Cursus Philosophicus Thomisticus, Secunda Pars Artis Logicae

To understand what is signified by the name “agent intellect,” IT MUST BE SUPPOSED, from Book 3 of On the Soul¹ and St. Thomas, Summa theologiae I, q. 79, arts. 3 and 4, as well as in many other places, that there are two intellects in us: one agent, the other possible or passive. The agent intellect is so called not because it acts by producing cognition, but because it acts by producing the species that are received in the possible intellect. The latter is therefore called possible because it is acted upon, or receives these species, and, once it has received them, performs cognition, since every cognition is generated by a power and an object. But an object cannot be present in a power by its own entity; it is present through its species or likeness, which in our powers is an accident that takes the place of the object and represents it. Although these species are sent from external objects to the external senses, which, informed by them, proceed to cognition and then transmit other species to the internal senses—as experience itself shows such species to exist, since when the external senses cease to operate, representations occur in the internal senses, as is clear in dreamers—nevertheless these species are not proportioned to the intellect. Since it is spiritual, the intellect requires a representation of spiritual things and an intelligible, not sensible, object. It was therefore necessary to posit a certain power or faculty that would draw a spiritual species from these sensible species and impart it to the possible intellect. This power or faculty cannot understand, because intellection is produced by a power and a species, whereas this power makes species. When, therefore, it makes them, it does not presuppose them in order to understand; hence, in making them, it does not understand.

This briefly supposed, there are two DIFFICULTIES in this part:

The first is whether the species produced by the agent intellect represents only the nature and not the singularity, so that there is no species in the intellect that directly represents a sensible singular as its own. We shall say nothing about this question here, since it belongs to the books On the Soul² and to the beginning of the Physics, where it is treated whether a singular is directly known by our intellect.³

The second is whether, supposing—as we shall show there and suppose here—that the intelligible species produced by the agent intellect represents the nature and not singularity or individuating conditions, it thereby represents the nature with universality, at least metaphysical universality, or represents only the nature in itself, with every state of universality and singularity removed. We are speaking of the metaphysical universal, since exclusion of singulars and negative abstraction suffice for it. But the logical universal also requires an ordering to inferiors, which, since it is a relation of reason, does not follow from abstraction in just any way, but from abstraction that is cognition. Here, however, we are not speaking of universality as known, but as represented prior to all cognition; for the agent intellect precedes all cognition.

Several AUTHORS support the negative view, either because they think that species produced by the agent intellect, although spiritual in entity, do not abstract from singulars in representation, as Father Merinero indicates, disputation 2, On the Universal, question 1, no. 29, and as the Conimbricenses report of Scotus, question 5, On the Universal, article 2; others, because, even if the species represent the nature without singulars, they still deny that universality is represented there, since this comes about only through cognition, whereas that species is a principle for knowing the nature, not something that presupposes or constitutes it as known. See Father Suárez, disputation 6 of the Metaphysics, section 6, no. 7, who also adds that not every universality is produced by the agent intellect—for example, that of a proper attribute, difference, or accident—but only specific universality.

NEVERTHELESS, LET THIS BE THE SOLE CONCLUSION: In St. Thomas’s view that the species produced by the agent intellect represents the nature without singularity, one must say that the universal is represented fundamentally, which is the metaphysical universal; thus that species regards the nature not merely in itself and in a state of isolation, but under a unity of precision.

Cajetan teaches this conclusion expressly in chapter 4 of On Being and Essence, after question 6, section Istis praelibatis. It is drawn from St. Thomas not only from passages where he teaches that through the agent intellect a species is formed representing the nature and not material individuating conditions—as may be seen especially in Summa theologiae I, q. 14, art. 11, ad 1; q. 79, art. 3, at the end of the body of the article; q. 85, art. 1, ad 3 and 4; and Summa contra gentiles II, c. 77—but also from other passages where he teaches that a nature abstracted in this way by the agent intellect is universal. This is clear in opusc. 55,⁴ where he says that “one and the same nature, which was singular and individuated by matter in singular human beings, later becomes universal through the action of the intellect purifying it of the conditions of here and now, etc.” And in opusc. 48, treatise 1, chapter 1, he says,⁵ “in our imagination the form representing a man then acts, by the power of the agent intellect, upon the possible intellect, and then a certain form is caused in the possible intellect, which is called an intelligible species or, according to others, an act of understanding or a word; this form represents a man as abstracted from material conditions, and this is what it means to be universal.” Therefore, according to St. Thomas, it does not represent the nature in itself, since that is neither universal nor particular, but represents the universal.

The BASIS of the conclusion is that the species thus produced by the agent intellect represents the nature with individuals excluded, as we now suppose, and represents it as one. Therefore, it represents the nature neither merely in itself nor with singular unity, but with a unity of precision, which is followed by an aptitude or non-repugnance to regard and to be in those individuals; this is the metaphysical universal and the foundation of the logical universal.

The consequence is clear, because a nature in itself is neither one nor many, as was sufficiently shown in the preceding question from St. Thomas. Therefore, if the nature is represented there as one, it must be represented with singular or universal unity. It is not represented with singular unity, as we suppose; therefore it is represented with universal unity. We call this the metaphysical universal, which differs from the logical universal in this: both regard singulars, but the metaphysical universal regards them as the terminus from which, since it abstracts from them, whereas the logical universal regards them as the terminus toward which, since it regards them so as to be predicated of them.

This whole argument is sound, and only the minor remains to be proved: that the nature is represented as one in that species. This is proved as follows: an intellect informed by that species knows the nature as one; therefore the nature was represented as one in the species itself, for cognition reaches in knowing what the species reaches in representing. That the intellect, informed by that species, knows the nature as one is manifest: if it did not know it as one, the nature would not be made one as known by the force of such cognition. Therefore, if it is made known as one, cognition reaches it as one.

