. Human beings or persons are natural substances.
3. Thus the essence of human beings or persons includes both form
and matter.

This inference begins with a basic principle of Aquinas’s metaphysics of

natural substances, which he also refers to as material or composite or sen-
sible substances: the essence of such substances contains both substantial
form and matter. The inference then applies that basic principle to human
beings, whose matter and substantial form are a body and rational soul. Aqui-
nas endorsed this basic principle about the essence of natural substances
from the beginning to the end of his career and just as consistently applied
it to human beings.6 The inference as a whole is one of Aquinas’s common

6
Scriptum Super Sententiis (henceforth In Sent.) I, d. 8, q. 5, a. 2; In Sent. IV, d. 44,
q. 1, a. 1, sol. 2, ad 2; De ente et essentia (henceforth DEE), c. 2; Summa Contra Gentiles
(henceforth SCG) II, c. 30; SCG IV, c. 81; Summa Theologiae (henceforth ST) I, q. 29,
a. 2, ad 3; ST I, q. 75, a. 4; ST I, q. 85, a. 1, ad 2; ST III, q. 4, a. 4; ST III, q. 5, a. 2;
Quaestiones disputatae de potentia (henceforth QDP) q. 9, a. 1, ad 6; Compendium Theologiae
(henceforth CT), c. 154; Sententia libri Metaphysicae (henceforth In Met.) VII, l. 9; In
Met. VII, l. 10; In Met. VII, l. 11. References to the works of Aquinas are to the online
130 Survivalism versus Corruptionism

ways of proving that human beings are not just souls but rather composites
of body and soul. In the Summa Contra Gentiles, for example, he argues,

Plato claimed that a human being is not something composed

of body and soul, but rather a soul using a body. . . . But this
is evidently impossible. For an animal and a human being are
sensible and natural things. Yet that would not be the case if the
body and its parts were not included in the essence of a human
being and of an animal, and instead the soul was the whole
essence of each, as was claimed, since the soul is not something
sensible or material. Therefore, it is impossible for a human
being or an animal to be a soul using a body, and not something
composed of body and soul.7

Most survivalists accept this basic principle of Aquinas’s metaphysics of

natural substances and also its application to human beings. But some sur-
vivalists do not.
According to Mark Spencer, for example, even the soul alone “has human
nature.”8 Indeed, he says that “human nature, rational animality, belongs to
the soul prior to belonging to the composite [of body and soul].”9 Even
when separated from the body, he says, the soul “retains ‘in root’ every essen-
tial feature of the person, . . . including its corporeality . . . vegetative nature,
sensitive nature, and humanity in general.”10 Spencer admits that this is an
“expansion to the Thomistic view of human nature,”11 but he thinks it is one
“to which the survivalist must be committed.”12 Corruptionists, however, will
want to resist this expansion of Aquinas’s view of human nature. For Aquinas
himself resisted it. Locating the essence of a natural substance in its substantial
form alone and thus locating the essence of a human being in the soul alone
is a mistake that Aquinas accused Averroes and his followers of making.13

edition at Corpus Thomisticum (website), accessed October 1, 2019, https://​www​

.corpusthomisticum​.org/​iopera​.html. English translations are my own.
7
SCG II, c. 57. Cf. ST I, q. 75, a. 4; ST III, q. 5, a. 2.
8
Mark Spencer, “The Personhood of the Separated Soul,” Nova et Vetera 12,
no. 3 (2014): 906.
9
Ibid., 906–­7.
10
Ibid., 894 (cf. 905).
11
Ibid., 906.
12
Ibid.
13
Thanks to Gyula Klima for first helping me see this.
 Turner C. Nevitt 131

