Passive intellect
| Latin | intellectus possibilis; intellectus passivus |
|---|---|
| Locus in Aquinas | Summa theologiae I, q. 79, aa. 2–4 |
| Branch | Philosophical anthropology |
| Controlling authority | Council of Vienne; Catechism 355–384; Thomistic synthesis |
| Doctrinal standing | The spiritual intellect of each person is implied by doctrine; possible-intellect psychology is the school |
| School | Thomism |
Passive intellect is, in Thomism, the possible intellect: the soul's spiritual power to receive intelligible species, called passive only as potential to all that it can understand.[1]
Passive as receptive, not as corruptible flesh
Summa theologiae I, question 79, article 2, asks whether the intellect is a passive power. To understand is in a way to be passive, taking passion in the wide sense of receiving what one was in potency to receive. The human intellect is the lowest in the order of intelligences, at first like a tablet on which nothing is written. It is therefore potential to intelligible things and is made to understand actually. That is why Aristotle called it the possible intellect.[1]
The same article warns against two other uses of 'passive intellect'. Some gave the name to the sensitive appetite, others to the cogitative power or particular reason. Those are acts of bodily organs and passive in a stricter sense. The possible intellect is not the act of a corporeal organ and is incorruptible. The 1913 article on intellect records the scholastic insistence that this higher power depends extrinsically, not intrinsically, on the organism.[2]
Need of an agent, and unity of the soul
Because forms in matter are not actually intelligible, a merely receptive power would never understand. Article 3 therefore requires an agent intellect that abstracts. Article 4 places both powers in the soul. The intellectual soul is actually immaterial, yet potential to determinate species; phantasms are actual images of species, yet potential as to immateriality. One soul can therefore have a power that makes things immaterial by abstraction and a power that receives them.[1]
The Council of Vienne defined the rational soul as of itself and essentially the form of the body. Catechism 355–384 receives that unity. Possible intellect is not a guest riding in the brain. It is the same soul's capacity to become all things intellectually, as the senses are its capacity to become all things sensitively. Personal immortality of the intellect follows from its not being the act of an organ, not from a borrowed cosmic mind.[3]
Against a single intellect for all men
Averroes made the possible intellect one for the species, as some had made the agent intellect one. Aquinas's replies in question 79, and in the treatise on the soul as form, refuse both. A power is multiplied with its substance. If understanding were not the act of this man, this man would not understand, and rewards and punishments of intellectual acts would be unintelligible. The faith that each person knows God, consents, and is judged requires a personal possible intellect.[4][5]
Habitual knowledge is the middle state of that power: species retained without continuous actual consideration. We can understand when we will, once we have learned, without always understanding. That Aristotelian remark, used in article 6, is the school's account of study, memory of science, and the difference between a child and a master. It is not a claim that ideas are stored as papers in a drawer of tissue.
Doctrine and vocabulary
Catholic doctrine holds that each human person has a spiritual intellect, that the soul informs the body, and that knowledge is real. Intellectus possibilis, its passivity in the third sense, and the exact division from cogitative power are Thomistic synthesis. Other Catholic psychologists may prefer different names if they keep the substance. Aeterni Patris commends this psychology as a servant of theology, not as a defined organology.[6]
The doctrine resists two errors. One says the mind is only the brain's steam. The other says the mind is a pure spirit trapped in flesh. The possible intellect, as Aquinas draws it, is the spiritual power of a form that is the form of this body. The human person needs senses to learn, and does not wait for a world-intellect to think. That is enough for Christian anthropology, whether or not the word possible is ever heard.[4]
References
- Back to citation occurrence 1.0 Back to citation occurrence 1.1 Back to citation occurrence 1.2 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, question 79 — Primary treatment of the intellectual powers, including the possible intellect, the agent intellect as a power in the soul, speculative and practical intellect, and synderesis.
- Back to citation Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), Intellect — Public-domain scholastic survey of intellect as a spiritual cognitive power, including the Aristotelian-Thomistic distinction of agent and possible intellect.
- Back to citation Council of Vienne, Fidei catholicae — Conciliar definition that the rational soul is of itself and essentially the form of the human body, against any denial of that substantial unity.
- Back to citation occurrence 4.0 Back to citation occurrence 4.1 Catechism of the Catholic Church, 355–384 — Authoritative anthropology of the human person as a unity of body and soul, with the soul as the form of the body and the principle of spiritual operations.
- Back to citation John Paul II, Fides et Ratio — Encyclical on the harmony of faith and reason, the enduring value of Aquinas, metaphysical realism, and legitimate philosophical plurality within Catholic faith.
- Back to citation Leo XIII, Aeterni Patris — Encyclical restoring Christian philosophy in the school of Thomas Aquinas while distinguishing that commendation from a definition of every Thomistic thesis.