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21 August 2020
Lecture 1 of 5
Theories of Human Knowing and the Nature of Universals in the Arabic Philosophical Tradition and their importance for Aquinas
in Two Parts
Part 1: The Greek and Arabic Traditions
Selected texts from the Greek and Arabic philosophical traditions: Aristotle, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistius, al-Farabi, Avicenna and Averroes
Aristotle: On scientific knowledge and the conditions for scientific demonstration, see Posterior Analytics 1.1-4. Mure: http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/posterior.1.i.html
“We suppose ourselves to possess unqualified scientific knowledge of a thing, as opposed to knowing it in the accidental way in which the sophist knows, when we think that we know the cause on which the fact depends, as the cause of that fact and of no other, and, further, that the fact could not be other than it is. Now that scientific knowing is something of this sort is evident-witness both those who falsely claim it and those who actually possess it, since the former merely imagine themselves to be, while the latter are also actually, in the condition described. Consequently the proper object of unqualified scientific knowledge is something which cannot be other than it is. . . . .” (1.2)
“What I now assert is that at all events we do know by demonstration. By demonstration I mean a syllogism productive of scientific knowledge, a syllogism, that is, the grasp of which is eo ipso such knowledge. Assuming then that my thesis as to the nature of scientific knowing is correct, the premisses of demonstrated knowledge must be true, primary, immediate, better known than and prior to the conclusion, which is further related to them as effect to cause. Unless these conditions are satisfied, the basic truths will not be ‘appropriate’ to the conclusion. Syllogism there may indeed be without these conditions, but such syllogism, not being productive of scientific knowledge, will not be demonstration. The premisses must be true: for that which is non-existent cannot be known-we cannot know, e.g. that the diagonal of a square is commensurate with its side. The premisses must be primary and indemonstrable; otherwise they will require demonstration in order to be known, since to have knowledge, if it be not accidental knowledge, of things which are demonstrable, means precisely to have a demonstration of them. The premisses must be the causes of the conclusion, better known than it, and prior to it; its causes, since we possess scientific knowledge of a thing only when we know its cause; prior, in order to be causes; antecedently known, this antecedent knowledge being not our mere understanding of the meaning, but knowledge of the fact as well.Now ‘prior’ and ‘better known’ are ambiguous terms, for there is a difference between what is prior and better known in the order of being and what is prior and better known to man. I mean that objects nearer to sense are prior and better known to man; objects without qualification prior and better known are those further from sense. . . . .” (1.2)
“Since the object of pure scientific knowledge cannot be other than it is, the truth obtained by demonstrative knowledge will be necessary. And since demonstrative knowledge is only present when we have a demonstration, it follows that demonstration is an inference from necessary premisses.” (1.4)
Posterior Analytics, 2.19 Mure:http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/posterior.2.ii.html
“As regards syllogism and demonstration, the definition of, and the conditions required to produce each of them, are now clear, and with that also the definition of, and the conditions required to produce, demonstrative knowledge, since it is the same as demonstration. As to the basic premisses, how they become known and what is the developed state of knowledge of them is made clear by raising some preliminary problems.
We have already said that scientific knowledge through demonstration is impossible unless a man knows the primary immediate premisses. But there are questions which might be raised in respect of the apprehension of these immediate premisses: one might not only ask whether it is of the same kind as the apprehension of the conclusions, but also whether there is or is not scientific knowledge of both; or scientific knowledge of the latter, and of the former a different kind of knowledge; and, further, whether the developed states of knowledge are not innate but come to be in us, or are innate but at first unnoticed. Now it is strange if we possess them from birth; for it means that we possess apprehensions more accurate than demonstration and fail to notice them. If on the other hand we acquire them and do not previously possess them, how could we apprehend and learn without a basis of pre-existent knowledge? For that is impossible, as we used to find in the case of demonstration. So it emerges that neither can we possess them from birth, nor can they come to be in us if we are without knowledge of them to the extent of having no such developed state at all. Therefore we must possess a capacity of some sort, but not such as to rank higher in accuracy than these developed states. And this at least is an obvious characteristic of all animals, for they possess a congenital discriminative capacity which is called sense-perception.But though sense-perception is innate in all animals, in some the sense-impression comes to persist, in others it does not. So animals in which this persistence does not come to be have either no knowledge at all outside the act of perceiving, or no knowledge of objects of which no impression persists; animals in which it does come into being have perception and can continue to retain the sense-impression in the soul: and when such persistence is frequently repeated a further distinction at once arises between those which out of the persistence of such sense-impressions develop a power of systematizing them and those which do not. So out of sense-perception comes to be what we call memory, and out of frequently repeated memories of the same thing develops experience; for a number of memories constitute a single experience. From experience again-i.e. from the universal now stabilized in its entirety within the soul, the one beside the many which is a single identity within them all-originate the skill of the craftsman and the knowledge of the man of science, skill in the sphere of coming to be and science in the sphere of being.
We conclude that these states of knowledge areneither innate in a determinate form, nor developed from other higher states of knowledge, but from sense-perception. It is like a rout in battle stopped by first one man making a stand and then another, until the original formation has been restored. The soul is so constituted as to be capable of this process.
Let us now restate the account given already, though with insufficient clearness. When one of a number of logically indiscriminable particulars has made a stand, the earliest universalis present in the soul: for though the act of sense-perception is of the particular, its content is universal-is man, for example, not the man Callias. A fresh stand is made among these rudimentary universals, and the process does not cease until the indivisible concepts, the true universals, are established: e.g. such and such a species of animal is a step towards the genus animal, which by the same process is a step towards a further generalization.
Thus it is clear that we must get to know the primary premisses by induction; for the method by which even sense-perception implants the universal is inductive. Now of the thinking states by which we grasp truth, some are unfailingly true, others admit of error-opinion, for instance, and calculation, whereas scientific knowing and intuition are always true: further, no other kind of thought except intuition is more accurate than scientific knowledge, whereas primary premisses are more knowable than demonstrations, and all scientific knowledge is discursive.From these considerations it follows that there will be no scientific knowledge of the primary premisses, and since except intuition nothing can be truer than scientific knowledge, it will be intuition that apprehends the primary premisses-a result which also follows from the fact that demonstration cannot be the originative source of demonstration, nor, consequently, scientific knowledge of scientific knowledge. If, therefore, it is the only other kind of true thinking except scientific knowing, intuition will be the originative source of scientific knowledge.And the originative source of science grasps the original basic premiss, while science as a whole is similarly related as originative source to the whole body of fact.”
Aristotle, De Anima, Book 1: http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/soul.1.i.html
The case of mind is different; it seems to be an independent substance implanted within the soul and to be incapable of being destroyed. If it could be destroyed at all, it would be under the blunting influence of old age. What really happens in respect of mind in old age is, however, exactly parallel to what happens in the case of the sense organs; if the old man could recover the proper kind of eye, he would see just as well as the young man. The incapacity of old age is due to an affection not of the soul but of its vehicle, as occurs in drunkenness or disease. Thus it is that in old age the activity of mind or intellectual apprehension declines only through the decay of some other inward part; mind itself is impassible. Thinking, loving, and hating are affections not of mind, but of that which has mind, so far as it has it. That is why, when this vehicle decays, memory and love cease; they were activities not of mind, but of the composite which has perished; mind is, no doubt, something more divine and impassible. That the soul cannot be moved is therefore clear from what we have said, and if it cannot be moved at all, manifestly it cannot be moved by itself.
De AnimaBook 2.2: http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/soul.2.ii.html
We have no evidence as yet about mind or the power to think; it seems to be a widely different kind of soul, differing as what is eternal from what is perishable; it alone is capable of existence in isolation from all other psychic powers.
De AnimaBook 3.4: http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/soul.3.iii.html
Turning now to the part of the soul with which the soul knows and thinks (whether this is separable from the others in definition only, or spatially as well) we have to inquire (1) what differentiates this part, and (2) how thinking can take place.
If thinking is like perceiving, it must be either a process in which the soul is acted upon by what is capable of being thought, or a process different from but analogous to that. The thinking part of the soul must therefore be, while impassible, capable of receiving the form of an object; that is, must be potentially identical in character with its object without being the object. Mind must be related to what is thinkable, as sense is to what is sensible.
