FACULTIES. – The immediate proximate principle of activity in a living being. They express the concepts of power, energy, force, capacity.
The doctrine of the *faculties*, as presented by traditional philosophy, can be deduced from a fourfold order of considerations: a) the soul is not always active or conscious; it therefore presupposes the reality of forces which, from a state of relative inertia, impel it to action; b) our senses likewise operate according to discontinuous rhythms; c) our actions are of differing and often discordant nature when compared with one another; d) despite this multifaceted and intermittent activity, we experience a convergence toward the unity of the principle to which we attribute all our spiritual, sensible, or vital actions. St. Thomas Aquinas (*Summa Theologiae*, I, q. 78, a. 4) and St. Bonaventure (*In I Sent.*, d. 3, p. 2, a. 1, q. 3 ad 3) define the *faculties* as “principium proximum et immediatum operationum animae.” From this definition it does not follow that all the *faculties* reside exclusively in the soul. While the soul is the unique seat of inorganic potencies (intellect and will), the entire human composite is the subject of those *faculties* which operate through organs (*Summa Theologiae*, I, q. 77, a. 5 and *Quaestiones disputatae de anima*, II, 12 ad 16).
As potencies, the *faculties* have an intrinsic relation or tension toward act, and this act differs according to the object. The diversity of acts and objects provides the foundation for the distinction and multiplicity of the *faculties* (cf. *Summa Theologiae*, loc. cit., a. 3), whereas Scotus places this foundation in the formal character proper to each individual potency (*Quodlibeta*, q. 13, n. 30). The Aristotelian classification (*De anima*, II, 3) admits five genera of *faculties*: the vegetative faculty (δρεπτικὸν), the appetitive (ὀρεκτικὸν), the sensitive (αἰσθητικὸν), the locomotive (κινητικὸν), and the intellective (νοητικὸν). The Scholastics accepted, without introducing substantial modifications, the Stagirite’s classification. Here is the schema of the *faculties* according to St. Thomas Aquinas: the vegetative faculty, subdivided into nutritive, augmentative, and generative; the sensitive faculty, specified into five external senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch) and four internal senses (common sense, imagination, estimative power, and memory); the appetitive faculty, which is twofold—sensitive and rational (will); the locomotive or motive faculty; and the intellective faculty for those cognitions that transcend the sphere of sensibility. Classifications of the *faculties* into active and passive, superior and inferior, are intuitive and thus require no further explanation.
Once the definition of the *faculties* as principles by which the soul operates is admitted, it is evident that a distinction must be drawn between the soul and them. However, the nature of this distinction is controversial. Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Giles of Rome, Vasquez, Suárez—in short, the Thomists—defend a real distinction, adopting the principle of the *Anglicus*: “Cum potentia animae non sit eius essentia, oportet quod sit accidens” (*Summa Theologiae*, I, q. 77, a. 1 ad 5). Scotus, on the other hand, together with his school (probably including St. Bonaventure), in order to safeguard the unity of the soul—which he considers compromised by the opposing view—asserts that between the soul and the *faculties* there obtains only a formal distinction (*Coxon.*, II, d. 16). Finally, Ockham and the nominalists, maintaining the real identity between substance and its attributes, admit between the soul and the *faculties* only a distinction of reason.
Once the *faculties* are distinguished from one another, they possess their own hierarchy, an order of priority and dignity. Hierarchically, the vegetative *faculties* are subordinate and ordered to the sensitive, and these to the rational. As for priority, it can be considered under a twofold aspect: temporal-historical and empirical. Under the first aspect, the difference of function is emphasized: the successive emergence of the *faculties*, so that the newborn exhibits a typical predominance of vegetative potencies, soon joined by affective and motor sensibility, while the full exercise of intelligence and will involves a further stage of bodily development. Under the empirical aspect, priority is considered in the sense of predominance: that is, one inquires which of the *faculties* governs the life of the average adult human being. The answer is relative to individual psychism: depending on the prevalence of sensibility, intelligence, or volition, there will be a corresponding director-operative predominance of the relevant *faculty*.
Finally, the dignity of the potencies has given rise to the Scholastic controversy between intellectualists and voluntarists. Here again, the two tendencies lean respectively toward St. Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus. The Angelic Doctor, following Aristotle, writes: “Si ergo intellektus et voluntas considerentur secundum se, sic intellektus invenitur eminentior” (*Summa Theologiae*, I-II, q. 8a, a. 3), and he proves his intellectualism both from the greater nobility of the object and from the influence that reason exercises over the will. Scotus, following the footsteps of St. Augustine and St. Bonaventure, defends the primacy of the will, basing himself principally on the greater excellence of the love of God in comparison with its knowledge and on the directive function that the will exercises over intellectual activity (*Opus Oxoniense*, IV, d. 49, q. 4): “Non convenit in parte intellectiva hoc imperare nisi voluntati” (loc. cit., d. 1, q. 2, n. 3).
Modern philosophy, from its very inception, has rejected the Scholastic conception of the *faculties*. Descartes, identifying the essence of the soul with thought, annulled every distinction between it and its potencies. Spinoza and the monists formally rejected the *faculties*. Leibniz reduced them to mere possibilities. The best-known among the adversaries of the doctrine of the *faculties* is Herbart, who, however, did not attack it in its classical formulation—which he declared to be “mythological psychology”—but rather in the form it assumed in Kant, who classifies the *faculties* into representative, affective, and conative. Beneke likewise denies their reality as original and distinct psychic forces, reducing them to acquired habits.
A singular place in the modern interpretation of the *faculties* is reserved for the Scottish school, which, starting from the analysis of psychic facts and the observation of their multiplicity, admits a series of attitudes or capacities as the causes of the specific manifestations of conscious life. Yet even if, in opposition to the associationists, Reid and his followers vigorously affirm the existence of the *faculties* and of the soul, they nevertheless hold that the study of the nature of the latter does not belong to psychology, which must concern itself solely with realities accessible to empirical knowledge—that is, operations and *faculties*.
Fouillée, Renouvier, Ribot, and others, emphasizing the unity of psychic function, ignore the *faculties* in the traditional sense. Thus, for systematic coherence, they are also rejected by the positivists, who, with Paulsen, reduce the potencies to forms of thought, and by the defenders of dynamism (v.), who identify energy integrally with reality.