aristotle, de anima
psyche
nous - intellectual, operations of reason (intro'ed in third book.)
key terms re. substance, matter, form: http://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/zeta17.htm
outline re the soul: http://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/psyche.htm
nested hierarchy of soul functions/activities (413123):
[cf Aquinas, vegetative [nutritiva] to the animal [sensitiva] to the human [intellectiva]. Summa Theologica Q 18, Art 2]
II.1, three types of substance:
De anima / Peri Psyches
Book 2
Book 3, Chs 4 & 5
Sensations are result of whole living organism, soul + body. Results of movement. Sensation is unity in the same sense as soul is unity - numerically one but divisible in essence or form.
Three groups of objects of sense:
- sensible things, specific or proper to each sense (color is a special object to the sight)
- sensible things which are incidentally perceptible, common to all senses (motion, number, shape, size). Sensible in this case is detected by accident b/c of assication with another sensible (the white object = son of Diares
touch (of which taste is a part) is primary sensation, others cannot exist without it (necessary for food/eating)
psyche not ot substance in its fullest sense (ousia), but rather it actualizes matter into a composite, which thus actualized is substance in its fullest sense.
ousia (categories):
- non-determined matter (hule)
- essence or form (eidos), due to which an object is the-what-it-is/what-ness (to te estin = quidditas)
- as an assembly (amfoin)
matter characterized by potentiality
body by nature organized
(but in De Anima, no one sense-organ for common sensibles, though he suggests elsewhere a single master sense organ. If there is one, it isn't the brain but the heart where inner heat was generated, closest element to ether of which divine bodies were made. and in the case of touch, which alone among the senses does not require an elemental intermediary, things get a little weirder).
"Because what perceives must be corporeal but the quiddity of the sensitive and the sensation is the form and the power of the body." (424a 17 and ff) (Bk 2, Ch 12)
(I don't think I have to time to dwell on this sensation stuff right now though I need to note that if I'm asked what Aristotle is doing differently from his predecessors here, matter and sensation are important. He is not going to try to describe the soul while ignoring the body).
soul is expression or realization of natural body. link b/n psychological states and physiological responses. Yet soul is not product of body, nor identical with the body. soul is form or entelechy of living body = actuality, the condition of something whose essence is fully realized. teleological view: nature=essence=function=end. What does not perform its function ceases to be what it is except by name. Cf energeia
furthermore, movement is not the essence of soul, contra at least some of his predecessors. it's also not a harmony
first and second actualizations. or actualities? not sure it can be removed from the concept of process, exactly. well, maybe.
phantasia - appearance, imagination. something like an image provided by sense-perception.
"Intellect is the form of forms (nous eidos eidon), sensation the form of sensibles. Since it seems that nothing exists separately besides perceptible extended bodies, precisely, the intelligible forms exist in the sensible forms; both abstract concepts as well as various states and affections of the perceptible objects. For this reason no one would be able to learn or understand anything without sensation. Thus, also in intellection, one must contemplate with images fantasmata. These resemble the things perceived, but are without matter." "How do the first thoughts differ from images? One has to say that they not only are images but that they cannot occur without them." (Rodier; 432 a 1-13, Bk 3 Ch 7))
but thought does seem to be separable from body. on the surface, it seems like he's contra Plato, forms cannot/do not exist apart from spatio-temporal specifics. But ...
psyche is the cause of the body in three ways:
- efficient (from which)
- final (for the sake of which)
- formal (by which, or substance)
- but NOT material (out of which)
soul as cause and principle is determined in three ways:
- principle of the end (aneka)
- cause of an essential form of the body of animals
- actualization of the potentiality
De Anima ii, 1), that "the soul is the act of a physical organic body having life potentially."
smallest number of organisms have reasoning (logismos) and thought (dianoia) - intelligence, purpose, discursive thinking
Book 3, Chs 4 & 5
- takes up thinking psyche, diff. between perceiving psyche
- fantasia neither knowledge nor belief. something like "imaging."
- the thinking faculty/intellect is what he calls nous. all operations of reason. it's the part of the soul that knows and thinks.
intellection (to noein)
sensation (to aisthanesthai)
"The intellect must be therefore impassible but receptive of form potentially without actually being its object; intellect is to its object, just as sense is to sensation." (429a 15-19, Bk 3 Ch 3). Is intellection acted upon by objects of thought, as sensation is acted upon by objects of sense? Is that even the right way to phrase it?
Something with the agency of the actual can act.... so Mind is potentially its object and it becomes actually when it thinks?
