Anaxagoras (; , "Anaxagoras", "lord of the assembly"; BC) was a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. Born in Clazomenae at a time when Asia Minor was under the control of the Persian Empire, Anaxagoras came to Athens. According to Diogenes Laërtius and Plutarch, in later life he was charged with impiety and went into exile in Lampsacus; the charges may have been political, owing to his association with Pericles, if they were not fabricated by later ancient biographers. Responding to the claims of Parmenides on the impossibility of change, Anaxagoras described the world as a mixture of primary imperishable ingredients, where material variation was never caused by an absolute presence of a particular ingredient, but rather by its relative preponderance over the other ingredients; in his words, "each one is...
Introduction
Anaxagoras
Anaxagoras | Introduction
He was a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. He was a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. He was a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. He was a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher
where is the solar system located in our galaxy
user
The Solar System, is located in the Milky Way's galactic habitable zone.
assistant
what is the milky way?
user
It is the galaxy that contains our Solar System.
assistant
can you tell me the names of the stars that form a part of this galaxy?
user
The Milky Way may contain ten billion white dwarfs, a billion neutron stars, and a hundred million stellar black holes.
assistant
can this galaxy be seen from earth in the northern hemisphere?
user
The Milky Way is visible from Earth as a hazy band of white light, some 30° wide, arching across the night sky.  As viewed from Earth, the visible region of the Milky Way's galactic plane occupies an area of the sky that includes 30 constellations.
assistant
how would you describe its size?
user
The Milky Way is the second-largest galaxy in the Local Group with its stellar disk approximately in diameter and, on average, approximately thick. The Milky Way is approximately 890 billion times the mass of the Sun.
assistant
name the structural parts of this.
user
Sorry. I cannot find the answer based on the context.
assistant
what is the estimated age of this galaxy?
user
Several individual stars have been found in the Milky Way's halo with measured ages very close to the 13.80-billion-year age of the Universe.
assistant
what are the names of the intellects who studied and observed this cluster of stars?
user
Aristotle, Anaxagoras, Democritus
assistant
what is the professional background of the first person mentioned?
user
He  was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece.
assistant
which period did he exist?
user
384–322 BC
assistant
what was his contribution as an intellect?
user
Aristotle's work encompassed virtually all facets of intellectual inquiry. Aristotle makes philosophy in the broad sense coextensive with reasoning, which he also would describe as "science".
assistant
were any of his original writings recovered?
user
The works of Aristotle that have survived from antiquity through medieval manuscript transmission are collected in the Corpus Aristotelicum. These texts, as opposed to Aristotle's lost works, are technical philosophical treatises from within Aristotle's school.
assistant
what is the professional background of the second person mentioned amongst the intellects?
user
this knod of intellect counted as a journey from general knowledge to special knowledge. this intellect also is the second perfection of intellect. However, this kind of reason allows to human free themselves from illusion and errors.
Aql bi-l-fi'l | Concept
The active intellect, as in Alfarabi, is the last in the chain. Avicenna sees active intellect as the cause not only of intelligible thought and the forms in the "sublunar" world we people live, but also the matter. (In other words, three effects.) Concerning the workings of the human soul, Avicenna, like Al Farabi, sees the "material intellect" or potential intellect as something that is not material. He believed the soul was incorporeal, and the potential intellect was a disposition of it which was in the soul from birth. As in Al Farabi there are two further stages of potential for thinking, which are not yet actual thinking, first the mind acquires the most basic intelligible thoughts which we can not think in any other way, such as "the whole is greater than the part", then comes a second level of derivative intelligible thoughts which could be thought.
Nous | Avicenna
Aristotle, in his "On the Soul" believes that human intellect at first is just a receptive faculty. This receptive capacity becomes actual by receiving the forms of things. It seems that Farabi for the first time in his book Treatise on Reason ( Risala fi'l-aql) renders the hierarchy of intellect following his theory on intellection. There Farabi tried to distinguish six meanings of Aql. The fifth intellect among them is very important. Farabi took notice to elaborate this kind of Aql in correct. Fifth reason itself divided to four stages, wherepotential Aql is the first stage. Other stages include actual intellect, acquired intellect and finally active intellect.
Aql Bil Quwwah | Historical background
The idea of a single, universal intellect associated with all human knowledge had been proposed by philosophers before Averroes. The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BC) proposes a "maker intellect" which enables thinking by making things intelligible, much like light allows seeing by making things visible. Plotinus (d. 270), whose works were well known in the Islamic world, proposed that human beings gained knowledge through their relation to a divine intellect. Muslim philosophers Al-Farabi (d. 951) and Avicenna (also known as Ibn Sina, d. 1037) further develop this theory and call it the "agent intellect", which gives forms to matter and facilitates human knowledge.
Averroes's theory of the unity of the intellect | Background
This does not mean that at one time it thinks but at another time it does not think, but when separated it is just exactly what it is, and this alone is deathless and everlasting (though we have no memory, because this sort of intellect is not acted upon, while the sort that is acted upon is destructible), and without this nothing thinks. The passage tries to explain "how the human intellect passes from its original state, in which it does not think, to a subsequent state, in which it does." He inferred that the energeia/dunamis distinction must also exist in the soul itself.
Active intellect | Aristotle's conception
This is what Robin Smith says in English that Aristotle said in Ancient Greek: "... If M belongs to every N but to no X, then neither will N belong to any X. For if M belongs to no X, neither does X belong to any M; but M belonged to every N; therefore, X will belong to no N (for the first figure has again come about)." The above statement can be simplified by using the symbolical method used in the Middle Ages: If MaN
Prior Analytics | Syllogism in the second figure
Averroes expounds his thoughts on psychology in his three commentaries on Aristotle's "On the Soul". Averroes is interested in explaining the human intellect using philosophical methods and by interpreting Aristotle's ideas. His position on the topic changed throughout his career as his thoughts developed. In his short commentary, the first of the three works, Averroes follows Ibn Bajja's theory that something called the "material intellect" stores specific images that a person encounters. These images serve as basis for the "unification" by the universal "agent intellect", which, once it happens, allow a person to gain universal knowledge about that concept. In his middle commentary, Averroes moves towards the ideas of Al-Farabi and Avicenna, saying the agent intellect gives humans the power of universal understanding, which is the material intellect.
Averroes | Psychology
Aristotle says that the intellect ("nous"), the ability to think, has no bodily organ (in contrast with other psychological abilities, such as sense-perception and imagination). Aristotle distinguishes between two types of intellect. These are traditionally called the "passive intellect" and the "active (or agent) intellect". He says that the "active (or agent) intellect" is not mixed with the body and suggests that it can exist apart from it. In his Metaphysics book Xll, he equates the active nous with the unmoved mover, of the universe, the cosmic nous, which is an idea already present in the texts of Plato. The passive nous is like clay; it can become anything and is subject to change.
