Thepassive intellect (Latin:intellectus possibilis; also translated aspotential intellect ormaterial intellect), is a term used inphilosophy alongside the notion of theactive intellect in order to give an account of the operation of the intellect (nous), in accordance with the theory ofhylomorphism, as most famously put forward byAristotle.
Aristotle gives his most substantial account of the passive intellect (nous pathetikos) inDe Anima (On the Soul), Book III, chapter 4. InAristotle'sphilosophy of mind, the passive intellect "is what it is by becoming all things."[1] By this Aristotle means that the passive intellect can potentially become anything by receiving that thing'sintelligible form. Theactive intellect (nous poietikos) is then required to illuminate the passive intellect to make the potential knowledge into knowledge in actuality, in the same way that light makes potential colors into actual colors. The analysis of this distinction is very brief, which has led to dispute as to what it means.
Greek thought
While Greek commentators such asAlexander of Aphrodisias andThemistius were broadly silent on the active intellect (debate over this would only become heated in the thirteenth-century Christian West in the context of debates over whetherAvicenna orAverroes provided the account of the working of the intellect that best cohered with Christian doctrine), they provided a great deal of commentary on the nature of the passive intellect. For instance, toAlexander of Aphrodisias (who coined for this power the term 'material intellect', a name later taken up byAverroes) the passive intellect was a separate intellect from the active.[2][3]
Averroes and Aquinas
Later philosophers, includingAverroes andSt. Thomas Aquinas, proposed mutually exclusive interpretations of Aristotle's distinction between the active and passive intellect. Other terms used are "material intellect" and "potential intellect", the point being that the active intellect works on the passive intellect to produce knowledge (acquired intellect), in the same way that actuality works on potentiality or form on matter.[citation needed]
Averroes held that the passive intellect, being analogous to unformed matter, is a single substance common to all minds, and that the differences between individual minds are rooted in their phantasms as the product of the differences in the history of their sense perceptions.[citation needed] Aquinas argues against this position inDisputed Questions on the Soul (Quaestiones disputatae de Anima), asserting that, while the passive intellect is one specifically, numerically it is many, as each individual person has their own passive intellect.[citation needed]
Passive intellect is identical withAql bi al-Quwwah inIslamic philosophy. Aql bi-al-Quwwah, defined as reason, could abstract the forms of entities with which it is finally identified.[4] For Farabi, the potential intellect becomes actual by receiving the form of matter. In other words, Aql al-Hayulani tries to separate the forms of existents from their matter. The form become identical with Aql.[5] Farabi also recognised the potential intellect as part of soul.[citation needed]
The soul is no separate immaterial entity. Wherever there is Nature, the soul is its universalimmaterialism, its simple 'ideal' life. Soul is thesubstance or 'absolute' basis of all the particularizing and individualizing ofmind: it is in the soul that mind finds the material on which its character is wrought, and the soul remains the pervading, identical ideality of it all. But as it is still conceived thus abstractly, the soul is only the sleep of mind - the passivenous of Aristotle, which ispotentially all things.
— G.W.F. Hegel,Philosophy of Mind/Spirit, Part Three of TheEncyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences (1830),§ 389, trans.William Wallace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), p.29[6]
Recalling the tradition inaugurated byAl-Farabi and then by Averroes'monopsychism,Hegel also stated that passive intellect is the universal soul, theuniversalsubstance, immaterial, separate from the individual and formless ("is potentially all things") that is able to particularise and realise the Spirit in any individual subject. While thisindividuation is taking place, it always remains itself, that is to say immaterial and universal, without any mixture with body'smatter: in other words, according toMoses Narboni, the unique intellect "iswith the body, but notin the body."[7]