But object of thought - the intelligible -- is form only, without matter. So this part of the soul which is called intellect is not in any act before it thinks. So how could it be mixed with body? Can't have a physical organ at least, I think. And can't be exactly independent, since mind is unity and a part of the psyche, and body and psyche form a syntheton.
If mind does not act through a bodily organ, then it's not moved by body's mvoement? In this sense impassible? Analogy with eyesight - it's the eye, not the sense faculty, that is impaired. The decay fo the body does not harm mind. BUT then he muddles things. If the mind were to be destroyed it would be by old age/senility. "Consequently, intellection and contemplation are impaired by loss of some other internal organ, but intellect itself remains impassible.... Mind is probably something more divine and impassible." (408b 24-29, Bk 1 Ch 4)
Mind works through intermediary - images (fantasmata). "Intellect is the form of forms (nous eidos eidon), sensation the form of sensibles." "Thus, also in intellection, one must contemplate with images fantasmata." 432a 2-14, Bk 3 Ch 7) Imagination fantasia extends to reason as deliberative imagination adn to sensation as sensitive imagination. Animals have deliberative imagination, but somehow reason is the peculiar faculty of man who can perceive universals by generalizing via sensation. Universals reside in the soul itself.
fantasia is special function of soul, cannot exist without sensation, but does not = sensation. It's the basis for intellectual operations. Related to memory (recovery of past sensation) as well as visualization (perception witout external stimuli).
Occurs at two levels:
1. sensitive
2. deliberative or rational
Memory is a prerequisite to desire which animals share even without sharing ability to reason. (?) (or some animals?)
Mind is impassible, unmixed force to the material which it forms. The thinking soul is the place where the forms are, but the forms are there potentially, not actually.
II.1: "The psyche must, then, be substance qua form of a natural body which has life potentially...The psyche, therefore, will be the actuality of a body of this kind." (412a 16 and passim)
- so is the intellect part of the freakin' psyche or not? I HATE Aristotle. Because he says the psyche is not a separate entity, and says that mind is part of psyche, but then there is something different about mind - the nous is more divine and *is impassible.* (he says probably)
- passive (potential) (matter) and
- active (actual) intellect.
The active is independent from the rest of the soul and obviously from the body, but the passive is not? If mind is indivisible, the highest faculty of soul, incorporeal, impassible, unmixed with body.... Mind is potentially, in a certain way its objects, but it is nothing actually until it thinks. (429 a 23-25 and passim) Something's wrong here.
He tries to get at it by analogy with nature: ""Since in the whole nature, something is the matter for each class (i.e. what is potentially all those things) and something else which is the efficient cause and an agent, because it makes them all (it is the situation like an art in relation to the material). So that distinction must exist in the soul as well. Therefore, there is one nous (intellect) which becomes all things and the other nous that makes them all. The situation resembles light, since the it, in a sort of way, makes potential colors actual colors." ""This nous is separate, impassible and unmixed being in its essence an activity for what is active is always worth more than what is passive, as principle is superior to matter." (430a 10-17)
writing tablet analogy - "...mind is in a sense potentially whatever is thinkable, though actually it is nothing until it has thought [.] What it thinks must be in it just as characters may be said to be on a writing-tablet on which as yet nothing actually stands written: this is exactly what happens with mind." "Mind is itself thinkable in exactly the same way as its objects are. For (a) in the case of objects which involve no matter, what thinks and what is thought are identical; for speculative knowledge and its object are identical..... (b) In the case of those which contain matter each of the objects of thougbht is only potentially present. It follows that while they will not have mind in them (for mind is a potentiality of them only in so far as they are capable of being disengaged from matter) mind may yet be thinkable." (McKeon trans 429b30-430a9)
Yeah, that clears everything right up. ""There is an analogy between the sensation in act and the thought. However, the difference between them is such that the agent which produces the actuality of sensation is external, namely what is seen or what is heard as well as the other sensibles. The reason for this is that the actual sensation is of the individual, whereas the knowledge has for the object the universals, which are in a way contained within the soul itself." (430a 17-19)
The essence of intellect is actgivity, so it can't not reason prior to thinking taking place; it must be active continually as arche/cause. ""When separate, it is just what it is and this is only immortal athanaton and eternal aidion. But we do not remember because this is impassible and the passive nous is perishable and without the active (creative) mind, no one (nobody or nothing) thinks." (430a 22 and ff)
So the nous is divided and it would seem that part of it is an integral part of the psyche (by definition inseparable from the body and therefore mortal and perishable) and part of it is immortal. But should it properly be called nous then? If we don't remember it... because earlier he said that phantasia is a special function of soul, cannot exist without sensation, and is the basis for intellectual operations. Related to memory as recovery as past sensation. It occurs at the sensitive level and the rational level... but if phantasia cannot exist without sensation, then even the rational level of phantasia must involve or envelop the sensitive level? So how can there be "nous" without passibility, as sensation requires movement and passibility? (What does he mean by passibility?)
