AQUINAS ON THE INDIVIDUALITY OF THINKING

TIANYUE WU

The Immateriality and Individuality of Thinking. To contemporary readers, it seems

obvious that a human person is the subject of his or her thinking. We have been
accustomed to the definition of subject as a thing that thinks. However, philosophers and
historians have not tired of warning us that this conception of subject is a late invention.
In his formidable approach to the archaeology of subject, Alain de Libera follows
Heidegger and Foucault in identifying a significant transition from the Aristotelian
conception of subject as the substratum that underlies all sorts of changes, including
thinking, to a more familiar notion of subject as an agent, the active principle of
thinking.1 Unlike his predecessors, de Libera argues that the subject-agent is not a
modern creation, but rather the fruit of debates over thinking and the self in the long
Middle Ages, of which Aquinass critique of Averroess doctrine of the unity of intellect
made a significant contribution.2
Averroess basic idea is that all human beings share a single intellect separate from
them, which functions as a causal principle of their thinking or understanding
(intelligere)3. A human being can be engaged in an act of thinking only when he is
1 Alain de Libera, Archologie du sujet I: Naissance du sujet (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin,
2007), 15-30.
2 Alain de Libera, Lunit de lintellect: Commentaire du De unitate intellectus contra averroistas de
Thomas dAquin (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 2004), esp. 9-11; id. Archologie du sujet I,
esp. 52-59, 303-311; id. When Did the Modern Subject Emerge, American Catholic Philosophical
Quarterly 82.2 (2008), 181-220, at 210-211; id. Archologie du sujet II: La qute de lidentit (Paris:
Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 2008), 136-139; id. Archologie du sujet III.1: Lacte de penser: la
double rvolution (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 2014), 245-256.
3 For the difficulties of rendering the Latin term intelligere into English, see Anthony Kenny,
Aquinas on Mind (London: Routledge, 1994), 41-42. It refers primarily to rational cognition of a
things universal properties, through which a knower obtains necessary information for knowledge. It
covers both dispositional apprehension as well as occurent acts of thinking.

1
conjoined with this single intellect. Averroes believes that this theory explains why we
can think about the same thing without positing Platonic Forms. Nevertheless, he also
holds that our acts of thinking are still different and individual, because the ultimate
principle of thinking, the separate intellect, is the same while its union with us varies
from person to person.4
To Aquinass mind, there is a very serious defect in Averroess theory, and that is
that it cannot offer a satisfactory explanation for the obvious fact that this human being
thinks (hic homo intelligit). Aquinas insists that Averroess claim that this single,
universal intellect is the ultimate subject-agent of makes it impossible to attribute the act
of thinking to individual persons, since they have merely an external relation to the
intellect. The external conjunction of a human person with the unique intellect is not
sufficient to establish this particular individual person as the agent of his own thinking,
because thinking seems to be an activity happening to him rather than an action initiated
by him. Instead, Aquinas argues that this human being thinks only when the principle of
thinking, i.e., the intellect, is an inherent part or power of his soul.
Aquinass emphasis on the individual agency of thinking seems rather appealing to
us, at least prima facie. But it poses serious challenges to Aquinas himself when his
hylomorphic conception of human being is taken into consideration. Following Aristotle,
Aquinas conceives of an individual person as a natural compound, with the soul as the
form and the body as the matter. At the same time, Aquinas also accepts Aristotles
obscure claim that the intellect is not mixed with the body or the matter so that it may
think about all things.5 As the intellects activity, thinking is likewise incorporeal or
immaterial. In consequence, a dilemma arises in Aquinass philosophical anthropology
concerning the subject of thinking.
On the one hand, if the human being as a whole is the subject of thinking, as
implied by the dictum this human being thinks, Aquinas needs to account for the
difficulties in attributing an immaterial act to a being whose nature involves matter. The
materiality proper to each human persons nature seems to be an insurmountable obstacle

4 Averroes, Commentarium magnum in Aristotelis De anima libros, ed. F. S. Crawford (Cambridge,

MA: The Medieval Academy of America, 1953), 3.5.
5 Aristotle, De anima, ed. W.D. Ross, with introduction and commentary (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1961), 3.4.429a24.

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to the coherence of Aristotles belief that the intellect possesses an unlimited capacity to
know all things. For Aquinas believes that the determinate nature of a knowing person
limits his cognition, just like a tongue inflected with bitter humour cannot perceive
anything sweet. This conceptual difficulty is particularly challenging for Aquinas
because the human person is taken as the agent of thinking rather than as the mere
substratum that underpins the process of thinking. Even worse, Aquinas uses the
immateriality of thinking as the central premise of his arguments for the souls
immortality. The intellective soul can survive death primarily because its thinking is its
own operation and does not require the bodys participation. To admit the individual
agency of thinking seems therefore to undermine both Aquinass loyalties to Aristotles
noetic theory and his rationale for affirming the power of reason to demonstrate the
immortality of the soul even apart from Christian revelation.
On the other hand, if we ascribe instead the principle of thinking to the intellect or
the intellective soul alone, as Aquinas appears to have done in his argument for the
immortality of the soul, then we seem to threaten the natural unity of human soul and
body as a hylomorphic compound. Furthermore, there is a deeper ontological problem
concerning the individuality of thinking. For Aquinas seems to commit himself to the
Aristotelian theorem that matter is the principle of individuation. If the active principle
of thinking is taken as an immaterial power, then how can it be individuated? How is the
individuality of thinking related to the individuality of each human person? Are Socrates
and Plato still distinct from each other in their thinking? If so, how?
What concerns us here is the metaphysical possibility of this human being thinks
within the framework of Aquinass philosophical anthropology. Whichever horn of the
dilemma Aquinas takes, the ultimate problem that confronts him is the compatibility
between the immateriality of thinking and the individuality of thinking. In other words,
for a medieval follower of Aristotle like Aquinas, it is not trouble free to assume that an
individual person is the thing that thinks, no matter how clear and distinct is the persons
inner experience that it is himself who is thinking. 6 However, as his contemporary

6 Since the fact that a person thinks is above all confirmed by this persons awareness of his thinking,
Aquinass reflections on self-knowledge in this regard have received considerable attentions in recent
scholarship, see in particular Franois-Xavier Putallaz, Le sens de la rflexion chez Thomas d'Aquin
(Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1991), Deborah L. Black, "Consciousness and Self-Knowledge
in Aquinas's Critique of Averroes's Psychology," Journal of the History of Philosophy 31.3 (1993):

3
adversaries complained, Aquinas seemed to be satisfied that the empirical evidence
sufficed to refute Averroes since Averroist noetic theory failed to save this obvious
phenomenon.7 Most of recent literature follows this criticism to challenge the
consistency of Aquinass position, in particular his conception of the human intellect as
the sole principle of thinking, which seems to be irreconcilable with his claim that this
human being thinks.8 Even Alain de Libera, after praising that Aquinas introduces a
modern concept of subject-agent by identifying the human intellective soul as the
subject of thinking,9 also carefully reconstructs Sigers arguments to show that Aquinas is

349-385, and Therese Scarpelli Cory, Aquinas on Human Self-Knowledge (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2014). However, unlike Avicenna, Aquinas does not identify self-awareness as the
foundation for the individuation of human intellect as an immaterial being. For a brilliant study of
Avicennas theory of self-awareness, see Jari Kaukua, Self-Awareness in Islamic Philosophy
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), esp. 43-61.
7 See for instance, Siger of Brabant, De anima intellectia, in Quaestiones in tertium de anima. De
anima intellectiva. De aeternitate mundi, ed. B. C. Bazn, (Louvain: Peeters, 1972), 84, 49-51,
Thomas etiam intentum non arguit, sed solum quaerit eius ratio quomodo compositum materiale
intelligeret, ut homo, si anima intellectiva in essendo sit separata a materia et corpore. Anonymous
(ed. Giele), Quaestiones in Aristotelis libros I et II De anima, in Trois commentaires anonymes sur le
Trait de lme dAristote (Louvain : Publications universitaires-Nauwelaerts), II, 4, p. 75, Isti autem
accipiunt quo homo proprie intelligit, nec hoc probant. Ex hoc supposito arguunt. Quodsi istud
suppositum non est verum, non arguunt. Cf. Aquinas, Summa Theologiae (hereafter ST), Opera
Omnia, Leonine Edition (Romae: Typographia Polyglotta S. C. de Propaganda Fide, 18881889) I, q.
76, a. 1, Si quis autem velit dicere animam intellectivam non esse corporis formam, oportet quod
inveniat modum quo ista actio quae est intelligere, sit huius hominis actio, experitur enim unusquisque
seipsum esse qui intelligit. For recent research on other medieval authors criticisms of Aquinass
position on hic homo intelligit, see Concetta Luna, Quelques prcisions chronologiques propos de
la controverse sur lunit de lintellect, Revue des Sciences Philosophique et Thologiques 83(1999):
649-84; Brian Francis Conolly, Averroes, Thomas Aquinas and Giles of Rome on How This Man
Understands, Vivarium 45, no.1 (2007): 69-92; Cecillia Trifogli, Giles of Rome against Thomas
Aquinas on the Subject of Thinking and the Status of the Human Soul, Documenti e studi sulla
tradizione filosofica medieval XXIII(2012), 221-44; Marilyn McCord Adams and Cecilia Trifogli,
"Whose Thought is it? the Soul and the Subject of Action in some Thirteenth and Fourteenth Century
Aristotelians,"Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 85.3 (2012): 624-47; Jean-Baptiste Brenet,
Sujet, objet, pense personnelle: lAnonyme de Giele contre Thomas dAquin, Archives dHistoire
Doctrinale et Littraire du Moyen ge, 79 (2012): 49-69.
8 See for instance, Bernardo-Carlos Bazn, The Human Soul: Form and Substance? Thomas
Aquinas Critique of Eclectic Aristotelianism, Archives DHistoire Doctrinale et Litteraire du Moyen
Age 64 (1997) : 95-126, id. The Creation of the Soul according to Thomas Aquinas, in Philosophy
and Theology in the Long Middle Ages: A Tribute to Stephen F. Brown, edited by Kent Emery, Jr. et
alii (Leiden: Brill, 2011) : 515-569; Jean Baptiste Brenet, ... set hominem
anima: Thomas dAquin et la pense personnelle comme action du compos, Mlanges de
lUniversit saint Joseph (Beirut), 59 (2006): 69-96, id. Thomas dAquin pense-t-il ? Retours sur Hic
homo intelligit, Revue des Sciences Philosophique et Thologiques, 93/2 (2009), 229-50; Antonio
Petagine, Matire, corps, esprit: La notion de sujet dans la philosophie de Thomas dAquin (Fribourg:
Academic Press Fribourg Suisse, 2014), esp. 218-229.
9 De Libera, Archologie du sujet I, 303-311; id. Archologie du sujet III, 1, 245-252.
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incapable of explicating how the act of thinking is an operation of the whole human
beings as a composite of soul and body.10
This essay aims to address these challenges by reconstructing the ontological
reasons Aquinas could have offered to demonstrate the compatibility of immateriality and
individuality of thinking in his controversy with the Averroists. The challenges are
twofold. On the one hand, it is necessary to show that the individuality of an embodied
person will not jeopardize the immateriality of his thinking nor the possibility that
someone else could think about the same thing. On the other hand, one also needs to
show that intellectual realities like thinking can be individualized just like the existence
of a human being is individualized. In other words, to resolve these challenges to the
coherence of Aquinass position, it is necessary to show how Socratess thinking can be
distinct from Platos thinking even when they are thinking about the same thing. After
resolving these challenges, we can then move on to clarifying the conditions under which
thinking can be identified as the action of a single human person. Only after we have
shown that a human person can think can we defend the claim that this human being
thinks.
However, the metaphysical approach to the individuality of intellectual thinking has
not been sufficiently appreciated by commentators on Aquinass arresting dictum hic
homo intelligit.11 Having rightly detected the tension between the immateriality of
thinking and the apparent materiality of a thinking person in this claim, most of scholars
tend to be satisfied with identifying the ambiguous status of the human intellect as the
only solution Aquinas can offer. For Aquinas, the human intellect denotes both a power
of the soul as the immediate principle of thinking and the human soul itself that informs a
material body. Since Aquinas recognizes a real distinction between the soul and its
powers, it seems to be possible for the human intellect to be both an immaterial power
and a material form.12 Putting aside Aquinass controversial distinction between the soul

