Aquinas and Sartre: On Freedom, Personal Identity, and the Possibility of Happiness

2. Identity and Human Incompletion in Aquinas

58 Chapter 2 I de n t i t y a n d H uman I ncom p l et ion i n Aqu i nas 1. Etienne Gilson, The Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy, trans. A. H. C. Downes (London: Sheed & Ward, 1936), 104. The full sentence reads: “Born of a final cause, the universe is necessarily saturated with finality, that is to say, we can never in any case dissociate the explanation of things from the consideration of their raison d’être.” This begs the questions of whether there is a single end for which things exist (see this chapter and chapter 6), and whether finality can be discovered without the knowledge that the universe is created (see the conclusion). 2. ST I.18:3. I am greatly simplifying this account. Plants, Animals, and Human Beings Thomas Aquinas grew up in a Christian culture that took for granted the doctrine of creation. Etienne Gilson wrote that in the eyes of this culture the universe is “saturated with finality.”1 Everything is becoming something and going somewhere. In this dynamic universe, according to Aquinas, living things, such as plants and animals, have a special place. They move themselves and so are involved in a more intimate way in the progression of their own journey. The extraordinary thing about human beings is that within certain limits they can determine for themselves what their destination will be and how they will get there. Aquinas examines these themes in a discussion about the life of God. He writes about the three types of movement that are associated with the three types of life we find around us: plant, animal, and human.2 Plants move in accordance with identit y i n aqu i nas = 59 their inherent nature, they grow and decay in a fixed way. Animal movements depend not just on their own nature but also on the nature of the things around them as they are apprehended through the senses. Plants, of course, are influenced by their immediate environment, but animals are more open to the world around them and influenced by things that remain apart from them. The goal of an animal, however, the direction of its movements, is still determined by its natural instincts. An animal’s decision to fight or flee, for example, while it may involve highly complex mental processes, is ultimately determined by the animal’s nature and the nature of its environment (the degree of danger, the possibility of escape, the needs of its offspring, etc.). Animals, as Stephen Brock writes, “only make themselves do what they are made to make themselves do.”3 A third type of movement belongs to human beings, since we are creatures with intellect. Our life has much in common with that of plants and animals. Yet the distinctive thing about the movement of human beings is that “they move themselves to an end that they themselves propose.”4 The goals of our activity are not determined solely by our nature or by the nature of the world around us. Aquinas believes, in the terms of the previous chapter, that our actions cannot be explained solely with reference to an established identity or to the objective circumstances of our environment. Something else is involved. The direction of our life is somehow up to us. We choose our goals and in that choice we establish a meaning for our life and determine the person we will become. Human identity is not something fixed and definitive, it unfolds over time, and it constantly has to be appropriated, acknowledged, and re-created through our actions. This whole book is an exploration of the nature of human identity, and only in chapter 6 will we look properly at Aquinas’s understanding of how human beings constitute themselves through their free choices. In this present chapter we will examine two distinct aspects of the question of identity. First, Aquinas argues that human beings have a peculiar openness to the world around them because of their intellect. We can, in a certain sense, share in the being of other things. We are formed by what we understand , to the extent that our identity depends in part on what we identify 3. Stephen Brock, Action and Conduct: Thomas Aquinas and the Theory of Action (Edinburgh : T & T Clark, 1998), 35. 4. ST I.18:3c. 60 = human being with. We are (through understanding other things) what we...