Aquinas On The Individuality of Thinking

AQUINAS ON THE INDIVIDUALITY OF THINKING
TIANYUE WU
T HE IMMATERIALITY AND INDIVIDUALITY OF THINKING. To

contemporary readers, it seems obvious that a human person is the
subject of his thinking. We have been accustomed to the definition of
the subject as a thing that thinks. However, philosophers and historians
have not tired of warning us that this conception of subject is a late
invention. In his formidable approach to the “archaeology of subject,”
Alain de Libera follows Heidegger and Foucault in identifying a
significant transition from the Aristotelian conception of subject as the
substratum that underlies all sorts of changes, including thinking, to a
more familiar notion of subject as an “agent,” the active principle of
thinking. 1 Unlike his predecessors, de Libera argues that the subject-
agent is not a modern creation but rather the fruit of debates over
thinking and the self in the long Middle Ages, in which Aquinas’s critique
of Averroes’ doctrine of the unity of intellect made a significant
contribution. 2
Averroes’ basic idea is that all human beings share a single intellect,
separate from each, which functions as a causal principle of their
thinking or understanding (intelligere). 3 A human being can be engaged
Correspondence to: Department of Philosophy, Peking University, 100871

Beijing, China.
1
Alain de Libera, Archéologie du sujet I: Naissance du sujet (Paris: Vrin,
2007), 15–30.
2
Alain de Libera, L’unité de l’intellect: Commentaire du De unitate
intellectus contra averroistas de Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: Vrin, 2004), esp. 9–
11; Alain de Libera, Archéologie du sujet I, esp. 52–59, 303–11; Alain de Libera,
“When Did the Modern Subject Emerge,” American Catholic Philosophical
Quarterly 82, no. 2 (2008): 181–220, at 210–11; Alain de Libera, Archéologie du
sujet II: La quête de l’identité (Paris: Vrin, 2008), 136–39; Alain de Libera,
Archéologie du sujet III.1: L’acte de penser: la double révolution (Paris: Vrin,
2014), 245–56.
3
For the difficulties of rendering the Latin term intelligere into English,
see Anthony Kenny, Aquinas on Mind (London: Routledge, 1994), 41–42. It
refers primarily to rational cognition of a thing’s universal properties, through
The Review of Metaphysics 71 (September 2017): 65–105. Copyright © 2017 by The Review of
Metaphysics.
66 TIANYUE WU
in an act of thinking only when he is conjoined with this single intellect.

Averroes believes that this theory explains why we can think about the
same thing without positing Platonic forms. Nevertheless, he also holds
that our acts of thinking are still different and individual, because the
ultimate principle of thinking, the separate intellect, is the same while
its union with us varies from person to person. 4
To Aquinas’s mind, there is a very serious defect in Averroes’
theory, which is that it cannot offer a satisfactory explanation for the
obvious fact that “this human being thinks (hic homo intelligit).”
Aquinas insists that Averroes’ claim that this single, universal intellect
is the ultimate subject-agent makes it impossible to attribute the act of
thinking to individual persons, since they have merely an external
relation to the intellect. The external conjunction of a human person
with the unique intellect is not sufficient to establish this particular
individual person as the agent of his own thinking, because thinking
seems to be an activity happening to him rather than an action initiated
by him. Instead, Aquinas argues that this human being thinks only when
the principle of thinking, that is, the intellect, is an inherent part or
power of his soul.
Aquinas’s emphasis on the individual agency of thinking seems
rather appealing to us, at least prima facie. But it poses serious
challenges to Aquinas himself when his hylomorphic conception of the
human being is taken into consideration. Following Aristotle, Aquinas
conceives of an individual person as a natural compound, with the soul
as the form and the body as the matter. At the same time, Aquinas also
accepts Aristotle’s obscure claim that the intellect is not mixed with the
body or the matter, for which reason it may think about all things. 5 As
the intellect’s activity, thinking is likewise incorporeal or immaterial. In
consequence, a dilemma arises in Aquinas’s philosophical anthropology
concerning the subject of thinking.
On the one hand, if the human being as a whole is the subject of
thinking, as implied by the dictum “this human being thinks,” Aquinas
which a knower obtains necessary information for knowledge. It covers both

dispositional apprehension as well as occurent acts of thinking.
4
Averroes, Commentarium magnum in Aristotelis De anima libros, ed.
F. S. Crawford (Cambridge, Mass.: The Medieval Academy of America, 1953),
3.5.
5
Aristotle, De anima, ed. W. D. Ross (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961),
3.4.429a24.
AQUINAS ON THE INDIVIDUALITY OF THINKING 67
needs to account for the difficulties in attributing an immaterial act to a

being whose nature involves matter. The materiality proper to each
human person’s nature seems to be an insurmountable obstacle to the
coherence of Aristotle’s belief that the intellect possesses an unlimited
capacity to know all things. For Aquinas believes that the determinate
nature of a knowing person limits his cognition, just as a tongue
inflected with bitter humor cannot perceive anything sweet. This
conceptual difficulty is particularly challenging for Aquinas because the
human person is taken as the agent of thinking rather than as the mere
substratum that underpins the process of thinking. Even worse,
Aquinas uses the immateriality of thinking as the central premise of his
arguments for the soul’s immortality. The intellective soul can survive
death primarily because its thinking is its own operation and does not
require the body’s participation. To admit the individual agency of
thinking seems therefore to undermine both Aquinas’s loyalties to
Aristotle’s noetic theory and his rationale for affirming the power of
reason to demonstrate the immortality of the soul even apart from
Christian revelation.
On the other hand, if we ascribe instead the principle of thinking to
the intellect or the intellective soul alone, as Aquinas appears to have
done in his argument for the immortality of the soul, then we seem to
threaten the natural unity of human soul and body as a hylomorphic
compound. Furthermore, there is a deeper ontological problem
concerning the individuality of thinking. For Aquinas seems to commit
himself to the Aristotelian theorem that matter is the principle of
individuation. If the active principle of thinking is taken as an
immaterial power, then how can it be individuated? How is the
individuality of thinking related to the individuality of each human
person? Are Socrates and Plato still distinct from each other in their
thinking? If so, how?
What concerns us here is the metaphysical possibility of “this
human being thinks” within the framework of Aquinas’s philosophical
anthropology. Whichever horn of the dilemma Aquinas takes, the
ultimate problem that confronts him is the compatibility between the
immateriality of thinking and the individuality of thinking. In other
words, for a medieval follower of Aristotle like Aquinas, it is not
unproblematic to assume that an individual person is the thing that
thinks, no matter how clear and distinct the person’s inner experience
68 TIANYUE WU
that it is he himself who is thinking. 6 However, as his contemporary

adversaries complained, Aquinas seemed to be satisfied that the
empirical evidence sufficed to refute Averroes since Averroist noetic
theory failed to save this obvious phenomenon. 7 Most of recent
literature follows this criticism to challenge the consistency of
6
Since the fact that a person thinks is above all confirmed by this person’s
awareness of his thinking, Aquinas’s reflections on self-knowledge in this
regard have received considerable attentions in recent scholarship. See in
particular François-Xavier Putallaz, Le sens de la réflexion chez Thomas
d’Aquin (Paris: Vrin, 1991); Deborah L. Black, “Consciousness and Self-
Knowledge in Aquinas’s Critique of Averroes’s Psychology,” Journal of the
History of Philosophy 31, no. 3 (1993): 349–85; and Therese Scarpelli Cory,
Aquinas on Human Self-Knowledge (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2014). However, unlike Avicenna, Aquinas does not identify self-awareness as
the foundation for the individuation of human intellect as an immaterial being.
For a brilliant study of Avicenna’s theory of self-awareness, see Jari Kaukua,
Self-Awareness in Islamic Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2015), esp. 43–61.
7
See, for instance, Siger of Brabant, De anima intellectia, in Quaestiones
in tertium de anima. De anima intellectiva. De aeternitate mundi, ed. B. C.
Bazàn (Louvain: Peeters, 1972), p. 84, ll. 49–51: “Thomas etiam intentum non
arguit, sed solum quaerit eius ratio quomodo compositum materiale
intelligeret, ut homo, si anima intellectiva in essendo sit separata a materia et
corpore.” Anonymous, Quaestiones in Aristotelis libros I et II De anima, ed.
Maurice Giele, in Trois commentaires anonymes sur le Traité de l’âme
d’Aristote (Louvain: Publications universitaires-Nauwelaerts), bk. 2, chap. 4, p.
75: “Isti autem accipiunt quo homo proprie intelligit, nec hoc probant. Ex hoc
supposito arguunt. Quodsi istud suppositum non est verum, non arguunt.” See
also St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae (hereafter, ST), Opera Omnia,
Leonine ed. (Rome: Typographia Polyglotta S. C. de Propaganda Fide, 1888–
89), I, q. 76, a. 1: “Si quis autem velit dicere animam intellectivam non esse
corporis formam, oportet quod inveniat modum quo ista actio quae est
intelligere, sit huius hominis actio, experitur enim unusquisque seipsum esse
qui intelligit.” For recent research on other medieval authors’ criticisms of
Aquinas’s position on hic homo intelligit, see Concetta Luna, “Quelques
précisions chronologiques à propos de la controverse sur l’unité de l’intellect,”
Revue des Sciences Philosophique et Théologiques 83 (1999): 649–84; Brian
Francis Conolly, “Averroes, Thomas Aquinas and Giles of Rome on How This
Man Understands,” Vivarium 45, no. 1 (2007): 69–92; Cecillia Trifogli, “Giles of
Rome against Thomas Aquinas on the Subject of Thinking and the Status of the
Human Soul,” Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medieval 23
(2012): 221–44; Marilyn McCord Adams and Cecilia Trifogli, “Whose Thought Is
It? The Soul and the Subject of Action in Some Thirteenth and Fourteenth
Century Aristotelians,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 85, no. 3
(2012): 624–47; Jean-Baptiste Brenet, “Sujet, objet, pensée personnelle:
l’Anonyme de Giele contre Thomas d’Aquin,” Archives d’Histoire Doctrinale et
Littéraire du Moyen Âge 79 (2012): 49–69.
Aquinas’s position, in particular his conception of the human intellect

