The passive intellect (Latin: intellectus possibilis; also translated as potential intellect or material intellect), is a term used in philosophy alongside the notion of the active intellect in order to give an account of the operation of the intellect ( nous ), in accordance with the theory of hylomorphism, as most famously put forward by Aristotle.
Aristotle gives his most substantial account of the passive intellect (nous pathetikos) in De Anima (On the Soul ), Book III, chapter 4. In Aristotle's philosophy of mind, the passive intellect "is what it is by becoming all things." [1] By this Aristotle means that the passive intellect can potentially become anything by receiving that thing's intelligible form. The active intellect (nous poietikos) is then required to illuminate the passive intellect to make the potential knowledge into knowledge in actuality, in the same way that light makes potential colors into actual colors. The analysis of this distinction is very brief, which has led to dispute as to what it means.
Greek thought
While Greek commentators such as Alexander of Aphrodisias and Themistius were broadly silent on the active intellect (debate over this would only become heated in the thirteenth-century Christian West in the context of debates over whether Avicenna or Averroes provided the account of the working of the intellect that best cohered with Christian doctrine), they provided a great deal of commentary on the nature of the passive intellect. For instance, to Alexander of Aphrodisias (who coined for this power the term 'material intellect', a name later taken up by Averroes) the passive intellect was a separate intellect from the active. [2] [3]
Averroes and Aquinas
Later philosophers, including Averroes and St. Thomas Aquinas, proposed mutually exclusive interpretations of Aristotle's distinction between the active and passive intellect. Other terms used are "material intellect" and "potential intellect", the point being that the active intellect works on the passive intellect to produce knowledge (acquired intellect), in the same way that actuality works on potentiality or form on matter.[ citation needed ]
Averroes held that the passive intellect, being analogous to unformed matter, is a single substance common to all minds, and that the differences between individual minds are rooted in their phantasms as the product of the differences in the history of their sense perceptions.[ citation needed ] Aquinas argues against this position in Disputed Questions on the Soul (Quaestiones disputatae de Anima), asserting that, while the passive intellect is one specifically, numerically it is many, as each individual person has their own passive intellect.[ citation needed ]
Passive intellect is identical with Aql bi al-Quwwah in Islamic philosophy. Aql bi-al-Quwwah, defined as reason, could abstract the forms of entities with which it is finally identified. [4] For Farabi, the potential intellect becomes actual by receiving the form of matter. In other words, Aql al-Hayulani tries to separate the forms of existents from their matter. The form become identical with Aql. [5] Farabi also recognised the potential intellect as part of soul.[ citation needed ]
Alexander of Aphrodisias was a Peripatetic philosopher and the most celebrated of the Ancient Greek commentators on the writings of Aristotle. He was a native of Aphrodisias in Caria and lived and taught in Athens at the beginning of the 3rd century, where he held a position as head of the Peripatetic school. He wrote many commentaries on the works of Aristotle, extant are those on the Prior Analytics, Topics, Meteorology, Sense and Sensibilia, and Metaphysics. Several original treatises also survive, and include a work On Fate, in which he argues against the Stoic doctrine of necessity; and one On the Soul. His commentaries on Aristotle were considered so useful that he was styled, by way of pre-eminence, "the commentator".
Ibn Rushd, often Latinized as Averroes, was an Andalusian polymath and jurist who wrote about many subjects, including philosophy, theology, medicine, astronomy, physics, psychology, mathematics, Islamic jurisprudence and law, and linguistics. The author of more than 100 books and treatises, his philosophical works include numerous commentaries on Aristotle, for which he was known in the Western world as The Commentator and Father of Rationalism.
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Averroism refers to a school of medieval philosophy based on the application of the works of 12th-century Andalusian philosopher Averroes, a commentator on Aristotle, in 13th-century Latin Christian scholasticism.
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In philosophy, potentiality and actuality are a pair of closely connected principles which Aristotle used to analyze motion, causality, ethics, and physiology in his Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, and De Anima.
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Nous, from Greek: νοῦς, is a concept from classical philosophy, sometimes equated to intellect or intelligence, for the faculty of the human mind necessary for understanding what is true or real.
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An intelligible form in philosophy refers to a form that can be apprehended by the intellect, in contrast to sense perception. According to Ancient and Medieval philosophers, the intelligible forms are the things by which we understand. These are Genera and species. Genera and species are abstract concepts, not concrete objects. For example, “animal”, “man” and “horse” are general terms that do not refer to any particular individual in the natural world. Only specific animals, men and horses exist in reality.
Medieval philosophy is the philosophy that existed through the Middle Ages, the period roughly extending from the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century until after the Renaissance in the 13th and 14th centuries. Medieval philosophy, understood as a project of independent philosophical inquiry, began in Baghdad, in the middle of the 8th century, and in France and Germany, in the itinerant court of Charlemagne in Aachen, in the last quarter of the 8th century. It is defined partly by the process of rediscovering the ancient culture developed in Greece and Rome during the Classical period, and partly by the need to address theological problems and to integrate sacred doctrine with secular learning. This is one of the defining characteristics in this time period. Understanding God was the focal point of study of the philosophers at that time, Muslim and Christian alike.
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