Chapter 1

Classification of the laws of the rational principle in its operation —
ontological, cosmological and psychological laws

1282. 'Anaxagoras alone said that the intellect cannot be divided into parts and has nothing in common with other things. But despite that, he did not say, nor is it clear from what he said, how the intellect knows, or what causes it to know.'(143)
The great step forward was taken by the Ionian school when Anaxagoras or Hermotimus, both of Clozomenae, recognised the extreme simplicity of the intellect. But, as Aristotle observes, the way in which the intellect knows and its means of knowledge were still unknown. An explanation was also needed of the causes which enabled the totally simple intellect to be moved, especially to knowledge of corporeal things.

1283. These questions were of supreme importance, and neither Aristotle nor any of the other ancient philosophers was able to provide an adequate answer. Aristotle, in confining himself to the question about the means of knowledge, applied to the spirit limited ontological principles drawn exclusively from material ens, not from all entia. Aristotle saw that matter and form are present in material nature. Matter is passive, form active; matter becomes everything, that is, all special corporeal entia; form does everything, that is, by configuring matter puts these entia in being. He believed that the same teaching could be used to explain the constitution of the intellect.

Aristotle thus agrees with Anaxagoras in saying that there is an unmixed, immaterial intellect. This, however, according to Aristotle, is knowledge itself in act. Prior to this, there exists in the soul a certain kind of matter of all cognitions. He thought that in this way he had overcome the difficulty about Anaxagoras' teaching which, by admitting only an immaterial intellect, had been unable to explain how this intellect could know, and be moved to know, material things.

1284. Several observations have to be made about Aristotle's reasoning.
1. First, this reasoning contains defects against the rules of good method. From the very beginning, Aristotle supposes that everything throughout nature is composed of form and matter. But he does not demonstrate such a universal principle except by recourse to experience and to the experience of material things alone. He then concludes that this must be the case for the soul also, although he should have been satisfied with observing if this were in fact the case without imposing a priori limits and laws, which are always arbitrary and fallacious, on the nature of the soul.

1285. 2. By going on to say that the possible intellect becomes all things, that is, all cognitions, he makes cognitions subjective. All of them, without exception, would be nothing more than the soul itself modified in various ways. Hence, these cognitions would be contingent, etc., as the soul is. They would be mere feelings of the soul without the power to testify to any object distinct from the soul.

1286. 3. If the last words have to be translated: idem autem est scientia quae actu est, quod res ipsa [knowledge in act is the same as the thing itself], as Michele Soffiano and other translators put it, we have to conclude that because all our information is simply the soul modified and actuated, so the soul would be all things. This is the panpsychism of many German philosophers.

1287. 4. If the acting intellect is cause, efficacy, a principle which operates in the form of an art or habit, it is not entirely in act. Although Aristotle did indeed indicate, with his possible intellect, the material cause of cognitions, about which Anaxagoras had been silent, he did not sufficiently explain with his acting intellect either the full-efficient cause of cognitions or their instrumental cause. Habit needs a stimulus if it is to come into act, especially if it must be determined to produce from matter one thing rather than another, if for example a statue of Apollo has to be made from a piece of stone rather than a statue of Hercules. In the same way, art needs instruments to produce the statue.

1288. 5. On his philosophical journey Aristotle encountered the beautiful likeness of light, which could have shown him the right way. But he used it very badly. Colours in potency, which he introduces, are not colours, and colours in act are the light itself modified and broken up. Moreover, the eye which sees is one thing, the light which makes us see is another. In Aristotle, however, the intellect, which is the eye, is confused with the light which makes us see. The object is confused with the subject.
This great distinction between object and subject, which alone was capable of completing that which Anaxagoras had left to be discovered, was lacking in Aristotelian philosophy.

1289. I have shown what the light of the mind is; the idea of being, which is the means of knowledge.
The human intellect, although unmixed, as Anaxagoras affirmed, possesses a duality which removes Aristotle's difficulty about the teaching of the great philosopher of Clozomenae. The intellect has been given a means of knowledge. At the same time, the way in which Aristotle thought the difficulty could be overcome has been shown to be erroneous.

