Human Understanding and the Agent Intellect in Aquinas

The Radical Difference between Aquinas and Kant Human Understanding and the Agent Intellect in Aquinas ǡǤǤ Chillum – 2021 The Radical Difference between Aquinas and Kant: Human Understanding and the Agent Intellect in Aquinas Andres Ayala, IVE Cover Design IVE Press Cover Art Nancy Marrocco Text © Copyright by Andres Ayala 2021 Institute of the Incarnate Word, Inc. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the United States of America. IVE Press 5706 Sargent Road Chillum, MD 20782 http://www.ivepress.org ISBN-13: 978-1-947568-22-8 Library of Congress Control Number: 2020946494 Printed in the United States of America f Author’s Foreword I have always loved singing, and some people say I am a musician. But when I was eighteen and had my first contact with Philosophy and Theology, I discovered I also had a brain, and that there were things about reality and God worth my youthful excitement and energy. Philosophy and Theology were for me a new beauty to enjoy, the beauty of making sense of reality and faith, but without taking away the mystery. These two pursuits were for me a new encounter with reality, a true dialogue, in which the only way to possess the other was to respect the other’s integrity and mystery. I wanted to master Philosophy and Theology, but they resisted control and slavery: they wanted to be loved, not mastered, and so I became a true “philosopher”, someone who loves wisdom, even if not possessing it completely. I still believe that love of wisdom produces true knowledge, and can develop to produce in the scholar a deep and unifying vision of reality. But that reality will always be a gift to us, and that is the aspect we will never master. Why is there being, and not nothing? Yes, we can arrive to the final cause: but in arriving, we remain speechless at the mystery of His eternal freedom in creating being. I know some people have chosen the path of Philosophy as the complete rationalization of being. Our culture has not received much inspiration from this path, but mainly new kinds of slavery and abuse of power. I prefer to be human, as being human was in the beginning… when reason wondered at reality, welcoming reality as an interesting friend and not eating it up as a lion devours its prey –leaving nothing outside itself, except maybe bones and blood. We do not find fulfilment in controlling what is inferior to us, but in being open to what is equal or superior to us. We do not find fulfillment in acting as prison guards of our small universes, but in relationship as friends, as beings in love. Behind these pages there is fire, a vision, a mission, like a conviction that burns inside and needs to burst through the mouth of a volcano. I have not written this book because I needed a degree, but because I needed to breathe. I had studied Aquinas (always in his own text and—with childlike stubbornness—only in Latin), and had some idea of Kant when I went to university. Once there, my classmates and I were introduced to an Aquinas I had not known, one who sometimes was even placed side by side with Kant. Let me be clear: Aquinas and Kant were not said to be the same thing (in Catholic circles, it is not uncommon to hear that Kant is “bad” and St. Thomas is “good”). But St. Thomas was explained with Kantian principles, which are as deep as the roots of our troubled modern culture. St. Thomas, so it seemed, along with Kant, had also made the “turn to the subject” and was no more the Aristotelian “believer”, who thinks nature is what it is–or better, what it seems to be. St. Thomas had apparently also realized that nature is intelligible not only when we think of it, but because we think of it. To me, the challenge seemed obvious: to show the radical difference between Aquinas and Kant. Kant had reasons to make his turn, his Copernican revolution. Could I explain those reasons, could I pinpoint the problem leading Kant to think in those terms? Could I show Aquinas facing the same problem and clearly taking a different direction in his proposed solution? That is what I have tried to do. And, I hope that you, my reader, find in this book something as inspiring as I dreamt you might. Peterborough, ON (Canada), June 20, 2020 vi Preface Tell me, you whom my soul loves, where you pasture your flock, where you make it lie down at noon…? (Song 1:7) Where is God? Is there any salvation outside human beings? Where is the wellspring of salvation? Is it in us or is it somewhere else? Is it about our being bathed in light by God, or is it about our flowing through life towards the ocean of nothingness and death? The idea of God upon which we build our theology depends on our approach to the problem of knowledge and being. If human knowing grounds being, then the being of God will appear in relationship to human thought—that