as the sole principle of thinking, which seems to be irreconcilable with
8
his claim that “this human being thinks.” Even Alain de Libera, after
affirming that Aquinas introduces a “modern” concept of subject-agent
by identifying the human intellective soul as the subject of thinking, 9
also carefully reconstructs Siger’s arguments to show that Aquinas is
incapable of explicating how the act of thinking is an operation of the
whole human being as a composite of soul and body. 10
This essay aims to address these challenges by reconstructing the
ontological reasons Aquinas could have offered to demonstrate the
compatibility of immateriality and individuality of thinking in his
controversy with the Averroists. The challenges are twofold. On the
one hand, it is necessary to show that the individuality of an embodied
person will not jeopardize the immateriality of his thinking nor the
possibility that someone else could think about the same thing. On the
other hand, one also needs to show that intellectual realities like
thinking can be individualized just as the existence of a human being is
individualized. In other words, to resolve these challenges to the
coherence of Aquinas’s position, it is necessary to show how Socrates’
thinking can be distinct from Plato’s thinking even when they are
thinking about the same thing. After resolving these challenges, we can
then move on to clarifying the conditions under which thinking can be
identified as the action of a single human person. Only after we have
8
See, for instance, Bernardo-Carlos Bazàn, “The Human Soul: Form and
Substance? Thomas Aquinas’ Critique of Eclectic Aristotelianism,” Archives
d’Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen Âge 64 (1997): 95–126, Bernardo-
Carlos Bazàn, “The Creation of the Soul according to Thomas Aquinas,” in
Philosophy and Theology in the Long Middle Ages: A Tribute to Stephen F.
Brown, ed. Kent Emery, Jr. et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 515–69; Jean-Baptiste
Brenet, “‘...set hominem anima’: Thomas d’Aquin et la pensée personnelle
comme action du ‘composé’,” Mélanges de l’Université Saint Joseph (Beirut)
59 (2006): 69–96, Jean-Baptiste Brenet, “Thomas d’Aquin pense-t-il? Retours sur
Hic homo intelligit,” Revue des Sciences Philosophique et Théologiques 93,
no. 2 (2009): 229–50; Antonio Petagine, Matière, corps, esprit: La notion de
sujet dans la philosophie de Thomas d’Aquin (Fribourg: Academic Press
Fribourg Suisse, 2014), esp. 218–29.
9
De Libera, Archéologie du sujet I, 303–11; de Libera, Archéologie du sujet
III, 1, 245–52.
10
De Libera, Archéologie du sujet III, 1, 352–53; 377–95.
70 TIANYUE WU
shown that a human person can think can we defend the claim that “this
human being thinks.”
However, the metaphysical approach to the individuality of
intellectual thinking has not been sufficiently appreciated by
commentators on Aquinas’s arresting dictum hic homo intelligit. 11
Having rightly detected the tension between the immateriality of
thinking and the apparent materiality of a thinking person in this claim,
most scholars tend to be satisfied with identifying the ambiguous status
of the human intellect as the only solution Aquinas can offer. For
Aquinas, the human intellect denotes both a power of the soul as the
immediate principle of thinking and the human soul itself that informs
a material body. Since Aquinas recognizes a real distinction between
the soul and its powers, it seems to be possible for the human intellect
to be both an immaterial power and a material form. 12 Putting aside
Aquinas’s controversial distinction between the soul and its faculties,
this solution has to face another problem: How can the principle of
thinking (the intellect as a faculty of the soul) be individualized and
become a power of the form (the intellect as the soul) that is
individuated by the animated human body? 13 One may appeal to other
suggestions such as Aquinas’s claim that the human soul is a form that
is not entirely immersed in the matter and therefore can have an
immaterial power like thinking or the principle of actiones sunt
suppositorum to argue that even though thinking is an immaterial
action, only a human person as a suppositum, or an individual subsisting
in the genus of primary substance, can be its genuine agent. 14 But as I
11
An interesting case is Brenet. He first claimed that Aquinas’s hic homo
intelligit is a self-evident claim as the law of noncontradiction that cannot be
denied. See Brenet, “ ‘…set hominem anima’,” 70 n. 4. Then he took it seriously
and set to examine in a later paper whether Aquinas himself is able to justify
this claim from a theoretical point of view. See Brenet, “Thomas d’Aquin pense-
t-il?” 229. However, Brenet is still more interested in the problem of attribution
than the problem of individuality.
12
See, for instance, Gyula Klima, “Aquinas on the Materiality of the Human
Soul and the Immateriality of the Human Intellect,” Philosophical
Investigations 32 (2009): 163–82; Brenet, “Thomas d’Aquin pense-t-il?” esp.
241.
13
See Adams and Trifogli, “Whose Thought Is It?” esp. 631.
14
See, for instance, de Libera, “When Did the Modern Subject Emerge,”
210–11; Richard Cross, “Accidents, Substantial Forms, and Causal Powers in
the Late Thirteenth Century: Some Reflections on the Axiom ‘Actiones sunt
shall argue in the following pages, the same problem arises again: How
is it metaphysically possible? Only after clarifying the ontological
foundation for individual thinking can we adequately respond to those
critics of Aquinas, both medieval and modern, who argue that his noetic
theory is not consistent.
This essay will attempt to show how Aquinas’s account of the
immateriality and individuality of thinking can withstand the arguments
of his critics. First, I will revisit Aquinas’s accusation that Averroes fails
to account for individual thinking to examine Aquinas’s own
metaphysical presuppositions. This approach will give us a more vivid
picture of the tension between the immateriality required by
Aristotelian epistemology and the individuality seemingly implied by
our own inner experience of thinking. Then I will reconstruct three
significant ontological presuppositions from Aquinas’s texts that
indicate a way to demonstrate the compatibility between the
immateriality and individuality of thinking. The first and most
significant of these presuppositions is Aquinas’s original conception of
individuality in terms of imparticipability, which allows him to establish
the individuality of thinking without reducing the intellectual soul to a
material form. For even with material beings, matter is not the ultimate
principle of individuation. 15 The second presupposition is concerned
with the complicated status of the intelligible species. The intelligible
species is an individual form in terms of the mode of existence, but a
universal form in terms of its content. The mechanism of intelligible
species helps Aquinas explain how the act of thinking is related to an
abstracted universal while maintaining its individuality. The third and
final presupposition of Aquinas’s theory is that form and matter (or soul
and body in the case human beings) relate to each other in an
asymmetric structure. For Aquinas, the intellective soul is ontologically
prior because as the substantial form of the body, it gives being to the
body. I will argue that this ontological priority allows Aquinas to defend
the metaphysical possibility of identifying each individual human
person as a genuine subject of thinking.
suppositorum’,” in Compléments de substance: Études sur les propriétés

accidentelles offertes à Alain de Libera, ed. Christophe Erismann and
Alexandrine Schniewind (Paris: Vrin, 2008), 133–46.
15
The failure to appreciate this point leads some commentators wrongly
to claim that Aquinas has to accept the intellective soul as a material being.
See, for instance, Conolly, “Averroes, Thomas Aquinas, and Giles of Rome,” 72.
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II
Aquinas’s Critique of the Averroists. Aquinas’s critique of

Averroes’s doctrine of intellect can be traced back to the very beginning
of his career. In his commentary on the second book of the Sententiae
written before 1256, Aquinas already argues that Averroes’s notion of a
separate intellect necessarily leads to the unacceptable result that a
particular person such as Socrates does not think. 16 This accusation
constitutes the core of Aquinas’s attacks on Averroes’s monopsychism
in his later works, which reach their peak in the treatise specifically
devoted to this controversy, De unitate intellectus contra Averroistas
in 1270. 17 Since our concerns in this essay are more theoretical and
systematic than historical, this section will focus on Aquinas’s main
arguments against Averroes and his followers in this short treatise,
supplemented by parallel passages in Aquinas’s other works. 18
16
St. Thomas Aquinas, Scriptum super libros Sententiarum magistri
Petri Lombardi episcopi Parisiensis (hereafter, In Sent), Tomus 2, ed. Pierre
Mandonnet (Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1929), bk. 2, d. 17, q. 2, a. 1: “Si ergo non
conjungitur intellectus nobiscum, nisi per hoc quod species intellecta aliquo
modo habet subjectum in nobis, sequitur quod hic homo, scilicet Socrates, non
intelligat, sed quod intellectus separatus intelligat ea quae ipse imaginatur.”
For comments on Aquinas’s first effort to deal with Averroes’ monopsychism,
see Richard Taylor, “Aquinas and ‘the Arabs’: Aquinas’s First Critical Encounter
with the Doctrines of Avicenna and Averroes on the Intellect, In 2 Sent. d. 17,
q. 2, a. 1,” in Philosophical Psychology in Arabic Thought and the Latin
th
Aristotelianism of the 13 Century, ed. Luis Xavier López-Farjeat and Jörg
Alejandro Tellkamp (Paris: Vrin, 2013), 141–83.
17
St. Thomas Aquinas, De unitate contra Averroistas (hereafter, DUI), in
Opera Omnia iussu Leonis XIII P. M. edita, Tomus 43 (Rome: Editori di san
Tommaso, 1976), 289–314. For the chronology of Aquinas’s works, I follow
Jean-Pierre Torrell, Initiation à saint Thomas d’Aquin: Sa personne et son
nd
œuvre, 2 ed. (Paris: Cerf, 2002), 634–38.
18
For more detailed expositions of the Thomistic texts following a
chronological order, see Richard Taylor, “Intellect as Intrinsic Formal Cause in
the Soul according to Aquinas and Averroes,” in The Afterlife of the Platonic
Soul: Reflection on Platonic Psychology in the Monotheistic Religions, ed.
John Dillon and Maha El-Kaisy Friemuth (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 187–220; and
Bazán, “The Creation of the Soul.”
The Mechanisms of Thinking. Before entering into Aquinas’s

criticisms of Averroes, we need to have a rough idea of the mechanisms
of thinking in Aquinas’s epistemology. 19
Above all, Aquinas holds that human cognition in this material
world starts with the external senses. The process of sensation is a
process of being impressed upon by the sensible properties of an
external thing. 20 Following Aristotle, Aquinas interprets this process of
being impressed as a special sort of reception in which a form is
received without its matter, as in the case of wax receiving the imprint
of a ring without its iron. 21 After being impressed, the wax obtains a
shape similar to that of the ring. Accordingly, the sensitive soul receives
a sensible form that is similar to that of a sensible object. Aquinas goes
on to distinguish two kinds of impressions, one natural and the other
spiritual. The precise meaning of this distinction is still an issue of
controversy. 22 What is clear is that unlike a natural impression, a
spiritual impression or change is the reception of a form F without
becoming F-ed; for example, the eye’s reception of red color without
itself becoming red. According to Aquinas, in the case of sensation, a
sensible form obtains an intentional or spiritual being (esse intentionale
et spirituale) in the soul that is different from its being in a material
object. 23 The sensible form in the soul is also called sensible species
19
For a more detailed accounts of the mechanisms of cognition, see, for
instance, Eleonore Stump, Aquinas (London: Routledge, 2003), 244–76.
20
See, for instance, ST I, q. 78, a. 3: “Est autem sensus quaedam potentia
passiva, quae nata est immutari ab exteriori sensibili.”
21
See De anima 2.12.424a17–24.
22
See Sheldon M. Cohen, “St. Thomas Aquinas on the Immaterial
Reception of Sensible Forms,” The Philosophical Review 92 (1983): 193–209;
Paul Hoffman, “St. Thomas Aquinas on the Halfway State of Sensible Being,”
The Philosophical Review 99 (1990): 73–92; Robert Pasnau, Theories of
Cognition in the Later Middle Ages (New York: Cambridge University Press,
1997), 31–47; Myles Burnyeat, “Aquinas on ‘Spiritual Change’ in Perception,” in
Ancient and Medieval Theories of Intentionality, ed. Dominik Perler (Leiden:
Brill, 2001), 129–53; Paul Hoffman, “Aquinas on Spiritual Change,” Oxford
Studies in Medieval Philosophy 2 (2014): 98–103.
23
St. Thomas Aquinas, Sentencia libri De anima (hereafter, InDA), Opera
Omnia iussu Leonis XIII P. M. edita, Tomus 45, 1 (Rome: Commissio Leonina,
1984), bk. 2, c. 24: “Et per hunc modum, sensus recipit formam sine materia,
quia alterius modi esse habet forma in sensu, et in re sensibili. Nam in re
sensibili habet esse naturale, in sensu autem habet esse intentionale et
spirituale.”
74 TIANYUE WU
(species sensibilis), which somehow represents the sensible object.

