Is Anything in The Intellect That Was No

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/6/2018, SPi
Is Anything in the Intellect that

Was Not First in Sense?
Empiricism and Knowledge of the
Incorporeal in Aquinas
Therese Scarpelli Cory
What is the scope of our intellectual knowledge, and how strictly is it bound
up with the scope of sensation? Thomas Aquinas—perhaps the best-known
representative of medieval empiricism—holds, as one of his core philosoph-
ical theses, that all our natural intellectual knowledge depends on sensation.
“The beginning of all our cognition,” he says, “is in sense.”¹ The human
intellect has as its proper object the “quiddities of material things,” e.g.,
essences such as ‘oak’ or ‘rhinoceros,’² so that we are intellectually dazzled by
incorporeal entities, like an owl dazzled by daylight.³ Indeed, in a much-
quoted passage, Aquinas paints a dramatically pessimistic picture of what we
can know of incorporeal entities:⁴
Our intellect receives from sense, and therefore that which falls into our intellect’s
apprehension are sensibles, and things of this sort have magnitude, which is why
¹ Aquinas, SBDT 6.2 [Leon. 50.164:71–2]; see similar remarks in DV 12.3, ad 2; DV

18.2, ad 7; ST Ia.84.6–7; and the picturesque formulation of ST Ia.12.12 [Leon. 4.136]:
“Our natural cognition can extend only so far as it can be guided [manuduci, literally, led
by the hand] by sensibles.” All translations from the Latin are my own; for editions and
abbreviations, see the bibliography.
² E.g., DV 12.7; ST Ia.84.7; ST Ia.85.3, ad 3; and ST Ia.88.1.
³ See texts in note 67.
⁴ I use “corporeal/incorporeal,” rather than “material/immaterial,” since in Aquinas’s
hylomorphic ontology, every form is immaterial in the sense that form and matter are
distinct metaphysical principles. In what follows, consonant with Aquinas’s usage, “cor-
poreal” applies to anything that has a bodily existence, whether that be a form, or a
substance itself as a whole. “Incorporeal” applies to any form that can or does subsist
without a material substrate.
Empiricism and Knowledge of the Incorporeal in Aquinas 101
‘point’ and ‘unity’ are only defined negatively. And therefore everything that transcends
these sensibles known to us are not cognized by us except through negation, just as
we cognize concerning separate substances that they are immaterial and incorporeal
and so on.⁵
Such remarks have led to a widespread impression of the senses as playing,
for Aquinas, the role of a gatekeeper restricting what can “get into” our
intellects. On this view, sensation not only controls what we can experien-
tially access, but also forces us to conceptualize everything in terms of
corporeal, sensible properties. And so incorporeal entities, which lie wholly
outside the scope of our experience, can only be conceptualized in corporeal
terms, e.g., as not-colored, not-extended, not-corporeal.
This way of reading Aquinas, which I will call the Sense-Gatekeeper view,
is familiarly encapsulated in the maxim “Nothing is in the intellect that is
not first in the senses,” which is popularly—and, I will argue, incorrectly—
believed to be a cornerstone of Aquinas’s philosophical psychology.⁶ The
Sense-Gatekeeper view achieved canonical status in the neo-Scholasticism
of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Grabmann, for instance,
writes that “the total content of higher knowledge is ultimately furnished
through the medium of the senses,” and that “we can think of incorporeal
objects, of which no images exist, only by analogy and by aid of the corporeal
of which we have images,”⁷ a sentiment echoed by other major forces
such as Mercier, Sertillanges, Garrigou-Lagrange, and Gilson.⁸ In recent
⁵ InDA 3.5 [Leon. 45/1.227:183–92].

⁶ For just one recent example, see Markus Führer, Echoes of Aquinas in Cusanus’s Vision
of Man (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014), 42. In reality, the nihil in intellectu
maxim appears only in Aquinas’s DV 2.3, arg. 19; since this is a disputatio, the language in
the argument is not originally Aquinas’s, but is introduced by an audience member. And
in fact, the response in ad 19 clearly interprets the principle as applying to abstractive
knowledge of corporeal things. Aquinas’s own formulations (see note 1) are more open-
ended, stating merely that the human intellect’s operation depends on or originates in
sensation. Contra Pickavé, who takes those formulations as equivalent to the nihil in
intellectu maxim (see Martin Pickavé, “Human Knowledge,” in B. Davies and E. Stump
(eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Aquinas [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014], 314), it
seems to me that the nihil in intellectu maxim restrictively portrays the senses as a conduit
for intellectual information, whereas Aquinas’s other formulations leave open the possi-
bility of a variety of ways in which intellectual knowledge might be causally related to
sensation.
⁷ Martin Grabmann, Thomas Aquinas: His Personality and Thought, trans. V. Michel
(New York: Russell & Russell, 1963), 138 and 147 (emphasis mine).
⁸ Étienne Gilson, Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. L. K. Shook (New
York: Random House, 1954): “The intelligible cannot reach [us] unless mixed with the
sensible” (219) . . . “We only know the incorporeal by comparing it with the corporeal” (221);
R. Garrigou-Lagrange, Reality: A Synthesis of Thomistic Thought, trans. P. Cummins (St. Louis:
Herder, 1950), 188: “Since its proper object, however, is the essence of the sense world, our
intellect can know God and all spiritual beings only by analogy with the sense world, the
102 Therese Scarpelli Cory
scholarship, the senses have maintained their role as exclusive purveyors of

