Aquinas remarks with some regularity on persons afflicted with the condition amentia, which is variously and inconsistently interpreted (in translation) as “imbeciles,” “fools,” “madmen,” “lunatics,” “the demented,” or “the insane.” The...
moreAquinas remarks with some regularity on persons afflicted with the condition amentia, which is variously and inconsistently interpreted (in translation) as “imbeciles,” “fools,” “madmen,” “lunatics,” “the demented,” or “the insane.” The amentes are persons who lack the use of reason in a profound and debilitating way; and, as I will show, the fact that we are sometimes found in this state informs Aquinas’s analysis of human nature and, in particular, Aquinas’s teaching on the good wrought by Christ for the members of his body. My purpose in this article is to explore what Aquinas has to say about the happiness of persons who are baptized and confirmed by the Church, and who have what neuropsychologists would describe as a profound cognitive impairment. The guiding question is this: Thinking with Aquinas, how do we account for the natural and supernatural happiness of those of us who lack the use of reason?
The discussion is divided into five parts. I begin (part I) by locating those who “lack the use of reason” within the theological infrastructure of Aquinas’s moral psychology and I identify the main problematic. With respect to that problematic, the principal conceptual resources provided by Aquinas are then outlined and two challenges are identified (part II). The first challenge is methodological, concerning the speculative import of the sacramental life of the Church. Francisco de Vitoria’s ‘Relectio de eo ad quod tenetur homo veniens ad usum rationis’ (1534) highlights for us (part III) a constellation of judgments relevant to interpreting Aquinas on these themes. The second challenge is to show the continuity between Aquinas’s account of the human being and his practical remarks on those who lack the use of reason. Specifically, given the various ways that, and degrees to which, the human being can lack the use of reason, I trace (part IV) Aquinas’s analysis of the power and operation of intellect, focusing on the intellectual acts which can be impaired and, concurrently, the intellectual acts which cannot be impaired in a living human being. I conclude (part V) with a description of the path of contemplative happiness that, on Aquinas’s terms, remains open for baptized persons who, like the amentes, suffer an involuntary alienation from bodily sense and who, thereby, utterly lack the use of reason.