YOU WILL SAY: Even when the intellect knows the nature in itself, it knows it as one, because it reaches it in a single act, and a single act regards a single object; yet from this the nature does not acquire the unity of a universal. Therefore, it is not sufficiently inferred that it has such unity when, by virtue of a species produced by the agent intellect, it knows the nature; for it can know the nature as one in itself.

THE REPLY IS that when the nature is known in itself, although the nature itself, which is the thing known, is neither one nor many, it nevertheless acquires unity precisely because it is known under a mode of unity; from this, a unity of precision sometimes follows in such a nature. Thus, for the nature to be known in itself does not remove the unity it acquires from the mode of cognition; it signifies only that, on the side of the thing known, considered in itself, it does not have that unity. “Nature in itself,” then, is signified only on the side of the thing known. If, however, it is known in the manner of one, by that very fact it has, from the mode of knowing, a unity of precision and universality. Thus, as known, it is one because of the mode of knowing; but in itself the thing known—that is, considered as it is in itself—is not one.

In reply to the basis of the opposing view, we say that the universality and unity of precision are not there actually cognized in that species, but are cognized virtually and actually represented in the way representation belongs to an impressed species. For just as species representing a universal remain in the memory, not because it is actually known there, but because it is represented there in first act, by the impressed species’ representation, so we say of that species formed by the agent intellect. Hence we deliberately did not frame the question in the title as whether a metaphysical universal is there, but whether one is represented there. For here we are treating not so much the universal in its being as the universal in representation. Since, however, the universal is represented there, and when cognition arrives it becomes actually known and universal in its being, we say that the species represents a metaphysical universal, although no being of reason pertaining to the logical universal yet actually exists there.

YOU WILL PRESS THE POINT: The universal is not represented in that species formally, as a being of reason, but fundamentally; therefore, it is represented fundamentally either proximately or remotely. If remotely, the singulars themselves, from which the universal is taken, are there. If proximately, this itself is a being of reason, which cannot be had before cognition by the possible intellect. This is urged especially concerning the very aptitude of the universal. For the agent intellect cannot have an act of this aptitude; therefore, neither can it have the aptitude and potency itself.

The consequence is clear, because where an act is impossible, there can be no potency, which posits a possibility for the act. The antecedent is evident, because its act is to be predicated of many; but it cannot be predicated through the agent intellect, and so on.

There is also a difficulty concerning unity, because the agent intellect does not form one nature out of several individuals: it does not have the act of bringing them together and comparing one with another, since it does not cognize, but has only negative precision, inasmuch as it takes one thing, namely the nature, and leaves another, namely singularity. Therefore, it takes from only one individual what belongs to the nature, leaving what belongs to the individual. But this is only to take the nature in itself, not with the unity of indifference and aptitude for many. Therefore, it does not produce the unity of the universal, which is not merely unity without any individuation, but unity together with indifference to many.

THE REPLY IS that the universal is represented in that species fundamentally, with its proximate foundation not yet cognized but represented. In reply to the objection, we say that the proximate foundation of universality is indeed a being of reason, which is not actually and formally present before cognition by the intellect; nevertheless, it can be present virtually and representatively, just as a being of reason can be present in the imagination, as a chimera represented there, as we said in question 2. Accordingly, by the power of the agent intellect no second intention is had formally, but it can be had fundamentally, because the very precision under which it represents the nature is not real, although it is not yet actually cognized but represented so that it may be cognized in the way that this precision can be represented: not as a thing, but as a condition of the thing represented.

In reply to the further objection about aptitude, we say that where an act is impossible, as it were, from within, potency is lacking; but if it is impossible only from without, namely because of a lack of application, potency is not lacking. Fire has the potency to burn wood in Rome, but lacks the application without which it cannot burn it. In the same way, that precise nature has the capacity or non-repugnance to be predicated of many, but lacks the application, which is cognition.

In reply to the objection about unity, we say that the agent intellect does not take one nature by comparison, but by precision, from several individuals or from one individual, taking what of itself is not incompatible with being in many. Accordingly, the nature is not thereby represented merely intrinsically, as regards its essential predicates, but represented in a certain mode—namely, in the manner of one—which is to take it as one with a unity of precision and with non-repugnance to many. When it is said that this precision is purely negative, we reply that the precision relates negatively to the inferiors it leaves aside, but relates positively to the nature it takes, representing it in the manner of one, just as it does later when it is known through the informing of such a species. This suffices for a represented metaphysical universal, since it expresses the nature with the condition of a unity of precision and with non-repugnance to many.

We omit for the present the arguments that might be brought to prove that the species abstracted by the agent intellect does not directly represent the nature without individuation, on the ground that the agent intellect cannot illuminate a phantasm, which is corporeal, by a spiritual action and light; these arguments belong to the books On the Soul. It suffices to observe that phantasms are not illuminated by receiving some spiritual light in themselves, but, as St. Thomas says, Summa theologiae I, q. 85, art. 1, ad 4, “phantasms are illuminated because, by the power of the agent intellect, they are made fit for intelligible species to be abstracted from them.” A phantasm, then, insofar as it is capable and fit to determine the agent intellect to produce a species of this object rather than that one, is said to be illuminated by it as it were intrinsically, because the intellect uses it as a determining instrument. The species itself, produced through the determination of the phantasm, is a spiritual illumination, but this is posited in the possible intellect. I do not object to the possibility that the phantasm receives some mode or impression from the agent intellect that is not illumination, but a certain mode of fitness, as an instrument receives from an artisan. But this belongs to the books On the Soul.