Intellect As Intrinsic Formal Cause in the Soul According to Aquinas and Averroes

INTELLECT AS INTRINSIC FORMAL CAUSE IN THE SOUL ACCORDING TO AQUINAS AND AVERROES

Richard C. Taylor*

The study of Averroes and his influence is changing. In recent years some scholars working in the thought of Thomas Aquinas have moved away from the very common focus on the conflict of Aquinas with Averroes and Averroists on the nature of the soul as found in the De unitate intellectus1 and other works.2 Many now see the positive value of the philosophical thought of Averroes to the development of the thought of Aquinas and thinkers of the Thirteenth century generally. They have come to appreciate the positive contributions of the philosophical psychology of Averroes to the development of the accounts of Aquinas concerning epistemological issues such as the grounding of the content of knowledge in the apprehension of the natures of things of the world rather than in illumination from God (according to Augustine and the tradition he gave rise to) or from a transcendent Agent Intellect (according to Avicenna in some fashion).3 Deborah

* Marquette University. 1 Representative among recent contributions containing positive assessments of the success of the critique of Averroes by Aquinas are Alain de Libera, L’Unité de l intellect de Thomas d Aquin (Paris, 2004) and the interpretive essays of Ralph McInerny in his Aquinas Against the Averroists: On There Being Only One Intellect (West Lafayette, Indiana, 1993). Particular attention should be given to Deborah Black’s critical review of McInerny’s account in Review of Metaphysics 49 (1995), pp. 147–148. 2 Edward P. Mahoney provides a list of the most important encounters of Aquinas with Averroes on the issue of the intellect in “Aquinas’s Critique of Averroes’ Doctrine of the Unity of the Intellect,” in Thomas Aquinas and His Legacy, David M. Gallagher, ed. (Washington, D.C., 1994), pp. 83–106. Those encounters are identified as (1)In 2 Sent. d. 17, q. 2, a. 1; (2) Summa Contra Gentiles 2, cc. 59–73; (3) Summa Theologiae, prima pars, q. 76; (4) Quaestiones disputatae de spiritualibus creaturis, articles 2 and 9; (5) Sententia libri de anima, book 3, c. 1 (see the discussion below for the precise cita- tion); (6) Compendia theologiae, c. 85; and (7) De unitate intellectus contra Averroistas, pages. Also see the remarks of R. A. Gauthier in his introduction to the critical edition of Aquinas’s Commentary on the De Anima in Ch. 4, “Les sources du commentaire, II. Le commentaire d’Averroès, section 2. Le Grand commentaire sur le Livre de l’Âme dans l’oeuvre de Saint Thomas,” in Thomas Aquinas, Sentencia libri de anima (Opera omnia, XLV, 1) *220a–*225a. (Rome: Commissio Leonina; Paris, 1984.) 3 For many years B. Carlos Bazán has shared his valuable insights in a number of important articles. See Bernardo C. Bazán, “La Noetica de Averroes (1126–1198),” 188 richard c. taylor

Black has done much to promote the sound and critical understanding of Averroes and the real value, or rather lack thereof, of attacks on him by Aquinas, with scholarly precision in a number of recent articles.4 Some other contributions have aimed at showing that Averroes’ famous doctrine of the two transcendent intellects, the Agent Intellect and the Material Intellect, in some fashion shared by all human knowers, provides an impressively coherent Aristotelian account for the series of characteristics which Aristotle attributes to the intellectual soul.5

Philosophia 38 (1972), pp. 19–49; “Intellectum Speculativum: Averroes, Thomas Aquinas, and Siger of Brabant on the Intelligible Object,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 19 (1981), pp. 425–446; “The Human Soul: Form and Substance? Thomas Aquinas’ Critique of Eclectic Aristotelianism,” Archives d’histoire doctrinale et litteraire du moyen âge 64 (1997), pp. 95–126; “Conceptions of the Agent Intellect and the Limits of Metaphysics,” in Nach der Verurteilung von 1277: Philosophie und Theologie an der Universität von Paris im letzten Viertel des 13. Jahrhunderts: Studien und Texte. After the condemna- tion of 1277: philosophy and theology at the University of Paris in the last quarter of the thirteenth century: studies and texts, Jan A. Aertsen, Kent Emery, Jr., and Andreas Speer (eds.). (Miscellanea Mediaevalia 28), pp. 178–210. Berlin and New York: W. de Gruyter, 2001; “13th Century Commentaries on De Anima: From Peter of Spain to Thomas Aquinas,” in In Commento Filosofico nell’Occidente Latino (secoli XIII–XV), Gianfranco Fioravanti, Claudio Leonardi and Stephano Perfetti (eds.), pp. 119–184. (Turnhout, 2002). In his articles in 1997 and later Bazán has been more appreciative of the insights of Averroes and their value to Aquinas as well as of the challenge they represented to Aquinas. Regarding Avicenna the standard view is recounted in Herbert Davidson’s Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, on Intellect (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). However, this has been recently criticised. See Dimitri Gutas, “Intuition and Thinking: The Evolving Structure of Avicenna’s Epistemology,” in Robert Wisnovsky (ed.),Aspects of Avicenna. (Princeton, 2001) (reprinted from Princeton Papers: Interdisciplinary Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. IX), pp. 1–38; and by Dag Nikolaus Hasse, “Avicenna on Abstraction,” ibid., pp. 39–72. A critical attempt at conciliation has been set forth by Jon McGinnis in “Making Abstraction Less Abstract: The Logical, Psychological and Metaphysical Dimensions of Avicenna’s Theory of Abstraction,” in Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 80 (2006), pp. 169–183. 4 Deborah Black, “Consciousness and Self-Knowledge in Aquinas’s Critique of Averroes’s Psychology,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 31 (1993), pp. 349–385; “Memory, Individuals, and the Past in Averroes’s Psychology. Medieval Philosophy and Theology” 5 (1996), pp. 161–187; “Conjunction and the Identity of Knower and Known in Averroes,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 73 (1999), pp. 159–184; and “Models of Mind: Metaphysical Presuppositions of the Averroist and Thomistic Accounts of Intellection,” Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale 15 (2004), pp. 319–352. For a impressive account of Averroes’ noetics in an important Averroist follower, see Jean-Baptiste Brenet, Transferts du sujet: la noétique d’Averroès selon Jean de Jandun (Paris: Vrin, 2003). 5 See Richard C. Taylor, “Averroes’ Epistemology and Its Critique by Aquinas,” Thomistic Papers VII. Medieval Masters: Essays in Memory of Msgr. E. A. Synan, R. E. Houser, ed. (Houston, 1999), pp. 147–177; “Cogitatio, Cogitativus and Cogitare: Remarks on the Cogitative Power in Averroes,” in L’elaboration du vocabulaire philosophique au Moyen Age, J. Hamesse et C. Steel, eds., pp. 111–146. [Rencontres de philosophie Medievale Vol. 8.] Turnhout, Brepols, 2000; “Separate Material Intellect in Averroes’