¹ ‘The Intellectual Animal’ was in fact the Aquinas Lecture delivered by Prof. Candace Vogler on 2 March 2017. The Aquinas Seminar Series that year focused on ‘Agency in Human Beings and Other Animals’, and three of our papers come from it: Dr Daniel De Haan spoke on ‘Diverse Dimensions of Animal Agency in Aquinas, Bermudez, and MacIntyre’, Prof. John Finley on ‘The Unity in Human Agency’, and Dr Janice Chik Breidenbach on ‘Thomistic Animalism: Language Animals or Animal Agents?’ Within the 2018 Aquinas Seminar Series on ‘God and the Metaphysics of Human Action’, Prof. John D. Love spoke on ‘Hand in Hand: Divine and Human Collaboration in Prudential Decision-Making According to Thomistic Texts’. Recordings of these and other papers are available at https://www.bfriars.ox.ac.uk/study/online-resources/

² The determination of Albert and Aquinas to employ Aristotle respectfully and judiciously is touched on by Tugwell, Simon OP, in Albert and Thomas: Selected Writings (New York: Paulist Press, 1988), pp. 10-11, 14-15, 21, 25-35, 226-228 & 257-259Google Scholar; and by McInerny, Ralph in St. Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982), ch. 2Google Scholar. On Albert see (e.g.) Tkacz, Michael W., ‘Albert the Great and the Revival of Aristotle's Zoological Research Program’, Vivarium 45 (2007), pp. 30-68CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For Aquinas, see, among much else, Brock, Stephen L., The Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas: A Sketch (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2015), ch. 1Google Scholar; Emery, Gilles OP, and Levering, Matthew, eds., Aristotle in Aquinas's Theology (Oxford: OUP, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³ Texts in: StAquinas, Thomas, Siger of Brabant and St Bonaventure, On the Eternity of the World (De aeternitate mundi), transl. with intro. by Vollert, Cyril, Kendzierski, Lottie H. and Byrne, Paul M. (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1964)Google Scholar; Aquinas on Creation, transl. by Steven E. Baldner and William E. Carroll (Toronto: PIMS, 1997). The discovery of the 3K black-body radiation left from the ‘Big Bang’, which does indicate the age of the cosmos, would have to wait for the invention of radio telescopes.

⁴ E.g. Summa Theologiae, Prima Pars (henceforth ST, I), q. 75, a. 4; q. 76, aa. 1, 3, 4, 6 & 7; qq. 77, 78, 80 & 81; q. 84, aa. 6-8; q. 85, a. 1.

⁵ ST, I-II, q. 4, a. 6; III, q. 61, a. 1.

⁶ For the body as hydraulic machine, see René Descartes, The Description of the Human Body, Part One; for the soul using the pineal gland, The Passions of the Soul, articles 34-35 (both in The Philosophical Works of Descartes, Vol. 1 (translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff and Dugald Murdoch; Cambridge: CUP, 1985), pp. 314-316, 341-342). For Descartes on animals, see Hatfield, Gary, ‘Animals’, in Broughton, Janet and Carriero, John, eds., A Companion to Descartes (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008), pp. 404-425Google Scholar.

⁷ Passiones animae is difficult to translate. False overtones intrude into ‘passions of soul’. ‘Emotions’ suggests the complexity of contextualised human psychological experience, whereas passiones animae are the more ‘animal’ responses of attraction and repulsion, ‘fight and flight’, that are evoked in many contexts.

⁸ The God Delusion (London: Bantam Press, 2006), pp. 182-184.

⁹ Daniel De Haan's paper mentions other senses now recognised, such as proprioception (which we also possess), electroception and magnetoception.

¹⁰ See Aquinas’ Sentencia libri De anima, Book 2, lectiones x-xiii, xxiv; Book 3, lectiones i-vi, xiv-xviii. These faculties are also explored in ST, I, qq. 78 & 81; I-II, qq. 22-48, but chiefly in relation to human beings. For a succinct account, see McCabe, Herbert, On Aquinas (ed. & intr. by Davies, Brian; London: Continuum, 2008), chh. 8, 12 & 13Google Scholar.