Therefore, since everything is a possible object of thought, mind in order, as Anaxagoras says, to dominate, that is, to know, must be pure from all admixture; for the co-presence of what is alien to its nature is a hindrance and a block: it follows that it too, like the sensitive part, can have no nature of its own, other than that of having a certain capacity. Thus that in the soul which is called mind (by mind I mean that whereby the soul thinks and judges) is, before it thinks, not actually any real thing. For this reason it cannot reasonably be regarded as blended with the body: if so, it would acquire some quality, e.g. warmth or cold, or even have an organ like the sensitive faculty: as it is, it has none. It was a good idea to call the soul ‘the place of forms’, though (1) this description holds only of the intellective soul, and (2) even this is the forms only potentially, not actually.
Observation of the sense-organs and their employment reveals a distinction between the impassibility of the sensitive and that of the intellective faculty. After strong stimulation of a sense we are less able to exercise it than before, as e.g. in the case of a loud sound we cannot hear easily immediately after, or in the case of a bright colour or a powerful odour we cannot see or smell, but in the case of mind thought about an object that is highly intelligible renders it more and not less able afterwards to think objects that are less intelligible: the reason is that while the faculty of sensation is dependent upon the body, mind is separable from it.
Once the mind has become each set of its possible objects, as a man of science has, when this phrase is used of one who is actually a man of science (this happens when he is now able to exercise the power on his own initiative), its condition is still one of potentiality, but in a different sense from the potentiality which preceded the acquisition of knowledge by learning or discovery: the mind too is then able to think itself. . . . .
[I]t is by means of the sensitive faculty that we discriminate the hot and the cold, i.e. the factors which combined in a certain ratio constitute flesh: the essential character of flesh is apprehended by something different either wholly separate from the sensitive faculty or related to it as a bent line to the same line when it has been straightened out.
De Anima3.5
Since in every class of things, as in nature as a whole, we find two factorsinvolved, (1) a matter which is potentially all the particulars included in the class, (2) a cause which is productive in the sense that it makes them all (the latter standing to the former, as e.g. an art to its material), these distinct elements must likewise be found within the soul (en tē psyche)
And in fact mind as we have described it is what it is what it is by virtue of becoming all things, while there is another which is what it is by virtue of making all things: this is a sort of positive state like light; for in a sense light makes potential colours into actual colours.
Mind in this sense of it is separable, impassible, unmixed, since it is in its essential nature activity (for always the active is superior to the passive factor, the originating force to the matter which it forms).
Actual knowledge is identical with its object: in the individual, potential knowledge is in time prior to actual knowledge, but in the universe as a whole it is not prior even in time. Mind is not at one time knowing and at another not. When mind is set free from its present conditions it appears as just what it is and nothing more: this alone is immortal and eternal (we do not, however, remember its former activity because, while mind in this sense is impassible, mind as passive is destructible), and without it nothing thinks.
Alexander of Aphrodisas on intellect and intellectual abstraction:
Alexander of Aphrodisias. Supplement to On the Soul, R. W. Sharples (tr.) (London: Duckworth, 2004), pp. 28-29:
This [intellect] is what is intelligible in its own nature and is such in actuality; for it is this that produces thinking and leads the material intellect to actuality. This too is itself an intellect; for immaterial form, which alone is intelligible in its own nature, is intellect.
For enmattered forms are made intelligible by the intellect, being intelligible potentially. The intellect separates them from the matter with which they have their being, and itself makes them intelligible in actuality, and each of them, when it is thought, then comes to be intelligible in actuality and intellect;[but] they are not like this previously or by their own nature. For intellect in actuality is nothing other than the form that is being thought, so that each of these things too, that are not intelligible without qualification, becomes intellect, whenever it is thought. As knowledge in actuality is the same as what is knowable in actuality, and / p.29 / as sensation in actuality is the same as the sensible in actuality and the sensible in actuality [is the same] as sensation in actuality, so too intellect in actuality is the same as what is intelligible in actuality, and what is intelligible in actuality [is the same] as intellect in actuality. For intellect, apprehending the form of the thing that is thought and separating it from the matter, both makes it intelligible in actuality and itself comes to be intellect in actuality.
Alexander of Aphrodisias. Supplement to On the Soul, R. W. Sharples (tr.) (London: Duckworth, 2004), p. 36:
Moreover, its producing is prior and [part of] its substance. First it produces by abstraction [something] intelligible, and then in this way it apprehends some one of these things which it thinks and defines as a this-something. Even if it separates and apprehends at the same time, nevertheless the separating is conceptually prior; for this is what it is for it to be able to apprehend the form.We say that fire is productive in the highest degree, because it consumes all matter that it gets hold of and provides [it as] nourishment for itself; and yet, in that it is nourished it is affected. In the same way we must consider that the intellect that is in us is productive; for it itself makes intelligible the things that are not intelligible in actuality. For nothing is intelligible other than the intellect that is in actuality and in itself. And the things that are made intelligible by what thinks them, and the activities of this, [are] also themselves intellect when they are thought. So, if intellect did not exist, nothing would be intelligible, neither what is naturally [so] – for it itself was alone of this sort – nor what is brought about by this; for if it did not exist, it would not produce.
Themistius, Paraphrase of the De Anima
In his Paraphrase of the De Anima of Aristotle, the Greek commentator Themistius provides his own detailed account of the reasoning of Aristotle in De Anima3.5, a key text in the discussion of intellectual abstraction. As indicated earlier, while Aristotle neither in De Anima3.4-5 nor elsewhere in that work or others provides a clear account of intellectual abstraction, the Arabic tradition knew the abstractionist accounts of Alexander and read them back into Aristotle. In his Paraphrase of the De AnimaThemistius does the same thing, though his account does not conceive of the Agent Intellect as God as had Alexander. Rather, for Themistius the Productive or Agent Intellect “has all the forms all together and presents all of them to itself at the same time” and yet plays a literally intrinsic role in the formation of intelligibles in act in individual human knowers.
According to Themistius the human soul has a potential intellect and an actual intellect. The latter is the potential intellect in a completed state of actuality in which it has knowledge of universals. Yet this “potential intellect must be perfected by some other intellect that is already perfect, i.e. actual, not potential. [This intellect] moves the potential intellect analogously to the craft [moving matter], and it perfects the soul’s natural disposition for thinking, and fully constitutes its hexis‘And this intellect is separate, unaffected, and unmixed’ (430a17-18).” This separate actual intellect, here the Agent Intellect, “advances the potential intellect, and not only makes it an actual intellect, but also constitutes its potential objects of thought as actual objects of thought. These are the enmattered forms, ie. the universal thoughts assembled from particular objects of perception.” For Themistius what he calls the potential intellect is not an intellect as such (in contrast to Avicenna) but rather it is his denomination of the human soul as containing a collection of images from the external and internal senses. It is a potency which the Agent Intellect takes over to make its collection of thoughts thereby enabling the human soul “able to make transitions, and to combine and divide thoughts.” Here the Agent Intellect, though full with forms, does not emanate from its forms upon the individual’s potential intellect but instead assists the potential intellect in actualizing itself as knower of intelligibles in act, that is, as an intellect in act or actual intellect. Though not stated explicitly, the implication is that the Agent Intellect will not mislead the human potential intellect but rather will function as a positive guide for the human intellect assisting it to a knowledge of forms that corresponds to the eternal forms it possesses in itself.
In this realization of human intellectual knowledge, the potential intellect
becomes all things, while the former [productive intellect, scil. the Agent Intellect] produces all things. That is why it is also in our power to think whenever we wish, for <the productive intellect> is not outside <the potential intellect as> the craft <is outside> its matter (as [for example] the craft of forging is with bronze, or carpentry with wood), but the productive intellect settles into the whole of the potential intellect, as though the carpenter and the smith did not control their wood and bronze externally but were able to pervade it totally. For this is how the actual intellect too is added to the potential intellect and becomes one with it. For [the compound] consisting of matter and form is one, and also has the two definitions of matter and creativity (démiourgia) by in one way becoming, and in another producing, all things. For in a way it becomes the actual objects [that it thinks] by being active in its thinking; and the one [aspect] of it, in which there is a plurality of its thoughts, resembles matter, the other [sc. its thinking] a craftsman. For it is in its power, when it wishes. to comprehend and structure its thoughts, since it is productive, and thus the founder (arkhégos), of these thoughts.
