Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, on Intellect: Their Cosmologies, Theories of the Active Intellect, and Theories of Human Intellect.

ing, receiving, and conceiving every material form [as an intelligible thought]," it "is called the acting acquired intellect [Greek: the active intellect... from without]"; for it is "not any part and power of our soul, but rather appears in us from without." If the statements quoted so far may be correlated, the De intellectu maintains that the transcendent active intellect enters man from without, it fixes a habitus for thought in the human intellect, it thereby leads the potential intellect to actuality, and the human intellect begins to think. Still a further amplification, or perhaps an alternative position, follows. Aristotle had drawn a parallel between intellect and sense perception,87 and the De intellectu plays on the parallel to expound what it calls "Aristotle's" reasons for "introducing an acquired intellect [Greek: the intellect from without]." The exposition begins with the assertion that whenever anything "comes into existence," three factors must be present. These are "something undergoing affection, something active and a third thing,... namely, that which is generated ... from them." In sense perception, the three factors are "the sense faculty,. . . the sense perceptible, and something generated, namely, the perception " And by analogy, thought too must contain a similar set of three factors. The argument focuses on the second of the factors found in all processes whereby things come into existence, hence in sense perception, and hence in thought as well. The second factor in all processes is "something active." In sense perception, where the De intellectu calls the second factor "the sense perceptible," the text accordingly explains that the factor in question is "something active," an agent enabling the sense faculty to pass to actuality. Since thought requires the same set of factors, it too must have a factor with the character of the second one in sense perception, with the character of the factor rendering the sense faculty actual. And such a factor in thought can be nothing other than "an actual active intellect." Consequently, "just as there exist things that are actually sense perceptible and that render sensation actual, so too there must exist things that, being themselves actually intelligible, render the ... intellect actual."89 There must exist "an actual active intellect that renders the hitherto potential intellect capable of thinking," "brings the material, potential intellect to actuality," and renders "all existent things 86 De inlellectu 108. Above, p. 19. In the sequel, not quoted here, the De intellectu ascribes plainly Stoic theories to this "Aristotle"; see below, p. 30. Zeller, followed by Bruns, the editor of the De intellectu, therefore ingeniously conjectured that "Aristotle" is a copyist's error for "Aristokles," the name of Alexander's supposed teacher. See Zeller (n. 26 above) 815. P. Moraux, Der Aristotelismus bei den Griechen 2 (Berlin 1984) 83 and n. 6, has responded that Alexander had a teacher named Aristotle and that the reference is to him. See also F. Trabucco, "II problema del de Philosophia di Aristocle di Messene e la sua doctrina," Acme 11 (1958) 117, 119. The Arabic manuscripts are garbled here. My translation is partly conjectural but it is compatible with the Greek original. Greek and Arabic Antecedents 23 intelligible." This factor in thought, which parallels what is actually sense perceptible, and which brings the human intellect to actuality, is an "intellect... entering from without," according to the original Greek. It is "acquired from without," according to the medieval Arabic translation. The De intellectu fails to identify what it is that is actually sense perceptible and that makes the sense faculty actual. When Averroes later read the De intellectu, he understood that in the case of vision, the actually sense perceptible is light, and the pages in the De intellectu coming after the statements just quoted tend to corroborate Averroes' interpretation. The De intellectu now argues the new, unexpected proposition that the human material intellect is not, after all, wholly "passive" but is "active" as well, and further that it develops spontaneously, as the "ambulatory faculty" in man spontaneously passes to actuality with time. To illustrate how the human intellect can be both active and passive, the De intellectu expands the repertoire of analogies by comparing the human intellect to an additional phenomenon, fire. Fire has two sides. It has an active side, which "destroys ... matter," but at the same time it also "feeds on" matter, and "insofar as it feeds on matter, it passively undergoes affection." Similarly, the "acting \fdcil] intellect in us"—which here means the human material intellect, described in the lines immediately preceding as active—both "separates off forms through its active side and "takes hold" of them through its passive side. Lest anyone suppose that