¹¹ Cf. Commentary on Book III of the Sentences, d. 35, q. 1, a. 2, qc. 2 ad 1: ‘animals border on humans in their estimative power, which is highest in them, and by which they do things similar to the works of reason.’

¹² In ST, I, q. 37, a. 1 he remarks that we haven't found as many ‘love’ words with which to speak about the ‘movements’ of the will as we have with which to speak about the workings of the intellect.

¹³ Tattersall, Ian, ‘Brain Size and the Emergence of Modern Human Cognition’ (in Schwarz, Jeffrey H., ed., Rethinking Human Evolution (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2018), pp. 319-334)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 324, points out that bonobos and chimps can add symbols but not ‘shuffle’ them ‘to mentally transcend the world that Nature presents to us’.

¹⁴ For example, Donaldson, Sue and Kymlicka, Will, Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights (Oxford: OUP, 2011)Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Cf. Aquinas’ ST, I, q. 75, a. 2; Quaestio Disputata De Anima (henceforth QDA), aa. 1 & 14.

¹⁶ This, of course, requires us to defend human nature as a well-defined reality in an evolutionary world, and to argue that it has an ontological status, not merely a socially-constructed status.

¹⁷ It is difficult to be conscious of anything else when suffering from a raging toothache or in the presence of something towards which one has a phobia; intense concentration on a mathematical or philosophical problem (or a gripping film or novel) can distract one from the passage of time or the development of hunger.

¹⁸ When Aquinas uses the adjective conscius, it is nearly always in the context of being ‘conscious of sin’.

¹⁹ ST, I, qq. 79 & 82; I-II, qq. 8-10. The will is not a pro-active deciding power that ‘floats above a landscape of choices’ arbitrarily opting for one of them; most basically, it is the ability to respond to the good recognised by reason. Nevertheless, thinking and wanting are so entangled that Mark Jordan can speak of ‘the untellable circlings of will and intellect’ (Teaching Bodies: Moral Formation in the Summa of Thomas Aquinas (New York: Fordham University Press, 2017), p. 102.)

²⁰ In ST, I, q. 87, Aquinas explains that we are well aware that we understand, but find it hard to think about the mind's nature. The intellect can reflect on itself, and we are able to know our acts of will, but we can't know by introspection the habits that shape the will; in other words, we sometimes discover our wants and may surprise ourselves by what we do! Cf. ST, I-II, q. 112, a. 5.

²¹ ST, I, q. 78, a. 4; cf. QDA, a. 13. Aquinas seems to play down what is instinctive in humans, as well as what can be learned by other animals; we might see less sharp a divide between humans and other animals in these respects.

²² ST, I, q. 79, a. 8; QDA, a. 7 ad 1. Janice Chik Breidenbach makes a similar point in Part IV of her paper.

²³ ST, I, q. 64, a. 2; q. 81, a. 3; I-II, q. 9, a. 2; q. 10, a. 3.

²⁴ Aquinas makes this distinction in, for example, Summa contra Gentes III, ch. 2, n. 9; ST, I-II, q. 1, a. 1; q. 18, a. 6. Truly human acts, subject to moral analysis, involve reason and will. Acts such as fidgeting or scratching an itch are simply ‘acts of a human being’; they do not result from deliberation but from ‘sudden imaginations’ or ‘disorder in [bodily] humours’.

²⁵ Being, unity, truth and goodness are ‘transcendentals’ as applying across every category and genus; they are ‘convertible’ in the sense that ‘deep down’ they ‘coalesce’: ST, I, q. 5, a. 1; q. 11, a. 1; q. 16. They keep step with each other both ontologically and morally: ST, I-II, q. 18, a. 1 makes this point regarding the being and goodness of moral acts. Beauty is allied with the transcendentals in some way: James F. Anderson, ed. & translator, An Introduction to the Metaphysics of St. Thomas Aquinas (2^nd ed., Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1997), includes it among them. Moral/spiritual beauty is mentioned in ST, II-II, q. 145, a. 2; q. 180, a. 2 ad 3.

