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Aristotle on God and the Human Intellect International Journal of Philosophy and Theology June 2015, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 18-36 ISSN: 2333-5750 (Print), 2333-5769 (Online) Copyright © The Author(s). All Rights Reserved. Published by American Research Institute for Policy Development DOI: 10.15640/ijpt.v3n1a3 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.15640/ijpt.v3n1a3 Aristotle on God and the Human Intellect Professor James Duerlinger1 Abstract In DA III 4−5 Aristotle explains what he believes to be the essential and necessary properties of the part of a soul with which it thinks intelligible forms. This is the part he calls the intellect (nous). My main concern in this essay is to translate and explain what Aristotle says in DA III 5 about God and the intellect, but since what he says in DA III 5 is a logical continuation of what he says in DA III 4, I will first explain what he says in DA III 4 from the perspective of its relation to what he says in DA III 5. Introductioni In DA III 4−5 Aristotle explains what he believes to be the essential and necessary properties of the part of a soul with which it thinks intelligible forms. This is the part he calls the intellect (nous). My main concern in this essay is to translate and explain what Aristotle says in DA III 5 about God and the intellect, but since what he says in DA III 5 is a logical continuation of what he says in DA III 4, I will first explain what he says in DA III 4 from the perspective of its relation to what he says in DA III 5. In his account of the human intellect Aristotle concisely expresses himself in sentences whose full meanings and/or connections to sentences before or after them are not always apparent.ii Since this problematic circumstance is especially acute in DA III 5, I will translate its seventeen sentences and add in brackets what I believe will help readers to understand their fuller meanings and connections to one another.iii My special concern is to explain what Aristotle says by using only terms he himself uses in his treatises. In this introduction, I explain the terminology of Aristotle I use in my analysis of his account of the agent intellect and introduce my main theses concerning the relationship between the agent intellect and the other intellect to which Aristotle refers in DA III 5. In the second part of this essay, I briefly explain what Aristotle says in DA III 4 with special attention to its relation to what he says in DA III 5, and in the third I translate and comment upon DA III 5 as his account of why we can think. Although Aristotle does not in DA III 5 say what it is he intends to be discussing there, he does so, I believe, at the beginning of DA III 4,iv where he says, “About the part of the soul with which the soul knows and judges [things]. , we must consider what its difference is [from the part of the soul with which the soul senses things] and how thinking comes to be.” Since Aristotle assumes that the soul knows and judges things by means of thinking (noēsis), in DA III 4 he explains the difference between the part of the soul with which it thinks and the part of the soul with which it senses, and in DA III 5 he explains how thinking comes to be.v The part of the soul he calls an intellect I will call the human intellect to distinguish it from the divine intellect that Aristotle discusses in M XII 7, 9– 10. Since the human intellect is the power of the human soul not only to think an intelligible object (noēton) by means of a concept (noēma)vi but also to combine concepts to think something about a subject, I will distinguish the soul conceiving an intelligible object from it thinking about an object it conceives. An intelligible object is a form that can be discriminated by the human intellect. Aristotle believes that sense (aisthēsis) discriminates sensible forms that have been imprinted on the sensing part of the soul and the intellect discriminates intelligible forms that have been imprinted on the thinking part of the soul. So I will often call an intelligible object an intelligible form to distinguish it from a sensible form. An intelligible form is an essence, which is a differentiated genus to which something belongs.vii In DA III 4–5 Aristotle discusses only the power of the human soul to conceive intelligible forms. 1Philosophy Department, University of Iowa, USA. E-mail: [email protected] James Duerlinger 19 The first actuality of the power to conceive an intelligible form is the human soul receiving a likeness of the form.viii A likeness of an intelligible form is the affection or impression (pathēma) in the soulix Aristotle calls a concept (noēma).x We may infer, from his claim that the human intellect is “actually none of the things [it thinks] prior to thinking [them],”xi that he believes that the human intellect is like a formless matter that receives as forms the concepts of intelligible forms. So when the human intellect thinks intelligible forms it receives as its form concepts of intelligible forms. The human intellect receiving as its form concepts of intelligible forms, however, is not the same as it thinking the intelligible forms with the concepts it has received as its form. The human intellect receiving as its form concepts of intelligible forms is the human intellect becoming concepts of intelligible forms in the way matter receives form. The human intellect becoming concepts of intelligible forms is the first actuality of its power to conceive the forms and it conceiving the forms is its second actuality.xii In DA III 5 Aristotle argues that present in the human soul there is another intellect that acts on the human intellect to produce thinking. The thinking it produces is the conceiving of intelligible forms. The intellect that produces thinking I call the agent intellect because it acts upon the other intellect, not because it acts upon intelligible forms or concepts, as commentators have mistakenly assumed. The intellect upon which it acts is the human intellect having become a concept of intelligible objects ― the human intellect in its first actuality. The agent intellect causes the human intellect in its first actuality to achieve its second actuality of conceiving intelligible objects by means of concepts the human intellect has become. Aristotle says that the agent intellect is in the human soul, but he believes that it is distinct from the human intellect, which is the power to conceive intelligible objects. As an agent acting upon the human intellect having become concepts, Aristotle assumes, the agent intellect imposes a form it possesses by its own nature upon the human intellect having become concepts so that the human intellect can think the intelligible form it has become. What exactly the agent intellect is and what the form is that it imposes upon the human intellect having become concepts is what I hope to explain. The thinking Aristotle discusses in DA III 4–5 is the simple act of the human intellect discriminating an intelligible form.xiii In general the discrimination of a form is an awareness of this form. The awareness of a form by the human intellect is a conceptual awareness. In DA III 6 Aristotle says that the form discriminated is indivisible,xiv which means that it is not divisible into parts one of which is said of another.xv When in this essay I refer to thinking, I mean only this simple act of thinking, not the act of thinking that in DA III 6 Aristotle says is the combining of concepts that makes thoughts that are true or false.xvi The simple act of thinking is the conceiving of an intelligible object. There are two kinds of intelligible objects that Aristotle distinguishes: an intelligible object with matter and an intelligible form without matter.xvii The first, according to Aristotle, is a potential intelligible object.xviii He says that an intelligible object with matter is thought by the human intellect without its matter, and that when it is, it is an actual intelligible object. Among intelligible objects without matter Aristotle recognizes a divine intellect, celestial intellects,xix and a human intellect in its first actuality. He says that the human intellect thinks intelligible objects with matter without their matter.xx In DA III 4–5 Aristotle discusses only the human intellect thinking forms present in matter without their matter.xxi The conceiving of an intelligible object is the basic act of the human intellect whose concept is the content of the act, as opposed to its intelligible object. Since in the simple act of the human intellect thinking a form, in addition, neither the content nor the object of the act of thinking is divisible into parts, one of which is said of the other, the thinking cannot be false.xxii The form of an intelligible object with matter is the form of a sensible object. When the sensible object is perceived, an image (phantasma) containing its form arises in the human soul.xxiii Aristotle believes that if the human intellect is to think the form in the image it needs to become the concept of the form.xxiv The human intellect does not come to be a concept of a form in an image unless an image containing the form is present before the human intellect.xxv An image containing the form arises when we perceive sensible objects in whose matter the form in the image is present.xxvi So the form, as it is present in the image, is the form present in matter, and the form, as it is present in the human intellect, is the concept of the form present in matter.xxvii Although in DA III 3 and DA III 6–8 Aristotle uses the terms translated here as “concept” and “image,” he does not use them in DA III 4–5.
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