ARCHETYPAL IDEA. - This designation refers to the supreme and primordial logical form of all things. Philosophers and theologians speak of it in order to clarify the relationship that obtains between God's knowledge and the reality of the universe.
Two problems may be distinguished, concerning respectively the idea as such (logical form) and the idea as archetypal (from the Greek ἀρχή = "principle" and τύπος = "image": primordial form).
1. By idea (v.) is meant — among the many other senses of the term — the form of a being, existing outside that being: "Per ideas intelliguntur formae aliarum rerum, praeter ipsas res existentes" (Sum. Theol., 1ª, q. 1, a. 1). Such a form can serve a double purpose, according to the twofold kind of our cognitions: in the practical order, to serve as the exemplar of the thing of which it is the form; in the gnoseological order, as the intelligible species of the cognitive act, that is, as the form obtained by abstraction, the principle and means of knowledge of things.
In God, a most pure act, the idea must not be understood in the human manner, that is, as a representative form, abstract, informing and determining the intellect to know, but only in the first sense, namely as a most pure model, in itself immutable, yet outwardly participable in a finite manner by innumerable empirical individuals.
The existence of such an idea, not as a separate form subsisting of itself in the Platonic manner, but in the divine mind (cf. St. Augustine, Quaest. 83, q. 46: PL 40, 29-31) is beyond doubt. Although it is not formulated in explicit terms by Sacred Scripture, this affirmation is nonetheless commonly accepted by the Fathers and the theologians (Suárez, De Deo Uno, lib. III, cap. 5, n. 2); indeed, by Toledo it is called "fere de fide" (In sum. Theol. s. Thomae Aquinatis enarratio, q. 15, a. 1, I, Rome 1869, p. 238), or by Fr. Buonpensiere, "fidei dogma" (Commentaria in 1ʳᵉ Sum. Theol., ibid. 1902, n. 975). In any case it is required by the teaching of the Catholic faith, according to which the world depends on God through the bond of a creative, foreseeing and provident causality. Since it is not the chance result of hidden or blind natural forces, but the effect of an intelligent and free cause, the entire universe had to have in the mind of its Artificer the corresponding exemplar, the idea (v. ESEMPLARISMO).
This being supposed, the following doctrinal points are commonly admitted: in God there is not a single idea, but a plurality of ideas, uncreated, eternal, immutable and invisible; the divine ideas are true exemplary forms, in imitation of which the divine Artificer acts in time; such ideas have a specific function, both in the production of things and in God's knowledge of them. On the other hand, the following problems are debated: of which determinate things the exemplary forms must be recognized in God: of real things (exemplaria), or also of possible things, indeed of future things, and not only on the positive side of good, but also on the negative side of evil (vationes); what kind of causality (efficient or extrinsic formal) is proper to the divine ideas; whether they belong primarily to the practical order and secondarily to the theoretical, or vice versa; whether in the production of beings they exert an influence in a proximate or a remote manner; whether in the divine knowledge of created things they are a subjective principle, that by which one knows (id quo), or an objective term, that which one knows (id quod).
2. I. a. means the original type and primitive model of all the perfections that shine in the universe, "more in one part and less elsewhere": the supreme exemplar, existing from all eternity in the divine mind.
It is certain that the i. a. is one and unique and that, at least as a remote and ultimate exemplar, it is the divine nature itself, known as infinitely participable and imitable; and that in it all the other ideas meet, indeed are identified, so that it may truthfully be called the idea of ideas. It remains doubtful whether such an i. a., or divine essence, should be considered as the typical exemplar, even proximate, in whose likeness all things visible and invisible are reproduced in time.
Bibliography10 works
Nilo di San Brocardo