The Aquinas Institute's Grand Publishing Project

For those of you who like collecting Aquinas translations, I thought I'd put in a link to the opera omnia project of the Aquinas Institute. They are aiming to produce English translations of all of Aquinas's works; which, given that even some of his major works (like the Commentary on the Sentences) have never appeared in English, is tremendous news. A number of the volumes appear to be re-workings of existing translation; for example that of the summa theologiae is based on the older Dominican translation.

From this series, I have acquired the commentaries on the letters of St Paul. I can attest that all aspects of the book production are of the very highest quality: a nice layout of Latin and English, printed on good quality paper and well bound. For what they are, the prices being asked are very modest.

Aquinas and Zombies

When Thomas Aquinas was writing his summa theologiae, the zombie apocalypse was considered too far in the future to be of direct relevance to the teaching of theology. Happily, modern writers have addressed this sad lacuna in the summa. However, less noticed is the fact that Aquinas did in fact talk about zombies without actually naming them as such. Where do we find this teaching?

The York Aquinas Reading Group has turned its attention to the Angels. In Ia.q51, Aquinas considers the bodily appearences of angels to men spoken about in the scriptures. It appears that the angels are using human bodies in some way or another. What is the nature of the relationship between angel and human body? In this short question Aquinas immediately discounts (article 1) the idea that the angels (as pure form) are united to the body as form is united to matter. But it is clear that the angels in some way assume human bodies (Article 2). What is the state of such a human body when it is under the power of an angel? In article 3, Aquinas denies that the human body assumed by the angel is alive; moreover the angel itself is not exercising vital functions through this body.

What Aquinas appears to have in mind here is something akin to the notion of zombie in modern philosophy of mind. In this context a zombie is a hypothetical exact physical copy of a human being but which has no consciousness, qualia or sentience. So, did Aquinas arrive at the modern notion of a zombie many centuries before they arose in the philosophy of mind?