intellectual information. According to Pickavé, “the senses provide the
intellect with the basic ‘raw material’ for higher-level cognitive activity.”⁹
Similarly, Pasnau and Shields attribute to Aquinas the belief that “we
know absolutely nothing about the essences of the separate substances,
except what they are not . . . Our only positive information about the world
comes through the senses, and we have no reason to suppose that what
holds true of the sensory, material realm holds for substances separate
from matter.”¹⁰
The Sense-Gatekeeper interpretation has drastic implications, effectively
encapsulating the human knower in the sensible realm, like a space traveler
trapped in a windowless spaceship who wonders what, if anything, is
“outside.” But proponents of the Sense-Gatekeeper interpretation have
not always faced up to these drastic implications, which are supposed to
be warded off by adding a qualification along the following lines: We are not
wholly cut off from incorporeal entities, for we can reason to their existence;
lowest of intelligible realities, to know which it needs the sense faculties as instruments.
In this state of union with body, its maner of knowing the spiritual world is not
immediate like that of the angel. So its very definition of the spiritual is negative. Spiritual,
it says, is what is immaterial, i.e., non-material. And this negative mode of knowing
the spiritual shows clearly that its proper sphere is in the world of sense”; Désiré Mercier,
Psychologie, 8th edn., vol. 2 (Louvain: Institut supérieur de philosophie, 1908), 7–8;
A.-D. Sertillanges, S. Thomas d’Aquin, 4th edn., vol. 2 (Paris: Alcan, 1925), 144–5; as
well as Boedder and Roland-Gosselin in notes 45–6 in this chapter. Of course, no
movement is monolithic, and the challenges to this thesis posed by Romeyer and Gardeil
are discussed in section 2.
⁹ Pickavé, “Human Knowledge,” 314–15.
¹⁰ Robert Pasnau and Christopher Shields, The Philosophy of Aquinas (Boulder, CO:
Westview, 2004), 61 (emphasis mine). See also Ralph McInerny, A First Glance at
St. Thomas Aquinas: A Handbook for Peeping Thomists (Notre Dame, IN: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1990), 192; Robert Schmidt, “The Evidence Grounding Judgments
of Existence,” in C. O’Neill (ed.), An Etienne Gilson Tribute (Milwaukee: Marquette
University Press, 1959), 243; Marie de l’Assomption, L’homme, personne corporelle: La
spécificité de la personne humaine chez saint Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: Parole et Silence,
2014), 169. Where the Sense-Gatekeeper view is not explicitly affirmed, I have not found
an alternative suggested; a tendency in these cases is to hedge by phrasing the relationship
between sensation and intellection ambiguously, without taking a stance on what the
exact relationship may be; see, e.g., John Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas
Aquinas: From Finite to Infinite Being (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of
America Press, 2000), 35; Ruedi Imbach and Adriano Oliva, La philosophie de Thomas
d’Aquin: Repères (Paris: Vrin, 2009), 44; Gabriele Galluzzo, “Aquinas on the Genus and
Differentia of Separate Substances,” Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale
18 (2007), 343–61, here 344. An exception, however, is the brief remark in Anthony
Kenny, Aquinas on Mind (New York: Routledge, 1993), 126, which articulates the main
lines of the position I unfold in detail here.
it is just that we cannot grasp them without reference to corporeal realities.¹¹

