Lecture Outline 1 of 5

1. 1.The legacy of the Greek philosophical tradition
   

2. 2.Greek into Arabic (via Syriac)
   

     The Circle of al-Kindi (9th c CE)

          Plotiniana Arabica, Procleana Arabica, Kalam fi mahd al-khair / Liber de

          causis

     Hunayn Ibn Ishaq (9th c CE), his Équipe and its continuation

          (Dar al-Hikmah)

     Ongoing translations into Syriac with later translations into Arabic for the

          following 2 1/2 centuries.

3. 3.The Major Relevant Thinkers of the Arabic philosophical tradition
   

     al-Kindi (d. ca. 870) SEP

     al-Farabi (d. ca. 950) SEP

     Ibn Sina / Avicenna (d. 1037) SEP

     al-Ghazali d. 1111) SEP

4. 4.Greek and Arabic Aristotle  / Aristotelian Works into Latin
   

     Plotinus

     Greek into Arabic before the 13th c.:

     Boethius (Categories, De interpretatione, Prior Analytics, Topics,

     Sophistici elenchi), James of Venice (1125-? Posterior Analytics, Physics,

     De Anima, De memoria, De longitudine, De iuventute, De respiratione, De

     morte, Metaphysics Bks. 1-4.4), Burgundio of Pisa (ca. 1150, De generatione

     et corruptione, Nicomachean Ethics Bks 1, 2-3, fragments 2-10), Henry

     Aristippus (before 1162, Meteorologica, Bk 4), Nicholas of Reggio (? later

     twelfth c.), Anon. (De somno. twelfth c.), Robert Grosseteste (1246-7,

     Nicomachean Ethics)

     Arabic into Latin:

     Gerard of Cremona (before 1187, Posterior Analytics, Physics, De caelo,

     De generatione et corruptione, Meteora 1-3 in paraphrase of al-Bitriq,

     Liber de causis, On the Causes and Properties of the Four Elements,

    Themistius Comm on Posterior Analytics, Elements of Euclid, Almagest of

    Ptolomy, Alexander’s On Time, On the Senses, That Augment and Increase

    Occur in Form, not in Matter, Mashal’allah’s On the Elements and Orbs,

    al-Kindi’s On the Five Essences, On Sleep and Vision, On the Intellect [De

     ratione], al-Farabi’s On the Classification of the Sciences, On the Syllogism,

     On Physics, Isaac Israeli’s On the Elements, On the Description and

     Definition of Things, Abu Wafa al-Mubashshir Ibn Fatik’s Choicest Maxims

     and Best Sayings <of Ptolomy>), Dominicus Gundisalvi (oftentimes

     apparently working with Johannes Hispanus, Alexander’s On the Intellect,

     al-Farabi’s On the Classicification of the Sciences, On the Intellect,

     Directing the way to Happiness, Explanation of the Problems in the

     Postulates of the Fifth Book of Euclid, ? Isaac Israeli’s On the Description

     and Definition of Things, Posterior Analytics 2.7, Avicenna’s On the Soul,

     Metaphysics, Letter on Medicines for the Heart,  Ps. Avicenna’s Book on

     the Heavens and the World, al-Ghazali’s Aims of the Philosophers, Ibn

     Gabirol’s Fount of Life), Michael Scot (Aristotle’s De animalibus, al-Bitruji,

     On the Movements of the Heavens, Averroes’s Long Commentary on the

     Metaphysics, Long Commentary on the Physics, Long Commentary on the

     De caelo, Epitomes of Parva Naturali, Middle Commentary on De gen, et

     corr., Middle Comm on Meteora, On the Substance of the Orb), Herman

     the German (mid-13th c., Aristotle’s Rhetoric, Ps. Aristotle’s Summa

     Alexandrinorum, al-Farabi’s Introduction  to the Book of Rhetoric),

     Herman of Carintha (Euclid’s Elements,  Abu Ma’shar’s Great

     Introduction to Astrology). et alia.

