Two Models of Thinking - Fordham University Faculty

(operationes). 40 He actually held that only cognitive and appetitive acts areself-contained actions. All natural actions are transitive. 41Aquinas, however, gave two alternative analyses of self-containedactions. In his first account, a self-contained action is an action that consistsmerely in an agent’s exercise of an activity that produces no result distinctfrom the activity itself. In his second account, a self-contained action is anagent’s exercise of an activity that does produce an effect distinct from theactivity itself. Contrary to what happens in transitive actions, however, theeffect of a self-contained action remains within the agent and is received in nopatient.Accordingly, Aquinas gave two alternative analyses of acts ofthinking as actions. In his first analysis, an act of thinking is an action that hasno end product distinct from the act of thinking itself. Thus, the term of thataction is not distinct from its principle; what makes an intellect actual is alsothe term of the intellect’s act. 42 In his second analysis, an act of thinking is anaction that results in the production of an internal term distinct from both theact and the form that makes the intellect actual. Specifically, the intellectproduces a concept, and that concept must be distinguished both from theintellect’s act of thinking and from the intelligible species received in theintellect. The species is the formal principle of an act of thinking. This meansthat the species is the form that makes the possible intellect actually thinkabout something. By contrast, the concept (which Aquinas called“conception” and “inner word”) is the term of an act of thinking, i.e. what the40 Aristotle himself had considered perception and thought as activities and hadcontrasted them to changes in a strict sense, because in activities there is no progress and no newform is acquired. See Aristotle, Meta. IX, 6, 1048b18–35 (a passage that was unknown tomedieval interpreters) and Nicomacheans Ethics X, 3–5. See J. L. Ackrill, “Aristotle’s Distinctionbetween Energeia and Kinesis,” in New Essays on Plato and Aristotle, ed. R. Bambrough (Londonand New York: Routledge, 1965), 121–141; M. F. Burnyeat, “Kinesis vs. Energeia: A Much-ReadPassage in (but not of) Aristotle’s Metaphysics,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 34 (2008):219–292. 41 CG II, 23, n. 993.42 CG I 53, first draft, printed as Appendix II, A in Liber de Veritate Catholicae Fideicontra errores Infidelium seu Summa contra Gentiles, vol. 1, ed. C. Pera, P. Marc, and P.Caramello (Torino/Roma: Marietti, 1961). I quote the relevant passage here below, at note 52. Seealso ST I, q. 56, a. 2: “Sed in actione quae manet in agente, oportet ad hoc quod procedat actio,quod obiectum uniatur agenti: sicut oportet quod sensibile uniatur sensui, ad hoc quod sentiatactu. Et ita se habet obiectum unitum potentiae ad huiusmodi actionem, sicut forma quae estprincipium actionis in aliis agentibus: sicut enim calor est principium formale calefactionis inigne, ita species rei visae est principium formale visionis in oculo.” The same point is made in STI, q. 85, a. 2. On the three successive drafts of CG I, 53, see L.-B. Geiger, “Les rédactionssuccessives de Contra Gentiles I, 53, d’après l’autographe,” in Saint Thomas d’Aquin aujourd’hui(Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1963), 221–240.18