Human Nature and Original Sin in Thomas Aquinas

The contemporary debate on human nature concerns two distinct issues, identified here as issues of ‘condition’ and ‘content’. These concern respectively the functional legitimacy or the formal use of the very concept of ‘(human) nature’, and –when such a nature is asserted– its defining characteristics. The debate on nature took an important turn when Aquinas integrated the different views of Aristotle and Augustine, both with regard to the condition and the content issue. In this paper, I focus on the epistemological functions of ‘human nature’ as part of the ‘condition’ issue, and on the consequences of original sin and the four wounds of human nature in Aquinas’s theology, as part of the ‘content’ issue.