PHL206H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Beatific Vision, Tabula Rasa, Visual Concepts
Document Summary
There is a bifurcation of power in the intellect because universals (intelligibles) don"t exist as universals (abstract intelligibles outside the soul), because everything outside the soul is a material particular. The intellect has to do some work just to turn what is initially material particulars into universals: it has to abstract the essence from the particulars to make an actual intelligible. The body is structured to receive external information, and the agent intellect is simply abstracting their intelligible content. Aquinas said this agent intellect is part of our soul, it is a capacity that we have. This is not the predominant view in aristotle or the early arabic readers, because they thought that the agent intellect was outside the soul. Picture of the soul with two intellectual capacities: You have the 5 basic external senses, the internal senses ( imagination , the brain, sense memory) and the intellect.