recognizing an active side of the human intellect leaves the transcendent active intellect otiose, the De intellectu insists: Although the human potential intellect develops spontaneously, the active intellect "acquired from without [nonetheless] . .. assists the human intellect." The need for an active intellect is justified through the familiar analogy of light, already mentioned in an earlier passage of the De intellectu, and at this point the De intellectu extracts a little more from the analogy than it previously did. "Light.. . produces. .. actual sight" and, concomitantly with being "seen itself," renders "color" visible. Human thought similarly requires an active intellect that enters man and becomes "an object of thought" (according to the Greek but blurred in the Arabic translation), thereby "perfecting" the already active material intellect and "fixing the habitus [for thought] in it." In perfecting the human intellect, the active intellect becomes itself an actual object of thought, just as light becomes an actual object of sight in the course of activating the faculty of vision. In sum, the De intellectu first states generally that the active intellect renders the material intellect actual by entering man from without and fixing a habitus for thought in the material intellect; Alexander, or whoever wrote the work, supports De intellectu 110. Below, p. 325. Alexander's De anima 82, instead contrasts the ambulatory faculty, which becomes actualized naturally, with the intellectual faculty, which does not. Ibid. 111. 24 Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, on Intellect the statement through Aristotle's comparison of the active intellect to light yet ignores the analogy's implications. The De intellectu then develops another Aristotelian notion and compares the process of thought to the process of sensation. The parallel with sensation leads to the conclusion that human material intellect is activated by the active intellect in the way that the sense faculty is activated by what is actually sense perceptible. In a final clarification of the nature of actual human thought, the De intellectu submits that the material intellect is itself active, like fire, and develops spontaneously, like the ambulatory faculty. But even when recognizing an active side of the human intellect, the De intellectu still insists on the need for an external active intellect. The external active intellect enters the material intellect from without and becomes its actual object of thought, as light, besides illumining visible objects, serves as the actual object of vision. Of interest for us in Plotinus is not his full doctrine of intellect but selected remarks. Plotinus' cosmic Intellect has a certain resemblance to the Aristotelian active intellect, the cause of actual human thought, and the resemblance increases when the active intellect is taken to be a transcendent substance. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that Plotinus employed what was to become the standard argument for the existence of the active intellect as an argument for the existence of his own cosmic Intellect. In the wording of the Arabic paraphrase of the Enneads, an intellect must exist which brings about actual thought in soul, because "potentiality passes to actuality only through a cause that is in actuality similar to [what] the [former is in] potentiality." In the original Greek, the argument is designed to prove that above the hypostasis Soul there stands the hypostasis Intellect. The Arabic paraphrase leaves uncertain, however, whether cosmic Soul or individual human souls are at issue. The anonymous Arabic paraphrase offering the argument might thus be treated as a text belonging to the Peripatetic mainstream, and the argument read as establishing the existence of an already actual intellect that brings the human rational soul to the state of actual thought. Part or all of human intellectual knowledge is, for Plotinus, communicated to the human rational soul directly by the cosmic Intellect. Plotinus writes that whenever "a soul is able to receive," Intellect "gives" it clear principles, and then "it [the soul] combines" those principles "until it reaches perfect intellect." In other passages the scope of the knowledge communicated by Intellect is broadened beyond "clear principles." In the wording of one of the Arabic paraphrases of Plotinus: "The intellectual sciences, which are the true sciences, come only from Intellect to the rational soul." And the paraphrase known as the Theology of Aristotle brings Risala ft al-llm al-flahi, in Plotinus apud Arabes, ed. A. Badawi (Cairo 1955) 168, paralleling Enneads 5.9.4. For the principle, see above, p. 18, and cf. Theology of Aristotle (n. 54 above) 38, paralleling Enneads 4.7.8. 95 Enneads 1.3.5. 96Risdlafi al-cllm al-flahl 169, paralleling Enneads 5.9.7. Greek and Arabic Antecedents 25 the matter-form dichotomy to bear, maintaining: Soul has "the status of matter," it "receives the form of Intellect, and "reason occurs in soul only thanks to Intellect." The ori