Hylomorphism | Intellect
The secondary literature on Aristotle is vast. The following is only a small selection.
Aristotle | Further reading
The Peripatetic axiom is: "Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses" (Latin: ""Nihil est in intellectu quod non sit prius in sensu""). It is found in Thomas Aquinas's "De veritate, q. 2 a. 3 arg. 19". Aquinas adopted this principle from the Peripatetic school of Greek philosophy, established by Aristotle. Aquinas argued that the existence of God could be proved by reasoning from sense data. He used a variation on the Aristotelian notion of the "active intellect" ("intellectus agens") which he interpreted as the ability to abstract universal meanings from particular empirical data.
Peripatetic axiom | Introduction
On the other hand, concerning the active intellect, like Alexander and Plotinus, he saw this as a transcendent being existing above and outside man. Differently from Alexander, he did not equate this being with the first cause of the Universe itself, but something lower. However he equated it with Plato's Idea of the Good.
Nous | Themistius
Themistius, another influential commentator on this matter, understood Aristotle differently, stating that the passive or material intellect does "not employ a bodily organ for its activity, is wholly unmixed with the body, impassive, and separate [from matter]". This means the human potential intellect, and not only the active intellect, is an incorporeal substance, or a disposition of incorporeal substance. For Themistius, the human soul becomes immortal "as soon as the active intellect intertwines with it at the outset of human thought". This understanding of the intellect was also very influential for Al-Farabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, and "virtually all Islamic and Jewish philosophers".
Nous | Themistius
This sort of intellect [which is like light in the way it makes potential things work as what they are] is separate, as well as being without attributes and unmixed, since it is by its thinghood a being-at-work ["energeia"], for what acts is always distinguished in stature above what is acted upon, as a governing source is above the material it works on. Knowledge ["epistēmē"], in its being-at-work, is the same as the thing it knows, and while knowledge in potency comes first in time in any one knower, in the whole of things it does not take precedence even in time.
Nous | Aristotle
The "Exercitationes" excited much attention, though they contain little or nothing beyond what others had already advanced against Aristotle. The first book expounds clearly, and with much vigour, the evil effects of the blind acceptance of the Aristotelian "dicta" on physical and philosophical study; but, as occurs with so many of the anti-Aristotelian works of this period, the objections show the usual ignorance of Aristotle's own writings. The second book, which contains the review of Aristotle's dialectic or logic, throughout reflects Ramism in tone and method. One of the objections to Descartes became famous through Descartes's statement of it in the appendix of objections in the "Meditations".
Pierre Gassendi | Philosophical writing
When these different shapes of atoms come to us, they stimulate our senses according to their shape, and our sensual impressions arise from those stimulations. The second sort of knowledge, the "legitimate" one, can be achieved through the intellect, in other words, all the sense data from the "bastard" must be elaborated through reasoning. In this way one can get away from the false perception of the "bastard" knowledge and grasp the truth through inductive reasoning. After taking into account the sense impressions, one can examine the causes of the appearances, draw conclusions about the laws that govern the appearances, and discover the causality (αἰτιολογία, "aetiologia") by which they are related.
Democritus | Epistemology
Alexander of Aphrodisias was a Peripatetic (Aristotelian) and his "On the Soul" (referred to as "De anima" in its traditional Latin title), explained that by his interpretation of Aristotle, potential intellect in man, that which has no nature but receives one from the active intellect, is material, and also called the "material intellect" ("nous hulikos") and it is inseparable from the body, being "only a disposition" of it. He argued strongly against the doctrine of immortality. On the other hand, he identified the active intellect ("nous poietikos"), through whose agency the potential intellect in man becomes actual, not with anything from within people, but with the divine creator itself.
Nous | Alexander of Aphrodisias
Anacharsis cultivated the outsider's knack of seeing the illogic in familiar things. For example, Plutarch remarks that he "expressed his wonder at the fact that in Greece wise men spoke and fools decided." His conversation was droll and frank, and Solon and the Athenians took to him as a sage and philosopher. His rough and free discourse became proverbial among Athenians as 'Scythian discourse'.
Anacharsis | Life
Aristotle, in his biology initially believed the heart to be the seat of intelligence, and saw the brain as a cooling mechanism for the blood. He reasoned that humans are more rational than the beasts because, among other reasons, they have a larger brain to cool their hot-bloodedness. Aristotle did describe the meninges and distinguished between the cerebrum and cerebellum. Herophilus of Chalcedon in the fourth and third centuries BC distinguished the cerebrum and the cerebellum, and provided the first clear description of the ventricles; and with Erasistratus of Ceos experimented on living brains. Their works are now mostly lost, and we know about their achievements due mostly to secondary sources.
Human brain | Early history
Previous scholars had noted that ancient texts refer to an "Aristotle" as a teacher of Alexander of Aphrodisias, and, unaware of any 2nd-century philosophers by that name, had emended the name to "Aristocles". If Moraux's theory is correct, and Aristotle of Mytilene was Alexander's teacher, then his philosophical views are represented in a passage of Alexander's "On Intellect" dealing with the doctrine of "the external intellect".
Aristotle of Mytilene | Introduction
Aristotle's "De anima" ("On the Soul") divides the mind into three parts: sensation, imagination and intellection. When one perceives an object, his mind composites a sense-image. When he remembers the object he previously sensed, he is imagining its form (the image of the imagination is often translated as "phantasm"). When he extracts information from this phantasm, he is using his intellect. Consequently, all human knowledge concerning universals (such as species and properties) are derived from the phantasm ("the received is in the receiver according to the mode of the receiver"), which itself is a recollection of an experience. Concerning the question of "Whether the intellect can actually understand through the intelligible species of which it is possessed, without turning to the phantasms?" in the "Summa Theologica", Aquinas quotes Aristotle in the "sed contra": "the soul understands nothing without a phantasm." Hence the peripatetic axiom.
Thomism | Epistemology
This sort of intellect [which is like light in the way it makes potential things work as what they are] is separate, as well as being without attributes and unmixed, since it is by its thinghood a being-at-work, for what acts is always distinguished in stature above what is acted upon, as a governing source is above the material it works on. Knowledge ("epistēmē"), in its being-at-work, is the same as the thing it knows, and while knowledge in potency comes first in time in any one knower, in the whole of things it does not take precedence even in time.
Active intellect | Aristotle's conception
Therefore, if Pericles was, at the same time, the most eloquent and the most powerful politician in Athens, we cannot conclude that both these distinct qualities are necessary to the same person. If Publius Crassus was, at the same time, an excellent orator and an expert of right, not for this we can conclude that the knowledge of right is inside the abilities of the oratory. Indeed, when a person has a reputation in one art and then he learns well another, he seems that the second one is part of his first excellence. One could call poets those who are called "physikoi" by the Greeks, just because the Empedocles, the physicist, wrote an excellent poem.