The corresponding Arabic translation of the Greek has the following:
The relation of art to matter is [the same as] the relation of the Active Intellect to the intellect in potency. In this way the intellect becomes everything and the intellect knows everything. On the basis of this it comes about for us that we know whenever we wish by the fact that the Agent Intellect is not external to the intellect in potency in the way the art is external to the matter as, for example, the art of the bronze forger is external to the bronze and the carpenter is external to the wood. Rather, the Agent Intellect enters into the intellect in potency entirely, as if one were to imagine the carpenter not only as approaching the wood from outside and the smith [likewise] the bronze but rather he has the power so that it penetrates it completely. For in this way the intellect in act [scil. the Agent Intellect], when united to the intellect in potency becomes one with it, since the composite [of the two] is one. And there are in it two notions, I mean the notion of matter and the notion of art. For in a way it becomes everything and in a way it makes everything. For in a way it comes to be the things themselves by its act according to intelligible forming (taṣawwur) by intellect and there appears from it a thing like a certain matter, I mean as all the intelligibles, and a thing from it like the maker. So this is so for it insofar as it possesses and brings about any intelligible it wishes. For it is the maker (fa‘‘āl) and the commander (qā’id) of the intelligibles.
al-Farabi on intellect and abstraction:
Two videos on al-Farabi, intellect, abstraction and substantial transformation:
https://streaming.mu.edu/Watch/f9K5LyXm
https://streaming.mu.edu/Watch/Jm7z9Y3A
Extracts fromLetter on the Intellect, from Classical Islamic Philosophy, McGinnis & Reisman, tr. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2007, pp. 68-78.
Pp.70-71:
10. Aristotle established four aspects to the term “intellect” that he uses in De anima: (i) the potential intellect, (ii) the actual intellect, (iii) the acquired intellect, and (iv) the Active Intellect.
11. The (i) potential intellect is a certain soul, or a part of a soul, or one of the faculties of the soul, or a certain thing whose being is prepared or disposed to extract the essential definitions and forms of all existing things from their matters and to make them all a form or forms for itself. Those forms extracted from matter do not become extracted from the matter in which they exist unless they have become forms for the potential intellect. Those forms that are extracted from their matters and become forms in this intellect are the intelligibles (this term is etymologically derived from the term for this intellect that extracts the forms of existing things, whereby they become forms for it).
12. The potential intellect is comparable to matter in which forms come to be. When you imagine a particular corporeal matter to be like a piece of wax on which an impression is stamped, and that impression and form that comes to be in its surface and depth, and that form so encompasses the entire matter that the matter as a whole comes to be like that form in its entirety by the form’s having spread through it, your imagination comes close to understanding what is meant when the forms of things come to be in that [intellect] that resembles a matter and a subject for that form but which differs from other corporeal matters in as much as corporeal matters receive forms only on their surfaces, not in their depths. Moreover, this intellect does not itself remain so distinct from the forms of the intelligibles that it and the forms stand removed in themselves from one another; rather, this intellect itself becomes those forms. It is as though you were to imagine the impression and mold through which a piece of wax takes on the form of a cube or sphere, and that form sinks into it, spreads throughout it, and entirely engulfs its length, breadth, and depth, then that piece of wax will have become that very form, with no distinction between what it is and what that form is. It is by way of this example that you should understand the coming to be of the forms of existing things in that thing that Aristotle in De anima calls the “potential intellect.”
13. As long as none of the forms of existing things is in it, it is potential intellect. Then, when the forms of existing things come to be in it as in the example we have provided, that thing itself becomes (ii) an actual intellect. This then is the meaning of”actual intellect.” When the intelligibles that it extracts from matters come to be in [the intellect], those intelligibles become actual intelligibles, having been potential intelligibles before they were extracted. Once extracted, they become actual intelligibles by virtue of becoming forms for that intellect, and it is precisely by those things that are [now] actual intelligibles that the intellect becomes an actual intellect. Their being actual intelligibles and its being an actual intellect is, then, one and the same thing. What we mean when we say that it “intellects” is nothing other than that the intelligibles become forms for it, in the sense that it itself becomes those forms. Thus, what is meant by the intellect’s actually intellecting, of being an actual intellect, and of being an actual intelligible, is one and the same thing and [is used] for one and the same account.
14. The intelligibles that are potentially intelligibles are those things that, before they become actual intelligibles, are forms in matters outside the soul. When they become actual intelligibles, their existence as actual intelligibles is not the same as their existence as forms in matters, and their existence in themselves [as forms in matters] is not the same as their existence as actual intelligibles. Their existence in themselves is a consequence of whatever else is connected to them, whether that is place, time, position, quantity, being qualified by corporeal qualities, acting, or being affected. When they become actual intelligibles, many of those other categories are removed from them, in which case their existence becomes another existence that is not the former existence. Moreover, what is meant by these categories, or much about them, in relation to [the actual intelligibles], comes to be understood in ways different from the former ways. For example, when you consider the meaning of place as understood in relation to [the actual intelligibles], you find either that none of the meanings of place apply to them at all, or you give the term “place” as understood by you in relation to them another meaning, one that is different from the former meaning.
p. 74:
18. The acquired intellect is like a subject for those [forms], whereas it is like the form for the actual intellect. The actual intellect is like a subject and matter for the acquired intellect, whereas it is like a form for that [potential intellect]. That [potential intellect] is like matter. At this level, forms begin to reduce to corporeal, material forms, and whatever they were before that gradually proceeds to break away from matter, each one in a different way and at a different level.
19. . . . [I]f one ascends by degrees from prime matter to the nature that is the corporeal forms in prime matter, then up to [the potential intellect] and above that to the acquired intellect, one will have reached something like the outermost boundary and limit to which the things related to prime matter and matter reach. When one ascends from [that], it is to the first level of immaterial beings, that of (iv) the Active Intellect.
20. What Aristotle calls the “Active Intellect” in Book III of De anima is a separate form that has never been and never will be in matter in any way. In its species it is an actual intellect very similar to the acquired intellect. It is what makes the potential intellect an actual intellect, and it is what makes the potential intelligibles actual intelligibles.
p. 76:
24. Next, [the Active Intellect] aims to bring [those forms in matter] closer and closer to the immaterial forms until the acquired intellect comes to be, at which point the substance of man, or man by virtue of what constitutes his substance, becomes the closest thing possible to the Active Intellect. This is the ultimate happiness and the afterlife, which is that the ultimate thing by which man becomes a substance comes about for him, and he attains his final perfection, which is that the final thing through which he becomes a substance performs the final action by virtue of which he becomes a substance. This is what is meant by the afterlife. When [the acquired intellect] does not act on some other thing outside of itself, where to act is to cause itself to exist, then it itself, its action, and the fact that it acts are one and the same thing. At that point, it has absolutely no need for the body to be a matter for it in order to subsist, and it has absolutely no need in any of its actions to seek the help of a faculty of a soul in a body, or to use any corporeal instrument whatsoever. The least perfect existence belonging to it is when it requires the body to be a matter for it in order to subsist as an existent, and when it is a form in a body or a corporeal matter as a whole. Above that, it does not require the body to be a matter for it in order to subsist, but in order to perform its actions, or many of them, it needs to use a corporeal faculty and to seek the aid of its action, for example, sensory perception and imagination. Its most perfect existence, though, is to reach the state we just mentioned.
Avicenna / Ibn Sina on intellect and abstraction:
Avicenna: Two videos on the rational soul and multiple kinds of abstractions:
https://streaming.mu.edu/Watch/Yr2m5H4L
https://streaming.mu.edu/Watch/e3YPo5t6
De Anima of the Shifa’:
Selections from Classical Arabic Philosophy, McGinnis & Reisman, tr. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2005)
p. 177: “It is clear from this, then, that when we define the soul as a perfection, this most properly denotes its meaning and likewise includes all species of the soul in all respects, not excluding the soul that is separate from matter.”
