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Aquinas's Model of Mind

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Patrick Quinn
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One of the most interesting features in Aquinas’s theory of mind relates to his view that the human intellect is inferior to that of an angel. St. Thomas gives the impression that if only our minds could act in the same way as those of the angels, many of our noetic difficulties would disappear. The weakness of the human mind is due, he believes, to the discursive process of human cognition which results from the application of our understanding to the potentially intelligible data that is acquired from the senses. Aquinas quite frequently deplores this mental condition, claiming that it represents a form of intellectual weakness (e.g. S.T. 1.58.3). The result of such a discursive process is that the human mind struggles to understand by means of lengthy and arduous mental efforts (S.T. 1.89.1). By comparison, the intuitive grasp of the angelic mind is swift and immediate, capable of directly obtaining knowledge of first principles (S.T. 1.58.3). Aquinas perceives the latter ability as a sign that angels are truly intellectual beings in a way that humans are not and he reserves for us the term rational (rationales vocantur) as a way of describing our slower intellectual ability. In such a context, rationality obviously does not constitute a positive description but rather denotes a form of mental weakness (ex debilitate intellectualis). The latter, according to S.T. 1.58.3, is quite clearly the result of our present mode of mental discursiveness in which the intellect proceeds gradually towards the knowledge of truth.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 77 , Issue 904 , May 1996 , pp. 215 - 223
Copyright
Copyright © 1996 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 See Aquinas's views on this in Super De Trin. 3.1, De Ver. 14.10, S.C.G. 1.4, S.T. 1.1.1 & S.T. II‐II.2.4. He was very influenced on these issues by Moses Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed Book I, Chs.31‐35.

2 The Latin text reads: ‘Et ideo dicuntur intellectuales; quod eliam apud nos ea, quae statim naturaliter apprehenduntur, intelligi dicuntur. Unde intellectus dicitur habitus primorum principiorum.’ 5.7”. 1.83.3.

3 There are some interesting comparisons that could be made here between Aquinas's model of mind and that of Descartes. See the latter's 4th Discourse and 2nd and 3rd Meditations in Descartes, Discourse on Method and The Meditations trans, bySutcliffe, F.E. (Middlesex: Penguin, 1968), pp.53‐60Google Scholar and 103‐131.

4 In this connection, see Chapter 5 of my forthcoming work Aquinas, Plalonism and the Knowledge of God (Aldershot: Avebury, 1996)Google Scholar. See also Quinn, Patrick, ‘Aquinas's Concept of the Body and Out of Body Situations’, The Heythrop Journal, Vol.24, No.4, October 1993, pp.387‐400CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Though he disagrees here with the notion of an accidental soul‐body relationship, Thomas argues later in the text that the soul's nature, which remains the same throughout embodiment and disembodiment, is capable of functioning intelligently in a bodily mode of existence and also in the absence of the body.

6 See Chapter 3 in my book, Aquinas, Platonism and the Knowledge of God.

7 See S.C.G. III.55 &. ST. I.12.7. See also Descartes, op. tit., p.57.

8 It is worth pointing out that the belief in angelic beings was not confined to the Christian tradition. It is also a feature of Jewish and Islamic thought and is found in Plotinus (e.g. Enn.III.4) as well as being reflected in the Platonic notion of daimon.

9 Tugwell, Simon O.P., Human Immortality and the Redemption of Death (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1990), p. 153Google Scholar.

10 Fabro, Cornelio, La Nozione Metafisica di Participazione (Sociela Editrice Intemazionale di Torino, 1963)Google Scholar: Hankey, W.J., God in Himself (Oxford: University Press, 1987)Google Scholar; Henle, RJ. S.J., Saint Thomas and Platonism (The Hague: Martinus Nijoff, 1956)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Little, Arthur SJ., The Platonic Heritage of Thomism (Dublin: Golden Eagle Books Ltd., 1949)Google Scholar; Quinn, Patrick, Aquinas, Platonism and the Knowledge of God (Aldershot: Avebury, 1996)Google Scholar.