A couple folks adding their thoughts on this in a different forum:
Thomistic hylomorphism is a philosophy of the human person. It is differentiated from 'dualism' which (as Plato said) was a way of looking at the human person as if the soul were stuck in the body. It is also different from materialism, which states that their is no immaterial soul, that the human person is only matter.Another adds:
Hylomorphism states that there is a immaterial soul and material body, but the soul is not just stuck in the body. The body is not a chain holding the soul down from it's true freedom (again, this is something Plato says in one of his dialogues). Rather the immaterial soul and the material body are intimately connected and, though it might be an oversimplification to say it this way, the soul shapes, in a sense, the form of the body.
Some interpret hylomorphism to say that the body and soul are still two separate things, but others interpret hylomorphism to say that there is no way to really separate the two, that they are again intimately linked and that it is strange to think of one without the other.
...Aquinas was not so emphatic about form and matter’s inseparability. As a Dominican priest, Aquinas had high regard for Scripture, which indicates a separation is possible. Verses such as Matthew 10:28 teach that the body and soul are not mutually dependent: “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.” Perhaps the strongest argument against stringent Aristotelian hylomorphism is in 1 Corinthians 15:40, where Paul writes of the resurrection: “There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another.”
Nevertheless, Aquinas was able to combine hylomorphism with essential Christian tenets. He claimed that, even though the soul and body are linked, the soul can survive without the body. The soul is simply incomplete until re-embodied. The soul or “form” of a human exists in an unnatural state until God resurrects the body. In this way Aquinas explained the transition between the death of the earthly body and the resurrection of a heavenly body. Having a body, according to Aquinas, is essential to being human, and thus humanity cannot be perfected without one.
http://www.quora.com/Thomas-Aquinas/What-is-Thomistic-hylomorphism
I will try and explain Thomistic hylomorphism, how one of my uncle explained me with an example.I found this discussion intriguing, and open the topic here for discussion too... thoughts?
I have a car. My car is made up of both the form of a car and the matter of a car.Does this make sense?
The car is made up of certain pieces of matter, let's say exactly 10,000 pieces of matter, for simplicity's sake. We could disassemble the car and there would be exactly 10,000 parts we could line up.
There's also molds for the car parts and a blueprint for it's assembly. I have all those things to make another copy of my car.
One could say that the matter of the car is simply the 10,000 parts lined up and that the form of the car is the blueprint and molds - really, the form is the precise 'outline' of all the car parts assembled in the right way to make the car. The parts all have to be in the right place to be called 'the form of a car'.
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