    [sources: Michael Trizio & Charles Burnett in The Cambridge History of

    Medieval Philosophy, Pasnau, ed. v. 2, 2010].

5. Other translations by William of Moerbeke et alii. See Trizio and Burnett.

6. 6.Texts for Class 6 October 2017
   

6 October 2017

Texts for class lecture & discussion

Theories of Human Knowing and the Nature of Universals in the Arabic Philosophical Tradition and their importance for Aquinas

Selected texts from the Greek and Arabic philosophical traditions: Aristotle, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistius, al-Farabi, Avicenna and Averoes

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 are neither 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 universal is 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 Anima Book 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 Anima Book 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 Anima 3.5

Since in every class of things, as in nature as a whole, we find two factors involved, (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 Aphrodias 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.

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 from Letter on the Intellect, from Classical Islamic Philosophy, McGinnis & Reisman, tr. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2007, pp. 68-78.

Pp.71-71:

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

It is very difficult to make a modest selction of texts of Averroes from his Long Commentary on the De Anima. In lieu of that I recommend the following video which explicates key texts with care:

Averroes on Human Intellectual Understanding: video at https://streaming.mu.edu/Watch/Lg49Aqd8.

Albert the Great

Video on the epistemology of Albert in his De homine: https://streaming.mu.edu/Watch/Eq79Lyo8

Paper in press on this issue: Taylor, “Remarks on the Importance of Albert the Great’s Analyses and Use of the Thought of Avicenna and Averroes in the De homine for the Development of the Early Natural Epistemology of Thomas Aquinas,” forthcoming 2018.  See Dropbox.

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 contra remarks 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 us and not a separate substance.” Cum igitur unum horum sit intellectus agens et alterum possibilis, uterque istorum intellectorum erit in nobis existens 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 solutio he 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 says in <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 homine he 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 us has 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 us and not a separate substance.” Item, Averroes: ‘Omnis intellectus in nobis existens habet 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 existens et 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 are in us in 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 us in 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 nobis existentia in potentia, tunc et agens continuatur nobis in potentia, quia non continuatur nobis nisi per illa; et cum fuerint existentia in nobis in 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 parts of the rational soul” Et propter hoc intellectus agens et possibili possunt esse intrinsicae partes animae 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 Anima that ‘when all the theoretical intelligibles are in us in 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 us in 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 nobis existentia in potentia, tunc et agens continuatur nobis in potentia, quia non continuatur nobis nisi per illa; et cum fuerint existentia in nobis in 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 intelligibilis is 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 homine Albert 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 Dropbox folder for Class 6 October 2017 at https://www.dropbox.com/sh/fr75q7ac7pgalqm/AAAi7MWLZfe9cIe6G0O3iJRma?dl=0.

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.”

In 2 Sent. D. 17, Q.2, A.1.

Whether there is one soul or intellect for all human beings

Introduction

For a video lecture on this text, see

https://streaming.mu.edu/Watch/Nz35JeSp

The issue of the relation of the intellect and the body was very challenging for thinkers of the Latin West in the Thirteenth century. This article is the first extended account of the human intellect in the corpus of Aquinas.

In Avicenna’s De Anima and Metaphysics Latin thinkers found the doctrine that the rational soul is created with the human body but stands apart from it and lives on after the death of the body because of the immateriality that its rationality entailed. For Avicenna, while the soul is per se rational, its intellect remains in potency and to be actualized requires the assistance of the separate Agent Intellect, the transcendent cause of all forms of the world, including rational forms or intelligible intentions.  The human internal powers of soul must be suitably prepared through experience and reflection upon the images of things of the world provided by the senses.  Then the rational soul’s receptive power of intellect comes to be intellectually understanding of intelligibles through the Agent Intellect.  Shared by all human beings by a process described both as an emanation and as a conjoining of the human rational soul, the Agent Intellect contains in its immaterial nature the intelligibles necessary for human intellectual understanding.  Once the soul becomes actualized in intellectual understanding in this manner, the rational soul is able more easily to receive the emanation of intelligibles or to conjoin with the Agent Intellect another time, something always required for understanding on the account of Avicenna since the rational soul has no intellectual memory of its own.

