Intellectum Speculativum : Averroes, Thomas Aquinas, and Siger of Brabant on the Intelligible Object

Intellectum Speculativum: Averroes, Thomas Aquinas, and Siger of Brabant on the Intelligible Object BERNARDO CARLOS BAZAN ANALYSES OF MEDIEVALCONTROVERSIESconcerning the nature of the intellect often neglect the problem of the intelligible object. The intelligible object, however, assumes a certain methodological priority for Aristotle, since, according to him, determination of the nature of the soul depends upon an analysis of its operations. These operations, in turn, are distinguished by their objects. The purpose of this paper is to examine a point which I consider indeed central to the noetic of Averroes: that of the well-known thesis of the union of the unique and separate intellect and individual persons through the medium of sensible images (intellectus copulatur nobis per phantasiam). I intend to show first that this doctrine is grounded on a welldeveloped notion of the object known (inteUectum), and then to show that the critique of Thomas Aquinas and the crisis of Siger of Brabant are understandable only on the basis of a reelaboration of this notion of the object.' 1. AVERROES Three Aistotelian principles are at the basis of the Averroistic explanation. First, there is the thesis of the intimate union between the intellect and the known in the act of knowing (intellectus et intellectum sunt idem). "~ This is I would like to indicate an important restriction in my work: I am placing myself within the perspective of the "Latin West." For this reason, my expose will be based upon the Latin translation of the Commentariummagnum of Averroes. All citations refer to the edition of F. S. Crawford: Averrois CordubensisCommentariumMagnum in AristotelisDe anima libros (Cambridge, Mass.: The Mediaeval Academy of America, 1953). ' Aristotele, De anima, II1, 4, 43~ 111,7, 43 la- [425] 426 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY followed by the very clear affirmation that the soul never thinks without an image. 3 And third, in the Treatise of the Soul, there is a certain distinction between the intellect and the exercise of thought, expressed under the form of an opposition between what is eternal and what is corruptible: The intellect (6 voa3g),it seems, exists in us as possessing a substantial existence, and is not subject to corruption .... The exercise of thought and knowledge (~6 voeO 6rI K~ 0~toQeev) declines then when some interior organ is destroyed; but, in itself, the intellect is impassible. And thought, as well as love or hate, are affections, not of the intellect, but of the subject that has intellect insofar as it has it. That is also why, once this subject is destroyed, memory and love cease: these are not, therefore, affections of the intellect, but of the composite (zoo Kotvoa3)which has perished. The intellect, no doubt, is something more divine and impassible.4 With regard to this passage, as with many others which testify to what F. Nuyens has called "the noedc problem" in the Treatise on the Soul, Averroes adopts an attitude that can be qualified as a "progressive resolution" of the Aristotelian aporiae. It is well known that the Arab Master claims that both the agent intellect and the receptive intellect (which he terms the "material" intellect because of its potential state) are separate and unique substances, ungenerated and incorruptible--characteristics that are deduced from the essential immateriality which these substances required as a condition for the possibility of intellectual knowledge. 5 Granted that the "material" intellect is the last of the spiritual substances, it is of such a nature that it must receive intelligibles from sensible images. 6 Because of this intentionali~y, of this proport/o which is proper to it, the intellect must come into contact with individuals. This rapport results in establishing an operational union, an operative composite (the Kotv6~t that Aristotle talks about), whose fruit is actual understanding (intelligere in actu). Thus, an operational unity of three principles is necessary for intellection in act to take place: the receptive material intellect, the images which offer the intelligible object in a potential state, and the agent intellect which actualizes them. 7 The imaginative faculty proper to each man, by participating in the act of intellection as the principle which provides data for the agent intellect, also merits the name of intellectus in the...