10 De Libera, Archologie du sujet III, 1, 352-353; 377-395.

11 An interesting case is Brenet. He first claimed that Aquinass hic homo intelligit is a self-evident
claim as the law of non-contradiction that cannot be denied. See id. Set hominem anima, 70,
n.4. Then he took it seriously and set to examine in a later paper if Aquinas himself is able to justify
this claim from a theoretical point of view. See id. Thomas dAquin pense-t-il? 229. However,
Brenet is still more interested in the problem of attribution than the problem of individuality.
12 See for instance, G. Klima, Aquinas on the Materiality of the Human Soul and the Immateriality
of the Human Intellect, Philosophical Investigations 32 (2009): 163182; Brenet, Thomas dAquin

5
and its faculties, this solution has to face another problem: how can the principle of
thinking (the intellect as a faculty of the soul) be individualized and become a power of
the form (the intellect as the soul) that is individuated by the animated human body? 13
One may appeal to other suggestions such as Aquinass claim that the human soul is a
form that is not entirely immersed in the matter and therefore can have an immaterial
power like thinking, or the principle of actiones sunt suppositorum to argue that even
though thinking is an immaterial action, only a human person as a suppositum, or an
individual subsisting in the genus of primary substance, can be its genuine agent.14 But as
I shall argue in the following pages, the same problem arises again: how is it
metaphysically possible? Only after clarifying the ontological foundation for individual
thinking can we adequately respond to those critics of Aquinas, both medieval and
modern, who argue that his noetic theory is not consistent.
This essay will attempt to show how Aquinass account of the immateriality and
individuality of thinking can withstand to the arguments of his critics. First, I will revisit
Aquinass accusation that Averroes fails to account for individual thinking to examine
Aquinass own metaphysical presuppositions. This approach will give us a more vivid
picture of the tension between the immateriality required by Aristotelian epistemology
and the individuality seemingly implied by our own inner experience of thinking. Then I
will reconstruct three significant ontological presuppositions from Aquinass texts that
indicate a way to demonstrate the compatibility between the immateriality and
individuality of thinking. The first and most of these presuppositions is Aquinass
original conception of individuality in terms of imparticipability, which allows him to
establish the individuality of thinking without reducing the intellectual soul to a material
form. For even with material beings, matter is not the ultimate principle of
individuation.15 The second presupposition is concerned with the complicated status of
pense-t-il? esp. 241.
13 Cf. Adams and Trifogli, Whose Thought Is It?, esp. 631.
14 See for instance De Libera, When Did the Modern Subject Emerge, 210-211. Richard Cross,
Accidents, Substantial Forms, and Causal Powers in the Late Thirteenth Century: Some Reflections
on the Axiom Actiones sunt suppositorum, in in Complments de substance: Etudes sur les
proprits accidentelles offertes Alain de Libera eds. Christophe Erismann and Alexandrine
Schniewind (Paris: Vrin, 2008), 133-46.
15 The failure to appreciate this point leads some commentators wrongly to claim that Aquinas has to
accept the intellective soul as a material being. See for instance, Conolly, Averroes, Thomas
Aquinas, and Giles of Rome, 72.

6
the intelligible species. The intelligble species is an individual form in terms of the mode
of existence, but a universal form in terms of its content. The mechanism of intelligible
species helps Aquinas explain how the act of thinking is related to a universal while
maintaining its individuality. The third and final presupposition of Aquinass theory is
that form and matter (or soul and body in the case human beings) relate to each other in
an asymmetric structure. For Aquinas, the intellective soul is ontologically prior because
as the substantial form of the body, it gives being to the body. I will argue that this
ontological priority allows Aquinas to defend the metaphysical possibility of identifying
each individual human person as a genuine subject of thinking.

II

Aquinass Critique of the Averroists. Aquinass critique of Averroess doctrine of

intellect can be traced back to the very beginning of his career. In his commentary on the
second book of the Sententiae written before 1256, Aquinas already argues that
Averroess notion of a separate intellect necessarily leads to the unacceptable result that a
particular person such as Socrates does not think. 16 This accusation constitutes the core of
Aquinass attacks on Averroess monopsychism in his later works, which reach their peak
in the treatise specifically devoted to this controversy, De unitate intellectus contra
Averroistas (hereafter DUI) in 1270.17 Since our concerns in this essay are more
theoretical and systematic than historical, this section will focus on Aquinass main

16 Scriptum super libros Sententiarum magistri Petri Lombardi episcopi Parisiensis (hereafter
InSent), Tomus 2, ed. P. Mandonnet (Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1929), lib. 2, d. 17, q. 2, a. 1, Si ergo non
conjungitur intellectus nobiscum, nisi per hoc quod species intellecta aliquo modo habet subjectum in
nobis, sequitur quod hic homo, scilicet Socrates, non intelligat, sed quod intellectus separatus intelligat
ea quae ipse imaginatur. For comments on Aquinass first effort to deal with Averroess
monopsychism, see Richard Taylor, Aquinas and the Arabs: Aquinass First Critical Encounter with
the Doctrines of Avicenna and Averroes on the Intellect, In2Sent. d. 17, q. 2, a.1, in Philosophical
Psychology in Arabic Thought and the Latin Aristotelianism of the 13th Century, eds. Luis Xavier
Lpez-Farjeat and Jrg Alejandro Tellkamp (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 2013), 141-83.
17 Aquinas, De unitate contra Averroistas, in Opera Omnia iussu Leonis XIII P. M. edita, Tomus
XLIII (Roma: Editori di san Tommaso, 1976), 289-314. For the chronology of Aquinass works, I
follow Jean-Pierre Torrell, Initiation saint Thomas dAquin: Sa personne et son uvre, Deuxime
edition (Paris: Cerf, 2002), 634-638.

7
arguments against Averroes and his followers in this short treatise, supplemented by
parallel passages in Aquinass other works.18

2.1 The Mechanisms of Thinking

Before entering into Aquinass criticisms of Averroes, we need to have a rough idea of
the mechanisms of thinking in Aquinass epistemology.19
Above all, Aquinas holds that human cognition in this material world starts with
external senses. The process of sensation is a process of being impressed upon by the
sensible properties of an external thing.20 Following Aristotle, Aquinas interprets this
process of being impressed as a special sort of reception, in which a form is received
without its matter, as in the case of wax receiving the imprint of a ring without its iron. 21
After being impressed, the wax obtained a shape similar to that of the ring. Accordingly,
the sensitive soul received a sensible form which is similar to that of a sensible object.
Aquinas goes on to distinguish two kinds of impressions: one natural and the other
spiritual. The precise meaning of this distinction is still an issue of controversy. 22 What
is clear is that unlike a natural impression, a spiritual impression or change is the
reception of a form F without becoming F-ed, for example, the eyes reception of red
color without itself becoming red. According to Aquinas, in the case of sensation, a
sensible form obtains an intentional or spiritual being (esse intentionale et spirituale) in

18 For more detailed expositions of the Thomistic texts following a chronological order, see Richard
Taylor, Intellect as Intrinsic Formal Cause in the Soul according to Aquinas and Averroes, in The
Afterlife of the Platonic Soul: Reflection on Platonic Psychology in the Monotheistic Religions, eds.
John Dillon and Maha El-Kaisy Friemuth (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 187-220 and Bazn, The Creation of
the Soul.
19 For a more detailed accounts of the mechanisms of cognition, see for instance, Eleonore Stump,
Aquinas (London: Routledge, 2003), 244-76.
20 See for instance, Aquinas, ST I, q. 78, a. 3, Est autem sensus quaedam potentia passiva, quae nata
est immutari ab exteriori sensibili.
21 See Aristotle, DA, 2.12.424a17-24.
22 See Sheldon M. Cohen, St Thomas Aquinas on the Immaterial Reception of Sensible Forms,
Philosophical Review 92 (1983), 193-209; Paul Hoffman, St Thomas Aquinas on the Halfway State
of Sensible Being, The Philosophical Review 99 (1990), 73-92; Robert Pasnau, Theories of
Cognition in the Later Middle Ages (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 31-47; Myles
Burnyeat, Aquinas on Spiritual Change in Perception, in Ancient and Medieval Theories of
Intentionality, ed. Dominik Perler (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 129-53; Paul Hoffman, Aquinas on Spiritual
Change, Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy 2 (2014), 98-103.

8
the soul that is different from its being in a material object. 23 The sensible form in the
soul is also called sensible species (species sensibilis) which somehow represents the
sensible object. Nevertheless, a sense is a power in a bodily organ and even the spiritual
change necessary for sense perception take place in the organ of sense.24 Moreover, the
process of being impressed also implies that there is something underlying the change as
its subject. The intentional presence of a sensible species cannot come into being without
the functioning of a bodily part.25 More importantly for our purposes, a sensible species
in the soul, though not in the sensible matter as an extra-mental sensible form, still
maintains the individuating conditions of the matter.26 This explains why the sensitive
power can only have cognition of individual things.
When a sensible species occurs in the soul, internal senses, such as memory and
imagination, will be activated to store and arrange the sensible species together with their
individuating conditions in the mental images called phantasms.27 Here, we touch the
boundary between sensual and intellectual cognition in the Aristotelian tradition.
Intellectual thinking is also a process of being impressed or being informed, but by a very
different sort of forms, that is, intelligible species. In this regard, intellect is also a
passive capacity of receiving forms and is therefore called the possible intellect.
However, unlike sensible species, intelligible species are completely immaterial. Besides
being in the cognitive powers of the soul, they are abstracted from both the individuating
conditions of matter and the function of a bodily organ. 28 Aquinas insists that the
intelligible species is the thing in virtue of which (id quo) we can think an object in an