De Oratore | Definition of orator, according to Antonius
The Tayyibi system of ten Intellects is adopted from the ten Intellects of the Fatimid "da’i" Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani, in a departure from Fatimid cosmological Neoplatonism. However, in Kirmani’s system, the First Intellect emanates two beings: the Second Intellect and the Potential Intellect, which is primordial Matter and Form. The Second Intellect emanates eight other Intellects in successive emanation, while the nine spheres of the Aristotelian cosmos proceed from the activities of each of the Intellects upon the Potential Intellect. The Potential Intellect—an emanation of the First Intellect subordinate in rank to the Second Intellect—is responsible for the physical world.
Tenth intellect | Historical origins: Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani, Ibraham al-Hamidi and non-Islamic influences
For example, a stone has in its nature the potentiality of falling to the earth and it will do so, and actualize this natural tendency, if nothing is in the way. Aristotle analyzed thinking in the same way. For him, the possibility of understanding rests on the relationship between intellect and sense perception. Aristotle's remarks on the concept of what came to be called the "active intellect" and "passive intellect" (along with various other terms) are amongst "the most intensely studied sentences in the history of philosophy". The terms are derived from a single passage in Aristotle's "De Anima", Book III.
Nous | Aristotle
Rémi Brague in his book devoted to the Treatise stresses the fact that Farabi is the only thinker mentioned therein. Al-Farabi as well as Ibn Sina and Averroes have been recognized as Peripatetics ("al-Mashsha’iyu"n) or rationalists ("Estedlaliun") among Muslims. However, he tried to gather the ideas of Plato and Aristotle in his book "The gathering of the ideas of the two philosophers". According to Adamson, his work was singularly directed towards the goal of simultaneously reviving and reinventing the Alexandrian philosophical tradition, to which his Christian teacher, Yuhanna bin Haylan belonged. His success should be measured by the honorific title of "the second master" of philosophy (Aristotle being the first), by which he was known.
Al-Farabi | Al-Farabi, Aristotle, Maimonides
Reevaluating Avicenna, and also Augustine and Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas stated in his "Disputed Questions on Truth": Thus, for Aquinas, the truth of the human intellect (logical truth) is based on the truth in things (ontological truth). Following this, he wrote an elegant re-statement of Aristotle's view in his Summa I.16.1:
Truth | Aquinas (1225–1274)
Anaximander (; "Anaximandros"; ) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who lived in Miletus, a city of Ionia (in modern-day Turkey). He belonged to the Milesian school and learned the teachings of his master Thales. He succeeded Thales and became the second master of that school where he counted Anaximenes and, arguably, Pythagoras amongst his pupils. Little of his life and work is known today. According to available historical documents, he is the first philosopher known to have written down his studies, although only one fragment of his work remains. Fragmentary testimonies found in documents after his death provide a portrait of the man.
Anaximander | Introduction
Aristotle elaborates on this point when he addresses the faculties of the soul. The various faculties of the soul, such as nutrition, movement (peculiar to animals), reason (peculiar to humans), sensation (special, common, and incidental) and so forth, when exercised, constitute the "second" actuality, or fulfillment, of the capacity to be alive. For example, someone who falls asleep, as opposed to someone who falls dead, can wake up and live their life, while the latter can no longer do so. Aristotle identified three hierarchical levels of natural beings: plants, animals, and people, having three different degrees of soul: "Bios" (life), "Zoë" (animate life), and "Psuchë" (self-conscious life).
Soul | Aristotle
The second field is the study of nomenclature. As the Character rose as a literary genre, many terms were coined in attempt to place labels on the new subject. The translation Theophrastus' title is based on the terms "charassein" and "Charakter", associated with the stamping of an impression. Rhetorica ad Herennium (c. 20 BC), attributed to Cicero, split the character up into two qualities: "effictio", the description of physical appearance, and "notation", the nature of man. Later in his De Inventione, Cicero divided the character, or "conformation" as he called it, into eleven points: name, nature ("natura"), way of life ("victus"), fortune ("fortuna"), physical appearance ("habitus"), passions ("affectio"), interests ("studium"), reasons for doing things ("consilium"), one's deeds ("factum"), what happens to one ("casus"), one's discourses ("orationes").
Stock character | Laërtius
Some of the missing parts of the second book (chapters 15, 31, 33, and 46) have, however, been recovered from a 14th-century gnomology. His knowledge of physics — in the wide sense which the Greeks assigned to this term — is often untrustworthy. Stobaeus betrays a tendency to confound the dogmas of the early Ionian philosophers, and he occasionally mixes up Platonism with Pythagoreanism. For part of the first book and much of the second, it is clear that he depended on the (lost) works of the Peripatetic philosopher Aetius and the Stoic philosopher Arius Didymus.
Stobaeus | Books 1 and 2
Although it cannot be excluded that this was the same person, it appears more probable that this Aristotle was a son or a relative of the dialectician.
Aristotle the Dialectician | Introduction
Al Kindi also pointed out to a kind of intellect could reach from the state of potentiality, to the state of actuality. Farabi pointed out the first level of actualization of intellect is the potential intellect. the second stage is to Aql bi'l fil or actual intellect. The actual intellect reflects upon itself. in other word when intellect acquired forms and categories, reflects upon itself, this action called as actual intellect. of course Groff classify the actual intellect as third. meanwhile Farabi used the term Aql bi'l fil for intellect in full exercise of its powers. also Iji, known theologian, referred to the actual intellect versus potential.
Aql bi-l-fi'l | Historical background
Pomponazzi claimed the right to study Aristotle for himself, and devoted himself to the "De anima" with the view of showing that Thomas Aquinas had entirely misconceived the Aristotelian theory of the active and the passive intellect.
Pietro Pomponazzi | Biography
The active intellect (Latin: "intellectus agens"; also translated as agent intellect, active intelligence, active reason, or productive intellect) is a concept in classical and medieval philosophy. The term refers to the formal ("morphe") aspect of the intellect ("nous"), in accordance with the theory of hylomorphism. The nature of the active intellect was the subject of intense discussion in medieval philosophy, as various Muslim, Jewish and Christian thinkers sought to reconcile their commitment to Aristotle's account of the body and soul to their own theological commitments. At stake in particular was in what way Aristotle's account of an incorporeal soul might contribute to understanding of the nature of eternal life.
Active intellect | Introduction
By 1268 Aquinas had written at least the first book of the "Sententia Libri De anima", Aquinas' commentary on Aristotle's "De anima", the translation of which from the Greek was completed by Aquinas' Dominican associate at Viterbo William of Moerbeke in 1267. Like Aristotle, Aquinas held that the human being was a unified composite substance of two substantial principles: form and matter. The soul is the substantial form and so the first actuality of a material organic body with the potentiality for life. While Aquinas defended the unity of human nature as a composite substance constituted by these two inextricable principles of form and matter, he also argued for the incorruptibility of the intellectual soul, in contrast to the corruptibility of the vegetative and sensitive animation of plants and animals.
