Material Intellect

= the collective intellect of mankind, independent of individuals? (a concept by Averroes)

Discussion

O. Leaman:

"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.]