I expect both the essay on Ibn Rushd (Averroes) from the Stanford

Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Aquinas’ Commentary on the De Anima of

Aristotle to be read and studied.

An Arabic commentator, Averroës, and the foremost Catholic commentator,

Aquinas on Aristotle's De Anima...primary sources for the course I teach on
Medieval Philosophy and Thomas Aquinas

Ibn Rushd (Averroes) on De Anima:

In the Aristotelian tradition, Ibn Rushd postulates a special sort of substantial

form—a soul—to account for living substances. Even in the mundane case of
plants, the complexities of their operations require a special principle beyond
what would be adequate for nonliving things: nutrition, for instance, “is
ascribed to the soul because it is impossible for it to be ascribed to the
powers of the elements” (LongAnima II.14). His theory of the soul’s
operations distinguishes, most basically, between the nutritive, sensory, and
rational levels. Judging from his casually flexible terminology, he sees no real
difference between treating these as different souls within a single living
thing or as parts of a single soul—parts characterized as a power (quwwa) or
principle (mabdaʾ). Judging again from his varying formulations, he thinks
there can be no definitive list of how many such powers of the soul there are.
The question he does regard as meaningful is whether a power is
distinguished solely in terms of its function, or also in terms of its substrate—
as he puts it, whether it “differs from the other powers in subject as well as
in intention (maʿnā), or only in intention” (LongAnima III.1; ParaAnima ¶276).
Each of the five external senses, for instance, has its own subject, a sensory
organ, whereas some of the higher sensory operations have dedicated
organs, in the brain, whereas other operations, such as recollection (Black
1996) and choice (Phillipson 2013), are mere functions produced by multiple
powers working in conjunction. This question of “subject” is particularly
vexed, as we will see, for the powers of intellect.

The “foundation” of cognition at all levels is its passivity (LongAnima II.54).

This is particularly clear for the five external senses, which have as their
objects the material qualities of the external world. Color, for instance, the
proper object of sight, is an elemental mixture on the surface of bodies
(ParaParv I.10 {15}), which acts on an illuminated medium and then the
organ of the eye, making its recipient at each stage be like the color itself.
The general (although not perfect) reliability of the process—that a sense
with respect to its proper sense object “does not err in regard to it for the
most part” (LongAnima II.63)—is a product of the natural world’s causal
regularity. Indeed, the passivity of the five senses is such that Ibn Rushd,
when speaking most carefully, seems to treat these organs as themselves
simply the corporeal media through which sensible qualities are conveyed to
the one true principle of sensation, the common sense (al-ḥiss al-mushtarak).
He writes, for instance, that “through the innermost of all the curtains of the
eye, the common sense can perceive the form” (ParaParv I.19 {30}); here is
where we pass from a purely corporeal stage to “the first of the spiritual
stages” (ParaParv II.26 {42–3}). The lesson he draws from Aristotle’s
notoriously obscure treatment of common sense (De anima 425b12ff) is that
the principle of sensation is “one in number and multiple in extremities and
organs,” like a point at the center of a circle (ParaAnima ¶260). Only here is
perception both self-aware and capable of assimilating the objects of
multiple sensory modalities. All subsequent cognition is dependent on the
information collected at this stage. (See Black 2019 for the theory’s strict
empiricism.)

To account for the functional role of common sense, Ibn Rushd accepts its
traditional—even antiquated—location at the heart, with the concession that
common sense has its origin there, but terminates in the brain (ParaParv
II.36 {59}). This brings sensible forms to the higher sensory powers, of which
he recognizes three that are distinct within the human brain both in function
and in subject:

imagination (al-mutakhayyila, al-khayāl);

the cogitative power (al-mufakkira, al-mumayyiza);

memory (al-ḥāfiẓa, al-dhākira).

