There have been philosophers who sought to preserve and ratify the dictates’ common sense, and there have been philosophers who were willing to overturn and correct those dictates. And then there was Averroes. His most notorious doctrine is not just counterintuitive. It commits him to something that seems self-evidently false, namely that there is only a single mind to which all human thought is related. As his most famous critic, Thomas Aquinas, pointed out, it seems simply obvious that we each have a mind of our own, and that we can each think as individuals. Averroes—to use the Latinized version of his name, Ibn Rushd—seemed to deny this in his Long Commentary on Aristotle’s On the Soul, triggering a protracted debate in Latin medieval and Renaissance philosophy.1 Why spill so much ink over such an implausible theory? Part of the reason was surely Averroes’s stature as the most authoritative commentator on Aristotle. When Aquinas devoted a treatise specifically to the issue, he met Averroes on his own ground by disputing the unity theory as an interpretation of On the Soul. His concern was not mainly to refute a false philosophical view, but to rescue Aristotle from being associated with that view.And there was another reason the topic attracted so much attention: Averroes’s arguments for the unity of intellect were surprisingly powerful. Just how powerful is shown in a superb new book by Stephen Ogden. Applying the sort of sympathetic approach and analytic acuity now standardly brought to the works of Aristotle himself, Ogden explains that Averroes had strong philosophical and exegetical reasons for endorsing the unity of the intellect. With regular reference to Aquinas as a foil, Ogden makes a convincing case that Averroes’s apparently unbelievable view in fact made a great deal of sense within an Aristotelian framework. Indeed, within that framework it often seems to be at an advantage against the apparently far more plausible view of Aquinas, for whom intellect is immaterial but individual: one mind per human, not one mind for the whole human race.Averroes’ position was, as he noted himself, unique within the complex history of interpretations of Aristotle’s On the Soul chapters 3.4–5, the chapters that deal most centrally with intellect. Ogden indeed says that the Averroist view “boasts novelty galore” (92). But it was actually not new to posit a single mind standing over all human individuals. The Aristotelian God was such a mind, as was the nous postulated by Plotinus. Closer to Averroes in time, culture, and intention was Avicenna (again, this name is a Latinization, in this case of Ibn Sīnā). He held that the so called “active intellect” (AI) described by Aristotle in the brief and inscrutable chapter 3.5 of On the Soul is a single transcendent principle that somehow allows individual humans to think. (Exactly how it does so is a matter of extensive dispute among Avicenna scholars.) By contrast, the potential or material intellect (MPI), which is responsible for receiving intelligibles, is for Avicenna unique to each human intellect.Averroes and Aquinas, as Ogden nicely observes, are in agreement that this mismatch between the AI and the MPI is unsustainable. Either both should be individual, or both should be one. Aquinas of course adopted the former view, Averroes the latter. Why? Before reading Ogden’s book, I thought that a chief reason for Averroes’s stance was that matter is the principle of individuation. For instance, two sunflowers share in the species of sunflower, but their forms are individuated by being received in two parcels of spatiotemporally distinct matter. But Aristotle argued explicitly that intellect is an immaterial power. So there is nothing that could distinguish many individual intellects. Ogden, though, makes a convincing case that this is not the argument underlying the Averroist theory (98–100). After all, the intellects associated with the celestial spheres are likewise immaterial, yet they manage to be distinct from one another. Possibly they differ in some way that would be impossible for individual human intellects, but that would need further argument. Thus, when Averroes argues that the MPI is a determinate, immaterial substance, this in itself leaves open whether there is one such intellect or many (105–8). Indeed, Avicenna used an argument much like Averroes’s to prove the immateriality of the MPI, while holding that each individual human has an MPI of their own.2So, while he allows that concerns about individuation may help to suggest a unity theory and would certainly pose problems for a view like Aquinas’s (see 220), Ogden thinks the Averroist theory is best proven in a different way. This is by means of what he calls the “Unity Argument,” which states that “the best way to explain how we can all think the same thing is that there is only one and the same thing that is thought—in one intellect” (109). As Ogden allows, it looks as if the