Self-Knowledge in Petrus Hispanus ’ Commentary on the De anima "

In the Sententia cum questionibus in libros De anima I-II Aristotelis (c. 1240), attributed to Petrus Hispanus, the recovered Aristotelian understanding of the soul does not completely replace the old Neoplatonic frame. Indeed, the commentary holds the existence of self-knowledge from the very beginning of the existence of the soul, before the acquisition of species. The aim of this paper is to describe Sententia’s view on self-knowledge analysing it in the context of its eclectic psychology and epistemology. I will attempt to demonstrate that, although the commentary is set in an explicit Neoplatonic framework, Petrus Hispanus seems to be quite uncomfortable within this framework and becomes increasingly committed to the Aristotelian doctrine and its vision of science.

The soul has a double sight: one to its creator, from whom it exits to the being, to whom knows because he is its cause. Additionally, the soul has a sight to the superior substances similar to itself, separated from the matter, and to the body it governs and to those things that are disposed for the body, which is below the soul. And as this double sight, the soul has a double potency: one by which it is compared to the superior things and by which is naturally separated, and this is the light of the illuminated soul itself, and this potency is the agent intellect, and this is proper. In this way, the soul does not need the body at all. The other potency is the possible intellect by which it knows the body and inferior things and governs the body (Sententia I, lect. 6, q. 1). 5 The starting point of this third position is the theory of the double face of the soul, which, having a Platonic origin, was assumed later by Neoplatonism and reached the Latin and the Arabic traditions; as Rohmer stated, "sans doute les deux doctrines [arabe et latine] ne sont-elles que les deux filiations d'une même source néoplatonicienne, deux enfants d'un même père qui, après avoir traversé les siècles, se sont retrouvés au haut moyen âge" (1927: 77). According to this perspective, the soul is intrinsically related to two realities, one superior and other inferior, and this fact determinates soul's ontology and its possibilities of knowledge. 6 As Bazán notes, Petrus Hispanus connects this doctrine of the double face of the soul to the Aristotelian duality of the agent and possible intellects (2002: 131). Accordingly, the knowledge that comes from a natural and superior illumination is related only and exclusively to the agent intellect. The other, on the contrary, involves agent but also possible intellect; this is the knowledge of mundane things, which is closely related to the data coming from the senses. This latter is obtained by the cognitive process  known as "abstraction", which lets the soul know the world. 7 Abstraere is, in this sense, a human mechanism of knowledge carried out by the set of cognitive faculties of the soul. Accordingly, there are successive receptions of the form that converge in abstraction: the senses abstract the sensible species from the things and afterwards the imagination receives these species from the senses; finally, the intellect receives the species from the imagination. The abstraction is, thus, a natural process that moves from smaller to larger spiritualization due to external and internal senses, and the intellectual faculty as is in Aristotle. 8 At the last stage, this abstractive process is completed by the action of imagination and human intellect, which, in turn, is divided into two, agent intellect and possible intellect. At this level, the phantasms are illuminated in the possible intellect by the agent intellect, which performs as light, producing clarity, understanding. This agent intellect performs acts of two different natures: a) it illuminates the possible intellect, making it actual -this act of the intellect could be considered communis, because in a way (quodam modo) it depends on the body because it depends on imagination-; b) it considers things completely abstracted from matter -by this action, intellect performs its activity with complete independence from the body, developing its proper activity-. Thus, with no help other than its own light, it turns itself over the received species and judges them. To clarify this double aspect of the intellect, Petrus makes use of two verbs which express the actions of light: "to illuminate" (illuminare), which needs an object to exist, and "to shine" (lucere), which expresses intransitivity and its character of pure action, in contrast to other activities stimulated by and destinated to external objects. 9 The knowledge of physical things in the world depends on sensory data, whereas intellectual thought depends on true and spiritual principles. 10 Because of that, the intellect is responsible for universal knowledge of extramental things, and this intellect, integrated both by the agent and the possible, is human, belongs to the human soul. Such consideration of the intellect pertaining to the soul is a deviation from Avicenna's view, which claims that the agent intellect is outside the human soul; the disagreement is not a novelty introduced by Petrus Hispanus, rather was a commonplace in the Latin commentaries during these decades, which wanted to dissociate themselves from Neoplatonic views which defended knowledge by emanation. As Bazán notes, "the doctrine of the agent intellect as Human knowledge, in contrast with divine or angelical knowledge, is the outcome of the combination of a priori faculties, which provide the innate possibility of conformity to things, and the sense data acquired a posteriori. 12 Both elements, only when are together, provide the acquired and, at the same time, appropriate representation of things, because the ontological principles of things are also principles of knowledge. As there is a correspondence between intelligibles, true knowledge of the things of the world can occur. 13 But, despite its key role in human cognition, abstraction is not the only way of knowing. The assumption of the theory of the double face indicates another source of knowledge. Indeed, Petrus Hispanus defends another type of knowledge, the one by illumination. This category includes the soul's self-knowledge, on which we will focus from this point on.

