Abstract

One issue in contemporary philosophy that has received significant attention recently concerns the metaphysical nature of human persons. The debate between philosophers who reduce human nature to physical or psychological properties alone, and those who hold that human nature transcends such properties, has engendered a great deal of scholarship and inspired others to formulate accounts that avoid the pitfalls of either extreme. I canvass this debate and focus upon three positions to explicate and evaluate. Richard Swinburne contends that a human person is identical to an immaterial soul. Eric Olson argues for a reduction of human nature to its biological "animality." Lynne Rudder Baker provides an account that preserves the inherently physical nature of human persons, while arguing that being a person includes more than what physical properties alone can explain. ;In addition to these contemporary scholars, I find Thomas Aquinas to provide a good source of interlocution and to add a comparable historical voice to this debate. I thus provide a reconstruction of Aquinas's account for comparison to those discussed previously. I claim that Aquinas offers an account which takes seriously the physical aspect of human nature, though Aquinas does not identify a human person with her physical body. Conversely, Aquinas does not argue that a human person is identical to an immaterial soul, though Aquinas considers an immaterial soul to be an essential part of human nature. ;Conclusions concerning the metaphysical nature of human persons have important practical implications in areas such as bioethics. For example, in the debate over euthanasia, one issue concerns whether a patient in a "persistent vegetative state," i.e., who is permanently unconscious, qualifies as a "person." I show how a metaphysical account of human nature, such as Aquinas', provides an arguable response to this issue among others in bioethics