In reality, this qualification secures just enough room for inferring the
existence of incorporeal entities from corporeal objects and saying that
they are unlike everything we know. The traveler remains trapped in the
spaceship, but she can reason from the characteristics of the spaceship that
something lies outside that is entirely other from everything she knows.
That is not nothing, of course. But the qualification fails to block two
serious implications. First, even with the qualification, my own incorporeal
intellect remains experientially inaccessible to me, rendering self-awareness
impossible—and so one must explain away the evidence for experiential
self-awareness in Aquinas.¹² Second, if I do manage to discover by reason
that something incorporeal exists, I still cannot say anything meaning-
fully positive about it at all—and so it becomes impossible to explain
why Aquinas himself dedicated so much time to theorizing about the
incorporeal.¹³
My own view is that these implications contradict Aquinas’s stated
positions, and so the Sense-Gatekeeper interpretation is to be rejected
as well—indeed Aquinas himself explicitly rejects it in his seldom-read
¹¹ See for instance McInerny, A First Glance, optimistically expanding the scope of
intellectual knowledge: “Sensible reality is a bridge to what is beyond sense. It is in
reflecting on our knowledge of sensible things that we come to see that coming to know is
very different from such things coming to be. The chalky squiggles on the board enable
the mind to think of abstract entities. So, too, the world shows forth the glory of God”
(149); and “[We] have the capacity to understand spiritual things, but only by looking
through material things first, and we have a natural tendency to dwell where we must first
look—in our natural environment, the sensible world, which alone afford a window on the
spiritual” (186). But given that “sensory images constitute the original data of thought”
(190), it is hard to see how they could communicate anything positive about the incorporeal
world, to the extent of providing a “window” to it.
¹² This pessimistic conclusion is explicitly embraced by the neo-Scholastic defenders of
the Sense-Gatekeeper view. In the works cited in notes 6–7, Grabmann, Thomas Aquinas,
148–9, and Gilson, Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, 473, n. 44, both go on to
assert that the human soul merely infers its own existence, although they curiously allow
that the soul directly experiences its acts. The Pasnau and Shields volume cited in note 10
likewise goes on to allow that “insofar as separate substances just are minds, we can ascribe
to them all the properties that beings with minds have” (61). But if “our only positive
information about the world comes through the senses,” how do we know what properties
(non-sensible) minds have? Something similar happens with the mention of “reflecting on
our knowledge” in the passage cited from McInerny in note 11.
¹³ Taking matters one step further, Carlos Steel has even suggested that Aquinas’s
commitment to the dependence of knowledge on sensation (apparently construed in a
Sense-Gatekeeper way) threatens the very possibility of metaphysics. See Carlos Steel,
“Siger of Brabant versus Thomas Aquinas on the Possibility of Knowing the Separate
Substances,” in J. Aertsen, K. Emery, and A. Speer (eds.), Nach der Verurteilung von 1277:
Philosophie und Theologie an der Universität von Paris im letzten Viertel des 13. Jahrhunderts
(Berlin: De Gruyter, 2001), 211–31.
commentary on the Sentences.¹⁴ In its place, I propose that his real view is as
follows: (a) The scope of our intellectual experience encompasses anything
ontological equal to and below the human intellect itself, and hence extends
beyond the sensible realm to encompass our own incorporeal intellect;
(b) We can conceptualize the incorporeal positively in itself, without invok-
ing the properties of physical objects, and the content of this positive
concept is precisely ‘intellectuality’; (c) Our concept of intellectuality is
precisely what enables us to theorize meaningfully, though with an important
and ineliminable imperfection, about other kinds of incorporeal (intellectual)
entities such as angels.
The aim in this study, then, is to reconstruct precisely Aquinas’s account
of how we are epistemically situated vis-à-vis incorporeal realities. The first
step is to differentiate between two related but distinct questions we might
ask about our intellect’s epistemic scope: namely, whether we can experien-
tially access incorporeal entities, and the degree to which we can conceptualize
incorporeal entities, if at all.¹⁵ The Sense-Gatekeeper view, I think, has been
implicitly strengthened by the tendency to conflate these questions. More-
over, it is not initially clear what conceptualizing might be, in Aquinas’s
framework, or what it would mean to conceptualize something adequately.
In particular, the Sense-Gatekeeper view sometimes seems to be linked with
a tendency to conflate conceptualizing and imagining: As evidence that we
have no positive concept of the incorporeal, some authors point to Aquinas’s
assertion that we always have recourse to imagination even when thinking
about incorporeal objects—as though the role of imagination is to substitute
for intellectual conceptualization.¹⁶ So it is necessary to understand exactly
¹⁴ The following argument appears in Sent. 3.23.1.2, arg. 5 [Moos 3.701 n. 32]: “If
someone says that [spiritual habits] are cognized by their having a likeness in the intellect,
it can be argued to the contrary that a likeness in intellect is founded in a likeness in
imagination in sense . . . But there is no likeness of such habits in imagination or sense, so
they cannot be cognized by their likeness.” Aquinas responds, ad 5 [Moos 3.704 n. 47]:
“All cognition whereby the intellect cognizes what is in the soul is founded upon its
cognizing its object, to which a phantasm corresponds. But its cognition need not remain
solely in [those] phantasms; rather, it is necessary that its cognition arise from phantasms,
and that it leave imagination behind in some cases.” Given the claims made in the
argument, it is clear that Aquinas is rejecting the claim that intellectual cognition of x
presupposes an imaginative likeness of x, defending instead the weaker claim that some
imaginative likeness of something (not necessarily of x) is a precondition for intellectual
activity. This amounts to denying that the conceptual content of intellect is restricted to
the content provided by phantasms: a rejection of the Sense-Gatekeeper view. (The
relationship between likeness and content will be discussed in section 1.)
¹⁵ I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this way of framing the issue
at stake.
¹⁶ See Grabmann, Gilson, and Marie de l’Assomption, cited at notes 8 and 10.
how intellectual conceptualizing works in Aquinas, a topic that has received

little attention.
Consequently, in section 1, I spell out how Aquinas’s cognition theory
accounts for different modes of experiential access and conceptualizing, and
how access is related to conceptualizing. Then in section 2, building on an
interpretation I have defended elsewhere,¹⁷ I discuss self-awareness as a
counterexample to the Sense-Gatekeeper view, arguing that self-awareness
not only constitutes experiential access to some incorporeal reality, our own
soul, but also even enables us to conceptualize incorporeal being positively
on its own terms, as ‘intellectual.’
Why then does Aquinas insist that we are owlishly bedazzled by incor-
poreal entities? In section 3, I show that he is referring to God and angels,
and explain why he thinks angels pose a special epistemic challenge to us.
(By focusing on angels, we can isolate the challenges posed by “higher
incorporeality” without muddying the waters with the problem of an
infinite object.¹⁸ In fact, in my view, the scholarly tendency to treat our
knowledge of non-sensible realities almost exclusively in connection with
knowledge of God is partly responsible for the appeal of the Sense-Gatekeeper
view.¹⁹) As we will see, angels dazzle us, for Aquinas, not because they are
¹⁷ Therese Cory, Aquinas on Human Self-Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 2013).
¹⁸ But it should be noted that Aquinas’s treatment of our philosophical knowledge of
God is not as restrictive as one might expect; for instance, as Wippel has shown, even
Aquinas’s most pessimistic statements about our knowledge of God apply only to
definitional and comprehensive knowledge of the divine essence (John Wippel, “Quiddita-
tive Knowledge of God,” in Wippel, Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas (Washington,
DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1984), 215–41). Note that in the case of
God, the likeness of effect to cause (creature to creator) legitimates analogical predication,
which allows Aquinas to present a more optimistic picture of our predications concerning
God. But against his Neoplatonist sources, he denies that non-divine intelligences are
mediate causes of corporeal entities, so he cannot invoke the likeness of effect to cause to
explain what we know about angels.
¹⁹ Scholars have increasingly recognized how medieval treatments of angels serve as
philosophical test cases for various problems. See for instance Tobias Hoffmann (ed.),
A Companion to Angels in Medieval Philosophy (Leiden: Brill, 2012), and Isabel Iribarren
and Martin Lenz (eds.), Angels in Medieval Philosophical Inquiry: Their Function and
Significance (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008). Nevertheless, no one has examined whether
Aquinas’s extensive philosophical conclusions about angels are in tension with his
pessimistic remarks about what we can know of them—not even in the small body of
literature on our knowledge of angels in Aquinas. See Steel, “Siger of Brabant versus
Thomas Aquinas”; David Wirmer, “Avempace—ratio de quiditate: Thomas Aquinas’s
Critique of an Argument for the Natural Knowability of Separate Substances,” in A. Speer
and L. Wegener (eds.), Wissen über Grenzen: Arabisches Wissen und lateinisches Mittelalter
(Berlin: De Gruyter, 2006), 569–90; John McKian, “What Man May Know of the
Angels: Some Suggestions of the Angelic Doctor,” New Scholasticism 29 (1955), 259–77
and 441–60; 30 (1956), 49–63.
incorporeal, but because they are ontologically disproportionate to the kind of