Mind–body dualism | From Neoplatonism to scholasticism
Descartes did not provide a well-theorized explanation of the self since his views on the subject were primarily found in the first-person narrative in "Meditations". However, key features of the concept can be identified such as the way the immaterial thinking self is disembodied and is doomed to isolation. The nature of the self was specifically addressed in the Second Meditation wherein the narrator stated: "I am, then, in the strict sense only a thing that thinks; that is, I am a mind, or intelligence, or reason - words whose meaning I have been ignorant of until now." Descartes concluded famously that Cogito ergo sum, "I think, therefore I am", but realized that according to his wax argument you could never similarly demonstrate the existence of the 'other'.
Cartesian Self | Background
He was the first of his intellectual circle to raise the philosophy of Plato above that of Aristotle and to teach philosophy as a professor. Surpassing Photius in intellect and wit, he lacks that scholar's dignity and solidity of character. A restless brilliance characterized his life and literary activity. At first a lawyer, then a professor; now a monk, now a court official; he ended his career the prime minister. He was equally adroit and many-sided in his literary work; in harmony with the polished, pliant nature of the courtier is his elegant Platonic style of his letters and speeches.
Byzantine literature | Encyclopedists and essayists
Avempace (also known as Ibn Bajja, d. 1138) proposed a theory of the intellect that was to influence Averroes's theory, but, according to the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, his preserved works are so obscure and incomplete that scholars of philosophy do not know how well-developed his theory was. Averroes's idea is different from the previous theories because the other ones hold that the universal intellect is superhuman and that each human individual has its own intellect, while Averroes identifies the single intellect with the mind of all humans. While Averroes propounds his general ideas on human intellect in all of his three commentaries on Aristotle's "On the Soul", this theory only appears in his final long commentary.
Averroes's theory of the unity of the intellect | Background
A couple emphasized topics to be found in the first section are "certitude and the psychology of logic." It includes a medieval examination of epistemological issues; such as the certainty of knowledge. A strong Aristotelian appreciation is felt in the remaining sections, since the majority of the work is dedicated to commenting on the first eight chapters of Aristotle's "Physics", and his treatises "On Generation and Corruption" & "On the Soul". In those sections of the "Summa" will be found discussions and commentary on such topics as: alteration, change (i.e., the measure of motion), properties of natural bodies and their forms (parts II and III); questions dealing with classification (e.g., "whether light belongs to some element"; motions and changes of bodies/forms (parts IV – VI); and in the final sections an examination of the intellect and matters of the soul (parts VII – IX).
John Dumbleton | Philosophical contributions
Sachs comments that the nature of the active intellect was "the source of a massive amount of commentary and of fierce disagreement"; elsewhere, chapter 5 of "De Anima" has been referred to as "the most intensely studied sentences in the history of philosophy". As Davidson remarks: Just what Aristotle meant by potential intellect and active intellect - terms not even explicit in the "De anima" and at best implied - and just how he understood the interaction between them remains moot. Students of the history of philosophy continue to debate Aristotle's intent, particularly the question whether he considered the active intellect to be an aspect of the human soul or an entity existing independently of man.
Active intellect | Interpretations
Alexamenus of Teos () was, according to Aristotle in his dialogue "On Poets", the first person who wrote Socratic dialogues before the time of Plato. An Aristotelian papyrus from Oxyrhynchus claims that this is merely malicious gossip by Aristotle.
Alexamenus of Teos | Introduction
Whereas Malebranche followed Augustine in his description of intellectual knowledge, in his approach to mind–body problems he began as a follower of Descartes. But in contrast to Descartes, who considered it possible to form a clear and distinct idea of the mind, Malebranche argues in the "Dialogues on Metaphysics", a dialogue between Theodore and Aristes, that we do not have a complete conception of the powers of the mind, and thus no clear conception of the nature of the mind. I am unable, when I turn to myself, to recognize any of my faculties or my capacities. The inner sensation which I have of myself informs me that I am, that I think, that I will, that I have sensory awareness, that I suffer, and so on; but it provides me with no knowledge whatever of "what" I am – of the nature of my thought, my sensations, my passions, or my pain – or of the mutual relations that obtain between all these things.
Nicolas Malebranche | Malebranche's dualism
Plotinus and the later Platonists worked to clarify the Demiurge. To Plotinus, the second emanation represents an uncreated second cause (see Pythagoras' Dyad). Plotinus sought to reconcile Aristotle's "energeia" with Plato's Demiurge, which, as Demiurge and mind ("nous"), is a critical component in the ontological construct of human consciousness used to explain and clarify substance theory within Platonic realism (also called idealism). In order to reconcile Aristotelian with Platonian philosophy, Plotinus metaphorically identified the demiurge (or "nous") within the pantheon of the Greek Gods as Zeus.
Demiurge | Neoplatonism
The idea is first encountered in Aristotle's "De Anima", Book III. Following is the translation of one of those passages ("De Anima", Bk. III, ch. 5, 430a10-25) by Joe Sachs, with some notes about the Greek: ...since in nature one thing is the material ("hulē") for each kind "(genos)" (this is what is in potency all the particular things of that kind) but it is something else that is the causal and productive thing by which all of them are formed, as is the case with an art in relation to its material, it is necessary in the soul ("psuchē") too that these distinct aspects be present; the one sort is intellect ("nous") by becoming all things, the other sort by forming all things, in the way an active condition ("hexis") like light too makes the colors that are in potency be at work as colors ("to phōs poiei ta dunamei onta chrōmata energeiai chrōmata").
Active intellect | Aristotle's conception
The unity of the intellect is a philosophical theory proposed by the Muslim medieval Andalusian philosopher Averroes (1126–1198), which asserted that all humans share the same intellect. Averroes expounded his theory in his long commentary of "On the Soul" to explain how universal knowledge is possible within the Aristotelian theory of mind. Averroes's theory was influenced by related ideas by previous thinkers such as Aristotle, Plotinus, Al-Farabi, Avicenna (Ibn Sina) and Avempace (Ibn Bajja). When Averroes's works were translated into Latin, this theory was taken up and expanded by Averroists in Western Europe in the following centuries, such as Siger of Brabant, John of Jandun and John Baconthorpe.
Averroes's theory of the unity of the intellect | Introduction
Following is an English translation of the argument: However, Avicenna posited the brain as the place where reason interacts with sensation. Sensation prepares the soul to receive rational concepts from the universal Agent Intellect. The first knowledge of the flying person would be "I am," affirming his or her essence. That essence could not be the body, obviously, as the flying person has no sensation. Thus, the knowledge that "I am" is the core of a human being: the soul exists and is self-aware. Avicenna thus concluded that the idea of the self is not logically dependent on any physical thing, and that the soul should not be seen in relative terms, but as a primary given, a substance.
