There can be no person who is not a spiritual substance. Spiritual being is an essential characteristic of every person and co-original with the interpersonal relation: the person is spiritual substance and relational — both belong co-originally to her essence.
The spiritual being of the person means that the person cannot be reduced to her biological, chemical, or physical dimension. The person is more than her body, although she is essentially bodily. Spiritual being grounds the right to life: because the person is a spiritual substance from conception onward, she has a right to life from conception onward (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 140–150).
Spiritual Being and Substantiality
In the Thomistic tradition, substance is that which stands in itself (ens per se) and does not require another in order to exist. The person is not merely a bundle of properties or a stream of conscious experiences. She is a substantial entity, standing in herself.
This standing-in-itself is of a spiritual nature. The soul as a spiritual principle of life constitutes the person as substance and is at the same time the formal cause of the body. The body-soul unity is therefore not an external joining of two parts, but the inner constitution of the one person.
Spiritual being radically distinguishes the person from all non-personal entities. A stone, a plant, an animal — they all are, but they are not in the mode of the spiritual. Only the person has that interiority which enables her to enter into a relation to herself, to know herself, and to go beyond herself.
Spiritual being is thus the ontological root of self-transcendence.
Spiritual Being as Necessary and Inalienable
As an essential characteristic, spiritual being is necessary and inalienable. It cannot be lost through illness, unconsciousness, or disability. A human being lying in a coma is just as much a spiritual substance as a waking human being — for spiritual being does not concern the actual exercise of spiritual acts, but the being of the person herself. Whoever ties spiritual being to actual capacity for consciousness confuses the ontological level with the phenomenal and opens the door to that oblivion of the person against which the dissertation warns.
Spiritual Being and Artificial Intelligence
The question of spiritual being has particular urgency in the context of artificial intelligence: a machine can process information, but it is not a spiritual substance. It lacks interiority, the self, the I. Ascribing “spirit” or “consciousness” to technical systems misjudges the categorial difference between person and thing.
Ontological classification:
- Superordinate concept: essential characteristic
Ontological relations:
- is co-original with: interpersonal relation
- is grounded in: individuality, heart
- grounds: right to life
- presupposes: soul as spiritual principle of life
Chapter assignment: Chapter 4: Personhood
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.
Further sources:
- Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologiae I, q. 75, a. 2 (the spirituality of the soul and its irreducibility to the material).
- Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologiae I, q. 76, a. 1 (the soul as forma corporis).
- Seifert, Josef (1989): Das Leib-Seele-Problem und die gegenwärtige philosophische Diskussion. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. (German)
- Spaemann, Robert: Persons. The Difference between ‘Someone’ and ‘Something’. Translated by Oliver O’Donovan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
See also
Spiritual Substance, Interpersonal Relation, Person, Personhood, Substance, Soul, Body-Soul Unity, Spiritual Life, Essential Characteristic, Individuality, Heart, Uniqueness, Self-Transcendence, Artificial Intelligence, Oblivion of the Person, I