En este trabajo se presenta una interpretación sobre la célebre distinción entre el intelecto activo y el intelecto pasivo en _De anima_ III, 5, a partir de “otra modesta propuesta”. Para ello, se expone el núcleo fundamental de esa reciente propuesta, que identifica el intelecto activo con el hábito de los principios y con el contenido de los primeros principios. A continuación, se ponen de manifiesto algunas objeciones a dicha interpretación y, finalmente, se analizan las notas o características del intelecto (...) activo presentes en el texto de Aristóteles. El propósito de este artículo consiste en mostrar una posible comprensión del intelecto activo de Aristóteles, con la intención de que se convierta en una “aún más modesta propuesta”. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Rhizomata Jahrgang: 5 Heft: 2 Seiten: 177-209.

In one of the unpublished parts of his manuscript titled the Spicilegia, Arthur Schopenhauer presents an uncharacteristically sympathetic reading of an Aristotelian text. The text in question, De anima III. 5, happens to include the only occurrence of arguably the most controversial idea in Aristotle, namely the distinction between active and passive nous. Schopenhauer interprets these two notions as corresponding to his own notions of the ?will? and the ?intellect? or ?subject of knowledge?, respectively. The result is a unique interpretation, (...) according to which Aristotle's active nous is in fact non-intellectual: it is devoid of any interaction with intelligible objects, and hence lacks any intellectual activity. I show that this interpretation, though counterintuitive, is tenable, and that it may contribute to our understanding of Aristotle even if we do not adopt Schopenhauer's metaphysics. (shrink)

I lay out and examine two sharply conflicting interpretations of Aristotle's claims about nous in the De Anima (DA). On the human separability approach, Aristotle is taken to have identified reasons for thinking that the intellect can, in some way, exist on its own. On the naturalist approach, the soul, including intellectual soul, is inseparable from the body of which it is the form. I discuss how proponents of each approach deal with the key texts from the DA, focusing on (...) four of the most important and interesting topics in this area. Two of these topics concern the activity of understanding (noêsis): first, what does Aristotle mean when he claims that the intellect cannot have a bodily organ and, secondly, what role does Aristotle think phantasmata (“images” or “representations”) play in understanding something? Two of the topics concern DA 3.5, one of the most difficult passages in Aristotle's corpus: first, what is the nature and role of the productive intellect (nous poiêtikos) introduced there and, secondly, what are this chapter's implications for the question of whether the intellect or intellectual soul can exist apart from the body? I conclude by identifying areas where further research is necessary. (shrink)

This article deals with an argument reported by Razi (d. 1210) that attempted to undermine the immaterialist position about human nature. After some introductory remarks and explanation of the conceptual background, the article analyses the structure of the argument, with special attention to the idea of soul-switching.’ Some comparisons are made between the argument reported by Razi and a number of arguments from modern and contemporary eras of philosophy. One section is devoted to the critique of the argument and its (...) conceptual basis. This article shows that the argument reported by Razi is a methodological antecedent of a family of contemporary epistemological arguments against substance dualism. It is also shown that discussion of the argument could be useful to highlight a weakness in some, but not all, versions of immaterialism about human nature. (shrink)

Aristotle’s Naïve Somatism is a re-interpretation of Aristotle’s cognitive psychology in light of certain presuppositions he holds about the living animal body. The living animal body is presumed to be sensitive, and Aristotle grounds his account of cognition in a rudimentary proprioceptive awareness one has of her body. With that presupposed metaphysics under our belts, we are in a position to see that Aristotle in de Anima (cognition chapters at least) has a di erent explanatory aim in view than that (...) which the literature generally imputes to him. He is not explicating what we would call the “mental”—the private, inner realm which some take to be of a di erent kind than the physical—as most take him to be. His explanandum is content acquisition; the explanans is showing how the body becomes like various aspects of objects. Although he famously describes the mind (nous) as unmixed with the body, he is guided by functional constrains—nous cannot be limited or qualified if it is to potentially think all things. Thus, his inquiry into cognition is philosophically limited from a contemporary perspective. Aristotle is not doing philosophy of mind, for he doesn’t seem to find the “mental” philosophically perplexing. (shrink)

El presente artículo se enfrenta al problema clásico sobre cómo interpretar lo que Aristóteles, en de An. III, 5, denomina “el intelecto que produce todas las cosas”, llamado comúnmente intelecto agente. Históricamente, se han presentado dos lecturas: una, que se remonta a Alejandro de Afrodisia, que lo asocia con el motor inmóvil y con la divinidad y otra, asociada a Teofrasto pero que tiene en Filópono y St. Tomás de Aquino a sus principales representantes, que lo considera una facultad puramente (...) humana. Esta última interpretación ha sido históricamente la más sostenida; sin embargo, en tiempos recientes ha habido un resurgimiento de interpretaciones del intelecto agente como “divino”. Lo que queremos mostrar en este texto es que este resurgimiento se debe, más que a una reinterpretación del intelecto agente, a una comprensión diferente de la divinidad en la filosofía aristotélica, con características inmanentes y más próximas al intelecto humano. (shrink)