incorporeal reality we experience, i.e., our own intellects. Indeed, he thinks that
even after experiencing angels in the afterlife, the human soul will still fail to
conceptualize them adequately. Drawing on the principles concerning access
and conceptualizing established in section 1, I will attempt to pin down the
precise sense in which their “higher” status thwarts our attempts to concep-
tualize them. The findings of this last section, I hope, will finally reveal why
Aquinas—despite his avowed pessimism about our knowledge of angels—
gives himself license to indulge in extensive theorizing about the nature and
activity of angels.
1. A C C E S S A N D CO N C E P T UA L I Z I N G
In inquiring into the scope of our embodied intellects, it is useful to

distinguish two possible questions: namely, a question about what our
intellects can experientially access, and a question about what our intellects
can properly conceptualize.²⁰ And hence it is important for our purposes to
get clear on what counts as experiential access and how the mode of access
limits our conceptualizing of x, on Aquinas’s account. These principles will
help determine in section 2 what kind of concept of incorporeality can result
from the experience of our own incorporeal intellect, and enable us to
distinguish in section 3 between epistemic obstacles traceable to our lack of
experience of angels, and those traceable to their ontological superiority to us.
a. Access
Aquinas recognizes two ways in which we become acquainted with some
entity x: either “in itself,” or “through another.” To cognize x in itself
implies having experience of x, present to the knower in its real being
(I will call this “experiential access”). To cognize x through another implies
that the knower has first experienced something else, y, from which she then
infers something about x (I will call this “indirect access”).²¹
The paradigm case of cognizing x “in itself”—accessing x experientially—
is of course sensation of physical objects.²² But, on Aquinas’s view, the senses
²⁰ Aquinas does not use this terminology himself; what I am designating “experiential
access” and “proper conceptualizing” represent two dimensions of the case he describes as
“cognizing something by its own likeness.”
²¹ E.g., SCG 3.49, Quodl. 7.1.1.
²² The “experience” with which we are concerned here is a direct and immediate
acquaintance of the sort we associate with sensation of “some present thing” (see DM
are not the only cognitive powers capable of accessing realities experientially. Our
intellect, too, can cognize realities “in themselves,” including even essences
abstracted from sense and imagination, such as ‘rhinoceros’ or ‘triangularity.’
When the intellect accesses its objects in this way, Aquinas sometimes under-
scores the act’s experiential character by describing it in terms drawn from
sensation—e.g., as an “intellectual vision.”²³
But not all intellectual cognition counts as intellectual vision, for
Aquinas. So what is the condition under which my intellect experientially
accesses some extramental x, i.e., “intellectually sees” x or understands x “in
itself ”? (Here, x is something extramental—as we shall see in section 2,
experiential access must be described differently in the case of self-awareness,
where the knower is the known.)
One answer that Aquinas gives, strangely, is that x must be cognized by its
own likeness. “A thing is cognized in the manner of intellectual vision whose
likeness exists in the intellect, just as the likeness of a thing corporeally seen
is in the sense of the one seeing it.”²⁴ Now this criterion is at first glance
puzzling. For Aquinas, all cognition—whether sensory, imaginative, or
intellectual—requires the assimilation of the knower to the known. If the
knower is not already ontologically identical with the known, the knower
must be made “like” the known, i.e., be formed by a “likeness” (similitudo)
of the known. (This intellectual likeness is just what he calls the “intelligible
species.”²⁵) So “to understand x by its likeness” hardly seems distinctive of
experiential access to x !
As a criterion for intellectual vision, however, Aquinas seems to be using
“its own likeness” in a narrow technical sense referring to the way in which
the likeness is produced. Elsewhere, he distinguishes between intellectual
vision (experiential access) and the knowledge had by reasoning from effect
to cause (indirect access), in terms of how the likeness in the cognitive power
results. In the former case, something is cognized “by the presence of its
likeness in the cognitive power, as when a stone is seen by the eye because of
16.7, ad 12)—not the experientia equivalent with Aristotle’s empeiria, which has to do
with repetition and expectation as the basis for induction (on the latter, see Matthias Lutz-
Bachmann, “ ‘Experientia’ bei Thomas von Aquin,” in A. Fidora and M. Lutz-Bachmann
(eds.), Erfahrung und Beweis: Die Wissenschaften von der Natur im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert
(Berlin: De Gruyter, 2007) 153–62; and Peter King, “Two Conceptions of Experience,”
Medieval Philosophy and Theology 11 (2003), 203–26).
²³ E.g., Sent. 4.49.2.7, ad 6; SCG 3.41; ST Ia.56.3. Note that although Aquinas clearly
allows for a direct intellectual acquaintance with essences, he tends not to apply the
language of “experience” (experientia, experiri) to such cognition; this terminology in his
writings tends to be associated more narrowly with cognition of singular objects.
²⁴ SCG 3.41 [Leon. 14.102:4–7].
²⁵ He describes the intelligible species as “that by which” one cognizes, not “that
which” one cognizes, though the interpretation of this phrase remains controversial.
its resulting likeness in the eye.” In the latter case, “the likeness is not taken
immediately from the cognized thing, but from something else from which
it results, as when we see a man in a mirror.”²⁶ The distinction here is
between an intellectual likeness produced by x itself, and a likeness produced
by something else, from which we draw inferences about x. So I would argue
that a likeness is x’s own, in the sense required for experiential access, only
when x itself is the cause of the likeness.
Another way that Aquinas formulates the criterion for intellectual vision
of x, I think, amounts to the same thing. In his commentary on the
Sentences, in laying out the requirements for intellectual vision of God, he
stipulates that the likeness whereby x is understood must have the “same
specific ratio” as x:
In order for sight to cognize white, it must receive the likeness of white according to
the specific ratio [of white], although not in the same mode of being. For the form
has one mode of being in sense, and another in the extramental thing. But if the form
of yellow were in the eye, it would not be said to see white. And similarly, in order for
the intellect to understand some quiddity, there must come to be in it a likeness with
the same specific ratio (ejusdem rationis secundum speciem), even if the mode of being
is not the same.²⁷
The Scholastic term ratio is notoriously untranslatable, but here “same
specific ratio,” contrasted as it is with “different mode of being,” arguably
means something along the lines of determination to a kind. The point is
that in order to “see” x intellectually, one needs a likeness whose determin-
acy is the same as that of x. To access experientially an essence that is
determinately—if one might excuse the awkwardness—“rhinocereic,” the
knower must be formed with a determinately “rhinocereic” likeness or
intelligible species. But whence does the likeness acquire this determinacy?
There cannot be more in the effect than there is in the cause: The
“rhinocereic” determinacy of the likeness can be brought about only by a
²⁶ ST Ia.56.3 [Leon. 5.67]. Elsewhere Aquinas says that intellectual vision occurs
when the object’s form “offers itself” to the intellect, again suggesting a causal relationship
(Sent. 3.24.1.4, qc. 3 exp.).
²⁷ Sent. 4.49.2.1 [Parma 7.1198]. Note that here Aquinas sets up this criterion as
necessary for all understanding of essences (“ad hoc quod intellectus intelligat aliquam
quidditatem, oportet . . . ”)—not because he thinks that experiential access is required for
any intellectual cognition, but because in this context, discussing the beatific vision, he is
only interested in the kind of intellectual activity that would count as intellectual vision
(for intelligere defined in terms of vision, see Sent. 1.3.4.5). See also Quodl. 7.1.1 [Leon.
25/1.8:106–11], stating the requirement that “when something is immediately seen by its
species, that species must represent the thing according to the complete being of its
species; otherwise the thing itself is not said to be seen, but only, as it were, its shadow”; as
well as Sent. 3.23.1.2; SCG 3.49; ST Ia.56.3.
determinately “rhinocereic” agent.²⁸ In this way, the “same specific ratio”