²⁶ Scotus denied the need for infused cardinal virtues: Lottin, Odon, Psychologie et morale aux XIIe et XIIIe siecles (Gembloux, Belgium: Duculot, 1942-54), vol. 4.2, pp. 739-42Google Scholar. Michael Sherwin has argued that this view fails to account for how adult converts who lack acquired virtues can yet do what virtue demands: ‘Infused Virtue and the Effects of Acquired Vice: A Test Case for the Thomistic Theory of Infused Cardinal Virtues’, The Thomist, 73 (2009), pp. 29-52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁷ ST, I-II, q. 63, a. 4. I hope we may legitimately add that infused temperance also enables us joyfully to feast at Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, etc.

²⁸ Aquinas’ still-maturing theology of the ‘Gifts’ is found in ST, I-II, q. 68; II-II, qq. 8, 9, 19, 45, 52, 121 & 139. For recent treatments see Pinsent, Andrew, The Second Person Perspective in Aquinas's Ethics: Virtues and Gifts (New York: Routledge, 2012)Google Scholar and Conrad, Richard OP, 7 Gifts of the Holy Spirit (London: Catholic Truth Society, 2009)Google Scholar.

²⁹ ST, I-II, q. 94, a. 4.

³⁰ To paraphrase ‘virtue’ both as ‘strength or excellence of mind or character’, and as ‘life-skill’, can remind people of the attractiveness and even vibrancy of virtue.

³¹ Many lives are not ideal. I have explored elsewhere how infused virtues can partially make up for the lack of acquired virtues and vice versa: ‘Human Practice and God's Making-Good in Aquinas’ Virtue Ethics’, in Carr, David, Arthur, James and Kristjánsson, Kristján, eds., Varieties of Virtue Ethics (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), pp. 163-179CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³² ‘“Till We Have Faces”: Second-Person Relatedness as the Object, End and Crucial Circumstance of Perfect or “Infused” Virtues’ (in Carr, Arthur and Kristjánsson, eds., Varieties of Virtue Ethics, pp. 267-279), pp. 268-270. See papers 12-15 and 19 in the same collection for related points.

³³ To the extent that one can distinguish happiness from virtue!

³⁴ In The Concept of Mind (London: Hutchinson's University Library, 1949), pp. 15-16, Gilbert Ryle wrote, about ‘the official theory’ of mind/body dualism: ‘I shall often speak of it, with deliberate abusiveness, as “the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine.” I hope to prove that it is… one big mistake…, a category mistake’. In her entry ‘Gilbert Ryle’ in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (substantive revision Wed Feb 4, 2015), Julia Tanney deals in a nuanced way with the widespread attribution of ‘soft’ behaviourism to Ryle.

³⁵ There is a range of philosophical opinions on whether free will (defined in some way or other) is compatible with determinism (of some kind or other). I do not at all want to equate free decision with an indeterminacy construed as randomness: to make a decision by mentally flipping a coin is in fact to abdicate the opportunity to decide, whereas to take rational account of needs, motives, etc., is to put oneself into the decision.

³⁶ QDA, aa. 9 & 10; Herbert McCabe, On Aquinas, ch. 2.

³⁷ QDA, aa. 9 ad 10. And, to repeat, bone, muscle and blood are subsumed into the whole organism, which really does have a nature.

³⁸ To speak of ‘form organising matter’ invites the mental picture of matter as ‘basic stuff’, with form as shape or structure. There are occasions when Aristotle and Aquinas speak that way; but they make it clear that materia prima is not any kind of stuff at all. It is a ‘principle’ that contributes to material things, but cannot exist by itself, or be conceived – it ‘lies beneath’ the possibility of change from one kind of thing to another, and grounds the ‘brute facticity’ of material things that resists being universalised and allows many individuals to exist in one species. Conversely, ‘substantial form’ is not a structuring of pre-existing components, but more deeply pervasive. It makes something, through and through, to be precisely what it is, e.g. a rabbit. Thus it locates something within a species, allows us to ‘abstract’ and discuss scientifically the rabbit ‘pattern of life’, and makes this rabbit (or whatever) what it is for as long as it is. See Herbert McCabe, On Aquinas, chh. 4 & 5.