is it like a Venn diagram of being, cf the partly-descended soul of Plotinus? where part of the human soul remains in the spiritual world and is not fully descended into the body? Not in the same way of course- Aristotle is not conceiving of descent in teh way Plotinus is, nor of the "spark of creative divinity" thing in the same way, I don't think, but if there is any analogy it would be in the sense that a part of what makes up the human being is not properly "belonging to" the human being? This language is all wrong.
In any case, it seems safe to say that for Aristotle, there is no "individual consciousness" or personality with memories that would survive after bodily death. *If* there is a part of the soul or self that is immortal, it can't be the part that has or retains memories or that undergoes the act of sensation. The immortal part must cause our ability to reason as psychosomatic unities, but it is not really part of the "self" in any comprehensible way. is it even safe to say this is part of human psyche, then? since already, elsewhere, by definition, psyche/soma are the interdependent things that they are? Maybe there is something here that could relate to Plotinus' spark of divine stuff, but not, I think, in a "descent"/Platonic way. I don't really know. Bottom line (or one of them): no immortal soul as "individual self" for Aristotle, and he did not equate psyche with nous, did not restrict soul to mental operations.
Human intellectual activity demands an external and efficient cause. So external active nous.
from Katona, Gabor, "The Evolution of the Concept of Psyche from Homer to Aristotle," Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology 22, 1 (2002).
Ok, this gets at the problem of nous I thought I was seeing:
Inconsistency in conception of human being as organic synthesis of psyche-and-nous - emerges in Aquinas too with subsistence of intellectual soul, b/c Aquinas had a prior commitment to immortality of soul and a prior commitment to Augustine, too, in a lot of ways.
"Aristotle introduced the idea of an agent intellect [nous poetikos] as an immortal, immaterial element of the soul, thereby endangering the unity of man as body-and-soul" says Katona (41).
"The soul is the primary act of a physical body capable of life" (De Anima 412b - Foster/Humphries. McKeon trans, "the souls is the first grade of actuality of a natural body having life potentially in it.") Katona: "The soul is the substantial form of the body. As a unity of matter and form, body and soul constitute the substance called 'this man.; The self is neither the soul in itself nor the body but, rather, the organic unity of the two. This organic unity of body-and-soul, however, is endangered [what a curious word!] when [he] introduces the concept of the agent intellect (nous poetikos)" in Bk 3 Ch V, 430a10-430a25. "This intellect is described as 'separable, uncompounded and incapable of being acted on.' Also it 'alone is immortal and perpetual. It does not remember, because it is impassible.'"
McKeon trans: "Since in every class of things, as in nature as a whole, we find two factors involved, (1) a matter which is potentially all the particulars included in the class, (2) a cause which is productive in teh sense that it makes them all (the latter standing to the former, as e.g. an art to its material), these distinct elements must likewise be found within the soul. And in fact mind as we have described it [in Ch 4] is what it is by virtue of becoming all things, while there is another which is what it is by virtue of making all things [light analogy follows]. Mind in this sense of it is separable, impassible, unmixed, since it is in its essential nature activity (for always the active is superior to the passive factor, the originating force to the matter which it forms." "Actual knowledge is identical with its object." potential knowledge can be prior to actual knowledge in the individual but not in the universe as a whole. "Mind is not at one time knowing and at another not. When mind is set free from its prsent conditions it appears as just what it is and nothing more: this alone is immortal and eternal (we do not, however, remember its former activity because, while mind is in this sense impassible, mind as passive is destructible), and without it nothing thinks."
Katona asks, "The question is how this agent intellect becomes attached to the individual as a composite of body-and-soul? If it is separable and incorruptible, how does it take part in the substantial life and unity of the individual? How can we save the substantial unity of body-and-soul if the agent intellect is separable and ontologically distinct?" (41)
Ugh.
