Human person as substance-in-relation in W. Norris CLARKE: “Creative retrieval” or “Completion” of Aquinas’ thought?

“Substance-in-relation” is W. Norris CLARKE’s own contribution to the thought of Aquinas on the metaphysics of the human person. Clarke argues that a dynamic notion of the human person with an intrinsic dynamic substance and a primordial relation is implicit in the thought of Aquinas and he wants to make them explicit. His approach was to “creatively retrieve” this intrinsic dynamic notion in Aquinas and to “complete” it with the rich relational notion that was well-developed by some contemporary existential phenomenologists, personalists and psychotherapists. He argues that the human person possesses dyadic structures of substance and relation that are equally primordial. So, for him, “to be” a human person is to be a “substance-in-relation.” This implies that substance alone, even though dynamic, is insufficient to constitute a human person. In this way, Clarke seems to differ from Aquinas who argued that the human person is a substance composed of body and soul. In fact, the conclusions reached by Clarke on the basic seminal ideas of the human person leaned more towards the thoughts of the above contemporary thinkers than that of Aquinas, suggesting that he must have departed significantly from St. Thomas. This raises doubt about to what extent he retrieved the thought of Aquinas. This research, therefore, is an attempt to furnish some elements that would help the reader to evaluate whether Clarke’s work could be considered more as a “creative retrieval” or more as a “creative completion” of the thought of Aquinas. The method employed here is to trace the background to the formation of Clarke’s thought. There is also an analysis of his thought. This is followed by a critical analysis of his notion of human substance and of relation. Finally, certain elements are furnished to help the reader in this evaluation.