Averroes’ Doctrine of Material Intellect in the Long Commentary on the De Anima of Aristotle

Yıl 2021, , 39 - 66, 15.03.2021

Musa Duman

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4604660

Öz

Averroes was fully aware of the fact that Aristotle’s account of intellect as propounded in De Anima was incomplete. This meant that the key facet of Aristotle’s thought was fraught with gaps. Averroes made repeated attempts in his commentaries on De Anima to fill the gaps. The problem for Averroes was this: “if human beings are enmattered entities, how will anything more than sense perception be possible?” Averroes believes that finally in his Long Commentary on De Anima he has achieved a full and coherent account of thinking and understanding that centers on a new notion of the material intellect, according to which, together with the active intellect, there is also a distinct material intellect, numerically one for all human beings. The present article explores in detail this idea of material intellect. It is shown that material intellect, for Averroes, functions as the transpersonal, non-particular and non-empirical subject required for the production and containment of universal meanings. The idea seems to aim at connecting consistently the embodied, sensible forms of human cognitive experience with the noetic, conceptual element of knowledge within a basically ontological account.

Anahtar Kelimeler

material intellect, active intellect, knowledge, sense perception, experience, De Anima

Aristoteles’in De Anima’sı Üzerine Büyük Şerh’te İbn Rüşd’ün Heyulani Akıl Öğretisi

Öz

ibn Rüşd, Aristoteles’in akıl yorumunun, Ruh Üzerine’de ortaya konulduğu şekliyle, noksan olduğunun farkındaydı. Bu Aristoteles düşüncesinin anahtar bir boyutunun boşluklarla dolu olduğu anlamına geliyordu. İbn Rüd De Anima üzerine yazdığı şerhlerde bu boşlukları doldurmak için mükerrer girişimlerde bulunmuştur. İbn Rüşd için problem şuydu: “Eğer insanlar bedenli varlıklarsa, algıdan daha fazlası nasıl mümkün olacaktır?” İbn Rüşd nihayet Ruh Üzerine’ye Dair Büyük Şerh’te düşünme ve anlamanın heyulani aklın yeni bir tasavvurunda temerküz eden tam ve tutarlı bir açıklamasına ulaştığına inanır. Buna göre, faal aklın yanında, ayrıca sayı olarak bir ve tüm insanlar için ortak bir heyulani akıl vardır. Mevcut makale bu heyulani akıl fikrini tetkik etmektedir. Heyulani aklın, İbn Rüşd’de, tümel manaların üretilmesi ve tutulması için gerekli kişilerüstü, tikel-olmayan ve empirik-olmayan bir taşıyıcı olarak işlev icra ettiği gösterilmektedir. Bu fikri insani bilişsel deneyimin bedensel ve duyusal özelliklerini bilginin noetik ve kavramsal unsurları ile, esas itibariyle ontolojik bir açıklama çerçevesinde, tutarlı bir şekilde bağlantılayan ilginç bir varsayım olarak telakki edebiliriz.

Anahtar Kelimeler

heyulani akıl, faal akıl, bilgi, deneyim, Ruh üzerine

Kaynakça

• AQUINAS, Thomas (1968). On the Unity of the Intellect against the Averroists, trans. B. H. Zedler, Wisconsin: Marquette University Press.
• ARISTOTLE (1984). Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
• AVERROES (2012). Long Commentary on Aristotle’s De Anima, trans. R. C. Taylor, New Haven: Yale University Press.
• AVERROES (1986). Ibn Rushd’s Metaphysics, trans. C. Genequand, Leiden: Brill.
• BLACK, Deborah L. (1999). “Conjunction and Identity of Knower and Known in Averroes”, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 73: 159-184.
• BLACK, Deborah L. (1996). “Memory, Individuals, and the Past in Averroes’ Psychology,” Medieval Philosophy and Theology, 5: 161-187.
• BLACK, Deborah L. (1993). “Consciousness and Self-Knowledge in Aquinas’s Critique of Averroes’s Psychology.” Journal of the History of Philosophy, 31.3: 23–59.
• BURNYEAT, Myles (2008). Aristotle’s Divine Intellect, Milwaukee: Marquette University Press.
• CARR, David (1977). “Kant, Husserl and the Nonempirical Ego”, The Journal of Philosophy, 74 (11): 682-690.
• CASTON, Victor (2009). “Aristotle’s Psychology”, in A Companion to Ancient Philosophy, ed. Mary L. Gill and Pierre Pellegrin, 338-341, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
• CASTON, Victor (1999). “Aristotle’s Two Intellects: A Modest Proposal.” Phronesis 44: 199–227.
• CONNOLY, Brian F. (2007). “Averroes, Thomas Aquinas and Giles of Rome on How This Man Understands” Vivarium, Vol. 45, No. 1: 69-92.
• DAVIDSON, Herbert A. (1992). Alfarabi, Avicenna and Averroes on Intellect: Their Cosmologies, Theories of the Active Intellect and Theories of Human Intellect, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• DAVIDSON, Herbert A. (1984). “Averroes and Narboni on the Material Intellect”, AJS Review, Vol. 9, No. 2: 175-184.
• GABBE, Myrna (2010). “Themistius on Concept Acquisition and Knowledge of Essences”, Archiv f. Geschichte der Philosophie, 92: 215- 235.
• HYMAN, Arthur (1981). “Aristotle’s Theory of Intellect and its Interpretation by Averroes”, in Studies in Aristotle, ed. Dominic O’Meara, 161-191, Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press.
• KENNY, Anthony (1993). Aquinas on Mind, London: Routledge.
• SCHRODER, F. and TODD, R. (1990). Two Greek Aristotelian Commentators on the Intellect, Introduction, Translation, Commentary and Notes by Frederic Schroeder and Robert B. Todd, Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies.
• TAYLOR, Richard C. (2013). “Themistius and the Development of Averroes’ Noetics,” in Medieval Perspectives on Aristotle’s De Anima, eds. Russell L. Friedman and Jean-Michel Counet, 1-38, Louvain: Peeters Publishers, 2013.
• TAYLOR, Richard C. (2004a). “Improving on Nature’s Exemplar: Averroes’ Completion of Aristotle’s Psychology of Intellect”, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, vol. 47, Special Issue: Philosophy Science & Exegesis, number 83: 107-130.
• TAYLOR, Richard C. (2004b). “Separate Material Intellect in Averroes’ Mature Philosophy,” in Words, Texts and Concepts Cruising the Mediterranean Sea, eds. Gerhard Endress, Rüdiger Arnzen and J. Thielmann, Leuven: Peeters Publishers.
• TAYLOR, Richard C. (2000). “Cogitatio, Cogitativus and Cogitare: Remarks on the Cogitative Power in Averroes,” in L'élaboration du Vocabulaire Philosophique au Moyen Age, ed. J. Hamesse, C. Steel, Louvain-la-Neuve- Leuven.
• TAYLOR, Richard C. (1999). “Averroes' Epistemology and its Critique by Aquinas,” in Medieval Masters: Essays in Memory of Msgr. E. A. Synan, Houston, TX: University of St. Tomas.
• TAYLOR, Richard C. (1998). “Averroes on Psychology and the Principles of Metaphysics”, Journal of the History of Philosophy, vol. 36, number 4: 507-523.
• THEMISTIUS (2013). On Aristotle On the Soul, trans. Robert B. Todd, Bloomsbury: London.