These faculties, listed in order from the anterior to the posterior of the
brain’s supposed three chambers (ParaParv II.26 {42}), account for much of
human cognition. Most basically (for details see LongAnima II.63, III.6;
Blaustein 1984; Hansberger 2019), imagination allows us to form sensory
images taken from sensation even when we are not presently sensing an
object. The cogitative power refines these images so as to allow a distinct
grasp of the “individual contents” (al-maʿānī al-shakhṣiya, known in the Latin
tradition as “intentions”) that are confusedly contained within sensory
experience. Memory stores and recalls these images. Ibn Rushd explicitly
argues (Incoherence II.2 {546-7}) that the cogitative power can do all the
work that Ibn Sīnā had split between a cogitative power and a further
estimative power (al-quwwa al-wahmiyya). The overall process is compared
to the gradual “abstracting and cleansing” of the rind, eventually leaving just
the fruit itself (ParaParv II.26 {43}), these fruits being the “substantial
differences” between individuals (LongAnima II.65). Nonhuman animals,
because they lack a cogitative power entirely, are incapable of moving
beyond superficial sensory appearances (LongAnima III.57).

In keeping with his broadly naturalistic orientation, Ibn Rushd allows the
brain a much larger share of the cognitive load than one finds in most
premodern philosophers. But the “fruit” these corporeal powers yield is
always a representation of a particular individual. To think abstractly—to
have universal concepts—requires the powers of intellect, and here is where
his naturalism notoriously comes to an end. Ibn Rushd, though he deploys a
bewildering variety of terms for different aspects of intellect, ultimately
endorses just two intellectual powers distinct both in function and subject:

an agent intellect (ʿaql al-faʿʿāl), which illuminates imagined intentions,

making them universal;

a material intellect (ʿaql al-hayūlāni), which receives those abstracted forms

and thereby thinks—fittingly described as “material” not because it is
corporeal but because it is a matter-like potentiality for receiving forms in the
intelligible domain.

Following what was then the dominant Aristotelian view, he treats the agent
intellect as a single, separate, eternal substance, and spends little time
arguing for this doctrine, or even explaining how it “illuminates” imagined
intentions (LongAnima III.17–18; Davidson 1992, pp. 315–18). In contrast, he
discusses the material intellect at length in various treatises, with his views
evolving dramatically over time (see Taylor 2009). Here we focus only on his
final considered view of the subject, as set out in the Long Commentary,
according to which the material intellect, like the agent intellect, is a single,
separate, eternal substance (LongAnima III.5).
Ibn Rushd recognized the audacity of supposing that human beings share in
a single intellect, writing that “this claim came to me after long reflection
and intense care, and I have not seen it in anyone else before me”
(CommAlex, p. 30). Indeed, he himself had once called such a view
“repulsive” (ParaAnima ¶282). Still, we can understand why he was
eventually drawn to it in light of his commitment to three propositions:

Human beings think abstractly;

Abstract thought is impossible for corporeal beings;

Human beings are corporeal.

Although the trio is jointly contradictory, each claim is individually plausible:

(A) seems obvious; (B) follows from the familiar Aristotelian argument that a
power capable of understanding all bodies must itself contain the nature of
no body (LongAnima III.4); (C) is a consequence of Ibn Rushd’s eventual
conclusion that the various strategies for situating an immaterial power
within a human being—his own and that of earlier commentators—were all
failures. The genius of his ultimate position was to find a way for all three
claims to be embraced. In one sense, human beings are individual
composites of matter and substantial form, and so wholly corporeal.
Although he consistently describes both the material and the agent intellect
as parts of the human soul (e.g., LongAnima III.5 {406}), they are souls and
actualities only equivocally: they are not the actuality of a body (LongAnima
II.7, II.21, III.5 {396–7}). When human beings are conceived in this narrow
way, (C) is true and (A) is false.

But of course there must be some sense in which (A) is true. Ibn Rushd
insists that, even though we all share the material intellect, its thinking can
count as my thinking. To explain this, he appeals to Aristotle’s doctrine that
“the soul never thinks without an image” (De anima III.7, 431a17; Wirmer
2008, 367–75). The material intellect, although separate, is dependent both
for its function and for its very existence on receiving imagined intentions
from individual human beings (CommAlex p. 29); it is eternal only because
the human species is eternal (LongAnima III.5 {407}). Each of us, therefore,
partially controls the operation of this separate material intellect. Its
operation is to think, but inasmuch as we each control our imagination, and
the imagination is what triggers thought, it is appropriate to think of the
thoughts we trigger as our thoughts, and to think of the two shared
intellects, agent and material, as each a part of our soul (LongAnima II.60,
III.18, III.36 {500}). With this, Ibn Rushd offers the first developed statement
of the extended-mind thesis: that a being’s cognitive system extends beyond
the individual organism. When human beings are conceived in this extended
way, (A) is true and (C) is false.