.
nous - intellectual, operations of reason (intro'ed in third book.)
key terms re. substance, matter, form: http://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/zeta17.htm
outline re the soul: http://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/psyche.htm
nested hierarchy of soul functions/activities (413123):
- Growth, nutrition, (reproduction) --> nutritive soul (plants)
- Locomotion, perception --> sensitive/perceptual soul (all animals) [later in Bk 2]
- Intellect (= thought) --> rational/thinking soul (human beings) [Bk 3]
[cf Aquinas, vegetative [nutritiva] to the animal [sensitiva] to the human [intellectiva]. Summa Theologica Q 18, Art 2]
II.1, three types of substance:
- Matter (potentiality)
- Form (actuality)
- The compound of matter and form
De anima / Peri Psyches
Book 2
Book 3, Chs 4 & 5
Sensations are result of whole living organism, soul + body. Results of movement. Sensation is unity in the same sense as soul is unity - numerically one but divisible in essence or form.
Three groups of objects of sense:
- sensible things, specific or proper to each sense (color is a special object to the sight)
- sensible things which are incidentally perceptible, common to all senses (motion, number, shape, size). Sensible in this case is detected by accident b/c of assication with another sensible (the white object = son of Diares
touch (of which taste is a part) is primary sensation, others cannot exist without it (necessary for food/eating)
psyche not ot substance in its fullest sense (ousia), but rather it actualizes matter into a composite, which thus actualized is substance in its fullest sense.
ousia (categories):
- non-determined matter (hule)
- essence or form (eidos), due to which an object is the-what-it-is/what-ness (to te estin = quidditas)
- as an assembly (amfoin)
matter characterized by potentiality
body by nature organized
(but in De Anima, no one sense-organ for common sensibles, though he suggests elsewhere a single master sense organ. If there is one, it isn't the brain but the heart where inner heat was generated, closest element to ether of which divine bodies were made. and in the case of touch, which alone among the senses does not require an elemental intermediary, things get a little weirder).
"Because what perceives must be corporeal but the quiddity of the sensitive and the sensation is the form and the power of the body." (424a 17 and ff) (Bk 2, Ch 12)
(I don't think I have to time to dwell on this sensation stuff right now though I need to note that if I'm asked what Aristotle is doing differently from his predecessors here, matter and sensation are important. He is not going to try to describe the soul while ignoring the body).
soul is expression or realization of natural body. link b/n psychological states and physiological responses. Yet soul is not product of body, nor identical with the body. soul is form or entelechy of living body = actuality, the condition of something whose essence is fully realized. teleological view: nature=essence=function=end. What does not perform its function ceases to be what it is except by name. Cf energeia
furthermore, movement is not the essence of soul, contra at least some of his predecessors. it's also not a harmony
first and second actualizations. or actualities? not sure it can be removed from the concept of process, exactly. well, maybe.
phantasia - appearance, imagination. something like an image provided by sense-perception.
"Intellect is the form of forms (nous eidos eidon), sensation the form of sensibles. Since it seems that nothing exists separately besides perceptible extended bodies, precisely, the intelligible forms exist in the sensible forms; both abstract concepts as well as various states and affections of the perceptible objects. For this reason no one would be able to learn or understand anything without sensation. Thus, also in intellection, one must contemplate with images fantasmata. These resemble the things perceived, but are without matter." "How do the first thoughts differ from images? One has to say that they not only are images but that they cannot occur without them." (Rodier; 432 a 1-13, Bk 3 Ch 7))
but thought does seem to be separable from body. on the surface, it seems like he's contra Plato, forms cannot/do not exist apart from spatio-temporal specifics. But ...
psyche is the cause of the body in three ways:
- efficient (from which)
- final (for the sake of which)
- formal (by which, or substance)
- but NOT material (out of which)
soul as cause and principle is determined in three ways:
- principle of the end (aneka)
- cause of an essential form of the body of animals
- actualization of the potentiality
De Anima ii, 1), that "the soul is the act of a physical organic body having life potentially."
smallest number of organisms have reasoning (logismos) and thought (dianoia) - intelligence, purpose, discursive thinking
Book 3, Chs 4 & 5
- takes up thinking psyche, diff. between perceiving psyche
- fantasia neither knowledge nor belief. something like "imaging."
- the thinking faculty/intellect is what he calls nous. all operations of reason. it's the part of the soul that knows and thinks.
intellection (to noein)
sensation (to aisthanesthai)
"The intellect must be therefore impassible but receptive of form potentially without actually being its object; intellect is to its object, just as sense is to sensation." (429a 15-19, Bk 3 Ch 3). Is intellection acted upon by objects of thought, as sensation is acted upon by objects of sense? Is that even the right way to phrase it?