arch-Aristotelian Averroes is here indulging a Platonist intuition (113). When you and I both understand the form of sunflower, we should both be grasping one and the same object of thought. But Averroes assumes that an intelligible object must always reside in a mind, not subsist independently like a Platonic form. It follows that the intelligibles are all received in a single mind. The only alternative would be to say that you are getting one idea of sunflower, while I am getting another. But then we would not in fact be thinking about the same thing or, as we might put it, “having the same thought.”This leaves Averroes with the problem of how to explain why it seems that we are thinking as individuals. Actually, that is not the only problem. Ogden makes another nice point here, namely that the difficulty is not only phenomenological, but also ontological (166). The individual human should be the agent of thinking, and the fact that we feel as though this is the case is simply evidence for that ontological claim. When Aquinas pressed this objection in his treatise against Averroes on the unity of the intellect, repeatedly challenging the Averroist to explain the fact that “this human thinks (hic homo intelligit)” (McInerny 1993), the objection functions at both levels. Modern-day interpreters have sought to answer on Averroes’s behalf. Typically, they want to show that each human is in some sense a subject of intellective thought for Averroes, for example, through some sort unification with the single intellect, or because our lower cognitive activity is supplying the necessary basis for that intellect. Thus when my remembered images of sunflowers are used by the single intellect to think about the intelligible form of sunflower, it will seem to me that I am the one engaging in intellection. Ogden allows that this might explain the phenomenological appearance that I am the one thinking. But when it comes to the ontological version of the objection, he thinks that Averroes would just bite the bullet. He would admit that strictly speaking, no human individual is the one understanding or thinking the universal intelligible object. Only the single intellect is doing that. The intellect lies outside individual human cognition, which is why it can only be called “soul” in an equivocal way (51–2, 184).Thus Ogden ascribes to Averroes an “error theory” (174), according to which we mistakenly take ourselves to be engaging in true intellection when in fact we are not. The most that embodied humans can do is operate with abstract or “vague” individual images that approximate universal intelligibility without quite achieving it (199). So it turns out that you and I really do have our own ideas of sunflower, gleaned from our different experiences of particular sunflowers. There is a single thought of sunflower only at the level of the single intellect. Ogden courteously but firmly critiques other scholars’ attempts to escape this conclusion, for instance by saying that there is some sort of formal unity between the intellect and the individual human (the single intellect would, as Richard C. Taylor 2013 has stressed, be “form for us”). Ogden argues that this is true in the sense that there is an operative unity between intellect and individual (205). But the fact that the intellect is using the memories and imagined images in my brain obviously does not mean that I am the intellect, any more than an online server would be identical with my laptop because it uses data uploaded from my laptop’s hard drive (my analogy, not Ogden’s, though he uses similar ones). The intellect would be identical with the human individual if it were that human’s substantial form (174), which is clearly not the case, given that it could not be both my substantial form and yours.While I’m guessing that some modern-day Averroes specialists may balk at this reading, Ogden is able to point to medieval and Renaissance thinkers who had the same no-holds-barred understanding of Averroes. He at the very least puts the onus on interpreters to explain how we humans are, in our multiplicity, somehow the same as one single intellect. Ogden’s reading has a consequence that Averroes seems to admit (see esp. 223), namely that humans have no prospect of an individual afterlife. The human species is everlasting and so is the intellect “fed” by our bodily cognitive processes, but you and I are going to stop existing when we die. More generally, Ogden’s version of Averroes accepts a philosophical anthropology according to which we are fully embodied beings, “like other animals” as Ogden says more than once, with substantial forms that require a material receiver to ensure continued persistence (217). In this respect, Ogden’s Averroes, despite the startling conclusions to which he was led in his protracted attempts to interpret Aristotle aright, had an understanding of the human being that is not so unfamiliar to the modern-day philosopher.