Even if this extended conception of a human being is allowed, that still

leaves a question about why these two separated intellects must each be
singular, and so shared by all human beings. Ibn Rushd’s answer depends in
part on an argument against private concepts: that without concepts that are
literally shared, teachers could not convey knowledge to students
(LongAnima III.5 {411–12}; Ogden forthcoming). He also argues that an
intellect individuated by a corporeal subject would receive individualized
forms (LongAnima III.5 {402}; Ogden 2016). Accordingly, he thinks the
domain of actually intelligible concepts, and of the intellects in which those
objects exist, must be entirely separate from the material realm, and cannot
be individuated by matter. And, as we have seen in the previous two
sections, he is for independent reasons committed to the existence of such a
realm, among the celestial spheres. Accordingly, the human intellectual
powers can be identified as the lowest members of this hierarchy
(LongAnima III.19; Davidson 1992, 223–31; Taylor 1998).

Aquinas on Aristotle’s De Anima

§ 235. The Philosopher now begins to explain the definition of the soul given
in Lectio 1; after which, at ‘Therefore it is evident’, he draws a conclusion
from [Link] explanation has two parts, in the first of which he is concerned
directly with the soul itself, while in the second, where he says ‘Not that
which has cast off’ he explains that part of the definition which refers to the
subject which has a soul. With regard to the soul itself, he begins by
illustrating the definition by a comparison with artificial things; and then
goes on, at ‘Now what has.’ to explain it by considering the parts of the soul
separately.
In artificial things, made by human skiff, the forms imposed on the material
are accidental forms; and since these are easier for us to perceive than is
substantial form, as being more accessible to the senses, it is obviously
reasonable to approach the soul, which is a substantial form, through a
comparison with accidental forms. And again, the soul’s parts or potencies
are more readily perceptible to us than its essence; for all our enquiry into
the soul has to start from the objective terms of its activities and then
proceed from these activities to their potencies, and thence to an
understanding of the soul in its essence; that is why a study of the soul’s
parts can throw light on the definition of it.

§ 236. First, then, he observes that the definition given above is ‘general’, i.e.
it applies to any soul. It posits the soul as a substance, which is a form; and
this means that it presents to us the idea of the essence of something. For
there is this difference between a form that is substance and one that is not,
that the latter sort are not strictly of the essence or ‘whatness’ of a thing:
whiteness is not of the essence of a white body; whereas substantial form is
essential and quidditative. To call the soul a substantial form, therefore, is to
imply that it is of the essence and ‘whatness’ of the body it animates. Hence
he says ‘this’, i.e. this quidditative substance, ‘is the essence of this body’,
i.e. of the body that is what it is precisely through having this particular form.
For this form is essential to the thing, and is denoted by the definition of
what the thing is.

§ 237. And because substantial forms, including the forms of natural bodies,
are not evident to us, Aristotle makes his meaning clear with an example
taken from the forms (accidental) of artificial. things. ‘If’, he says, ‘some
utensil (i.e. an artificial instrument) for example an axe, were a physical (i.e.
a natural) body,’it would possess a form in the manner already explained. So
he continues: ‘Then being-an-axe would be its substance,’ i.e. would be the
substantial form of the axe, which is that to which we refer our idea of axe as
such. This idea of axe as such he identifies with the essence of the axe, with
what causes it to be an axe; and this essential form he identifies with the
substance of the axe. He says ‘substance’ because the forms of natural
bodies are substantial forms. Furthermore, if the axe were not merely a
natural, but also an animate, body, its form would be a soul; and if it lost this
soul it would no longer be an axe, except in name; just as when the soul
leaves the body there is no longer an eye or flesh, except in name. Of course
the axe, not being in fact a natural body, has no axe-form which is of the
essence of the body that it is; so that if it lost the form of axe, the axe would
still exist substantially, because the substance of artificial things is their
matter which remains when the artificial form and, with this artificial form,
the actuality of the artificial body as such, is removed.

