Abstract

In 1270, while occupying one of the Dominican Chairs of Theology at Paris Thomas Aquinas became embroiled in a dispute with, among others, Siger of Brabant. Out of this dispute came his brief polemical work De unitate intellectus contra averroistas along with the De anima intellectiva of Siger and many other works by various commentators. ;This dispute took its origin from various readings of Aristotle's recently acquired work De anima. The central point at issue was whether Aristotle had taught that the human intellect is that faculty of the human soul by which it knows or rather whether it is a substance which exists apart from the soul and operates upon it in knowing. At stake is the literal truth of such statements as "This man knows." As a further consequence comes the question of whether the soul can be known to be immortal. ;It has been my task in this dissertation to examine the first art of the first part of this question--whether Aristotle did indeed hold in the De anima as Thomas and Siger knew it, and as Thomas maintains that he did, that the human intellect is that part of the human soul by which it knows and thinks. ;The dissertation proceeds by first examining all the texts of Aristotle's De anima which Thomas and Siger cite in defense of their positions in the three major translations available at Paris at the time of this controversy and then examining what Thomas and Siger in turn have to say about them. Finally, it concludes that while Siger's account draws its strength primarily from his reading of one controverted text Thomas explains the same text in a different way which is at least equally valid. Further, Thomas' account is the only one which explains the order of the De anima as a whole, both in itself and within the whole of the Aristotelian corpus. As such then we must take his as the better reading of Aristotle's text