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Human Thinking and the Active Intellect in Aristotle Human Thinking HUMAN THINKING AND THE ACTIVE INTELLECT IN ARISTOTLE HUMAN THINKING AND THE ACTIVE INTELLECT IN ARISTOTLE By DAREN JONESCU, M.A. A Thesis Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy McMaster University © Copyright by Daren Jonescu, August 2000 DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (2000) McMaster University (Philosophy) Hamilton, Ontario TITLE: Human Thinking and the Active Intellect in Aristotle. AUTHOR: Daren Jonescu, M.A. (McMaster University) SUPERVISOR: Dr. S. Panagiotou NUMBER OF PAGES: v, 304 ii ABSTRACT In Book III, Chapter 5 of his De Anima, in the midst of his account of the faculty of thought, Aristotle concludes that there are, in some sense, two minds required for thinking, one which 'becomes all things', and another which 'makes all things'. The second of these -- commonly called the "active intellect" has always been a source of puzzlement for interpreters, on two fronts: (1) How does this entity 'make' things, i.e. what does it do, in relation to the potential or "passive" intellect, by way of producing the ideas in the latter?; and (2) What is the metaphysical status of the active intellect? In particular, can Aristotle's description of this mind as "eternal and immortal" be reconciled with his accounts, elsewhere, of the nature and function of eternal beings? In this dissertation, with the help of related passages in other works, I unravel the details and implications of Aristotle's remarkably terse and economical discussion of the active intellect. Further, I show how we can, and why we must, re-interpret the most important aspect of Aristotle's metaphysics -- his theory of the divine beings, the "unmoved movers" in light of what we learn from De Anima III.5. Aristotle is seen to have solved an essential epistemological problem, namely how we initially form the ideas or 'concepts' about which we think, in a manner which brings his psychology into direct contact with his theory of being. In the process, he implies a view of the power of human reason that is both ennobling and humbling. lll ACKNOWLEGEMENTS I should like to thank several people for their contributions to this effort. Firstly, my supervisor, Dr. Spiro Panagiotou, has, aside from his careful scouring of the work itself, performed several kindnesses beyond the call of duty. My second reader, Dr. Ken Dorter, offered prompt, encouraging, and thought-provoking comments on drafts of the thesis. Dr. Costas Georgiadis, the department's resident Aristotle specialist, though disagreeing, I dare say, with most of what is in these pages, expressed this disagreement with his usual charm and collegiality. Thanks, finally, to Shannon, whose relation to the motion of the outermost sphere is the theme of everything to which this dissertation serves as a rough draft of a preface. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ..........................................p. 1 Part I: Identifying the Active Intellect Chapter 1. Finding the Right Questions ................p. 8 Chapter 2. Light and Colour ..........................p. 42 Chapter 3 . "There are gods even here" ................p. 73 Chapter 4. Perishability............................p. 108 Part II: The Nature of Human Thinking Chapter 5. The Importance of Language ...............p. 151 Chapter 6. Nous, Dianoia, and Episteme ............. p. 186 Chapter 7. Making All Things ........................p. 251 Bibliography ........................................p. 299 v Introduction In this dissertation, I interpret Aristotle's account of the so-called 'active', or 'agent', or 'productive' intellect, in De Anima III.5. My approach assumes a fundamental consistency between this chapter's description of an intellect which "makes all things" and the other important Aristotelian discussions of the nature of thinking in general, as well as of the role of the divine in human thought. By comparing the wording of III.5 with that of the other passages, and by taking seriously the few hints that Aristotle gives us as to the nature of the relationship between the active and passive intellects, I offer new support for the long-standing branch of the interpretive tradition which sees in III.5 an allusion to the divine beings of Metaphysics XII. The great pitfall, in a project of this sort, is the temptation to draw connections between texts without sufficient justification, and hence to give to one's conclusions the appearance of arbitrary assertions. Therefore, if one's purpose is to make explicit a relationship that is merely implied by Aristotle's own words, then one must take the preliminary step of establishing reasonable grounds for the belief that such an implication actually exists. I say this in part as an apology for certain arguments in the 1 2 dissertation which may be exhausting to the reader, or which may seem to be flogging dead horses. Drawing a coherent and consistent doctrine out of Aristotle's terse and contextually varied remarks about the relationship between the divine and human