Self-Knowledge
The reference to soul's self-knowledge is provided at the very beginning of the Sententia, in the first question of the introductory section, devoted to elucidate the epistemic grounds that legitimate the science of the soul. 14 This early apparition in the discussion is not by accident; the inquiry on a possible innate self-knowledge is intimately related to the legitimation of the science of the soul as Aristotle proposed in his De anima, which can be completely superfluous if there exists a natural and innate self-knowledge, that is, if we have a direct and complete knowledge of our soul and its operations since ever. Nevertheless, Petrus Hispanus, far from seeing in it a contradiction, is going to defend both the existence of self-knowledge and the necessity of a psychological science.
Self-knowledge (cognitio sui) first mention takes place when Petrus Hispanus exposes seven ways of the intellect to gain accurate knowledge. According to this inventory, 13 Sententia I, lect. 11, q. 6 (ed. Alonso: 404-405): "Anima habet conformitatem cum rebus sibi innatam, non tamen completam nisi per representationem specierum que non est sibi innata. Habet enim anima potentias in se per quas nata est omnia investigare et quas per conformitatem quam habet cum rebus ducit in effectum. Habet enim potentiam qua est omnia facere et habet potentiam qua est omnia fieri et ita per suas potentias sibi innatas habet conformitatem cum omnibus sibi innatam. Completio autem illius conformitatis est per representationem specierum ipsi anime que representatio est adquisita. Dicitur autem conformitas innata […]. Completio autem illius est acquisita, scilicet, per representationem"; Sententia, Qpream. 3, q. 3 (ed. Alonso: 117): "Non solum abstractio est secundum exigentiam anime set secundum proportionem et exigentiam ipsarum rerum secundum quam proportionantur anime per suam similitudinem ut ab ipsa cognoscantur". Cf. as well in Sententia I, lect. 11, q. 6 (ed. Alonso: 451). the first way is through sensitive knowledge, which is particular, and comes directly from the sensual species. By the other ways, nevertheless, the intellect not only can abstract intelligible species from the sensual species but can also know more: by means of other species (2 nd mode); reaching the cause of the sensible effect (3 rd mode); by presence (4 th mode); conceiving spiritual things by the privation of physical realities (5 th mode); understanding by analogical thinking from a physical to a non-physical model (6 th mode); thinking the universal through the similarities from the particulars (7 th mode). By all of these last six ways, says Petrus, the intellect can obtain an essential knowledge of the soul. 15 With them the intellect does not have any direct relation with the corporeal reality; rather, it deals only with the intellectual and spiritual reality to perform its own activity, which is free from the corporeal element.
Among them, the 4 th mode is, in turn, different from all others, because it does not come, originally, from the abstracted data, but is per presentiam sui; here Petrus, in order to clarify what that knowledge consists of, refers to al-Ghazali: Quarto modo per sui presentiam et sic anima illuminata non obumbrata mole carnis se per se cognoscit, quia apparet sibi nuda et presens. Deus enim se ipsum cognoscit, quia est sibi presens, quia inter ipsum et ipsum non cadit medium, sicut uult Algazel, et similiter est de anima (Sententia, Qpream. 1, q. 1 [ed. Alonso: 62-63]).
