The Separated Substances

Abstract

While the discussion of the Platonic Ideas was, in a sense, a discussion of separated substances, there still remains room for a specific investigation under the rubric ‘separated substances.’ For Saint Thomas himself has a series of discussions directly dealing with the problem from this standpoint and incorporating philosophical approaches to it.¹ He points out that the philosophers have employed various arguments and that, in each case, distinctively different positions on the problem have, therefore, been reached. Among the philosophers cited, Plato and the Platonists consistently appear, likewise with a characteristic via and a distinctive resulting pattern of separated substances.