The Long Commentary on the De Anima of Aristotle by Averroes provided an account of human intellectual understanding very different from that of Avicenna. While for both Averroes and Avicenna sense perception and experience of the world are essential starting points for the development of intellect, Averroes expounded a doctrine of abstraction derived from the writings of al-Farabi who held that the content of human understanding comes from the world and not by emanation or through conjoining with the separate Agent Intellect.  Rather, the imagination holds intentions garnered from perception which are refined by the human cogitative power located in the brain and deposited into memory. The formal contents of those intentions in the memory of an individual human being are then separated from the conditions of materiality in abstraction by the Agent Intellect and transferred to a higher mode of being, the mode of intelligibles in act. These intelligibles are then received into the separate Material Intellect which constitutes an immaterial and eternal shared thesaurus of intelligibles which are the referents of human thought and intellectual understanding that make discourse and science possible for mortal human beings. For Averroes these two separate entities, the Agent Intellect and the Material Intellect, are both available to human beings acting by will and are also “in the soul” in a way not fully grasped by Aquinas in his analysis of the teachings of Averroes in this article.

In the article translated below Aquinas draws in detail from Averroes’s account and critique of the teachings of Alexander, Avempace (Ibn Bâjjah), Theophrastus, and Themistius in the Long Commentary on the De Anima and displays a comprehensive and insightful knowledge of Avicenna’s De Anima and Metaphysics. From Avicenna he accepts the account of the human possible intellect as a power of each human soul individually and as originating with the creation of the body as persisting in immaterial existence after the death of the body. He also found in Avicenna a passage on universals and particulars essential to the development of his own unique doctrine of human intellectual understanding.  However, he rejects Avicenna’s account of emanation or conjunction with a separately existing Agent Intellect as the source for the content of human intellectual understanding. In place of that Aquinas accepts Averroes’s doctrine of the abstraction of the content of understanding from the contents of perception. However, while Averroes taught in the Long Commentary on the De Anima that the Agent Intellect and the Material Intellect are separately existing and shared eternal substances, Aquinas taught that the agent intellect and the material or possible intellect are powers intrinsic to the individual human soul. For Aquinas an individual human being employing the abstractive power of the agent intellect is able to transfer intentions intelligible in potency present in phantasms or images in the brain to the mode of being of intelligibles in act and received into human understanding by the receptive power of the possible intellect. These abstracted intelligibles Aquinas calls intelligible species.  For Aquinas, then, the immaterial human rational soul created together with the body is multiplied in accord with the number of human bodies and so too are the individual powers of agent intellect and possible intellect.

Complete Translation (c) Richard C. Taylor 6 October 2017

Question 2.

Third it is asked whether the soul was created outside the body. Regarding this two issues are raised. First, whether there is one soul or intellect for all human beings, as a certain separate substance flowing into all bodies. Second, if there are many [souls and intellects], whether they are created in the body or outside the body.

First Article.

To the first we proceed as follows.

[Objections]

1. It seems that the rational soul or intellect is one in number in all human beings.  For no form except a material form is multiplied in being with the division of matter.  But the intellect, as is proven in De Anima 3 is not a material form since it is not the act of a given body. This is proven from its very act because it knows all material forms. This could not be the case if it were to have one of these in its own nature or [if] it were determined to [one] on the basis of the body for which it is the act, just as the visual power would not know all colors if the pupil which is its organ were to have a determinate color.  Therefore, the intellect is not multiplied in being with the division of matter and so it remains one in all individuals of the human species who are divided [into individuals] only in virtue of matter.

2. Furthermore, it is impossible that the principle be more material than what it is the principle of, because the principle must be more simple. But, as is conceded by all, there are some powers of the rational soul which are not acts of a given body nor of an attached organ, the principle and root of which is the very essence of the soul.   Therefore, it seems that neither is the rational soul united to the body through its essence as its act. And so it follows, as it seems, that rational souls are not distinguished with the division of bodies.

