Desperately difficult texts inevitably elicit desperate hermeneutical measures. Aristotle's De Anima, book three, chapter five, is evidently one such text. At least since the time of Alexander of Aphrodisias, scholars have felt compelled to draw some remarkable conclusions regarding Aristotle's brief remarks in this passage regarding intellect. One such claim is that in chapter five, Aristotle introduces a second intellect, the so-called 'agent intellect', an intellect distinct from the 'passive intellect', the supposed focus of discussion up until this passage.1 This (...) view is a direct descendent of the view of Alexander himself, who identified the agent intellect with the divine intellect.2 Even the staunchest defender of such a view is typically at a loss to give a plausible explanation of why the divine intellect pops into and then out of the picture in the intense and closely argued discussion of the human intellect that goes from chapter four through to the end of chapter seven.3 Revolting against an extravagant postulation of entities, Michael Wedin, for example, has argued with considerable subtlety and ingenuity that there is in fact only one intellect discussed in De Anima.4 This unified intellect is fully capable of being integrated into Aristotle's hylomorphic psychology. In order to make his case, though, Wedin is himself forced (1) to discount the importance of some texts and (2) to interpret others in a way that strains credulity. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the origins of the ‘problem of universals’. I argue that the problem has come to be badly formulated and that consideration of it has been impeded by falsely supposing that Platonic Forms were ever intended as an alternative to Aristotelian universals. In fact, the role that Forms are supposed by Plato to fulfill is independent of the function of a universal. I briefly consider the gradual mutation of the problem in the Academy, in Alexander of (...) Aphrodisias, and among some of the major Neoplatonic commentators on Aristotle, including Porphyry and Boethius. (shrink)

RésuméL'article étudie les rapports que la théorie thomasienne de la vision béatifique entretient avec la noétique qu'Averroès expose dans sonGrand CommentaireduDe anima. DuCommentaire des Sentences, où le jeune Thomas propose une transposition explicite de l'intellection philosophique des substances séparées dans l'ordre théologique chrétien, aux œuvres de la maturité, qui n'en font plus mention, on tâche de présenter la nature exacte des emprunts et d'apprécier leur justesse en s'interrogeant sur la cohérence conceptuelle du geste de l'Aquinate: Thomas pouvait-il suspendre sa conception (...) de la vision de Dieu par essence à un dispositif noétique originairement actif dans un système jugé erroné et contraire à la foi? Pouvait-on théologiquement accorder au rapport entre essence divine et intellect ce que, philosophiquement, on refusait à celui entre l'intellect séparé et le corps? Si Thomas et ses partisans, dans la querelle qui s'ouvrait, l'assurent, on indique nonobstant ce que l'emprunt paradoxal d'origine conserve de conceptuellement problématique au cœur du thomisme. (shrink)