ABSTRACT

Medieval Islamic theories of cognition generally posit as the principle of human rationality—itself described as a faculty and pure potency (quwwa)—an intellect (‘aql) which is “separate” (mufāriq) from both matter and the human soul. This intellect is a descendant of the productive (poietikos) intellect in Aristotle’s De anima (III, 5, 430a10–19), which is separate (choristos), impassible (apathes), unmixed (amighes) and, in its essence, act (te ousia on energeia). Exegetes of Late Antiquity (e.g. Alexander of Aphrodisias) had already compared it to the faculty that, in De generatione animalium (736b27–29), Aristotle describes as coming to the soul “from without” (thurathen). In addition to making use of this Aristotelian nucleus, Medieval Islamic theories of cognition elaborated the Neoplatonic elements they found particularly in the texts, often ascribed to Aristotle, of the Arabic Plotinus and Proclus: thus in al-Fārābī and Ibn Sīnā, for example—the two authors on whom this chapter is primarily focused—the transcendence ascribed to the separate intellect can be explained by the theory of emanation that is the foundation of their metaphysics.