It is the mistake of identifying what Aquinas calls “the form of the whole”
with what he calls “the form of a part.”14
According to Aquinas, there are two ways to refer to any thing’s essence or
nature: either concretely as the whole thing or abstractly as part of the thing.15
The essence of a human being, for example, can be referred to concretely
with the term human being or abstractly with the term humanity. The concrete
term human being signifies all the essential principles of a human being (every-
thing that makes a human being a human being) without prescinding from or
positively excluding other things about a human being, such as its accidental
features.16 Thus the term human being signifies the essence of a human being
as a whole, which is why it can be predicated of a human being—­saying
“Socrates is a human being,” for example. The abstract term humanity, on
the other hand, signifies all the same essential principles of a human being,
but it does so by prescinding from or positively excluding everything else
about a human being.17 Thus the term humanity signifies the essence of
a human being as a part, which is why it cannot be predicated of a human
being—­saying “Socrates is humanity,” for example—­since there is more to
any human being than its essential principles alone.
Now somewhat confusingly, Aquinas calls the essence of a thing consid-
ered abstractly as a part “the form of the whole.”18 He calls it the “form of
the whole” in order to contrast it with what he calls “the form of a part”19—­
that is, the substantial form of matter, which, in the case of a human being,
is the rational soul. According to Aquinas, Averroes and his followers made
the mistake of identifying the form of the whole with the form of a part—­that
is, identifying the essence of a natural substance with its substantial form

14
For more detailed discussion of this issue, see Armand Maurer, “Form and
Essence in the Philosophy of St. Thomas,” in Being and Knowing: Studies in Thomas
Aquinas and Later Medieval Philosophers (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval
Studies, 1990), 3–­18; John F. Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From
Finite Being to Uncreated Being (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press,
2003), 328–­33.
15
Cf. In Sent. I, d. 23, q. 1, a. 1; In Sent. III, d. 5, q. 1, a. 3; DEE, c. 2; SCG I, c.
21; SCG IV, c. 81; ST I, q. 3, a. 3; Quaestiones disputatae de quolibet (henceforth QQ) IX,
q. 2, a. 1, ad 1; QDP q. 9, a. 1; CT I, c. 154; In Met. VII, l. 11.
16
Cf. supra n. 15.
17
Ibid.
18
Cf. In Sent. I, d. 8, q. 5 a. 2; In Sent. I, d. 23, q. 1, a. 1; In Sent. IV, d. 44, q. 1, a.
1, qc. 2, ad 2; DEE, c. 2; SCG IV, c. 81; QQ IX, q. 2, a. 1, ad 4; QQ II, q. 2 a. 2; CT I,
c. 154; In Met. I, l. 12; In Met. V, l. 5; In Met. VII, l. 9.
19
Cf. supra n. 18.
132 Survivalism versus Corruptionism

alone to the exclusion of its matter.20 We might forgive Averroes and his
followers for making this mistake, since their view seems to have been that
of Aristotle himself,21 whose thought they wished to restore to its authentic
form. But Aquinas refused to read Aristotle that way, interpreting even the
most difficult texts of the Metaphysics in line with his own view, which he took
from Avicenna.22 According to that view, the essence of a natural substance
includes both substantial form and matter, and thus the essence of a human
being includes both soul and body.23 In other words, the form of the whole is
not the form of a part; humanity is not just the rational soul alone.
Aquinas gives a number of different reasons for including matter in the
essence of a natural substance and thus distinguishing the form of the whole
from the form of a part.24 In the De ente et essentia, for example, he argues,
“The existence of a composite substance is not that of the form alone, or
of the matter alone, but of the composite [of both]. Yet it is the essence
according to which a thing is said to exist. Hence, the essence, in virtue of
which a thing is called an existent, must not be the form alone, or the matter
alone, but both.”25 The close connection between essence and existence
means that whatever a thing’s existence actualizes must be included in its
essence. Since the existence of a natural substance actualizes both its form
and its matter, both form and matter must be included in the essence of a
natural substance. Aquinas immediately goes on in the De ente to apply this
conclusion to human beings, explaining that the essence of a human being
must include flesh and bone, just as the essence of a particular human
being such as Socrates must include this flesh and this bone.26

III. Essences

The close connection between essence and existence underlies the second
inference in the metaphysical argument for corruptionism stated previously:

Cf. In Sent. I, d. 8, q. 5, a. 2; In Sent. IV, d. 44, q. 1, a. 1, sol. 2, ad 2; DEE, c. 2;

20

SCG IV, c. 81; CT I, c. 154; In Met. VII, l. 9.