Nevertheless, a sense is a power in a bodily organ, and even the spiritual
change necessary for sense perception takes place in the organ of
sense. 24 Moreover, the process of being impressed also implies that
there is something underlying the change as its subject. The intentional
presence of a sensible species cannot come into being without the
functioning of a bodily part. 25 More importantly for our purposes, a
sensible species in the soul, though not in the sensible matter as an
extramental sensible form, still maintains the individuating conditions
of the matter. 26 This explains why the sensitive power can have
cognition of only individual things.
When a sensible species occurs in the soul, internal senses, such as
memory and imagination, will be activated to store and arrange the
sensible species, together with their individuating conditions, in the
mental images called phantasms. 27 Here, we touch the boundary
between sensual and intellectual cognition in the Aristotelian tradition.
Intellectual thinking is also a process of being impressed or being
informed, but by a very different sort of forms, that is, intelligible
species. In this regard, intellect is also a passive capacity of receiving
forms and is therefore called the possible intellect. However, unlike
sensible species, intelligible species are completely immaterial. Besides
being in the cognitive powers of the soul, they are abstracted from both
the individuating conditions of matter and the function of a bodily
organ. 28 Aquinas insists that the intelligible species is the thing in virtue
of which (id quo) we can think an object in an intellectual way, that is,
in a way not limited by the constraints of matter and individuality, which
24
ST I, q. 78, a. 3; InDA, bk. 2, c. 14.
25
By appealing to its intentional being, Stump claims that sensible species
is an immaterial form consisting in the matter of an organ of the body. See
Stump, Aquinas, 254. The term “immaterial” is misleading here. Although
Aquinas does mention the immaterial existence of sensible species, it does not
follow that he views sensation as a wholly immaterial and incorporeal process.
See Pasnau, Theories of Cognition, 42–47. Moreover, it will be clear later that
for Aquinas what impedes understanding is the materiality of a thing. If the
sensible species is already immaterial, there will be nothing preventing it from
becoming an intelligible form in actuality, which will destroy Aquinas’s sharp
distinction between sensual and intellectual cognition.
26
InDA, bk. 2, c. 5.
27
ST I, q. 78, a. 4.
28
InDA, bk. 2, c. 5.
will finally bring us to knowledge that is immaterial, universal, and

necessary. 29 The intelligible species are so completely immaterial that
they cannot exist in things that involve matter or individuate conditions
of matter. That means even sensible species retained in phantasms are
not intelligible unless abstracted from the individuating conditions. For
sensible species are nothing but representations of sensible objects,
which have material and individual existence. 30 In other words,
phantasms cannot directly impress their likeness on the possible
intellect as colors do on our visual power, because the possible intellect
can be impressed only by pure immaterial forms, which have a mode of
existence entirely different from sensible species. 31 Therefore, to
initiate a process of thinking, we have to posit an additional principle
capable of abstracting the intelligible forms from phantasms. This
active principle is called the agent intellect, in contrast with the possible
intellect, which passively receives the forms. The abstractive
mechanism of the intellect is still a matter of controversy, especially
concerning whether the intelligible species is separated from
phantasms, or whether it is instead generated as something new by the
agent intellect. 32 No matter what the agent intellect exactly contributes
in the process of abstraction, what is clear is the sheer immateriality of
the intellect as a cognitive power and the intelligible species as the
result of abstraction. When the agent intellect abstracts an intelligible
species from its material conditions and impresses it upon the possible
intellect, the possible intellect then engages in acts of thinking such as
29
ST I, q. 85, aa. 1–2; InDA, bk. 3, c. 2 (following the chapter numbering of
Gauthier’s Leonine edition).
30
St. Thomas Aquinas, Liber de veritate catholicae Fidei contra errores
infidelium seu Summa contra Gentiles (hereafter, SCG), ed. P. Marc et al.
(Turin: Marietti, 1961), bk. 2, c. 59, see also ST I, q. 85, a. 1.
31
ST I, q. 85, a. 1, ad 3: “colores habent eundem modum existendi prout
sunt in materia corporali individuali, sicut et potentia visiva, et ideo possunt
imprimere suam similitudinem in visum. Sed phantasmata, cum sint
similitudines individuorum, et existant in organis corporeis, non habent
eundem modum existendi quem habet intellectus humanus, ut ex dictis patet;
et ideo non possunt sua virtute imprimere in intellectum possibilem.”
32
See especially Therese Cory’s critique of the standard account of
abstraction either as a process of selective attention to some aspects of the
phantasm or as a process of stripping the material features of the phantasm, in
“Rethinking Abstractionism: Aquinas’s Intellectual Light and Some Arabic
Sources,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 53, no. 4 (2015): 607–46, esp.
620.
76 TIANYUE WU
forming a definition of the nature of an extramental object, which brings

our cognition of an individual material thing to completion. 33
Considering his strong emphasis on the immateriality of thinking,
it is surprising to find Aquinas taking the claim hic homo intelligit as
the starting point of his philosophical arguments against Averroist
monopsychism. 34 However, as noted earlier, Aquinas often asserts this
proposition as an unquestionable premise without offering an argument.
At one place, when he does offer an argument to defend it, he merely
claims that it is a universal phenomenon that all can confirm by their
experience of self-awareness: We all have the experience of being the
one who thinks when we think. 35 Unlike Descartes, Aquinas does not
think it necessary to question the certainty of this self-perception. 36 The
reason is that this claim does not play a foundational role in Aquinas’s
metaphysical approach to the act of thinking, a point that will be clearer
later in this essay. 37 Here it suffices to say that most medieval authors,
even though they have different understandings of the contribution of
33
ST I, q. 85, a. 2, ad 3.
34
DUI, c. 3, par. 61: “Manifestum est enim quod hic homo singularis
intelligit: numquam enim de intellectu quereremus nisi intelligeremus; nec cum
querimus de intellectu, de alio principio querimus quam de eo quo nos
intelligimus.” See also SCG, bk. 2, c. 59; InDA, bk. 2, c. 27.
35
See, for instance, ST I, q. 76, a. 1: “experitur enim unusquisque seipsum
esse qui intelligit.” For more references to this sort of experience and an
interesting study of the verb “experiri” in Aquinas’s works, see Ruedi Imbach,
“‘Expertus sum’. Vorläufige Anmerkungen zur Bedeutung des Verbs ‘experiri’
bei Albert dem Grossen, Siger von Brabant und Thomas von Aquin,” in Les
innovations du vocabulaire latin à la fin du moyen âge : autour du Glossaire
du latin philosophique, ed. Olga Weijers, Iacopo Costa, and Adriano Oliva
(Turnhout : Brepols, 2010), 61–88, esp. 77–86.
36
See ST I, q. 76, a. 1: “ipse idem homo est qui percipit se et intelligere et
sentire.” Cory thinks that here perception is used as a general term of
cognition, which also indicates the intimate presence of the object to the
perceiving person. See Cory, Aquinas on Human Self-Knowledge, 71–74.
Moreover, as Ruedi Imbach observes, unlike Descartes’s fascination with the
“ego” in this sort of perception or experience, Aquinas prefers to use the verb
“experiri” in its third-person singular form (experitur) or first-person plural
form (experimur), which also contributes a significant difference between two
approaches to the cognition of the self. See Imbach, “‘Expertus sum’,” 77.
37
See also Robert Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature: A
Philosophical Study of Summa Theologiae Ia 75-89 (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2002), 338.
human beings to thinking, agree that “this human being thinks” is a

phenomenon that must be saved. 38
The Doctrine of Two Subjects. Aquinas presents two attempts of

the Averroists to explain how a human being thinks when the principle
of thinking is a separate substance, and then shows why they are
unsuccessful. 39 Their first explanation is based upon Averroes’ doctrine
of two subjects. Their second one relies on a mover–moved model of
the intellect and human beings.
According to the Averroists’ first explanation, a single intelligible
species has two subjects, the separate possible intellect itself and the
phantasms found in human persons. In an act of thinking, the
intelligible species unites us to the possible intellect through our
phantasms. The possible intellect’s act of thinking can be ascribed to
us because the numerically same intelligible species informs both the
possible intellect and our phantasms. 40
Aquinas offers three objections to this Averroist explanation of
how thinking can be said to be ours. First, he argues that the union of
the separate intellect with human beings, as described by these
Averroists, is not a natural or immanent union but simply an operational
or functional combination, inasmuch as the separate intellect’s act of
thinking requires the operation of our sensitive power of imagination
38
See, for instance, Adams and Trifogli, “Whose Thought Is It?” 625. One
noticeable exception is the anonymous manuscript edited by Maurice Giele,
Quaestiones in Aristotelis libros I et II De anima, bk. 2, chap. 4, p. 75: “Unde,
quod homo proprio sermone intelligit, non concedo; illo tamen concesso,
nescio respondere; sed istud nego et merito; ideo faciliter respondebo.”
39
As de Libera rightly notes, Averroes himself introduces the two-subjects
theory to explain not how a human being thinks, but rather how different
human beings can think about the same thing. However, Aquinas’s arguments
based upon the dictum hic homo intelligit were so influential that all Latin
Averroists have to “expliquer en quoi l’homme individuel pense, s’il n’est pas le
sujet de la pensée.” See de Libera, Archéologie du sujet III, 1, 186; 246.
40
DUI, c. 3, par. 62: “dixit [sc. Auerroys] quod intelligere illius substantie
separate est intelligere mei uel illius, in quantum intellectus ille possibilis
copulatur michi uel tibi per fantasmata que sunt in me et in te. Quod sic fieri
dicebat: species enim intelligibilis que fit unum cum intellectu possibili, cum sit
forma et actus eius, habet duo subiecta, unum ipsa fantasmata, aliud
intellectum possibilem. Sic ergo intellectus possibilis continuatur nobiscum
per formam suam mediantibus fantasmatibus; et sic dum intellectus possibilis
intelligit, hic homo intelligit.”
78 TIANYUE WU
41
(fantasia). In an earlier text, he stresses that the sort of union with
the possible intellect that Averroes is proposing is merely a union on the
level of action, namely, on the level of the Aristotelian second actuality,
which is contingent for human beings. Since thinking is the sort of
operation that distinguishes the human species from all other animals,
however, he argues that Aristotelian psychology requires that we be
united with the possible intellect immanently, on the level of first
actuality, that is, the level of the soul as the substantial form of an
42
animal.
Aquinas’s second objection concerns the numerical identity of
intelligible species in two subjects. He argues that the possible intellect
can receive an intelligible species only when it is in actuality. By
contrast, a species in phantasms is merely intelligible in potentiality.43
Our analysis of the mechanism of thinking has shown that we need the
process of abstraction to make the species actually intelligible so that it
can inform the possible object. As mentioned earlier, no matter how we
interpret Aquinas’s conception of abstraction, the intelligible species
has a totally immaterial mode of existence different from species in our
corporeal organs, since the latter still retains the individuating
conditions of matter. Thus, phantasms and the possible intellect are
informed by different kinds of species, and therefore have different acts
of receiving forms, that is, different acts of cognizing. It is interesting
that here, Aquinas returns to the sheer immateriality of thinking to deny
the functional union between the separate intellect and our phantasms
he conceded above for the sake of argument. Due to the inherent
individuating conditions, it is not possible for phantasms to become a
subject to which the intelligible species can inhere as Averroists
41
Aquinas, DUI, c. 3, par. 63: "secundum autem dictum Auerroys,
intellectus non continuaretur homini secundum suam generationem, sed
secundum
42
operationem sensus.”
Aquinas, SCG, bk. 2, c. 59, pars. 15–16, see also InSent, bk. 2, d. 17,
q. 2, a. 1.
43
DUI, c. 3, par. 64: “Manifestum est enim quod species intelligibilis
secundum quo est in in fantasmatibus, est intellecta in potentia; in intellectu
autem possibili est secundum quod est intellecta in actu, abstracta a
fantasmatibus.” It is interesting to note that Aquinas talks about the intelligible
species in phantasms. This is an unusual usage Aquinas concedes for the sake
of argument. He immediately revises it in the mirror analogy that follows to
emphasize that the intelligible species only exists in the possible intellect.
propose. 44 Then Aquinas appeals to an analogy. He argues that the

intelligible species in the possible intellect merely has a
representational relation to phantasms, just as a person’s appearance
(species) reflected in a mirror has a representational relation to the
person himself. However, the act of reflecting can be attributed only to
the mirror and not to the person, just as the act of thinking can be
attributed only to the possible intellect and not to our phantasms. 45
Aquinas’s third attack on the two-subjects doctrine seems to be
most devastating. Conceding for the sake of argument that the form in
the possible intellect is numerically the same with that in phantasms,
Aquinas argues that the mere functional union between them is not
sufficient to guarantee the attribution of thinking to the human being
who has these phantasms. 46 His argument is based upon an analogy of
the color on a wall. 47 According to Aquinas, when the color is seen, a
sensible species representing the color occurs in the visual power of an
animal. However, the functional union of the color on the wall with its
sensible species does not make the color or the wall a thing that can see,
because it does not have the visual capacity. Accordingly, the
combination of the intelligible species with a person’s phantasms
44
De Libera argues that Averroes does not conceive of phantasms as a
subject-substratum, but rather as a mover that cooperates with the agent
intellection in making a human person think. See Averroes, Commentarium
magnum 3.4 and de Libera’s comments in Archéologie du sujet III, 1, 207–14.
45
DUI, c. 3, par. 64: “Nisi forte dicatur quod intellectus possibilis
continuatur fantasmatibus sicut speculum continuatur homini cuius species
resultat in speculo; talis autem continuation manifestum est quod non sufficit
ad continuationem actus. Manifestum est enim quod actio speculi, que est
representare, non propter hoc potest attribui homini: unde nec actio intellectus
possibilis propter precictam copulationem posset attribui huic homini qui est
Sortes, ut hic homo intelligit.”
46
See Adams and Trifogli, “Whose Thought Is It?” 628–31.
47
Deborah Black argues that Averroes never draws any comparison
between the eye and the material intellect that would justify Aquinas’s
presumption here, but rather compares the material intellect with the
transparent medium in visual perceptions. Deborah Black, “Models of the
Mind: Metaphysical Presuppositions of the Averroist and Thomistic Accounts
of Intellection,” Documenti E Studi Sulla Tradizione Filosofica Medievale 15
(2004): 319–52. For Aquinas’s own understanding of the role of the transparent
medium in this analogy, see, for instance, SCG, bk. 2, c. 59. For comments on
the analogy of light in understanding the agent intellect’s role in abstraction by
Averroes, Avicenna, and Aquinas, see Cory, “Rethinking Abstractionism,” 614–
23.
80 TIANYUE WU
cannot make the person a thing that thinks. For it is the cognitive power
rather than the cognitive species that determines the attribution of a
cognitive act. 48 What Aquinas has in mind here seems to be the
Aristotelian principle that an action belongs to the thing to the which
the power belongs. 49 It implies that a human being should have a power
corresponding to the immaterial act of thinking to become its possessor.
However, the genuine challenge for our approach is still how an
immaterial power like intellect can be inherent to some extent in a
material being.
The Mover–Moved Model. In addition to advocating for the two-

