Passive intellect
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.
Contents
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 act, 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.
Interpretations
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 Alexander of Aphrodisias, for instance, (who coined the term of the 'material intellect' for this power, 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.
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. Aquinas argues against this position in the Disputed Questions on the Soul (Quaestiones disputatae de Anima), and asserts that while the passive intellect is one specifically, numerically it is many, as each individual person has their own passive intellect.
Passive intellect in Islamic philosophy
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Passive intellect is identical with Aql Bil Quwwah in Islamic philosophy. Aql bi-al-quwwah defined as reason which could abstracting the forms of entities with which it is finally identified.[4] For Farabi, the potential intellect becomes actual by receiving the form in matter. In other words, Aql Hayulany tries to separate the forms of existents from their matters in such a way that there is no material characters along with forms such as material circumstances. The forms receive by potential Aql untie with it, in other words they becomes identical.[5] Farabi also known the potential intellect as part of soul. According to Farabi, Aql Bil Quwwah is ready to abstract the quiddities and forms from things and matters. After that, this kind of intellect transforms that forms for itself.[6]
References
- ↑ Aristotle, De Anima, Bk. III, ch. 5 (430a10-25).
- ↑ Nicolas, S., Andrieu, B., Croizet, J.-C., Sanitioso, R. B., & Burman, J. T. (2013). Sick? Or slow? On the origins of intelligence as a psychological object. Intelligence, 41(5), 699–711. doi:10.1016/j.intell.2013.08.006 (This is an open access article, made freely available by Elsevier.)
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- ↑ (Craig & 1998 p.556)
- ↑ (Chase in Lloyd A. Newton & 2008 p.28)
- ↑ (Ian Richard Netton & 1384 AP p.p.47-48)
Sources
- Commentarium magnum in Aristotelis De anima libros, ed. Crawford, Cambridge (Mass.) 1953: Latin translation of Averroes' long commentary on the De Anima
- Averroes (tr. Alain de Libera), L'intelligence et la pensée, Paris 1998: French translation of Averroes' long commentary on book 3 of the De Anima