criterion seems to amount to the same as the “by its own likeness” criterion.
To summarize, then, Aquinas defends a causal criterion for experiential
access of extramental x’s:
I intellectually experience x-ness if and only if I cognize x-ness by an intellectual
likeness that is directly caused by x.
This criterion is linked to a broader principle that is the foundation of
Aquinas’s theory of causation: “Every agent makes its patient like itself.” To
be an agent just is to impart one’s likeness to something else. In fact, as it
now appears, Aquinas also holds the stronger position that an x-likeness,
properly speaking, can only be caused by an x-agent. Only a rhinoceros
(acting through our sense and imagination²⁹) has the causal power to make
our intellect rhinoceros-like. In contrast, if a pig is what I actually experi-
ence, then the likeness or intelligible species that results in my intellect is a
pig-likeness. This pig-likeness makes my intellect indirectly like rhinoceri
only to the extent to which pigs and rhinoceri are themselves alike, and to that
extent I can indirectly cognize ‘rhinoceros’ through ‘pig’ (more on this in a
moment). For Aquinas, then, indirect access to x is possible only because
essences themselves have real commonalities amongst each other, such that x
can be cognized from an experience of some y that is like x.
b. How Access Affects Conceptualizing

Now two people who both have the same kind of access to x may nonetheless
conceptualize x quite differently—in other words, the content of their
concept of x may vary considerably. (I use “conceptual content” here to
refer to whatever the knower in question understands to be true of x and
might subsequently express in statements about x; e.g., for ‘rhinoceros’ the
content might be ‘horned,’ ‘thick skinned,’ ‘bulky shaped,’ ‘grey,’ etc.)
While Aquinas does not provide a taxonomy of possible variations in
conceptual content, one can identify in his writings at least three different
ways in which conceptual content can vary.
First, conceptual content can be positive or negative. For Aquinas,
conceptual content need not always be expressible in some positive assertion
²⁸ See, e.g., DV 10.6, ad 7.

²⁹ Note that Aquinas apparently does not consider the intermediacy of sense and
imagination as having any bearing on whether the likeness is “x’s own” or not. And notice
too that the indispensable role of imagination entails, for him, that any “malforming” of
the intellect’s assimilation to external objects is traceable to the imagination; see, e.g., Sent.
2.39.2.2, ad 4; ST Ia.17.2, ad 2.
about rhinoceri. A concept can also be usefully enriched by negations that

fix its boundaries: My concept ‘rhinoceros’ improves when I learn that they
are not a type of pig, or that they do not live in herds. Nevertheless, my
concept needs to have at least some positive content in order for me to be
able to formulate a definition of rhinoceri: On Aquinas’s view, a definition
must say positively what distinguishes this kind from other kinds in the
same genus.³⁰
Second, conceptual content ranges along a spectrum from poor to rich,
which has to do with how complete my knowledge is.³¹ The zoologist’s
concept ‘rhinoceros’ is very rich in comparison to my relatively impover-
ished concept. The more I experience and study rhinoceri, the richer my
conceptual content is—that is, the more my concept ‘rhinoceros’ “fills out,”
and hence the more I have to say about rhinoceri.
Third, conceptual content ranges along a spectrum from vague to distinct
(i.e., more generic to more specific), which has to do with how far my
categorization of the essence falls from the gold standard of the Aristotelian
definition.³² For instance, to grasp a rhinoceros in terms of a more specific
genus, e.g., mammal, is better (more distinct) than grasping it in a higher
genus, e.g., living thing. My knowledge is at its most distinct when I can
define rhinocerity, which requires placing it correctly in its most proximate
genus, and identifying the specific difference that distinguishes it from
everything else in that genus. Distinctness, however, is more than merely
the precision with which a concept picks out the essence. A definition not
only locates the essence within the space of reality, but also provides a unified
explanation of the distinctive features of entities that have this essence.³³
(For instance, in the classical definition of ‘human’ as ‘rational animal,’
‘rational’ is supposed to explain other uniquely human properties, such as
‘risible,’ ‘political,’ ‘artistic,’ etc.)
³⁰ See SCG 3.39.

