The Metaphor of Light :: Philosophy Intellectual Papers

The Metaphor of Light The classical unresolved bother of the effective spirit, raised by Aristotle in De Anima III.5, has received several interpretations in the history of philosophy. In this paper, I will recover the old hypotheses harmonize to which the active thought is the god of Aristotles metaphysics. I propose that if the active intellect is god, it is not an efficient cause but the lowest cause of gracious thought-the entelecheia of the gay wise soul. Nevertheless, the problem of the active intellect is insoluble exclusively because we do not count with all the elements required to obtain a sound solution. Yet it can be attenuated by an start out that renders much more(prenominal) coherence to De Anima III.5 than other attempts. To this end, I will (1) snap the classical conception of Aristotles two intellects, (2) work on the explanation equality excellence of the active intellect, the metaphor of light, distinguishing the double conception of potency and act t hat may be found in it, and (3) analyse the concept of entelecheia as the process by which the active intellect actualizes intelligibles in the sense of the final cause.One of the classic problems, and virtuoso of the most difficult to solve in Aristotelian philosophy, is that there is no text in which Aristotle explicitly states how the intellect manages to make intelligibles in actuality, that is, ideas. What he says in the fifth chapter of the third agree of De Anima, instead of clarifying how man cerebrates, makes the intellectual process even more obscure, because the soul, as enteleceia of the body, is presented as one unit, but the mentioned text refers to two intellects, and one of them appears to be immortal, not human.It is this intellect, precisely, which Aristotle describes as separate, immortal and eternal, characteristics attributed only to god. Based on such terms, critics gift made numerous interpretations on the relationship betwixt rational thought and god wheth er man is (or has) the active intellect, whether he thinks in concert with god, or whether only god is the agent and man is a passive-potential intellect.We think that the active intellect is, indeed, god, but that it is not really an efficient cause of human thought, but rather the final cause or enteleceia of the human rational soul. Joseph Owens and W. Guthrie have recently affirmed this hypothesis. Traditionally, however, some other authors, even though they consider the active intellect to be a separate entity, have doubted or denied that it is god.