112. Intellectual Memory and the Unity of Understanding

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Lecture Notes

Main Topics #

The Question: Is Intellectual Memory a Distinct Power? #

• Whether memory should be distinguished as a separate intellectual power from understanding
• How this relates to Augustine’s framework of memory, intelligence, and will as expressing the image of the Trinity
• The critical difference between the sensory and intellectual orders

Reception and Retention in Different Orders #

Sensory Powers #

• Reception and retention require different powers due to the bodily nature of sense organs
• Material qualities determining retention differ from those enabling reception:
  • Moist things receive easily but retain poorly
  • Dry things retain well but receive poorly
• This is why imagination and memory are distinct interior sensory powers

Intellectual Powers #

• No bodily organ is involved in intellectual knowledge
• Therefore, the same power can both receive and retain intelligible forms
• The immaterial nature of the intellect enables greater stability and permanence than bodily matter

Foundational Principle: Mode of Reception #

• “What is received is received according to the mode of the receiver”
• The nature of the receiver determines how forms are received and conserved
• Applied to understanding: immaterial reception produces more stable retention than material reception

Augustine’s Authentic Position #

What Augustine Actually Taught #

• Memory: the soul’s habitual retention of forms (whether actively thinking or not)
• Intelligence: the act of understanding itself
• Will: the act of willing or loving
• These represent three aspects or acts of a single intellectual power, not three distinct powers

The Misreading Through Peter Lombard #

• Peter Lombard’s Sentences presents memory, intelligence, and will as three distinct powers
• This became the standard medieval interpretation
• Thomas returns to Augustine’s authentic text from On the Trinity (Book 14) to correct the misunderstanding

Key Arguments #

Against Treating Memory as a Separate Intellectual Power #

Argument from the Nature of Intellectual Reception:

• If sensory powers retain forms, the understanding must retain them even more (a fortiori argument)
• The understanding is more stable and unchanging than bodily organs
• Therefore, intellectual memory cannot require a separate power as sensory memory does

Argument from the Immateriality of the Intellect:

• Sensory powers require distinct reception and retention powers because of bodily materiality
• The intellect, being immaterial, has no such bodily constraints
• Therefore, the same power both receives intelligible forms and conserves them habitually

Against Avicenna’s Denial of Intellectual Memory:

• Avicenna claimed the understanding only knows when actually thinking; nothing is retained
• Contradiction with Aristotle’s teaching that “the soul is the place of forms”
• Against reason: if material bodies retain sensible forms, immaterial intellect must retain intelligible forms even more
• The word “understanding” itself (from stare, to stand) indicates stability and rest, not mere passing apprehension

Distinction Between Sense Memory and Intellectual Memory #

Why Sensory Powers Distinguish Reception and Retention:

• The bodily nature of sense organs creates the distinction
• Reference to Thomas Aquinas on interior senses (Summa Theologiae II, Q. 78, Art. 4)
• The principle is grounded in the opposition between what enables reception and what enables retention in material things

Why Intellectual Powers Do Not Distinguish Them:

• Without bodily organs, there is no material basis for separating these functions
• The same immaterial power receives and conserves intelligible forms
• The intellect’s immateriality ensures greater permanence than any material retention

Important Definitions #

Memory (memoria) - Intellectual Order #

• The soul’s habitual conservation of intelligible species
• Not limited to the past (as sensory memory is)
• Pertains to the intellectual part of the soul only; beasts do not possess it
• A passive power with the capacity both to receive and to conserve what it receives

Understanding (intellectus) #

• Can refer either to the power itself or to the act of understanding
• In the context of this discussion, encompasses both the receiving of intelligible forms and their habitual retention
• Characterized by immateriality and stability

Habit (habitus) #

• An intermediate state between pure potency and actual exercise of a power
• In the intellectual order, the ordered conservation of intelligible species enabling understanding “on demand”
• Demonstrated by the capacity to recall and understand learned material (e.g., the Pythagorean theorem) without currently thinking about it

Agent and Patient Intellect #

• Agent intellect: the active power that abstracts intelligible forms from phantasms
• Patient (possible) intellect: the receptive power that receives intelligible forms
• These are distinguished by their functional relation to the object (act vs. potency), not by their separation as distinct powers

Examples & Illustrations #

The Pythagorean Theorem #

• Before learning: Cannot understand the theorem even if one desires to
• After learning Book 1 of Euclid: Can understand the theorem whenever one chooses
• During final exams: The professor demonstrates the proof from habitual knowledge
• Significance: Shows the reality of habitual knowledge as an intermediate state between pure potency and actual understanding

The Treasury Principle #

• Reference to Christ’s words: “From his treasure house [the scribe] brings forth things both old and new” (Matthew 13:52)
• The mature scholar stores intelligible forms in memory like treasures in a storehouse
• Unlike sensory memory (retrieving sensible images), intellectual memory preserves universal intelligible forms
• The act of understanding is like opening the treasure house and examining what is stored there

Rosie the Dog #

• Personal anecdote: A dog remembers being struck and reacts with fear upon seeing the person again
• Significance: Demonstrates that sensory memory (of particulars and past sensible experiences) exists in animals
• Contrasts with intellectual memory, which is peculiar to rational souls

Sensory Reception and Retention Contrasted #

• Moist matter: receives impressions easily but does not retain them well
• Dry matter: retains impressions but receives new ones with difficulty
• Consequence: In bodily organs, reception and retention require different physical dispositions, hence different powers
• Application: Since the intellect has no such material constraints, it needs only one power for both functions

Questions Addressed #

Q: Did Augustine teach that memory, intelligence, and will are three distinct powers? #

A: No. Augustine meant three different acts or aspects of the single intellectual power: memory as habitual retention, intelligence as the act of understanding, and will as the act of loving. Peter Lombard misread Augustine on this point, creating a widespread misinterpretation that Thomas corrects by returning to Augustine’s own text.

Q: How can the understanding retain forms if it is not always thinking about them? #

A: Through habitual knowledge (habitus), which is an intermediate state between pure potency and actual understanding. Once the Pythagorean theorem is learned, one possesses the form habitually and can exercise understanding of it whenever chosen, even if not actually thinking about it at every moment.

Q: Why don’t we need separate powers for receiving and retaining in the intellect as we do in the senses? #

A: Because the intellect has no bodily organ. The bodily nature of sensory powers creates the necessity for distinct powers (moist receives but doesn’t retain; dry retains but doesn’t receive). The immaterial intellect, being more stable than any material organ, can both receive and retain through the same power.

Q: What is the primary basis for distinguishing powers of the understanding? #

A: The object and its mode of relation to the power. The only essential distinction within intellectual powers is between the agent intellect (related to its object as act to potency) and the patient intellect (related to its object as potency to act). Both regard the same universal object (being itself), so no other distinction of powers is possible.

Notable Quotes #

“For to the definition of a passive power, it pertains for it to conserve just as to receive.” — Thomas Aquinas, establishing that retention belongs essentially to a receptive power

“Aristotle means what Thomas Aquinas says he means.” — Duane Berquist, enunciating his hermeneutical principle for interpreting Aristotle

“Augustine means what Thomas Aquinas says he means.” — Duane Berquist, extending the principle to patristic interpretation, though with acknowledged qualification

“The dry soul is wisest and best.” — Heraclitus, cited regarding the correlation between dryness and retention of forms