Intellect

INTELLECT. - It is the principle of thought of human consciousness that distinguishes man from the lower forms of life.

The first affirmation of the intellect as a suprasensible activity is owed to Anaxagoras (Aristotle, Met., I, 3, 984 b 15), who nevertheless limits himself to conceiving the intellect (νοῦς) as "cause of the order of the cosmos" and principle of movement and of the separation of things (H. Diels-W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, II, 5th ed., Berlin 1935, B 13, p. 39). It is a disputed question whether Democritus admitted a distinction of nature between intellect and sense: it seems, however, that the fundamental principle of his theory of knowing - "like is known by like" (ὕμοιον ὁμοίω) - is nothing but the application of the common principle to the interaction of beings (cf. Aristotle, De gen. et corr., I, 7, 323 b 10 ff.). Deepened in its constitutive function of truth by Platonic idealism, the intellect is referred by Aristotle intrinsically to sensible experience in its representative syntheses (φαντάσματα; cf. De an., III, 3, 428 a 1; ibid., 7, 431 a 17): but Aristotle left unsolved the problem of the personal individuality of the intellect. Neoplatonism, in its attempt at a synthesis between Plato and Aristotle, conceived the intellect as the second hypostasis between the One-Good and the Soul: Plotinus calls the intellect the "first act of the Good" that circulates around the Good, while the Soul looks to the intellect and through it arrives at God (Enn., 1, 8; ed. E. Bréhier, I, Paris 1924, p. 116, 21 ff.). Plotinus and the whole Neoplatonic school labored to reconcile the separation posited by Plato between Ἰωσσοφηλός and Ἰαραδείγματα, and no single theory has yet been found. In Proclus, who gathers the results of the tradition in a more systematic form, there are found three degrees or moments of the intellect: a) there is first a δεῖον νοητὸν which is the principle of the intelligible and transcends it: ἢ νοητὸν κατ' αἰτίαν; b) there follows the νοῦς νοητὸς in which subject and object are ἐν κατ' ἀριθμῶν and which is the first and principal intellect (πρῶτος, ἀμφέβητος νοῦς); c) finally there are the participating νόες, that is, κατὰ μέθῃςν, in which subject and object are distinct (cf. Procl., The elements of theology, ed. E. R. Dodds, Oxford 1933, p. 285 ff.).

The problem of the intellect forms, so to speak, the central theme of the historical development of Aristotelianism: the discussions turn above all on the interpretation of ch. 5 of book III of the De anima, in which Aristotle distinguishes two intellects in the soul just as in every nature two principles are distinguished: one passive, matter, which is in potency to all things, the other which is like "cause and agent" (τὸ αἴτιον καὶ ποιητικῶν). There is therefore an intellect to which it belongs to become all things (ὁ νόῳ... τῷ πάντα γίνεσθαι), the other to which it belongs to make (intelligibles) all things (ὁ τῷ πάντα ποιεῖν), which Aristotle seems to exalt as the principal one, separate, immortal and eternal (De an., III, 5, 430 a 10 ff.). Alexander of Aphrodisias, closer and more faithful to the Aristotelian text, understands the agent intellect as God himself, the first cause, who is the intellect par excellence (ὁ καὶ κυρίως κατὶ νόῳ; Alexander of Aphrodisias, De anima cum mantissa, ed. I. Bruns, Berlin 1887, p. 89, 18), while the possible intellect is called material (ὁλικός) and corruptible. The controversies over the intellect were in vogue in Arabic philosophy, in which the Neoplatonic tendency prevailed: for Avicenna, who continues the position of al-Fārābī, the separate intellect is the agent intellect and is posited as the last separate spiritual substance (in the emanative process) which infuses forms into material substances (dator formarum) and is the principle of knowledge for individual men. For his opponent Averroes, on the other hand, it is the possible or material intellect that is separate, which is one for the whole human species, eternal and incorruptible, and which unites itself to individual men and to particular phantasms by means of the cogitative power proper to each one (cf. Comm. in III De Anima, V, Venetian ed. 1562, fol. 138 ff.). The immense literary production of the late Middle Ages and the early Renaissance on the Averroist problem bears witness to the lack of a sense of the spiritual human interiority against which St. Thomas had already proclaimed his: hic homo intelligit (Sum. Theol., 1ª, q. 76, a. 1).

In modern philosophy the intellect follows the peculiar orientation of the different systems: in English empiricism the intellect (understanding) is reduced to a function of reflection on the contents of experience; in pre-Kantian metaphysical rationalism, on the other hand, the intellect absorbs in various ways the value and the cognitive functions of experience itself. Hegel will qualify all this "metaphysics of the intellect" (Verstandesmetaphysik) as abstract and empty, especially in its last forms (Wolff). In Kant the intellect is the faculty of the categories, while reason deals with the Ideas (God, soul, world) which represent real totalities transcending the objectifying function proper to the categorial intellect. In Hegelian idealism reason (Vernunft) gains complete ascendancy over the intellect (Verstand): every formality at which the intellect arrives is considered as empty abstractness, and the series of formal perfections according to which the intellect conceives the scala entium is considered a "false infinity": the true reality is the dialectic of reason as the totality of the becoming of the human spirit and therefore the true Absolute (cf. Logik, 2nd ed. by A. Lasson, I, Berlin 1932, book I, section 1, ch. 1, p. 140 ff.; book III, section 3, ch. 3; Italian trans. by A. Mani, II, Bari 1925, p. 483 ff.). In more recent philosophy, the metaphysics of the intellect has been supplanted by the exaltation of science (empiricism, positivism...), by the "philosophy of life" and of the "vital impulse" (Nietzsche, Bergson, Simmel...), by the dialectic of existence and of historical materialism. For St. Thomas the intellect has the function of apprehending the essence of things and the first principles both of speculative knowledge and of human morality (intellectus principiorum, synderesis), from which the movement of theoretical reason and the maturing of practical action begin (cf. Sum. Theol., 1ª, q. 79, aa. 8-12). V. CONCETTO; CONOSCENZA; GIUDIZIO; IDEA; INTELLETTUALISMO.

Cornelio Fabro