Active Intellect In Aristotle, :: essays research papers

All men by nature desire to know. An trace of this is the delight we take in our senses for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves and above every others the sense of sight. This is the foundation of hu existence association Aristotle presents us with in Book Alpha of the Metaphysics. The next question which we essential naturally ask ourselves is, How? How is it that we can have any friendship at all? We by our very nature desire to know and welove the senses in themselves but what is the relationship between the two and by what faculty are we equal to(p) to call anything knowledge once sense perception has occurred?Aristotle sets up as his faculty for knowledge both the active and the passive intellects. We begin to have knowledge through with(predicate) sense experience. We cannot know without sense experienceand it is from sense experience that all knowledge is therefore generated. Knowledge for Aristotle is a knowledge of universals, that is, a kn owledge of Essences. pattern is thus the faculty bywhich we come to comprehend universals. And since material objects are a composite unity of essence and existence, it naturally follows that we grasp the universal through our encounter with the particular. What follows is a series of events which leads to knowledge. The passive intellect receives the image from the sense data and it is stamped upon the passive intellect from the material impression. From this stamp the active intellect is to take to the woods out of it and somehow make a universal concept from this particular experience. But there is something more at work here. There is something in the genius ( more specifically in the soul) thatsomehow comprehends and makes universals intelligible. Various theories have been postulated concerning this but we shall concentrate on Aristotle and leave the other philosophies for now. What is at work in man is a divine reason immanent in mans soul. Somehow man is connected to and shares in divine reason. A distinction must be made here. We are not saying that the human souls capacity to grasp universals is in some way a shaping machine or shares in the pure act of God, but that without this divine reason at work in the souls of men no understanding of universals could take out at all. The mind works on the material given to it, that is its potential, and from this material it moves to actuality.