Aquinas on the Natural Intellect and the Ideas Given by the Divine Grace

Subject Areas : Philosophy

Amir Jafari ¹ (PhD Student of Islamic Philosophy, Faculty of Law, Theology & Political Sciences, Tehran Branch of Science & Research, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran)
Mohammad Saeedimehr ² (عضو هیئت علمی دانشگاه تربیت مدرس)

Received: 2022-03-07 Accepted : 2022-03-07 Published : 2022-02-20

Keywords: Aquinas, Natural Intellect, the Divine Grace, Knowledge,

Abstract :

From Aquinas’s viewpoint the intellect is just one of the Faculties of the human soul, and not identical with the very essence of the soul and thus human being possesses an intellect. On the other hand, unlike Plato, he believes that man has no innate concept but he can separate or abstract the forms (Ideas) of natural things. The origin of human concepts is the material world, so the Intellect‘s operation arises from sensation. The intellect knows nothing but what it receives from the senses. From this point of view Aquinas must be seen as an empiricist. Thomas is, however, a Christian philosopher too. God is the immaterial truth, so the natural power of the created intellect falls short to enable it to see the essence of God. Consequently, he believes that humans are sometimes given non-material ideas through divine grace. It increases the intellectual powers so that the forms are ultimately perceived by the human intellect. Nonetheless, in order to have these forms, some supernatural disposition should be added to the intellect.