21
Cf. Joseph Owens, The Doctrine of Being in the Aristotelian Metaphysics, 3rd ed.
(Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1978), 360–­65.
22
For a detailed survey of the texts, see Maurer, “Form and Essence,” 11–­13.
23
Cf. supra n. 6.
24
For a detailed survey of all the reasons, see Wippel, Metaphysical Thought,
328–­33.
25
DEE, c. 2.
26
Ibid.
 Turner C. Nevitt 133

4. A natural substance cannot exist without the parts of its essence.

5. Thus human beings or persons cannot exist without both form and
matter.

This inference states a basic principle of Aquinas’s metaphysics of essences:

nothing can exist without the parts of its essence. It then applies that basic
principle to human beings, whose essence includes both matter and form,
body and soul. Nothing can exist without its essence because an essence
is “that through which and in which an existent has existence.”27 A thing’s
essence limits and specifies its kind of existence, as form limits and specifies
matter, making it the kind of thing it is.28 It is thus through its essence that each
thing has its specific kind of existence. But at the same time, a thing’s exis-
tence actualizes its essence, as form actualizes the matter in which it inheres.29
It is thus in its essence that each thing has its existence, as it is in matter that
each material thing has its form. Because an essence is that through which and
in which a thing has existence, nothing can exist without its essence. Suggest-
ing that something could exist without its essence would be as absurd for
Aquinas as suggesting that matter could exist without form—­something he
always rejected as completely impossible.30
Because nothing can exist without its essence, when a thing’s essence
itself has parts, that thing cannot exist without those parts, since those parts
just are that thing’s essence. Aquinas is adamant that a composite substance’s
essence is not some third thing in addition to its parts—­that is, that the form
of the whole is not something distinct from the substantial form and matter
out of which it is composed.31 For, he argues, if the form of the whole were
an additional form over and above the substantial form and matter out of
which it is composed, then the form of the whole would be an accidental
form of the substance, in which case the essence of the substance would be
accidental rather than substantial, which is unacceptable.32 Hence a compos-
ite essence just is the parts out of which it is composed, and thus a thing
with such an essence cannot exist without such parts. That is why a natural
substance cannot exist without both form and matter and why human beings
cannot exist without both soul and body.

27
DEE, c. 1.
28
Cf. QQ IX, q. 4, a. 1; SCG II, c. 54.
29
Cf. supra n. 28.
30
Cf. In Sent. II, d. 12, q. 1, a. 4; Quaestiones disputatae de veritate (henceforth QDV ),
q. 3, a. 5; QDP, q. 4, a. 1; QQ III, q. 1, a. 1; ST I, q. 66, a. 1 and a. 2.
31
Cf. DEE, c. 2; SCG IV, c. 81.
32
Cf. supra n. 31.
134 Survivalism versus Corruptionism

A few survivalists agree that nothing can exist without the parts of its
essence, including human beings. In fact, this close connection between
essence and existence is one of the main reasons that Spencer gives for locat-
ing a human being’s essence in the soul alone (since otherwise a human being
could not survive death with just a soul).33 But most survivalists disagree.
All survivalists at least grant that a natural substance cannot exist without
its substantial form and thus that a human being cannot exist without its
soul. But because Aquinas thinks that the human soul is capable of subsist-
ing apart from the body, most survivalists claim that he also thinks that at
least one kind of natural substance—­a human being—­is capable of existing
without any matter at all. Yet these same survivalists recognize that matter is
part of the essence of natural substances, including human beings. Given the
close connection between essence and existence, this ought to be a contra-
diction: matter is part of the essence of a human being, but a human being
can exist without any matter. Yet these survivalists avoid contradiction by
proposing a different way of understanding essences—­not as necessary for the
existence of things but as merely normative for their existence. As Stump says,
“Although the metaphysical constituents of a human being normally include
matter and a substantial form, Aquinas thinks that a human being can exist
without being in the normal condition.”34 Other survivalists, such as Chris-
topher Brown and Jason Eberl, offer the same interpretation of essences as
merely normative or natural or typical rather than strictly necessary for the exis-
tence of things.35
Survivalists have not offered much independent textual evidence for their
interpretation of essences as merely normative in Aquinas’s metaphysics. The
textual evidence for survivalism itself might be appealed to as evidence for
the survivalist’s interpretation of essences. If Aquinas thought that matter
is part of a human being’s essence and yet also thought that human beings
exist without matter immediately after death, then he must not have thought
that all the parts of a thing’s essence are strictly necessary for its existence, at
least not for human beings. But in the context of the debate between surviv-
alists and corruptionists, this way of defending the survivalist’s interpretation

