Persons, Souls and Embryos

Abstract

The first part of this paper offers comments on the current debate within the Catholic church over the point in the development of the human embryo when ensoulment takes place. Interest is not so much in trying to determine the point of ensoulment as in clarifying the concept of ensoulment (animation, hominization) as inherited from Aristotle and Aquinas. This clarification leads to the second part of the paper, a discussion of some problems with the traditional Catholic notion of the soul as a spiritual principle “created immediately…by God”.