Aquinas on Invidivduality

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Recommended: Brief analysis of Thomas Acquinas

One must approach Summa Theologica with the understanding that the supreme mind thought the world, which is to say; the world is a product of divine thought. We will base our investigation of his work off this principle, the creative ability of divine thought.

In so far as the human is concerned, Saint Aquinas made some rather - for the time - radical claims. Aquinas declares that humans possess two things that are not alike between any two men. The soul, and the active intellect, both he says “are multiplied according to the number of men” (Summa Theologica, 74). Meaning each man or women possesses a unique soul, and active intellect.

What is the active intellect? At the end of the Summa Theologica the Aquinas arrives at a conclusion to this query. The active intellect is described as “the part of the intellect with some power to make things actually intelligible by abstraction of the species from material conditions”(Summa Theologica, 72-73). This act of creation of an insubstantial species from what was observed in the material world is the role Aquinas assigns to the active intellect. The active intellect, which Dr. Hankey describes as, “the part of the intellect, that creates in thought all things” (FYP lecture).

Given that the divine mind and the active intellect both share this ability to create. We must examine the relationship between the two, in hopes of discovering the similarity and difference between the human and divine intellect.

Some might argue that these immaterial species of things must have already been present for the human mind to abstract them from the environment. That human’s cannot create but merely interpret their environment. This statement is both true and untrue. It is true, in so far as Go...

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...hing man can know completely in the immaterial world by virtue of being its creator, and thus too, the immaterial is all he or she may rule.

So man is a creator, just as he is created. Man is the ruler of the immaterial, but a slave to what is already present in the material. Mankind may only know completely that which is beyond the material. The human intellect is both infinitesimally close to the divine, and yet so radically distant. The human mind, within its own realm - the realm of the immaterial - possesses the spark of divinity, that of the creator. This is the truth buried in the words of St. Thomas Aquinas.

Works Cited

Aquinas. Summa Theologica. Foundation Year Programme Handbook. Halifax: University of Kings College, 2011-2012

Genesis. The Bible. Revised Standard Version.

Hankey W.J., “Union of Opposites,” Foundation Year Lecture, October 24, 2011

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