33
Cf. Spencer, “Personhood,” 905.
34
Stump, “Resurrection, Reassembly, and Reconstitution,” 166 (emphasis mine).
Cf. Stump, “Resurrection and the Separated Soul,” 463.
35
Christopher M. Brown, Aquinas and the Ship of Theseus: Solving Puzzles about
Material Objects (New York: Continuum, 2005), 58, 78; Christopher M. Brown, “Souls,
Ships, and Substances: A Response to Toner,” American Catholic Philosophical Quar-
terly 81, no. 4 (2007): 657, 658; Jason Eberl, “Do Human Persons Persist between
Death and Resurrection?,” in Metaphysics and God: Essays in Honor of Eleonore Stump,
ed. Kevin Timpe (New York: Routledge, 2009), 189, 196.
 Turner C. Nevitt 135

of essences begs the question. We need independent reason to think that

Aquinas saw a human being’s essence and its parts as merely normative rather
than strictly necessary. For if he saw such parts as strictly necessary, then
survivalism is false, and the texts typically appealed to as evidence for surviv-
alism must be read differently.
So which account of essences did Aquinas endorse? Did he think of the
parts of a human being’s essence as merely normative or as strictly neces-
sary? Survivalists often defend their view that matter is merely normative for
human beings by comparing the loss of matter to the loss of other normal
parts of a human being: just as a human being can survive the loss of a hand
or an arm, so too a human being can survive the loss of all its matter.36 But
such analogies fail to distinguish between a thing’s essence and its proper
accidents in Aquinas’s metaphysics. A thing’s essence is what the thing is by
definition. A human being, for example, is a rational animal by definition.
A thing’s proper accidents are what the thing is like, given what it is by defi-
nition. As a rational animal, for example, a human being is also risible and
teachable. Being risible or teachable is not what it is to be a human being; it is
only what a human being is like, given that a human being is a rational animal
by definition.
A thing’s essence and its proper accidents are easy to confuse, since
Aquinas thinks we often have to use proper accidents to stand in for a thing’s
specific difference in the definition that signifies its essence.37 Before we
know that a human being is defined as a rational animal, for example,
we might define a human being as a teachable animal, using the proper acci-
dent “teachable” in place of the specific difference “rational” in the defini-
tion of a human being. The confusion between essences and proper accidents
is further compounded by the fact that interpreters of Aquinas sometimes
refer to a thing’s proper accidents as its “essential properties.” But strictly
speaking, proper accidents are not part of a thing’s essence; rather, they flow
from its essence as an effect flows from its cause.38 Being risible and teach-
able, for example, flows from being a rational animal. But of course, the flow
of causes and effects can sometimes be impeded, which is why a thing might
be able to exist without some of its proper accidents. But that does not mean
that a thing can exist without its essence or the parts of its essence.

36
Cf. Stump, “Resurrection, Reassembly, and Reconstitution,” 165–­66; Brown,
“Souls, Ships, and Substances,” 657–­58; Eberl, “Do Human Persons Persist,” 196.
37
Cf. DEE, c. 5; QDP, q. 9, a. 2, ad 5; QDV q. 10, a. 1, ad 6; ST I, q. 77, a. 1, ad 7;
Quaestiones disputatae de spiritualibus creaturis q. 11, ad 3; In librum Aristotelis De generatione
et corruptione expositio I, l. 8; Sentencia libri De anima I, l. 1; In Met. VII, l. 12.
38
For a detailed discussion of the “flow” of proper accidents from the essences
of their subjects, see Wippel, Metaphysical Thought, 266–­75.
136 Survivalism versus Corruptionism