23 Aquinas, Sentencia libri De anima (hereafter as InDA), Opera Omnia iussu Leonis XIII P. M.
edita, Tomus XLV, 1 (Roma: Commissio Leonina 1984), lib. 2, c. 24, Et per hunc modum, sensus
recipit formam sine materia, quia alterius modi esse habet forma in sensu, et in re sensibili. Nam in re
sensibili habet esse naturale, in sensu autem habet esse intentionale et spirituale.
24 ST I, q. 78, a. 3; InDA lib. 2, c. 14.
25 By appealing to its intentional being, Stump claims that sensible species is an immaterial form
consisting in the matter of an organ of the body. See Stump, Aquinas, 254. The term immaterial is
misleading here. Though Aquinas does mention the immaterial existence of sensible species,
nevertheless, it does not follow that he views sensation as a wholly immaterial and incorporeal
process. See Pasnau, Theories of Cognition, 42-47. Moreover, it will be clear later that for Aquinas
what impedes understanding is the materiality of a thing. If the sensible species is already immaterial,
there will be nothing preventing it from becoming an intelligible form in actuality, which will destroy
Aquinass sharp distinction between sensual and intellectual cognition.
26 Aquinas, InDA, lib. 2, c. 5.
27 Aquinas, ST, I, q. 78, a. 4.
28 Aquinas, InDA, lib. 2, c. 5.
9
intellectual way, that is, in a way not limited by the constraints of matter and
individuality, which will finally bring us to knowledge that is immaterial, universal, and
necessary.29 The intelligible species are so completely immaterial that they cannot exist
in things that involve matter or individuate conditions of matter. That means even
sensible species retained in phantasms are not intelligible unless being abstracted from
the individuating conditions. For sensible species are nothing but representations of
sensible objects which have material and individual existence. 30 In other words,
phantasms cannot directly impress their likeness on the possible intellect as colors do on
our visual power, because the possible intellect can only be impressed by pure immaterial
forms, which have a mode of existence entirely different from sensible species.31
Therefore, to initiate a process of thinking, we have to posit an additional principle
capable of abstracting the intelligible forms from phantasms. This active principle is
called the agent intellect, in contrast with the possible intellect which passively receives
the forms. The abstractive mechanism of the intellect is still a matter of controversy,
especially concerning whether the intelligible species is separated from phantasms, or
whether it is instead generated as something new by the agent intellect. 32 No matter what
the agent intellect exactly contributes in the process of abstraction, what is clear,
however, is that the sheer immateriality of the intellect as a cognitive power and the
intelligible species as the result of abstraction. When the agent intellect abstracts an
intelligible species from its material conditions and impresses it upon the possible
intellect, the possible intellect then engages in acts of thinking such as forming a

29 Aquinas, ST, I, q. 85, aa. 1-2; InDA, lib. 3, c. 2 (following the chapter numbering of Gauthiers
Leonine edition).
30 Aquinas, Liber de veritate catholicae Fidei contra errores infidelium seu Summa contra Gentiles
(later as SCG), ed. P. Marc et alii (Taurini-Romae: Marietti, 1961), lib. 2, c. 59, see also ST, I, q. 85, a.
1.
31 Aquinas, ST I, q. 85, a. 1, ad 3. colores habent eundem modum existendi prout sunt in materia
corporali individuali, sicut et potentia visiva, et ideo possunt imprimere suam similitudinem in visum.
Sed phantasmata, cum sint similitudines individuorum, et existant in organis corporeis, non habent
eundem modum existendi quem habet intellectus humanus, ut ex dictis patet; et ideo non possunt sua
virtute imprimere in intellectum possibilem.
32 See especially Therese Corys critique of the standard account of abstraction either as a process of
selective attention to some aspects of the phantasm or as a process of stripping the material features of
the phantasm, in ea. Rethinking Abstractionism: Aquinass Intellectual Light and Some Arabic
Sources, Journal of the History of Philosophy 53.4 (2015) 607-646, esp. 620.

10
definition of the nature of an extramental object, which brings our cognition of an
individual material thing to completion.33
Considering Aquinass strong emphasis on the immateriality of thinking, it is
surprising to find Aquinas taking the claim hic homo intelligit as the starting point of his
philosophical arguments against Averroist monopsychism.34 However, as noted earlier,
Aquinas often asserts this proposition as an unquestionable premise without offering an
argument. At one place, when he does offer an argument to defend it, he merely claims
that it is a universal phenomenon that all can confirm by their experience of self-
awareness: we all have the experience of being the one who thinks when we think. 35
Unlike Descartes, Aquinas does not think it necessary to question the certainty of this
self-perception.36 The reason is that this claim does not play a foundational role in
Aquinass metaphysical approach to the act of thinking, a point that will be clearer later
in this essay.37 Here it suffices to say that most medieval authors, even though they have
different understandings of the contribution of human beings to thinking, agree that this
human being thinks is a phenomenon that must be saved,.38

33 Aquinas, ST I, q. 85, a. 2, ad 3.
34 Aquinas, DUI c. 3, para. 61, Manifestum est enim quod hic homo singularis intelligit: numquam
enim de intellectu quereremus nisi intelligeremus; nec cum querimus de intellectu, de alio principio
querimus quam de eo quo nos intelligimus. See also SCG lib. 2, c. 59; InDA lib. 2, c. 27.
35 See for instance, ST I, q. 76, a. 1, experitur enim unusquisque seipsum esse qui intelligit. For
more references to this sort of experience and an interesting study of the verb experiri in Aquinass
works, see Ruedi Imbach, Expertus sum. Vorlufige Anmerkungen zur Bedeutung des Verbs
experiri bei Albert dem Grossen, Siger von Brabant und Thomas von Aquin, in Les innovations du
vocabulaire latin la fin du moyen ge : autour du Glossaire du latin philosophique, eds. Olga
Weijers, Iacopo Costa, and Adriano Oliva, (Turnhout : Brepols, 2010), 61-88, esp. 77-86.
36 See ST I, q. 76, a. 1, ipse idem homo est qui percipit se et intelligere et sentire. Cory thinks that
here perception is used as a general term of cognition, which also indicates the intimate presence of
the object to the perceiving person, see Cory, Aquinas on Human Self-Knowledge, 71-74. Moreover,
as Ruedi Imbach observes, unlike Descartes fascination with the ego in this sort of perception or
experience, Aquinas prefers to use the verb experiri in its third-person singular form (experitur) or
first-person plural form (experimur), which also contributes a significant difference between two
approaches to the cognition of the self. See Imbach, Expertus sum, 77.
37 See also Robert Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature: A Philosophical Study of summa
theologiae Ia 75-89 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 338.
38 See for instance, Adams and Trifogli, Whose Thought Is It? 625. One noticeable exception is
the anonymous manuscript edited by Maurice Giele, Quaestiones in Aristotelis libros I et II De anima
II, 4 p. 75, Unde, quod homo proprio sermone intelligit, non concedo; illo tamen concesso, nescio
respondere; sed istud nego et merito; ideo faciliter respondebo.

11
2.2 The Doctrine of Two Subjects

Aquinas presents two attempts of the Averroists to explain how a human being
thinks when the principle of thinking is a separate substance, and then shows why they
are unsuccessful.39 Their first explanation is based upon Averroess doctrine of two
subjects. Their second one relies on a mover-moved model of the intellect and human
beings.
According to the Averroists first explanation, a single intelligible species has two
subjects: the separate possible intellect itself and the phantasms found in human persons.
In an act of thinking, the intelligible species unites us to the possible intellect through our
phantasms. The possible intellects act of thinking can be ascribed to us because the
numerically same intelligible species in-forms both the possible intellect and our
phantasms.40
In response to the Averroists, Aquinass first argues that the union of the separate
intellect with human beings is not a natural or immanent union but simply an operational
or functional combination, because it requires the operation of the sensitive power of
imagination (fantasia).41 In an earlier text, he stresses that the union Averroes is
proposing works merely on the level of action. This is concerned with the Aristotelian
second actuality which is contingent for human beings. However, since thinking is the
sort of operation that distinguishes the human species from all other animals, Aristotelian
psychology requires a more immanent union on the level of first actuality, i.e. the level of
the soul as the substantial form of an animal.42

39 As De Libera rightly notes, Averroes himself introduces the two subjects theory not to explain how
a human being thinks, but rather how different human beings can think about the same thing.
However, Aquinass arguments based upon the dictum hic homo intelligit was so influential that all
Latin Averroists have to expliquer en quoi lhomme individuel pense, sil nest pas le sujet de la
pense. See id. Archologie du sujet III, 1, 186; 246.
40 Aquinas, DUI, cap.3, para. 62, ... dixit [sc. Auerroys] quod intelligere illius substantie separate
est intelligere mei uel illius, in quantum intellectus ille possibilis copulatur michi uel tibi per
fantasmata que sunt in me et in te. Quod sic fieri dicebat: species enim intelligibilis que fit unum cum
intellectu possibili, cum sit forma et actus eius, habet duo subiecta, unum ipsa fantasmata, aliud
intellectum possibilem. Sic ergo intellectus possibilis continuatur nobiscum per formam suam
mediantibus fantasmatibus; et sic dum intellectus possibilis intelligit, hic homo intelligit.
41 Aquinas, DUI, c.3, para. 63, secundum autem dictum Auerroys, intellectus non continuaretur
homini secundum suam generationem, sed secundum operationem sensus.
42 Aquinas, SCG lib. 2, c. 59, para. 15-16, see also InSent lib. 2, d. 17, q. 2, a. 1.
12
 Aquinass second objection concerns the numerical identity of intelligible species
in two subjects. He argues that the possible intellect can receive an intelligible species
only when it is in actuality. In contrast, a species in phantasms is merely intelligible in
potentiality.43 Our analysis of the mechanism of thinking has shown that we need the
process of abstraction to make the species actually intelligible so that it can in-form the
possible object. As mentioned earlier, no matter how we interpret Aquinass conception
of abstraction, the intelligible species has a totally immaterial mode of existence different
from species in our corporeal organs, since the latter still retains the individuating
conditions of matter. Therefore, phantasms and the possible intellect are in-formed by
different kinds of species, and therefore have different acts of receiving forms, that is,
different acts of cognizing. It is interesting that here, Aquinas returns to the sheer
immateriality of thinking to deny the functional union between the separate intellect and
our phantasms he conceded above for the sake of argument. Due to the inherent
individuating conditions, it is not possible for phantasms to become a subject to which
the intelligible species can inhere as Averroists propose. 44 Then Aquinas appeals to an
analogy. He argues that the intelligible species in the possible intellect merely has a
representational relation to phantasms, just like a persons appearance (species) reflected
in a mirror has a representational relation to the person himself. However, the act of
reflecting can be attributed only to the mirror rather than to the person, just like the act of
thinking can be attributed only to the possible intellect rather than to our phantasms.45
Aquinass third attack on the two-subjects doctrine seems to be most devastating.
Conceding for the sake of argument that the form in the possible intellect is numerically

43 Aquinas, Dui, c.3, para. 64, Manifestum est enim quod species intelligibilis secundum quo est in
in fantasmatibus, est intellecta in potentia; in intellectu autem possibili est secundum quod est
intellecta in actu, abstracta a fantasmatibus. It is interesting to note that Aquinas talks about the
intelligible species in phantasms. This is an unusual usage Aquinas concedes for the sake of
argument. He immediately revises it in the mirror analogy that follows to emphasize that the
intelligible species only exists in the possible intellect.
44 De Libera argues that Averroes does not conceives of phantasms as a subject-substratum, but rather
as a mover that cooperates with the agent intellection in making a human person think. Cf. Averroes,
Commentarium magnum 3.4 and de Liberas comments in Archologie du sujet III.1 207-214.
45 Aquinas, Dui, c. 3, para. 64, Nisi forte dicatur quod intellectus possibilis continuatur
fantasmatibus sicut speculum continuatur homini cuius species resultat in speculo; talis autem
continuation manifestum est quod non sufficit ad continuationem actus. Manifestum est enim quod
actio speculi, que est representare, non propter hoc potest attribui homini: unde nec actio intellectus
possibilis propter precictam copulationem posset attribui huic homini qui est Sortes, ut hic homo
intelligit.

