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Is it true that St Thomas Aquinas was influential in causing the Catholic Church to teach that animals do not have souls? 2A00:23C7:6E03:A101:ED32:B5FC:41FD:1EB (talk) 11:49, 8 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
No - for Thomas, following Aristotle, all living creatures have a soul. Anima, which is 'soul' in English, is the scholastic term for the subtantial form of an embodied living being. Like all material things, animals are composites, on this view, of 'form' and 'matter', though neither of these terms means precisely what it means in modern parlance. What is true about Thomas, but is by no means unique or original to him, is that he believes that animals have material souls, where human beings have immaterial, intellectual souls, which are capable of post-mortem disembodied existence. 2A02:C7C:CB3F:4000:ADDE:6997:AEF1:70B2 (talk) 21:18, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is not correct. In Aristotle and St. Thomas, all souls, even those of plants, are not material. They are related to the material bodies they inform as act to a potency. If they were material they would be in place and so not exist in all places of the body. In Thomas, what makes a human soul different from an animal or plant soul is not its immateriality but its completely immaterial functions, such as knowing immaterial universal concepts. This alone is the foundation of Thomas's view that the human soul is per se immortal. That does not mean that even the human person per se is immortal. The human person is a body-soul composite and so will only have full existence "immortally" after the bodily resurrection. 138.51.33.22 (talk) 23:45, 22 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Modern and postmodern bias through the whole article.
Some contents of this article are written with a diverging meaning from Thomas' writings. The linked quotes does not corresponds with the article content. 2001:B07:6473:C490:9326:A7E:4566:79A4 (talk) 03:18, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If you meant that this article has a style that is inappropriate for Wikipedia, or that parts are not accurate, it would be helpful for other editors if you would point out the sections that need improvement. It is, however, a 21st-century encyclopedia article, not a medieval treatise, so it won't express things the way a scholastic would. Tikwriter (talk) 19:03, 28 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Incipit
The incipit is not correctly displayed on smartphones. There is a broken line when it says "Thomas Aquinas OP" 2.196.188.252 (talk) 09:26, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This isn't related directly to your concern, but I reverted your recent change because it's generally not ever a more ideal option to make "considered one of the greatest"-class claims in own voice. We can quibble about who we should quote as to be representative, but claims of those kind in own voice are both trouble to source, as well as of comparatively little substance as to be better avoided, imo. Remsense ‥ 论10:26, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thomas vs Aquinas
I note that all over this page, the first name "Thomas" is used instead of "Aquinas". Can anyone tell me why that's appropriate? It's not a hill I'm particularly inclined to die on, but why do we do this? Is there a good reason? It seems odd, and I can't think of any other person that we do that for. Like, in an article about Bill Clinton, we wouldn't say "Bill was elected in 1992." We would say "Clinton was elected in 1992." TRowlette (talk) 14:49, 28 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
At this point in history, individuals in Europe did not have surnames, as communities were usually not big enough to require more than one name to identify a given person within said community. As mentioned, "Aquinas" means "of Aquino"—when important individuals needed to be distinguished outside of their home communities, the place associated with their origin is often used. This is exactly equivalent to "Augustine of Hippo" or "Augustine of Canterbury", and we would never refer to those individuals as "Hippo" or "Canterbury". Remsense 🌈 论15:27, 28 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I am curious what other editors would think of the hatnote saying, "...this article refers to the person by their given name, Thomas," instead of the current hatnote, "...the person is properly referred to by the given name, Thomas." I do agree that it seems to work well for this article to use "Thomas" throughout, but a lot of other scholarship simply calls him "Aquinas" - and I mean peer-reviewed academic work as much as popular writing. Similarly, names in the Middle Ages could go one way or the other with some figures, i.e. Albert the Great would more often be cited as "Albert", but John Duns Scotus ("John of Duns, the Scot") is often just called "Scotus", and even his wikipage has Duns Scotus as its title. Tikwriter (talk) 16:16, 28 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
A lot of other publications use different style guides or conventions, and that's fine. There are reasons for either convention ("Aquinas" is indeed clearly more singular in reference than "Thomas" in all world history), but the reasons for this one are fairly clear also—it's often flat-out misleading to readers to treat like a term is a surname when it isn't—if Thomas weren't a monk, his hypothetical progeny wouldn't've been named Giovanni and Maria Aquinas. No one in his life would've referred to him as such, nor he himself, only posterity.
That said, Duns Scotus is genuinely a worthwhile counterexample to ponder. I actually think his article already makes the right choice, by referring to him in full as "Duns Scotus" each time. Remsense 🌈 论16:25, 28 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps off topic but I think Duns Scotus should be moved to John Duns Scotus, as WP:MONONYM states Using the last name as the page title for a person, when the first name is also known and used, is discouraged, even if that name would be unambiguous, and even if it consists of more than one word.Dantus21 (talk) 03:32, 1 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
For what it's worth a similar discussion on this matter can be found here, although that discussion ultimately went nowhere. I have no strong opinion on what the shorthand should be, but the editing notice should definitely be removed as it seems it's just wrong (how does one remove those notices? Do you jsut put an expiration date on it?) I also went ahead and edited the hatnote to better reflect the reality of the name usage. — Dantus21 (talk) 03:28, 1 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
level-3 vital article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