subjects theory, the Averroists claim that the intellect is somehow
united with a material body (corpus) as its mover, which constitutes
their second effort to save the phenomenon of Socrates seeming to
think. Aquinas lists three possible versions of the mover–moved model:
(1) Socrates is the whole mover–moved compound; (2) Socrates is
merely the moved body, which is animated by the vegetative and sensual
soul; (3) Socrates is just the possible intellect as the mover. 50
Aquinas’s objection to the first option relies primarily on an
Aristotelian conception of substance: The mover and the moved cannot
form a substance that instantiates a natural species, such as a horse.
For Aristotle believes that only a union of form and matter (that is,
actuality and potentiality) can make different parts a genuine whole
other than a mere unintegrated aggregation of two different things. 51 If
the Averroists conceded that the union of the possible intellect and the
body is merely an accidental aggregation, it would follow that Socrates
as the whole will not be a primary substance in Aristotelian categories.
More importantly, it would therefore be impossible to attribute the
action of a part to the mover–moved compound, for Aquinas assumes
that the action of a part can be ascribed to the whole only when the
48
DUI, c. 3, par. 65.
49
See, for instance, Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae de anima
(hereafter, QDA), in Opera Omnia iussu Leonis XIII P. M. edita, Tomus 45, 1
(Rome: Commissio Leonina, 1996), a. 19: “Et hoc est quod philosophus dicit, in
libro de somno et vigilia (454a8) quod cuius est potentia eius est actio.” For
comments on the significance of this principle in establishing the agency of
human being in his actions, see de Libera, Archéologie du sujet I, 53–59.
50
DUI, c. 3, par. 66.
51
Metaphysics 8.6.1045a8–25. See DUI, c. 3, par. 68.
whole in question is a genuine unity such as a primary substance. For

instance, one cannot say that the thinking of a pilot belongs to the
aggregate of the pilot and the boat moved by him. 52
It seems even more ridiculous to think that the pilot’s thinking can
be attributed to the moved boat, as suggested by the second mover–
moved model. First, Aquinas denies the possibility of such transition.
He distinguishes transitive actions from intransitive ones. It is obvious
that thinking is not an action that can be transferred to its object. 53
Second, even granting that the transition of thinking were possible,
Aquinas insists nonetheless that the mover plays a more important role
than the moved in determining the attribution of action. Therefore it is
not appropriate to ascribe the act of thinking to its instrument such as
Socrates. 54 Third, in a process of transition, what receives the effect of
an act Φ is often said to be Φ-ed rather than Φ-ing. For instance, in the
case of building a house, the art of building is transferred from the
builder to the house. It is absurd to say that the house therefore can
exercise the art of building. 55 Aquinas concedes that there is another
form of transition, which allows a recipient to Φ. For example, when
water is heated by fire, it can heat other things as well. Nevertheless,
this is possible only when the water itself has heat as its form, in virtue
of which it heats another thing. So if this is the case of Socrates’
thinking, it follows that the principle of thinking must be a form of
Socrates, which is precisely the position Aquinas himself take great
pains to establish against the Averroists. 56 Throughout his anti-
Averroist writings, Aquinas insists that only when the intellect is a
power formally (formaliter) existing in us can its intellectual operation
be ascribed to us. 57
52
DUI, c. 3, par. 68.
53
DUI, c. 3, par. 70, see also SCG, bk. 2, c. 73; ST I, q. 85, a. 2.
54
DUI, c. 3, par. 71.
55
DUI, c. 3, par. 72.
56
DUI, c. 3, par. 73.
57
See, for instance, SCG, bk. 2, c. 76: “Oportet igitur quod principia quibus
attribuuntur hae actiones, scilicet intellectus possibilis et agens, sint virtutes
quaedam in nobis formaliter existens.” For a comprehensive analysis of this
principle of intrinsic formal cause in Aquinas’s different works, see Taylor,
“Intellect as Intrinsic Formal Cause,” 190–202. We shall return to this principle
below.
82 TIANYUE WU
Before moving to Aquinas’s own account of the individuality of

thinking, we shall briefly mention his comments on the third option for
the mover–moved model, according to which Socrates is identical with
the mover, that is, with the possible intellect itself. Aquinas identifies
this approach to the mover–moved model as Plato’s view. In his
evaluation of it, rather than dismissing it out of hand, Aquinas mentions
its affinity to Aristotle’s words that the element of intellect in a man can
be thought to be the man himself. 58 Certainly, he reaffirms immediately
the Aristotelian hylomorphism according to which Socrates is
composed of soul and body. He lays a strong emphasis on the priority
of the soul with respect to the definition of the body: “no part of the
body can be defined without some part of the soul.” 59 Without the soul,
flesh and eye are called so only homonymously. 60 It is not difficult to
see why Aquinas is not entirely hostile to the Plato’s identification of a
person with his intellect. For it at least offers an obvious explanation of
how this human being thinks. What is problematic is the relation of this
personal thinking to his corporeal being.
Aquinas’s philosophical arguments against the Aveorrists present a
more vivid picture of two seemingly incompatible themes in Aquinas’s
metaphysical approach to human thinking: the sheer immateriality of
thinking on the one hand, and the corporeal being of a human person on
the other. In particular, Aquinas’s criticisms of the two-subject doctrine
and the mover–moved model indicate that he thinks a more substantial
relationship between thinking and person is needed. For Aquinas, only
the relationship between form and matter can satisfy this requirement.
He concludes that a person’s act of thinking embodies a genuine unity
of the possible intellect’s function to the human person as a thinking
thing. However, this is possible only when the possible intellect is a
58
Nicomachean Ethics 9.4.1166a15–17. See DUI, c. 3, par. 74.
59
DUI, c. 3, par. 75: “nulla pars corporis potest diffiniri sine parte aliqua
anime.” Aquinas’s point in this passage is that this intimate relation between
the body and the soul shows that a human being cannot be merely his intellect.
Nevertheless, it can be read from another direction to show that the soul is
ontologically prior to the body.
60
InDA, bk. 2, c. 2. For a more detailed account of the homonymy of the
body and the ontological priority of the soul to the body, see my article “The
Ontological Status of the Body in Aquinas’s Hylomorphism” (forthcoming in
Studia Neoaristotelica 14 [2017]).
power of the soul that is united with us as the substantial form. 61 Then
he needs to explain how a thoroughly immaterial action can involve
matter. In the section that follows, I will argue that the priority of the
soul in Aquinas’s hylomorphic anthropology suggests a way to
incorporate these two aspects of his thought into a coherent account.
III
Aquinas’s Positive Account for the Individuation of Thinking. In

the last chapter of De unitate intellectus and other contexts, Aquinas
takes great pains to tackle a series of problems relating to attributing
the act of thinking to a human person. The following can help us better
specify the theoretical challenges Aquinas has to face in maintaining
that thinking is an act of a corporeal being.
Three Objections to Aquinas’s Claim that “This Human Being

Thinks.” (1) The first and most important problem has to do with the
ontological status of the intellect. If the possible intellect is not unified
but multiplied according to the diversity of human beings, then one
would assume that it must be individuated by the material distinction of
human bodies. For the principle of individuation for a material
compound is supposed to be the matter. Moreover, only a material form
can be multiplied by the distinction of the matter. It necessarily follows
that the possible intellect is nothing but a material form, which is in
tension with Aristotle’s belief that the intellect is something separate
from matter. 62 Aquinas’s opponents go even further to claim that a form
separated from matter is neither numerically one nor something that
can be individualized. 63 They also argue that, if the intellect were a
material form, since all human bodies have a determinate nature, it
would follow that the intellect would have a determinate nature in itself.
61
DUI, c. 3, par. 78: “sequitur quod intellectus sic uniatur nobis ut uere ex
eo et nobis fiat unum; quod uere non potest esse nisi eo modo quo dictum est,
ut sit scilicet potentia anime que unitur nobis ut forma.”
62
DUI, c. 5, par. 95. See also InSent, bk. 2, d. 17, q. 2, a. 1, arg. 1; SCG, bk.
2, c. 75.
63
DUI, c. 5, par. 96. See also Siger of Brabant, Questiones In III De anima,
q. 9, as cited in de Libera, L’Unité de l’Intellect, 400.
84 TIANYUE WU
This result is contrary to the nature of the possible intellect. The

possible intellect has a natural capacity to know all things, and if the
intellect had a determinate nature, this determinacy would impede its
cognition of other things not sharing its determinate nature. 64 In short,
the claim that “this human being thinks” seems to entail that the intellect
is a material form, which is contrary to Aquinas’s explicit assertion that
the intellect is immaterial.
(2) The second objection to Aquinas’s position concerns the
intellect’s status as a cognitive power. By definition, the possible
intellect is the cognitive power of receiving intelligible forms. If the
possible intellect is multiplied in the sense that my intellect is different
from yours, then the intelligible form in my intellect will be different
from the form in yours. For it is taken as an axiom that what is received
is received according to the mode of the receiver. 65 For Aquinas’s
opponents, this axiom implies that the intelligible forms in our intellect
are numerically distinct and individual forms. However, individual
forms are intelligible only potentially, since a common intention or
concept can be abstracted from them. For the same reason, this new
intention is also individualized by our intellects, and then there will be
another intention to be abstracted, which continues ad infinitum. In
other words, the individuation of thinking will lead to the individuation
of thought’s object and ultimately make thinking impossible. 66
(3) The last objection relates to Aquinas’s commitment to the
immortality of intellective souls and touches one of the most difficult
challenges to his ontology of thinking. The objection is based upon a
fundamental principle of causation: When the cause is taken away, so
too is the effect. If possible intellects and their acts of thinking are
multiplied in accordance with bodies (secundum corpora), then they
will not remain when the bodies have been destroyed, and the Christian
belief in postmortem rewards and punishments will lose its ontological
ground. 67
64
ST I, q. 76, a. 1.
65
For more details about the sources of this principle and its application
in various modes of cognition, see John F. Wippel, “Thomas Aquinas and the
Axiom ‘What Is Received Is Received According to the Mode of the Receiver,’”
in Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas II (Washington, D.C.: The
Catholic University of America Press, 2007), 113–22.
66
This objection is reconstructed from SCG, bk. 2, c. 75; ST I, q. 76, a. 2;
QDSC, a. 9, arg. 13; and DUI, c. 5, par. 102.
67
DUI, c. 5, par. 100. See also QDSC, a. 9, arg. 3; ST I, q. 76, a. 2.
Aquinas on the Ontological Status of the Intellect. In Aquinas’s