3. Furthermore, everything which is received in something is received in it in the mode of the recipient, not in its own mode, as is held by Dionysius and the Book of Causes. If, therefore, the intellect were individuated with the division of body in order to be distinct in diverse [individuals], it is necessary that intelligible forms received in [the individual intellect] also be individuated.  From that two unacceptable consequences seem to follow. One is that, since no particular is understood in act but rather [only] in potency, species of this sort will not be intelligible in act but will require that they be understood through other species, and so forth into infinity. The other is that the mode of receiving forms in prime matter and in the possible intellect will be the same, because in the case of both they are received as those are and not as are forms taken absolutely. Hence, just as prime matter does not know forms which it receives, so too neither [does] the possible intellect [know forms which it receives], as it seems.

4. Furthermore, for any things distinguished from one another, it is necessary that there be something diverse in the nature of each. But since the intellect is none of the things which exist before [it is actually] understanding, it seems that there cannot be something diverse found in it unless according to the diversity of understood species. Therefore, the intellects of one individual and another do not differ in essence but through understood species alone.

5. Furthermore, for all substances existing per se and immaterial, diversity in number is due to diversity of species. [This is] because, if they have their own absolute subsisting being, they cannot be distinguished essentially through something which is outside their essence on which they are spread, as bodily forms are spread on matter.  However, in the essence of these there is nothing but form, and the diversity of [form] brings about the diversity of species.  But it cannot be said that the intellects of  diverse human beings differ in species because human beings themselves differ in species by the diversity of their forms.  Therefore, since the rational soul is a substance subsisting in itself — otherwise it would not remain [in existence] after [the death of] the body — and is immaterial, it seems that it also does not differ in number in diverse human beings.

[Contrary arguments]

1. The case for the contrary is that it is impossible for a form one in number to belong to many individuals.  But the rational soul is the form of any given human being. For, if a human being were to have the being of a human from the substance of the sensitive or nutritive soul, it could not be found in a human being in reference to his first being which is the basis for [a human being] rising above other animals, and that is an unacceptable consequence. Therefore it is impossible for there to be one rational soul belonging to all [human beings].

2. Furthermore, it is impossible for diversity in second being to be found in those things for which there is no diversity with respect to first being. [This is] because the diversity of secondary perfections and contrariety cannot exist at once with the unity of first perfection because in this way contraries would exist in the same thing. But we find ultimate perfections in second being to be diverse and contrary in diverse human beings, for some of them are fools and some wise, some vicious and some virtuous.  Therefore, it is necessary that the first perfection, namely the soul, be varied in diverse [human beings] in first being.

3. Furthermore, the soul is the form and mover of the body. But in celestial bodies, according to the position of the philosophers, diverse movers are assigned to diverse bodies. Therefore it seems that diverse souls are much more surely in diverse human beings.

[Solution]

[A] I respond.  It should be said that there are many opinions on the part of the philosophers regarding the unity and diversity of the rational soul, when we have set aside those who assert that the intellect is one for all intellectual nature or who hold that the intellect is the same as the divine essence.

[B] To understand these [sorts of views] it is necessary to understand that intellect is distinguished by the philosophers into three: the possible intellect, the agent intellect and the intellect in a positive disposition. Possible intellect names what is in potency for receiving all understood forms, as vision is in potency for receiving all colors. Agent intellect names what makes intelligibles in potency to be [intelligibles] in act, as light which makes colors visible in potency to be visible in act. Intellect in a positive disposition or formal [intellect] is so named by them when the possible intellect has already been perfected by the intelligible species so that it is able to operate [in its own right], for no passive power has an operation unless perfected by the species of its object, as vision does not see before it has received the species of color.

