Jim Mackenzie - - Educational Philosophy and Theory 44 7: The Place of Intellect in Aristotle.
- On the Unity of the Intellect Against the Averroists;
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Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, on Intellect: Davidson - - Oxford University Press. Lloyd Gerson - - Phronesis 49 4: Marquette University Press, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Maurer - - Dialogue 9 3: Brian Francis Conolly - - Vivarium 45 1: The meaning and implications of both questions can best be understood in the light of their historical background.
History of the problem. The story begins with Aristotle's De anima.
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Noting that in nature as a whole we find. And in fact mind as we have described 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 …. Mind in this sense is separable, impassible, unmixed, since it is in its essential nature activity …. When mind is set free from itspresent conditions it appears as just what it is and nothing more; this alone, is immortal and eternal …. While mind in this sense is impassible, mind as passive is destructible, and without it nothing thinks. The fact that Aristotle distinguished an active intellect that makes things actually intelligible from a passive intellect that receives these intelligibles was clear, but precisely what he held about the natures of these intellects and their relationship to man was not.
Although these words were to be examined and reexamined and compared with other of his statements, commentators could not agree on what he really meant. The reference to active mind as separable, impassible, unmixed, immortal and eternal, for example, gave rise to the question: Is active mind a power of the human soul or a substance separate and distinct from man?
Among the Greek commentators, Theophrastus c.
Intellect, Unity of
But Alexander of Aphrodisias c. Among Arabian thinkers, too, the active or agent intellect was held to be a separated substance and one for all men.
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For avicenna — , the last of the separate spiritual intelligences emanating from the one necessary Being was the agent intellect or Intelligence Meta. From this intellect, intelligible forms or species were infused into possible intellects belonging to individual human souls.
INTELLECT, UNITY OF
Each human soul had to consider and compare the images coming to it from the senses. These movements prepared it to receive from the separated agent intellect an "abstraction," which in this context meant an emanation of intelligible forms. But the intelligibles so received were not retained. Each time a man wished to have intellectual knowledge, his soul again had to be united with the separate agent intellect De anima 5.
Averroes' theory of the unity of the intellect - Wikipedia
For Avicenna, although there was one agent intellect for all men, each man had his own possible intellect. This was necessary to insure its power of knowing universals In 3 anim. Therefore man's highest powers, the cogitative power, imagination, and memory, were given the task of preparing sensory data for the separated intellects to utilize ibid.
The separated agent intellect then makes actually intelligible the intelligible species potentially present within the phantasms provided by these powers.
The separated possible intellect can thereupon be actuated and become the subject in which knowledge exists ibid. Unless such data were provided by man, the separated possible intellect would know nothing ibid. Because of man's indispensable role in this process, he himself somehow shares in intellectual knowledge. This may not completely explain how the individual man knows. He had no awareness of a spiritual intellective soul that could be the form of a body without being itself immersed in matter see soul, human.
These views that gradually became known to the Christians of western Europe as the works of Aristotle, accompanied by commentaries of Arabian thinkers, became available in Latin translation during the 12th and 13th centuries. While Aristotle's logical works had previously been known and admired, Christians now had access to his other treatises, including that on the soul. This new literature was viewed by some authorities as a possible source of error.
Averroes' theory of the unity of the intellect
Averroes argues, as put by the historian of philosophy Peter Adamson , that "there is only one, single human capacity for human knowledge". For Averroes, this explains how universal knowledge is possible: Starting from the thirteenth century, Western European writers translated Averroes' works into Latin , generating a circle of followers known as the Latin Averroists.
While Averroes' works have very limited influence in the Islamic world, the Latin translation of his works enjoyed a wide audience in Western Europe. Other thinkers, however, were opposed to the theory. Many scholastic thinkers, including the Italian Thomas Aquinas criticized it for not being able to explain how humans can think individually, [1] and how this single intellect is associated with human body.
If there is only one eternal soul, and individualized thinking only happens through a lower faculty which will perish with the body when a person dies, then the theory fails to provide for a person's immortality and afterlife.
Thomas Aquinas wrote a treatise De Unitate Intellectus, Contra Averroistas "On the Unity of the Intellect, against the Averroists" , which contained detailed arguments to reject this theory.