³¹ I take it that Aquinas’s references to “comprehension” (comprehensio) refer to
knowledge that is as rich as it can be, i.e., in which nothing of x’s reality remains unknown
to the knower. See for instance Sent. 2.11.2.6, expos., which gives two reasons for failures
in cognition, i.e., something in the object remains hidden to the knower, and/or the
knower is defective relative to the object and hence “fails to comprehend it”; and Sent.
3.14.1.2.1, ad 2, where comprehension is equated with “seeing totally,” such that nothing
that is actually visible in the object escapes vision.
³² See InPhys 1.1; InMeteor 1.1; ST Ia.85.3.
³³ See InMeta 7.3, n. 1325 [Marietti 329]: “Something’s definitive ratio (if there is
one) does not signify whatever the name signifies, as when I say ‘someone who bears
weapons,’ which signifies the same as ‘weapons-bearer.’ Otherwise, all rationes would be
terms, that is definitions”; a similar remark appears in InMeta 7.4, n. 1339, and InPostAn
2.8, n. 6. On the relationship of the nature to its per se accidents, see DV 1.3 and InMeta
6.3, no. 29.
With all of this in mind, how does lack of experiential access to x affect
conceptualization of x? Significantly, Aquinas holds that all our conceptual
content comes from experience. So if I have not experientially accessed x,
the content of my concept ‘x’ is taken from my experiences of other objects.³⁴
Suppose, for instance, that Jane has never encountered a rhinoceros, but has
seen its tracks and heard eyewitnesses describe it by comparing it to more
familiar animals. The content of her concept ‘rhinoceros,’ then, is drawn from
what she has experienced, e.g.: ‘An animal like an enormous grey pig with very
thick skin and a horn on its nose, which moves on all fours and leaves tracks
of such and such shape.’ Notice that the likenesses on which Jane relies for
conceptualizing ‘rhinoceros’ are not rhinoceros-likenesses, but likenesses of
various proxies such as pigs or deer.
How well can this concept—a pastiche of borrowed likenesses—
assimilate Jane to real rhinocereity? The answer, in any given case, depends
on the extent to which the relevant intermediary objects have something in
common with rhinoceri. The less rhinoceri have in common with the objects
of her experience, the poorer and vaguer Jane’s concept ‘rhinoceros’ is.³⁵
Comparing rhinoceri to rocks (“a kind of grey, pointy rock that moves by
itself”) is less informative than comparing them to pigs. In contrast, an
accumulation of borrowed content, refined by negations that further narrow
down the conceptual “space” that rhinoceri occupy (“doesn’t fly, doesn’t
swim”), can be very effective in approximating an essence. The power—and
limitations—of a concept acquired through comparisons can be illustrated
by two depictions of rhinoceri that were drawn on the basis of testimony
alone, without any experience of the real thing: namely, Albrecht Dürer’s
astonishing woodcut (Fig. 1), and a medieval drawing of the so-called
“monoceros” (Fig. 2).³⁶
In Jane’s case, Aquinas can allow that she does know vaguely “something
of” the essence ‘rhinoceros’: namely, its genus ‘animal,’ with which she is
³⁴ SBDT 1.1.2, ad 5 [Leon. 50.85:183–6]: “When something is not cognized by its

own form but rather by its effect, the form of the effect takes the place of the form of the
thing itself”; and Sent. 3.23.1.2.
³⁵ See Sent. 4.49.2.1, cited at note 27.
³⁶ “They give the name monocerus to an animal that is composed from many animals.
It has a terrifying bellow, the body of a horse, the feet of an elephant, a pig’s tail, the head
of a deer, and in the middle of its forehead it bears a horn which is beautiful for its
wondrous splendor. The horn is four feet long and is so sharp that it easily pierces
everything it strikes with one blow. The animal is almost never able to be tamed and
hardly ever comes into the power of men while still alive, for seeing itself beaten, it kills
itself in a rage.” Albertus Magnus, On Animals: A Medieval Summa Zoologica, trans.
K. F. Kitchell, Jr. and I. M. Resnick (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999),
vol. 2, bk. 22, p. 1521, line 119.
Figure 1 Albrecht Dürer, ‘The Rhinoceros’, 1515

Rosenwald Collection, National Gallery of Art.
Figure 2 Anonymous illustration in Jacob van Maerlant, Der Naturen Bloeme, c.1350
Koninklijke Bibliotheek, KB, KA 16, Folio 71r.
directly acquainted from experiences of other animals, such as pigs.³⁷