minds is a tricky business. Thus it behoves us to carve each stone in the structure as meticulously as possible, though hopefully never at the expense of the larger aim which these details are meant to serve, namely a clarification of some of Aristotle's most important insights into human thought. Further, projects of this nature -- those, that is, which attempt to follow a thinker's train of thought beyond the limits of his words -- inevitably lead us to a challenging crossroads. For if we can show that there is indeed an intimate connection between theoretical positions which, as commonly interpreted, might not appear to be more than superficially related, then we are faced with the task of addressing the implications of this new-found connection for our understanding of the explicitly stated aspects of the works in question. In the present case, this will mean, for example, speculating on how our inherited understanding of Aristotle's account of the astronomical function of the divine beings must be expanded or supplemented in light of the relation which I hope to establish between the active intellect and the unmoved movers. My primary concern in this dissertation is to 3 establish the interrelations among the various passages at issue. This, however, does not give me license to evade the subsequent, and more speculative, step that I have just described. I will therefore introduce, at various stages of the discussion, certain tentative answers to the questions which naturally arise from the considerations I present. These answers, though by no means offered without careful consideration, are of course matters for further investigation and debate. My purpose in offering them is in part to promote such debate by attempting to clarify the nature of the issues at stake, i.e. to show what kinds of questions we must be prepared to try to answer. To put this another way, if the main line of argument in this dissertation is at all convincing, then certain extraordinarily complex questions arise with regard to some of the most profound areas of Aristotle's thought. In the present context, it is more important to me that the reader fully comprehend and acknowledge these complexities, and the importance of addressing them, than that he or she accede to my particular suggested solutions. I do hope to state this more positively that the reader will not feel free to adopt solutions to these difficulties which cannot account for the full complexity of the issues that I have delineated, or which have only the advantage of being more orthodox. The dissertation is divided into two parts. The first, comprised of four chapters, establishes the divinity of 4 the active intellect and outlines the structure of the relationship that must obtain between this intellect and human thinking. The second is comprised of three chapters, and proceeds, by means of an account of the relationship between Aristotle's and Plato's respective terminologies of human thought, toward the suggestion that the active intellect performs its function of producing ideas by standing to the human intellect as a desired end to desiring matter. In Chapter 1, I outline the nature of the issues at stake in De Anima III.5, and, beginning with a particularly difficult statement from the end of the chapter, introduce some of the main lines of interpretation which have been taken by both ancient and modern commentators. The purpose of this chapter is primarily to focus the reader's attention on those few details in III.5 which can and ought to be examined for clues as to the place of the active intellect within Aristotle's metaphysical scheme. Chapter 2 examines one particularly central detail in III.5, namely the analogy between the active intellect and light. Arguing first of all for the importance of this analogy, against the views of some interpreters who have downplayed its significance, I then embark upon an extensive analysis of the analogy itself, drawing on material from De Anima II.7, in which Aristotle explains the nature of light, and also on related material from other works, especially the Metaphysics and the Nicomachean Ethics. Here it will be shown 5 that we must take seriously the possibility that the active intellect is indeed an Aristotelian divinity, and not merely analogous to such a being, as some have contended. In Chapter 3, the connection between the active intellect and the Prime Mover is pursued further, through the examination of some of the other important terms used in III.5 to describe the nature of this intellect, particularly its portrayal as an essentially active being. Through an extended discussion of a similar passage in the Eudemian Ethics, we will be able to clear up many of the outstanding concerns from Chapter 1 regarding whether the active intellect thinks the objects of human knowledge, what weight can be placed on Aristotle's claim that the active intellect is "in the soul", and what might be entailed by identifying the active intellect with the "divine element" of human beings to which Aristotle sometimes refers.
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