Saturday, September 8, 2007

Empirical knowledge of the soul

How do we know that we have souls? It is true that God tells us in his revelation that we have them. But this is not the only source of our knowledge of them. Case in point: the ancient pagan philosophers, such as Aristotle, knew that we had them.

St. Thomas says, in his commentary (sorry, no link) on Aristotle's De Anima (On the Soul), that our knowledge of the soul is both "good and honourable," and "It has certainty; for everyone knows by experience that he has a soul which is his life principle" (Bourke, The Pocket Aquinas, p. 93).

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