ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author addresses the role of abstraction in the medieval theories of acquiring concepts from experience. He describes in the section “Illumination vs. Abstraction” the non-abstractive accounts of concept acquisition through divine illumination and influence from higher separate intellects after some introductory remarks on the medieval discussion of universals. The Aristotelians of that time developed an elaborated theory of concept acquisition by means of abstraction, following Aristotle in explaining perception and intellection with the help of the general theory of active and passive potencies. Abstraction is described in terms of selective attention: “To abstract the universal from the particular, or an intelligible species from phantasms, is to consider the nature of the species without considering the individual principles represented by the phantasms”. The elementary grasp of the intelligible nature is normally correct, but the possibility to improve it shows that the automatic abstraction of intelligible species provides only limited intellectual information.