§ 238. Then he explains why he has distinguished between the axe as it

actually is and as it would be were it a physical (that is, a natural) living
body: for the soul is not the essence and idea, i.e. the form, of an artificial
body like an axe, but ‘of such a physical body’, i.e. of a body that is alive. To
make this clearer he adds ‘as has in itself the principle of movement and
rest’—which is characteristic of natural things. For Nature is this sort of
principle, as he says in the Physics, Book II.

§ 239. Then at ‘Now what has been said’ he applies what has been concluded
about the soul as a whole, and the animate body as a whole, to the parts of
each. if, he says, the eye were a whole animal, its soul would be sight; for
sight is the essential form of the eye; which in itself is the material condition
of sight; in the same way as an organic body is the material condition of a
soul. Once sight is lost, the eye, is no longer an eye, except in the sense that
a stone or painted eye may be called an eye equivocally (this term is used
when the same name is given to essentially different things). Remove, then,
what makes an eye really an eye, and there is left only the name. And the
same argument applies to the animate body as a whole: what makes it an
animate body is its form, the soul. This removed, you have a living body only
equivocally. For as one part of the sensitive soul is to one part of the
sensitive body, so the faculty of sense as a whole is to the whole sensitive
body as such.

§ 240. Next, at ‘Not that which has cast off’, he explains what was meant by
defining the soul as the ‘act of a potentially animate body’. Now ‘potentially’
may be said about a thing in either of two senses: (a) as lacking the power to
act; (b) as possessed of this power but not acting by it. And the body, whose
act is the soul, is potentially animate in the second sense only. So, when he
calls the body a thing potentially alive he does not mean that it has lost the
soul it had and now lacks a life-principle altogether; he is speaking of what
still has such a principle. On the other hand, seeds and the fruits that contain
them are only potentially living bodies with souls; for a seed as yet lacks a
soul. It is ‘potential’ therefore like that which has lost its soul.

§ 241. And to show just how the body is potential to the actuality that comes
from its soul he adds that being awake is the actuality of the sensitive soul in
the same way as cutting is the actuality of a knife and seeing is that of an
eye; for each of these acts is the activity and use of a principle already there.
But the soul is the first and underlying actuality; like the faculty of sight itself
or the capacity of any tool; for each of these is the operative principle itself.
So the body, complete with its soul, is potentially animate in the sense that,
though it has its first actuality, it may lack the second. And as the eye is a
thing composed of a pupil as its matter and the faculty of sight as its form,
so an animal is a thing composed of soul as its form and body as its matter.

§ 242. Then, at ‘Therefore it is evident’, he deduces a truth from the

foregoing. Having shown that the soul is the whole body’s actuality, its
‘parts’ being the actualities of the body’s parts, and granted that an actuality
or form cannot be separated from that which is actual and has form, we can
certainly conclude that no soul can be separated from its body,—at least
certain parts of the soul ‘cannot be separated, if the soul can be said to have
parts. For obviously some ‘parts’ of the soul are nothing but actualities of
parts of the body; as we have seen in the case of sight, that it is the eye’s
actuality. On the other hand, certain parts of the soul may well be separable
from the body, since they are not the actuality of any corporeal part, as will
be proved when we come to treat of the intellect.

§ 243. As to Plato’s opinion that the soul is the act of the body not as its form
but as its mover, he adds that it is not yet clear whether the soul is the act of
the body as a sailor of a ship, i.e. as its mover only.

§ 244. Finally, recapitulating, he says that the foregoing is an ‘outline’

description of the soul, meaning that it is extrinsic, as it were, and superficial
and incomplete. It will be completed when he comes to define the innermost
nature of the soul and the nature of each of its parts.
§ 253. Next, at ‘Going back then’, he begins to prove the definition of the
soul given above; and this in the way indicated, i.e. from effects to causes.
This is how he sets about it: the first principle of life in things is the actuality
and form of living bodies; but soul is the first principle of life in living things;
therefore it is actuality and form of living bodies. Now this argument is
clearly a posteriori; for in reality the soul is the source of vital activities
because it is the form of a living body, not e converso. So he has to do two
things here; first, to show that soul is the source or principle of vitality, and
secondly, to show that the first principle of vitality is the form of living bodies
(this comes at ‘Since that whereby etc.’). With regard to the first point he
does three things: (a) he distinguishes modes of life, (b) he shows that the
soul is the principle of living activities—at ‘Hence all plants’; and (c) he
explains how these parts of the soul are interrelated, by means of which it
originates vital activities. This is at ‘We now ask whether each of these’.

