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Chapter 2

Comments On The Two Definitions
Of Human Being Proposed By Us

34. We shall now examine our own definitions.

It is clear that by defining the human being as `an intellective and volitive animal subject', we have avoided the three difficulties mentioned above. In this definition:

1st. Both the passive and the active parts of human nature, which we have called intellective and volitive, are expressed.

2nd. The primitive faculty of the understanding is indicated by calling the human being intellective, not rational.

3rd. The human being is first said to be `a subject'. Three conditions are then added to this subject: `animality, intelligence and will'. In this way these qualities have the same relationship to the `subject'; none is more privileged than another. In other words, the principle which forms human unity is posited as distinct from animality, intelligence and will, but common to them all. The subject which feels as an animal is also that which understands and wills as intelligent and volitive.

35. Any supposition which sustained the contrary would involve logical repugnance and manifest absurdity. It is impossible for an animal to be that which understands, just as it is impossible for the principle constituting animality to possess intelligence. Such an assertion would presuppose confusion between two things which are separate of their very nature. When I say `animal', I say `a principle which feels materially, and moves from place to place in accordance with these sensations'; when I say `intellective being', I say `a principle which conceives in an immaterial way, and wills without moving from place to place'. These properties are contraries. With the first, I know and define animal; with the second I know and define intellective being.

If the animal were to understand, it would to that extent cease to be an animal. To say that an animal reasons is the same, strictly speaking, as attributing reasoning to the sense-principle. But with such an attribution I either destroy reason by reducing it to material feeling, or I destroy material feeling by maintaining that the animal principle (which is always understood as a principle of material feeling) is a principle of immaterial feeling, that is, of reasoning. In the former case, I have not attributed rationality to the animal, but only the animality(16) already possessed by the animal; in the latter, I have not attributed one of the two principles (sense-principle and rational principle) to the other, but by destroying the first I have retained the rational principle just as it was. In a word, when I say `rational animal', I must understand one of two things: either 1. that the feeling principle, as feeling principle, reasons, which is as absurd as saying that the principle of vision, which perceives colours, is that which perceives sounds, smells and tastes, or as saying that the non-intelligent principle (the animal) understands; or 2. that the principle which feels, also reasons, not in so far as it feels or is the proximate principle of feeling but in so far as it is referred to and rooted in a common principle of feeling and reasoning. In such a case, this common principle of feeling and reasoning would be a third principle, not a principle rather of one than of the other of these two functions. It would be a principle uniting both functions in itself. Hence it would no longer be true to say that `the animal reasons'. We would say that this third principle feels and moves itself as an animal, and at the same time reasons. Clearly the expression `rational animal' is not altogether exact, precisely because in saying `animal' I say `a principle which feels' and is called `animal' only in so far as it feels but does not reason.

36. A favourable interpretation could be given to the common phrase `rational animal' if, after finding that the human subject were as much animal as intellective, we were to maintain equally `the subject who understands is an animal' and `an animal is that which understands'. Granted the fully perfect unity of the subject, which is both animal and intellective, the two ways of speaking could be true. Unfortunately, such an interpretation is excluded by Aristotle wherever he endeavours to prove that `rational animal' should be used instead of `animal, intellective being'.(17) Nevertheless, we wanted to draw attention to this possible interpretation so that the reader might understand the meaning of such phrases as `intellective animal' and `rational animal' when we use them, as we often do. They are in part true, although they are not sufficient to constitute an exact definition of the human being.

37. I added another definition to that just examined, and called the human being `an animal subject endowed with the intuition of indeterminate-ideal being and with the perception of corporeal-fundamental feeling, and acting in accordance with the animality and intelligence it possesses'. This second definition is more explicit than the first.
The former could be criticised for the reason which led the Scholastics to call the human being rational rather than intellective. By saying `rational', the human being is characterised differently from beasts, which have feeling but no reason, and from angels, which have intellect but no reason. Hence St. Thomas affirms with great precision that human beings are rational natures, and angels intellective natures.(18)

38. It would be possible to maintain that, in the first definition we have given, the human being is sufficiently distinguished from angels by his perceived animality, and from brute beasts by intelligence. On the other hand, in calling angels intellective natures, they are not assigned a difference truly distinguishing them from human beings. The word intellective does not exclude reasoning, and is applicable to angels and human beings.

39. Nevertheless it cannot be denied that the word `intellective' in the first definition requires some explanation. In the second, however, all is made clear by substituting the words `endowed with the intuition of indeterminate-ideal being and with the perception of corporeal fundamental feeling, and acting in accordance with the animality and intelligence it possesses' in place of the attributes `intellective and volitive'. The expanded definition illustrates the specific difference between human and every other intellect.

It is of course true that the nature of any intellect whatsoever consists in the intuition of ideal being, but the characteristic note of the human intellect, as we showed in The Origin of Thought,(19) is the intuition of indeterminate-ideal being and the perception of its own corporeal fundamental feeling(20) alone. This initial conception of being and first perception forms the foundation of human intelligence and human species and distinguishes human beings from all separate intelligences that can be conceived mentally (that is, from angels).

40. This highly imperfect intuition of being shows why creative wisdom connected animality to human intelligence, the lowest grade of intelligence. Animality is given to the human being as a means of partially completing the human vision of, and share in, being, as we showed in The Origin of Thought. Feeling furnishes the intelligent subject with a fundamental perception and adds many determinations to being as naturally intuited by human subjects.

41. But intelligences which by nature already possess various operations and perceptions in an order higher than that of animality have no need of this means. Ancient writers correctly characterised and described the human being when they maintained that `the human being occupies the lowest position in the order of intelligences'.(21)

42. By adding to the definition the words `acting in accordance with its animality and intelligence', the degrees and modes of human action are indicated. First place is given to reason as the operative principle which joins and binds intellect and feeling in itself by means of perception. In this way, the chief powers of human nature, which are rooted in the unity of the subject, are sufficiently expressed in the definition.

Notes

(16) Aristotelian sensism is evident here. Aristotle's definition of human being is dependent upon it.

(17) It will not be out of place to note that although the expression `rational animal' applied to the human being is tainted with the materialism of which Aristotle was sometimes accused (and from which it is difficult to absolve him altogether), such an accusation cannot be levelled at the Catholic schools which resisted every kind of materialism. The worst that can be said of them is that in taking Aristotle as their guide they accepted certain of his philosophically in exact expressions which they could not correct and justify without great subtlety and ingenuity.

(18) S.T., I, q. 58, art. 3.

(19) Cf. 481-482, 486-487.

(20) The theory behind this perception will be examined in our work on psychology.

(21) St. Thomas, following in the footsteps of Aristotle, had already observed that knowing something in a universal sense without determinations is more imperfect than knowing the same thing with its determinations and in its particular aspects (S.T., I, q. 85, art. 3).