Something with the agency of the actual can act.... so Mind is potentially its object and it becomes actually when it thinks?
But object of thought - the intelligible -- is form only, without matter. So this part of the soul which is called intellect is not in any act before it thinks. So how could it be mixed with body? Can't have a physical organ at least, I think. And can't be exactly independent, since mind is unity and a part of the psyche, and body and psyche form a syntheton.
If mind does not act through a bodily organ, then it's not moved by body's mvoement? In this sense impassible? Analogy with eyesight - it's the eye, not the sense faculty, that is impaired. The decay fo the body does not harm mind. BUT then he muddles things. If the mind were to be destroyed it would be by old age/senility. "Consequently, intellection and contemplation are impaired by loss of some other internal organ, but intellect itself remains impassible.... Mind is probably something more divine and impassible." (408b 24-29, Bk 1 Ch 4)
Mind works through intermediary - images (fantasmata). "Intellect is the form of forms (nous eidos eidon), sensation the form of sensibles." "Thus, also in intellection, one must contemplate with images fantasmata." 432a 2-14, Bk 3 Ch 7) Imagination fantasia extends to reason as deliberative imagination adn to sensation as sensitive imagination. Animals have deliberative imagination, but somehow reason is the peculiar faculty of man who can perceive universals by generalizing via sensation. Universals reside in the soul itself.
fantasia is special function of soul, cannot exist without sensation, but does not = sensation. It's the basis for intellectual operations. Related to memory (recovery of past sensation) as well as visualization (perception witout external stimuli).
Occurs at two levels:
1. sensitive
2. deliberative or rational
Memory is a prerequisite to desire which animals share even without sharing ability to reason. (?) (or some animals?)
Mind is impassible, unmixed force to the material which it forms. The thinking soul is the place where the forms are, but the forms are there potentially, not actually.
II.1: "The psyche must, then, be substance qua form of a natural body which has life potentially...The psyche, therefore, will be the actuality of a body of this kind." (412a 16 and passim)
- so is the intellect part of the freakin' psyche or not? I HATE Aristotle. Because he says the psyche is not a separate entity, and says that mind is part of psyche, but then there is something different about mind - the nous is more divine and *is impassible.* (he says probably)
- passive (potential) (matter) and
- active (actual) intellect.
The active is independent from the rest of the soul and obviously from the body, but the passive is not? If mind is indivisible, the highest faculty of soul, incorporeal, impassible, unmixed with body.... Mind is potentially, in a certain way its objects, but it is nothing actually until it thinks. (429 a 23-25 and passim) Something's wrong here.
He tries to get at it by analogy with nature: ""Since in the whole nature, something is the matter for each class (i.e. what is potentially all those things) and something else which is the efficient cause and an agent, because it makes them all (it is the situation like an art in relation to the material). So that distinction must exist in the soul as well. Therefore, there is one nous (intellect) which becomes all things and the other nous that makes them all. The situation resembles light, since the it, in a sort of way, makes potential colors actual colors." ""This nous is separate, impassible and unmixed being in its essence an activity for what is active is always worth more than what is passive, as principle is superior to matter." (430a 10-17)
writing tablet analogy - "...mind is in a sense potentially whatever is thinkable, though actually it is nothing until it has thought [.] What it thinks must be in it just as characters may be said to be on a writing-tablet on which as yet nothing actually stands written: this is exactly what happens with mind." "Mind is itself thinkable in exactly the same way as its objects are. For (a) in the case of objects which involve no matter, what thinks and what is thought are identical; for speculative knowledge and its object are identical..... (b) In the case of those which contain matter each of the objects of thougbht is only potentially present. It follows that while they will not have mind in them (for mind is a potentiality of them only in so far as they are capable of being disengaged from matter) mind may yet be thinkable." (McKeon trans 429b30-430a9)
Yeah, that clears everything right up. ""There is an analogy between the sensation in act and the thought. However, the difference between them is such that the agent which produces the actuality of sensation is external, namely what is seen or what is heard as well as the other sensibles. The reason for this is that the actual sensation is of the individual, whereas the knowledge has for the object the universals, which are in a way contained within the soul itself." (430a 17-19)
The essence of intellect is actgivity, so it can't not reason prior to thinking taking place; it must be active continually as arche/cause. ""When separate, it is just what it is and this is only immortal athanaton and eternal aidion. But we do not remember because this is impassible and the passive nous is perishable and without the active (creative) mind, no one (nobody or nothing) thinks." (430a 22 and ff)
So the nous is divided and it would seem that part of it is an integral part of the psyche (by definition inseparable from the body and therefore mortal and perishable) and part of it is immortal. But should it properly be called nous then? If we don't remember it... because earlier he said that phantasia is a special function of soul, cannot exist without sensation, and is the basis for intellectual operations. Related to memory as recovery as past sensation. It occurs at the sensitive level and the rational level... but if phantasia cannot exist without sensation, then even the rational level of phantasia must involve or envelop the sensitive level? So how can there be "nous" without passibility, as sensation requires movement and passibility? (What does he mean by passibility?)