Nevertheless, Jane’s concept has a key deficiency: According to Aquinas,
what is proper to rhinoceri as such—what he calls the ratio speciei, the
determinacy of the species—necessarily eludes Jane as long as she lacks
experience of rhinoceri. In other words, borrowed conceptual content can
enable her to approximate conceptually what is proper to rhinoceri as such.
But it cannot substitute for the content provided by an “intellectual vision”
of ‘rhinoceros.’ The reason is precisely what we saw earlier: She lacks
experience of ‘rhinoceros,’ i.e., her intellect has not been causally affected
by a rhinoceros. The intelligible likeness whereby she knows ‘rhinoceros,’
then, cannot be determinately rhinocereic, since it was not produced by the
causal activity of a rhinoceros through sense and imagination.³⁸
Now Aquinas does not say what the lack of the “determinacy of the
species” (ratio speciei) implies for Jane’s conceptual content. At least it seems
to be the case that she is ignorant of the specific difference of ‘rhinoceros,’
and hence will not be able to conceptualize ‘rhinoceros’ distinctly, in terms
of its proper definition.³⁹ But it seems to me that the deficiency that Aquinas
is describing goes beyond a mere inability to articulate a proper definition.
On his view, I think, what Jane lacks is not only a piece of information about
part of the definition of ‘rhinoceros,’ but more broadly a familiarity with the
uniquely rhinocereic way in which common mammalian physical structures
and behaviors are instantiated in rhinoceri.⁴⁰ For instance, Jane certainly
understands something of rhinocereity when she understands that rhinoceri
³⁷ InPostAn 2.7, n. 6 [Leon. 1*2.199:139–47]: “Someone who cognizes that something

exists must cognize that by something that belongs to the thing: either something beyond its
essence, or something of its essence,” giving the example of cognizing thunder as “some
sound in the clouds, which pertains to the essence of thunder but is not the whole essence”;
and Sent. 4.49.2.1 [Parma 7.1198], saying that it is possible to grasp “the same ratio of the
genus (eamdem rationem generis)” without intellectually seeing the essence.
³⁸ Sent. 3.14.1.2, ad qc. 1 makes this point clearly [Moos 3.445–6 n.79]: “If something
exceeds the intellectual likeness whereby that thing is understood, the intellect does not
achieve seeing the essence of that thing. For as was said, the intellect is determined to the
cognized thing by that likeness. For instance, if the intelligible species represents human
insofar as it is sensible and not insofar as it is rational, then the essence of human is not seen;
for when something has been taken away from the essence of a thing, the essence of
something other remains”; see also Sent. 4.49.2.1, and SCG 3.39.
³⁹ This seems clear from the example given in Sent. 3.14.1.2, ad qc. 1, in the
previous note.
⁴⁰ One reason to think that this is Aquinas’s view has to do with his metaphysics of
essence. For instance, in explaining how the definition ‘rational animal’ maps onto this
human being Socrates, he insists that there is not some part of Socrates that is ‘animal’ and
another part that is ‘rational.’ Although the parts of the definition are “taken from” parts
of Socrates, i.e., reason (as something distinctive) and other vital powers (common to
Socrates and other animals), humanity in Socrates is not composed of two natures,
animality and rationality. Rather, the humanity that Socrates instantiated is just one—and
have a distinctive gait. But lacking experience of rhinocereity, no matter how

carefully she qualifies the comparisons—‘with a gait like that of a pig, but
slower and heavier’—her concept can only approximate, never replicate, the
unique character of this specific kind of gait. She has, so to speak, used a
multiplicity of comparisons to construct a many-sided hole into which this
round peg does fit, but not snugly.
Jane’s concept ‘rhinoceros’ is deficient, then, in that it fails to reflect the
distinctively rhinocereic way of being an animal. In contrast, a rhino observer
experiences the multifarious ways that rhinoceri express their nature in
their distinctive physical structures and behaviors, and hence can concep-
tualize ‘rhinoceros’ in terms of what is proper specifically to this animal
species, without having to borrow content from concepts of other animals.
I will call this sort of conceptualizing “proper conceptualizing.” Experien-
tial access is necessary for proper conceptualizing. And I take proper
conceptualizing to be necessary, but not sufficient, for defining x. (So it
may be the case that a long-term rhino observer, despite having great
experiential familiarity with uniquely rhinocereic features and behaviors,
never manages to find the right way to articulate the essence in terms of a
genus and specific difference.)
In sum: Lacking experiential access to ‘rhinoceros,’ Jane, our armchair
zoologist, can know “something” (vaguely) of the essence ‘rhinoceros’ and
its characteristic properties, by what it has in common with the entities she
does experience. By adding qualifications to these common features, she
may even develop a much richer and more precise concept ‘rhinoceros’ than
the uninformed zoo visitor. But without acquiring experience of rhinoceri
themselves, she cannot properly conceptualize the rhinocereic way in which
these common features are instantiated, and hence also will not be able to
formulate a definition of ‘rhinoceros.’
c. Are the Senses My Intellect’s Gatekeepers?

Now that we understand how Aquinas construes the relationship between
access and conceptualizing, we can understand more clearly what exactly
the Sense-Gatekeeper view would commit him to. From cases like Jane’s,
in which lack of sense-experience leads to conceptual inadequacies, the
Sense-Gatekeeper view extracts (a) a universal limitation on what the
embodied human intellect can access: namely, sensory experience is
the parts of the definition, ‘rational’ and ‘animal,’ are predicated of Socrates as a whole qua
human: see esp. InMeta 7, lect. 9, and the references in note 84.
necessary for intellectual experience; and hence (b) a corresponding restric-

