Separate Material Intellect in Averroes\u27 Mature Philosophy

Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy, 2017

Averroes held the controversial thesis that there is only one separate material or possible intellect for all humans. This chapter analyzes a passage from his Long Commentary on the De Anima which has been thought to constitute a primary philosophical argument for the view. It is called the Determinate Particular Argument, because it contends that the material intellect cannot be a determinate particular if it is to be the ontological receptacle of universal intelligible forms. After defending one crucial premise, it will be shown how the key term ‘determinate particular’ must be qualified to avoid an inconsistency with Averroes’s metaphysics and his position on the species membership of separate substances. Given this qualification in the face of competing views, the chapter concludes that the Determinate Particular Argument should not be taken as a sufficient and independent argument for Averroes’s full thesis on the intellect.

Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, 2021

Averroes (Ibn Rushd) is well-known for his controversial thesis that there is only one separate intellect for all humankind. This article provides a detailed analysis of Averroes’s Unity Argument from his Long Commentary on De Anima, which argues from unified concepts and knowledge to a single transcendent intellect. I set out the Unity Argument in its textual and philosophical context, explain exactly how the argument works on a new interpretation of its infinite regress (based on Averroes’s other assumptions about the mind-dependence of universals), and offer some brief suggestions as to how it might be further evaluated in light of alternative ancient and medieval theories. Ultimately, I demonstrate that the Unity Argument is Averroes’s most important philosophical argument for his distinctive view of intellect.

In the Long Commentary on the De Anima, Averroes posits three separate intelligences in the anima rationalis or the rational soul: agent intellect or intellectus agens; material or passible intellect, intellectus possibilis; and speculative intellect, intellectus speculativus, or actualized or acquired intellect, intellectus adeptus. In the De Anima 3.1.5, "there are three parts of the intellect in the soul; the first is the receptive intellect, the second, the active intellect, and the third is actual intellection...," that is, material, agent, and speculative or actualized. While material intellect is "partly generable and corruptible, partly eternal," corporeal and incorporeal, the speculative and agent intellects are purely eternal and incorporeal. In the De Anima 3.1.5, the existence of intelligibles or first principles in intellect, as they are understood in actualized intellect, "does not simply result from the reception of the object," the sensible form in sense perception in material intellect, "but consists in attention to, or perception of, the represented forms...,"the cognition of the forms in actualized intellect wherein they can be understood as intelligibles, which requires both the participation of active intellect and the motivation of the individual for intellectual development. The goal of intellectual development is to achieve union with active intellect, the final entelechy, and through this union the highest bliss in life can be achieved. Such bliss can only be achieved "in the eve of life." All individual material intellects are capable of some ability to form concepts and abstract ideas at a basic level, but beyond that intellectual development varies among individuals according to the level of volition. Complete knowledge of the material world results in complete unity between the material intellect and the active intellect.

2004

ion or conceptualization, then, is genuinely based on human perceptual experience for its content and does not rely on illumination or emanation of intelligible content from a transcendent entity. The role of the agent intellect in this account is solely to explain the way that intentions which are intelligible in potency by its intellectual 'light' come to be intelligibles in act. With its light it makes actual what was presented to it as potential, namely the intentions, and then it impresses these on the material intellect in the same act since these intentions now intelligible in act require a subject for their existence. proper sensibles, {226) and it deposits it in the memory. This same [individual intention) is what the imaginative [power) apprehends, but the imaginative [power) apprehends it as conjoined to those sensibles, although its apprehension is more spiritual." "For, just as the subject of vision moving [vision), which is color, moves it only when c...

Mevzu – Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, 2021

Averroes was fully aware of the fact that Aristotle’s account of intellect as propounded in De Anima was incomplete. This meant that the key facet of Aristotle’s thought was fraught with gaps. Averroes made repeated attempts in his commentaries on De Anima to fill the gaps. The problem for Averroes was this: “if human beings are enmattered entities, how will anything more than sense perception be possible?” Averroes believes that finally in his Long Commentary on De Anima he has achieved a full and coherent account of thinking and understanding that centers on a new notion of the material intellect, according to which, together with the active intellect, there is also a distinct material intellect, numerically one for all human beings. The present article explores in detail this idea of material intellect. It is shown that material intellect, for Averroes, functions as the transpersonal, non-particular and non-empirical subject required for the production and containment of universal meanings. The idea seems to aim at connecting consistently the embodied, sensible forms of human cognitive experience with the noetic, conceptual element of knowledge within a basically ontological account.

Among the seminal studies of this doctrine and its repercussions, cf. E. Renan's/4ve/-/'oejer I' Averroisme (Paris 1861), pp. 133 ff. Other studies are referred to in my article. "Averroes on Intellection and Conjunction," yoMr«o/o/ the American Oriental Society 86 (1966) 76-85.

Giornale Critico della Filosofia Italiana, 2024

This article centers on Agostino Nifo’s De intellectu (1503). In particular, it discusses Nifo’s treatment of Ibn Bājja’s (Avempace) doctrine of the material intellect. Nifo is rather dismissive towards Avempace’s opinion for two reasons. One such reason is historical and involves Nifo’s choice to conform to the Christian doctrine; the other is textual and concerns the sources used by Nifo. By grounding his views on Averroes’ Long Commentary on Aristotle’s De anima, Nifo reproduced an account reflecting a particular stage in the development of Averroes’ noetics, a stage in which Averroes had distanced himself from Avempace.