I cannot repent after death, or make moral progress; can I make intellectual progress post-mortem? Maybe Ed Feser can answer this question along Thomistic lines, assuming the question has a sense clear enough to answer. Aquinas takes no position on it, at least not in the sections of Summa Contra Gentiles where he discusses the will‘s fixity after death. See SCG, Book Four, sections 92-95.
Well said.
Well, I didn’t actually say anything; I merely posed a question.
Bill,
This is a very interesting question, and it prompted me search Aquinas’ ST to see if he addressed it there.
Correct me if I am wrong, but does not the following section of the ST (1-11, q. 67. a. 2, s.c.), “Whether the intellectual virtues [wisdom, scientific knowledge, intuitive reason, prudence/ practical wisdom, and art/craft/technical skill] remain after this life” indicate that the Aquinas believed that “intellectual progress [is possible] post-mortem”?
There, he writes:
… As stated in the I:79:6 some have held that the intelligible species do not remain in the passive intellect except when it actually understands; and that so long as actual consideration ceases, the species are not preserved save in the sensitive powers which are acts of bodily organs, viz. in the powers of imagination and memory. Now these powers cease when the body is corrupted: and consequently, according to this opinion, neither science nor any other intellectual virtue will remain after this life when once the body is corrupted.
But this opinion is contrary to the mind of Aristotle, who states (De Anima iii, text. 8) that ‘the possible intellect is in act when it is identified with each thing as knowing it; and yet, even then, it is in potentiality to consider it actually.’ It is also contrary to reason, because intelligible species are contained by the ‘possible’ intellect immovably, according to the mode of their container. Hence the ‘possible’ intellect is called ‘the abode of the species’ (De Anima iii) because it preserves the intelligible species.
And yet the phantasms, by turning to which man understands in this life, by applying the intelligible species to them as stated in the I:84:7; I:85:1 ad 5, cease as soon as the body is corrupted. Hence, so far as the phantasms are concerned, which are the quasi-material element in the intellectual virtues, these latter cease when the body is destroyed: but as regards the intelligible species, which are in the ‘possible’ intellect, the intellectual virtues remain. Now the species are the quasi-formal element of the intellectual virtues. Therefore these remain after this life, as regards their formal element….”
[A bit confused by his terminology, I turned to Google’s AI, which explains Aquinas’ understanding of “species” as “the immaterial representations or forms by which the intellect understands an object…. the means by which knowledge is present in the ‘possible’ intellect” and they are the “quasi-formal element of the intellectual virtues” …” because they determine the potential of the intellect (the possible intellect) to a specific act of understanding or knowing.”]
Not sure this is helpful, but the search for an answer, even if off the mark, was enjoyable.
Vito