P.178-9: The floating or flying man:
“7. … For the purposes of establishing the existence of the soul belonging to us, here we have to provide a pointer that serves [both] as alert and reminder by hitting the mark with anyone who is at all capable of catching sight of the truth on his own, and also does not require straightening out his way of thinking, or hitting him over the head with it, or steering him away from sophisms. So we say that it has to be imagined as though one of us were created whole in an instant but his sight is veiled from directly observing the things of the external world. He is created as though floating in air or in a void but without the air supporting him in such a way that he would have to feel it, and the limbs of his body are stretched out and away from one another, so they do not come into contact or touch. Then he considers whether he can assert the existence of his self. He has no doubts about asserting his self as something that exists without also [having to] assert the existence of any of his exterior or interior parts, his heart, his brain, or anything external. He will, in fact, be asserting the existence of his self without asserting that it has length, breadth, or depth, and, if it were even possible for him in such a state to imagine a hand or some other extremity, he would not imagine it as a part of his self or as a necessary condition of his self-and you know that what can be asserted as existing is not the same as what cannot be so asserted and that what is stipulated is not the same as what is not stipulated. Thus, the self whose existence he asserted is his unique characteristic, in the sense that it is he himself, not his body and its parts, which he did not so assert. Thus, what [the reader] has been alerted to is a way to be made alert to the existence of the soul as something that is not the body-nor in fact any body-to recognize it and be aware of it, if it is in fact the case that he has been disregarding it and needed to be hit over the head with it.”
The rational soul and abstraction:
P. 192:
“13. It is also correct for us to state that the posited intelligibles, each one of which the rational faculty can actually intellect, are potentially infinite. Moreover, it is correct for us to state that something that has a capability for a potential infinity of things cannot be a body nor a faculty in a body. We have demonstrated this in the preceding sections. Therefore, it is impossible for the thing itself that forms concepts of the intelligibles to subsist in a body in any way, or for its action to be generated out of a body or by means of a body. […]”
P. 195:
“1. The soul does not die with the death of the body; for anything that corrupts by virtue of something else’s corrupting has some type of connection with it. Either (1) it is connected with it as something posterior to it in existence, or (2) as something prior to it in existence (that is, it precedes it essentially, not temporally), or (3) as something coexistent with it.”
7. From “The Soul,” V.5
CONCERNING THE INTELLECT THAT ACTS UPON OUR SOULS AND THE INTELLECT IN OUR SOULS THAT IS AFFECTED
1. [234] We say that the human soul is at one time something intellecting potentially and thereafter becomes something actually intellecting. Now whatever is brought from potency to act does so only on account of a cause in act that brings it out. So there is a cause that brings our souls from potency to act with regard to the intelligibles. Since it is the cause with respect to providing the intelligible forms, it is precisely but an actual intellect in whom the principles of the intellectual forms are Separate (mujarrada) [from matter], and whose relation to our souls is the relation of the Sun to our vision. Just as the Sun is actually visible in itself and through its light it makes actually visible what is not actually visible, so likewise is the state of this intellect vis-a-vis our souls; for when the intellecting faculty reviews the particulars that are in the imagery [faculty] and the Active Intellect sheds light onto us upon them (which we discussed), the things abstracted from matter and its associations are altered and impressed upon the rational soul. [“Being altered” is] not in the sense that [the particulars] themselves are transferred from the imagery to our intellect, nor [is “being impressed”] in the sense that the connotational attribute (ma’nā) immersed in the [material] associations (which in itself and with regard to its very being is separate (mujarradd) [from matter)) makes something like itself. Quite the contrary, [the alteration and being impressed] is in the sense that reviewing [the things abstracted from matter and its associations] prepares the soul in order that the thing separate from matter [coming] from the Active Intellect [i.e., the intellectual forms] flows down upon them; for discursive thought and selective attention are certain motions that prepare the soul in a way to receive what flows down just as middle terms prepare [the soul] to receive the conclusion in the most convincing way, although the first is according to one way and the second according to another, as you will come to know.
2. So when a certain relation to this form happens to the rational soul by means of the light shed by the Active Intellect, then from [the relation to the form] there comes to be in [the soul] something that in one way is of its genus and in another way is not, just as when light falls on colored objects, in the seeing of them it produces an effect that is not in every way [reduced] to their sum. So the things in the imagery [faculty] which are potentially intelligible, become actually intelligible not themselves but what is acquired from them. In fact, just as the effect resulting from the sensible forms by means of the light is not itself those forms, but rather something related to them that is engendered by means of the light in the recipient facing [the light]’ so likewise when the rational soul reviews those forms in the imagery [faculty] and the light of the Active Intellect comes into a type of conjunction with them, then they are prepared so that from the light of the Active Intellect they come to be within [the rational soul] the abstract version of those forms [free] from [material] taints.
3. As soon as the essential aspects of [those forms] are distinguished from their accidental aspects on the part of the human intellect, and what makes them similar to the forms of the imagery is distinguished from what makes them different, the connotational attributes that show no difference from those become one in the intellect itself by comparison of similarity, but those connotational attributes that bear comparison to what is different become many connotational attributes and so the intellect has the ability both to consider one of the connotational attributes to be many and to consider the multiple connotational attributes to be one. There are two ways that the many can be considered one. The first is in that when the numerically many differing connotations related to the forms of the imagery do not differ in definition, they become a single connotational attribute. The second way is by combining the many different connotations of genera and differences into a connotational attribute that is singular in the definition. The way to make one connotational attribute many is the reverse of these two processes.
4. This is one of the properties of the human intellect. It does not belong to any of the other faculties; for they perceive the many as a many as it is and the one as one as it is, whereas they cannot perceive the simple one, but rather the one inasmuch as it is a whole combined of things and their accidents. Also they cannot separate out the accidental aspects and extract them from the essential aspects. So, when the senses present a given form to the imagery [faculty] and the imagery [faculty] presents it to the intellect, the intellect takes a single connotational attribute from it. Then if another form of the same species is presented to it-“another” only in number-the intellect by no means takes any form different from what was taken, unless it is due to the accident that is particular to this inasmuch as it is that accident such that it takes it one time as separate [of all accidents] and another time with that accident. This is why it is said [237] that Zayd and ‘Amr have one connotational attribute in terms of “humanness,” not on the basis of the fact that the humanness associated with the particular properties of ‘Amr is the very same humanness associated with the particular properties of Zayd, as though there were a single thing belonging to Zayd and ‘Ann, as is the case with friendship or property. Instead, “humanness” in terms of existence is many, and there is no existence belonging to some one common humanness in external reality unless it is that very humanness of Zayd and ‘Amr. We will endeavor to explain this in the discipline of philosophy [i.e., metaphysics]. What is intended [here] is that since the first of [the two forms, e.g., Zayd’s form of humanness] provided the soul with the form of “humanness,” the second [form, e.g., ‘Amr’s form of humanness] does not provide anything at all. Instead, the connotational attribute imprinted in the soul by both is a single one, that is, the one from the first presentation of the imagery, while the second presentation has no influence, for either one of them could have preceded and left this very same imprint in the soul, not like the two individuals of a man and a horse.
5. This [is one point]. Next, it is characteristic of the intellect that, when it perceives things that have an earlier and later association with it, it intellects the time with them necessarily-but that is not over a period of time but in an instant, where the intellect intellects the time in an instant. Its construction of the syllogism and the definition is unquestionably in a period of time; however, its conception of the conclusion and the thing defined is instantaneous.
6. The inability of the intellect to conceptualize things that are at the upper limit of being intelligible and abstracted from matter is not on account of something in those things themselves, nor on account of something innate to the intellect, but rather on account of the fact that the soul is distracted while in the body by the body. It needs the body for many things, but the body keeps it at a remove from the most noble of its perfections. The eye cannot bear to gaze at the Sun, certainly not on account of something in the Sun nor that it is not clearly visible, but rather on account of something about the natural makeup of the body [of the eye]. When this state of being immersed and impeded are removed from the soul we have, it will intellect these [extreme intelligibles] in the noblest, clearest, and most pleasurable ways. Our discussion here, however, concerns the soul only inasmuch as it is a soul, and that only inasmuch as it is associated with this matter. So we should not discuss the return of the soul when we are discussing nature, until we move on to the discipline of philosophy [i.e., metaphysics] and there investigate the things that are separate [from matter]. The investigation in the natural philosophy, however, is restricted to what is appropriate to natural things, and they are the things that bear relation to matter and motion.
