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Former good articleThomas Aquinas was one of the Philosophy and religion good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
September 3, 2006Peer reviewReviewed
May 17, 2009Good article reassessmentDelisted
Current status: Delisted good article

Do animals have souls?

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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]

Editing notice

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The editing notice When referred to by a single name, he should always be referred to as simply "Thomas" is absurdly prescriptive. It should be removed. Srnec (talk) 03:11, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Partofthemachine: Many reliable sources call him Aquinas. Srnec (talk) 15:22, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Seems to me that it was implemented so that people wouldn’t confound his purported last name for his real name. Raulois (talk) 17:13, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
He is called both 'Thomas' and 'Aquinas' in reliable sources. There's no right or wrong. It's one thing to keep this page consistent, but another to tell people you should never call him 'Aquinas'. That's just not true. It wasn't a last name, but that doesn't matter. The form 'Aquinas' does not represent a standard form for medieval Italians in either Italian or English. It's like "Charlemagne". Srnec (talk) 00:45, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Modern and postmodern bias through the whole article.

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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

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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 ‥  10:26, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]