How to Make Things with Ideas. The Active Character of Knowledge in the Noetics of Avicenna and Thomas Aquinas
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to examine a fairly common assumption: the arrival of a Creator God in the intellectual horizon of the Middle Ages would have promoted a rather passive image of both knowledge and the knower, and it would have produced an ontological consolidation of res sensibilis. To achieve this purpose we will analyse some significant issues of Avicenna’s and Aquina’s noetics. We will try to test the following hypothesis: it’s plausible that the Creator God –as the Divine Intellect– has offered to medieval noetic a model for the human intellect, which would have led to a more active view on this latter intellect.Downloads
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