The fourth way is by its presence and thus the illuminated soul, not being shaded by the flesh, knows itself through itself because it appears to itself naked and present. Indeed, as Algazel says, God knows Himself because He is present to Himself and because between He and Himself there is not a medium, and something like this happens to the soul. So, in a similar way, the soul can know itself (Sententia, Qpream. 1, q. 1). 16 As it is presented, this self-knowledge does not seem to correspond to that conceived by Aristotle in the brief lines devoted to self-knowledge, in the De anima, according to which the soul's self-knowledge would come together with the knowledge of the things: Once the mind has become each set of its possible objects, as a man of science has, when this phrase is used of one who is actually a man of science (this happens when he is able to excercise the power on his own iniciative), its condition is still one of potentiality, but in a different sense from the potenciality which preceded the acquisition of knowledge by learning or discovery; the mind too is then able to think itself". condition is still one of potentiality, but in a different sense from the potenciality which preceded the acquisition of knowledge by learning or discovery; the mind too is then able to think itself (Aristotle. The adherence to a non-Aristotelian view of self-knowledge is confirmed below, when assuming the theory of the double knowledge of the soul, mentioned before. Next, Petrus Hispanus explains more about the character of this special knowledge, produced by illumination: Anima enim illuminata est a primo et data est ei uirtus a principio ut cognoscat se ipsam et diuinum bonum, et de hac cognitione uerum est quod est ei innata; et hec non est cognitio sciencifica ipsius animae, set est cognitio sui. De cognitione autem sciencifica dicendum est quod non est nobis innata set potius acquisita (Sententia, Qpream. 1, q. 2 [ed. Alonso: 66, repeated in 167]).
The soul is illuminated by the first, and the soul has the power of knowing itself and the divine good from its beginning, and with regards to this knowledge, it is true that it is innate. And this is not scientific knowledge of the soul but it is self-knowledge. However, with regard to scientific knowledge, it is true that it is not an innate knowledge, but it is acquired (Sententia, Qpream. 1, q. 2).
This illumination provides to the soul an innate self-knowledge which is not a scientific knowledge from the senses but another kind of true knowledge, from the beginning of the soul's existence. This means that self-knowledge is not via the acquisition of species, but, if any sort of innate self-knowledge exists, it is of a different kind, similar to God's self-knowledge, per presentiam. For supporting this view, Petrus Hispanus invokes the authority of no others than Boethius and Augustine of Hippo: The soul knows itself by itself. As Boethius said in the De consolatione, the soul cannot ignore two things, namely, the truth and itself.
[…] The soul cannot ignore itself because it is always present to itself. Also, Augustine says that as the soul knows everything, it is impossible that it does not know itself; so, it is clear that soul knows itself, as it was shown by Boethius and Augustine. On the contrary, it should be said that the knowledge of the soul is double: one originates in the sense and starts in the objects and ends in the potencies and from the potencies goes to the substances. This is not the soul's selfknowledge. There is other knowledge of the soul by means of a reflection of itself, and the soul has this knowledge about itself; and about this one, the objection is not pertinent (Sententia, Qpream. 1, q. 2). 18 True self-knowledge is produced from the beginning because the soul is always present to itself and cannot ignore itself, and this innate knowledge is per reflectionem sui supra se.
The distinction between the two kinds of self-knowledge in the soul -one because of the species, and the other by presence, a priori-is again provided below in the text, The soul's self-knowledge is double: one is by its reflection over itself, and this falls over itself first and it is innate, and this is not given to all the souls but only to the soul that is more abstracted from sensual things. I do not say separated but abstracted, as that one is always present, and when it is more abstracted, it is more present to itself. There is another soul's cognition by means of the information by the acquired science, and this starts from the exterior things and finishes in the soul and about that Aristotle speaks. And this later falls over the thing first and through the thing over the soul. Nonetheless, the former cognition falls over the soul first (Sententia, Qpream. 1, q. 5).