³⁹ For levels of life, see ST, I, q. 18, a. 3; q. 78, a. 1; QDA, a. 13. For Aquinas, ‘to live is to be’ (Wingell, Albert E., ‘Vivere Viventibus Est Esse in Aristotle and St. Thomas’, in The Modern Schoolman XXXVIII (1960-61), pp. 85-120Google Scholar). Hence levels of life map onto levels of the transcendentals.

⁴⁰ ST, I, q. 75, a. 2; QDA, a. 14. Herbert McCabe, On Aquinas, chh. 5 & 6.

⁴¹ The circles that used to be drawn as if they were the electrons’ orbits are actually symbols of the electrons’ average distance from the nucleus: the electrons in the first four elements, and some of those in all other elements, being in S-orbitals, do not revolve around the nucleus at all, having a zero angular momentum quantum number.

⁴² Aristotle seems to have found Atomism incoherent for several reasons: it implied action at a distance, and he could not see how the distance between atoms could be quantified if there was a complete void between them. Physics, Book IV, chh. 6-9 (whose interpretation remains a matter of debate) comprises a discussion of ‘the void’. I suspect Aristotle also found Atomism unsatisfactory because it implied that the solid atoms are what truly exist, so that organisms are, like machines, nothing more than temporary assemblies of components.

⁴³ E.g. Silva, Ignacio, ‘Werner Heisenberg and Thomas Aquinas on Natural Indeterminism’, in New Blackfriars 94 (2013), pp. 635-653CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁴ Cf. the section ‘Indetermination and the Hierarchy of Being’ in Ignacio Silva, ‘Werner Heisenberg and Thomas Aquinas on Natural Indeterminism’.

⁴⁵ Bobik, Joseph, Aquinas on Matter and Form and the Elements: A Translation and Introduction of the De Principiis Naturae and the De Mixtione Elementorum of St. Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1998), Part IVGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁶ This relates to the puzzle how indeterminacy at the quantum level relates to the laws of motion, etc., that we find at the macroscopic level. See for example Koons, Robert C., ‘Hylomorphic Escalation: An Aristotelian Interpretation of Quantum Thermodynamics and Chemistry’, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 92 (2018), pp. 159-78CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The view is widespread that quantum indeterminacy is quite other than randomness on the macroscopic scale; in any case, as I remarked in note 35, freedom is quite other than mere randomness.

⁴⁷ For examples see Cartwright, Nancy and Pemberton, John, ‘Without Them, What Would Modern Science Do?’ in Greco, John and Groff, Ruth, eds., Powers and Capacities in Philosophy: The New Aristotelianism (New York: Routledge, 2013)Google Scholar; and the papers in Simpson, William M. R., Koons, Robert C. and Teh, Nicholas J., eds., Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Contemporary Science (New York: Routledge, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁸ Robert Van Gulick, ‘Consciousness’, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (substantive revision Tues. Jan 14, 2014); cf. Bruce Weber, ‘Life’ (Ib., substantive revision Mon. Nov 7, 2011).

⁴⁹ Aquinas’ Third Way urges us to recognise that the being of even incorruptible entities (e.g. the heavenly bodies as then understood) needs a Source, i.e. God whose Being does not need a source. The Fourth Way relies on recognising that the degrees of being, goodness, etc., we observe point to God's transcendent Being and Goodness.

