Extract
[...] These two forms that reason takes in the deployment of knowledge, he calls active intellect and possible intellect. The possible intellect is the thought that puts knowledge into action or potential through the particular. The active intellect is the cause of thought, it is, according to Duns Scot:habitus principiorum" (De anima a faculty of principles, which will be explained by the theory of intelligible species in opposition to the theory of sensible species of Aristotle. From the division of the intellect into agent and possible, the idea of the existence of intelligible species follows, which oppose the sensible species extracted from the theory of the resemblance of being. [...]
[...] This establishes the categorical proof that the soul must guide sensation in order for an alteration to occur in an organ. In order for a sensation to be the cause of an idea, it is necessary that subtly, thought guides and orients sensation so that it becomes truth. In this way, sensations are linked to the recognition of the material qualities of the objects to which they relate, which requires the intervention of the intellect to discover the essence of the perceived things. [...]
[...] The argument is as follows: « If a first cause is possible and does not exist, it could only be produced by a cause that is prior to it. But a first cause cannot depend on any prior cause. Therefore, if a first cause does not exist, it is impossible for it to exist, which contradicts the conclusion of the proof. Therefore, a first cause exists . This formulation is unprecedented and without precedent in scholasticism. It requires revisiting « the Id ipsum esse of St. Thomas. [...]
[...] There is therefore a neutrality of nature towards singularity and universality. Thus, the truth of the statements of identity is preserved. Scot radically separates the universality that produces genus and species, produced by the intellect, from the community, property of a nature, by itself neither singular nor universal. The universal is a term that belongs to thought alone, while nature is not conceived. What, then, is the cause of the singular realities included in their common nature? How can particular beings exist really in nature? [...]
[...] The pure act of the existence of God is the presence of a being whose existence and essence are realized together in an intensive and extensive manner, in a presence external to the being. Where potentiality and actuality are therefore realized in a single, transcendent unity, from which it proceeds in the theological sum the necessity of considering the absolute simplicity of the divine nature. God is the being without accident, that is, the uncreated being, cause of all causes, or again, cause of Himself: \"cause sui. [...]