As it is described, this is a different kind of knowledge from that proposed by Aristotle in the third book of the De anima, which, according to the author of this commentary, is this one produced when the agent intellect illuminates the possible agent. Because of that difference, to Petrus, like to Avicenna, as Sebti notes (2000: 107), Aristotle's understanding of self-knowledge, as it is usually conceived, is not true selfknowledge. 19 True self-knowledge, both innate and by presence, is by the reflection of the agent intellect on itself: "dicendum est quod uirtuti anime agenti intellectiue debetur hoc, scilicet cognoscere se ipsam" ["It must be said that it is due to the agent power of the intellectual soul that it knows itself"] (Sententia, Qpream. 1, q. 8 [ed. Alonso: 71]). This natural self-knowledge (cognitio sui) does not have any relation to the acquisition of the species. 20 What Petrus Hispanus does mean by cognitio, when referring to self-knowledge, clearly differs from that provided through abstraction. Nonetheless, despite these statements, the content and idiosyncrasy of self-knowledge are questions that still remain obscure to the reader of the commentary.
The key to answer these questions may be found in the description of the soul's ontology provided by the commentary. This description departs from what has been called "the doctrine of the plurality of substantial forms", which was assumed by many Latin authors. 21 Accordingly, Petrus presumes the existence of three different substances in the human soul, namely the vegetative, the sensible and the intellective substance. 22 Regarding self-knowledge, only the superior one, the intellective subs-ARTÍCULOS Self-Knowledge in Petrus Hispanus' Commentary on... tance, can know itself because it is the only one present to itself by virtue of its pure immateriality, not shaded by the flesh. Whereas the other substantial forms are not transparent to themselves, the intellective is able to apprehend itself: Sensus enim obfuscatus est organo, et propter hoc suam operationem non cognoscit set alia uirtus interior abstractior est et potencior, scilicet, sensus communis, qui est superior ad sensus particulares. Sic autem non est de anima intellectiua, quia sic non est obumbrata, et propter hoc ipsa se et suum actum potest apprehendere (Sententia, Qpream. 1, q. 7 [ed. Alonso 71]).
Indeed, the sense is obfuscated by the organ, and this is the reason why it does not know its operation, but this is known by other inner faculty, more abstract and potent, namely, the common sense, which is superior to the particular senses. That does not happen to the intellective soul, as it is not shaded in this way. Because of this, the intellective soul knows itself, and is able to apprehend its own action (Sententia, Qpream. 1, q. 7).
In contrast to what happens with the senses, the intellect can apprehend its own activity, an apprehension that only the superior faculties are able to perform. This can only mean that the intellect, by its own active presence, knows itself as a pure knower, as intellect. It is a kind of cognition per actus, and, at the same time, it is a direct cognition through presence, without intermediaries. Thus, only in the scope of the intellective soul, and, namely, in the activity of the agent intellect, the soul can have self-knowledge by its own act. In consequence, the soul and, by extension, the human being do not acquire, in this knowledge, a complete understanding of their whole reality, unlike God or the other intelligences have.
