Selections on will in knowing from Averroes’ Long Commentary on the De Anima of Aristotle.  Draft. Not for distribution. (c) Richard C. Taylor, tr. Marquette University 02/11/2008

 

The following translations are of the Latin text, Averrois Cordubensis Commentarium Magnum in Aristotelis De Anima Libros, F. Stuart Crawford (ed.).  Cambridge: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1953.

TEXT 1:

“They confirmed this by the fact that Aristotle insisted that the agent intellect exists for us in the soul, since we seem to strip forms from matter first and then to understand them. To strip them is nothing but to make them intelligibles in act after they were [intelligibles] in potency, to the extent that apprehending them is nothing but receiving them. They saw that this activity of creating and generating intelligibles is due to our will and is able to be augmented in us in accord with the augmentation of the intellect which is in us, namely, the theoretical intellect. And it was already explained that the intellect which creates and generates intelligibles and things understood is the agent intelligence. For this reason they said that the intellect in a positive disposition is that intellect, though sometimes weakness afflicts it and sometimes an  addition [accrues to it] because of the mixture. This, therefore,  moved Theophrastus, {391} Themistius and others to hold this opinion about the theoretical intellect and to say that this was the opinion of Aristotle.”

TEXT 2:

“18. <doc>It is necessary, therefore, that in [the soul] there be the intellect which is intellect insofar as it is made everything, and the intellect which is intellect insofar as it makes it understand everything, and the intellect insofar as it understands everything, as a positive disposition, which is like light.</doc>  <doc>For light in a way also makes colors which are in potency to be colors in act.</doc> (430a14-17)

Since those three differences must be found in the part of the soul which is called intellect, it is necessary that there be in it a part which is called intellect insofar as it is made everything by way of likeness and reception. There must also be in it a second part which is called intellect insofar as it makes that intellect which is in potency to understand everything in act. For the reason why it makes the intellect which is in potency to understand all things in act is nothing other than that it is in act; for this fact, that it is in act, is the cause that it understands all things in act.  And there must also be in it a third part which is called intellect insofar as it makes every intelligible in potency to be an intelligible in act. He said: <doc>It is necessary, therefore</doc>, etc. He means by that the material intellect. This, therefore, is his description mentioned earlier. Next he said: <doc>and...the intellect insofar as it makes it understand everything.</doc> He means {438}  by that what comes to be, which is in a positive disposition.  This [latter] pronoun it can be understood to refer to the material intellect, as we said, and can be understood to refer to the human being who is the one understanding. It is necessary to add in the account: insofar as it makes it understand everything in its own right and when it wishes.  For this is the definition of a positive disposition, namely, that what has a positive disposition understands in virtue of it what is proper to itself in its own right and when it wishes, without it being the case that it needs something external in this. Next he said: <doc>and the intellect insofar as it understands</doc>, etc. He means by that the agent intelligence.  When he said this: <doc>it understands everything, as</doc> a certain <doc>positive  disposition</doc>, he means that it makes everything intelligible in potency to be intelligible in act after it was in potency, as a positive disposition and form. Next he said: <doc>like light</doc>, etc.  Now he gives the way on the basis of which it was necessary to assert the agent intelligence to be in the soul. For we cannot say that the relation of the agent intellect in the soul to the generated intelligible is just as the relation of the artistry to the art's product in every way. For art imposes the form on the whole matter without it being the case that there was something of the intention of the form existing in the matter before the artistry has made it. It is not so in the case of the intellect, for if it were so in the case of the intellect, then a human being would not need sense or imagination for apprehending intelligibles. Rather, the intelligibles would enter into the material intellect from the agent intellect, without the material intellect needing to behold sensible forms. And neither can we even say that the imagined intentions are solely what move the material intellect and draw it out from potency into act. For if it were so, then there would be no difference between the universal and the individual, and then the intellect would be of the genus of the imaginative power. Hence, in view of our having asserted that the relation of the imagined intentions {439} to the material intellect is just as the relation of the sensibles to the senses (as Aristotle will say later),  it is necessary to suppose that there is another mover which makes [the intentions] move the material intellect in act (and this is nothing but to make [the intentions]  intelligible in act by separating them from matter).

Because this intention, which forces the assertion of an agent intellect different from the material intellect and different from the forms of things which the material intellect apprehends,  is similar to the intention on account of which sight needs light, in view of the fact that the agent and the recipient are different from light, he was content to make this way known by means of this example.  It is as if he says: and the way which forced us to suppose the agent intellect is the same as the way on account of which sight needs light. For just as sight is not moved by colors except when they are in act, which is not realized unless light is present since it is what draws them from potency into act, so too the imagined intentions do not move the material intellect except when the intelligibles are in act, because it is not actualized by these unless something else is present, namely, the intellect in act. It was necessary to ascribe these two activities to the soul in us, namely, to receive the intelligible and to make it, although the agent and the recipient  are eternal substances, on account of the fact that these two activities are reduced to our will, namely, to abstract intelligibles and to understand them. For to abstract is nothing other than to make imagined intentions intelligible in act after they were [intelligible] in potency. But to understand is nothing other than to receive these intentions. For when we found the same thing, namely, the imagined intentions, is transferred in its being from one order into another, we said that this must be from an agent cause and a recipient cause. The recipient, however, is the material [intellect] and the agent is [the intellect] which brings [this] about.

We found that we act in virtue of these two powers of intellect {440} when we wish; and nothing acts except through its form; [so] for this reason it was necessary to ascribe to us these two powers of the intellect. The intellect which is responsible for abstracting and creating the intelligible necessarily precedes in us the intellect which is to receive it. Alexander says that it is more correct to describe the intellect which is in us through its agent power, not through the patient [power], since affection and reception are common to the intellect, the senses, and discerning powers, while activity is proper to [intellect].  It is better that the thing be described through its activity. I say: this would be necessary in every way, only if this name affection were said in a univocal way in regard to these, but in fact it is said only equivocally.

All the things said by Aristotle in regard to this are so that the universals have no being outside the soul, [for that sort of separate being] is what Plato intended. For, if it were so, then there would be no need to assert the agent intellect.”

TEXT 3:

“A question of great importance also arises in the case of the account saying that the form by which we extract intelligibles is the intellect which is in a positive disposition in composition with the agent intellect. For what is eternal does not need the generable and corruptible in its activity. How, then, is the eternal in composition with the corruptible in such a way that there comes to be from them one activity? But we will speak about this later. For it seems that this position is as it were the starting point and foundation of what we want to say concerning the possibility of conjoining with separate things according to Aristotle, namely, the position that the final form belonging to us by means of which we extract and make intelligibles in virtue of our will is composed of the agent intellect and the intellect which is in a positive disposition. We see, therefore, from the account of the Peripatetic commentators directed toward this end that this is possible,  namely, to understand separate things ultimately.” {490}

        TEXT 4:

“Let us say, therefore: the intellect existing in us has two activities insofar as it is ascribed to us, one of the genus of affection, namely, understanding, and the other of the genus of activity, namely, to extract forms and denude them of matters, which is nothing but making them intelligible in act after they were such in potency. [Hence] it is evident that, after we have possessed the intellect which is in a positive disposition, it is in our will to understand any intelligible we wish and to extract any form we wish.” {495}