⁵⁰ Besides articles referenced later: Opderbeck, David W., ‘Can Origen Help Us Understand Adam?’ in New Blackfriars 99 (2018), pp. 561-577CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cunningham, Conor ‘Dawkins is Dead: Long Live Evolution!’ in New Blackfriars 96 (2015), pp. 269-278CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Newton, William, ‘A Case of Mistaken Identity: Aquinas's Fifth Way and Arguments of Intelligent Design’, in New Blackfriars 95 (2014), pp. 569-578CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Barnes, Corey L., ‘Natural Final Causality and Providence in Aquinas’, ib., pp. 349-361Google Scholar; George, Marie, ‘What Would Thomas Aquinas Say about Intelligent Design?’ in New Blackfriars 94 (2013), pp. 676-700CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tkacz, Michael, ‘Thomistic Reflections on Teleology and Contemporary Biological Research’, ib., pp. 654-675Google Scholar; O'Collins, Gerald SJ, ‘Cosmological Christology: Arthur Peacocke, John Polkinghorne and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in Dialogue’ in New Blackfriars 93 (2012), pp. 516-523CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵¹ https://www.thomisticevolution.org/

⁵² ‘An Evolutionary Adaptation of the Fall’ (New Blackfriars 95 (2014), pp. 295-307), p. 296CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵³ See Schwarz, Jeffrey H., Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, and the Emergence of Species (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1999), Chapters 11 & 12Google Scholar; id., ‘What's Real About Human Evolution? Received Wisdom, Assumptions and Scenarios’, in id., ed., Rethinking Human Evolution (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2018), pp. 61-91, at pp. 73-81.

⁵⁴ For Aquinas’ account of the soul's creation see ST, I, qq. 90 & 118. It is widely held that we need to update him on the moment of the soul's infusion (e.g. Ford, Norman M., When Did I Begin? Conception of the Human Individual in History, Philosophy and Science (Cambridge: CUP, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jones, David Albert, The Soul of the Embryo: An enquiry into the Status of the Human Embryo in the Christian Tradition (London: Continuum, 2004)Google Scholar). See also the end of Janice Chik Breidenbach's paper in this issue.

⁵⁵ Language is a uniquely human behaviour, as is handedness; both are connected with the brain's lateral asymmetry. Brain asymmetry is not uniquely human; however, the precise way it developed in our relatively recent ancestors might have provided a foundation for truly human language (Skiba, S. A. and Taglialatela, J. P., ‘Evolution of Laterality and Language in Primates’, in Kaas, Jon H., ed., Evolution of Nervous Systems, (2^nd Ed., Cambridge, MA: Academic Press, 2017), Vol. 4, pp. 301-309CrossRefGoogle Scholar). Aquinas saw our relatively large brain (the organ of imagination, cogitation and memory) as suiting a body animated by a rational soul (QDA, a. 8; cf. ST, I, q. 76, a. 5 c & ad 2). This does not imply that embryos are sub-human: Aquinas saw a truly rational soul as present long before the balance of humours supports the use of reason, and as present in people in whom some bodily defect prevents them ever having the use of reason (ST, I, q. 101, a. 2; III, q. 68, a. 12).

⁵⁶ Ian Tattersall, ‘Brain Size and the Emergence of Modern Human Cognition’, pp. 324-327. The slow development of flaked stone tools among Homo species for over a million years continued for 100,000 years among anatomically modern humans before any strong evidence of symbolic behaviour appeared.

⁵⁷ ‘Brain Size and the Emergence of Modern Human Cognition’, pp. 327-329.

⁵⁸ For Aquinas’ discussion of the limitations that are built into us owing to ‘necessitas materiae’, see ST, I, q. 76, a. 5 ad 1 & ad 2; I-II, q. 85, a. 6; II-II, q. 164, a. 1 ad 1; QDA, a. 8. For a persuasive account of how some ‘drives’ inherited from our pre-human ancestors can lead to evil if not controlled by ‘higher’ considerations, see Midgley, Mary, Wickedness: A Philosophical Essay (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984)Google Scholar.

⁵⁹ Discussion of the theology of original justice and fall is beyond the scope of this article. Lembke's article makes some helpful observations about Aquinas’ account, though I would query some details. For a review of recent theology see O'Sullivan, James P., ‘Catholics Re-examining Original Sin in light of Evolutionary Science: The State of the Question’, New Blackfriars 99 (2018), pp. 653-674CrossRefGoogle Scholar.