Aither 14/2015:140-161 | DOI: 10.5507/aither.2015.019

The Unicity of the Intellect in Renaissance Philosophy

Tomáš Nejeschleba

Katedra filozofie, Filozofická fakulta, Centrum pro práci s renesančními texty, Univerzita Palackého v Olomouci

The concept of the unicity of the intellect emerged in the history of philosophy in association with interpretations of Aristotle's On the Soul, where the Philosopher distinguishes between two types of "intellect". The first one in the subsequent tradition becomes the agent intellect (intellectus agens), unlike the second type, which is usually referred to as the material intellect (materialis), or the possible intellect (possibilis). A major controversy did not arise until the unicity of intellect was attributed to the possible (material) intellect by Averroes, who in his Long Commentary to Aristotle's On the Soul, describes not only the active intellect but also the material (possible) intellect as transcendent and numerically unified. After the rejection of this so-called monopsychism in the 1270s through condemnation by the Paris bishop Étienne Tempier, the doctrine on the unicity of the intellect spread most notably at Northern Italian universities. The article deals firstly with the doctrine of the unicity of intellect as it was advocated or described by 15^th century authors somehow connected with Paduan university (Paul of Venice, Niccolò Tignosi, Johannes Argyropoulos, Elia del Medigo, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Nicoletto Vernia). Secondly it summarizes the criticism of monopsychism during the Renaissance (Nicolaus of Cusa, Cardinal Bessarion, Marsilio Ficino, later Nicoletto Vernia, Agostino Nifo and Pietro Pomponazzi). Finally the fate of monopsychism after the bull "Apostolici regiminis" in the 16^th century is considered (Pomponazzi, Luca Prassicio, Francesco Vimercato, Jacopo Zabarella and Francisco Suárez).

Published: September 30, 2015  Show citation