initial response to the first objection in his commentary on the
Sentences of Peter Lombard, it is somewhat surprising to find that he
does not think it is contradictory to assert that the intellect is a material
form.
[I]t should be said that the intellect is not denied to be a material
form so that it might be prevented from giving being to matter (quin
det esse materiae) as a substantial form, with respect to its first
being. For this reason, it is necessary that the multiplication of the
intellect, that is, of the intellective soul, follow upon the division of
matter which causes diverse individuals. But it is called immaterial
with respect to its second actuality, which is an operation; because
thinking does not take place by means of a mediating bodily organ.
This occurs because an operation proceeds from the essence of the
soul only through its mediating power or potency. Hence, since it
has some powers which are not acts of certain organs of the body, it
is necessary that certain operations of the soul do not occur through
a mediating body. 68
It seems that the young Aquinas adopts a materialist view of the

intellect, probably for its terse simplicity in clarifying the individuation
of intellect. At this point in his intellectual development, when he holds
that the intellect is a material form, Aquinas explains the diversity of the
intellect—as with the diversity of other material being—in terms of the
division of matter. Matter remains the principle of individuation.
Socrates’ intellect is distinct from Plato’s primarily because they inform
two different bodies. Then Aquinas appeals to the ambiguity of the Latin
word intellectus to show how this materialist view can be compatible
68
InSent, bk. 2, d. 17, q. 2, a. 1, ad 1: “Ad primum ergo dicendum, quod
intellectus non negatur esse forma materialis quin det esse materiae sicut
forma substantialis quantum ad esse primum; et ideo oportet quod ad
divisionem materiae, quae causat diversa individua, sequatur etiam
multiplicatio intellectus, idest animae intellectivae. Sed dicitur immaterialis
[provisionary Leonine edition: hoc dicitur] respectu actus secundi, qui est
operatio: quia intelligere non expletur mediante organo corporali, et hoc
contingit quia ab essentia animae non exit operatio nisi mediante virtute ejus
vel potentia; unde cum habeat quasdam vires que non sunt actus quorundam
organorum corporis, oportet quod quedam operationes animae sint non
mediante corpore.” The English translation cited (with slight modifications) is
that of Richard Taylor in Philosophical Psychology in Arabic Thought and the
th
Latin Aristotelianism of the 13 Century, 292. The Latin text is the
provisionary Leonine edition Taylor uses with one exception noted above.
86 TIANYUE WU
with the immateriality of intellect. The Latin word intellectus can refer
to either the intellective soul as the substantial form of the body or the
intellective power that serves as the immediate principle of thinking.
For Aquinas, the possible intellect denotes a cognitive power of the soul.
However, in the passage cited above he is answering an argument that
claims, “the rational soul or intellect is one in number in all human
beings.” 69 This explains why these two terms are used interchangeably
in Aquinas’s response. It follows that Aquinas merely claims that the
intellective soul is multiplied as a material form. Aquinas also insists
that the intellective soul cannot be the immediate basis of its operations
but rather operates through the mediation of its intellective powers. 70
Only when taken as a power of the soul, the intellect is immaterial in
that its operation, namely thinking, does not involve any bodily activity.
Here, by implicitly invoking his controversial doctrine of a real
distinction between the essence of the soul and its powers, 71 Aquinas
concludes that one cannot directly infer from the immateriality of one
of the soul’s powers that the soul itself is also immaterial.
Aquinas’s early account, however, has significant defects. Above
all, it risks seeming incoherent. He explicitly denies that the rational
soul is a material form when he talks about the origin of the human soul
in the same work, which immediately follows the one cited above: “The
rational soul is neither composed of matter, nor is a material form, as if
[it is] merged in the matter.” 72 If we do not believe that Aquinas could
be making contradictory claims, we must pay careful attention to the
69
InSent, bk. 2, d. 17, q. 2, a. 1, arg. 1: “anima rationalis vel intellectus sit
unus numero in omnibus.”
70
See, for instance, InSent, bk. 1, d. 3, q. 4, a. 2; ST I, q. 77, a. 1.
71
In a recent survey on the medieval controversy on the soul’s faculties
and its essence, Dominik Perler challenges the traditional interpretation of
Aquinas’s position as maintaining a real distinction between the soul and its
faculties. Perler argues that x and y are really distinct only when x can exist
without y and y without x. However, the soul can never exist without its
faculties as its necessary accidents (propria), and vice versa. See Dominik
Perler, “Faculties in Medieval Philosophy,” in The Faculties: A History, ed.
Dominik Perler (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 97–139, esp. 108–
09. I think Perler adopts an unnecessarily strong interpretation of the real
distinction. In this context, Aquinas claims that the essence of the soul is really
distinct from its capacities or faculties merely in that the distinction does not
depend upon our conceptions of them.
72
InSent, bk. 2, d. 18, q. 2, a. 1, ad 6: “anima rationalis nec ex materia
composita est, nec est forma materialis, quasi in materia impressa.” The
translation is mine.
qualifications he makes in these two claims. In the earlier text, he

identifies the intellect or the rational soul as a material form merely in
that it “gives being to matter as a substantial form.” In contrast, when
he denies that the rational soul of a human being is a material form that
can be generated by his parents, he means that the soul is not wholly
limited by its matter in such a way that its operations cannot be without
the body. In short, the intellective soul is not a material form without
qualification, but a special one that can have both material individuation
and immaterial capacities. Nevertheless, if we do not want to take this
as a merely ad hoc explanation, we still need to clarify how this
combination of two characteristics of the soul is metaphysically
possible. In particular, we need to elucidate in what sense the
intellective soul gives being to the matter, an obscure but important
claim we shall return at the end of this essay.
Furthermore, the distinction between the intellective soul and the
intellective power is a distinction between substantial and accidental
forms. For Aquinas takes the powers of the soul as accidental forms,
though as necessary ones flowing out from the essence of the soul. 73 As
mentioned above, Aquinas recognizes a real distinction between the
soul and its powers. Taking this for granted, one may still wonder how
an immaterial power can belong to a material form. This seems to make
an accidental form prior to its substantial form in dignity or ontological
status, which conflicts with Aquinas’s ontology of priority and at least
asks for further explanation. This point turns out to be the foundation
of an objection Aquinas has to deal with later in the Summa
Theologiae. 74 However, his response merely repeats the
aforementioned ad hoc solution that the human soul is a form of the
body (corporis forma) that is not totally merged in the corporeal matter
and therefore can have some incorporeal power like the intellect. 75 It is
73
See InSent, bk. 2, d. 17, q. 1, a. 2, ad 6; ST I, q. 77, aa. 1, 6.
74
ST I, q. 76, a. 1: “Praeterea, eiusdem est potentia et actio, idem enim est
quod potest agere, et quod agit. Sed actio intellectualis non est alicuius
corporis, ut ex superioribus patet. Ergo nec potentia intellectiva est alicuius
corporis potentia. Sed virtus sive potentia non potest esse abstractior vel
simplicior quam essentia a qua virtus vel potentia derivatur. Ergo nec
substantia intellectus est corporis forma.” See also DUI, c. 3, par. 81.
75
ST I, q. 76, a. 1, ad 4: “Ad quartum dicendum quod humana anima non est
forma in materia corporali immersa, vel ab ea totaliter comprehensa, propter
88 TIANYUE WU
noteworthy that here Aquinas no longer refers to the intellect or the

intellective soul as a material form, but rather as a “form of the body.”
For Aquinas unambiguously claims in the Summa that material
formality is incompatible with the subsistence of the human soul. 76
Moreover, Aquinas’s response to the objection seems to presuppose that
a form not totally merged in the matter, whether it is called a material
form or form of the body, is not posterior to the immaterial power of
thinking in dignity or in ontological status. It seems that the intellective
soul is at least as immaterial, simple, and abstract as the intellective
power of thinking, for it is also not constrained by the capacities of the
matter. 77 Therefore, one cannot claim without additional argument that
the intellective soul as such is nonetheless a form of the body rather
than an immaterial entity.
On the other hand, by abandoning his view of the intellect as a
specific material form, Aquinas also has to give up matter as the
principle of the individuation of thinking. As I will argue, he actually
mentions something more fundamental to account for the individuality
of both material and immaterial beings. To better understand this
approach, we need to clarify in advance a few significant conceptual
distinctions concerning individuality.
First, individuality cannot be identified with multiplicity, especially
not with the multiplicity of instances within a species. A thing can be
individuated without becoming multiplied. For God is an individual, but
there is only one God. 78 Further, for Aquinas, each species of angel only
has one individual. Angels are individuated by their intrinsic natures
but cannot be numerically multiplied by anything. 79
suam perfectionem. Et ideo nihil prohibet aliquam eius virtutem non esse
corporis actum; quamvis anima secundum suam essentiam sit corporis forma.”
76
ST I, q. 75, a. 2, ad 1: “hoc aliquid potest accipi dupliciter, uno modo, pro
quocumque subsistente, alio modo, pro subsistente completo in natura alicuius
speciei. Primo modo, excludit inhaerentiam accidentis et formae materialis,
secundo modo, excludit etiam imperfectionem partis. . . . Sic igitur, cum anima
humana sit pars speciei humanae, potest dici hoc aliquid primo modo, quasi
subsistens.”
77
See DUI, c. 3, par. 81: “Anima autem humana, quia secundum suum esse
est, cui aliqualiter communicat materia non toatliter comprehendens ipsam, eo
quod maior est dignitas huius forme quam capacitas materie.”
78
See, for instance, ST I, q. 11, a. 3.
79
ST I, q. 50, a. 4. See also QDSC, a. 8. See Giogio Pini, “The Individuation
of Angels from Bonaventure to Duns Scotus,” in A Companion to Angels in
Moreover, individuality is different from unity as well. For unity is

said in many ways: numerical, specific, general, and proportional. 80 For
instance, two human beings can be one or identical in species in that
they have the same definition. It is obvious that only numerical unity is
concerned with the individuality under consideration. Aquinas
emphasizes as well that the other sorts of unity are not unity without
qualification (simpliciter). 81
Furthermore, even numerical unity cannot be identified with
individuality. Aquinas makes a significant clarification on their
relationship: A thing is called numerically one (unum numero) not
because it is one in number (unum de numero), but because it is not
divided when being numbered. The indivisibility is the cause of
numerability, not the other way around. 82 In other words, numerical
unity is a phenomenon that needs to be accounted for by a more
profound ontological indivisibility. Returning to the case of thinking,
we can say that any act of thinking as an instance of action is necessarily
an action that is numerically one. However, this says nothing about the
principle of its individuation, for even a separate intellect can have such
a single action. It can even be multiplied according to the difference of
its objects. My thinking of a mathematical object is numerically
different from my understanding of the metaphysical principle of
individuation. The fact that it is an instance of action does not explain
why it should be ascribed to a particular individual that is acting. For
that purpose, we need to show the essential link between the act of
thinking and the individuality of its agent.
Finally, we should distinguish the problem of individuality of
thinking from the question of personal identity over time. For the
metaphysical possibility of individual thinking is primarily concerned
with the synchronic unity between a material human being and his
Medieval Philosophy, ed. Tobias Hoffmann (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 79–115, esp.
90.
80
Metaphysics 5.8.1016b31–35, cited in DUI, c. 5, par. 97: “Vnum autem in
V Methaphisice dicitur quadrupliciter, scilicet numero, specie, genere,
proportione.”
81
DUI, c. 5, par. 97: “Nec est dicendum quod aliqua substantia separata sit
unum tantum specie uel genere, quia hoc non est esse simpliciter unum.”
82
Ibid.: “Nec dicitur aliquid unum numero quia sit unum de numero—non
enim numerus est causa unius sed e conuerso—, sed quia in numerando non
diuiditur; unum enim est id quod non diuiditur.”
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immaterial act of thinking, while personal identity is more concerned

