User talk:Adamm hilarius meersmens
Averroes and the Active Intellect, the Material Intellect. (i'm not quite certain enough to make a topic of it... although i think it really fits the commons, the peer-to-peer-thinking, the progress not in terms of economics, but in terms of thoughts) (therefore i first put it here..., check-doublecheck.)
Averroes or Aboe-Al-Walid Mohammed ibn Ahmad ibn Roesjd (1126-1198), born in Islamitic Cordoba, influenced the western thinking through his work in which he tried to combine the thinking of the Greeks, before all Aristoteles and Plato, with the framework of the koran. He also tried to reconcile reason with revelation. furthermore he tried to show in his writings how different groups in society could perceive (those) ideas. For that he looked at how language was used (philosophical, dialectical, literal).
The active intellect is universal, immaterial and eternal. It exists independently from and outside the body of the human being. Thoughts are themselves immaterial and eternal, but thoughts need a material intellect that thinks them. The material intellect is a human intellect. It constantly thinks and for that it cannot be the intellect of one single individual. Individual people don't think continuously. Therefore the material intellect is to be equated with the whole of humankind. The speculative or passive intellect is a personal intellect, Averroes equalizes this with imagination. [Leezenberg, M. (2001). Islamitische filosofie. Een geschiedenis. Amsterdam: Bulaaq.]
When it comes in to contact with the active intellect, the speculative intellect will produce the material intellect. This material intellect has the capacity to receive intelligibilities from the active intellect. We may not perceive this as an independent entity, but more as an instance from the active intellect. It's like an aspect from the active intellect that is present in individual human beings. The speculative intellect is as it were the cause of the connection between the active and the material intellect that is achieved. This connection ensures that we are able to think in more abstract ways. Through the conjunction between the active intellect and the material intellect, the material intellect equates itself up to a certain height with that what it thinks. It begins to look more on the active intellect and reaches up to a form of perfection. This passive or receptive intellect that incorporates itself with the active intellect ensures that we become immortal. Not as an individual, but as humanity. For Averroes the human thinking activity is that what makes all human beings one. [Leaman, O. (1988). Averroes and his philosophy. Oxford: Clarendon Press.]
Also to be found (Dutch) in Wouters, D. (2010). Averroës over de communicatie tussen de intellectue
elite en de massa. masterproef wijsbegeerte UGent . promotor prof. Danny Praet.
Combined with what was read in: Watson, P. (2005). Ideeën. De geschiedenis van het menselijk denken. Houthem: Spectrum.
note: Something in my imagination equates this active intellect with what Lao Tzu (Laozi, Lao Tse) calls 'tao'. The material intellect can be equated with 'the internet', the networking of thoughts (memes).
fascinating!
I slightly disagree: I think the internet is the material basis for the material intellect. It existed before the internet, and could express itself in various media as well.
--MIchel Bauwens (talk) 08:59, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
yes, more than right is that disagreement. somehow i have forgotten the books and the language there written within, the whole past before present... The internet is, better framed, 'just' a communication tool that is more succesfull in reaching. Better it would have been if i combined 'open-source' with it and stated that the more open-source all culture is, the higher the ability to reach for the active intellect, for then knowledge is not hidden away in different boxes, which makes it easier to rule, cfr. divide and conquer, in terms of knowledge. (wetenschap als ook maar een schap in een heuse kast die openbaar dient te zijn, opdat het dient het zijn.)(culture is used in the broader sense of a non-genetic-transfer of knowledge.) also, and finally - the spring has entered this small city - i thought of 'tao', 'active intellect' as 'the commons', since the commons are not only human (not at all) and it is what moves outside of our perception. (het buitenzintuiglijke, het buitenmenselijke.)
uiterst dank.
- DUTCH: manifest (zwaar woord voor een mening.) inzake 'wat pooweezie ook hoort te zijn', politiek... - omdat je nederlands kent en omdat ik het hier en daar lezen laat ter ondersteuning, en meer nog ietwat buig.
- Rudolf Boehm, (i think it would be useful to translate it into English. Perhaps i will be able, although i doubt every thing in my speaking and writing... Meanwhile i post the link here to the dutch version. He has an, as i see it, important book called 'Economomy and Metaphysics'. (etc.)
- European Spring. rock 'n roll jesus (thanks to diaspora-network)
- ☯(ulrich libbrecht) - also more than (interesting) critic on economism, related to taoism, buddhism, and more.
dank! mb