Lecture 7 — Recapitulation of the intellect, sense, and imagination

Now, recapitulating what we have said about the soul, let us repeat that the soul is in a way all things that exist; for things are either sensible or intelligible, and knowledge is in some way the things knowable, and sensation is the things sensible. But how this is so we must inquire. For knowledge and sensation are divided into the realities: the potential answers to things that exist in potency, the actual to things that exist in act. In the soul, the sensitive power and that which can know are these things in potency: the latter, the knowable; the former, the sensible.

Now, they must be either the things themselves or their species. But they are certainly not, then, the things themselves, for a stone is not in the soul, but its species is. Thus the soul is like a hand: for the hand is the instrument of instruments, and the intellect is the species of species, and sense is the species of sensible things.

But since there are no real things apart from magnitudes, as sensible objects are seen to be separate, then within the sensible species are the intelligible objects, both the things that are spoken of by abstraction and whatever qualities and habits belong to sensible things. And on this account, what does not sense neither learns nor understands anything. Rather, when one contemplates, he must at the same time contemplate some phantasm; for the phantasms are as the sense-objects, save that they are without matter.

But imagination is other than affirmation and denial: for the true and the false are a combining of concepts.

What difference have the primary concepts that they should not be phantasms? But neither are the others phantasms, though they do not exist without phantasms.

787. Now, recapitulating what we have said (431b20). After treating of sense and intellect, through the things he has determined the Philosopher goes on now to manifest what one should think about the nature of the soul. And this is divided into two parts.

In the first, he shows that the early philosophers were partly right and partly wrong about the nature of the soul.

In the second, he clarifies the intellect’s dependence on the senses, at but since there are no real things (432a3; [791]);

As to the former point, he does two things:

first, he explains how the soul, as the early philosophers said, is in a way all things;

second, he says how it is not all things in the way they supposed, at now, they must be the things (431b28; ]789]).

He says, then: now, recapitulating what we have said about the soul, let us repeat that the soul is in a way all things; for all things are either sensible or intelligible, but the soul is in a certain way both the sensible things and the intelligible things, because sense and intellect (or scientific knowledge) are in the soul, whereas sensation is in some way the sensibles themselves, and the intellect, or knowledge, the intelligible things, that is, the scientifically knowable.

788. But how this is so we must inquire. For sense and knowledge are divided into the realities, that is, they are divided into act and potency in the same way that realities are, but in such a way that potential knowledge and sensation are oriented to the knowable and the sensible that exist in potency, and actual knowledge and sensation are actually ordered to the knowable and sensible that exist in act. But there is a difference between the two relationships. For the sense in act and knowledge or the intellect in act are also the objects they actually sense or understand, the soul’s sensitive power and that which can know, that is, the intellectual power, are not the sensible or knowable thing itself; but rather, they are in potency as regards them, the sensitive as regards the sensible, and what can know as regards the knowable. And thereby it is granted that the soul is “somehow” all things.

789. Next, at now, they must be (431b28), he shows that it is “all things” in a way other than what the ancients claimed. He says that if the soul is indeed all things, it must either be the sensible and knowable realities themselves, as Empedocles said that we, being earth, know earth, and being water, know water, or it is the species of the things themselves. But the soul is not the realities itself, as they asserted, since a stone is not in the soul, but the stone’s species is; and this enables us to see how intellect in act is said to be the very thing understood in act, insofar as the species of the intellect is the species of the thing actually understood.

790. Thus it is clear that the soul resembles the hand. For the hand is the instrument of instruments, for hands are given to man in place of all the organs that are given to other animals for purposes of defense or attack or assistance. For man can provide all these needs for himself with his hands.

And in a similar way, the soul is given to man as the place of all forms, so that a human being is in a way the whole of being, inasmuch as through his soul is all things, in a way, as his soul is able to receive all forms. For the intellect is a certain form receptive of all intelligible forms, and the sense is a certain form receptive of all sensible forms.

791. Next, at but since there are (432a3), because the doctrine just stated, that intellect is in a way the intelligible objects just as sense is the sensible objects, might lead one to suppose that the intellect did not depend on the sense (as would be the case indeed if the things intelligible to our intellect were separate from sensible things in their being, as the Platonists thought), so he now shows the intellect’s dependence on the senses.

And afterwards, at but imagination is other (432a10), he shows that it differs, nonetheless, from imagination, which also depends on the senses.

First, then, he observes that, since there are no real things that are understood by us except sensible magnitudes, as things separate from them in being, as the sensible objects are seen to be separate from each other, so it is necessary that things intelligible to our intellect exist within the sensible species in their being, both the things said to exist through abstraction, that is, mathematical objects, and natural things, which are the qualities and habits belonging to sensible things.

It follows, then, that without some use of the senses, a human being can neither learn, as acquiring new knowledge, nor understand, as though using knowledge that was already acquired. Rather, when the intellect actually contemplates anything, it must at the same time form for itself some phantasm; for phantasms are likenesses of sensible things.

792. But they differ from them in their being outside matter. For as we have shown, the sense is receptive of the species without matter; and imagination is a movement produced by sensation in act. (Bk. 2, lect. 5, n. 284; lect. 24, n. 551.)

It will be clear now that Avicenna erred in saying that once the intellect has acquired knowledge, it no longer needs the senses. For it is manifest that even after someone has the habit of knowledge, in order to contemplate it, one must use a phantasm; and any injury to the organ will impede our using the knowledge we already have.

793. Then, at but imagination is other (432a10), he distinguishes between intellect and imagination.

First, with respect to the activity of the intellect that is composing and dividing, he says that imagining is other than the intellect’s affirmation and denial; for in the bringing together of concepts there is immediately the true and the false, which is not the case with imagining. For knowing truth and falsehood belong to the intellect alone.

794. Second, at what difference (432a12), he asks how the primary concepts, the grasping of indivisible objects, are so different that they are not the phantasms; and he replies that these are not without phantasms, but nonetheless they are not phantasms, because phantasms are likenesses of particulars; the things understood, however, are universals abstracted from individuating conditions. Phantasms, then, are not actually, but only potentially, the indivisibles.