13
the same with that in phantasms, Aquinas argues that the mere functional union between
them is not sufficient to guarantee the attribution of thinking to the human being who has
these phantasms.46 His argument is based upon an analogy of the color on a wall. 47
According to Aquinas, when the color is seen, a sensible species representing the color
occurs in the visual power of an animal. However, the functional union of the color on
the wall with its sensible species does not make the color or the wall a thing that can see,
because it does not have the visual capacity. Accordingly, the combination of the
intelligible species with a persons phantasms cannot make the person a thing that thinks.
For it is the cognitive power rather than the cognitive species that determines the
attribution of a cognitive act.48 What Aquinas has in mind here seems to be the
Aristotelian principle that an action belongs to the thing to the which the power belongs. 49
It implies that a human being should have a power corresponding to the immaterial act of
thinking to become its possessor. However, the genuine challenge for our approach is
still how an immaterial power like intellect can be inherent to some extent in a material
being.

2.3 The Mover-Moved Model

In addition to advocating for the two-subjects theory, the Averroists claim that the
intellect is somehow united with a material body (corpus) as its mover, which constitutes
their second effort to save the phenomenon of Socrates seeming to think. Aquinas lists
three possible versions of the mover-moved model: (1) Socrates is the whole mover-

46 See Adams and Trifogli, Whose Thought Is It? 628-631.

47 Deborah Black argues that Averroes never draws any comparison between the eye and the material
intellect that would justify Aquinass presumption here, but rather compares the material intellect with
the transparent medium in visual perceptions. Deborah Black, Models of the Mind: Metaphysical
Presuppositions of the Averroist and Thomistic Accounts of Intellection, Documenti E Studi Sulla
Tradizione Filosofica Medievale, 15(2004): 319-352. For Aquinass own understanding of the role of
the transparent medium in this analogy, see for instance SCG lib. 2, c. 59. For comments on the
analogy of light in understanding the Agent Intellects role in abstraction by Averroes, Avicenna and
Aquinas, see Cory, Rethinking Abstractionism, 614-623.
48 Aquinas, DUI, c. 3, para. 65.
49 See for instance, Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae de anima (later as QDA), in Opera Omnia iussu
Leonis XIII P. M. edita, Tomus XXLV, 1 (Roma: Commissio Leonina, 1996), a. 19, Et hoc est quod
philosophus dicit, in libro de somno et vigilia (454a8) quod cuius est potentia eius est actio. For
comments on the significance of this principle in establishing the agency of human being in his
actions, see De Libera, Archologie du sujet I, 53-59.

14
moved compound; (2) Socrates is merely the moved body, which is animated by the
vegetative and sensual soul; (3) Socrates is just the possible intellect as the mover.50
Aquinass objection to the first option relies primarily on an Aristotelian conception
of substance: the mover and the moved cannot form a substance that instantiates a natural
species, such as a horse. For Aristotle believes that only a union of form and matter (that
is, actuality and potentiality) can make different parts a genuine whole other than a mere
unintegrated aggregation of two different things.51 If the Averroists conceded that the
union of the possible intellect and the body is merely an accidental aggregation, it would
follow that Socrates as the whole will not be a primary substance in Aristotelian
categories. More importantly, it would therefore be impossible to attribute the action of a
part to the mover-moved compound, for Aquinas assumes that the action of a part can be
ascribed to the whole only when the whole in question is a genuine unity such as a
primary substance. For instance, one cannot say that the thinking of a pilot belongs to the
aggregate of the pilot and the boat moved by him.52
It seems even more ridiculous to think that the pilots thinking can be attributed to
the moved boat, as suggested by the second mover-moved model. First, Aquinas denies
the possibility of such transition. He distinguishes transitive actions from intransitive
ones. It is obvious that thinking is not an action that can be transferred to its object. 53
Secondly, even granting that the transition of thinking were possible, Aquinas insists
nonetheless that the mover plays a more important role than the moved in determining the
attribution of action. Therefore it is not appropriate to ascribe the act of thinking to its
instrument such as Socrates.54 Thirdly, in a process of transition, what receives the effect
of an act is often said to be -ed rather than -ing. For instance, in the case of
building a house, the art of building is transferred from the builder to the house. It is
absurd to say that the house therefore can exercise the art of building. 55 Aquinas
concedes that there is another form of transition, which allows a recipient to . For
example, when water is heated by fire, it can heat other things as well. Nevertheless, this

50 Aquinas, DUI, c.3, para. 66.

51 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 8.6.1045a8-25. See Aquinas, DUI, c. 3, para. 68.
52 Aquinas, DUI, c. 3, para. 68.
53 Aquinas, DUI, c. 3, para. 70, see also SCG lib. 2, c. 73; ST I, q. 85, a. 2.
54 Aquinas, DUI, c. 3, para. 71.
55 Aquinas, DUI, c. 3, para. 72
15
is possible only when the water itself has heat as its form, in virtue of which it heats
another thing. So if this is the case of Socrates thinking, it follows that the principle of
thinking must be a form of Socrates, which is precisely the position Aquinas himself take
great pains to establish against the Averroists.56 Throughout his anti-Averroist writings,
Aquinas insists that only when the intellect is a power formally (formaliter) existing in us
can its intellectual operation be ascribed to us.57
Before moving to Aquinass own account of the individuality of thinking, we shall
briefly mention his comments on the third option for the mover-moved model, according
to which Socrates is identical with the mover, that is, with the possible intellect itself.
Aquinas identifies this approach to the mover-moved model as Platos view. In his
evaluation of it, rather than dismissing it out of hand, Aquinas mentions its affinity to
Aristotles words that the element of intellect in a man can be thought to be the man
himself.58 Certainly, he reaffirms immediately the Aristotelian hylomorphism according
to which Socrates is composed of soul and body. He lays a strong emphasis on the
priority of the soul with respect to the definition of the body: no part of the body can be
defined without some part of the soul. 59 Without the soul, flesh and eye are called so
only homonymously.60 It is not difficult to see why Aquinas is not entirely hostile to the
Platos identification of a person with his intellect. For it at least offers an obvious
answer how this human being thinks. What is problematic is the relation of this personal
thinking to his corporeal being.
Aquinass philosophical arguments against the Aveorrists present a more vivid
picture of two seemingly incompatible themes in Aquinass metaphysical approach to
human thinking: the sheer immateriality of thinking on the one hand, and the corporeal

56 Aquinas, DUI, c. 3, para. 73.

57 See for instance Aquinas, SCG, lib. 2, c. 76, Oportet igitur quod principia quibus attribuuntur hae
actiones, scilicet intellectus possibilis et agens, sint virtutes quaedam in nobis formaliter existens. For
a comprehensive analysis of this Principle of Intrinsic Formal Cause in Aquinass different works, see
Taylor, Intellect as Intrinsic Formal Cause, 190-202. We shall return to this principle in 3.4.
58 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 9.4.1166a15-17. See Aquinas, DUI, c. 3, para. 74.
59 Aquinas, DUI, c. 3, para. 75, ... nulla pars corporis potest diffiniri sine parte aliqua anime.
Aquinass point in this passage is that this intimate relation between the body and the soul shows that
a human being cannot be merely his intellect. Nevertheless, it can be read from another direction to
show that the soul is ontologically prior to the body.
60 Aquinas, InDA, lib. 2, c. 2. For a more detailed account of the homonymy of the body and the
ontological priority of the soul to the body, see my article, The Ontological Status of the Body in
Aquinass Hylomorphism, (forthcoming).

16
being of a human person on the other. In particular, Aquinass criticisms of the two-
subject doctrine and the mover-moved model indicate that he thinks that a more
substantial relationship between thinking and person is needed. For Aquinas, only the
relationship between form and matter can satisfy this requirement. He concludes that a
persons act of thinking embodies a genuine unity of the possible intellects function to
the human person as a thinking thing. However, this is possible only when the possible
intellect is a part of the soul that is united with us as the substantial form. 61 Then he
needs to explain how a thoroughly immaterial action can involve matter. In the section
that follows, I will argue that the priority of the soul in Aquinass hylomorphic
anthropology suggests a way to incorporate these two aspects of his thought into a
coherent account.

III

Aquinass Positive Account for the Individuation of Thinking. In the last chapter of De
unitate intellectus and other contexts, Aquinas takes great pains to tackle a series of
problems relating to attributing the act of thinking to a human person. The following
ones can help us better specify the theoretical challenges Aquinas has to face in
maintaining that thinking is an act of a corporeal being.

3.1 Three Objections to Aquinass Claim that this human

being thinks

(1) Above all, there is a problem with the ontological status of the intellect. If the
possible intellect is not unified but multiplied according to the diversity of human beings,
then it will be individuated by the material distinction of human bodies. For the principle
of individuation for a material compound is supposed to be the matter. Moreover, only a
material form can be multiplied by the distinction of the matter. It necessarily follows

61 Aquinas, DUI, c. 3, para. 78. ... sequitur quod intellectus sic uniatur nobis ut uere ex eo et nobis
fiat unum; quod uere non potest esse nisi eo modo quo dictum est, ut sit scilicet potentia anime que
unitur nobis ut forma.

17
that the possible intellect is nothing but a material form, which contradicts with
Aristotles belief that the intellect is something separate from matter.62 Aquinass
opponents even go further to claim that a form separated from matter is neither
numerically one, nor something that can be individualized. 63 They also argue that, if the
intellect were a material form, since all human bodies have a determinate nature, it would
follow that the intellect would have a determinate nature in itself. This result is contrary
to the nature of the possible intellect. The possible intellect has a natural capacity to
know all things, and if the intellect had a determinate nature, this determinacy would
impede its cognition of other things not sharing its determinate nature.64 In short, the
claim that this human being thinks seems to entail that the intellect is a material form,
which is contrary to Aquinass explicit assertion that the intellect is immaterial.
(2) The second objection to Aquinass position concerns the intellects status as a
cognitive power. By definition, the possible intellect is the cognitive power of receiving
intelligible forms. If the possible intellect is multiplied in the sense that my intellect is
different from yours, then the intelligible form in my intellect will be different from the
form in yours. For it is taken as an axiom that what is received is received according to
the mode of the receiver.65 For Aquinass opponents, this axiom implies that the
intelligible forms in our intellect are numerically distinct and individual forms. However,
individual forms are intelligible only potentially, since a common intention or concept
can be abstracted from them. For the same reason, this new intention is also
individualized by our intellects and then there will be another intention to be abstracted,
which continues ad infinitum. In other words, the individuation of thinking will lead to
the individuation of thoughts object and ultimately make thinking impossible.66
(3) The last objection relates to Aquinass commitment to the immortality of
intellective souls and touches one of the most difficult challenges to his ontology of
62 Aquinas, DUI, c. 5, para. 95, see also InSent, lib. 2, d. 17, q. 2, a. 1, arg. 1; SCG, lib. 2, c. 75.
63 Aquinas, DUI, c. 5, para. 96. See also Siger of Brabant, Questiones In III De anima, q. 9 as cited
in de Libera, LUnit de lIntellect, 400.
64 ST, I, q. 76, a. 1, arg 2.
65 For more details about the sources of this principle and its application in various modes of
cognition, see John F. Wippel, Thomas Aquinas and the Axiom What Is Received Is Received
According to the Mode of the Receiver, in id. Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas II
(Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2007), 113-122.
66 This objection is reconstructed from Aquinas, SCG lib. 2, c. 75, ST I, q. 76, a. 2, arg. 4, QDSC a.
9, arg. 13, and DUI, c. 5, para. 102.

18
thinking. The objection is based upon a fundamental principle of causation: when the
cause is taken away, so too is the effect. If possible intellects and their acts of thinking
are multiplied in accordance with bodies (secundum corpora), then they will not remain
when the bodies have been destroyed, and the Christian belief in postmortem rewards and
punishments will lose its ontological ground.67

3.2 Aquinas on the Ontological Status of the Intellect

In Aquinass initial response to the first objection in his commentary on the

Sentences of Peter Lombardo, it is somewhat surprising to find that he does not think it is
contradictory to assert that the intellect is a material form.