[C] In light of these considerations, it should be known that nearly all the philosophers after Aristotle are in agreement that the agent intellect and the possible [intellect] differ in substance and that the agent intellect is a certain separate substance.  It is both last among the separate intelligences and related to the possible intellect as that by which we understand, as higher intelligences [are related] to the souls of the spheres.  But this cannot be sustained according to the faith.  For if, as Anselm proves, God did not will that the salvation of humanity come about through an angel, lest the parity in glory of human beings and angels be abolished were an angel to come to be the cause of human salvation.  Likewise, if our soul were held to depend on some intelligence or angel for a natural operation, it could not reasonably be sustained that the soul will be equal to the angel in glory. [This is] because the ultimate perfection of any given substance is in the completion of its operation. For this reason the philosophers mentioned hold that the ultimate happiness of human beings is to be united with the agent intellect. And for this reason some Catholic teachers, correcting and partially following this opinion, asserted in a probable enough way that God Himself is the agent intellect. [This is] because by turning to Him our soul is made blessed, which they confirm in virtue of what is written at John 1, 9: He was the true light, etc.

[D] Concerning the possible intellect there has likewise been great diversity among the philosophers following Aristotle. For some have said that the possible intellect is diverse in diverse [human beings], while others [have said that it] is one for all [human beings].

Among those who held it to be diverse in diverse [human beings] there are three opinions. 

[Alexander]

[E] For some say that the possible intellect is nothing other than a disposition which is in human nature for receiving the impressions of the agent intellect and that this is a bodily power consequent upon the human constitution.  This was the opinion of Alexander [of Aphrodisias].  But this cannot stand up even according the intention of Aristotle who wants the possible intellect to be receptive of intelligible species. However, a disposition is not [itself] receptive but rather something which has been disposed [is receptive]. But what has been disposed by this disposition is a body or a power in a body, and in that way what receives intelligible forms would be a body or a power in a body, which the Philosopher refutes. Furthermore, it would follow that the possible intellect would not be a power for having knowledge. For no power caused by the commixture of elements is able to know, because in this way the quality belonging to the elements would act beyond [the limits of] its species, which is impossible.

[Ibn Bâjjah / Avempace]

[F] For this reason other [philosophers] said that the possible intellect is nothing but the power of imagination, insofar as it is naturally constituted such that forms which come to be understood in act are [already] in it.  This is the opinion of Ibn Bâjjah.  But this is also impossible because, according to the Philosopher in Book 3 of the De Anima, phantasms which are in the imaginative [power] are related to the human intellect as colors to vision.  For this reason it is necessary that the phantasms be what move the possible intellect, as color moves vision. The ability which is in the possible intellect for understanding is similar to the ability which is in the patient in potency so that it may be patient in act. The ability which is in the imaginative [power] is as the ability of the agent in potency so that it may be agent in act. However, it is impossible that the same thing be mover and moved, agent and patient.  Therefore, it is impossible that the imaginative power be the possible intellect.  Furthermore, to this extent it would follow that the power receiving the intelligibles in act which is called possible intellect would be employing a bodily organ, since the imaginative power would have a determinate organ.

[Conclusion re. Alexander and Ibn Bâjjah / Avempace]

[G] It should also be known that, according to these opinions, the possible intellect is generated with the generated body and corrupted with the corrupted body and, since there is no difference of intellect in diverse human beings except the possible [intellect] because the agent [intellect] is one, what remains of the intellect from all human beings after death is one in number, namely the agent intellect.  And this is heretical in the extreme because in this way reward of those deserving after death would be abolished.

[Avicenna]

[H] For this reason there is the third opinion  belonging to Avicenna, who holds the possible intellect to be diverse in diverse individuals, to be founded upon the essence of the rational soul and not to be a bodily power, to begin to exist with the body but not to come to an end with the body. Hence, with respect to the possible intellect, his opinion is what we hold according to the Catholic faith, although he errs with others concerning the agent intellect, as was said.