Now Aquinas never names parts such as hands and arms among the parts
of a human being’s essence; indeed, he explicitly excludes such parts from
a human being’s essence.39 When he wants to specify the parts of a human
being’s essence, he usually just names matter and form or body and soul.40
When he wants to specify the material parts of a human being’s essence,
he usually just names flesh and bones.41 The only organs he ever includes
within a human being’s essence are what he calls the “primary organs,”42
or the “principal parts of the body,”43 such as the heart or the brain. These
are the bodily parts in which the soul first exists, he says, and without which
the whole animal cannot exist.44 That is why such bodily parts must be
included in the definition signifying the essence of the animal. As Aquinas
explains,

Now just as an individual is individuated by matter, so each thing

is placed in its species by its form. For a human being is not a
human being because it has flesh and bones, but on account of
the fact that it has a rational soul in flesh and bones. Hence, the
definition of the species must be taken from the form,
and the only material parts to be included in the definition
of the species are those in which the form exists first and
foremost. . . . Therefore, if a human being is to be defined, it
must be defined by the soul, and yet it must also include in its
definition the parts of the body in which the soul first exists,
such as the heart or the brain.45

Aquinas considered such bodily parts “absolutely necessary” for a human

being because they are part of a human being’s “proper matter” and thus
among its “essential principles.”46 But of course, parts such as hands and
arms are not necessary for a human being and thus are not to be included

39
Cf. Super Boetium De trinitate (henceforth In De trin.) q. 5, a. 3.
40
Cf. DEE, c. 2; In Sent. III, d. 5, q. 3, a. 2; In Sent. III, d. 6, q. 3, a. 1; In Sent.
III, d. 22, q. 1, a. 1 and ad 3; QQ II, q. 1, a. 1; QQ III, q. 2, a. 2; SCG II, c. 57; SCG
IV, c. 37; ST I, q. 75, a. 4; ST III, q. 50, a. 4; In Met. VII, l. 9; In Met. VII, l. 10;
CT I, c. 154; CT I, c. 229.
41
Cf. DEE, c. 2; SCG II, c. 92; SCG IV, c. 30; SCG IV, c. 84; ST I, q. 29, a. 2,
ad 3; ST I, q. 75, a. 4; ST I, q. 85, a. 1, ad 2; ST III, q. 4, a. 4; ST III, q. 5, a. 2; QDP,
q. 9, a. 1, ad 6; CT I, c. 154.
42
SCG II, c. 30.
43
In Met. VII, l. 10.
44
Ibid.
45
Ibid. VII, l. 11.
46
SCG II, c. 30.
 Turner C. Nevitt 137

among the parts of a human being’s essence.47 Such bodily parts are at most
proper accidents of a human being, which is why a human being can exist with-
out them. But that does not mean that a human being can exist without the
bodily parts included in its essence.
The same failure to distinguish between a thing’s essence and its proper
accidents seems to me to lie behind another way that survivalists have tried
to defend their interpretation of essences as merely normative in Aquinas’s
metaphysics. Some survivalists have argued that the corruptionist’s interpre-
tation of essences as strictly necessary proves too much, since Aquinas thinks
that the human soul informs the human body essentially—­that is, by essence
or nature.48 So if essences were strictly necessary for the existence of things,
then it would seem that the soul could not exist apart from the body, as Aqui-
nas thought it did. Edward Feser made this argument in an exchange with
me on his blog.49
Aquinas raises a similar objection to his view that the soul is united to
the body as its form, and he answers it by distinguishing between the soul’s
essence or nature and its proper accidents. As he says, “The soul is united
to the body essentially [secundum se] just as a light body is up essentially
[secundum se]. And just as a light body remains light when separated from its
proper place, though it still retains an aptitude and inclination toward
its proper place; so too the human soul retains its existence when separated
from the body, with an aptitude and natural inclination toward union with the
body.”50 Here Aquinas compares the soul’s act of informing the body with
a light body’s being up. But of course, being up is not what a light body is; it
is not its essence. Rather, being up is what a light body does as a light body in
its natural state; it is at most a proper accident. That is why a light body can
continue to exist without being up: the aptitude or inclination to be up is part
of its essence, but actually being up is not. Similarly, the act of informing the
body is not what the soul is; it is not its essence. Rather, the act of informing
the body is what the soul does as a form in its natural state; it is at most a
proper accident. That is why the soul can continue to exist without actually
informing the body: the aptitude or inclination to inform the body is part of its
essence, but the act of informing the body is not. Since the act of informing
the body is at most a proper accident of the soul, the fact that the soul can