7. So we say instead that the intellect conceptualizes differently depending upon the existence of things. So with very strong things, the intellect may not be able to perceive them because they overwhelm it, and with very weakly existing things, like motion, time, and matter, the soul may find it difficult to conceptualize them because of their weak existence. As for privations, the intellect does not conceptualize them when it is actual in an absolute sense, because privation is perceived insofar as possession is not perceived, so whatever is perceived of privation as a privation and evil as an evil is something potential and an absence of a perfection. Any intellect that perceives it does so only because it bears some relation to it potentially. So the intellects in which nothing potential is mixed do not intellect nor conceptualize privation and evil as a privation and an evil, given there is nothing in existence that is an absolute evil.
Ibn Rushd / Averroes
Introduction to Averrroes: video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uo5ZlDnzgXs&feature=youtu.be
Averroes on Human Intellectual Understanding: video at https://streaming.mu.edu/Watch/Lg49Aqd8.
Since the only Latin writings on the De Anima of Aristotle by Averroes was the Long Commentary on the De AnimaI will limit my account to that work.
Averroes’s Long Commentary on theDe Anima
In his major work on human knowledge, more familiar because of the wide dispersion of its Latin translation in medieval Europe, Averroes again confronted the issue of the nature of intelligibles in act and the character of a subject suitable for them for the sake of human intellectual understanding in his last major work on the intellect. Critically reflecting on the teachings of Themistius in the latter’s Paraphrase of the De Anima, Averroes brought his mind to bear on notion he had not dealt with at length in either of the two earlier commentaries, namely, a unity of knowledge that makes shared science and intersubjective intellectual discourse possible. In both of those works Averroes held that each human being possesses his or her own personal material. In the Long Commentary, however, he adopts a view that he had explicitly rejected in the Middle Commentaryand that he had raised as worthy of further consideration in a short work called Epistle 1 on Conjunction: the material intellect as a single separate entity shared by all human beings. In forming this new understanding, Averroes found the Paraphrase of the De Animaby Themistius a powerful stimulant.
In the Arabic text of Themistius Averroes read,
There need be no wonder that we all are as a group composites of what is in potency and of what is in act. All of us whose existence is by virtue of this one are referred back to a one which is the agent intellect. For if not this, then whence is it that we possess known sciences in a shared way? And whence is it that the understanding of the primary definitions and primary propositions is alike [for us all] without learning? For it is right that, if we do not have one intellect in which we all share, then we also do not have understanding of one another.
This unity of intellect for the sake of “understanding of one another” Averroes applied to his conception of human intellectual knowledge to form his novel understanding of the unity of the material. It is a view inspired by his third reading of Themistius’s Paraphrase, though not held by Themistius himself. For Averroes this understanding of the material intellect satisfied the need for the unity of understanding on the part of distinct human individuals since this entity is the repository of abstracted intelligibles in act to which all particular acts of understanding and scientific discourse refer. This is possible only insofar as the nature of the material intellect is such that it is a unique reality constituting a distinct immaterial species so that intelligibles received are not particularized as they would be were it to be truly material or one among many individuals of a species. Averroes was well aware of the difficulty of asserting that something without matter and itself actual as immaterial could be receptive, a notion he labeled as “the problem of Theophrastus.” Nevertheless, to solve the complex array of issues involved in accounting for the phenomenon of intellectual understanding on the part of transitory human beings, Averroes crafted this new account explicitly conscious of the metaphysical commitments entailed, something evident in his description of the Material as “a fourth kind of being” in addition to matter, form and matter-form composites.
With this new teaching Averroes brought the familiar notion that individual human beings employ the external senses and the common sense to produce intentions in the imagination. These are then refined and stripped of the extraneous by the cogitative power yielding denuded intentions placed in memory ready for transference from the mode of being of particulars to the mode of being of intelligibles in act. This takes place thanks to the presence of the separate agent intellect “in the soul” as “form for us” effecting the abstractive transference. It is also thanks to the presence of the material “in the soul” as well as its being the immaterial subject receptive of the intelligible made in act by the agent intellect, no longer an intelligible in potency as it was in the external and internal powers of the individual soul. For the individual human knower this brings about the theoretical intellect as a positive disposition of knowing (al-ʿaql bi-l-malakah, intellectus in habitu) in the soul which accounts for the human experience of knowing the intelligibles in act which Averroes had reasoned could only exist in the material, the shared immaterial subject of intelligibles. In this teaching the presence of the two separate intellects “in the soul” provides the connection with the individual knower’s cogitative power responsible for human acts of will in making pre-noetic preparations for abstraction. This is the gathering of images intelligible in potency through the external and internal senses. The realization of knowledge in that individual is coordinated with abstracted intellectual content in the material to yield the theoretical intellect of individual human knowing. On this account, the theoretical intelligibles exist in act in the separate material since they require an immaterial substrate but they also exist in the individual human knower through a connection with the separate material apparently forged in the process of abstraction. In this way the individual human knower can be called the subject of truth insofar as the individual provides from sense perception the content intelligible in potency. This comes to exist as intelligible in act in the material — the subject of the existence of the intelligible in act — by way of the abstractive and elevating power of the agent intellect. In his Commentary on the Republiche explains that the end of humans as natural beings is the attainment of ultimate perfection and happiness through the intelligibles of the theoretical sciences.
The most challenging section of the Long Commentaryis in Book 3, Comment 36, where Averroes critically reviews the responses of Alexander, Themistius, al-Farabi and Ibn Bajja to Aristotle’s famous remark at the end of De Anima3.7, 431b17-19: “Whether it is possible for [the human mind] while not existing separate from spatial conditions to think anything that is separate, or not, we must consider later.” It was commonly known that there was no extant text in which Aristotle returned to explicate his meaning. These two Greek philosophers took the text to refer not to mathematics and mathematical abstraction but to the issue of whether real intellectual knowledge of eternal and unchanging essences can only come through a connection to higher intellectual substances, and in this these two predecessors in the Arabic tradition followed their lead. Averroes found that those who held for the material to be a body or a power in a body could find no way to provide a satisfactory account of human intellectual understanding of immaterial intelligibles. Alexander had been right to hold that the activity of the separate agent intellect as “form for us” is required for the abstraction of intelligibles from human experience of the world and that that intellect must somehow be “in the soul.” But he was wrong to think that the material could be epiphenomenal on a mixture of bodily parts and elements. (Yet, as explained earlier, this not far from Averroes’s own position in the Short Commentary.) Such a thing could never be the receptive subject of eternal intelligibles in act. Themistius was wrong to think in a Platonic fashion that the intelligibles preexist in the Agent intellect and that each human individual has his or her own intellect to be actualized as immaterial in an abstractive process of its own under the guidance of the separate Agent intellect. Al-Farabi, Averroes reports, apparently questioned his own view and raised the question of whether there really could be a connection between transcendent intellect and human experiences of the world of particular beings to allow for a real science of intelligibles in act to be generated in some way in human beings. And Ibn Bajjah had set out to explain the connection to transcendent intellect by a proposing a rising tree of abstractive processes that would lead human beings finally to a single intellect, the Agent intellect containing all the intelligibles in act. This Averroes rejected since abstraction alone by itself cannot attain to anything beyond initial experience with which the abstraction began. Abstraction of sensibles cannot lead by its continued use to something so generically different as a purely immaterial intellect. For Averroes none of these methods lead to a post mortem for human beings consisting in conjoining with separate intellect for highest human fulfillment and ultimate happiness. Rather, for Averroes the highest fulfillment available to human beings is perfection in the theoretical intelligibles, that is, in scientific knowledge. The existence of human knowledge of eternal intelligibles of science gives witness that human beings are naturally constituted to attain knowledge. What is required for this is that it be the natural condition of human beings that they use their external and internal senses to apprehend the world and its forms and essences which are intelligible in potency. To make the transference from the mode of being of a particular to the mode of being as an intelligible in act (which makes the predication of universals possible) Aristotle’s assertion of the Agent intellect is also required. And to make available the needed subject for intelligibles in act there must be asserted a separate Material which (unlike the views of Averroes in the two earlier commentaries) is not a determinate particular but a unique entity shared by all human beings for the unity of science and of intersubjective discourse. Hence, to return to the issue of Aristotle’s text at De Anima3.7, there is a kind of uniting with separate substances that must take place for the sake of human knowledge, namely the uniting with the separate agent intellect and the separate Material. In this way the end of human beings is to be found in knowledge and not uniting with a separate entity; rather, uniting for the short period of a transitory human lifetime is a means to the fulfillment and happiness gained in the attainment of knowledge.
