De Anima (On the Soul)
107. Summa Theologiae I, Q.79, A.5: Is the Agent Intellect One in All Men?
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[0:00] know, that's kind of a nice one verse. You know, where he's very explicit about he's wanting them to to believe and to hope and to love, and therefore, seems to lead them to eternal life, yeah. Father and Son, Holy Spirit, Amen. Father of lights, enlighten us. Guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, ordain in us our images images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. St.

[0:28] Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor, and help us to understand all that you've written. Name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Amen. So we're up to the fifth article here in question seventy-nine.

[0:53] Interesting to note in those first four articles that the questions are reversed in the order there. Because the first article is whether the understanding, meaning the possible understanding, is some power of the soul, and then he asks whether it's an undergoing power, and then he talks about whether there is an agent intellect, and then whether it's something of the soul, kind of the reverse order, huh? Okay, let you figure that out why that might be so.

[1:28] The one about whether it's something of the soul, right, is reversed in the order. Just there's more of a problem, right? People seeing the agent intellect as part of the soul. So I have to work. This is reversed from what order? Well, if you look at the first two articles, one is asking about the possible understanding, whether it's a power of the soul, right? Right. And that's the first article.

[1:57] The second article is more on the nature of the possible understanding, right? Okay. The third article is about the existence of the understand the agent intellect, and then the corresponding article to Article One is Article Four, so it's the second in place.

[2:20] And why is that? Do we suppose? Well, I'm saying I'm going to leave that to you to decide. Okay. Although, in a way, in Article Three, it's not so much asking as much the nature of the agent intellect, although that comes out in that, right? But the very existence of it, right? Right. Yeah. Because people in general might know that we have the ability to understand and reason on one hand, and we have the ability to choose, but we have this third power in our soul.

[2:45] Most people wouldn't be aware of, right? So he doesn't, you know, really have an article on whether, you know, we have the ability to understand, you know, although that's something questionable too sometimes. But that we have this ability to make understandable and act, right? What is in the images is something that people might not recognize us as having.

[3:15] So the fifth article, to the fifth, he proceeds thus: It seems that the active, the agent understanding, is one in all men. For nothing that is separated from the body is multiplied according to multiplication of bodies. But the active understanding is separated; it's not a material thing, as is said in the third book about the soul. Therefore, it is not multiplied. In the many bodies of men, but there's one of them in all.

[3:54] That's in a way we get to the question of how there can be many what souls, right? When these souls can exist apart from the body,

[4:03] we'll see if Thomas, you know, solves it partly along those same lines. But moreover, the second objection: the active understanding, the agent understanding, makes the universal, which is something one in many. But that which is the cause of unity is more something one.

[4:32] Knows that old principle there, right? When the same is said of two things, but of one of them because of the other, belongs more to the cause, right? So if the agent intellect makes something to be one out of many, then it itself must even more so be something one,

[4:55] just as if sugar makes coffee to be sweet, huh? Before it's already sugar itself must be sweet, right? As well as coffee. Therefore, the agent intellect is one in all.

[5:13] Or there, to certain extent, maybe he's what the objector is kind of playing with one, huh? Okay. I always quote that fragment of Heraclitus. It's wise, he says, listening not to me, but to reason, to agree that all things are one.

[5:36] Now some people think that by that he means, you know, the dog and the cat and tree are all one thing, right? Which would be kind of stupid, I would say, in part, considering not something that reason would lead you to see. But maybe he means that all things are one in the sense that each thing in itself is what unified, huh? Okay. And and of course in wisdom you learn that one is kind of like a property of being, huh?

[6:04] Whatever is is one, huh? As Thomas would we explain say in the Suma here, whatever is is simple or composed, right? And what is composed isn't unless its what parts are together are unified, right? And if the composed must be one in order to be even more so as a simple one, huh? So whatever is is one. That could be one meaning he has in mind, right?

[6:35] That would be true, right? Another meaning would be, you know, the the whole universe of things has some kind of what unity, a unity of order, right? And it's one in its origin, right? And one in its ultimate end, and so on, huh? So one has many what senses here, right? I mean, you could say, well, yeah, your agent intellect and my agent intellect must be one if it makes something one in our what thinking, right?

[7:04] If it makes something one out of many images. But that doesn't mean that my agent intellect and your agent intellect is what numerically one and the same agent intellect, huh? Okay. You find that same kind of argument though sometimes when they say, you know, we understand the same things, we must have one and the same understanding, right? Which is not really true, huh?

