Active Intellect In Aristotle, :: essays research papers

All workforce by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves and above entirely others the sense of sight. This is the foundation of human knowledge Aristotle presents us with in Book Alpha of the Metaphysics. The next question which we moldiness naturally anticipate ourselves is, How? How is it that we can take in any knowledge at all? We by our very nature desire to know and welove the senses in themselves to a greater extentover what is the relationship between the two and by what faculty are we commensurate to call anything knowledge once sense perception has occurred?Aristotle sets up as his faculty for knowledge both the active and the peaceable intellects. We begin to have knowledge through sense eff. We cannot know without sense experienceand it is from sense experience that all knowledge is therefore generated. Knowledge for Aristotle is a knowledge of universal s, that is, a knowledge of Essences. Thought is thus the faculty bywhich we come to entrap universals. And since corporal 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 fabric impression. From this stamp the active intellect is to draw out of it and somehow subscribe a universal concept from this particular experience. But there is something more at work here. There is something in the mind ( more specifically in the thought) 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 manufacturer reason immanent in mans soul. someway man is conn ected 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 maker or shares in the pure act of God, but that without this divine reason at work in the souls of men no taste of universals could take place at all. The mind works on the material given to it, that is its potential, and from this material it moves to actuality.