Avicenna | Thought experiments
It is more probably a later compilation made from the Confession by someone else. It should be noticed that Gennadius's (quasi-Platonic) philosophy is in evidence in his Confession (God cannot be interpreted, "theos" from "theein", etc.; cf. Rimmel. Either for the same reason or to spare Muslim susceptibility he avoids the word "Prosopa" in explaining the Trinity, speaking of the three Persons as "idiomata" "which we call Hypostases".
Gennadius Scholarius | Second Period (anti-Union)
This illumination removes all accident (such as time, place, quality) and physicality from them, converting them into primary intelligibles, which are logical principles such as "the whole is greater than the part". The human intellect, by its act of intellection, passes from potentiality to actuality, and as it gradually comprehends these intelligibles, it is identified with them (as according to Aristotle, by knowing something, the intellect becomes like it). Because the Agent Intellect knows all of the intelligibles, this means that when the human intellect knows all of them, it becomes associated with the Agent Intellect's perfection and is known as the acquired Intellect.
Al-Farabi | Epistemology and eschatology
The second work that Kiyozawa was inspired by was the Discourses of Epictetus. The philosopher was a slave as a young man and handicapped because of it but this did not stop his pursuit of the truth. This perseverance was admired by Kiyozawa as Epictetus believed that pain has its origins in the unenlightened aspect of the self, and that pain can only be relieved by growth in the enlightened aspect of the self. The individual must go through this process of the self.
Kiyozawa Manshi | Intellectual influences
But if he failed in this, he would be born a second time, now as a woman." Plato also appears to use the term "womanish" or "female-like" as an derogatory term implying inferiority and emotional instability, as this is clear from "Republic" 469d and 605e, amongst others.
Aristotle's views on women | Comparison with Plato's views on women
Sayre's second book, "Plato's Late Ontology: A Riddle Resolved" (1983), argues that these views in fact are present in the "Philebus" but are expressed in terminology not frequently used by Aristotle.
Kenneth M. Sayre | Plato
According to a distinction that originates with Aristotle himself, his writings are divisible into two groups: the "exoteric" and the "esoteric". Most scholars have understood this as a distinction between works Aristotle intended for the public (exoteric), and the more technical works intended for use within the Lyceum course / school (esoteric). Modern scholars commonly assume these latter to be Aristotle's own (unpolished) lecture notes (or in some cases possible notes by his students). However, one classic scholar offers an alternative interpretation. The 5th century neoplatonist Ammonius Hermiae writes that Aristotle's writing style is deliberately obscurantist so that "good people may for that reason stretch their mind even more, whereas empty minds that are lost through carelessness will be put to flight by the obscurity when they encounter sentences like these."
Corpus Aristotelicum | Exoteric and esoteric
Camillo argues against "philosophers ignorant of God" who identify the "active intellect" with human reason, insofar as this one is usually absent from men, who are merely capable of it. The "active intellect" must reside safely and eternally "in God", so as to safeguard man's capacity to reason. As other ancient mythic "images" or "symbols," that of the three "Gorgoni" is used to protect the verities of the mind, or "the mystery of truth" ("il mistero della verita') from being profaned. By casting the principle of reason in the authoritative form of God, philosophers who do "not" ignore God defend reason from being turned into an instrument of the physical senses below it.
Giulio Camillo | "L’Idea del Theatro"
The analogy he provides to explain his theory is that of wood and fire. Wood, he argues, is potentially hot (just as a human is potentially thinking about a universal), and therefore requires something else which is already hot (such as fire) to actualize this. This means that for the human intellect to think about something, the First Intellect must already be thinking about it. Therefore, he says that the First Intellect must always be thinking about everything. Once the human intellect comprehends a universal by this process, it becomes part of the individual's "acquired intellect" and can be thought about whenever he or she wishes.
Al-Kindi | Epistemology
The fragments of Hecataeus suggest that he wrote only an annal-like sequence long on names and events but short on connecting narrative. To this framework Herodotus adds the logoi, or independent anecdotes of persons and events derived from independent oral traditions, which Herodotus obtained by interview with record-keepers and state historians. The disconnectedness comes from their being independent. It is pointless, therefore, to try to invent connections.
Aristagoras | The affirmative view
Until the early modern era, much of the discussion which has survived today concerning "nous" or intellect, in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, concerned how to correctly interpret Aristotle and Plato. However, at least during the classical period, materialist philosophies, more similar to modern science, such as Epicureanism, were still relatively common also. The Epicureans believed that the bodily senses themselves were not the cause of error, but the interpretations can be. The term "prolepsis" was used by Epicureans to describe the way the mind forms general concepts from sense perceptions. To the Stoics, more like Heraclitus than Anaxagoras, order in the cosmos comes from an entity called logos, the cosmic reason.
Nous | Post Aristotelian classical theories
This concept of intelligent spheres of existence also appears in Gnostic Christianity as Aeons, having been conceived at least eight hundred years before Maimonides. Maimonides’ immediate source was probably Avicenna, who may in turn have been influenced by the very similar scheme in Isma'ili Islam. This leads into a discussion about the merits of the debate whether the universe is eternal or created. As in the first book, Aristotle's theory of the eternity of the universe is seen as the best, philosophically. However, this is because Maimonides considered the proofs that the universe was created to be inferior. He still points out supposed problems with the Aristotelian view and states that, while Aristotle's argument is the best, the possession of Divine Revelation from the Torah is the extra piece of information necessary to decide the matter.
The Guide for the Perplexed | Book Two
His argument for the subsistence and incorruptibility of the intellectual soul takes its point of departure from the metaphysical principle that operation follows upon being ("agiture sequitur esse"), i.e., the activity of a thing reveals the mode of being and existence it depends upon. Since the intellectual soul exercises its own "per se" intellectual operations without employing material faculties, i.e. intellectual operations are immaterial, the intellect itself and the intellectual soul, must likewise be immaterial and so incorruptible. Even though the intellectual soul of man is able to subsist upon the death of the human being, Aquinas does not hold that the human person is able to remain integrated at death.
Mind–body dualism | From Neoplatonism to scholasticism
The cultivated rival suggests that the philosopher, while not needing to bother himself with the hands-on practicalities ("cheirourgia", 135b), should aspire to a level of understanding in all the arts ("technai") such that he is second only to the expert in that particular field—still a kind of polymathy. Socrates challenges this suggestion by forcing him to admit that, in any conceivable particular circumstance, the philosopher would be useless in comparison to a true expert on the matter. For example, a doctor would always be preferable to the philosopher in case of sickness, as would a pilot when in need to stir a ship.