47
Cf. In De trin. q. 5, a. 3.
48
Cf. ST I, q. 76, a. 1.
49
Edward Feser, “So What Are You Doing after Your Funeral?,” Edward Feser
(blog), March 26, 2016, https://​edwardfeser​.blogspot​.com/​2016/​03/​so​-what​-are​
-you​-doing​-after​-your​-funeral​.html.
50
ST I, q. 76, a. 1, ad 6.
138 Survivalism versus Corruptionism

exist without the body does not mean that a thing can lose its essence or any
part of its essence without ceasing to exist.
Brower defends the survivalist’s interpretation of essences as merely
normative with an argument similar to Feser’s, but he adds the example of
the accidents in the Eucharist.51 Accidents are supposed to exist in a subject
by nature or essence, and yet Aquinas thinks that the accidents of bread
and wine exist without a subject in the Eucharist. Thus Aquinas’s view of
the Eucharist would appear to be self-­contradictory, if essences are strictly
necessary. Brower supposes that Aquinas avoids the contradiction by adopt-
ing a dispositional view of essences instead. But he does not. For when Aquinas
explains how accidents are able to exist without a subject in the Eucharist, he
does not say that existing in a subject is part of the essence of accidents, yet
they can still exist without a subject, since essences are merely dispositional.
Rather, he says that existing in a subject is not in fact part of the essence
of accidents: “Existence itself cannot be the essence . . . of an accident.
Thus . . . the definition of an accident is not ‘existing in a subject.’”52 Rather,
existing in a subject merely “agrees with” or “is owed to” the essence of
an accident, he says.53 Hence accidents retain their essence even without a
subject precisely because existing in a subject is not part of their essence;
it is at best a proper accident. The disposition to exist in a subject may be a part
of their essence but actually existing in a subject is not. Thus the fact that
accidents can exist without a subject does not mean that a thing can lose its
essence or any part of its essence without ceasing to exist.
So survivalists who take the normative view of essences or at least of
the material parts of essences seem to me to have conflated essences with
proper accidents. And as I said, they have not offered much independent
textual evidence for their view. Yet corruptionists have not offered much
independent textual evidence for their view of essences either. Nevertheless,
there is a good deal of such evidence. For Aquinas often says explicitly that
matter is necessary for the existence of natural substances, including human
beings, since matter is one of their essential principles. Perhaps the plainest
text is Aquinas’s discussion of the absolute necessity found among creatures
in the Summa Contra Gentiles. “Since a thing cannot exist without its essential
principles, which are matter and form,” he says, “whatever belongs to a thing
by reason of its essential principles necessarily has an absolute necessity in all
[such things].”54 He then applies this principle to the proper matter of human

51
Cf. Brower, Aquinas’s Ontology, 298–­300.
52
ST III, q. 77, a. 1, ad 2. Cf. In Sent. IV, d. 12, q. 1, a. 1, ad 2; QQ IX, q. 3, a. 1,
ad 2.
53
Cf. supra n. 52.
54
SCG II, c. 30.
 Turner C. Nevitt 139

beings: “Absolute necessity arises from the essential principles of things . . . by