is, as a condition of possibility of human thinking. This view leads naturally to a notion of God made in the image of men and women—that is, defined by human thought and, in a sense, confined to it. Conversely, if being grounds knowing, then God is able to appear at the end of the philosophical process, as the Supreme, Intensive Being, cause of the participated being of things and of human knowing. This is why the revolution in philosophy after Kant has not been without consequences in the theological field. The interpretation of Aquinas has not escaped the turmoil of modern thought: some scholars have tried to assimilate Aquinas to Kant, and even to ground Aquinas’ metaphysical principles in Kant’s epistemological approach. In this book, I hope you will find a rediscovery of Aquinas’ approach to human understanding as radically different from Kant’s approach. It is, I believe, a most important key in understanding Aquinas’ overall theological doctrine. Within the following study of the agent intellect, you will find a careful examination of Aquinas’ approach to the problem of the universals, and to knowing in general, enabling you to see the fundamental distinction between Aquinas’ epistemology and that of Kant. As you are appreciating the doctrinal context in which the agent intellect appears, what will be demonstrated clearly to you is that the Thomistic agent intellect is not a Kantian formal a priori—a conception which would make it the source of intelligible content in human understanding. The presence of the universal in the things themselves, the notions of “abstraction” and of “intelligible”, the receptivity of knowing in general, and other principles of Thomistic Gnoseology will be examined in order to foster a better understanding of Aquinas, bringing to the fore his specific and unique contribution to modern debates. Because the interpretation you are about to encounter may seem controversial for some, you will be given an abundance of pertinent explicit quotations showing how often and how clearly Aquinas affirms certain points. This ample referencing will help you to better understand the respective contexts in which Aquinas makes his key points, leaving less room for quick and inaccurate interpretations of Aquinas’ thought. Isolated quotations and truncated texts do not have the same power as do more complete references, and can lead to diametrically opposed interpretations. With ample referencing, you will be empowered to assess for yourself this newly proposed interpretation of Aquinas’ agent intellect. I invite you to enter into what I consider an accurate interpretation of Aquinas’ text, an interpretation both intelligible and relevant to the modern mind. It is an invitation to see Aquinas facing our own questions and reacting to our answers. It is an invitation to let Aquinas speak to our modern age. It may seem that a good speaker like Aquinas cannot change the world—but he might change your world, and that is what will make the difference. Aquinas’ Epistemology, as an escape door to a meaningful world, overcomes viii the boredom of the existential void and gives us real hope—for once—in discovering beyond the curtain the Eternal Author of our Salvation.1 1 In Appendix 1 please find two important clarificiations, the contents of which are clear from their respective titles: Note 2, “Is the Universal Really in the Things Themselves? A Clarification.” and Note 3, “On the ‘Agent Object’ Terminology.” I thank Fr. Alberto Barattero IVE Ph.D. for his suggestion to include these notes, which I think will help in the overall understanding of my position. ix Summary The following is an interpretation of Aquinas’ agent intellect focusing on Summa Theologiae I, qq. 75-89, and proposing that the agent intellect is a metaphysical rather than a formal a priori of human understanding.2 A formal a priori is responsible for the intelligibility as content of the object of human understanding and is related to Kant’s epistemological views, whereas a metaphysical a priori is responsible for intelligibility as mode of being of this same object. We can find in Aquinas’ text many indications that the agent intellect is not productive of the intelligible object but is, rather, productive of the abstracted or intelligible mode of being of this object. This is because for Aquinas the universal as nature, which is the object of human understanding, is present in the things themselves but with a different mode of being. Chapter 1 is intended to establish the fact which requires for Aquinas an agent intellect, and provides two very important principles: one is that the object of human understanding (the universal as nature) is present in the things themselves and, the other, that it is not in the things themselves with a mode of being which makes it available to the intellectual eye.

Load more