Thomas Aquinas on Bodily Identity

Thomas Aquinas on Bodily Identity revolves around some of the most controversial and innovative ideas put forward by the most famous medieval thinker, but its central questions still provoke philosophical discussions today, both within and beyond the academy. What constitutes a human being? What is it that makes a person the same person over time and across drastic physical change? The Dominican theologian Thomas Aquinas’s views on these questions were shaped by theological concerns, pagan and Arabic authoritative sources, and contemporary polemic with dualist heresy. He considered embryology and heredity; whether the food we eat becomes who we are; and what happens to our bodies after we die. He concluded that the element of individuality in each human being is a mathematical structure in many ways analogous to a genetic code.