§ 254. He starts then by saying that to carry put our intention of proving the
definition of the soul, we must assume as a kind of principle that things with
souls differ from those without souls in being alive. Life is the test; and as life
shows itself in several ways, if a thing has life in only one of these ways it is
still said to be alive and to possess a soul.

§ 255. Life, he says, shows itself in four modes: (1) as intellectual; (2) as
sensitive; (3) as the cause of motion or rest in space; (4) as cause of the
motions of taking nourishment, decay and growth. He distinguishes only
these four modes, although he has already distinguished five main types of
vital activity, and this because he is thinking here and now of the degrees of
animate being. There are four such degrees, distinguished in the same way
as the four modes in which life is manifested: for some living things, i.e.
plants, only take nourishment and grow and decay; some have also
sensation, but are always fixed to one place—such are the inferior animals
like shell-fish; some again, i.e. the complete animals like oxen and horses,
have, along with sensation, the power to move from place to place; and
finally some, i.e. men, have, in addition, mind. The appetitive power, which
makes a fifth type of vitality, does not, however, imply a distinct degree of
living being; for it always accompanies sensation.
§ 256. Next, at ‘Hence all plants’, he shows that a soul is involved in all these
modes of life. He does this with regard (1) to plants, and (2) to animals, at
‘But an animal is such, primarily’. Then (3), he summarises, at ‘For what
cause”, what has been said and remains to be said. As to (1) he does two
things. First he shows that the life-principle in plants is a soul. We have
remarked, he says, that whatever evinces one of the four modes of life
mentioned above can be said to live. Therefore plants are alive; for they all
possess some intrinsic power or principle of growth and decay.

§ 257. Now this principle is not mere nature. Nature does not move in
opposite directions, but growth and decay are in opposite directions; for all
plants grow not only upwards or downwards, but in both directions. Hence a
soul, not nature, is clearly at work in them. Nor do plants live only when
actually growing or decaying, but, as things that take nourishment, they live
so long as they can assimilate the food that induces growth.

§ 258. Next, at ‘It is possible’, he shows that this principle of feeding and
growing can exist apart from other life-principles, but these cannot exist
apart from it, at least in things subject to death. He adds this last clause
because of immortal beings like immaterial substances or heavenly bodies;
because, if these have a soul, it is intellectual; it is not a capacity to take
nourishment. And the separability of this life principle from others is clearly
evident in plants which have, in fact, no other one but this. it follows that
what first of all causes life in mortal things is this principle of growth and
nourishment, the so-called vegetative soul.

§ 259. Then, at ‘But an animal is such primarily’ he shows that a soul is the
source of living in animals. And here he does two things. First he observes
that what primarily distinguishes animals is sensation, though there are
animals which have local movement as well; for we call those things animals
(not just living beings) which have sensation, even if they are fixed to one
place. For there are many such animals whose nature restricts them to one
place, but which have the power of sense, e.g. shell-fish, which cannot move
from place to place.
§ 260. Then at ‘Touch is’ he shows that touch is the primary sense in animals.
For just as the vegetative soul, he says, is separable from all the senses
including touch, so touch is separable from all the other senses. For many
inferior animals have only the sense of touch; but there are no animals
without this sense. Now that degree of soul in which even plants participate
we call the vegetative. Hence we can distinguish three degrees of living
beings: first, plants; secondly, the inferior animals fixed to one place and
with no sense but touch; and, thirdly, the higher, complete animals which
have the other senses and also the power to move from place to place. And a
fourth degree consists, evidently, of beings which have all this and mind as
well.

§ 261. Finally, at ‘For what cause’ summarising what has been said and
remains to be said, he remarks that the cause of both these phenomena,
namely the separability of the vegetative principle from sensation and of
touch from the other senses, will be -given later on. He does this at the end
of the whole Treatise. For the present it suffices to say that ‘soul’ is the one
principle underlying the four distinct modes in which life is manifested,
namely the vegetative mode which belongs to plants and to all living things;
the sensitive mode in all animals; the intellectual mode in all men; and
fourthly, the mode that is a power to move from place to place, which exists
in all the higher animals, both those with senses only and those with intellect
as well.