Race and soul...do different races have different souls?

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Alfarix

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Is plausible that according to the 11th thomistic thesis that different races possess different souls (that dosent mean the difference is absolute) ? The soul changes because the matter that individuates it changes.
That’s hylomorphism, what Aquinas teaches ?
 
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Ok I was talking more about physical differences in the context of individuation and St. Thomas Equinas view on body and soul, our biological causality can shape also our soul ?
 
Alfarix said:
Ok I was talking more about physical differences in the context of individuation and St. Thomas Equinas view on body and soul, our biological causality can shape also our soul ?
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Like between you and me?
 
Are you actually quoting St. Thomas or just misunderstanding hylemorphism? All human beings share the same form/kind of soul. The matter and material conditions of our individual instantiations differentiates this human being* from that human being. Race has nothing to do with it. And I certainly know of no promoter of hylemorphism today who would support an interpretation that the substantial form of one race of human beings is different than the substantial form of another.

If he ever did write such a thing (and I’m really aware of no such thing), that would be an epistemic judgment and an erroneous one, judging one kind of being to be a different kind of being than another. It would not necessarily follow from hylemorphism itself; such a belief would have been a matter of human judgment in differentiating substantial kinds.
 
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The only thing that would individuate a soul itself (compared to individuating substances with the same form/soul) would be the learned knowledge of the intellect.
 
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No, following Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza they are now referred to as ‘clusters’. Which largely amount to the same distinctions as races.
 
Alfarix said:
Can u elaborate an answer here only on the subject I proposed?
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You asked about hylomorphism as used by St. Thomas Aquinas. Hylomorphism is the theory that all physical beings are composed of two principles of being which are the prime matter (an undefined primitive) and the substantial form (definite mode of existence).

Per St. Thomas Aquinas, the human being is a living body of a particular kind, and the human body is composed of matter and form, and the human soul is the form of the human body. The human incorruptible soul (form) is related to the human body (subject).
 
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itstymyguy said:
I don’t know, but why would this matter at all??
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It would be interesting as an artifact and little more. But no, there is no source from Scripture or Tradition saying different races have different souls.
 
11. The principle of individuation, i.e., of numerical distinction of one individual from another with the same specific nature, is matter designated by quantity. Thus in pure spirits there cannot be more than individual in the same specific nature.

It seems to me that the distinction concerns everyone with respect to everyone else, a white with respect to a black, but also a white with respect to a white and a black with respect to a black; that it’s about me compared to you reading me, regardless of the color of our skin.
 
So it’s really a question of every single individual soul being different?
 
StudentMI said:
Imagine someone who is 1/13 Latvian. Would he have a different type of soul?
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Just because it sounds ridiculous, this does not automatically make it false.

AFAIK there is no reason to assume there is a difference. But this is just an AFAIK assumption / observation and not a truth.

The closest I can come to this is the passage (was it in St Matthew’s gospel?) where Jesus tells a gentile women he was come to serve the Jews and not the gentiles, and she replied something about the dogs eating the scraps that fall from their master’s table.

One could of course argue that Jews in this context refers to the religion and not the race. But can we be sure? Are we maybe interpreting the word race in too much of a 20th Century / 21st Century context here, whereas in the past the word was more fluid in meaning?
 
I understood it like this.

But what is certain is that there is not the slightest foothold for sustaining a distinction between races as if race were a concept in the metaphysics of the person

From the metaphysical point of view, race is like the difference between those who know how to put their tongue in a U shape and those who cannot: it is nothing.
 
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