Folia Theologica 12. (2001)
Tibor Rászlai: Aquinas ont the Infallibilty of the Intellect
THE INFALLIBILITY OF THE INTELLECT 131 when our grasp of essences is deficient, we must use fallible discursive reason in coming to a.full grasp of the essence.25 26 It seems that, contrary to my claim about the veracity of the intellect, Aquinas thinks that our grasp of quiddities is liable to error. Although I have so far spoken of the "stronger reading" as a single set of interpretive claims, it is necessary now to distinguish various versions of it. The passages just cited do undermine what we might call the strongest version of the stronger reading, which claims that the FOI fully and perfectly intuits the essences of all natural, material things that are perceived by the senses. Such a reading is both highly implausible in itself and at odds with Aquinas's texts. But then what sense can we make of claims about the intellect's veracity? Since a complete response to this question would require more space than is here available, I shall only sketch an outline of my solution. Essentially, I want to claim that, while the intellect is veracious in that it is competent to distinguish essences and classify individuals according to their essences - "to cut the world at its joints", if you will, it is often, at least initially, unable to specify the whole of essence, or even the parts of the definition. On this interpretation, reasoning about ideas formed in the FOI is not employed somehow to establish the correspondance between these ideas and real essences, but to move from an imperfect to a full grasp of the essence. This interpretation we can still label the strong version of the strongest reading of the veracity doctrine, or just the strong reading. Aquinas tells us that our intellect moves from an incomplete to a complete actuality, from a more universal, vague grasp of an essence to a less universal, definite grasp.27 Before we arrive at the complete actuality of "perfect scientific knowledge", there is often "imperfect scientific knowledge" in which "things are known indistictly and with a certain amount of confusion."28 Aquinas explains: 25 ST I., q. 77., a. 1., ad 3. 26 ST I., q. 85., a. 3. c 27 ST I., q. 85., a. 3. c 28 ST I., q. 85., a. 3. c
