Mind, Cognition and Representation: The Tradition of Commentaries on Aristotle’s De anima (review)

Late medieval and early modern commentaries on De anima are Janus-faced texts. They look backwards, continuing ancient debates about well-known Aristotelian topics, and forwards, introducing new concepts and methodological principles that pave the way for non-Aristotelian theories of mind. The eleven essays in this volume, which cover the period between the late thirteenth and the early seventeenth centuries, elucidate this double orientation by presenting case studies of Aristotelians who engaged in discussions about classical issues (the immateriality of the intellect, the plurality of forms, etc.) and thereby opened the door to new theories such as materialism and substance dualism. The papers do not aim at providing a survey of the commentary literature, but focus on specific texts. Some of them deal with often neglected sources. Thus, Olaf Pluta presents a detailed analysis of Nicholas of Amsterdam’s Questions on De anima and nicely shows that one can find a form of “soft materialism” (114) in his philosophy of mind. For Nicholas rejected the thesis that the intellect is a separable, immaterial entity, claiming instead that intellectual states are always dependent on material ones without being reducible to them. Other papers provide a fresh re-interpretation of well-known texts. For instance, Guy Guldentops makes clear that the late thirteenth-century philosopher James of Douai was neither an Averroist nor a Thomist, but an original thinker who argued that the individual intellect is “infused” in the body at the end of the process of generation (30). Still other papers present a general framework for assessing theories of mind. Let me focus on a remarkable example.

In his paper covering the entire late medieval debate, Robert Pasnau defends the thesis that it was not so much the mind-body problem that was at stake, but the mind-soul problem: how is the relationship between the mind (or intellect), responsible for thinking, and the soul, making a piece of matter a living thing, to be explained? Pasnau points out that philosophers in the Aristotelian tradition developed three theoretical frameworks to answer this question. According to “the way of exclusion,” the mind is metaphysically separate from the soul. This way was chosen by Averroes, who claimed that there is no room for an immaterial, eternally existing mind within a perishable soul. Pasnau convincingly argues that this position was taken up by Descartes, who also saw a metaphysical gap. Of course, Descartes did not posit just one mind, but a plurality of individual minds, and he did not conceive of the soul hylomorphically, but chose a mechanistic explanation. But what he borrowed from the Averroist tradition was the crucial claim that an immaterial entity cannot be derived from a material one. In contrast, “the way of unification” attempted to minimize the difference between mind and soul by claiming that the mind is simply a substantial form united with the soul as a bundle of other substantial forms, namely those responsible for nourishing, perceiving, etc. This option was chosen by Ockham, who assumed that there is indeed a plurality of forms in a human being. However, this leaves open how and why all these forms are united, given that they are really (and not just conceptually) distinct from each other. That is why Pasnau turns to a third model, “the way of inclusion,” which he considers to be the most promising. According to this model, prominently defended by Aquinas, the mind is a specific power somehow included in the soul’s essence and caused by it. Looking ahead to the modern period, Pasnau recognizes an “almost Leibnizian orientation of Aquinas” (18), because the mind is not considered to be something added to the soul. It rather arises from the soul’s inside and gradually develops. What makes this model appealing in Pasnau’s eyes is the fact that it preserves the unity of a human...