1290. The differences between my way of overcoming the difficulty and Aristotle's are these:
1. Aristotle, in affirming that the intellective soul was composed of matter and form in the likeness of material nature, made it result from two elements, each of which was a substantial part of the intellective soul, although form was even more substantial than matter. For my part, I did not make ideal being a substantial part of the soul, but simply the object given to be seen by the soul. Ideal being thus places the soul in act and in being without confusing itself with the soul. It simply posits cognition in the soul. For me, therefore, the intellective soul remains altogether unmixed, despite its being joined with something different from itself which illumines it.

1291. 2. Aristotle makes the soul result from a form similar to the forms of real being. This form is itself a reality, it is the act of reality. For me, ideal being does indeed inform the soul, but in a completely different way. It conserves its own being, which is totally different from that of the soul. It simply gives itself to the soul to be known.(145) Forms, or informing causes of this kind, I call objective. Present in the spirit as essential light, they provide it with an act of intuition which could in some way be called a subjective form. From this point of view, objective forms are causes of subjective forms.

1292. 3. Aristotle grants to the intellective soul something which corresponds with the matter of bodies. Consequently he says that the soul becomes all things. This I repudiate entirely. The soul always remains a principle of extreme simplicity. It is not made up, properly speaking, of form and matter, but of act and potency. It is indeed act before it is potency. And it is potency not per se but as a result of change in its terms, as I have explained. Aristotelians can now press the following objection: 'In this case, how do you account for the rise of special cognitions?'

My answer is: the rational soul apprehends ens, which is ideal and real. Ideal ens, which is essentially unlimited, is given to the soul by nature. The soul also receives by nature a limited, real ens in the animal fundamental feeling which is perceived rationally by the soul because it is already comprehended in its own way in ideal ens, which comprehends everything. The relationship between a limited-real ens and unlimited-ideal ens constitutes concepts, that is, special and generic ideas. But neither ideal ens nor any real ens perceived naturally by the soul is the soul itself; it is something joined to the soul through its proper relationship of rationality, as I have called it to distinguish it from everything else. In this way, the Aristotelian difficulties vanish without breaking up on the rock where Aristotle foundered.

1293. Having established the composition of the soul, and explained how it is able to work and develop, I have opened the way to a suitable classification of the laws followed by the soul in its operation. The soul's activities spring and as it were burst forth from two sources, its term and its principle (it has this in common with every other finite ens). The term of the soul is twofold: Ens and the World (what is real but finite). Hence there are three sources for the laws governing the soul's operation: Ens, the World, and the activity proper to the rational principle. The laws of operation proper to the rational principle can therefore be classified of themselves into three extremely noble kinds: ontological, cosmological and psychological. I shall begin by discussing the laws imposed by the nature of the object on the rational principle in its action, that is, the ontological laws, which can never be lacking whatever ens is present as the object of the soul's operation.

Notes

(143) Aristotle, Metaph ., 1. Shortly before this, Aristotle had written: 'But it seems that Anaxagoras maintained that the soul and the intellect were different. — Nevertheless, he uses both as though they constituted a single nature, except that he made the intellect the PRINCIPLE of all things. He says that the intellect alone, amongst all entia, is simple, unmixed, pure. But he attributes to the same principle both knowing and moving, saying that the intellect had put all things in motion.' — It was said, however, during Aristotle's time that Hermotimus, a fellow-citizen of Anaxagoras, had previously posited the intellect as the cause of the universe. Metaph ., 1. Hermotimus and Anaxagoras provide a date for the interchange of teaching between the Ionic and Italic schools. From the time of these philosophers onwards, both schools dealt with the same questions and differed in name rather than opinion. Cf. Rinnovamento , bk. 3, ch. 51.

(144) De An . 3.

(145) Sistema filosofico , n. 35.