Rival Lovers | Synopsis
Thomas Aquinas disagreed with this belief and devoted most of his writing to Averroism and criticized monopsychism. One of his works, a commentary on Aristotle's "On the soul", is titled "De unitate intellectus contra Averroistas". In this commentary, Aquinas demonstrates how Averroes misinterpreted Aristotle's argument, claiming that the correct interpretation was that an individual's intellect cannot be independent of his or her physical body.
Monopsychism | Aquinas
according to Avicenna's intellectual abstraction, the potential Aql act as possible intellect. this stage begins with absolute potency. Avicenna, following Farabi, counted for reason some degrees like the potential one. at the same time Avicenna claimed that the intellect of human beings becomes perfect due to a transcendent link with eternally intellection. Avicenna believes that the legislator who has potential intellect receives the intelligible forms from agent intellect in political philosophy. Averroes also believed that the potential intellect essentially belong to the immaterial scope like active intellect. also he maintained the potential Aql accidentally is belong to material faculties. Averroes also take a step further since that he believed that all human beings have only one potential intellect.
Aql Bil Quwwah | function in epistemology
In both cases, therefore, there came to be a very strong tendency to equate good with authentic, and shoddy with interpolated. This, too, was a mindset inherited from the Alexandrians.
Homeric scholarship | Common ground between Analysts and Unitarians
The Islamic philosophers al-Farabi (c.872–c.950) and Avicenna (c.980–1037), following Plotinus, maintained that Aristotle's movers, called intelligences, came into being through a series of emanations beginning with God. A first intelligence emanated from God, and from the first intelligence emanated a sphere, its soul, and a second intelligence. The process continued down through the celestial spheres until the sphere of the Moon, its soul, and a final intelligence. They considered that each sphere was moved continually by its soul, seeking to emulate the perfection of its intelligence. Avicenna maintained that besides an intelligence and its soul, each sphere was also moved by a natural inclination ("mayl").
Dynamics of the celestial spheres | Islamic interpreters
The second school of Sceptics is describe in Brahmajala Sutta in similar terms as the first, except that for them to be led to believe in a proposition by one's likes, desires, aversions, and resentments would be entanglement ("upadanam"), and such entanglement would be a source of worry ("vighato") and as such a moral danger ("antarayo"). According to Jayatilleke, this group adopted Scepticism mainly due to morality, since to do so otherwise would lead to lead to worry and mental disquietude ("vighata"), and not necessarily due to the considerations of rebirth, as understood according to the Buddhist connotation of the word "entanglement".
Ajñana | Second School
After a thesis on Plato, she shifted towards philosophy of language and logic and Wittgenstein. She is now a specialist of the Vienna Circle and of Wittgenstein.
Antonia Soulez | Thought
Similar observations argue against identifying the main figure as an "alchemist," a subject that would allow for other figures, such as an assistant tending a fire. The objects depicted suggest a domestic setting, yet the improbable architecture speaks more for a history than a genre subject. The French art historian Jean-Marie Clarke argues that the scene is ultimately derived from the Book of Tobit, one of Rembrandt's favorite Old Testament sources. The sole objection to this interpretation is that, apart from the two main figures—the blind Tobit and his wife Anna— there is no identifying attribute, such as Anna's spinning wheel.
Philosopher in Meditation | Subject matter
At the head of his system, Iamblichus placed the transcendent incommunicable "One", the "monad", whose first principle is intellect, "nous". Immediately after the absolute One, lamblichus introduced a second superexistent "One" to stand between it and 'the many' as the producer of intellect, or soul, "psyche". This is the initial "dyad". The first and highest One ("nous"), which Plotinus represented under the three stages of (objective) being, (subjective) life, and (realized) intellect, is distinguished by Iamblichus into spheres of intelligible and intellective, the latter sphere being the domain of thought, the former of the objects of thought. These three entities, the "psyche", and the "nous" split into the intelligible and the intellective, form a "triad".
Iamblichus | Iamblichus' cosmology
Aristo also rejected Physics, saying that it was beyond us. This is reflected in his views concerning God: Aristo holds that no form of God is conceivable, and denies him sensation, and is in a state of complete uncertainty as to whether he is, or is not, animate. This was in marked opposition to Zeno to whom "the universe was animate and possessed of reason." He did, however, agree with Zeno that Nature was comprehensible, arguing against the Academics. He once asked an Academic "Do you not even see the man who is sitting next to you?", and when the Academic replied, "I do not," Aristo said: "Who then has blinded you; who has robbed you of your eyes?"
Aristo of Chios | Physics
Aristotle was considered to give a more important position to sense perception than Plato, and commentators in the Middle Ages summarized one of his positions as ""nihil in intellectu nisi prius fuerit in sensu"" (Latin for "nothing in the intellect without first being in the senses").
Empiricism | c. 330 – 400 BCE
The active intellect was a concept Aristotle described that requires an understanding of the actuality-potentiality dichotomy. Aristotle described this in his "De Anima" (book 3, ch. 5, 430a10-25) and covered similar ground in his "Metaphysics" (book 12, ch.7-10). The following is from the "De Anima", translated by Joe Sachs, with some parenthetic notes about the Greek. The passage tries to explain "how the human intellect passes from its original state, in which it does not think, to a subsequent state, in which it does." He inferred that the energeia/dunamis distinction must also exist in the soul itself:- ...since in nature one thing is the material ["hulē"] for each kind ["genos"] (this is what is in potency all the particular things of that kind) but it is something else that is the causal and productive thing by which all of them are formed, as is the case with an art in relation to its material, it is necessary in the soul ["psuchē"] too that these distinct aspects be present; the one sort is intellect ["nous"] by becoming all things, the other sort by forming all things, in the way an active condition ["hexis"] like light too makes the colors that are in potency be at work as colors ["to phōs poiei ta dunamei onta chrōmata energeiai chrōmata"].
Potentiality and actuality | The active intellect
Aristotle, however, believed the heart was the center of intelligence and that the brain regulated the amount of heat from the heart. This view was generally accepted until the Roman physician Galen, a follower of Hippocrates and physician to Roman gladiators, observed that his patients lost their mental faculties when they had sustained damage to their brains.
Neuroscience | History
If the Anonymus Bellermanni source is correct, this implies that whole of the first half of each double-foot bar or measure is the thesis, and the whole of the second half is the arsis. Stefan Hagel, however, argues that this does not preclude the possibility that within the thesis and arsis there was a further hierarchy of strong and weak notes.
Seikilos epitaph | Stigmai
(This was in fact an old Aristotelian doctrine, which they took up, but as discussed above Aristotelians still believed that the senses on their own were not enough to explain the mind.) These philosophers explain the intellect as something developed from experience of sensations, being interpreted by the brain in a physical way, and nothing else, which means that absolute knowledge is impossible. For Bacon, Hobbes and Locke, who wrote in both English and Latin, ""intellectus"" was translated as "understanding". Far from seeing it as secure way to perceive the truth about reality, Bacon, for example, actually named the "intellectus" in his "Novum Organum", and the proœmium to his "Great Instauration", as a major source of wrong conclusions, because it is biased in many ways, for example towards over-generalizing.