The foregoing reflects the issue of the ontology of the soul since the philosophical reasoning must be focused on the natures of the intelligibles in act and natures of the subjects into which they are received. For Averroes human intellectual understanding comes about when the two separate substances, the agent intellect and the material, are intrinsically present in the human soul by a form of sharing or participation. But the human soul is the first actuality of a natural body having organs, while those intellects are separate from body. In light of this, Averroes determines that the term soul is equivocal and that intellect is not properly part of the essence of the human soul. With this Averroes provided his own response to the issue raised by Aristotle in De Anima2.2 as to whether intellect is another kind of soul distinct from the soul that is the form of the physical body. Explaining his understanding of Aristotle, Averroes writes,
[I]t is better to say, and seems more to be true after investigation, that this is another kind of soul and, if it is called a soul, it will be so equivocally. If the disposition of intellect is such as this, then it must be possible for that alone of all the powers of soul to be separated from the body and not to be corrupted by [the body’s] corruption, just as the eternal is separated. This will be the case since sometimes [the intellect] is not united with [the body] and sometimes it is united with it.
That is, the human being’s soul is the actuality of body responsible for the formation of the hylomorphic composite. The rational part of soul or intellect is not properly soul as form of the body; it can be called soul but only in a wholly equivocal sense. Intellect, then, does not belong properly and per se to this hylomorphic composite in virtue of itself but rather is only shared through the presence of the Agent intellect and the Material during the earthly life of the human individual. Hence, no argument for personal immortality can be based on the per se presence of an intellectual — and thereby immaterial — power of the soul fully intrinsic to each individual human. The consequence is that, while the agent intellect, the material, and also the human species can be reasoned to be eternally in existence, there is no basis in argument for a continued existence of the individual human soul after the death of the body. For Averroes in the Long Commentary, then, the ontology of the human soul does not entail any post mortem existence for individual human beings, Nor does it entail a rising of the human soul or intellect to some sort of extra natural contemplation of separate substances in which they are united in ultimate happiness. This, however, was not what the Latin tradition found in reading Averroes. Thomas Aquinas thought that Averroes held that through a connection with the Agent intellect humans could rise by natural powers to see and know other higher separate substances, something he fully rejected in his own teaching. Siger of Brabant reasoned that for Averroes the Material is the most receptive of all entities. Consequently, since human beings unite with the Material, through that uniting they could come to knowledge of all other separate intellects. The language for both views is present in Comment 36 and elsewhere in the Long Commentarybut as parts of the analysis and refutation of the views of others.
Part 2: The Latin Tradition:
Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas
Albert the Great
Video on the epistemology of Albert in his De homine: https://streaming.mu.edu/Watch/Eq79Lyo8
Published paper on this issue: Richard C. Taylor, “Remarks on the Importance of Albert the Great’s Analyses and Use of the Thought of Avicenna and Averroes in the De hominefor the Development of the Early Natural Epistemology of Thomas Aquinas” in Die Seele im Mittelalter. Von der Substanz zum funktionalen System, Guenther Mensching and Alia Mensching-Estakhr, eds., ed. (Würzburg: Koenigshausen & Neumann, 2018) pp.131-158. (Contradictio. Studien zur Philosophie und ihrer Geschichte, vol. 16, ed. Günther Mensching et al.).
Key texts:
(1) On the nature of the intellect Albert holds in the De homine— as did Thomas later — that the agent intellect and the possible intellect are powers in the individual soul. Albert cites with precision the texts of Avicenna and his followers al-Ghazali and Gundissalinus who hold that the Agent Intellect is the last of the hierarchy of immaterial separate substances and does not exist in the individual human soul. This is a view Albert rejects with detailed argumentation, as the following texts demonstrate:
(1.1) 402.40: “We concede that the agent intellect is in the soul.” Concedimus quod intellectus agens universaliter est in anima. My emphasis.
(1.2) 408.68: “<Avicenna> expressly accepted that the Agent Intellect is the separate intelligence of the tenth order of the separate intelligences.” [E]xpresse accipitur quod intellectus agens est intelligentia separata decimi ordinis intelligentiarum secondarum.”
(1.3) But Albert himself in a sed contraremarks that these are in us and not separate. 411.51: “Since, therefore, one of these is the agent intellect and the other the the possible <intellect>, each of those intellects will be in usand not a separate substance.” Cum igitur unum horum sit intellectus agens et alterum possibilis, uterque istorum intellectorum erit in nobisexistens et non separata substantia.” My emphasis. In the solution at 412.72-76 he affirms this. See (1.5) below.
(1.4) 412.57-68: Albert clearly rejects the views of the philosophers who say that the Agent Intellect is separate and efficient cause of human knowing. He writes against “others” (scil. Avicenna) that he rejects the connection between the intellect as the tenth in the emanative hierarchy of the heavens and the the function of the Agent Intellect. The notion that “the human possible intellect moves a human being to connected to the the agent intellect of the tenth order” (intellectus humanus possibilis movet hominem ad hoc quod conformetur intelligentiae agenti decimi ordinis) and that “in this way the goodnesses flow from the agent intellect into the possible intellect” (et hoc modo fluunt bonitates ab intelligentia agente in intellectum possibilem) is something Albert will have none of (nos nihil horum dicimus). This is further confirmed in his direct discussion of the agent intellect (415-416) where he writes in his solution concerning the constituent parts of the human intellect 416.33-41: “We concede that the agent intellect is part of the soul . . . And on account of this we say that the agent intellect is part of the potential soul flowing from it as ‘that by which it is’, or act; but the possible <intellect> is the part of the soul flowing from it as ‘what is’ or potency.” Concedimus quod intellectus agens est pars animae . . . Et propter hoc dicimus quod intellectus agens est pars potentialis animae fluens ab eo quod est ‘quo est’, sive actus; possibilis autem est pars animae fluens ab eo quod est ‘quod est’, sive potentia.) In the response to the first objection he confirms his view as follows 416.51-53: “And on account of this the agent and possible intellects can be intrinsic parts of the rational soul.” Et propter hoc intellectus agens et possibilis possunt esse intrinsicae partes animae rationalis.My emphasis.
(1.5) 412.69: In his solutiohe follows the view of Averroes who says that the human agent intellect is conjoined with the human soul, is simple and does not itself have the intelligibles but instead brings them about in the human possible intellect by abstracting them from phantasms. “But we say none of these things. For following Aristotle and Averroes we say that the heavens do not have a soul beyond the intelligence, as was determined above on the question of the heavens. And likewise we say that the human agent intellect is conjoined to the human soul, is simple and does not possess the intelligibles but brings them about in the possible intellect from phantasms, as Averroes expressly saysin <his> Commentary on De Anima.” Sed nos nihil horum dicimus. Sequentes enim Aristotelem et Averroem dicimus caelum non habere animam praeter intelligentiam, ut supra in quaestione de caelo determinatum est. Et similiter dicimus intellectum agentem humanum esse coniunctum animae humanae, et esse simplicem et non habere intelligibilia, sed agere ipsa in intellectu possibili ex phantasmatibus, sicut expresse dicit Averroes in commento libri de anima..” My emphasis.
As we have seen, the doctrine of Averroes is that the Agent Intellect does not have all the intelligibles in it — as Albert correctly notes — but rather abstracts them from images in the individual human soul and impresses them onto the separate Material or Possible intellect. Both these are separate substances for Averroes and yet they must come to be present in the soul (fī nafs) through a form of sharing and presence. This is required to be the case because that in virtue of which something formally acts must be intrinsic to it. Hence, for Averroes the separate substances, the Agent Intellect and the Material Intellect, must come to be in the soul, that is, intrinsic to it in the attainment of intelligibles in act while remaining separately existing eternal and imperishible substances. But Albert does not understand Averroes in this (correct) way but rather understands those two intellects to be powers existing intrinsic to the individual human intellect with each person having his or her own powers of agent and possible (scil., material) intellect.