[Theophrastus and Themistius]

[I] Among those who hold the possible intellect to be one for all [human beings], there is a twofold opinion. One is that of Themistius and Theophrastus, as the Commentator [Averroes] attributes to them in his Commentary on book 3 of the De Anima. For they say that even the intellect in a positive disposition, which is the third, is one in all [human beings] and eternal and [that] it is, as it were, composed of the agent intellect and the possible [intellect] such that the agent intellect is as its form and, through the conjoining of the possible intellect, the agent intellect is also conjoined with us.  [This occurs] in such a way that the agent intellect is of the substance of the theoretical intellect which also is called the intellect in a positive disposition through which we understand.  They indicate as a sign of this sort of thing that  that action of the intellect which is in our power pertains to the intellect in a positive disposition.  Therefore, since to abstract species from phantasms is in our power, it is necessary that the agent intellect belong to the intellect in a positive disposition as its form. They are led to this position because, since they wish on the basis of the demonstration of Aristotle to hold the possible intellect to be one in all [human beings] because [the possible intellect] is not a determinate particular nor a power in a body and consequently is eternal. And, further, the agent intellect is likewise eternal according to them, and it is impossible for the effect to be generable and corruptible if the agent and recipient is eternal. [Hence,] they asserted that the understood species are eternal. For this reason it does not happen that, in virtue of the fact that new intelligible species which were not before come into being, sometimes the intellect understands and sometimes it does not. Rather [this intermittent understanding happens] from the conjunction of the agent intellect with the possible [intellect], according to which it is conjoined to us through its impression. 

[Averroes Refutation of Theophrastus and Themistius]

[J] But the Commentator also refutes this opinion. [This is] because it would follow that the forms of natural things which are understood would exist from eternity without matter and outside the soul. Due to that those species are not placed in the possible intellect as its form because the form of the possible intellect is asserted by them to be the agent intellect. Since the ultimate perfection of human beings is according to the intellect in a positive disposition and the first [perfection] according to possible intellect,  it would also follow that one human being would not differ from another human being, neither according to ultimate perfection nor according to first [perfection] . Thus, there would be one being and one operation for all human beings, which is impossible.

[Averroes]

[K] For this reason he himself held another way, that the agent intellect as well as the possible [intellect] is eternal and is one in all [human beings], but the intelligible species are not eternal. He also holds that the agent intellect is not related to the possible [intellect] as its form but as a craftsman to matter and [that] the understood species abstracted from phantasms are as form of the possible intellect [and that] from the two of these there comes to be the intellect in a positive disposition.

[Aquinas’s Refutation of Averroes]

[L] In virtue of this position he tried to escape all the impossible things which occurred for Themistius.  First because he shows that, if the agent intellect is eternal and the recipient eternal, namely the possible intellect, it is not necessary that they, namely the intelligible species, be made eternal.  For the visible species has a twofold subject: one in which it has spiritual being, namely vision, and one in which it has material being, namely a colored body.  Similarly, the intelligible species also has a twofold subject: one in which it has material being, namely the very phantasms which are in the imagination, and according to this being those species are not eternal; and another [subject] in which it has immaterial being, namely the possible intellect, and according to this subject they do not have the characteristic of being generable and corruptible. But that seems to be no response [at all].  For, as the species of color which is in the wall and which is in the eye is not the same in number, so too the species which is in the imagination and in the possible intellect are not the same in number. Hence, it still remains that that species which is in the possible intellect has one subject only which is eternal and in such a way that [that species] is itself eternal only and what is generable and corruptible in the imagination is different in number. [This is so] unless perhaps he says that [the species] are eternal absolutely but not by reference to a [particular human being] in whom the phantasms ― the likenesses of which are present in the possible intellect ― do not exist from eternity. But nevertheless, since no phantasms are eternal, it still would follow that those species which are in the possible intellect from eternity would not have been abstracted from some phantasms, and this is contrary to the intention and words of the Philosopher.