with the diachronic continuity of this union.
Therefore, what concerns us is the fundamental unity or
indivisibility of an individual person at any given moment that grounds
our attribution of the act of thinking to him. This act is individualized
not only because it is a numerically single act, but more importantly
because it belongs to a person who is unique and irreplaceable. As
Aquinas insists, in created things, the individuating principle should
explain not only their subsistence but also the difference of those who
share a common nature. 83 Only with such a conception of individuality
is it possible for us to distinguish Socrates’ thinking from Plato’s.
Now we return to Aquinas’s response to the first objection
mentioned above in the De unitate intellectus. Above all, Aquinas
argues that God and angels as separate substances are necessarily
individual and singular (indiuidue et singulares), because otherwise
they cannot have any operation or action. 84 As Alain de Libera rightly
observes, Aquinas’s position on this point is based upon a
misunderstanding of Aristotle’s famous claim that actions are only
concerned with individuals as objects (actus sint solum singularium)
to mean that only individuals as subjects can act. 85 It follows that God
and angels act only as individuals even though they are separate from
matter and the material world. Aquinas goes further to claim that even
83
St. Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae de potentia (hereafter,
QDP), in Quaestiones disputatae, t. 2, ed. P. M. Pession (Turin-Rome: Marietti,
1965), 1-276, q. 9, a. 5, ad 13: “in rebus creatis principia individuantia duo
habent: quorum unum est quod sunt principium subsistendi (natura enim
communis de se non subsistit nisi in singularibus); aliud est quod per principia
individuantia supposita naturae communis ab invicem distinguuntur.” Cited
from Enzo Portalupi, “Das Lexikon der Individualität bei Thomas von Aquin,”
in Individuum und Individualität im Mittelalter, ed. Jan A. Aertsen and
Andreas Speer (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1996), 57–73, at 67.
84
DUI, c. 5, par. 99: “Indiuidue ergo sunt substantie separate et singulares.”
There seems to be no substantial difference between these two terms in
Aquinas’s ontology, for instance, the Aristotelian claim here sometimes reads
as actiones sunt solum singularium, sometimes as actiones sunt
individuorum. For more discussions on Aquinas’s usage of these terms, see
Portalupi, “Das Lexikon der Individualität.”
85
DUI, c. 5, par. 98: “Nec etiam hoc uerum est, quod substantia separata
non sit singularis et indiuiduum aliquid; alioquin non haberet aliquam
operationem, cum actus sint solum singularium, ut Philosophus dicit.” See de
Libera, L’unité de l’intellect, 408.
Platonic ideas are individuals in this sense and therefore cannot be

defined or predicated of many things. In light of this understanding of
immaterial individuality, Aquinas reinterprets the Aristotelian doctrine
that matter is the principle of individuation. He introduces a new
conception of individuality that he sees as applying to both material and
immaterial realities:
Matter is the principle of individuation in material things insofar as
matter is not participated in (participabilis) by many, since it is the
first subject not existing in another. . . . Separate substances,
therefore, are individual and singular, but they are individuated not
by matter but by the fact that they are not destined to (nate) be in
another thing and consequently to be participated in by many. From
which it follows that if any form is destined to be participated in by
another, so that it become the actuality of some matter, then it can
be individuated and multiplied by its combination (comparatio) with
matter. 86
It is clear now that a thing is called individual because it cannot be

further participated in by any other subject-substratum. In other words,
imparticipability and individuality are equivalent in this context. It is
also evident now that Aquinas does not recognize two principles of
individuation in human beings as some commentators wrongly
suggested: “like material things, we are individuated by matter. Like
immaterial things, we are individuated by our intellectuality.” 87 For
imparticipability univocally explains the individuality of both material
and immaterial things.
This conception of imparticipability offers an alternative answer to
the individuality of thinking that replaces the conception of intellect as
a special material form. The summary above of Aquinas’s critique of
86
DUI, c. 5, pars. 98–99: “Non enim materia est principium indiuiduationis
in rebus materialibus, nisi in quantum materia non est participabilis a pluribus,
cum sit primum subiectum non existens in alio . . . Indiuidue ergo sunt
substantie separate et singulars; non autem indiuiduantur ex materia, sed ex
hoc ipso quod non sunt nate in alio esse, et per consequens nec participari a
multis. Ex quo sequitur quod si aliqua forma nata est participari ab aliquo, ita
quod sit actus alicuius materie, illa potest indiuiduari et multiplicari per
comparationem ad materiam.” The translation is modified from Ralph
McInerny’s in his Aquinas against the Averroists (West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue
University Press, 2002).
87
Montague Brown, “St. Thomas and the Individuation of Persons,”
American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 65, no. 1 (1991): 29–44, at 41; see
also Portalupi, “Das Lexikon der Individualität,” 67.
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Averroists’ doctrine of two subjects already indicates that, for Aquinas,

thinking is ascribed to a person because he has a cognitive power that
serves as the active principle of thinking. Now Aquinas goes on to
confirm that cognitive powers are individuated in virtue of the
substantial form to which they belong, that is, the intellective soul. The
soul itself is further individuated by its essential relation to the body. 88
This is not a simple return to the matter as the principle of individuation,
because material individuality can be explained in terms of
imparticipability as well. Nevertheless, unlike separate substances that
are destined or made according to their nature (natus est) to be
imparticipable, the ultimate source of the imparticipability of a
composite substance is the primacy of matter as subject-substratum.
However, from very early on, Aquinas is quite clear that matter cannot
be called a subject-substratum in its strict sense because it does not
have a complete being like a subject-substratum of an accident. 89
Strictly speaking, the first subject that cannot be further participated in
by other things is the compound of form and matter. In the case of
human beings being the agents of their thinking, we are brought back to
the question about the ontological compatibility between the
intellective soul and the material body. Before returning to this
fundamental issue, we have a more urgent question. Granting that our
intellective power is individuated because our intellective souls are
individuated, it is still unclear how this individual power functions in
our thinking. For Aristotle claims that thinking is immaterial in that it
is not the actuality of matter. However, in Aquinas’s opponents’ eyes,
the individuality of the intellective power seems to conflict with this
claim.
88
DUI, c. 5, par. 99: “Iam autem supra ostensum est quod intellectus est
uirtus anime que est actus corporis; in multis igitur corporibus sunt multe
anime, et in multis animabus sunt multe uirtutes intellectuales que uocantur
intellectus: nece propter hoc sequitur quod intellectus sit uirtus materialis, ut
supra ostensum est.”
89
St. Thomas Aquinas, De principiis naturae, from Sancti Thomae de
Aquino opera omnia, vol. 43, ed. Roberto Busa (Rome: Editori di San
Tommaso, 1976), c. 1: “Et secundum hoc differt materia a subiecto: quia
subiectum est quod non habet esse ex eo quod advenit, sed per se habet esse
completum, sicut homo non habet esse ab albedine. Sed materia habet esse ex
eo quod ei advenit, quia de se habet esse incompletum.”
Aquinas on Intelligible Species. Aquinas’s response to the second

objection relies on his peculiar conception of intelligible species, which
is another topic of ongoing interpretative controversy. 90 Since our
concerns are more ontological than epistemological, we will simply
focus on its role in determining the individuality of thinking. As
mentioned above, a most significant point for Aquinas’s species theory
of cognition is that a species is the thing in virtue of which (id quo) an
intellect can think or understand an intelligible form in its actuality.
Aquinas insists that within the Aristotle’s philosophical framework,
what is understood (intellectum) is normally not an intelligible species
but the nature or quiddity of a thing, which remains the same for all
intellects. 91 This sharp distinction between intelligible species and the
object of thinking is central to Aquinas’s critique of Averroes and his
followers. 92 Whether the intelligible species is formally identical with
the extramental nature or just its mental representation is still a
controversial issue. 93 What is unquestionable is that the species plays
two different roles in the process of thinking. On the one hand, the
intelligible species is the form or intention that the agent intellect
abstracts from phantasms and is received into the possible intellect.
According to the axiom that what is received is received in the manner
90
For a general study of the intelligible species in medieval philosophy,
see Leen Spruit, Species Intelligibilis: From Perception to Knowledge, Volume
One: Classical Roots and Medieval Discussions (Leiden: Brill, 1994). For more
specific studies on Thomas Aquinas, see Jeffrey E. Brower and Susan Brower-
Toland, “Aquinas on Mental Representation: Concepts and Intentionality,” The
Philosophical Review 117, no. 2 (2008): 193–243; Elena Baltuta, “Aquinas on
Intellectual Cognition: The Case of Intelligible Species,” Philosophia 41, no. 3
(2013): 589–602.
91
DUI, c. 5, par. 106: “Est ergo dicendum secundum sententiam Aristotilis
quod intellectum quod est unum est ipsa natura uel quiditas rei; de rebus enim
est scientia naturalis et alie scientie, non de speciebus intellectis.” See also
QDSC, a. 9, ad 6.
92
See Bernardo-Carlos Bazàn, “Intellectum Speculativum: Averroes,
Thomas Aquinas, and Siger of Brabant on the Intelligible Object,” Journal of
the History of Philosophy 19, no. 4 (1981): 425–46. See also de Libera, L’unité
de l’intellect, 440–42.
93
For criticisms of the traditional reading in favor of the identity between
the intelligible species and the essence of extramental objects, see Claude
Panaccio, “Aquinas on Intellectual Representation,” in Ancient and Medieval
Theories of Intentionality, ed. Dominik Perler (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 185–201;
and Robert Pasnau, Theories of Cognition, esp. 195–219. For a recent defense
of traditional realist reading, see Baltuta, “Aquinas on Intellectual Cognition.”
94 TIANYUE WU
of its recipient, the intelligible species is an accidental form received in

the possible intellect in accordance with the ontological status of the
possible intellect. Since Aquinas believes that the possible intellect is a
power of an individual soul, it follows that the intelligible species is
individuated in the intellect. On the other hand, the intelligible species
is abstracted from material and individuating conditions of phantasms.
It is an intention in the mind representing the extramental thing “not in
its individual conditions, but only according to the universal nature.” 94
This is the so-called theory of the double being of the intelligible species.
According to this theory, the intelligible species has both an individual
ontological being and a universal intentional being. 95 Thanks to the
double being of the intelligible species, 96 Aquinas proposes a solution to
the puzzles revolving around the universality and individuality of
thinking:
Therefore, there is one thing that is thought by me and by you, but it
is thought in virtue of one thing by me and in virtue of another by
you, that is, by different intelligible species, and my thinking is
97
different from yours and my intellect is different from yours.
My thinking is distinct from yours because it is essentially rooted in my

individual power of cognition. Nevertheless, our thoughts can be
communicated because they are related to the same object, either
extramental or representational, which has been abstracted from its
material and individuating conditions. In most cases, the object of
thought is the universal nature of things. However, there is still a
marginal issue that needs to be addressed here. Aquinas mentions that
in some special cases, when the intellect reflects on itself, the
intelligible species received in the possible intellect will become the
94
DUI, c. 5, par. 107: “Hec [sc. species] autem, cum sit abstracta a
principiis indiuidualibus, non representat rem secundum condiciones
indiuiduales, sed secudnum naturam uniuersalem tantum.”
95
See, for instance, Bazàn, “Intellectum Speculativum,” 436; Baltuta,
“Aquinas on Intellectual Cognition,” 591.
96
Aquinas explicitly acknowledges his indebtedness to Avicenna in this
regard. See InSent, bk. 2, d. 17, q. 2, a. 1, ad 3. See also Avicenna, Metaphysics,
5.1, as cited in Taylor, “Aquinas and the ‘Arabs’,” 156.
97
DUI, c. 5, par. 108: “Est ergo unum quod intelligitur et a me et a te, sed
alio intelligitur a me et alio a te, id est alia specie intelligibili; et aliud est
intelligere meum et aliud tuum; et alius est intellectus meus et alius tuus.”
object of intellectual thinking. 98 Since the intelligible species in the