is it like a Venn diagram of being, cf the partly-descended soul of Plotinus? where part of the human soul remains in the spiritual world and is not fully descended into the body? Not in the same way of course- Aristotle is not conceiving of descent in teh way Plotinus is, nor of the "spark of creative divinity" thing in the same way, I don't think, but if there is any analogy it would be in the sense that a part of what makes up the human being is not properly "belonging to" the human being? This language is all wrong.
In any case, it seems safe to say that for Aristotle, there is no "individual consciousness" or personality with memories that would survive after bodily death. *If* there is a part of the soul or self that is immortal, it can't be the part that has or retains memories or that undergoes the act of sensation. The immortal part must cause our ability to reason as psychosomatic unities, but it is not really part of the "self" in any comprehensible way. is it even safe to say this is part of human psyche, then? since already, elsewhere, by definition, psyche/soma are the interdependent things that they are? Maybe there is something here that could relate to Plotinus' spark of divine stuff, but not, I think, in a "descent"/Platonic way. I don't really know. Bottom line (or one of them): no immortal soul as "individual self" for Aristotle, and he did not equate psyche with nous, did not restrict soul to mental operations.
Human intellectual activity demands an external and efficient cause. So external active nous.
from Katona, Gabor, "The Evolution of the Concept of Psyche from Homer to Aristotle," Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology 22, 1 (2002).
Ok, this gets at the problem of nous I thought I was seeing:
Inconsistency in conception of human being as organic synthesis of psyche-and-nous - emerges in Aquinas too with subsistence of intellectual soul, b/c Aquinas had a prior commitment to immortality of soul and a prior commitment to Augustine, too, in a lot of ways.
"Aristotle introduced the idea of an agent intellect [nous poetikos] as an immortal, immaterial element of the soul, thereby endangering the unity of man as body-and-soul" says Katona (41).
"The soul is the primary act of a physical body capable of life" (De Anima 412b - Foster/Humphries. McKeon trans, "the souls is the first grade of actuality of a natural body having life potentially in it.") Katona: "The soul is the substantial form of the body. As a unity of matter and form, body and soul constitute the substance called 'this man.; The self is neither the soul in itself nor the body but, rather, the organic unity of the two. This organic unity of body-and-soul, however, is endangered [what a curious word!] when [he] introduces the concept of the agent intellect (nous poetikos)" in Bk 3 Ch V, 430a10-430a25. "This intellect is described as 'separable, uncompounded and incapable of being acted on.' Also it 'alone is immortal and perpetual. It does not remember, because it is impassible.'"
McKeon trans: "Since in every class of things, as in nature as a whole, we find two factors involved, (1) a matter which is potentially all the particulars included in the class, (2) a cause which is productive in teh sense that it makes them all (the latter standing to the former, as e.g. an art to its material), these distinct elements must likewise be found within the soul. And in fact mind as we have described it [in Ch 4] is what it is by virtue of becoming all things, while there is another which is what it is by virtue of making all things [light analogy follows]. Mind in this sense of it is separable, impassible, unmixed, since it is in its essential nature activity (for always the active is superior to the passive factor, the originating force to the matter which it forms." "Actual knowledge is identical with its object." potential knowledge can be prior to actual knowledge in the individual but not in the universe as a whole. "Mind is not at one time knowing and at another not. When mind is set free from its prsent conditions it appears as just what it is and nothing more: this alone is immortal and eternal (we do not, however, remember its former activity because, while mind is in this sense impassible, mind as passive is destructible), and without it nothing thinks."
Katona asks, "The question is how this agent intellect becomes attached to the individual as a composite of body-and-soul? If it is separable and incorruptible, how does it take part in the substantial life and unity of the individual? How can we save the substantial unity of body-and-soul if the agent intellect is separable and ontologically distinct?" (41)
Ugh.
.