[M] Secondly, however, he tries to show that from this position it does not follow that there is one being and one operation belonging to all human beings, according to which all are equally wise. For he says, the understood species is related to the possible intellect in some way as form to matter and because of that somehow one complete thing is made from them. [Consequently, in this the possible intellect’s] conjunction with us is through that which is formal in the mentioned conjunction, namely, through the understood species, which he says is the phantasm in us as one subject and the possible intellect itself as the other [subject]. Hence, since diverse phantasms are in diverse [human beings], the possible intellect is conjoined to diverse human beings with a diverse conjunction. On the basis of this human beings have diverse being. Also on the basis of this one knows and another is ignorant.  [This is] because [the possible intellect] is conjoined to one [human being] according to one understood species without being conjoined to another according to that [same species].  Still, there are certain understood [things] such as the first conceptions of the intellect by which it is conjoined to all human beings, [concepts] which the possible intellect is never deprived of, with [the understanding that] human beings exist from eternity, as he says. Hence, however much of the intellect that is in us he concludes is in a way corruptible and in a way incorruptible.  [This is] because for that part in virtue of which it is multiplied, namely the phantasm, corruption occurs; but for the part in virtue of which it is a unity, namely on the part of the possible intellect, there is incorruptibility.  Hence, it follows also from this that there would remain no diversity of souls after the corruption of bodies.

[N] But this response is shown to be frivolous in many ways.  First, [it is frivolous] because, as was said, the species which is the form of the possible intellect is not the same in number in the phantasm as in the subject. Rather, it is a likeness of that. Hence, it follows that the possible intellect is in no way conjoined with us, and so we will not understand through it.  Second, [it is frivolous] because the conjunction of the possible intellect with the understood species is through an operation of intellect pertaining to second perfection. Hence, it is impossible that his first perfection and substantial being be acquired by a human being through such a conjunction. In this way, since a human being has intellect from such a conjunction as they say, a human being would not be a human being in a determinate species insofar as [the human being] has intellect.  [This is] because that medium, namely the understood species, is conjoined with both of the extremes by the mode of an accident to a subject, namely with the imaginative power and with the possible intellect. [But] this is also contrary to [what] the Philosopher [writes] at Metaphysics 8, where he shows that the soul is united to the body without anything intermediate and also without any mediating knowledge, as Lycophron said.  That position seems to return to the one [of Lycrophon].  Third, [it is frivolous] because the operation does not come forth from the object but from potency, for the visible thing does not see but rather vision [does].  If, therefore, the intellect is conjoined with us only through the fact that the understood species in some way has a subject in us, it follows that this human being, namely Socrates, does not understand but rather that the separate intellect understands these things which [a human being] imagines.  And it is not difficult to adduce many other absurd things [from the position of Averroes].

[Aquinas]

[O] For this reason, when all the errors mentioned have been set aside, I say with Avicenna that the possible intellect begins to exist, 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.  And I also add that the agent intellect is diverse in diverse [human beings], for it does not seem likely that in the rational soul there does not exist some principle which can fulfill a natural operation.  That follows if there is held to be one agent intellect, be it called God or intelligence. Nor again do I say these two, the agent intellect and the possible [intellect], are one power named in diverse ways due to diverse operations. [This is] because [when] any given actions are reduced to contrary principles, it is impossible to reduce them to the same power.  On the basis of this memory is distinguished from sense because receiving species of sensibles which belongs to sense and retaining [them] which belongs to memory are reduced to contrary principles also in bodily things, namely dampness and dryness.  Therefore, since receiving understood species which belongs to the possible intellect and making them intelligibles in act which belongs to the agent intellect cannot [both] come together in the same thing, but receiving belongs to some thing insofar as it is in potency and making [belongs to something] insofar as it is in act, then it is impossible that the agent [intellect] and the possible [intellect] not be diverse powers.

