Averroes (1126-1198), known as the “Commentator” in Islamic philosophy and as the most extremist Aristotelian in the Islamic world, provides us with detailed comments on Aristotle’s work, De Anima (On the Soul), in his book Long Commentary on the Soul. The parts where he focuses on the Third Book of De Anima; he, rather than interpreting Aristotle and explicating Aristotle’s original ideas, in my consideration, gives radical claims on the Intellect by closing the gaps and by explicating the unexplained (or rather obscure) parts in Aristotle’s original work with regard to the Intellect, its divisions, and regarding the questions of immortality of the soul. At the end, he manifests his doctrine of Mind according to which the previously held distinctions of the Mind (namely Active and Material Intellect, though his understanding of them is different than his predecessors, which I will clarify) is considered not as substantial distinctions, but as two distinct stages of the one and the same Intellect, and the Intellect as a whole is eternally, immanently, and universally shared in all individuals belonging to the human species.
Clarification of the terms Intellect, Passive Intellect, Active Intellect, Material Intellect according to Aristotle, Alexander (of Aphrodisias), and Themistius is necessary to understand what Averroes means by these terms, along with his distinct interpretations of these terms. Aristotle, in De Anima, investigates in the faculties of the Soul and searches which faculty will remain eternal after death. After sense-perception and imagination are considered in the first place, for Aristotle the faculty of the Intellect is the only remaining candidate for eternality. However, in the Book 3.5, Aristotle introduces a distinction between Active Intellect and Passive Intellect, while the latter passively receives forms, is affected by them and perishes with the body; the former is the one which organizes and reshapes the forms in harmony, that is the act of thinking and it, seemingly, deserves the eternity after death. Although, these parts of the text is highly obscure and interpreted in several ways so far; bearing in mind the ordinary termination of Aristotle with respect to potentiality and actuality, I understand from his account of the Intellect’s two stages that they are inseparable (as for Aristotle, potentiality and actuality come in degrees, and things aspire to be more actual while in their potential –that is, associated with the material sphere more than the forms- states). The Passive Intellect has a substantial reality so that the Active Intellect can produce conceptual and universal thoughts about the reality.
According to Alexander, on the other hand, who employs the term “Material Intellect” for the Passive Intellect and associates it with the bodily dispositions of humans, by way of which humans have a kind of “preparedness” for the actual act of knowing. This identification is defectful for Averroes, because it poses contradictions for Aristotle’s Anaxagorean conception of the Nous (Mind). For all individual humans have distinct bodily dispositions and therefore distinct “preparedness” for knowledge, the reality they comprehend would not be the same which makes the act of teaching, communicating and even the supposingly universal parts of humans’ –as a kind- cognition and sensation activity unintelligible (as well as the presupposed concrete reality of the object known). Having rejected Alexander with taking his term Material Intellect (yet, as distinct from the Passive Intellect, which is the imaginative faculty of the soul for Averroes, in his doctrine), Averroes describes Themistius’s position, who conceptualizes the Active Intelellect as identical with the souls of individual humans, by considering the Material Intellect as the potential stage of the first –though both are immaterial and have no relation with the sensory faculties. His views, again, are not the ones that Averroes find compatible with Aristotle. Averroes claims in several places of the text that only his views are the most compatible with Aristotle. For me, this is flawed because he makes distinctions that Aristotle never mentions and links the gaps between the distinct faculties, which is a defect of Aristotle in my consideration. So, from now on I will approach Averroes’s claims as (extremely succesful) attempts to reconcile different faculties of the Soul (sense perception –immediate knowing-, imagination and thinking), and to try to provide universal forms of sensing, knowing and thinking in all individual humans in the same species, in rather similar manner with Kant (the similarity between them is inevitably anachronic for me). At the end, he is justified to say that when undersood as a universal form of act of sensing, thinking and understanding (like space, time and the concept of “I” in Kant’s epistemology), the same Material Intellect is shared by all humans. This is what I infer from overall of his account, which I will try to reconstruct below to clarify.
Although the Material Intellect and the Active Intellect differ in their actions (the former is to be informed –patient-, the latter –agent- is to generate the act of conceptualization), they are closely linked and can be thought of two sides of one and the single mind, because the former is perfected by intellecting the latter. For getting the most general and universal definition of the reality that is agreed by the majority is important in Aristotelian naturalistic philosophy, one can say that taking one’s cognitive abilities to the level of the Active Intellect (that is the last emanation of the First Intellect, which is full form and actuality) is considered as the highest perfection of rational human beings that is achievable. Since even the most universal knowldedge starts with the operations of the sensory organs and sometimes imagination faculty of humans, having a universally shared form to understand the commonalities in the objects we encounter with our rather inferior faculties (compared to the Intellect) would provide the substantial ground for the Active Intellect to build conceptual knowledge and for us to make it intelligible the relationship between the distinct faculties of the Soul , left unexplained by Aristotle. This universally shared form fits the description of the Material Intellect of Averroes. Therefore, together with the Active Intellect, they are neither the body nor the power within the body, separate, non-mixed, non-passable; and they can be understood in activity. For example, one can think of this universal form shared by all rational humans as “understanding everything one perceives in space and time”, like in Kant. This universality in cognition is shared by all rational humans when they perceive concrete objects and provide grounds for explaining how distinct individuals conceptualize what they see as the same thing –most of the time. The Material Intellect requires the perception and concrete existents to become actual conceptionalisation.
The actual and the most universal knowledge is “always identical with its object” as Aristotle puts it and Averroes admits,so one needs perfection with regard to what one gets directly with sense-perception with the help of universal forms shared by all rational humans provided by the Material Intellect. In that context, one can talk about the eternality of both the Material and the Active Intellect, not when they are understood as the faculty of the soul of individual human beings but when they are considered as more general –human species- in a sense of Aristotelian secondary substances. That is, it is not the case that when I die, the individual Intellect of mine will have independent and eternal substance; rather, when the commonly shared part of all rational human beings’ Intellect is eternal (and it would not be “commonly shared universal form” if we only consider an individual). Also, the seemingly extraordinary claim that we, rational humans, all share one Mind, when it is understood in this context, becomes intelligible: That is, we share the universal form that is common in all activities that aim at the universal knowledge. The extreme similarity of this rationality-centered human being definition, which also has several presuppositions regarding the activities of distinct faculties of the Soul and their relation with each other, with the Kantian (modern) conception of humanity as a shared value between all rational human instances is also relevant. (Although, here we are faced with a claim that one can get the knowledge of objects as they are in themselves, unlike in Kant.)
To conclude, I investigated in what sense Averroes claimed that we all share one common Mind (both as Material and Active Intellect). While the Material Intellect’s rather receiving status makes it dependent upon the external objects that are cognized and makes it perishable; as it includes the universal forms to make the link between the other faculties and the Active Intellect possible, it is eternal and shared by all humans as the one and the same. The fact that we all share the same Active Intellect becomes a trivial claim with respect to the former, because it is defined as the ninth emanation from the First Cause and in a way already represents the universal knowledge of things as they are in themselves.
BESTE GÜN ASLAN 