intellect is an individual form, Aquinas still needs to explain how this
individual form can be understood as something intelligible in actuality.
Aquinas’s answer is rather simple: What is incompatible with thinking is
not singularity but materiality. Since intelligible species are immaterial
individuals just like separate substances, which obviously can each
individually think about themselves, nothing prevents the individuated
intelligible species from being thought in the intellect’s self-reflection. 99
Aquinas’s incorporation of intelligible species into his account of
the individuality of thinking represents significant progress. For its
double aspect helps us better conceive of the combination of
individuality and immateriality in a single entity. It offers a mechanism
to show how the act of thinking is related to a universal while
maintaining its individuality. An intelligible species is individuated
because it is an intentional being that is retained in the possible intellect.
This gives us a good reason to ascribe the act of thinking to the intellect
in virtue of this individuated species. However, can we therefore
ascribe thinking to the person who has the intellect? Aquinas seems to
imply so. He mentions that the human intellect has a special need of
intelligible species in order to know, because it has no immanent
knowledge at all. A human intellect needs sensation and imagination to
obtain its own intelligible species. This understanding of the human
intellect seems to indicate that our corporeal existence contributes to
the acts of our intellects. However, it merely seems so. For as is shown
in Aquinas’s critique of Averroists’ theory of two subjects, the
contribution of phantasms to the process of thinking is something that
needs to be deprived of its individuating conditions. Therefore, even if
we can accept the primitive individuality of intellect and its own
98
DUI, c. 5, par. 106: “Hec autem species non se habent ad intellectum
possibilem ut intellecta, . . . nisi in quantum intellectus reflectitur supra se
ipsum.” For an interesting account of the significance of the intellect’s
reflexivity in Aquinas’s conception of human agency, see Therese Cory, “The
Reflexivity of Incorporeal Acts as Source of Freedom and Subjectivity in
Aquinas,” in Subjectivity and Selfhood in Medieval and Early Modern
Philosophy, ed. Jari Kaukua and Tomas Ekenberg (Dordrecht: Springer, 2016),
125–41.
99
DUI, c. 5, par. 108: “Non enim singularitas repugnat intelligibilitati, sed
materialitas: unde, cum sint aliqua singularia immaterialia, sicut de substantiis
separatis supra dictum est, nichil prohibet huiusmodi singularia intelligi.”
96 TIANYUE WU
intelligible species, what we have achieved is merely to ascribe the act

of thinking to the intellect, not the person.
Aquinas on the Intellect and the Body. Aquinas’s response to the

third objection, the one concerning the soul’s individuality after death,
strengthens the aforementioned tendency of his thought to link the act
of thinking to an individual intellect rather than to an individual person.
With the new principle of individuality at hand, Aquinas gives a simple
answer to the objection about the individuality of the intellect that
survives death: The unity of a thing depends upon its being. Since the
intellect (and the intellective soul) has its own being, it will not be taken
away when the body is destroyed. Therefore, the intellect’s unity and
the individuality flowing from its existence will remain after death. 100
This argument obviously presupposes the immortality of the soul,
which is not put into question by the Averroists Aquinas has in mind.
Nevertheless, a crucial point in Aquinas’s argument for the immortality
of the soul is that the intellective soul has its own operation, namely
thinking, which is not shared by the body. This is so because the
intellect by nature can cognize the natures of all bodies. As shown in
the first objection above, medieval Aristotelians believed that if the
intellective soul had a determinate material nature, this would impede
its cognition of other things. Therefore, it is impossible for the
intellective soul as the principle of thinking to be a body or to operate
through a bodily organ. It follows that the intellective soul has thinking
per se that the body does not share in. 101
Whether this argument for the subsistence of the intellect is valid
is not our concern here. What troubles us here is the argument’s explicit
claim that thinking is an operation of the intellective soul itself, because
this claim seems to be incompatible with his hylomorphic conception of
human being. As mentioned above, Aquinas misinterprets Aristotle’s
claim that actions are concerned only with individual objects to mean
100
DUI, c. 5, par. 100: “Vnumquodque enim sic est ens sicut unum, ut
dicitur in IV Methaphisice; sicut igitur esse anime est quidem in corpore in
quantum est forma corporis, nec est ante corpus, tamen destructo corpore
adhuc remanet in suo esse: ita unaqueque anima remanet in sua unitate, et per
consequens multe anime in sua multitudine.”
101
See, for instance, ST I, q. 75, a. 2; QDSC, a. 2.
that actions merely belong to individual subjects. 102 It is well known that
Aquinas’s ontology adopts an even stronger version of this principle:
Actions belong only to supposita (actiones sunt suppositorum). 103
Since a suppositum is understood as an individual that subsists in the
genus of substance, 104 it follows that strictly speaking only a human
person can qualify as the agent of his thinking. Aquinas himself also
unequivocally acknowledges this point in his argument for the
immortality of the soul: “one can say that the soul thinks, just as the eye
sees. But one speaks more strictly in saying that the human being thinks
through the soul.” 105 So, to repeat again our puzzle from the beginning:
How can the same action of thinking be ascribed both to the intellect
and to the human person who is thinking?
It has been suggested that Aquinas proposes a straightforward way
to link thinking, intellect, and the human person by his formal
conception of the intellect: The (possible) intellect is the thing, formally
speaking (formaliter loquendo), in virtue of which a human being
thinks. 106 Aquinas here is alluding to the principle of intrinsic formal
cause, according to which a thing acts only when the principle of action
is its intrinsic form. 107 It is evident by definition that the intellect is the
principle of intellectual thinking. However, one should be careful
directly to draw the conclusion that the intellective principle of human
thinking is a form of the human body, as Aquinas implies here. 108 In his
102
See n. 84 above.
103
See, for instance, ST I, q. 39, a. 5, ad 1. For more references, see Bazàn,
“The Creation of the Soul,” 533 n. 51.
104
ST I, q. 29, a. 2.
105
ST I, q. 75, a. 2, ad 2: “Potest igitur dici quod anima intelligit, sicut oculus
videt, sed magis proprie dicitur quod homo intelligat per animam.” The
translation cited is from The Treatise on Human Nature: Summa Theologiae
1a75-89, trans. Robert Pasnau (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002).
106
InDA, bk. 3, c. 1: “Intellectus ergo possibilis est, quo hic homo,
formaliter loquendo, intelligit.” See also QDSC, a. 2; QDA, a. 5; ST I, q. 76, a. 1.
See above n. 57.
107
See, for instance, QDSC, a. 2: “Nulla autem operatio conuenit alicui nisi
per aliquam formam in ipso existentem, uel substantialem uel accidentalem,
quia nichil agit aut operatur nisi secundum quod est actu; est autem
unumquodque actu per formam aliquam, uel substantialem uel accidentalem,
cum forma sit actus.”
108
See ST I, q. 76, a. 1: “Hoc ergo principium quo primo intelligimus, sive
dicatur intellectus sive anima intellective, est forma corporis.” However, even
in this context, Aquinas also carefully mentions the distinction between the
98 TIANYUE WU
treatise against the Averroists, Aquinas cautiously elucidates that the

intellect formally inheres in a human person, “not in that it is the form
of the body, but in that it is a power of the soul that is the form of the
body.” 109 This is so because Aquinas believes that an operation or action
is ascribed to an agent only by means of a power that is the immediate
or proximate principle of the action. 110 It means that the intellective soul
can be called the nonproximate principle of thinking only in a derivative
sense. Furthermore, by attributing the act of thinking to the intellective
soul via the intellective power, we are presupposing that the possible
intellect can be identified as a power of the intellective soul. And as we
argued above, this is possible only when the intellective soul itself is
held to be as immaterial as its intellective power.111 For even Averroes
can acknowledge that the possible intellect is a power of the intellective
soul, provided that the soul is a completely separate substance. 112
Averroes’ idea turns out to be similar to Aquinas’s argument concerning
the individuality of intelligible species. However, for Aquinas, the
presence of the intelligible species in the intellective soul merely shows
that the soul thinks; it does not show that the person thinks. The
greatest challenge for Aquinas’s theory of individual thinking is still how
an immaterial soul can be united with the body as its substantial form
while the act of thinking remains an operation of the soul per se. Does
Aquinas have a way out of the dilemma we have been struggling with?
I think we need to return to a general point of Aquinas’s
hylomorphism we mentioned earlier, namely, the priority of form over
matter. I will mention here only briefly a beautiful expression of this
priority found in Aquinas’s early account of intellect: “form gives being
to matter (forma dat esse materiae)”. 113
intellect as a cognitive power and the intellective soul as the substantial form
of human beings. Unfortunately, this subtle distinction has been ignored in
Taylor’s account mentioned in n. 57.
109
DUI, c. 4, par. 84: “intellectus formaliter ei (sc. homo singularis
intelligens) inhereat: non quidem ita quod sit forma corporis, sed quia est uirtus
anime que est forma corporis.”
110
See QDSC, a. 10: “Omne autem agens quamcumque actionem habet
formaliter in se ipso uirtutem que est talis actionis principium.”
111
See in particular n. 77.
112
See de Libera, Archéologie du sujet III, 1, 178.
113
InSent., bk. 2, d. 17, q. 2, a. 1, ad 1; see n. 68. See also De principiis
naturae, c. 1.
Some cautions should be taken into consideration before we apply

this terse expression to the special case of human being. Above all, in
this phrase, form is simply a shorthand for substantial form. Likewise,
as I have argued elsewhere, the matter in question is nothing but prime
matter in the sense of pure potentiality. 114 Aquinas maintains that it is
the form that provides or completes the being of the matter by making
115
it actual. When Aquinas insists that form gives being to matter, it
should not be understood as if there are two separate entities that exist
on their own and then one of them bestows the act of being on the other.
Before obtaining a form or the form, the matter, absolutely speaking,
does not exist. On the other hand, a material form normally cannot exist
without the matter. It follows that the hylomorphic compound, not the
material form, is the genuine possessor of the being given by the form.
In other words, the verb “to give” signifies a special sort of ontological
priority of form to matter, which does not have an existential
connotation. It does not imply that form can exist without matter and
then brings matter into being. It merely means that the form plays a
dominant role in explaining the act of being of a hylomorphic
compound.
In the case of human beings, one can easily infer that the being of
the human person exclusively originates from the intellective soul as his
substantial form. Aquinas rejects the idea that there are other
substantial forms such as corporeity, vegetative soul, animal soul, and
so on that also determine the being of a human person. The intellective
soul therefore determines the whole person’s mode of being as its sole
substantial form. 116 So when the essence of a person is concerned, we
can say that we are essentially our intellective souls.
114
For a more nuanced argument for this claim, see Wu, “The Ontological
Status of the Body.” For a different approach, see John F. Wippel, The
Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated
Being, (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2000),
312–27.
115
De principiis naturae, c. 1: “Et quia forma facit esse in actu, ideo forma
dicitur esse actus.”
116
For a superb account of Aquinas’s theory of the unity of substantial
form, see John F. Wippel, “Thomas Aquinas and the Unity of Substantial Form,”
in Philosophy and Theology in the Long Middle Ages: A Tribute to Stephen F.
Brown, 117–54.
100 TIANYUE WU
In his arguments against the Averroists, Aquinas also mentions

ancient commentator Themistius’s distinction between “I” and my
essence, which can be used to support the above startling claim. 117
According to Themistius, “I” as a thing that really exists in this material
world is composed of something in actuality and something in
potentiality. However, my essence is defined by what I actually am.
Themistius argues that my essence can come only from the soul that is
the actuality of the body, and not from the vegetative and sensitive soul,
because they are matter for the intellectual power. 118 No doubt, Aquinas
cannot accept an unqualified identity of a human person with his
intellective soul. As mentioned earlier, this is taken as a Platonic
position he openly rejects because it fails to explain how the same
human person can be the subject both of his thinking and of his
sensation. 119 However, this does not mean that Aquinas cannot accept
their identity in regard to being. For the soul gives being to the body
and therefore shares the same act of being with the human person of
whom it is the substantial form.
In regard to the ontological priority of the soul in determining the
being of a human person, we can say that there is a reduction in
Aquinas’s hylomorphic ontology that is inverse to materialism. It is not
that the soul’s being should be explained in terms of the body’s being,
but the other way around. In this light, it does not matter what the body
contributes to the act of thinking as a constituent of the human person.
For whatever it contributes, it contributes in virtue of the intellective
soul as its unique substantial form. Only when the intellective soul is
present can the matter of a human being be a body. In this sense we can
say that it is the intellective soul that is thinking, even though strictly
speaking it is not the agent of thinking. For the agent of thinking in this
world is a living person whose being originates exclusively from the
intellective soul. The fact that thinking is the intellective soul’s own
operation does not threaten the substantial unity required by Aquinas’s
117
DUI, c. 2, par. 50: “aliud utique erit ego et michi esse. Et ego quidem est
compositus intellectus ex potentia et actu, michi autem esse ex eo quod actu
est.”
118
Ibid.: “Esse igitur michi ab anima et hac non omni; non enim a sensitiua,
materia enim erat fantasie; neque rursum a fantastica, materia enim erat
potentia intellectus; neque eius qui potentia intellectus, materia enim est
factiui. A solo igitur factiuo est michi esse.”
119
See, for instance, ST I, q. 75, a. 4.
hylomorphic anthropology. This is possible because he accepts the