Albert later changes his view and holds the common (and correct) understanding of Averroes. But in the De hominehe sees the Cordoban write that the intellects are “in the soul” and “in us” and interprets it as indicating the agent and possible intellects are powers of the individual human soul.Well aware of the importance of his way of understanding Averroes for its contribution to a sound account of the soul, Albert quotes Averroes on this point of the intellects being both “in the soul” and “in us.”
(1.6) 411.46-53: “Again, Averroes <writes>: ‘Every intellect existing in ushas two actions. One is of the genus of affection and it is to understand; the other <is> of the genus of action. And this is for abstracting these from matter, which is nothing but to make them understood in act after they were understood in potency.’ Since, therefore, one of these is the agent intellect and the other the possible <intellect>, each of those intellects will be existing in usand not a separate substance.” Item, Averroes: ‘Omnis intellectus in nobis existenshabet duas actiones. Quarum una est de genere passionis, et est intelligere; alia de genere actionis, et est abstrahere eas a materia, quod nihil aliud est quam facere eas intellectas in actu postquam erant intellectae in potentia’. Cum igitur unum horum sit intellectus agens et alterum possibilis, uterque istorum intellectuum erit in nobis existenset non separata substantia. My emphasis. Note that here Albert is himself a witness to the existence in his own day of two interpretations of Averroes, one that those intellects are separate substantial entities and the other that they are powers of the human soul when he writes at 411.52-53, “both of those intellects will be existent in us and not a separate substance” uterque istorum intellectuum erit in nobis existens et non separata substantia.”
(1.7) 414.27-38: “And this is what Averroes says in his Commentary on Book Three of the De Anima: ‘It is evident that, when all the theoretical intelligibles arein usin potency, then the agent <intellect> is united with us in potency, because it is not united with us except through them. And when they are existing in usin act, then it too is united with us in act. For the act of the agent intellect is determined by reference to the phantasms, and in this way a determined <action> moves the possible intellect and brings it forth into act, as the action of light is determinate in reference to colors and in this way a determinate <action> brings forth vision into act. And in virtue of this it is evident that the agent intellect is not a substance full of forms.’Et hoc est quod dicit Averroes in commento super tertium de anima: ‘Manifestum est, quoniam quando omnia speculativa fuerint in nobisexistentia in potentia, tunc et agens continuatur nobis in potentia, quia non continuatur nobis nisi per illa; et cum fuerint existentia in nobisin actu, tunc et ipse continuatur nobis in actu’. Actio enim intellectus agentis determinatur ad phantasma, et sic determinata movet intellectum possibilem et educit eum in actum, sicut actio luminis determinatur ad colores, et sic determinata visum educit in actum. Et per hoc patet quod intellectus agens non est substantia separata plena formis.”My emphasis. Albert’s own view involves the rejection of the view he found in Avicenna regarding an emanation of intelligibles from the separate agent intellect. The human agent intellect is not full of forms as Albert understood the Agent Intellect of Avicenna, but rather is what provides the power for a genuine abstraction or separation of forms from the content of experience in phantasms or images.
Hence, for Albert the two intellects, agent and possible, are parts or powers of the human soul:
(1.8) 416.52: “And on account of this the agent intellect and the possible intellect are intrinsic partsof the rational soul” Et propter hoc intellectus agens et possibili possunt esse intrinsicae partesanimae rationalis .” My emphasis. That is, in substance and definition the agent intellect is a power and principle of the soul for apprehending intelligibles. On this issue, Quid sit intellectus agens secundum substantiam et diffinitionem(418.4), Albert comes to the following conclusion:
(1.9) 419.5-8: “Solution: It should be said that the agent intellect in substance and definition is a power and an active principle of intelligibles, and on account of this the Philosopher says that the intellect is ‘that by which all things are made’.” Solutio: Dicendum quod intellectus agens secundum substantiam et diffinitionem est potentia et principium activum intelligibilium, et propter hoc dicit Philosophus quod est intellectus ‘quo est omnia facere’.” While for Albert the human separate intellect is not to be identified with the human power of agent intellect, still the human intellect in which knowledge is realized (called the theoretical or speculative intellect) is separate from matter and its concomitants:
(1.10) 419.41-43: “The <human> separate intellect is not the same as the agent intellect but rather the speculative intellect is separate from matter and its concomitants. Separatus intellectus non est idem quod agens intellectus; sed intellectus speculativus est separatus a materia et appendiis materiae.” Albert goes on to cite the same text of Averroes he had cited earlier now indicating that the possible intellect is affected by the formal actualizing character of the power called agent intellect and also by the intelligible species received into it.
(1.11) 438.64-439.4: “For Averroes says in <his> Commentary on the Third Book of De Animathat ‘when all the theoretical intelligibles arein usin potency, then the agent <intellect> is united with us in potency, because it is not united with us except through them. And when they are existing in usin act, then it too is united with us in act.’ From this we take it that the intellect is in potency to the species of the agent <intellect> and to the intelligible species. In this way it is in potency to two species at once.”Dicit enim Averroes super tertium de anima quod ‘quando omnia speculativa fuerint in nobisexistentia in potentia, tunc et agens continuatur nobis in potentia, quia non continuatur nobis nisi per illa; et cum fuerint existentia in nobisin actu, tunc et ipse continuatur nobis in actu’. Ex hoc accipitur quod intellectus est in potentia ad speciem agentis et ad speciem intelligibilis, et ita est in potentia ad duas species simul. To this Albert responds at 439.31-37: [D]icendum quod suscipit speciem agentis et speciem intelligibilis, sed illae duae species non sunt nisi actus unus. Species enim agentis est actus speciei intelligibilis, sicut lux actus coloris . . . . . It should be said that it receives the species of the agent and the intelligible species, but those two species are only one act. For the species of the agent is the act of the intelligible species, as light is the act of color . . . . .” My emphasis. This theoretical or speculative intellect is the power of the possible intellect when we are in the state of knowing.
(2) What is essentially the foundation of the doctrine of Aquinas on the abstraction and apprehension of the species intelligibilisis also spelled out clearly by Albert.
(2.1)435.47-69: “Solution: It should be said that all the intelligibles are denuded of matter and the concomitants of matter or stripped per se, and on account of this the theoretical intellect is the species of all the intelligibles and the same in act with them. But act has a twofold relation. One is to the thing of which it is the act, and in this way it is the ratio of the thing and a quiddity having no difference from it. For if it were to have a difference according to that in which it differs, the thing known would not be cognized in virtue of that. For this reason the species which is in the soul — which is the principle of understanding the whole thing and the whole being of the thing — is taken completely as the act of the whole thing. Since it is in the intellect in this way, because it is in this way the principle of understanding, knowledge is the thing known in act and the theoretical intellect <is> the theoretical <intelligible> in act. It has another comparison to that in which it is as in a subject and in this way it is not the principle of understanding but rather the principle of being. Because there is in the intellect an accidental likeness, it causes in it accidental being; because there is a natural form in the thing, it makes in it natural being. Noting this the Philosopher says that knowledge in some way is the thing known and in another passage he says that intellect is the same in act as that which is understood, but the being is different. And likewise sense is the same in act as the sensible but its being is different, as we explained above.”Solutio: Dicendum quod omnia intelligibilia denudata sunt a materia et appendiciis materiae vel nuda per seipsa, et propter hoc intellectus speculativus species omnium intelligibilium et idem actu cum omnibus. Sed actus duplicem habet comparationem. Unam ad rem cuius est actus, et sic est ratio rei et quiditas nullam habens differentiam ab ipsa. Si enim haberet differentiam secundum illud in quo differret, non cognosceretur per ipsum res scita; et ideo species quae est in anima, quae est principium intelligendi totam rem et totum esse rei, omnino accipitur ut actus rei totius, et cum sic sit in intellectu, eo quod principium sic sit intelligendi, est scientia res scita in actu, et intellectus speculativus speculatum in actu. Aliam habet comparationem ad id in quo est ut in subiecto, et sic non est principium intelligendi, sed principium esse; et quia in intellectu est similitudo accidentalis, causat in ipso esse accidentale; quia vero in re est forma naturalis, facit in ipsa esse naturale. Et hoc attendens Philosophus dicit quod scientia modo quodam est res scita, et in alio loco dicit quod intellectus est idem actu cum eo quod intelligitur, sed esse est aliud; et similiter sensus cum sensibili est idem actu, sed esse est aliud, sicut supra exposuimus..”