[7:34] That interesting expression you're talking about love, huh? Return your love. What does that mean? Love the one that loved you first. Yeah, but notice when you say you know someone loves you first, right? And then you return their love. Well, there's two ways maybe that you can understand that text. One would be an unfriendly sense, right? If you return your love, I don't want it. Yeah, that's not what you mean, though, right?

[8:05] When you say return your love, what you mean is what? I love you in return. But is my love your love handed back to you? No, but that's the way we speak in English. We say, and maybe other languages too, "I'm going to return your love," right? So if you love me and then I love you in return, we speak of what? I'm returning your love. Okay, just like if you give me, you know, lend me your book and then I return your book, right?

[8:36] It's sort of the same love whereby you love me and whereby I love you in return. But is that really what we mean? I'm in turn loving you too, but that returning, you know, the love whereby I, I what, love you in return is not a returning of the love that you give me. But in a way, it is, huh? A little bit like that, huh? I think the the word expression is kind of interesting, huh?

[9:09] Because it has some likeness there to what justice, right? Where you give me something and I have to give it back to you, right? You know, it's kind of a interesting way of speaking, but we'll leave that to love and friendship, course.

[9:33] But you know, in the in the prologue to Roman Juliet, you know, where Shakespeare is kind of preparing for this tragedy, a pair of star-crossed lovers take their life, right? Remember that line in the prologue? A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life. It's life in the singular, there, right? See,

[9:59] as if the lovers had only what one life. Yeah, yeah, you see, have interesting, huh? Yeah, yeah, like in Shakespeare's play, there, poem about the phoenix and the turtle, there, right? No reason can be found that two have become one,

[10:22] and therefore, you know, the love has what murdered number, right? Okay, so gotta watch some of those ways of speaking, huh? Moreover, all men come together in the first. Thoughts of the understanding, the first concepts, huh? We all know, for example, that a whole is more than a part, right? Anybody here doesn't know that? Anybody in the world doesn't know a whole is more than a part?

[11:00] See, and if someone says he doesn't know that, he's not telling the truth. And so we'll give him only a part of his salary this week. Give him a part of the meal he ordered, a part of the automobile he bought, right? He'll scream and rave and rant, showing that he thinks that the whole is more than a part. But what do you mean? I mean, you know, I gave you the the potato, but not the steak or something, right?

[11:31] But for you, the part is equal to the whole, so we can make some money off you by the money. What do you mean? You didn't get your whole salary, you know? I mean, you're shortchanged. What do you mean? Because the the part is not shorter than the whole, is it? You see. Although you do have the sophists, you know, like Lord Bertrand Russell, right, who denied that the whole was more than the part.

[11:54] You have a nice sophistical argument that my old teacher De Koninck there refuted, you know. Anyway. But we assent to these things, right? The same things through the agent intellect, huh? So as first things we understand, it's through the agent intellect that we understand them. Therefore, since we are all understanding and agreeing the same thought, we all come together in one agent intellect, huh? Okay. It is kind of strange, you know, this agreement that you have there among men.

[12:35] It's just kind of rare, right? Oh yeah. Yeah. Um. I was telling you, you know how I was one time saying to my friend Warren Murray there, I don't see why my mother, when she was a widow, and my aunt Margaret was a widow, why they just couldn't just set up house together, you know, rather than maintain two separate houses. Well, it seems that all women have different ways of doing things, even even sisters.

[13:05] And I said, you know, I mean. So he says, well, he says, would two of us ever teach the same course the same way? And I remember with the chairman, I first came to Assumption. You know, sometimes when you teach a course you haven't ever taught, you kind of talk to somebody who's taught it or something, you know, and and so on. But Father Fortier says, you know, nobody can teach somebody else's course, right?

[13:30] So there's no two professors who teach a course or present the same material exactly the same way. I mean, it's kind of interesting the way you know the the Indians. Discrepancies even among people who aren't generally in agreement, huh? Mm-hmm. That's a that's a stupid way to teach the course. I mean, you should do it this way. There's just so much. and that's why sometimes I wonder and I think about the Trinity because God the Father and God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, they have one mind, right?

[14:00] But literally one mind, huh? You know, that's kind kind unusual. And it says in Scripture that that the early Church that they had, you know, one, you know, one soul, one, you know, one heart, you know, huh? I mean, unanimous means what? One, one soul, right? But is it really one soul that we have? Huh? You say, is it? No, say. But that's the way we speak there, right?

