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Unconscious Thought In Peripatetic Philosophy, John Shannon Hendrix Jan 2014

Unconscious Thought In Peripatetic Philosophy, John Shannon Hendrix

Architecture, Art, and Historic Preservation Faculty Publications

In Aristotle’s De anima 3.5, the relation between intellect and thought, and between thought and object, is not accessible to discursive or conscious thought; an understanding of the relation requires nous, intuitive or “unconscious” thought. The “active” intellect is accessible to discursive reason only sporadically. “Mind does not think intermittently” (De anima 430a10–25): mind is always thinking, consciously and unconsciously. Alexander of Aphrodisias saw the active intellect as transcendent in relation to the material intellect. The thought which is an object of thought is immaterial, or unconscious. In his De intellectu (108), there must be something at work …


Plotinus: The First Philosopher Of The Unconscious, John Shannon Hendrix Jan 2014

Plotinus: The First Philosopher Of The Unconscious, John Shannon Hendrix

Architecture, Art, and Historic Preservation Faculty Publications

Plotinus is sometimes referred to as “the first philosopher of the unconscious.” In his 1960 essay “Consciousness and Unconsciousness in Plotinus,” Hans Rudolph Schwyzer called Plotinus “the discoverer of the unconscious.” What exactly was Plotinus’ unconscious? In the Enneads, Plotinus asks about soul and intellect: “Why then…do we not consciously grasp them…? For not everything which is in the soul is immediately perceptible” (V.1.12.1–15).[i] In the De anima of Aristotle, “Mind does not think intermittently” (430a10–25).[ii]We cannot remember eternal mind in us, because passive mind is perishable. Is the productive or active intelligence in our mind …