Nous | Early modern philosophy
However, al-Kindi says that human intellects are only "potentially" able to comprehend these. This potential is actualized by the First Intellect, which is perpetually thinking about all of the universals. He argues that the external agency of this intellect is necessary by saying that human beings cannot arrive at a universal concept merely through perception. In other words, an intellect cannot understand the species of a thing simply by examining one or more of its instances. According to him, this will only yield an inferior "sensible form", and not the universal form which we desire. The universal form can only be attained through contemplation and actualization by the First Intellect.
Al-Kindi | Epistemology
The Second Alcibiades or Alcibiades II () is a dialogue traditionally ascribed to Plato. In it, Socrates attempts to persuade Alcibiades that it is unsafe for him to pray to the gods if he does not know whether what he prays for is actually good or bad for him. There is dispute amongst scholars about the text's authenticity, and it is generally considered apocryphal. The main criticisms of its authenticity revolve around its defective arguments, lack of humor, and style; those who consider it inauthentic date its composition to the 3rd or 2nd centuries BC.
Second Alcibiades | Introduction
In Aristotelian syllogistic ("Prior Analytics", Bk I Caps 4-7), syllogisms are divided into three figures according to the position of the middle term in the two premises. The fourth figure, in which the middle term is the predicate in the major premise and the subject in the minor, was added by Aristotle's pupil Theophrastus and does not occur in Aristotle's work, although there is evidence that Aristotle knew of fourth-figure syllogisms.
Prior Analytics | The fourth figure
In his "Nicomachean Ethics", Aristotle divides the soul ("psychē") into two parts, one which has reason and one which does not, but then divides the part which has reason into the reasoning ("logistikos") part itself which is lower, and the higher "knowing" ("epistēmonikos") part which contemplates general principles ("archai"). "Nous", he states, is the source of the first principles or sources ("archai") of definitions, and it develops naturally as people gain experience. This he explains after first comparing the four other truth revealing capacities of soul: technical know how ("technē"), logically deduced knowledge ("epistēmē", sometimes translated as "scientific knowledge"), practical wisdom ("phronēsis"), and lastly theoretical wisdom ("sophia"), which is defined by Aristotle as the combination of "nous" and "epistēmē".
Nous | Aristotle
This has been referred to as one of "the most intensely studied sentences in the history of philosophy". In the "Metaphysics", Aristotle wrote at more length on a similar subject and is often understood to have equated the active intellect with being the "unmoved mover" and God. Nevertheless, as Davidson remarks: Just what Aristotle meant by potential intellect and active intellect – terms not even explicit in the "De anima" and at best implied – and just how he understood the interaction between them remains moot to this day. Students of the history of philosophy continue to debate Aristotle's intent, particularly the question whether he considered the active intellect to be an aspect of the human soul or an entity existing independently of man.
Potentiality and actuality | The active intellect
He believes that the philosopher is key in furthering the fields of science. The philosopher must be able to stand back and observe science and nature with an impartial eye. Furthermore, the importance of science and the advancements of such intellects as Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, Descartes, John Locke and others are explained.
Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot | Part II
Concerning the actualization of thought, Avicenna applies the term "to two different things, to actual human thought, irrespective of the intellectual progress a man has made, and to actual thought when human intellectual development is complete", as in Al Farabi. When reasoning in the sense of deriving conclusions from syllogisms, Avicenna says people are using a physical "cogitative" faculty ("mufakkira, fikra") of the soul, which can err. The human cogitative faculty is the same as the "compositive imaginative faculty ("mutakhayyila") in reference to the animal soul". But some people can use "insight" to avoid this step and derive conclusions directly by conjoining with the active intellect.
Nous | Avicenna
This line of thought is also followed in the Summa Theologica and the Compendium of Theology. A basic question of Greek Philosophy: Can an organized hierarchy (as is seen in nature) exist in the absence of an intelligence? In the atheistic view, the answer is "yes". If one answers "no", then there is a necessity of an intelligent God. The Greeks called this ultimate intelligence the "gnos" or "nous" (Nahm pp. 1–28). However, the intimate nature of this intelligence cannot be delineated by human contemplation. Many philosophers concluded that the Universe itself, was the God (Gilson). It was basically indifferent the needs of the human.
Thought of Thomas Aquinas | Existentialism
Each of these perspectives is itself a Form, and is how Intellect generates for itself its own content. Plotinus speaks about the generation of Intellect from the One, and Intellect's attempt to return to the One in a thinking which is also a desiring. Proclus systematises this production through a threefold movement of remaining, procession, and return ("mone, proodos, epistrophe"). Intellect remains in the One, which means that it has the One as its origin. It proceeds from the One, which means that it comes to be as a separate entity. But it returns to the One, which means that it does not cut itself off from its source, but receives the good which is its identity from the One.
Proclus | Intellect
The only aspect of his philosophical views which are known is that he did not make the first principle of reality the "One" beyond intellect and being as Plotinus did, but rather the first principle was the supreme intellect and primary being, which suggests that his views were that of traditional Middle Platonism, rather than the Neoplatonism of Plotinus.
Origen the Pagan | Introduction
The function of the active nous is to give form to the passive nous. Aristotle opposed Plato's idea that the soul carries memories of previous lives with it and attributed the faculty of memory to the passive nous, which, by the virtue of being subject to change, can die. According to one interpretation, a person's ability to think (unlike his other psychological abilities) belongs to some incorporeal organ distinct from his body. This would amount to a form of dualism. However, according to some scholars, it would not be a full-fledged Cartesian dualism. This interpretation creates what Robert Pasnau has called the "mind-soul problem": if the intellect belongs to an entity distinct from the body, and the soul is the form of the body, then how is the intellect part of the soul?
Hylomorphism | Intellect
These thinkers blended Aristotelian philosophy with Christianity, bringing the thought of Ancient Greece into the Middle Ages. Scholars such as Boethius, Peter Abelard, and John Buridan worked on Aristotelian logic. The medieval English poet Chaucer describes his student as being happy by having A cautionary medieval tale held that Aristotle advised his pupil Alexander to avoid the king's seductive mistress, Phyllis, but was himself captivated by her, and allowed her to ride him. Phyllis had secretly told Alexander what to expect, and he witnessed Phyllis proving that a woman's charms could overcome even the greatest philosopher's male intellect. Artists such as Hans Baldung produced a series of illustrations of the popular theme.
Aristotle | On medieval Europe
As a result, Kukkonen argues, any analysis of reality today "will almost certainly carry Aristotelian overtones ... evidence of an exceptionally forceful mind." Jonathan Barnes wrote that "an account of Aristotle's intellectual afterlife would be little less than a history of European thought".