the order of the parts of their matter or form. . . . For, since a human being’s
proper matter is a mixed and tempered and organized body, it is absolutely
necessary for a human being to have in itself each of the elements and
humors and principal organs. Similarly, if a human being is a rational mortal
animal, and this is a human being’s nature or form, it is necessary that it
be both an animal and rational.”55 Because the body is part of the essence
of a human being, Aquinas considers the body (with its mix of elements
and humors and principal organs) absolutely necessary for the existence of
a human being—­just as necessary as being rational.
The previous text from the Contra Gentiles is not an isolated one. Aquinas
insists on the necessity of sensible matter for the existence of human beings
from the beginning to the end of his career. In his early commentary on
Boethius’s De Trinitate, for example, Aquinas distinguishes between physics,
mathematics, and metaphysics based on the degree to which the objects they
study are separated from matter. He begins with physics: “There are some
objects of speculation that depend on matter for their existence, since they
cannot exist except in matter. And these are subdivided. For some of them
depend on matter in order to exist and to be thought of, as things whose
definition includes sensible matter; hence, they cannot be thought of with-
out sensible matter, as, for instance, the definition of a human being must
include flesh and bones. And these are the things studied by physics or natural
science.”56 In this classic text on the nature of the sciences from early in his
career, Aquinas clearly places human beings—­his chosen example—­among
the natural objects studied by physics, which he says cannot exist or even
be thought of without matter, since they include sensible matter in the
definitions that signify their essences.
Aquinas continues to draw the same conclusion from the same prem-
ises to the end of his career. In his late commentary on Aristotle’s Meta-
physics, for example, he discusses the mistake of Averroes and his followers,
who reduced the essence of natural things to their substantial form alone.
He argues against this view in one of his common ways and then defends
Avicenna’s view, which he attributes to Aristotle, explaining that the essence
of natural things includes both form and matter. Aquinas then immediately
concludes that this is why Plato was wrong about the existence of sepa-
rately subsisting forms or ideas. As he himself explains, “For [Plato] said that
the species of natural things existed by themselves without sensible matter,
as if sensible matter were in no way part of their species. Hence, showing
that sensible matter is part of the species of natural things, shows that it is

55
Ibid.
56
In De trin. q. 5, a. 1.
140 Survivalism versus Corruptionism

impossible for the species of natural things to exist without sensible matter.
For example, it is impossible for a human being to exist without flesh and
bones. And the same goes for other such things.”57 The context makes it
clear that by “species” here, Aquinas means the essence or nature of natu-
ral things, which is signified by their definition. Aquinas takes the fact that
such things include both form and matter in their essence to imply that such
things, including human beings—­his chosen example—­cannot exist without
matter. That implication is the same one expressed by the second inference in
the metaphysical argument for corruptionism stated previously: nothing can
exist without the parts of its essence, and thus human beings cannot exist
without both form and matter.

IV. Personhood

That brings me to the third and final inference in the argument for corruptionism:

6. But human beings or persons lose all their matter at death.

7. Thus human beings or persons cease to exist at death.

All survivalists grant that death is the separation of the soul from the body
and thus that human beings or persons lose all their matter at death. The
human body corrupts and ceases to exist as a human body, becoming a
corpse instead. The human soul survives and continues to exist, but since it
is no longer joined to the body, the human being or person is no longer com-
posed of both a body and soul, matter and a substantial form. Hence if mat-
ter is part of the very essence of a human being and if essences are strictly
necessary for the existence of things, then it follows that human beings or
persons cease to exist at death. Yet some survivalists think that this does not
in fact follow. Brower, for example, argues that human persons survive death,
although human beings do not.58 Thus the conclusion is true of human beings
but not of human persons.
Most survivalists are not willing to recognize any such distinction
between human beings and human persons. They grant that for Aquinas, the
terms human being and human person have different senses, since Aquinas
defines a human being as a rational animal but defines a person as an indi-
vidual substance of a rational nature.59 Yet most survivalists insist that in

In Met. VII, l. 9. Cf. ST III, q. 4, a. 4.

57

Brower, Aquinas’s Ontology, 279–­310.

58

59
On “person,” see In Sent. I, d. 25, q. 1, a. 1; QDP q. 9, a. 2; ST I, q. 29, a. 1. On
“human being,” see DEE, c. 2; In Sent. I, d. 23, q. 1, a. 3, ad 4; ST I, q. 29, a. 4, ad 2;
 Turner C. Nevitt 141

