Faculties of the soul
| Latin | Potentiae animae |
|---|---|
| Treatise | Summa theologiae I, questions 77–83 |
| Controlling authority | Catechism 362–368; Thomistic synthesis |
| Doctrinal standing | Intellect and will as spiritual operations of the one soul are Catholic doctrine; the real distinction of powers from essence is a school thesis |
| School | Thomism |
| Branch | Philosophical anthropology |
Faculties of the soul are, in Thomism, the operative powers by which the one human soul lives, senses, understands, and wills, really distinct from the soul's essence and ordered among themselves.
Powers, not little souls
Summa theologiae I, question 77, asks whether the powers of the soul are the soul's essence. Aquinas answers that in God operation and essence are identical, but in creatures powers flow from essence as accidents of a special kind, qualities that dispose the subject to act. A man is not a bundle of faculties. He is one soul in one body, and the faculties are the ways that one soul operates.[1]
The 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia article on the soul reports the received list: vegetative powers of nutrition, growth, and generation; sensitive powers of the exterior and interior senses and of the sensitive appetite; locomotive power; intellect; and will. The list is a school inventory. It is meant to keep operations from being confused with one another, not to populate the man with extra substances.
Order of the powers
Higher powers contain the lower virtually. The intellective soul is the form of the body, so the same soul that understands also senses and vegetates, not by three substantial forms but by one form with ordered powers. The will follows the intellect as appetite follows knowledge. The sensitive appetite follows particular knowledge. Habits perfect powers. Grace perfects the essence of the soul and, through it, the powers, by infused virtues and gifts.[2]
This order explains both unity and conflict. The same man understands and hungers. The lower power has its own object and can resist. Reason rules politically. The map is therefore a moral map as well as a psychological one: virtue is the right disposition of these powers, not the abolition of the lower ones.
Catholic doctrine and school thesis
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 362–368, teaches that the human person is a unity of body and soul, that the soul is the form of the body, and that intellect and will are spiritual. Lateran V defends the immortality of the rational soul. None of those acts defines the number of interior senses or the real distinction of powers from essence.[3]
Scotists and later scholastics have disputed how the powers stand to the essence. That is intramural Catholic philosophy. The Thomistic real distinction is a privileged synthesis. It is not a conciliar canon. What cannot be surrendered is the one subject who knows, loves, and is sanctified.
Theological use
Sacramental character marks the soul as a power of public worship. Infused virtues are habits in the powers. The gifts of the Holy Spirit dispose the powers to the Spirit's motion. Without a doctrine of faculties, grace would have nowhere to sit except a vague self. With a cartoon of faculties, grace would look like extra machinery bolted onto a person.[4]
Pastoral care addresses the whole set: ignorance in the intellect, weakness in the will, disorder in the appetite, and wounds in memory and imagination. The school names help the confessor and the teacher. They are not a substitute for the Gospel that heals the one soul.
References
- Back to citation Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, question 77 — Primary account of the powers of the soul in general, their distinction from the soul's essence, and their order.
- Back to citation Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, question 76 — Primary hylomorphic anthropology: the intellective soul as form of the body and the rejection of a plurality of substantial forms in man.
- Back to citation Catechism of the Catholic Church, 355–368 — Authoritative anthropology of the human person as a unity of body and soul, the soul as form of the body, and the soul's immediate creation and immortality.
- Back to citation Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), Soul — Public-domain account of the soul, its faculties, and the Catholic doctrine of the human soul as substantial form.