St. Thomas Aquinas on the Separated Soul and Its Personhood: A Mixed View

De Haan and Dahm have recently proposed a “Middle Way” to reconcile the long-standing conflict between Corruptionists and Survivalists in the ancient Thomistic debate over the personhood of the separated soul. While the Middle Way has some difficulties with the traditional positions, it relies on the unstable notion of an “incomplete person.” Building on the Middle Way’s insights, this paper proposes a “Mixed View.” Based on “Single-Part-Composition”, “Composition as Non-Identity”, “the Criterion of the Numerical Identity of Substances”, and the three criteria of personhood analyzed by De Haan and Dahm, I argue that the separated soul solely composes a substance that is numerically identical to the pre-mortem substance. This post-mortem substance satisfies the criteria for personhood but no longer under the species of human being, and the soul itself is not a person. The Mixed View preserves personal continuity without attributing personhood (complete or incomplete) to the soul, while also retaining the metaphysical seriousness of death as a substantial change, the abhorrence of death and the necessity of Resurrection.