spite of their different senses, the terms human being and human person refer to
one and the same thing, since an individual rational animal (a human being) is
just an individual substance of a rational animal nature (a human person). As
Stump says, “While there is a difference between a person and a human being
for Aquinas, there is no difference between a human person and a human
being.”60 But Brower argues that there must be a difference, given what Aqui-
nas says about the death of Jesus Christ. For Aquinas thought that Christ
ceased to be a human being at death, since his soul was no longer united to
his body, and yet Aquinas thought that Christ continued to exist after death.
So at least in Christ’s case, the human person survived death, although the
human being did not. Brower then extends the case of Christ to all human
beings or persons: they cease to be human beings at death, yet the persons
themselves survive. Brower calls this “nonhuman survivalism.”
But the extension of Christ’s case to all human beings or persons is a
mistake.61 For, as Aquinas says, although Christ is a true human being, he is
not a mere human being, since he is also a divine being.62 Christ is not only
a human person; he is also a divine person. That is why Christ can lose his
human nature and thus cease to be a human being at death without thereby
ceasing to exist, since Christ has another nature in which to subsist—­
namely, divine nature or divinity. But that is true of Christ alone, since he is
the only person with two natures. Mere human beings or persons have only
one nature—­human nature or humanity—­in which to subsist. Hence for
mere human beings, to cease to be a human being is to cease to be a human
person and thus to cease to exist. To suggest that mere human persons could
survive without the human nature that makes them human beings requires
a very different understanding of the relationship between persons and
natures than Thomists have historically ascribed to Aquinas.63 For Aquinas
defines a person as an individual substance of a rational nature. That means
that a person is a rational nature subsisting individually.64 To talk of person-
hood itself is to talk of a rational nature’s “specific determinate mode of
existing”65—­namely, its subsisting or existing in itself. How, then, could a

In Met. VII, l. 3; In Met. VII, l. 5.

60
Cf. Stump, “Resurrection, Reassembly, and Reconstitution,” 167n28.
61
As I explain in more detail elsewhere. See Nevitt, “Aquinas on the Death,”
91–­93.
62
Cf. QQ III, q. 2, a. 2, ad 2.
63
For a brief and very well-­annotated survey of the relevant history of Thom-
istic interpretation, see Spencer, “Personhood,” 884–­93.
64
QDP q. 9, a. 2. Cf. Lawrence Dewan, “The Individual as a Mode of Being
According to Thomas Aquinas,” in Form and Being: Studies in Thomistic Metaphysics
(Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2006), 229–­47.
65
QDP q. 9, a. 2, ad 6.
142 Survivalism versus Corruptionism

person possibly exist without a nature? A person just is a nature individually

subsisting.
To be fair, Brower does not actually seem to want to claim that mere
human persons lose their natures at death. For he claims that after death,
mere human persons retain their souls, which he identifies as their rational
nature; and he recognizes that such separated souls remain disposed toward
union with their bodies, which he says disposes human persons to be human
beings even after death. Thus Brower seems to want to adopt one of the two
views I discussed previously—­namely, the view that the soul is a nature rather
than merely part of a nature and the view that natures are merely norma-
tive rather than strictly necessary for the existence of things. But Jeremy W.
Skrzypek, another defender of “nonhuman survivalism,” is quite explicit:
human persons lose their essence or nature at death and still continue to
exist.66 Yet that view is hard to make sense of, given Aquinas’s understanding
of personhood as the very existing or subsisting of an individual rational
nature. In any case, it departs radically from the view of personhood that
Thomists have traditionally ascribed to Aquinas.

V. Conclusion

The debate between survivalists and corruptionists has uncovered a num-

ber of deep and troubling disagreements about how to understand some
of Aquinas’s most basic metaphysical principles—­principles such as mat-
ter, form, nature, essence, and personhood. Corruptionists claim that the
essence or nature of natural substances includes both form and matter and
thus that human nature includes both body and soul. While most survivalists
agree, some seem to disagree and to locate human nature in the soul alone.
Corruptionists also claim that all the parts of a thing’s essence or nature are
necessary for its existence. Although a few survivalists agree, most survival-
ists disagree and interpret essences and their parts as merely normative rather
than strictly necessary for the existence of things. Corruptionists likewise
claim that human beings and human persons are the same thing and that a
merely human person just is a human nature subsisting individually. While
most survivalists seem to agree, a few disagree, even to the point of claim-
ing that a mere human person can exist without any essence or nature at all.
Whose view of essences is correct? Which account of personhood is right?
I have given some of my reasons for thinking that corruptionists rather than

66
Jeremy W. Skrzypek, “Complex Survivalism, or: How to Lose Your Essence
and Live to Tell about It,” Philosophy, Faith, and Modernity: Proceedings of the American
Catholic Philosophical Association 91 (2017): 185–­99.
 Turner C. Nevitt 143

survivalists have the right interpretation of Aquinas. Whether I am mistaken

or not is something that I hope the future of the debate will show.

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