¹ See the following: Geach, Peter, ‘Aquinas’ in G. E. M. Anscombe & P. Geach, Three Philosophers (Oxford: Blackwell, 1961)Google Scholar; Kenny, Anthony, Aquinas (Oxford University Press, 1980)Google Scholar; O'Connor, D. J., Aquinas and Natural Law (London: Macmillan, 1967).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

² An elevation given formal expression by the publication in 1879 of Aeterni Patris, an encyclical letter by Pope Leo XIII in which Catholic thinkers are urged to seek guidance in the works of the Angelic Doctor. For the text of this encyclical and some reflections upon it and its influence see: Brezik, Victor (ed.), One Hundred Years of Thomism? Aeterni Patris and Afterwards: A Symposium (Houston: Center for Thomistic Studies, 1981).Google Scholar In 1980 Pope John Paul II renewed the commendation of Aeterni Patris, saying ‘[T] ruly such is St Thomas Aquinas [“among the scholastic doctors, the chief and master of all”] not only for the completeness, balance, depth and clarity of his style, but still more for his keen sense of fidelity to the truth, which can also be called realism. Fidelity to the voice of created things so as to construct the edifice of philosophy: fidelity to the voice of the Church so as to construct the edifice of theology’ (Address to the Eighth International Thomistic Congress, 1980).Google Scholar

³ In this connection see his denial of Bonaventure's claim that the doctrine of the world's temporal creation can be demonstrated by philosophical proof (Summa Theologiae, Ia, 46, 2Google Scholar, and Quaestio Disputata de Potentia 3, 14, 8Google Scholar; and his rejection of Anselm's ontological argument (Summa Contra Gentiles, I, xi).Google Scholar

⁴ See Owens, Joseph, ‘Aquinas on Cognition as Existence’, American Catholic Philosophical Association Proceedings 48, (1974), 74–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and ‘Aris totle—Cognition a way of Being’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 6, 1976, 1–11.Google Scholar

⁵ See Hamlyn, David, Aristotle's De Anima, Books II and III (Oxford: Clarendon, 1968)Google Scholar‘Notes’ p. 140Google Scholar; and ‘Aristotle's Cartesianism’, Paideia, (1978), pp. 8–10.Google Scholar See also the discussion of Aquinas in Hamlyn, , Sensation and Perception (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961) 46–51.Google Scholar

⁶ For versions of this claim see Sorabji, Richard, ‘Body and Soul in Aristotle’, Philosophy 49, 1974, 63–89CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Hartman, Edwin, Substance, Body and Soul (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977)Google Scholar; and Wilkes, K., Physicalism (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978) 115ff.Google Scholar For an interesting challenge to these efforts to assimilate Aristotle's view to modern perspectives see Burnyeat, Myles, ‘Is an Aristotelian Philosophy of Mind Still Credible?’Google Scholar, forthcoming in a volume of essays on De Anima edited by Martha Nussbaum & Amélie Rorty.

⁷ De Anima 402^a 5. Here and elsewhere I am relying upon the Hamlyn translation of Books II and III, cited in footnote 5.

⁸ 412^b 5. Versions of this formula appear elsewhere in the text, though interestingly Aristotle offers an extensionally distinct definition of ‘be-souled things’ in De Caelo where he writes that the stars are animate and possess principles of movement though they are without organs (see Book II, especially 292^a 18–21). Moreover, and of special relevance to the issue of the nous poiētikos, it does not even seem to be necessary that living things be bodily. In Book XII of the Metaphysics (1072^b 25) Aristotle writes that ‘[L]ife also belongs to God; for the actuality of thought is life, and God is that actuality; and God's self-dependent actuality is life most good and eternal. We say therefore that God is a living being, eternal, most good’ (Ross's translation). Comparison between the latter and the characterization of the Active Intellect in De Anima (‘this intellect is distinct, unaffected, and unmixed, being in essence activity… In separation it is just what it is, and this alone is immortal and eternal’ (430^a 17)) may serve to explain the tendency among some medieval commentators to regard nous as both one in all men and as being the Divinity itself.

⁹ As Hamlyn notes, however, (op. cit., 129) this analogy is in some tension with the remarks made at the start of Chapter 3 where Aristotle distinguishes thought and perception and accuses his predecessors of erring through ident ifying them.

