Aquinas Against the Averroists: On There Being Only One Intellect

Part 2. Text

P T A R W Thomas's Latin is not easily altered; therefore, I have taken few liberties for the sake of style in the translation. I only hope that the result is intelligible English. C. S. Lewis has observed that medieval Latin was a living language, unlike the closet classicism of the Renaissance with its sterile attempts to mimic the style of a long-gone day. In reviving Latin, the men of the Renaissance managed to make it a dead language. The language of our text, on the other hand, is alive and lively. Thomas obviously wrote his attack on the "Averroists"-all Christian contemporaries of his in Paris-in one compositional burst. The work is well organized and well argued, and its language serves its purpose. The engrossing issues it covers make the repetitiveness of phrase and syntactic construction, as well as the limited vocabulary, less noticeable. In this sense, the style of the opusculum is an accomplished one. It does what it is meant to do. We are not distracted by elegant turns of phrase nor arrested by metaphors. The task of the translator is to find a counterpart in English for such a style. Consequently, I have resisted the temptation brought on by the labors of translation to make the language of the text "interesting." The liberties I have taken are meant to prevent my version from obscuring the argument. I am grateful to Father Louis Bataillon, O.P., of the Leonine Commission, and Father Mateus Cardoso Peres, O.P., assistant to the master ofthe Dominican Order for the Intellectual Life, for permission to include the critical Leonine edition of the text ofthe De unitate intellectus. I have added the paragraph numbers of the Keeler edition to facilitate checking references. I 17 18 I PART TWO De unitate intellectus Capitvlvm I (1) Sicut omnes homines naturaliter scire desiderant ueritatem, ita naturale desiderium inest hominibus fugiendi errores et eos cum facultas affuerit confutandi. Inter alios autem errores indecentior esse uidetur error quo circa intellectum erratur, per quem nati sumus deuitatis erroribus cognoscere ueritatem. Inoleuit siquidem iam dudum circa intellectum error apud multos, ex dictis Auerroys sumens originem, qui asserere nititur intellectum quem Aristotiles possibilem uocat, ipse autem inconuenienti nomine materialem, esse quandam substantiam secundum esse a corpore separatam, nec aliquo modo uniri ei ut forma; et ulterius quod iste intellectus possibilis sit unus omnium hominum. Contra que iam pridem plura conscripsimus ; sed quia errantium impudentia non cessat ueritati reniti, propositum nostre intentionis est iterato contra eundem errorem conscribere aliqua quibus manifeste predictus error confutetur. (2) Nec id nunc agendum est ut positionem predictam in hoc ostendamus esse erroneam quod repugnat ueritati fidei christiane; hoc enim satis in promptu cuique apparere potest. Subtracta enim ab hominibus diuersitate intellectus, qui solus inter anime partes incorruptibilis et immortalis apparet, sequitur post mortem nichil de animabus hominum remanere nisi unicam intellectus substantiam ; et sic tollitur retributio premiorum et penarum et diuersitas eorundem. Intendimus autem ostendere positionem predictam non minus contra philosophie principia esse quam contra fidei documenta. Et quia quibusdam, ut dicunt, in hac materia uerba Latinorum non sapiunt, sed Peripateticorum uerba sectari se dicunt, quorum libros numquam in hac materia uiderunt nisi Aristotilis, qui fuit secte peripatetice institutor, ostendemus primo positionem predictam eius uerbis et sententie repugnare omnino. 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 19 I Text On There Being Only One Intellect Chapter 1 (1) All men by nature desire to know the truth;1 they also have a natural desire to avoid error and to refute it when the opportunity arises. Since we have been given an intellect in order to know truth and avoid error, it seems singularly inappropriate to be mistaken about it. For a long time now there has been widespread an error concerning intellect that originates in the writings ofAverroes. He seeks to maintain that what Aristotle calls the possible, but he infelicitously calls the material, intellect is a substance which, existing separately from the body, is in no way united to it as its form, and furthermore that this possible intellect is one for all men. We have already written much in refutation ofthis,2 but because those mistaken on this matter continue impudently to oppose the truth, it is our intention once more to write against this error and in such a way that it is decisively refuted. (2) There is no need now to show that the foregoing...