[I]t should be said that the intellect is not denied to be a material

form so that it might be prevented from giving being to matter
(quin det esse materiae) as a substantial form, with respect to its
first being. For this reason, it is necessary that the multiplication
of the intellect, that is, of the intellective soul, follow upon the
division of matter which causes diverse individuals. But it is called
immaterial with respect to its second actuality, which is an
operation; because thinking does not take place by means of a
mediating bodily organ. This occurs because an operation
proceeds from the essence of the soul only through its mediating
power or potency. Hence, since it has some powers which are not
acts of certain organs of the body, it is necessary that certain
operations of the soul do not occur through a mediating body.68
67 Aquinas, DUI, c. 5, para. 100, see also QDSC a. 9, arg. 3; ST I, q. 76, a. 2, arg. 2.
68 Aquinas, InSent, lib. 2, d. 17, q. 2, a. 1, ad 1. Ad primum ergo dicendum, quod intellectus non
negatur esse forma materialis quin det esse materiae sicut forma substantialis quantum ad esse
primum; et ideo oportet quod ad divisionem materiae, quae causat diversa individua, sequatur etiam
multiplicatio intellectus, idest animae intellectivae. Sed dicitur immaterialis [provisionary Leonine
edition: hoc dicitur] respectu actus secundi, qui est operatio: quia intelligere non expletur mediante
organo corporali, et hoc contingit quia ab essentia animae non exit operatio nisi mediante virtute ejus
vel potentia; unde cum habeat quasdam vires que non sunt actus quorundam organorum corporis,
oportet quod quedam operationes animae sint non mediante corpore. The English translation is cited
with slight modifications from that by Richard Taylor in Philosophical Psychology in Arabic Thought
and the Latin Aristotelianism of the 13th Century, eds. Luis Xavier Lpez-Farjeat and Jrg Alejandro

19
It seems that the young Aquinas adopts a materialist view of the intellect, probably for its
terse simplicity in clarifying the individuation of intellect. At this point in his intellectual
development, when he holds that the intellect is a material form, Aquinas explains the
diversity of the intellect--as with the diversity of other material beingin terms of the
division of matter. Matter remains the principle of individuation. Socratess intellect is
distinct from Platos primarily because they in-form two different bodies. Then Aquinas
appeals to the ambiguity of the Latin word intellectus to show how this materialist view
can be compatible with the immateriality of intellect. The Latin word intellectus can
refer to either the intellective soul as the substantial form of the body or the intellective
power that serves as the immediate principle of thinking. For Aquinas, the possible
intellect denotes a cognitive power of the soul. However, in the passage cited above he is
answering an argument which claims that the rational soul or intellect is one in number
in all human beings.69 This explains why these two terms are used interchangeably in
Aquinass response. It follows that Aquinas merely claims that the intellective soul is
multiplied as a material form. Aquinas also insists that the intellective soul cannot be the
immediate basis of its operations but rather operates through the mediation of its
intellective powers.70 Only when taken as a power of the soul, the intellect is immaterial
in that its operation, namely thinking, does not involve any bodily activity. Here, by
implicitly invoking his controversial doctrine of a real distinction between the essence of
the soul and its powers,71 Aquinas concludes that one cannot directly infer from the
immateriality of one of the souls powers that the soul itself is also immaterial.

Tellkamp (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 2013), 292. The Latin text is the provisionary
Leonine edition Taylor uses with one exception noted above.
69 Aquinas InSent, lib. 2, d. 17, q. 2, a. 1, arg. 1, anima rationalis vel intellectus sit unus numero
in omnibus.
70 See for instance, InSent, lib. 1, d. 3, q. 4, a. 2; ST I, q. 77, a. 1.
71 In a recent survey on the medieval controversy on the souls faculties and its essence, Dominik
Perler challenges the traditional interpretation of Aquinass position as maintaining a real distinction
between the soul and its faculties. Perler argues that x and y are really distinct only when x can exist
without y and y without x. However, the soul can never exist without its faculties as its necessary
accidents (propria) and vice versa. See Dominik Perler, Faculties in Medieval Philosophy, in The
Faculties: A History, ed. Dominik Perler (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 97-139, esp.
108-09. I think that Perler adopts an unnecessarily strong interpretation of the real distinction. In this
context, Aquinas claims that the essence of the soul is really distinct from its capacities or faculties
merely in that the distinction is not depend upon our conceptions of them.

20
 Aquinass early account, however, has significant defects. Above all, it risks
seeming incoherent. He explicitly denies that the rational soul is a material form when he
talks about the origin of the human soul in the same work, which immediately follows the
one cited above: The rational soul is neither composed of matter, nor is a material form,
as if [it is] merged in the matter. 72 If we do not believe that Aquinas could be making
contradictory claims, we must pay careful attention to the qualifications he makes in
these two claims. In the earlier text, he identifies the intellect or the rational soul as a
material form merely in that it gives being to matter as a substantial form. In contrast,
when he denies that the rational soul of a human being is a material form that can be
generated by his parents, he means that the soul is not wholly limited by its matter so that
its operations cannot be without the body. In short, the intellective soul is not a material
form without qualification, but a special one that can have both material individuation
and immaterial capacities. Nevertheless, if we do not want to take this as a merely ad hoc
explanation, we still need to clarify how this combination of two characteristics of the
soul is metaphysically possible. In particular, we need to elucidate in what sense the
intellective soul gives being to the matter, an obscure but important claim we shall return
at the end of this essay (3.4).
Furthermore, the distinction between the intellective soul and the intellective power
is a distinction between substantial and accidental forms. For Aquinas takes the powers
of the soul as accidental forms, though as necessary ones flowing out from the essence of
73
the soul. As mentioned above, Aquinas recognizes a real distinction between the soul
and its powers. Taking this for granted, one may still wonder how an immaterial power
can belong to a material form. This seems to make an accidental form prior to its
substantial form in dignity or ontological status, which conflicts with Aquinass ontology
of priority and at least asks for further explanation. This point turns out to be the
foundation of an objection Aquinas has to deal with later in the Summa Theologiae.74

72 Aquinas, InSent lib. 2, d. 18, q. 2, a. 1, ad 6 anima rationalis nec ex materia composita est, nec
est forma materialis, quasi in materia impressa. The translation is mine.
73 See InSent lib. 2, d. 17, q. 1, a. 2, ad 6; ST I, q. 77, a. 1 and 6.
74 Aquinas, ST, I, q. 76, a. 1, arg. 4, Praeterea, eiusdem est potentia et actio, idem enim est quod
potest agere, et quod agit. Sed actio intellectualis non est alicuius corporis, ut ex superioribus patet.
Ergo nec potentia intellectiva est alicuius corporis potentia. Sed virtus sive potentia non potest esse
abstractior vel simplicior quam essentia a qua virtus vel potentia derivatur. Ergo nec substantia
intellectus est corporis forma. See also Aquinas, DUI, c. 3, para. 81.

21
However, his response merely repeats the aforementioned ad hoc solution that the human
soul is a form of the body (corporis forma) that is not totally merged in the corporeal
matter and therefore can have some incorporeal power like the intellect. 75 It is
noteworthy that here Aquinas no longer refers to the intellect or the intellective soul as a
material form, but rather as a form of the body. For Aquinas unambiguously claims in
the Summa that material formality is incompatible with the subsistence of the human
soul.76 Moreover, Aquinass response to the objection seems to presuppose that a form
not totally merged in the matter, whether it is called a material form or form of the body,
is not posterior to the immaterial power of thinking in dignity or in ontological status. It
seems that the intellective soul is at least as immaterial, simple, and abstract as the
intellective power of thinking, for it is also not constrained by the capacities of the
matter.77 Therefore, one cannot claim without additional argument that the intellective
soul as such is nonetheless a form of the body rather than an immaterial entity.
On the other hand, by abandoning his view of the intellect as a specific material
form, Aquinas also has to give up matter as the principle of the individuation of thinking.
As I will argue, he actually mentions something more fundamental to account for the
individuality of both material and immaterial beings. To better understand this approach,
we need to clarify a few significant conceptual distinctions concerning individuality in
advance.
First of all, individuality cannot be identified with multiplicity, especially not with
the multiplicity of instances within a species. A thing can be individuated without
becoming multiplied. For God is an individual but there is only one God. 78 Further, for

75 Aquinas, ST I, q. 76, a. 1, ad 4, Ad quartum dicendum quod humana anima non est forma in
materia corporali immersa, vel ab ea totaliter comprehensa, propter suam perfectionem. Et ideo nihil
prohibet aliquam eius virtutem non esse corporis actum; quamvis anima secundum suam essentiam sit
corporis forma.
76 Aquinas, ST I, q. 75, a. 2, ad 1, hoc aliquid potest accipi dupliciter, uno modo, pro quocumque
subsistente, alio modo, pro subsistente completo in natura alicuius speciei. Primo modo, excludit
inhaerentiam accidentis et formae materialis, secundo modo, excludit etiam imperfectionem partis.
Sic igitur, cum anima humana sit pars speciei humanae, potest dici hoc aliquid primo modo, quasi
subsistens
77 See Aquinas, DUI c. 3, para. 81, Anima autem humana, quia secundum suum esse est, cui
aliqualiter communicat materia non toatliter comprehendens ipsam, eo quod maior est dignitas huius
forme quam capacitas materie.
78 See for instance, Aquinas, ST, I, q. 11, a. 3.
22
Aquinas, each species of angel only has one individual. Angels are individuated by their
intrinsic natures but cannot be numerically multiplied by anything.79
Moreover, individuality is different from unity as well. For unity is said in many
ways: numerical, specific, general and proportional. 80 For instance, two human beings
can be one or identical in species in that they have the same definition. It is obvious that
only the numerical unity is concerned with the individuality under consideration.
Aquinas emphasizes as well that the other sorts of unity are not unity without
qualification (simpliciter).81
Furthermore, even numerical unity cannot be identified with individuality. Aquinas
makes a significant clarification on their relationship: a thing is called numerically one
(unum numero) not because it is one in number (unum de numbero), but because it is not
divided when being numbered. The indivisibility is the cause of numerability, not the
other way around.82 In other words, numerical unity is a phenomenon that needs to be
accounted for by a more profound ontological indivisibility. Returning to the case of
thinking, we can say that any act of thinking as an instance of action is necessarily an
action that is numerically one. However, this says nothing about the principle of its
individuation, for even a separate intellect can have such a single action. It can even be
multiplied according to the difference of its objects. My thinking of a mathematical
object is numerically different from my understanding of the metaphysical principle of
individuation. The fact that it is an instance of action does not explain why it should be
ascribed to a particular individual that is acting. For that purpose, we need to show the
essential link between the act of thinking and the individuality of its agent.
Finally, we should distinguish the problem of individuality of thinking from the
question of personal identity over time. For the metaphysical possibility of individual
thinking is primarily concerned with the synchronic unity between a material human

79 Aquinas, ST, I, q. 50, a. 4. See also QDSC a. 8. See Giogio Pini, The Individuation of Angels
from Bonaventure to Duns Scotus, in A Companion to Angels in Medieval Philosophy, ed. Tobias
Hoffmann (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 79-115, esp. 90.
80 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 5.8.1016b31-35, cited in Aquinas, DUI c.5, para. 97. Vnum autem in V
Methaphisice dicitur quadrupliciter, scilicet numero, specie, genere, proportione.
81 Aquinas, DUI c.5, para. 97, Nec est dicendum quod aliqua substantia separata sit unum tantum
specie uel genere, quia hoc non est esse simpliciter unum.
82 Ibid., Nec dicitur aliquid unum numero quia sit unum de numero non enim numerus est causa
unius sed e conuerso --, sed quia in numerando non diuiditur; unum enim est id quod non diuiditur.

