Peter Auriol on the Soul: an Itinerary through his Human Ontology

In my dissertation, I focus on several aspects of the philosophical anthropology or human ontology of the Franciscan theologian Peter Auriol († 1322). In particular, I deal with a few controversies related to the main issue of identifying which are the ontological components of a human being. Hence, in my dissertation a reader can find a comprehensive reconstruction of Auriol’s position on the human soulbody relation, seen as a specific case within the more general form-matter relation, to which a detailed analysis of Sentences II, d. 16, qq. 1-3 is added (ch. 1). After having considered the constitutive parts of the human composite, I deal with the description of the human forma totius, namely the delineation of the characteristics that allow us to call certain beings human beings. This debate is particularly challenging because Auriol changed his view on the relation between the forma totius and the parts of the composite several times throughout his works. The third chapter is devoted to a consideration of Auriol’s stance on the plurality of substantial forms with particular focus on the form of corporeity and its relation with the soul, on the one hand, and prime matter, on the other. Finally, the fourth chapter focuses on a delineation of the soul’s make up, thus considering the relation between the rational soul and its intellective and sensory powers or activities, and the relation between possible and agent intellect within a rational soul that is the form of the body. My research has three main aims: 1) provide the reader with an analysis of questions, especially from the Sentences commentary and the Quodlibet, that were still unexplored; hence, the first chapter of my dissertation lays the foundations for the following three chapters, whose main issues have rarely, if ever, been considered by the scholarship. 2) I intend to give an overall perspective on Auriol’s thought on the human ontology, so that, while dealing with all these debates, I try to show how they are all linked together. 3) I mean to evaluate to what extent Auriol’s solutions appear to be groundbreaking or conventional to draw a faithful representation of Auriol’s thought.