Intellect

(Latin intelligere -- inter and legere -- to choose between, to 
discern; Greek nous; German Vernunft, Verstand; French intellect; 
Italian intelletto). 

The faculty of thought. AS understood in Catholic philosophical 
literature it signifies the higher, spiritual, cognitive power of 
the soul. It is in this view awakened to action by sense, but 
transcends the latter in range. Amongst its functions are 
attention, conception, judgment, reasoning, reflection, and self-
consciousness. All these modes of activity exhibit a distinctly 
suprasensuous element, and reveal a cognitive faculty of a higher 
order than is required for mere sense-cognitions. In harmony, 
therefore, with Catholic usage, we reserve the terms intellect, 
intelligence, and intellectual to this higher power and its 
operations, although many modern psychologists are wont, with much 
resulting confusion, to extend the application of these terms so 
as to include sensuous forms of the cognitive process. By thus 
restricting the use of these terms, the inaccuracy of such phrases 
as "animal intelligence" is avoided. Before such language may be 
legitimately employed, it should be shown that the lower animals 
are endowed with genuinely rational faculties, fundamentally one 
in kind with those of man. Catholic philosophers, however they 
differ on minor points, as a general body have held that intellect 
is a spiritual faculty depending extrinsically, but not 
intrinsically, on the bodily organism. The importance of a right 
theory of intellect is twofold: on account of its bearing on 
epistemology, or the doctrine of knowledge; and because of its 
connexion with the question of the spirituality of the soul. 

HISTORY

The view that the cognitive powers of the mind, or faculties of 
knowledge, are of a double order -- the one lower, grosser, more 
intimately depending on bodily organs, the other higher and of a 
more refined and spiritual nature -- appeared very early, though 
at first confusedly, in Greek thought. It was in connexion with 
cosmological, rather than psychological, theories that the 
difference between sensuous and rational knowledge was first 
emphasized. On the one hand there seems to be constant change, 
and, on the other hand, permanence in the world that is revealed 
to us. The question: How is the apparent conflict to be 
reconciled? or, Which is the true representation? forced itself on 
the speculative mind. Heraclitus insists on the reality of the 
changeable. All things are in a perpetual flux. Parmenides, Zeno, 
and the Eleatics argued that only the unchangeable being truly is. 
Aisthesis, "sense", is the faculty by which changing phenomena are 
apprehended; nous, "thought", "reason", "intellect", presents to 
us permanent, abiding being. The Sophists, with a skill 
unsurpassed by modern Agnosticism, urged the sceptical 
consequences of the apparent contradiction between the one and the 
many, the permanent and the changing, and emphasized the part 
contributed by the mind in knowledge. For Protagoras, "Man is the 
measure of all things", whilst with Gorgias the conclusion is: 
"Nothing is; nothing can be known; nothing can be expressed in 
speech". Socrates held that truth was innate in the mind 
antecedent to sensuous experience, but his chief contribution to 
the theory of knowledge was his insistence on the importance of 
the general concept or definition. 

It was Plato, however, who first realized the full significance of 
the problem and the necessity for coordinating the data of sense 
with the data of the intellect, he also first explained the origin 
of the problem. The universe of being, as reported by reason, is 
one, eternal, immutable; as revealed by sense, it is a series of 
multiple changing phenomena. Which is the truly real? For Plato 
there are in a sense two worlds, that of the intellect (noeton) 
and that of sense (horaton). Sense can give only an imperfect 
knowledge of its object, which he calls belief (pistis) or 
conjecture (eikasia). The faculties by which we apprehend the 
noeton, "the intelligible world" are two: nous, "intuitive 
reason", which reaches the ideas (see IDEA); and logos, 
"discursive reason", which by its proper process, viz. episteme 
"demonstration", attains only to dianoia "conception". Plato thus 
sets up two distinct intellectual faculties attaining to different 
sets of objects. But the world of ideas is for Plato the real 
world, that of sense is only a poor shadowy imitation. Aristotle's 
doctrine on the intellect in its main outline is clear. The soul 
is possessed of two orders of cognitive faculty, to aisthetikon, 
"sensuous cognition", and to dianoetikon "rational cognition" . 
The sensuous faculty includes aisthesis, sensuous perception", 
phantasia, "imagination", and mneme, memory". The faculty of 
rational cognition includes nous and dianoia. These, however, are 
not so much two faculties as two functions of the same power. They 
roughly correspond to intellect and ratiocinative reason. For 
intellect to operate, previous sense perception is required. The 
function of the intellect is to divest the object presented by 
sense of its material and individualizing conditions, and 
apprehend the universal and intelligible form embodied in the 
concrete physical reality. The outcome of the process is the 
generalization in the intellect of an intellectual form or 
representation of the intelligible being of the object (eidos, 
noeton). This act constitutes the intellect cognizant of the 
object in its universal nature. In this process intellect appears 
in a double character. On the one hand it exhibits itself as an 
active agent, in that it operates on the object presented by the 
sensuous faculty rendering it intelligible. On the other hand, as 
subject of the intellectual representation evolved, it manifests 
passivity, modifiability, and susceptibility to the reception of 
different forms. There is thus revealed in Aristotle's theory of 
intellectual cognition an active intellect (nous poietikos) and a 
passive intellect (nous pathetikos). But how these are to be 
conceived, and what precisely is the nature of the distinction and 
relation between them, is one of the most irritatingly obscure 
points in the whole of Aristotle's works. The locus classicus is 
his "De Anima", III, v, where the subject is briefly dealt with. 
As the active intellect actuates the passive, it bears to it a 
relation similar to that of form to matter in physical bodies. The 
active intellect "illuminates" the object of sense, rendering it 
intelligible somewhat as light renders colours visible. It is pure 
energy without any potentiality, and its activity is continuous. 
It is separate, immortal, and eternal. The passive intellect, on 
the other hand, receives the forms abstracted by the active 
intellect and ideally becomes the object. The whole passage is so 
obscure that commentators from the beginning are hopelessly 
divided as to Aristotle's own view on the nature of the nous 
poietikos. Theophrastus, who succeeded Aristotle as scholiarch of 
the Lyceum, accepted the twofold intellect, but was unable to 
explain it. The great commentator, Alexander of Aphrodisias, 
interprets the nous poietikos as the activity of the Divine 
intelligence. This view was adopted by many of the Arabian 
philosophers of the Middle Ages, who conceived it in a pantheistic 
sense. For many of them the active intellect is one universal 
reason illuminating all men. With Avicenna the passive intellect