¹⁰ See Hamlyn, , ‘Aristotle's Cartesianism’, op. cit., 14.Google Scholar

¹¹ 430^a16–25.

¹² See 429^a 18. Incidentally, this passage is the source of one of Aquinas' famous (among scholastics) arguments for the immateriality of the intellect and the immortality of the soul. See Summa Theologiae, Ia, 75, 2; and Quaestio Disputata de Anima, 14. For a limited though useful commentary see McCabe, Herbert, ‘The Immortality of the Soul’, in Kenny, A. (ed.), Aquinas: A Collection of Critical Essavs (London: Macmillan, 1969).Google Scholar

¹³ 430^a 10.

¹⁴ This expression is owing to P. Lee; see his ‘St Thomas and Avicenna on the Agent Intellect’, The Thomist 45, (1981), 41–62.Google Scholar

¹⁵ See Meno 82–85Google Scholar and Phaedo 73–76.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Ouaestio Disputata de Anima 15c.Google Scholar

¹⁷ 430^a16.

¹⁸ De Anima, op cit., 140–141.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Jonathan Barnes entertains the possibility that Aristotle may have been articulating a distinction between concept-formation and the exercise of con cepts; but he comments that if so this proposal faces (internal) difficulties. He also notes that the active/passive intellect distinction is not made elsewhere. See ‘Aristotle's Concept of Mind’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 72, (1971), 112.Google Scholar

²⁰ See Hartman, , op. cit.Google Scholar

²¹ Posterior Analytics 100^a10–15, translated by Barnes, Jonathan (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975).Google Scholar

²² Op. cit.,99^b 35–100^a 3.

²³ The interpretation of this part of the Analytics is not easy and depends in part on the rendering of arche and its qualifications. In the relevant section of the Barnes translation this appears as ‘principles’, ‘primitive, immediate principles’, and ‘the primitives’; the corresponding Mure translation, collected in McKeon, R., The Basic Works of Aristotle (New York: Random House, 1941)Google Scholar has ‘basic premises’, ‘primary, immediate premises’ and ‘primary premises’; the Tredennick (Loeb) translation (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1976) offers ‘first principles’, ‘immediate first principles’ and ‘primary premises’. Clearly if one favours ‘premises’ for the immediate product of the process described by Aristotle, this implies something propositional and of itself would seem to exclude a concept-formation account of the passage. However, the choice of ‘principle’, suggesting universal nature, at least leaves this possibility open, though it does not entail it either. I am indebted to my colleague Christopher Bryant for alerting me to this point. I am persuaded that the Barnes rendering is consistently faithful to the letter of the text. It is interesting to compare the various renderings of Aristotle with the following passage from Aquinas: ‘[S]ince the principle of all the knowledge which the reason acquires about a thing, is the understanding of that thing's essence, because according to the Philosopher's teaching the principle of a demonstration is what a thing is, it follows that our knowledge about a thing will be in proportion to our understanding of its essence’, (Summa Contra Gentiles, I, iii (London: Burns Oates & Washbourne, 1924)).Google Scholar

²⁴ For further philosophical discussions of these issues see Haldane, John, ‘Brentano's Problem’, Grazer Philosophische Studien 35, (1989), 1–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and ‘Mind/World Identity Theory and the anti-Realist Challenge’, in Haldane, J. & Wright, C. (eds), Realism, Reason and Projection (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).Google Scholar

²⁵ Quaestio Disputata de Spiritualibus Creaturis, 10.Google Scholar

²⁶ Owens, , op. cit.Google Scholar; Kluge, E. H.-W., ‘Abstraction: a Contemporary Look’, The Thomist 40, (1976), 337–365.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁷ See his review of Substance, Body and Soul in The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 28, 1978, 347–348.Google Scholar

²⁸ For Aquinas' own detailed account of the general project of the De Anima and commentaries on its various sections see Aristotle's De Anima in the version of William of Moerbeke and the Commentary of St Thomas Aquinas, translated by Foster, K. & Humphries, S. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1951).Google Scholar An interesting scholarly article of relevance to some of the general issues raised in the foregoing is Owens, Joseph, ‘Aquinas as an Aristotelian Commentator’, in Maurer, A. (ed.), St Thomas Aquinas 1274–1974: Commemorative Studies (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1974).Google Scholar