ABSTRACT
In the search for a non-dualistic theory of post-mortem survival, Hylomorphism seems the natural point of departure. Adopting the Aristotelian notion of the soul as substantial form of the body, Thomas Aquinas explicitly rejects the dualistic identification of the person with the immaterial soul.1 The human person is seen as an embodied entity, and as such she can survive her own death only with her body.2 Surprisingly, the majority of contemporary non-dualistic proponents of post-mortem survival have a negative attitude towards the Thomistic conception of immortality and resurrection. They deny that the concept of the soul is needed for a coherent non-dualistic account of post-mortem survival. According to them, the soul carries the entire ontological burden in the transition from death to resurrection. The main problem is located in the state of the soul between death and resurrection: What happens to the soul in the period immediately after death when it is no longer the form of the living organism and not yet the form of the resurrected body? Eric Olson puts this problem in the following way:
That Thomas Aquinas posits the disembodied existence of the soul in the period between death and resurrection is regarded as clear evidence for a residual substance dualism in his conception of the mind-body relationship. The hylomorphic account of the soul is labeled “compound dualism”4 or is characterized as a “hybrid of
Immaterialism and Animalism.”5 Lynne Rudder Baker explicitly presents her own view-the Constitutionalist approach-as an alternative to “Thomas Aquinas’ hybrid Immaterialism.”6