[14:28] Huh? So we all understand the same thing by the age intellect. There must be really one age intellect that's making us all think the same thing about these things. But against this is what the philosopher says in the third book about the soul. That the agent intellect, the acting upon understanding, is like a light, but there is not the same light in diverse things illuminated. Therefore, there is not the same act of understanding or agent intellect in diverse men.

[15:03] I answer it ought to be said that the truth of this question depends upon the things that have gone before. For if the agent understanding, the acting upon understanding, was not something of the soul, but were a certain what separated substance, right, like an angel or God, then there would be one agent intellect of all men. And sometimes they compare that, you know, to the sun, right?

[15:36] Okay, it's the same sun in a sense that enables all of us to see, right? So if you think that the agent intellect is something separated from all of us, like the sun is from our eyes, right, then you might have one in number, right? But it has been shown in the previous article, right, that the agent intellect was something of the soul, right, It was a power of soul.

[16:00] And this is what they understand who lay down the, or who posit the unity of the agent intellect. If, however, the agent intellect is something of the soul, as a certain power of it, is necessary to say that there are many agent intellects, according to the what plurality of souls, huh? Which are multiplied according to multiplication of men, as has been said above.

[16:34] Therefore, for it is not possible that there be one in the same power in number of diverse what substances, huh? Okay. So no, she's drawing this conclusion from the previous what article, right? Where he showed that the agent intellect is a power of the human soul. So the power of my soul can't be the power of your soul, even though it might be like in some way, huh?

[17:01] Could you explain it? I never, I couldn't figure out this last sentence. How it fit in? What exactly? I didn't understand that last sentence. Didn't click with me. Why saying that? Which one is that? This non enim potest. Okay, well, that's it is necessary because he's saying if the agent intellect is something of the soul, if it be a power of it, then he's drawing the conclusion, right?

[17:30] It's necessary to say that there are many agent intellects, huh? But part of the reason, in order to draw the conclusion, is the one that he supplies in the last sentence, huh? Because there can't be one in the same power in number, right? Of diverse substances, huh? Oh yeah. Okay. So it has to be like a premise, along with the si autem intellectus, the if part there, the if then statement, huh?

[17:55] Right. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Now he's going to reply to the first objection. To the first, therefore, it should be said that the philosopher proves that the agent intellect is separated. Through this, that the possible understanding is what separated, huh? Okay. I think we recall that from our study of the third book of the soul. And Aristotle then said, if the possible understanding is not a body, huh?

[18:40] You remember the reason he gave for that, right? The reason he gives in the third book is that the possible understanding is able to receive the natures of all material things. Oh yeah. Just like the eye is able to receive all colors, huh? Yeah. And the eye could not receive all colors if it already had a color in the fluid there, right? Yeah. Okay. And likewise, my tongue could not receive all tastes if my tongue was sugary or sweet and sour tongue or something, right?

[19:10] That would prevent me from tasting all tastes, huh? So just as each sense is lacking in the object that it receives, huh? So likewise, the universal understanding, right? The possible understanding, he calls it, that is able to what know all material things by receiving the natures of all these things in it, must be itself lacking any material nature. Okay. That's the reason he gives there. There are other reasons you can give besides that, huh?

[19:43] And then when he comes to the fact that the proper object of this possible understanding is that what it is is something sensed or imagined, huh? And then you realize that what is sensed or imagined is not actually understandable, and you see the need then for the agent intellect, right? Well, if that makes things that are not actually understandable, things that are material actually immaterial, right? Then a fortiori it must be what itself immaterial.

[20:15] Hmm. And the it's even more what uh like an agent, huh? With respect to the possible understanding, and the agent, of course, is more perfect than the one it acts upon, huh? So if the one it acts upon is immaterial, then even more so, Aristotle argues, must the agent intellect be immaterial? Okay. So it's a power or an ability that our soul has, but not in the body, right?

[20:45] Okay, in that sense, it's separated, right? Okay, but not separated in the sense of what the Greeks call a separated substance, an immaterial substance by itself.

[21:01] So he reasons from the way in which the possible understanding, the one that understands, is immaterial, to the other one being immaterial. and from one being separated, other being separated. But the possible understanding is said to be separated because it is not the act of some bodily organ,

[21:21] and according to this, in this way also, the acting upon or the act of understanding is said to be separated, not in the sense that it be a what separated substance. So the angels in philosophy are usually called separated substances. Oh yeah. Okay.

[21:45] Immaterial substances. Mm hmm. Told you that joke about Father Boulay, right? I comes back to La Val there, you know, with my professors and so on, and we go out to dinner there, Father Boulay and myself, and one of the the lady students, right, and so on,