23
being and his immaterial act of thinking, while personal identity is more concerned with
the diachronic continuity of this union.
Therefore, what concerns us is the fundamental unity or indivisibility of an
individual person at any given moment that grounds our attribution of the act of thinking
to him. This act is individualized not only because it is a numerically single act, but more
importantly because it belongs to a person that is unique and irreplaceable. As Aquinas
insists, in created things, the individuating principle should not only explain their
subsistence, but also the difference of those who share a common nature. 83 Only with
such a conception of individuality, is it possible for us to distinguish Socrates thinking
from Platos.
Now we return to Aquinass response to the first objection mentioned above in the
De unitate intellectus. Above all, Aquinas argues that God and angels as separate
substances are necessarily individual and singular (indiuidue et singulares), because
otherwise they cannot have any operation or action. 84 As Alain de Libera rightly
observes, Aquinass position on this point is based upon a misunderstanding of Aristotles
famous claim that actions are only concerned with individuals as objects (actus sint
solum singularium) to mean that only individuals as subjects can act. 85 It follows that
God and angels only act as individuals even though they are separate from matter and the
material world. Aquinas goes further to claim that even Platonic Ideas are also
individuals in this sense and therefore cannot be defined or predicated of many things. In
light of this understanding of immaterial individuality, Aquinas reinterprets the
Aristotelian doctrine that matter is the principle of individuation. He introduces a new

83 Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae de potentia (later as QDP), in Quaestiones disputatae, t. 2, ed. P.

M. Pession (Marietti, Taurini-Romae, 1965), 1-276 q. 9, a. 5, ad 13, in rebus creatis principia
individuantia duo habent: quorum unum est quod sunt principium subsistendi (natura enim communis
de se non subsistit nisi in singularibus); aliud est quod per principia individuantia supposita naturae
communis ab invicem distinguuntur. Cited from Enzo Portalupi, Das Lexikon der Individualitt bei
Thomas von Aquin, in Individuum und Individualitt im Mittelalter, eds. Jan A. Aertsen and Andreas
Speer (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1996), 57-73, at 67.
84 Aquinas, DUI c.5, para. 99, Indiuidue ergo sunt substantie separate et singulares. There seems to
be no substantial difference between these two terms in Aquinass ontology, for instance, the
Aristotelian claim here sometimes reads as actiones sunt solum singularium, sometimes as actiones
sunt individuorum. For more discussions on Aquinass usage of these terms, see Portalupi, Das
Lexikon der Individualitt.
85 Aquinas, DUI, c. 5, para. 98, Nec etiam hoc uerum est, quod substantia separata non sit singularis
et indiuiduum aliquid; alioquin non haberet aliquam operationem, cum actus sint solum singularium,
ut Philosophus dicit. See de Libera, Lunit de lintellect, 408.

24
conception of individuality that he sees as applying to both material and immaterial
realities:

Matter is the principle of individuation in material things insofar as

matter is not participated in (participabilis) by many, since it is the
first subject not existing in another. Separate substances,
therefore, are individual and singular, but they are individuated
not by matter but by the fact that they are not destined to (nate)
be in another thing and consequently to be participated in by
many. From which it follows that if any form is destined to be
participated in by another, so that it become the actuality of some
matter, then it can be individuated and multiplied by its
combination (comparatio) with matter.86

It is clear now that a thing is called individual because it cannot be further participated in
by any other subject-substratum. In other words, imparticipability and individuality are
equivalent in this context. It is also evident now that Aquinas does not recognize two
principles of individuation in human beings as some commentators wrongly suggested:
like material things, we are individuated by matter. Like immaterial things, we are
individuated by our intellectuality.87 For imparticipability univocally explains the
individuality of both material and immaterial things.
This conception of imparticipability offers an alternative answer to the
individuality of thinking that replaces the conception of intellect as a special material
form. The summary above of Aquinass critique of Averroists Doctrine of Two Subjects
(2.1) already indicates that, for Aquinas, thinking is ascribed to a person because he has a
86 Aquinas, DUI, c. 5, para. 98-99, Non enim materia est principium indiuiduationis in rebus
materialibus, nisi in quantum materia non est participabilis a pluribus, cum sit primum subiectum non
existens in alio Indiuidue ergo sunt substantie separate et singulars; non autem indiuiduantur ex
materia, sed ex hoc ipso quod non sunt nate in alio esse, et per consequens nec participari a multis. Ex
quo sequitur quod si aliqua forma nata est participari ab aliquo, ita quod sit actus alicuius materie, illa
potest indiuiduari et multiplicari per comparationem ad materiam. The translation is modified from
Ralph McInernys in his Aquinas against the Averroists.
87 Montague Brown, St. Thomas and the Individuation of Persons, American Catholic
Philosophical Quarterly 65.1 (1991): 29-44, at 41, see also Portalupi, Das Lexikon der
Individualitt, 67.

25
cognitive power that serves as the active principle of thinking. Now Aquinas goes on to
confirm that cognitive powers are individuated in virtue of the substantial form to which
they belong, that is, the intellective soul. The soul itself is further individuated by its
essential relation to the body.88 This is not a simple return to the matter as the principle of
individuation, because material individuality can be explained in terms of
imparticipability as well. Nevertheless, unlike separate substances that are destined or
made according to their nature (natus est) to be imparticipable, the ultimate source of the
imparticipability of a composite substance is the primacy of matter as subject-substratum.
However, from very early on, Aquinas is quite clear that matter cannot be called a
subject-substratum in its strict sense because it does not have a complete being like a
subject-substratum of an accident.89 Strictly speaking, the first subject that cannot be
further participated in by other things is the compound of form and matter. In the case of
human beings being the agents of their thinking, we are brought back to the question
about the ontological compatibility between the intellective soul and the material body.
Before returning to this fundamental issue, we have a more urgent question. Granting
that our intellective power is individuated because our intellective souls are individuated,
it is still unclear how this individual power functions in our thinking. For Aristotle claims
that thinking is immaterial in that it is not the actuality of matter. However, in Aquinass
opponents eyes, the individuality of the intellective power seems to conflict with this
claim.

3.3 Aquinas on Intelligible Species

Aquinass response to the second objection relies on his peculiar conception of

intelligible species, which is another topic of ongoing interpretative controversy.90 Since
88 Aquinas, DUI, c. 5, para. 99, Iam autem supra ostensum est quod intellectus est uirtus anime que
est actus corporis; in multis igitur corporibus sunt multe anime, et in multis animabus sunt multe
uirtutes intellectuales que uocantur intellectus: nece propter hoc sequitur quod intellectus sit uirtus
materialis, ut supra ostensum est.
89 Aquinas, De principiis naturae (later as DPN), from Sancti Thomae de Aquino opera omnia, vol.
43, ed. Roberto Busa (Rome: Editori di San Tommaso, 1976), c. 1, Et secundum hoc differt materia a
subiecto: quia subiectum est quod non habet esse ex eo quod advenit, sed per se habet esse
completum, sicut homo non habet esse ab albedine. Sed materia habet esse ex eo quod ei advenit,
quia de se habet esse incompletum.
90 For a general study of the intelligible species in medieval philosophy, see Leen Spruit, Species
Intelligibilis: From Perception to Knowledge, Volume One: Classical Roots and Medieval Discussions

26
our concerns are more ontological than epistemological, we will simply focus on its role
in determining the individuality of thinking. As mentioned earlier (2.1), a most
significant point for Aquinass species theory of cognition is that a species is the thing in
virtue of which (id quo) an intellect can think or understand an intelligible form in its
actuality. Aquinas insists that within the Aristotles philosophical framework, what is
understood (intellectum) is normally not an intelligible species, but the nature or quiddity
of a thing, which remains the same for all intellects. 91 This sharp distinction between
intelligible species and the object of thinking is central to Aquinass critique of Averroes
and his followers.92 Whether the intelligible species is formally identical with the
extramental nature or just its mental representation is still a controversial issue. 93 What is
unquestionable is that the species plays two different roles in the process of thinking. On
the one hand, the intelligible species is the form or intention that the agent intellect
abstracts from phantasms and is received into the possible intellect. According to the
axiom that what is received is received in the manner of its recipient, the intelligible
species is an accidental form received in the possible intellect in accordance with the
ontological status of the possible intellect. Since Aquinas believes that the possible
intellect is a power of an individual soul, it follows that the intelligible species is
individuated in the intellect. On the other hand, the intelligible species is abstracted from
material and individuating conditions of phantasms. It is an intention in the mind
representing the extramental thing not in its individual conditions, but only according to

(Leiden: Brill, 1994). For more specific studies on Thomas Aquinas, see Jeffrey E. Brower and Susan
Brower-Toland, "Aquinas on Mental Representation: Concepts and Intentionality," The Philosophical
Review 117.2 (2008): 193-243; Elena Baltuta, "Aquinas on Intellectual Cognition: The Case of
Intelligible Species," Philosophia 41.3 (2013): 589-602.
91 Aquinas, DUI, c.5, para. 106, Est ergo dicendum secundum sententiam Aristotilis quod
intellectum quod est unum est ipsa natura uel quiditas rei; de rebus enim est scientia naturalis et alie
scientie, non de speciebus intellectis. See also QDSC, a. 9, ad 6.
92 See Bernardo-Carlos Bazn, "Intellectum Speculativum: Averroes, Thomas Aquinas, and Siger of
Brabant on the Intelligible Object," Journal of the History of Philosophy19.4 (1981): 425-446. See
also de Libera, Lunit de lintellect, 440-442.
93 For criticisms of the traditional reading in favor of the identity between the intelligible species and
the essence of extramental objects, see Claude Panaccio, Aquinas on Intellectual Representation, in
D. Perler (ed.) Ancient and Medieval Theories of Intentionality (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 185-201; and
Robert Pasnau, Theories of Cognition in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press), esp. 195-219. For a recent defense of traditional realist reading, see Baltuta, Aquinas on
Intellectual Cognition.

27
the universal nature.94 This is the so-called theory of the double being of the intelligible
species. According to this theory, the intelligible species has both an individual
ontological being and a universal intentional being. 95 Thanks to the double being of the
intelligible species,96 Aquinas proposes a solution to the puzzles revolving about the
universality and individuality of thinking:

Therefore, there is one thing that is thought by me and by you,

but it is thought in virtue of one thing by me and in virtue of
another by you, that is, by different intelligible species, and my
thinking is different from yours and my intellect is different from
yours.97

My thinking is distinct from yours because it is essentially rooted in my individual power

of cognition. Nevertheless, our thoughts can be communicated because they are related
to the same object, either extramental or representational, which has been abstracted from
its material and individuating conditions. In most cases, the object of thought is the
universal nature of things. However, there is still a marginal issue that needs to be
addressed here. Aquinas mentions that in some special cases, when the intellect reflects
on itself, the intelligible species received in the possible intellect will become the object
of intellectual thinking.98 Since the intelligible species in the intellect is an individual

94 Aquinas, DUI, c. 5, para. 107, Hec [sc. species] autem, cum sit abstracta a principiis
indiuidualibus, non representat rem secundum condiciones indiuiduales, sed secudnum naturam
uniuersalem tantum.
95 See for instance, Bazn, "Intellectum Speculativum, 436; Baltuta, Aquinas on Intellectual
Cognition, 591.
96 Aquinas explicitly acknowledges his indebtedness to Avicenna in this regard, see InSent, lib. 2, d.
17, q. 2, a. 1, ad 3. Cf. Avicenna, Metaphysics, 5. 1 as cited in Taylor, Aquinas and the Arabs,
156.
97 Aquinas, DUI, c. 5, para. 108, Est ergo unum quod intelligitur et a me et a te, sed alio intelligitur a
me et alio a te, id est alia specie intelligibili; et aliud est intelligere meum et aliud tuum; et alius est
intellectus meus et alius tuus.
98 Aquinas, DUI, c.5, para. 106, Hec autem species non se habent ad intellectum possibilem ut
intellecta, ... nisi in quantum intellectus reflectitur supra se ipsum. For an interesting account of the
significance of the intellects reflexivity in Aquinass conception of human agency, see Therese Cory,
The Reflexivity of Incorporeal Acts as Source of Freedom and Subjectivity in Aquinas, in Jari
Kaukua and Tomas Ekenberg (eds.), Subjectivity and Selfhood in Medieval and Early Modern
Philosophy (Cham: Springer, 2016), 125-141.