This lack of adequacy between intellective self-knowledge and the soul's self-knowledge in Petrus Hispanus' view can be properly understood from the distinction between the substance and potency of the soul, which he adopts, and which overlaps the doctrine of the plurality of forms in the soul (see López Alcalde, 2018: 376-381). Petrus Hispanus, in contrast to Augustine and other contemporary authors, assumes a fundamental distinction regarding the soul, differentiating the soul as actus primus and actus secundus. As first act, the soul is beyond its potency, it is more than its potency. 23 Consequently, the soul's own and entire substance is far from being directly apprehended by any human faculty. Self-knowledge, properly speaking, is related only to the potency of the soul. This knowledge, therefore, cannot be considered a real quidditative knowledge of the soul as a substantial reality, but only a knowledge of a direct "experience" of the exercise of its potency. At the back there is the old distinction between the soul's substance and potency, according to which "intellect" is only a nomen officii. Therefore, concepts as "intellect" or "intellective soul", do not allude to the entire substance of the soul. 24 Self-knowledge is not a direct knowledge of the essence of its substance, which would consist of the apprehension of its reality as a spiritual reality. Actually, the knowledge of the soul as substance, Hispanus notes, is not easily given. 25 This distinction between the soul and one of its faculties is also adequate to explain the way Petrus Hispanus addresses the Avicennian "flying man argument". 26 According to Bazán (1997: 103) or Toivanen (2015: 64), more recently, by the argument, Avicenna aimed to demonstrate the existence of the soul as an immaterial, autonomous and sufficient substance. In turn, Petrus Hispanus uses it here to demonstrate the existence of the intellective soul in the body: Alia est ratio Auicenne per quam possumus animam intellectiuam ymaginari esse in nobis. Intelligamus quod aliquis sit subito creatus et perfectus ultima perfecctione habens in se animam intellectiuam et habeat omnia exteriora uelata et uisum exteriorem uelatum. Item non tangat ipsum spissitudo aeris ut moueat membra eius, nec aliquod extrinsecum moueat membra eius ut ipsum excitet ad operationem nec etiam sentiat aliquod membrum moueri, nec unum alterum moueat ut non concurrant membra ad inuicem nec se tangant nec faciant motum, tum ille in tali statu affirmabit se esse, unde si sic interrogatur, interrogatione spirituali utrum sit respondebit responsione spirituali intrinseca quod est. Si autem queratur utrum ipse sit sua manus aut pes respondebit quod non et quod ignorat omnia illa esse partes suas cum illas non sentiat nec se credat eas habere, similiter si interrogatur utrum sit totum corpus quo uelatur respondebit quod non, quia non sentit corpus nec scit ipsum esse partem sui. Ergo aliquid aliud preter corpus et partes corporis est in ipso quod affirmat se esse. Hoc autem non est nisi substantia cognoscitiua que est anima intellectiua que est in corpore que confirmat se ipsam et que non eget corpore ad hoc ut affirmet se et sic necesse est eam ponere et ymaginari esse in corpore humano (Sententia II,lect. 4,q. 10 [ed. Alonso: 622]).
Another argument is that of Avicenna by which we can imagine that the intellective soul exists in us. Let us think that one man is created and completed suddenly having in himself the intellective soul as the ultimate perfection and having all external things and outer vision blindfolded. Additionally, let him not touch any air density while moving his limbs. And [assume] that nothing outside moves his limbs nor excites each to action, nor feels any limb to be moved, nor one to move the other, nor members to act among themselves, nor to touch nor to make a movement, yet in such a state, he will affirm that he exists. If he is questioned by a spiritual questioning if he exists, he will respond by a spiritual answer that he exists. If he were also asked whether this is his hand or foot, he will answer that he is not and that he does not know that any of them are his parts because he does not feel them or believe that he possesses them. Likewise, if he is questioned whether it is his whole body with which is veiled, he will answer that not because he does not feel the body nor does he know that it is a part of himself. Therefore, there is some other thing distinct from the body and its parts in himself that affirms that exists. This is but a cognitive substance, which is the intellective soul that is in the body, which confirms itself and which does not need the body to assert itself, and thus it is necessary to affirm it and to imagine it existing in the human body (Sententia II, lect. 4, q. 10). 27 The flying man argument, adopted here to demonstrate the existence of the soul in the body, seems also to confirm the irrefutable reality of the act of knowing, but not much more. Although it is quidditative knowledge -knowledge on the nature of the intellective soul-, it is an incomplete soul's self-knowledge. Again self-knowledge appears to be limited to the knowledge of the soul just as an intellectual potency, which 25 Sententia I, lect. 2, q. 7 (ed. Alonso: 230): "Cognitio anime et diffinitionis eius est difficilis". 26 In the Liber de anima I. 1: 36.49-37; V.7: 162.52-167.13. 27 This Avicennian argument appears again later, in the discussion on different substances of the soul. Cf. Sententia II, lect. 6, q. 1 (ed. Alonso: 650-659).
is the agent of knowledge. And because in the intellect the terms of the cognition are the same (the subject and the object) the relation between them is without no intermediaries, so there is a transparency between the agent of knowledge and its object.
