Folia Theologica 12. (2001)
Tibor Rászlai: Aquinas ont the Infallibilty of the Intellect
THE INFALLIBILITY OF THE INTELLECT 129 m. There Aquinas, in commenting on Aristotle, contrasts the first and second operations of the intellect. The second operation is expressed in a complex judgment that is either true or false: "(Aristotle) says that the statement by which the intellect says 'something about something', as happens in affirmation, is always either true or false."18 As said above, such a judgment involves both predicative compositio, asserting that the mental synthesis exists in reality, or takes a negative attitude in divisio, denying such a correspondance. Such mental states are said to be true or false with respect to the content of the mental attitude; that is, they are veracious or fallacious with respect to a mental predication understood (according to Thomas) as corresponding, or not corresponding, to what is. As we have seen, truth and falsity cannot enter into the FOI as it does in the SOI, for in the former there is as yet no judgment; in the FOI there is no mental attitude of judgmental compositio or divisio, which refers one's understanding to the individual things and their forms that are the proper objects of the intellect. Still, although in the FOI the subject does not refer her understanding to the object's ubderstanding, her intellect in understanding can be said to correspond with such objects. As Thomas writes of the FOI: "But nevertheless, although this non-complex intelligibility itself is neither true or false, nevertheless the intellect in understanding this (intelligibility) itself is true insofar as it is assimilated to the thing understood. And thus (Aristotle) adds that the intellect - "which is of this very 'what it is' /quid est/ insofar as this is of something the what it is to be /quod aliquid erat esse/" (that is, insofar as it understands what a thing is /quid est res/ - it (i. e., the intellect) is always true, and not insofar as it apprehends something about something."19 The thing understood here, I submit, is the essence of that which has been perceived by the senses. The intellect in understanding is assimilated /adaequatur/ to it insofar as its idea corresponds to this 18 In de Anima, III., XI., 760. 19 In de Anima, III., XI., 760.
