Active Intellect In Aristotle, :: essays research papers

All men by nature desire to get along. An singularity of this is the delight we take in our whizs for even apart from their usefulness they ar loved for themselves and above all others the sense of sight. This is the foundation of kind noesis Aristotle presents us with in Book Alpha of the Metaphysics. The next top dog which we must naturally ask ourselves is, How? How is it that we can sustain any lie withledge 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 efficacy are we able to call anything knowledge once sense perception has occurred?Aristotle sets up as his faculty for knowledge both the busy and the passive intellects. We begin to have knowledge through sense experience. We cannot know without sense experienceand it is from sense experience that all knowledge is therefore generated. companionship for Aristotle is a knowledge of universals, that is, a knowledge of Essences. Thought is thus the faculty bywhich we come to comprehend universals. And since material objects are a entangled unity of essence and existence, it naturally follows that we grasp the universal through our bump with the cross. What follows is a series of events which leads to knowledge. The passive intellect receives the image from the sense info and it is stamped upon the passive intellect from the material impression. From this stamp the active intellect is to extend out of it and somehow make a universal concept from this particular experience. But there is something more at micturate here. There is something in the nous ( 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 master reason immanent in mans soul. Somehow man is connected to and shares in divine reason. A distinc tion 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 native act of God, but that without this divine reason at work in the souls of men no understanding 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.