中文翻译：

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阿威罗论智力：从亚里士多德的起源到阿奎那的批判

有哲学家试图维护和认可命令的常识，也有哲学家愿意推翻和纠正这些命令。然后是阿威罗伊斯。他最著名的学说不仅违反直觉。它使他相信某些似乎不言而喻的错误，即只有一个思想与所有人类思想相关。正如他最著名的批评家托马斯·阿奎那 (Thomas Aquinas) 所指出的那样，我们每个人都有自己的思想，而且我们每个人都可以独立思考，这似乎是显而易见的。阿威罗伊——用他名字的拉丁化版本，伊本·鲁世德——在他对亚里士多德的《论灵魂》的长篇评论中似乎否认了这一点，引发了拉丁中世纪和文艺复兴时期哲学的旷日持久的争论。1 为什么要在这样一个难以置信的理论上泼这么多墨？部分原因肯定是阿威罗伊作为亚里士多德最权威的评论家的地位。当阿奎那专门针对这个问题专门写了一篇论文时，他通过争论统一理论作为对灵魂的解释而在他自己的立场上遇到了阿威罗伊斯。他关心的主要不是驳斥错误的哲学观点，而是拯救亚里士多德免于与该观点相关联。这个话题引起如此多关注还有另一个原因：阿威罗伊关于智力统一性的论证出奇地有力。斯蒂芬·奥格登 (Stephen Ogden) 的一本极好的新书展示了它的力量有多大。运用现在通常用于亚里士多德本人作品的那种同情的方法和分析的敏锐度，奥格登解释说，阿威罗伊 (Averroes) 有很强的哲学和解释学理由支持智力的统一。经常引用阿奎那作为陪衬，奥格登提出了一个令人信服的案例，即阿威罗伊斯看似难以置信的观点实际上在亚里士多德的框架内具有很大的意义。事实上，在那个框架内，它似乎常常比阿奎那显然更合理的观点更有优势，对阿奎那来说，智力是非物质的，而是个人的：每个人一个头脑，而不是整个人类一个头脑。阿威罗伊斯的立场是，正如他自己指出的那样，在亚里士多德的《论灵魂》第 3.4-5 章的复杂解释历史中独一无二，这些章节最主要涉及智力。奥格登确实说过阿威罗伊主义的观点“拥有丰富的新颖性”（92）。但实际上，让一个人的头脑凌驾于所有人之上并不是什么新鲜事。亚里士多德的上帝就是这样一种思想，正如普罗提诺所假定的 nous 一样。在时间、文化和意图上更接近阿威罗伊的是阿维森纳（同样，这个名字是拉丁化的，在这种情况下是伊本西纳）。他认为，亚里士多德在《论灵魂》第 3.5 章简短而高深莫测的章节中所描述的所谓“主动智力”(AI) 是一种单一的超越原则，它以某种方式允许人类个体思考。（究竟是如何做到这一点是阿维森纳学者之间广泛争论的问题。）相比之下，负责接收可理解事物的潜在或物质智力（MPI）对于阿维森纳来说是每个人类智力所独有的。阿威罗伊和阿奎那，作为奥格登很好地观察到，一致认为 AI 和 MPI 之间的这种不匹配是不可持续的。两者都应该是单独的，或者两者都应该是一个。阿奎那当然采纳前一种观点，阿威罗伊采纳后者。为什么？在读奥格登的书之前，我认为阿威罗伊的立场的一个主要原因是物质是个体化的原则。例如，两朵向日葵共享向日葵的种类，但它们的形式因被两块时空截然不同的物质所接受而个性化。但亚里士多德明确指出，智力是一种非物质的力量。因此，没有什么可以区分许多个体智力。不过，奥格登提出了一个令人信服的案例，证明这不是阿威罗伊主义理论 (98–100) 的基础论据。毕竟，与天球相关的心智同样是非物质的，但他们设法彼此区分开来。可能它们在某些方面存在差异，这对于个体人类智力来说是不可能的，但这需要进一步的论证。因此，当 Averroes 争辩说 MPI 是一种确定的、非物质的实体时，这本身就没有确定是否存在一个这样的智力（105-8）。事实上，Avicenna 使用了与 Averroes 非常相似的论证来证明 MPI 的非物质性，同时坚持每个人都有自己的 MPI。对于像阿奎那（见 220）这样的观点的问题，奥格登认为阿威罗伊主义的理论最好用不同的方式来证明。