1 Body and Soul Separable but Unified: Can Thomistic-like Dualism Square the Circle? Alin Christoph Cucu 1 Abstract The ontology of the human person is a matter of ongoing debate. Substance dualism is a view that solves virtually all the intractable problems that haunt its materialist rivals. It does that in virtue of its conception of the human person as a single, unified, indivisible immaterial substance, distinct from the body conceived as a separate substance. This gives rise to the charge of an unnatural ‘dismantlement’ of the human person, of losing the intuitively felt union of the embodied human being. Thomism with its broadly Aristotelian hylomorphic metaphysics can help out here, but only at the cost of being difficult to square with Christian doctrine and the growing evidential body of near-death experiences. On a more abstract level, it looks indeed hard to find an account which combines the separability and the union of body and soul: it might even seem like ‘squaring the circle’. J.P. Moreland has recently offered a view he calls ‘Thomistic-like dualism’ (TLD) which he claims combines the advantages of substance dualism and of Thomism. I will argue that TLD is indeed able to do that. I further identify an objection Moreland has not anticipated and answer to it with the aid of Rob Koons’ Aristotelian philosophy of inanimate and biological substances. Keywords: Thomism – Substance dualism – Soul – Body – Embodiment – Christian doctrine 1 University of Lausanne, Unicentre, CH-1015 Lausanne. E-Mail: alin.cucu@unil.ch