28
form, Aquinas still needs to answer how this individual form can be understood as
something intelligible in actuality. Aquinass answer is rather simple: what is
incompatible with thinking is not singularity but materiality. Since intelligible species
are immaterial individuals just like separate substances, which obviously can each
individually think about themselves, nothing prevents the individuated intelligible species
from being thought in the intellects self-reflection.99
Aquinass incorporation of intelligible species into his account of the individuality
of thinking represents significant progress. For its double aspect helps us better conceive
of the combination of individuality and immateriality in a single entity. It offers a
mechanism to show how the act of thinking is related to a universal while maintaining its
individuality. An intelligible species is individuated because it is an intentional being that
is retained in the possible intellect. This gives us a good reason to ascribe the act of
thinking to the intellect in virtue of this individuated species. However, can we therefore
ascribe thinking to the person who has the intellect? Aquinas seems to imply so. He
mentions that the human intellect has a special need of intelligible species in order to
know, because it has no immanent knowledge at all. A human intellect needs sensation
and imagination to obtain its own intelligible species. This understanding of the human
intellect seems to indicate that our corporeal existence contributes to the acts of our
intellects. However, it merely seems so. For as is shown in Aquinass critique of
Averroists theory of two subjects (2.2), the contribution of phantasms to the process of
thinking is something that needs to be deprived of its individuating conditions.
Therefore, even if we can accept the primitive individuality of intellect and its own
intelligible species, what we have achieved is merely to ascribe the act of thinking to the
intellect, not the person.

3.4 Aquinas on the Intellect and the Body

Aquinass response to the third objection, the one concerning the souls individuality
after death, actually strengthens the abovementioned tendency of his thought to link the
act of thinking to an individual intellect rather than to an individual person. With the new
99 Aquinas, DUI, c.5, para. 108, Non enim singularitas repugnat intelligibilitati, sed materialitas:
unde, cum sint aliqua singularia immaterialia, sicut de substantiis separatis supra dictum est, nichil
prohibet huiusmodi singularia intelligi.

29
principle of individuality at hand, Aquinas gives a simple answer to the objection about
the individuality of the intellect that survives death: the unity of a thing depends upon its
being. Since the intellect (and the intellective soul) has its own being, it will not be taken
away when the body is destroyed. Therefore, the intellects unity and the individuality
flowing from its existence will remain after death.100
This argument obviously presupposes the immortality of the soul, which is not put into
question by the Averroists Aquinas has in mind. Nevertheless, a crucial point in
Aquinass argument for the immortality of the soul is that the intellective soul has its own
operation, namely, thinking, which is not shared by the body. This is so because the
intellect by nature can cognize the natures of all bodies. As shown in the first objection
(3.1), medieval Aristotelians believed that if the intellective soul had a determinate
material nature, this would impede its cognition of other things. Therefore, it is
impossible for the intellective soul as the principle of thinking to be a body or to operate
through a bodily organ. It follows that the intellective soul has thinking per se that the
body does not share in.101
Whether this argument for the subsistence of the intellect is valid is not our concern
here. What troubles us here is the arguments explicit claim that thinking as an operation
of the intellective soul itself, because this claim seems to be incompatible with his
hylomorphic conception of human being. As mentioned above (3.2), Aquinas
misinterprets Aristotles claim that actions are only concerned with individual objects to
mean that actions merely belong to individual subjects.102 It is well known that
Aquinass ontology adopts an even stronger version of this principle: actions only belong
to supposita (actiones sunt suppositorum).103 Since suppositum is understood as an
individual that subsists in the genus of substance,104 it follows that strictly speaking only a
human person can qualify as the agent of his thinking. Aquinas himself also

100 Aquinas, DUI, c. 5, para. 100, Vnumquodque enim sic est ens sicut unum, ut dicitur in IV
Methaphisice; sicut igitur esse anime est quidem in corpore in quantum est forma corporis, nec est
ante corpus, tamen destructo corpore adhuc remanet in suo esse: ita unaqueque anima remanet in sua
unitate, et per consequens multe anime in sua multitudine.
101 See for instance, Aquinas, ST, I, q. 75, a. 2, QDSC, a. 2.
102 See supra note 85.
103 See for instance, ST, I, q. 39, a. 5, ad 1. For more references, see Bazn, The Creation of the
Soul, 533, n. 51.
104 Aquinas, ST, I, q. 29, a. 2.
30
unequivocally acknowledges this point in his argument for the immortality of the soul:
one can say that the soul thinks, just as the eye sees. But one speaks more strictly in
saying that the human being thinks through the soul. 105 So, to repeat again our puzzle at
the beginning, how can the same action of thinking be ascribed both to the intellect and to
the human person that is thinking?
It has been suggested that Aquinas proposes a straightforward way to link thinking,
intellect, and human person by his formal conception of the intellect: the (possible)
intellect is the thing, formally speaking (formaliter loquendo), in virtue of which a human
being thinks.106 Aquinas here is alluding to the Principle of Intrinsic Formal Cause,
according to which a thing acts only when the principle of action is its intrinsic form. 107
It is evident by definition that the intellect the principle of intellectual thinking.
However, one should be careful to directly draw the conclusion that the intellective
principle of human thinking is a form of the human body, as Aquinas implies here. 108 In
his treatise against the Averroists, Aquinas cautiously elucidates that the intellect formally
inheres in a human person not in that it is the form of the body, but in that it is a power
of the soul that is the form of the body. 109 This is so because Aquinas believes that an
operation or action is ascribed to an agent only by means of a power which is the
immediate or proximate principle of the action. 110 It means that the intellective soul can
be called the non-proximate principle of thinking only in a derived senses. Furthermore,

105 Aquinas, ST, I, q. 75, a. 2, ad 2. Potest igitur dici quod anima intelligit, sicut oculus videt, sed
magis proprie dicitur quod homo intelligat per animam. The translation is cited from Robert Pasnau
(tr.), The Treatise on Human Nature: Summa Theologiae 1a75-89 (Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett
Publishing Company, Inc., 2002).
106 Aquinas, InDA, lib. 3, c. 1, Intellectus ergo possibilis est, quo hic homo, formaliter loquendo,
intelligit. Cf. QDSC a. 2; QDA, a. 5; ST, I, q, 76, a.1. See above note 57.
107 See for instance, Aquinas, QDSC, a. 2, Nulla autem operatio conuenit alicui nisi per aliquam
formam in ipso existentem, uel substantialem uel accidentalem, quia nichil agit aut operatur nisi
secundum quod est actu; est autem unumquodque actu per formam aliquam, uel substantialem uel
accidentalem, cum forma sit actus.
108 Cf. Aquinas, ST, I, q. 76, a.1, Hoc ergo principium quo primo intelligimus, sive dicatur
intellectus sive anima intellective, est forma corporis. However, even in this context, Aquinas also
carefully mentions the distinction between the intellect as a cognitive power and the intellective soul
as the substantial form of human beings. Unfortunately, this subtle distinction has been ignored in
Taylors account mentioned in note 105.
109 Aquinas, DUI, c. 4, para. 84, ... intellectus formaliter ei (sc. homo singularis intelligens)
inhereat: non quidem ita quod sit forma corporis,sed quia est uirtus anime que est forma corporis.
110 See Aquinas, QDSC a. 10, Omne autem agens quamcumque actionem habet formaliter in se ipso
uirtutem que est talis actionis principium.

31
by attributing the act of thinking to the intellective soul via the intellective power, we are
presupposing that the possible intellect can be identified as a power of the intellective
soul. And as we argued earlier in 3.2, this is possible only when the intellective soul
itself is held to be as immaterial as its intellective power.111 For even Averroes can
acknowledge that the possible intellect is a power of the intellective soul, provided that
the soul is a completely separate substance. 112 Averroes idea turns out to be similar to
Aquinass argument concerning the individuality of intelligible species. However, for
Aquinas, the presence of the intelligible species in the intellective soul merely shows that
the soul thinks; it does not show that the person thinks (3.3). The greatest challenge for
Aquinass theory of individual thinking is still how an immaterial soul can be united with
the body as its substantial form while the act of thinking remains an operation of the soul
per se. Does Aquinas have a way out of the dilemma we have been struggling with?
I think that we need to return to a general point of Aquinass hylomorphism we
mentioned earlier (3.2), namely, the priority of the form over the matter. Due to the limit
of this essays scope, I just want to give a quick reference to a beautiful expression of this
priority found in Aquinass early account of intellect: form gives being to matter
(forma dat esse materiae).113
Some cautions should be taken into consideration before we apply this terse
expression to the special case of human being. Above all, in this phrase, form is simply a
shorthand for substantial form. Likewise, as I have argued elsewhere, the matter in
question is nothing but prime matter in the sense of pure potentiality. 114 Aquinas
maintains that it is the form that provides or completes the being of the matter by making
it actual.115 When Aquinas insists that form gives being to matter, it should not be
understood as if there are two separate entities that exist on their own and then one of
them bestows the act of being on the other. Before obtaining a form or the form, the
matter, absolutely speaking, does not exist. On the other hand, a material form normally

111 See in particular note 77.

112 Cf. De Libera, Archologie du sujet III, 1, 178.
113 Aquinas, InSent., lib. 2, d. 17, q. 2, a. 1, ad 1, see note 68. Cf. Aquinas, DPN, c. 1.
114 For a more nuanced argument for this claim, see Wu, The Ontological Status of the Body. For a
different approach, see John F. Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite
Being to Uncreated Being, (Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2000),
312-327.
115 Aquinas, DPN, c. 1, Et quia forma facit esse in actu, ideo forma dicitur esse actus.
32
cannot exist without the matter. It follows that the hylomorphic compound, not the
material form, is the genuine possessor of the being given by the form. In other words,
the verb to give signifies a special sort of ontological priority of form to matter, which
does not have an existential connotation. It does not imply that form can exist without
matter and then brings matter into being. It merely means that the form plays a dominant
role in explaining the act of being of a hylomorphic compound.
In the case of human beings, one can easily infer that the being of the human person
exclusively originates from the intellective soul as his substantial form. Aquinas rejects
the idea that there are other substantial forms such as corporeity, vegetative soul, animal
soul and so on that also determine the being of a human person. The intellective soul
therefore determines the whole persons mode of being as its sole substantial form. 116 So
when the essence of a person is concerned, we can say that we are essentially our
intellective souls.
In his arguments against the Averroists, Aquinas also mentions ancient
commentator Themistiuss distinction between I and my essence, which can be used to
support the above startling claim.117 According to Themistius, I as a thing that really
exists in this material world is composed of something in actuality and something in
potentiality. However, my essence is defined by what I actually am. Themistius argues
that my essence can only come from the soul that is the actuality of the body, and not
from the vegetative and sensitive soul because they are matter for the intellectual
power.118 No doubt Aquinas cannot accept an unqualified identity of a human person
with his intellective soul. As mentioned earlier (2.3), this is taken as a Platonic position
he openly rejects because it fails to how the same human person can be the subject both
of his thinking and of his sensation. 119 However, this does not mean that Aquinas cannot