As we have seen, at the very beginning of the Sententia Petrus states the existence of an essential soul's self-knowledge by means of a direct contact with its substance; nevertheless, following the progress of the commentary, and thanks to a more global comprehension of Petrus Hispanus' psychology, we can say that the object of this knowledge is reduced to a direct comprehension of its intellective nature. Indeed, there is clarity in the knowledge of the potency. But, to Petrus, the complete substance in its spirituality is still far from our regular cognitions. Beyond the soul's active reality as an intellective form, its substance remains unknown and inaccessible to man, except for what is known by this internal and privileged experience of the act of knowing. The essence of the human soul is its own perfection, and the intellect appears to be naturally blind to it, 28 because the soul is a spiritual substance united to a body, and, in consequence, the human soul's ways of cognition need, indeed, the operation of these two realities, the soul and the body. The intellective soul knows itself as a separated substance only when is abstracted, and this is the reason why we do not have knowledge of the separated substances or of our soul as a separated substance.
In conclusion, self-knowledge, as Petrus Hispanus conceives, because of it concerns only the intellect, does not let man know the nature of its soul.
Nonetheless, such limitation does not make of this self-knowledge a useless knowledge, for it can be a first step for the constitution of a scientific knowledge of the soul, if considered as a specific kind of perception of the soul, as inner perception. The resultant scheme comes very close to that initiated by means of the external operations of the soul. In this case, it is by means of a perception of pure inner activity. The posterior stage for building knowledge from this cognitio sui would be a secondary act of the intellect or consideration -from the effects to causes, by comparison, etc. […] A parte autem sue substantie habet anima rationem diffinitionis. Set illa oculta nobis ratione sue simplicitatis. Per relationem autem ad alias creaturas diffinitur per priuationem earum, sicut quodlibet principium et quodlibet simplex hoc modo diffinitur (Sententia I,lect. 2,).
It should be said that it is natural to the soul to be defined, and we speak first about the intellective soul, in which there is more manifestation and reason to define. Indeed, it [the soul] looks to the creator from whom it receives influence, being and conservation. It looks to the body with whom it is united, which is perfected by the soul and maintained and to whom it addresses the operation. And it looks to its essence. And it has a comparison to 28 Sententia I,lect. 2,q. 7.2 (ed. Alonso: 230): "Ad rationes in contrarium dicendum est quod uia in cognitionem anime est duplex: quedam procedit per obiecta et operationes et hec est manifesta. Alia est que procedit ad substantiam anime et hec est occulta, quia substantia anime maxime est remota a sensu. Secundum primam procedit ratio, quia hec scientia est nobilior et certior in modo demonstrationis quia procedit per obiecta et operationes anime. Hoc autem modo procedendo facilis est anime cognitio. Ad secundam rationem dicendum est quod diffinitio quidditatis anime non competit operationibus anime nec obiectis, set competit substantie eius que nobis est occulta et inmanifesta, et ideo cognoscere quidditatem anime est difficile". different things from itself, being defined by privation. And in these four ways, that is, by looking to the creator, by comparison to that by which it is influenced, by its essence, and by privation of others things, every spiritual substance knows.
[…] With regard to the substance, the soul has a reason for being defined. However, it is occult to us because of its simplicity. However, by comparison to other creatures, it is defined by privation, as every principle and every simple thing is defined this way (Sententia I, lect. 2, q. 7).
The science of the soul -as Aristotle conceived of it-is therefore necessary to understand the reality of the soul in its relation with a body, as the form of the body and its perfection. In another level, Metaphysics, as a prior scientia, is the science which aims to know the soul in its pure spiritual dimension: Dicendum quod dupliciter est loqui de anima intellectiua: uno modo a parte sue substantie et uite separate, et sic est de consideratione metaphysice. Alio modo contingit loqui de anima a parte unionis eius cum corpore et existentie eius in corpore secundum quod mouet corpus et habet operationes communes cum corpore, et sic spectat ad naturalem scienciam, quia naturalis sciencia considerat passiones et operationes in materia; et ita hec sciencia de anima, que est presentis speculationis, naturalis est, quia est de anima unita corpori (Sententia, Qpream. 1, q. 12 [ed. Alonso: 78]).