Aristotle | Influence
Aristotle (384–322 BC) was a student of Plato who famously set forth an extended treatise on rhetoric that still repays careful study today. In the first sentence of The Art of Rhetoric, Aristotle says that "rhetoric is the counterpart [literally, the antistrophe] of dialectic". As the "antistrophe" of a Greek ode responds to and is patterned after the structure of the "strophe" (they form two sections of the whole and are sung by two parts of the chorus), so the art of rhetoric follows and is structurally patterned after the art of dialectic because both are arts of discourse production.
Rhetoric | Aristotle
He argued strongly against the doctrine of the soul's immortality. He identified the active intellect ("nous poietikos"), through whose agency the potential intellect in man becomes actual, with God. A second book is known as the "Supplement to On the Soul" ("Mantissa"). The "Mantissa" is a series of twenty-five separate pieces of which the opening five deal directly with psychology. The remaining twenty pieces cover problems in physics and ethics, of which the largest group deals with questions of vision and light, and the final four with fate and providence. The "Mantissa" was probably not written by Alexander in its current form, but much of the actual material may be his.
Alexander of Aphrodisias | Original treatises
Within the Aristotelian corpus itself, the metaphysical treatises are referred to as τὰ περὶ τῆς πρώτης φιλοσοφίας (literally, "the [writings] concerning first philosophy"); "first philosophy" was what Aristotle called the subjects of metaphysics. (He called the study of nature or natural philosophy "second philosophy" ("Metaphysics" 1037a15).) It is notoriously difficult to specify the date at which Aristotle wrote these treatises as a whole or even individually, especially because the "Metaphysics" is, in Jonathan Barnes' words, "a farrago, a hotch-potch", and more generally because of the difficulty of dating "any" of Aristotle's writings. In the manuscripts, books are referred to by Greek letters.
Metaphysics (Aristotle) | Title, date, and the arrangement of the treatises
The process of emanation begins (metaphysically, not temporally) with the First Cause, whose principal activity is self-contemplation. And it is this intellectual activity that underlies its role in the creation of the universe. The First Cause, by thinking of itself, "overflows" and the incorporeal entity of the second intellect "emanates" from it. Like its predecessor, the second intellect also thinks about itself, and thereby brings its celestial sphere (in this case, the sphere of fixed stars) into being, but in addition to this it must also contemplate upon the First Cause, and this causes the "emanation" of the next intellect.
Al-Farabi | Metaphysics and cosmology
From his point of view, Aristotelianism is a decline in intellectual history, a falsification and destruction of the knowledge of earlier thinkers. The fourth book serves to prove errors in Aristotelian natural philosophy.
Franciscus Patricius | " Discussiones peripateticae "
Most of Case's works were commentaries on various treatises of Aristotle ("Organon", "Nicomachean Ethics", "Politics", "Economics", "Physics") under curious titles; they enjoyed a large circulation during his time, and were frequently reprinted. His works include "Summa veterum interpretum in universam dialecticam Aristotelis" (1584, on the "Organon") and "Speculum moralium quaestionium in universam ethicen Aristotelis" (1585, a commentary on the "Nicomachean Ethics"; verses prefixed by Laurence Humphrey), which was the first book printed at the press presented to Oxford by their chancellor, Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, and which had been reprinted eight times in Frankfurt by 1625. "Sphaera Civitatis" (1588, a commentary on Aristotle's "Politics"), like other books by Case, was reprinted abroad, and Barnes, the printer, obtained an order from the university in 1590 that every bachelor should take one copy on "determining."
John Case (Aristotelian writer) | Works
There is a notable change in the men, however; Simplicio, in particular, is no longer quite as simple-minded, stubborn and Aristotelian as his name implies. His arguments are representative of Galileo's own early beliefs, as Sagredo represents his middle period, and Salviati proposes Galileo's newest models.
Two New Sciences | Introduction
Part two of the book provides the reader with an account of the progress of human knowledge in the sequence of memory, imagination and reason. This sequence is different from the one described in Part I, where the sequence is memory, reason, and imagination. It is the sequence a mind left in isolation or the original generation follows whereas in Part II he describes the progress of human knowledge in the centuries of enlightenment that started from erudition, continued with belles-lettres, and reached to philosophy. Instead of writing in terms of general ideas, d'Alembert provides the dates, places and people responsible for the progress of literary works since the Renaissance leading up to his date.
Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot | Part II
This concept of intellect over nature is derived from the pseudo-Aristotelian Liber de Causis. Two categories of arts
Paul of Taranto | "Theorica et practica"
Greek thought While Greek commentators such as Alexander of Aphrodisias and Themistius were broadly silent on the active intellect (debate over this would only become heated in the thirteenth-century Christian West in the context of debates over whether Avicenna or Averroes provided the account of the working of the intellect that best cohered with Christian doctrine), they provided a great deal of commentary on the nature of the passive intellect. For Alexander of Aphrodisias, for instance, (who coined the term of the 'material intellect' for this power, a name later taken up by Averroes), the passive intellect was a separate intellect from the active.
Passive intellect | Interpretations
Once the person has sufficient empirical encounters with a certain concept, the power activates and gives the person universal knowledge (see also logical induction). In his last commentary—called the "Long Commentary"—he proposes another theory, which becomes known as the theory of "the unity of the intellect". In it, Averroes argues that there is only one material intellect, which is the same for all humans and is unmixed with human body. To explain how different individuals can have different thoughts, he uses a concept he calls "fikr"—known as "cogitatio" in Latin—a process that happens in human brains and contains not universal knowledge but "active consideration of particular things" the person has encountered.
Averroes | Psychology
He provides different theses for explaining human knowledge in his previous two commentaries, suggesting that the notion of unity of the intellect is his most mature theory after having considered other ideas.
Averroes's theory of the unity of the intellect | Background
The works of Aristotle that have survived from antiquity through medieval manuscript transmission are collected in the Corpus Aristotelicum. These texts, as opposed to Aristotle's lost works, are technical philosophical treatises from within Aristotle's school. Reference to them is made according to the organization of Immanuel Bekker's Royal Prussian Academy edition ("Aristotelis Opera edidit Academia Regia Borussica", Berlin, 1831–1870), which in turn is based on ancient classifications of these works.
Aristotle | Corpus Aristotelicum
His particular interest was in whether the agent intellect was within the soul or a power of the soul. Averroes' believed in the latter interpretation while many theologians were inclined to affirm the former. Adam doubted that the agent and possible intellect are of the same substance. He wondered if the substance of the possible intellect is within the soul while that of the agent intellect is outside of it. Like his Oxford colleagues he was curious about the unity of the soul. He felt that Aristotle merely refuted the idea of Plato. The latter believed the various functions of the soul (understanding, opinion, desire, etc.) reflected diverse parts of the soul, which were located in different organs.
Adam of Bockenfield | Nature of the soul