116 For a superb account of Aquinass theory of the unity of substantial form, see John F. Wippel,
Thomas Aquinas and the Unity of Substantial Form, in Kent Emery, Jr., et alii (eds.), Philosophy
and Theology in the Long Middle Ages: A Tribute to Stephen F. Brown, (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 117-
154.
117 Aquinas, DUI, c. 2, para. 50, aliud utique erit ego et michi esse. Et ego quidem est compositus
intellectus ex potentia et actu, michi autem esse ex eo quod actu est.
118 Aquinas, DUI, c. 2, para. 50, Esse igitur michi ab anima et hac non omni; non enim a sensitiua,
materia enim erat fantasie; neque rursum a fantastica, materia enim erat potentia intellectus; neque
eius qui potentia intellectus, materia enim est factiui. A solo igitur factiuo est michi esse.
119 See for instance, Aquinas, ST, I, q. 75, a. 4.
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accept their identity in regard to being. For the soul gives being to the body and therefore
shares the same act of being with the human person of whom it is the substantial form.
In regard to the ontological priority of the soul in determining the being of a human
person, we can say that there is a reduction in Aquinass hylomorphic ontology that is
inverse to materialism. It is not that the souls being should be explained in terms of the
bodys being, but the other way around. In this light, it does not matter what the body
contributes to the act of thinking as a constituent of the human person. For whatever it
contributes, it contributes in virtue of the intellective soul as its unique substantial form.
Only when the intellective soul is present can the matter of a human being be a body. In
this sense we can say that it is the intellective soul that is thinking, even though strictly
speaking it is not the agent of thinking. For the agent of thinking in this world is a living
person whose being originates exclusively from the intellective soul. The fact that
thinking is the intellective souls own operation does not threaten the substantial unity
required by Aquinass hylomorphic anthropology. This is possible because he accepts the
principle that a things unity also originates from its substantial form. For instance, in the
Summa contra Gentiles Aquinas applies this principle to argue for the unity of substantial
forms in a human being:

Moreover the principle of a things unity is the same as that of its

being; for one is consequent upon being. Therefore, since each
and every thing has being from its form, it will also have unity
from its form. Consequently, if several souls, as so many distinct
forms, are ascribed to man, he will not be one being, but
several.120

Therefore, if the intellective soul gives being to the human person, it also determines its
substantial unity. This claim on the convertibility of unity and being is a general one that
can be applied to all hylomorphic compounds. It follows that even material forms are

120 Aquinas, SCG, lib. 2, c. 58, Ab eodem aliquid habet esse et unitatem: unum enim consequitur ad
ens. Cum igitur a forma unaquaeque res habeat esse, a forma etiam habebit unitatem. Si igitur
ponantur in homine plures animae sicut diversae formae, homo non erit unum ens, sed plura. The
English translation is cited from Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought, 338.

34
prior to their matter in determining the being and unity of the whole compound. With
this general picture of hylomorphic unity in mind, the aforementioned ambiguous status
of the intellective soul as a form of the body that is not totally merged in the matter is no
longer an ad hoc explanation as it seems to be prima facie (3.2). For this special status
of the intellective soul goes along with the ontological priority of form to matter. What is
changed here is the existential connotation of this priority: now the intellective soul can
exist without the body, since Aquinas believes that there will be a separated soul between
human death and the general resurrection.121 Certainly, much work still needs to be done
to justify the introduction of the souls existential priority. Nevertheless, Aquinass
commitment to the ontological priority of form as reconstructed above at least indicates a
way to explain how the substantial form of a material compound can perform an
immaterial operation.
Returning to the dilemma we have been struggling with, we are now in a position
to say that Aquinas can indeed maintain the immateriality of thinking without destroying
the natural unity of the thinking person or abandoning his hylomorphic conception of the
human person. For the ultimate principle of thinking and the principle of unity is
precisely the same intellective soul. It is metaphysically possible for this immaterial soul
to be the form of the body simply because the ontological priority of form allows form (in
the case of the immaterial soul) to have a mode of being that is not fully shared or
consumed by the matter. This metaphysical possibility explains why Aquinas claims in
his early works that the intellective soul is an absolute form (forma absoluta) that has its
own absolute being (esse abolutum) independent from the matter.122 Whether this earlier

121 Aquinass obscure conception of the separated soul is still an issue of living debates, especially in
regard to whether it is sufficient for the survival of a human person. For a recent account of
survivalism, see Eleonore Stump, Resurrection and the Separated Soul, in B. Davies and E. Stump
(eds.), Oxford Handbook of Aquinas (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 458-466. For a
different corruptionist approach to the problem, see Patrick Toner, St. Thomas Aquinas on Death and
the Separated Soul, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 91, 4 (2010), 587599; Turner Nevitt,
Survivalism, Corruptionism, and Intermittent Existence in Aquinas, Historory of Philosophy
Quarterly, 31.1 (2014), 1-19. This controversy is significant for a diachronic account of personal
identity. For our current purpose, it is sufficient to mention that even survivalists concede that the
separated soul has a mode of existence totally different from that of a living person.
122 See for instance, Aquinas, InSent, lib. 1, d. 8, q. 5, a. 2, ad 1, Anima est forma absoluta, non
dependens a materia, quod convenit sibi propter assimilationem et propinquitatem ad Deum; ipsa
habet esse per se, quod non habent aliae formae corporales. InSent lib. 2, d. 3, q. 1, a. 6, Anima
autem rationalis habet esse absolutum, non dependens a materia. Both texts are cited from De Libera,
Archologie du sujet III, 1, 405.

35
notion of absolute form and his later conception of subsistent substantial form go beyond
the boundary of Aristotelian hylomorphism turns on how we understand the ontological
privilege of form in his ontology.123 At least one can say that some Aristotelian scholars
still think that this priority of form, especially in the case of the human soul, is an
essential characteristic of his philosophical psychology.124
Nevertheless, there is still a problem about the subject-agent of thinking. If the
intellective soul has thinking as its own operation, how can we be said to be the agents of
our thinking? Does the same action of thinking have two different subject-agents at the
same time?
The last question presumes that the intellective soul should be an independent
subject-agent to have its own operation. Therefore, to solve this problem, we need to
elucidate what is required for a thing to have an operation on its own. Aquinas claims
that only a thing that subsists on its own can have such an operation. 125 However, he
immediately makes it clear that the subsistence in question should be understood in a
weak sense. It means that a thing subsists on its own when it is not an accident or a
material form that inhere in another thing, even if it is a part. 126 Therefore, to have an
operation on its own means simply that there is a subsistent thing that is the sole source
of its operation. It does not matter whether the thing has a complete being like a
suppositum or something exists as an essential part in a suppositum. Applying this to the
case of thinking, we can infer that thinking ultimately originates from the intellective soul
alone. It does not necessarily follow that the soul should be either its immediate principle
or its agent. For the immediate principle is the intellective power of the soul, while the
agent should be a suppositum possessing a complete being, either the composite of the
soul and body in this life, or the separate soul after death but before resurrection, or the
composite of the soul and the resurrected body after resurrection. For the soul to have an

123 For instance, De Libera cites Bazan to argue that Aquinass conception of form does not accord
with a strict notion of substantial form, see Archologie du sujet III, 1, 405-407.
124 See for instance, Christopher Shields, The Priority of Soul in Aristotles De Anima: Mistaking
Categories? in D. Frede and B. Reis (eds.), Body and Soul in Ancient Philosophy, (Berlin, De
Gruyter: 2009), 156-168.
125 See for instance, Aquinas, ST I, q. 75, a. 2, Nihil autem potest per se operari, nisi
quod per se subsistit.
126 Aquinas, ST I, q. 75, a. 2, ad, 2, Sed per se existens quandoque potest dici aliquid si
non sit inhaerens ut accidens vel ut forma materialis, etiam si sit pars.
36
operation as its own only requires that the soul is the sole source of being in all cases.
Certainly it will follow that the soul has different modes of being and how to establish the
personal identity in these modes will be a great challenge for a Christian believer in the
immortality of the soul. Here I just want to mention that in all these occasions the
synchronic individuality of the soul resides in its inherent imparticipability as we argued
earlier in 3.2. If we can accept that this imparticipability of the soul survives death, we
can find a way to account for the sameness of individuality in the soul. Since Aquinas
believes that the human soul is directly created by God, he has good reasons to believe
that this individuality directly coming from God will not evaporate after death. We need
more studies to establish this point adequately, however.127 What is more relevant to our
present purposes is that the intellective soul can possess the same power of thinking by
giving being to different things, be it a corruptible body in this world, or an incorruptible
body in the life to come, or something else in between.

IV

Conclusion. Aquinas maintains an intimate relation between the act of thinking and
the human person as a material being, which manifests itself in his dictum this human
being thinks. Accordingly, he believes that a functional conjunction of a separate
intellect with a living body cannot provide a basis to ascribe the immaterial action of
thinking to individual human beings. For Aquinas, the act of thinking can be described as
an individual action first of all because it requires the mediation of intelligible species.
However, intelligible species has two different perspectives: it is both an intention
representing the nature of things and an accidental form that exists in the possible
intellect. In regard to its intentional being, intelligible species is an immaterial
representation of the extramental nature in that it has been abstracted from all the
individuating conditions of that nature. From the perspective of its existence in ones
possible intellect, intelligible species is individuated in accordance with the being of the

127 For a more detailed analysis of Aquinass doctrine of the creation of the soul, though with a very
different evaluation of Aquinass accounts for the individuality of thinking, see Bazn, The Creation
of the Soul.

37
possible intellect. However, the possible intellect is merely an incorporeal power of the
intellective soul. It follows that the individuality of the possible intellect comes from the
individuality of the intellective soul. However, the intellective soul itself is
individualized because of its inherent imparticipability, not because of its presence in a
material body. On the contrary, the soul as the substantial form determines the being of a
human person in this life. If the intellective soul can have another sort of being without
the body, its act of thinking can still be individualized because of its immanent
individuality. On the other hand, thinking is an immaterial operation because its
immediate principle, the intellective power, is not mixed with the matter. However, this
power is an accidental form flowing out of the essence of the soul. As we argued in 3.2,
it implies that the intellective soul is the ultimate source of thinkings immateriality. Now
the immateriality of thinking now no longer conflicts with its individuality, because they
both originates from the intellective soul as the substantial form of human beings. We
therefore have good reason to say that the intellective soul is the ultimate principle of
thinking, whereas in this life only a human person that receives its being from the
intellective soul is the genuine subject-agent of thinking.128

Institute of Foreign Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, Peking University, China

128 This research is a part of the Program Immateriality, Thinking and the Self in the
Philosophy of the Long Middle Ages funded by the British Academy through an
International Partnership and Mobility Grant. An earlier version of the essay has been
presented in a namesake conference in Cambridge in 2015. I am deeply indebted to John
Marenbon for his generous hospitality and helpful comments on the paper. The
anonymous referees comments and suggestions have proved to be extremely helpful. I
also want to thank Nicholas Lombardo for improving my English. This research is also
funded National Social Science Foundation of China
Project No. 11CZX042).
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