The intellectual agents or active intellect is a metaphysical concept that Aristotle introduced in his work About the Soul (Gr.: Peri Psūchês), Lat .: The Anima), Book III, Chapters 4 and 5. < / p>
This active or active intellect is distinguished from the intellectus possibilis (possibly intellect) and the intellectus passivus (passive intellect, Gr .: "nous dynamei" or "nous pathetikos"), and is an ability in the soul which causes the observations and the individual concepts are stripped of their physicality and transformed into universal concepts; which is called abstraction. We could perceive the intellectual agents as a kind of light for the reason that makes it otherwise unknown "Ding an sich" (Kant). Another formulation: the perceptible is considered by the activating part of the intellect, the intellectual agents.
In his description of the soul, Aristotle added the concept, so as to explain its operation as fully as possible. "Intellectual agents" was the "divine part" of the soul for him, that "from outside, it was brought into the fetus and into the soul through the door ..." (The Anima, Book III-5 ). Scholastic interpretations
Some medieval interpretations followed Avicenna, that there is only one spirit to which we all belong. Because the intellectual agent is the cause of the ideas (shapes) in the human mind, it can be considered as the first cause, and this ability is identified by God by some scholastic philosophers.
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