principle that a thing’s unity also originates from its substantial form.
For instance, in the Summa contra Gentiles Aquinas applies this
principle to argue for the unity of substantial form in the human being:
Moreover the principle of a thing’s unity is the same as that of its
being; for one is consequent upon being. Therefore, since each and
every thing has being from its form, it will also have unity from its
form. Consequently, if several souls, as so many distinct forms, are
ascribed to man, he will not be one being, but several. 120
Therefore, if the intellective soul gives being to the human person, it

also determines its substantial unity. This claim about the convertibility
of unity and being is a general one that can be applied to all hylomorphic
compounds. It follows that even material forms are prior to their matter
in determining the being and unity of the whole compound. With this
general picture of hylomorphic unity in mind, the aforementioned
ambiguous status of the intellective soul as a form of the body that is
not totally merged in the matter is no longer an ad hoc explanation as it
seemed to be prima facie. For this special status of the intellective soul
goes along with the ontological priority of form to matter. What is
changed here is the existential connotation of this priority: Now the
intellective soul can exist without the body, since Aquinas believes that
there will be a separated soul between human death and the general
resurrection. 121 Certainly, much work still needs to be done to justify the
introduction of the soul’s existential priority. Nevertheless, Aquinas’s
120
SCG, bk. 2, c. 58: “Ab eodem aliquid habet esse et unitatem: unum enim
consequitur ad ens. Cum igitur a forma unaquaeque res habeat esse, a forma
etiam habebit unitatem. Si igitur ponantur in homine plures animae sicut
diversae formae, homo non erit unum ens, sed plura.” The English translation
is Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought, 338.
121
Aquinas’s obscure conception of the separated soul is still an issue of
living debates, especially in regard to whether it is sufficient for the survival of
a human person. For a recent account of survivalism, see Eleonore Stump,
“Resurrection and the Separated Soul,” in Oxford Handbook of Aquinas, ed.
Brian Davies and Eleonore Stump (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012),
458–66. For a different corruptionist approach to the problem, see Patrick
Toner, “St. Thomas Aquinas on Death and the Separated Soul,” Pacific
Philosophical Quarterly 91, no. 4 (2010): 587–99; Turner Nevitt, “Survivalism,
Corruptionism, and Intermittent Existence in Aquinas,” History of Philosophy
Quarterly 31, no. 1 (2014): 1–19. This controversy is significant for a diachronic
account of personal identity. For our current purposes, it is sufficient to
mention that even survivalists concede that the separated soul has a mode of
existence totally different from that of a living person.
102 TIANYUE WU
commitment to the ontological priority of form as reconstructed above

at least indicates a way to explain how the substantial form of a material
compound can perform an immaterial operation.
Returning to the dilemma we have been struggling with, we are now
in a position to say that Aquinas can indeed maintain the immateriality
of thinking without destroying the natural unity of the thinking person
or abandoning his hylomorphic conception of the human person. For
the ultimate principle of thinking and the principle of unity is precisely
the same intellective soul. It is metaphysically possible for this
immaterial soul to be the form of the body simply because the
ontological priority of form allows form (in the case of the immaterial
soul) to have a mode of being that is not fully shared or consumed by
the matter. This metaphysical possibility explains why Aquinas claims
in his early works that the intellective soul is an absolute form (forma
absoluta) that has its own absolute being (esse abolutum) independent
of matter. 122 Whether this earlier notion of absolute form and his later
conception of subsistent substantial form go beyond the boundary of
Aristotelian hylomorphism turns on how we understand the ontological
privilege of form in his ontology. 123 At least one can say that some
Aristotelian scholars still think that this priority of form, especially in
the case of the human soul, is an essential characteristic of his
philosophical psychology. 124
Nevertheless, there is still a problem about the subject-agent of
thinking. If the intellective soul has thinking as its own operation, how
can we be said to be the agents of our thinking? Does the same action
of thinking have two different subject-agents at the same time?
122
See, for instance, InSent, bk. 1, d. 8, q. 5, a. 2, ad 1: “Anima est forma
absoluta, non dependens a materia, quod convenit sibi propter assimilationem
et propinquitatem ad Deum; ipsa habet esse per se, quod non habent aliae
formae corporales.” InSent, bk. 2, d. 3, q. 1, a. 6: “Anima autem rationalis habet
esse absolutum, non dependens a materia.” Both texts are cited from de Libera,
Archéologie du sujet III, 1, 405.
123
For instance, de Libera cites Bazan to argue that Aquinas’s conception
of form does not accord with a strict notion of substantial form. See
Archéologie du sujet III, 1, 405–07.
124
See, for instance, Christopher Shields, “The Priority of Soul in
Aristotle’s De Anima: Mistaking Categories?” in Body and Soul in Ancient
Philosophy, ed. Dorothea Frede and Burkhard Reis (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009),
156–68.
The last question presumes that the intellective soul should be an

independent subject-agent to have its own operation. Therefore, to
solve this problem, we need to elucidate what is required for a thing to
have an operation on its own. Aquinas claims that only a thing that
subsists on its own can have such an operation. 125 However, he
immediately makes it clear that the subsistence in question should be
understood in a weak sense. This means that a thing subsists on its own
when it is not an accident or a material form that inheres in another
thing, even if it is a part. 126 Therefore, to have an operation on its own
means simply that there is a subsistent thing that is the sole source of
its operation. It does not matter whether the thing has a complete being
like a suppositum or whether something exists as an essential part in a
suppositum. Applying this to the case of thinking, we can infer that
thinking ultimately originates from the intellective soul alone. It does
not necessarily follow that the soul should be either its immediate
principle or its agent. For the immediate principle is the intellective
power of the soul, while the agent should be a suppositum possessing a
complete being, either the composite of the soul and body in this life, or
the separate soul after death but before resurrection, or the composite
of the soul and the resurrected body after resurrection. For the soul to
have an operation as its own only requires that the soul is the sole
source of being in all cases. Certainly it will follow that the soul has
different modes of being, and how to establish the personal identity in
these modes will be a great challenge for a Christian believer in the
immortality of the soul. Here I want only to mention that in all these
occasions the synchronic individuality of the soul resides in its inherent
imparticipability, as we argued earlier. If we can accept that this
imparticipability of the soul survives death, we can find a way to
account for the sameness of individuality in the soul. Since Aquinas
believes that the human soul is directly created by God, he has good
reason to believe that this individuality directly coming from God will
not evaporate after death. We need more studies to establish this point
125
See, for instance, ST I, q. 75, a. 2: “Nihil autem potest per se operari, nisi
quod per se subsistit.”
126
ST I, q. 75, a. 2, ad 2: “Sed per se existens quandoque potest dici aliquid
si non sit inhaerens ut accidens vel ut forma materialis, etiam si sit pars.”
104 TIANYUE WU
adequately, however. 127 What is more relevant to our present purposes

is that the intellective soul can possess the same power of thinking by
giving being to different things, be it a corruptible body in this world, or
an incorruptible body in the life to come, or something else in between.
IV
Conclusion. Aquinas maintains an intimate relation between the

act of thinking and the human person as a material being, which
manifests itself in his dictum “this human being thinks.” Accordingly,
he believes that a functional conjunction of a separate intellect with a
living body cannot provide a basis for ascribing the immaterial action of
thinking to individual human beings. For Aquinas, the act of thinking
can be described as an individual action, first of all, because it requires
the mediation of the intelligible species. However, the intelligible
species has two different perspectives: it is both an intention
representing the nature of things and an accidental form that exists in
the possible intellect. In regard to its intentional being, the intelligible
species is an immaterial representation of the extramental nature in that
it has been abstracted from all the individuating conditions of that
nature. From the perspective of its existence in one’s possible intellect,
the intelligible species is individuated in accordance with the being of
the possible intellect. However, the possible intellect is merely an
incorporeal power of the intellective soul. It follows that the
individuality of the possible intellect comes from the individuality of the
intellective soul. However, the intellective soul itself is individualized
because of its inherent imparticipability, not because of its presence in
a material body. On the contrary, the soul as the substantial form
determines the being of a human person in this life. If the intellective
soul can have another sort of being without the body, its act of thinking
can still be individualized because of its immanent individuality. On the
other hand, thinking is an immaterial operation because its immediate
principle, the intellective power, is not mixed with the matter. However,
this power is an accidental form flowing from the essence of the soul.
127
For a more detailed analysis of Aquinas’s doctrine of the creation of the
soul, though with a very different evaluation of Aquinas’s accounts for the
individuality of thinking, see Bazán, “The Creation of the Soul.”
As we have argued, this implies that the intellective soul is the ultimate
source of thinking’s immateriality. The immateriality of thinking now
no longer conflicts with its individuality, because they both originate
from the intellective soul as the substantial form of human beings. We
therefore have good reason to say that the intellective soul is the
ultimate principle of thinking, whereas in this life only a human person
who receives his being from the intellective soul is the genuine subject-
agent of thinking. 128
Peking University
128
This research is a part of the program “Immateriality, Thinking and the
Self in the Philosophy of the Long Middle Ages,” funded by the British Academy
through an International Partnership and Mobility Grant. This research is also
funded by the National Social Science Foundation of China（中国国家社会科
学基金，项目编号 Project No. 11CZX042).

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AQUINAS ON THE INDIVIDUALITY OF THINKING

T HE IMMATERIALITY AND INDIVIDUALITY OF THINKING. To

Correspondence to: Department of Philosophy, Peking University, 100871

in an act of thinking only when he is conjoined with this single intellect.

which a knower obtains necessary information for knowledge. It covers both

needs to account for the difficulties in attributing an immaterial act to a

that it is he himself who is thinking. 6 However, as his contemporary

Aquinas’s position, in particular his conception of the human intellect

suppositorum’,” in Compléments de substance: Études sur les propriétés

Aquinas’s Critique of the Averroists. Aquinas’s critique of

The Mechanisms of Thinking. Before entering into Aquinas’s

(species sensibilis), which somehow represents the sensible object.

will finally bring us to knowledge that is immaterial, universal, and

forming a definition of the nature of an extramental object, which brings

human beings to thinking, agree that “this human being thinks” is a

The Doctrine of Two Subjects. Aquinas presents two attempts of

propose. 44 Then Aquinas appeals to an analogy. He argues that the

The Mover–Moved Model. In addition to advocating for the two-

whole in question is a genuine unity such as a primary substance. For

Before moving to Aquinas’s own account of the individuality of

Aquinas’s Positive Account for the Individuation of Thinking. In

Three Objections to Aquinas’s Claim that “This Human Being

This result is contrary to the nature of the possible intellect. The

Aquinas on the Ontological Status of the Intellect. In Aquinas’s

It seems that the young Aquinas adopts a materialist view of the

qualifications he makes in these two claims. In the earlier text, he

noteworthy that here Aquinas no longer refers to the intellect or the

Moreover, individuality is different from unity as well. For unity is

immaterial act of thinking, while personal identity is more concerned

Platonic ideas are individuals in this sense and therefore cannot be

It is clear now that a thing is called individual because it cannot be

Averroists’ doctrine of two subjects already indicates that, for Aquinas,

Aquinas on Intelligible Species. Aquinas’s response to the second

of its recipient, the intelligible species is an accidental form received in

My thinking is distinct from yours because it is essentially rooted in my

object of intellectual thinking. 98 Since the intelligible species in the

intelligible species, what we have achieved is merely to ascribe the act

Aquinas on the Intellect and the Body. Aquinas’s response to the

treatise against the Averroists, Aquinas cautiously elucidates that the

Some cautions should be taken into consideration before we apply

In his arguments against the Averroists, Aquinas also mentions

hylomorphic anthropology. This is possible because he accepts the

Therefore, if the intellective soul gives being to the human person, it

commitment to the ontological priority of form as reconstructed above

The last question presumes that the intellective soul should be an

adequately, however. 127 What is more relevant to our present purposes

Conclusion. Aquinas maintains an intimate relation between the

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