This notion of the content but not the mode of being of the thing as what is grasped Albert further emphasizes later at 446.9-11 when he writes the following: “The definition which is through the principles of knowing is given in virtue of forms abstracted from the particular which are the genus and difference.” Diffinitio autem quae est per principia cognoscendi, datur per formas abstractas a particulari, quae sunt genus et differentia.
(2.2) According to Averroes the abstracted intelligibles of human knowing (intelligibiles in actu) or, in the phraseology of Albert and Thomas, the species intelligibiles, are found in the separate Material Intellect and also in the disposition of the theoretical intellect belonging to the perishable human soul. In fact, for Avicenna — since he denies intellectual memory to the individual human rational soul — those intelligibiles must be available in the separate Agent Intellect. This issue Albert addresses at 439 ff. in the article, “Whether the disposition of the theoretical intellect remains in it after apprehension or in some memory which is part of the rational soul, or does not at all remain in the rational soul.” Utrum habitus intellectus speculativi post considerationem manet in ipso, vel in memoria aliqua quae sit pars animae rationalis, vel omnino non manet in anima rationali. He explains that for Avicenna the apprehensive power of the soul is not the same as the retentive power. For him, says Albert, the intelligible species is not retained in the possible intellect because it is an apprehensive power. He then writes at 442.5-17, “We, however, say that it remains in the possible intellect, because Aristotle expressly says that memory and recollection have their own acts of apprehension. Hence, it is false that to apprehend is not characteristic of the retentive part. For in the case of bodily powers one power receives while another retains, for it is characteristic of dampness to receive well and of dryness to retain well. But in the intellectual power it belongs to the same power to receive and to retain. This is because the acts of opposites there are not opposed since they are separate things <themselves> opposite to matter and the potency of acting and being acted upon. Hence, the possible intellect receives the forms and intelligibles and retains them.” Nos autem dicimus quod manet in intellectu possibili, quod Aristoteles expresse dicat quod memoria et reminiscentia habent suos actus apprehensionis. Unde falsum est quod thesauri non sit apprehendere. In virtutibus enim corporalibus alterius quidem virtutis est recipere et alterius retinere; humidi enim est bene recipere, et sicci bene retinere. Sed in intellectuali virtute eiusdem virtutis est recipere et retinere, eo quod oppositorum actus ibi non sunt oppositi, cum sint separata opposita a materia et potentia agendi et patiendi. Unde intellectus possibilis recipit formas intelligibilium et retinet eas.
It is quite clear in this work that Albert was very familiar with the abstractionism of Avicenna. But Albert rejected the common view attributed to Avicenna that the Agent Intellect is a separate substance and that human efforts with bodily external and internal sense powers were only a preparation for the reception of emanated intelligibles from the Agent Intellect. Albert also rejects the actual teaching of Averroes who held the Agent Intellect to be a separate intellectual substance in its own right. Still, Albert — who understands this to be a power of the individual human soul — follows Averroes in finding for it only the role minimally required for the completion of Aristotle’s account: the agent intellect is what provides the power for the abstraction or separation of the content intelligible in potency in the images or phantasms derived from sensory experience of the world. But Albert misread Averroes likely because of the novelty of Averroes’s doctrine of the separate and shared Material Intellect and also because Albert did not understand the intent of Averroes’s repetition of the phraseology of ‘in the soul’ and ‘in us’ used to describe the role of the separate Agent Intellect and separate Material Intellect in relation to the human soul. The argument from intrinsic formal cause set forth by Averroes and later used by Aquinas against Averroes, required for Averroes that the separate intellects — so essential to the natures of human beings as animals that are rational — be formally ‘in the soul’ for human intellectual understanding. But in the De homineAlbert holds that the agent intellect and the possible (material) intellect are not separate substances but rather immaterial powers of the soul separate from body, as the text at 411.51 quoted above indicates clearly with the phrase in nobis.
Thomas Aquinas
For Aquinas, see my translation of Commentary on the Sentences, In 2 Sent d.17, Q.2, A.1, in the Texts folder for Lecture 1 of 5 at https://marq-my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/personal/richard_taylor_marquette_edu/ErCuBjo8-s9IiOwnN671tfYBt9-XMk-0OZDQNO8f-oDryg?e=EogTxG
Four selections:
(1) “I say with Avicenna that the possible intellect comes into existence, but does not go out of existence with the body, that it is diverse in diverse [human beings], and that it is multiplied according to the division of matter in diverse individuals, just as other substantial forms.”
(2) “And I also add that the agent intellect is diverse in diverse [human beings], for it does seems unlikely that there does not exist in the rational soul some principle which can fulfill a natural operation.”
(3) “[T]he soul has a power by which it makes sensible species to be intelligible [species] in act, and this power is the agent intellect. And [the soul] has a power by which it is in potency for being made in the act of determinate knowing brought about by a sensible thing’s species made intelligible in act, and this power or potency is called possible intellect.”
(4) “[A]cording to Avicenna, the understood species can be considered in two ways, either with respect to the being that it has in the intellect, and in this way it has singular being, or with respect to the fact that it is a likeness of such an understood thing, to the extent that it leads to the knowledge of it, and on the basis of this part it has universality. [This is] because it is not a likeness of this thing insofar as it is this thing but rather according to the nature in which it agrees with others of its species.”
However, right from the beginning the views of Aquinas differed from those of his Arabic sources and from his teaching since he raises the issue of whether we really do apprehend essences in the present life.
Super Sent., lib. 2 d. 3 q. 1 a. 6 co.
[…]-11 Quinto secundum virtutem interpretativam: quia, secundum Damascenum, Angelus interpretatur vel loquitur quibusdam nutibus et signis intellectualibus sine vocis expressione, ut infra patebit; homo autem loquitur voce expressa. Nec est mirum quod sic diversimode Angeli et animae differre assignantur: quia differentiae essentiales, quae ignotae et innominatae sunt, secundum philosophum designantur differentiis accidentalibus, quae ex essentialibus causantur, sicut causa designatur per suum effectum; sicut calidum et frigidum assignantur differentiae ignis et aquae. Unde possunt plures differentiae pro specificis assignari, secundum plures proprietates rerum differentium specie, ex essentialibus differentiis causatas; quarum tamen istae melius assignantur quae priores sunt, quasi essentialibus differentiis propinquiores . . . . .
One of my students working on this topic also found these others:
Super Sent., lib. 1 d. 25 q. 1 a. 1 ad 8.
Ad octavum dicendum, quod, ut patet ex dictis, in corp. art. persona non nominat intentionem, sed rem cui accidit illa intentio: et ideo non nominat accidens, sed substantiam; nec hoc quod est individuum, est differentia substantiae, quia particulare non addit aliquam differentiam supra speciem. Sed tamen particulare efficitur individuum per aliquod principium essentiale, quod quidem in rebus compositis est materia, et in rebus divinis est relatio distinguens; et quia essentialia principia sunt nobis ignota, frequenter ponimus in definitionibus aliquid accidentale, ad significandum aliquid essentiale; et sic etiam nomen individui, quod est nomen accidentis, ponitur ad designandum principium substantiale, per quod sit individuatio. Sciendum tamen est, quod de persona dantur aliae definitions . . . . .
In Sent. II d. 35. q.1 art. 2, ad 3.
Ad tertium dicendum, quod sicut aliquando utimur non veris differentiis loco verarum, propter earum occultationem, ut in I Post,. text. 35, dicitur, ita etiam loco veri generis potest poni aliquid per quod genus magis innotescat . . . . .
Finally, some class oral comments on the origins of Latin Averroism.