There are two ways of speaking about the intellective soul: one is related to its substance and separated life, and in this sense, it pertains to metaphysical discourse. The other is speaking about the soul related to its union with the body and its existence in the body, and in this sense, it looks to natural science because natural science considers passions and operations in matter. Thus, this science of the soul, which is this speculation, is natural because it is about the soul united to the body (Sententia, Qpream. 1, q. 12).
In sum, self-knowledge should be considered an insufficient way of having cognition about the soul, providing little information about its functional, spiritual and divine nature, or about how our actions should be from a moral perspective. For these reasons, the dedication to human sciences such as metaphysics or ethics is pertinent and convenient. Before them all, however, the (Aristotelian) science of the soul is necessary for explaining not only the soul's intellectual operations but also for highlighting the role of the body in human knowing and acting. 29

Concluding Remarks
At the beginning of the commentary, Petrus Hispanus seems to reject the Aristotelian view of self-knowledge in favour of some kind of illuminist view in which real selfknowledge is, from birth, inside the soul. Nevertheless -as this paper aimed to point out-Petrus Hispanus' conception of the soul's self-knowledge, understood rather as "self-awareness," is in fact restricted to the innate intellective disposition and action, being more intellectual self-perception than self-knowledge in a complete sense. The actual fulfilment of this intellectual self-knowledge seems to exist only when the soul acts the intellective operation, which is performed also by the possible intellect and, in the last stage, done with the help of the sensible species; in other words, 29 Sententia I, lect. 1, q. 4 (Alonso: 202-203): "Ad hoc dicendum est quod, sicut dicit commentator, scientia de anima affert maximum iuuamentum ad omnes et primo ad naturales. Est enim pars nobilissima scientie naturalis. Nobilissima enim pars scientie naturalis est de corporibus animatis et propter hoc affert iuuamentum naturali. Secunda causa est quia est principium omnium rerum animatarum et secundum exigentiam anime sunt partes et principia in omnibus rebus animatis. Affert similiter iuuamentum morali, quia ei affert multa principia per que regulantur ciuitates et diuicie, quia ei affert cognitionem tam sensitiuam quam intellectiuam. Iterum affert iuuamentum scientie demonstratiue et metaphysice et mathematique, quia eis affert modum abstractionis et separationis que ab anima est. Tertium iuuamentum commune quod affert est quia ista scientia talis est quod per ipsam acquiritur cognitio priorum principiorum et cause cognitionis et firme certitudinis in omni scientia et propter hoc ista scientia influit supra omnes alias". Self-Knowledge in Petrus Hispanus' Commentary on... with the content of the data coming from the senses. Because of that, also regarding self-knowledge, the often-quoted Mediaeval aphorism attributed to Aristotle, "sicut habetur in tercio De anima nihil est in intellectu nisi prius fuerit in sensu" ["as it is in the third book of the De anima, there is nothing in the intellect that has not been before in the sense"], would remain preserved. 30 This means that, previous to its contact with sensible things, the soul is like a tabula rasa without anything of the world written in it, without content at all. 31 With the background of the theory of the illumination and avoiding the complete rejection of soul's self-knowledge, by reducing it, actually, to one of its potencies, Petrus Hispanus, the author of the Sententia, intends to conciliate the Augustinian view on self-knowledge with Aristotelianism, by means of the distinction between the soul's officium and its substance, or the soul as form and hoc aliquid.

ARTÍCULOS
Because of the inaccessibility to the substance by this self-knowledge, our master after all justifies the sciences as were conceived by Aristotle, which exist to understand the world and other non-corporeal realities, such as the human soul or God, whose essences are far from being known and understood by the limited human intellect. 30 In the Sententia, in Qpream. 1, q. 1 (ed. Alonso: 61) or in L. I, lect. 6, q. 3 (ed. Alonso: 301, 303). Attributed to Aristotle by most of the Latin authors, actually this sentence do not appear in a litteral way in the translatio vetus of the De anima (about this, see Cranefield, 1970:77-80).