这是通过他所谓的“统一论证，”其中指出，“解释我们如何能够思考同一件事的最好方法是，只有一个和同一件事被认为是在一个智力中”（109）。正如奥格登所允许的那样，看起来亚里士多德的主要人物阿威罗伊在这里沉迷于柏拉图主义的直觉 (113)。当你我都理解向日葵的形状时，我们应该都抓住了同一个思想对象。但阿威罗伊假设一个可理解的对象必须始终存在于心灵中，而不是像柏拉图的形式那样独立存在。随之而来的是，所有可理知者都被一个头脑所接受。唯一的选择是说你对向日葵有一种想法，而我却有另一种想法。但那样的话，我们实际上不会在想同样的事情，或者，正如我们可能会说的那样，“有同样的想法。“这给阿威罗伊斯留下了一个问题，即如何解释为什么我们似乎在作为个体思考。实际上，这不是唯一的问题。奥格登在这里提出了另一个很好的观点，即困难不仅是现象学的，而且是本体论的（166）。个体人类应该是思考的主体，而我们感觉好像是这种情况的事实只是本体论主张的证据。当阿奎那在他关于智力统一性的论文中强调这一反对意见时，反复挑战阿威罗伊斯解释“这个人思考（hic homo intelligit）”这一事实（McInerny 1993），反对意见在两个层面上都起作用。现代口译员试图代表阿威罗伊回答。通常，他们想表明，在某种意义上，每个人都是阿威罗伊斯的智力思想的主体，例如，通过与单一智力的某种统一，或者因为我们较低的认知活动正在为这种智力提供必要的基础。因此，当我记忆中的向日葵图像被单一的智力用来思考向日葵的可理解形式时，在我看来，我就是那个从事智力的人。奥格登承认，这或许可以解释我是一个思考的现象学现象。但当谈到反对的本体论版本时，他认为阿威罗伊斯只会咬紧牙关。他会承认，严格来说，没有人是理解或思考普遍可理解对象的人。只有单一的智力在做那件事。智力位于人类个体认知之外，这就是为什么它只能以模棱两可的方式被称为“灵魂”的原因 (51-2, 184)。因此，奥格登将阿威罗伊斯归因于一个“错误理论”(174)，根据该理论，我们错误地以为自己在进行真正的思考，而实际上我们并没有。具身人类所能做的最多就是使用抽象或“模糊”的个体图像，这些图像近似于普遍可理解性，但并未完全实现（199）。所以事实证明，你我确实对向日葵有自己的想法，这是从我们对特定向日葵的不同经历中收集到的。只有在单一智力的层面上才会有向日葵的单一想法。奥格登礼貌而坚定地批评了其他学者试图逃避这一结论的企图，例如，通过说智力与个体人类之间存在某种形式上的统一（正如 Richard C. Taylor 2013 所强调的那样，单一智力将成为“我们的形式”）。奥格登认为，在智力与个人之间存在操作统一的意义上，这是正确的 (205)。但是智力正在使用我大脑中的记忆和想象的图像这一事实显然并不意味着我就是智力，就像在线服务器与我的笔记本电脑一样，因为它使用从我笔记本电脑的硬盘驱动器上传的数据（我的类比，不是 Ogden 的类比，尽管他使用了类似的类比）。如果智力是人类的实体形式（174），那么智力将与人类个体相同，但显然情况并非如此，因为它不可能既是我的实体形式又是你的实体形式。虽然我猜测一些现代的阿威罗伊专家可能会对这种解读犹豫不决，但奥格登能够指出中世纪和文艺复兴时期的思想家对阿威罗伊有着同样无拘无束的理解。他至少让口译员有责任解释我们人类的多样性，在某种程度上与一个单一的智力相同。奥格登的解读有一个阿威罗伊似乎承认的后果（见特别说明 223），即人类没有个体来世的前景。人类是永恒的，由我们的身体认知过程“喂养”的智力也是如此，但是当我们死后，你和我将不复存在。更一般地说，奥格登的阿威罗伊版本接受了一种哲学人类学，根据这种哲学人类学，我们是完全具身的存在，正如奥格登不止一次所说的那样，“就像其他动物一样”，具有实体形式，需要物质接收者以确保持续存在（217）。在这方面，奥格登笔下的阿威罗伊，尽管在他长期试图正确解释亚里士多德的过程中得出了惊人的结论，但他对现代哲学家并不陌生的人的理解。