Three averroistic problems

pp. 85-113

in: Philip Merlan, Monopsychism mysticism metaconsciousness, Berlin, Springer, 1963

Abstract

In his Great Commentary to Aristotle's De anima Averroes¹ teaches that there are three intelligences — the productive (he says: agens), the material (he often says: possibilis),and what he calls the speculative.² The speculative intelligence is the result of the "energizing' ("actuating') of the material intelligence by the productive intelligence (which itself is energizing or actuating in the intransitive sense of the word). This energizing of the material intelligence is not an act of direct "illumination' of the material intelligence by the productive intelligence (nor is it the result of a direct action of intelligibles on the material intelligence).³ Rather, the productive intelligence illuminates the formae imaginativae, i.e. the residues of sensations, existing in the human mind. After these formae have been illuminated, they act on the material intelligence.⁴ As a result of this action, material intelligence becomes transformed into what Averroes calls speculative intelligence.⁵