[P] But how [the possible intellect and the agent intellect] could be rooted in one substance is difficult to see. For it does not seem that it could belong to one substance both to be in potency with respect to all intelligible forms which is the possible intellect and to be in act with respect to all those [intelligible forms] which is the agent intellect. [But were it] otherwise, it could not make all intelligible forms, since nothing acts except insofar as it is in act.  But, nevertheless, it should be known that it is not unacceptable that there be some two things each of which is in potency with respect to the other in diverse ways, as fire is in potency cold which belongs to water in act, and water is in potency hot, which is in act in fire.  Hence, [both] act and are acted upon with respect to one another.  I say that the sensible thing is related to the intellective soul similarly. For the sensible thing is intelligible in potency and has a nature distinct in act. Yet there is in the soul an intellectual light in act. But the determination of knowing with respect to this or that nature is there in potency, as the pupil is in potency with respect to this or that color.  For this reason the 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.  Upon the operations of these two powers follows all our understanding, both of principles as well as of conclusions. Hence what some say appears to be false, [namely] that the agent intellect is a disposition of principles.

[Responses to objections:]

1. Therefore to the first it should be said that the intellect is not denied to be a material form, so that it might be prevented from giving being to matter as substantial form with reference to first being.  For this reason it is necessary that the multiplication of the intellect, that is, of the intellective soul, follow upon the division of matter which causes diverse individuals. But this is said with respect to its second act which is an operation. [This is] because understanding does not take place by means of a mediating bodily organ.  This occurs because an operation proceeds from the essence of the soul only through its mediating power or potency. Hence, since it has certain powers which are not acts of certain organs of the body, it is necessary that certain operations of the soul are not through a mediating body.

2. To the second it should be said that, whenever two things which are such that one is more powerful than another are joined and one draws the other to itself, one has some power beyond that which is subject to it. [This] is clear in regard to a flame, because fire, overcoming the vapor to which it is conjoined, has the power of illuminating and the action of the enflamed vapor can extend itself by making heat in addition to that [illuminating]. Since, therefore, in the conjunction of form to matter the form is found controlling,  the more noble and the more controlling of the matter the form will be, the more it will be able have a power exceeding the condition of matter.  Hence, beyond the active and passive qualities which they themselves hold on the basis of matter, certain mixed bodies have certain powers which follow upon the species, such as that the magnet attracts iron.  This is even [evidently] more found in plants, as it is clear in growth which is controlled by the power of soul, which could not be through the power of fire, as is said in De Anima 2. This is found still more to be the case in animals because sensing is in every way above the power of the elemental qualities and [is found] most perfectly in the rational soul which is the most noble of forms.  For this reason [the soul] has certain powers in which it does not share with the body at all and certain [powers] which it does share [with the body].

3. To the third it should be said that, according 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.  Nor is it necessary that every singular being be intelligible in potency alone, as is clear concerning separate substances. But [it is necessary] in regard to those which are individuated by matter, as are bodies. But that species is individuated through the individuation of the intellect and, consequently, it does not lose intelligible being in act. [This is] just as I understand that I understand, although my understanding is a certain singular operation. It is also evident in itself that the second unacceptable consequence does not follow, because the mode of individuation through intellect is other than [the mode of individuation] through prime matter.

4. To the fourth it should be said that, as the Commentator also says in his Commentary on book 3 of the De Anima, it is not necessary that what is receptive of some things be deprived of any determinate nature but that it be free of the nature of what are received, as the pupil [is free] of the nature of colors. For this reason it is necessary that the possible intellect have a determinate nature. But before the understanding which is through the reception of species it does not have in its nature any of these things which it receives from sensibles. This is because it is said that "it is none of these things which are," etc.

5. 5.To the fifth it should be said that, although the soul does not have matter as a  part of itself by which it exists, nevertheless it has matter in which it exists as [the matter’s] perfection.  With the division [of matter] [the soul] is multiplied in number and not in species. However, it is otherwise in the case of those immaterial substances which do not also have matter for which they are the forms. [This is] because in these there can be no material multiplication but only formal [multiplication] which brings about the diversity of species.
   

Look briefly at his remarks some ca. 15 years later at

Summa theologiae, prima pars, Q. 79, aa. 1-3, extracted from http://dhspriory.org/thomas/english/summa/FP/FP079.html#FPQ79OUTP1.

For a video lecture on intellectual abstraction in the Summa theologiae, see https://streaming.mu.edu/Watch/Fj7t9LEf