tion on conceptualizing: namely, conceptual content is limited to what is
provided by sense-experience (“Nothing is in the intellect that is not first in
the senses”).
What are the implications for human knowledge of incorporeal entities?
The picture is a grim one. Precisely because they are incorporeal, such entities
are experientially inaccessible to us, since they have no color, smell, etc. with
which to act upon the senses. If we cannot have sense-experience of
incorporeal entities, then neither can our intellect be affected by them so
as to access them experientially. And hence when we do think about them,
our conceptual content must be drawn from sense-experience, i.e., we must
compare them to the corporeal essences that we have experienced. But the
essences of corporeal objects “fall short in every way of representing [angelic]
quiddities, because separate substances and material things do not have
quiddity in the same mode at all.”⁴¹ So any comparison between incorporeal
entities and the corporeal entities we do access directly would be eminently
uninformative. On this picture, at best we can merely reason that some
entities exist that do not have any of the properties familiar to us from
corporeal quiddities. This grim portrait appears to be confirmed above all by
InDA 3.5, quoted above in the introduction: “Everything that transcends
these sensibles known to us are only cognized by us by negation, just as we
cognize concerning separate substances that they are immaterial and incor-
poreal and so on.”
Nevertheless, this portrait hangs on two assumptions, which I will
attempt to dislodge, one at a time, in the upcoming sections. The first is
that the intellect’s scope for experiential access is restricted to what can be
experienced by the senses. The second is that when Aquinas speaks
pessimistically about our knowing “incorporeal entities,” he is speaking
about everything non-bodily. To the contrary: In section 2, we will see that
Aquinas thinks that we not only experientially access, but also properly
conceptualize, some incorporeal entity—namely, our own intellectual souls.
And in section 3, we will see that his pessimistic remarks about knowledge of
incorporeal entities refer specifically to intelligences that are ontologically
“above” our intellects (i.e., angels), which stymie our conceptual abilities
qua ontologically superior, and not qua incorporeal, regardless of whether we
access them experientially or not. In working out the details, we will be able
to see why despite such pessimistic formulations, Aquinas allows himself
considerable license to theorize about these sorts of intelligences.
⁴¹ DV 18.5, ad 6 [Leon. 22/2.547:254–548:261]; see also Sent. 4.49.2.1; SCG 3.41.

2 . S E L F - A W A R E N ES S A N D O U R C O N C E P T O F
T H E IN CO R P O R E A L
a. Accessing the Incorporeal Intellect

It may seem strange to call on Aquinas’s account of self-awareness as a key
witness against his commitment to a Sense-Gatekeeper view, for the argu-
mentation has usually gone the other way. For centuries, a steady stream of
interpreters have appealed to Aquinas’s alleged commitment to a Sense-
Gatekeeper view as evidence that he holds a theory of purely indirect self-
knowledge: Only sensible things can be objects of experience; so since the
human intellect is immaterial, it cannot experience itself. In the late thir-
teenth century, Aquinas’s Franciscan critics are already attributing to him
just such a view.⁴² (The view itself predates Aquinas’s arrival in Paris: In a
work from the mid-1240s, Roger Bacon considers and rejects an argument
that appeals to the Sense-Gatekeeper view against the possibility of any
human self-knowledge;⁴³ Aquinas likewise rejects a similar argument a few
years later in his Sentences commentary.⁴⁴)
The same pessimism concerning what we can know about the human
soul was widespread in early neo-Scholastic interpretations of Aquinas.
Boedder’s classic 1899 textbook went so far as to define the human soul
as “a being that subsists in itself, lacking three dimensions (ens in se subsistens
carens trina dimensione).”⁴⁵ This approach reflects perfectly the implications
of the Sense-Gatekeeper view, described in the previous section: If our own
soul is experientially inaccessible to us, and we can only reason to its
existence from its sensible effects, then we can conceptualize it only in
terms of content taken from experience of objects that are totally unlike it,
i.e., corporeal, sensible objects.⁴⁶
⁴² See, e.g., Robert Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2002), 335, and, for the historical background, F.-X. Putallaz, La
connaissance de soi au XIIIe siècle: De Matthieu d’Aquasparta à Thierry de Freiberg (Paris:
Vrin, 1991).
⁴³ See Roger Bacon, Questiones supra Librum de causis, ed. Robert Steele (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1935), 79, ll. 8–17.
⁴⁴ See note 14.
⁴⁵ Bernard Boedder, Psychologia rationalis, 2nd edn. (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder,
1899), 174.
⁴⁶ This line of thought is explicitly defended in Marie-Dominique Roland-Gosselin’s
review of Blaise Romeyer, “Notre science de l’esprit humain d’après S. Thomas d’Aquin,”
Archives de philosophie 1/1 (1923), 32–55, in Bulletin thomiste 1/4 (1924), 113–15, and also
in his review of Blaise Romeyer’s “Saint Thomas et notre connaissance de l’esprit humain,”
Archives de philosophie 6/2 (1928), 137–250, in Bulletin thomiste 6/2 (1929), 469–74.
In the 1920s, however, two French thinkers, Blaise Romeyer and Ambroise
Gardeil, independently observed that since Aquinas considers the study of the
human soul to be a “science” (scientia), he cannot have been so pessimistic
about our knowledge of it. In an Aristotelian framework, a science of the soul
would require defining the soul’s essence, which in turn assumes a proper
concept of the soul and hence experiential access to it.⁴⁷ Although their
proposal was crushed by an avalanche of criticism, it seems to me that their
reading of Aquinas (even if considerably flawed in other respects) was in this
respect correct.⁴⁸
In fact, I have elsewhere argued at length that Aquinas construes self-
awareness as a genuine self-experiencing : When the intellect receives the
likeness of an extramental thing and is actually performing an act of
understanding, it becomes manifest to itself, experiencing itself “in its
acts.” Experiential self-awareness is consistent with Aquinas’s claim that
“the beginning of all our intellectual knowledge lies in sensation,” because
the soul experiences itself only when it is activated in understanding—an
activation that in this life always presupposes sensation.
On my view, then, the embodied human intellect in Aquinas does have
experiential access to something incorporeal: itself (when it is actually under-
standing something). I will not rehearse the evidence for this interpretation
of Aquinas’s theory of self-awareness again here.⁴⁹ Instead, taking it for
granted, I want to explore its implications for the questions at hand
concerning the scope of the human intellect’s conceptualizing.
b. Conceptualizing the Incorporeal? A Misconception

In the case of Jane and the rhinoceros in section 1, experiential access to x
yields a proper concept of x. Nevertheless, given Aquinas’s pessimistic
remarks about our knowledge of incorporeal substances, it is tempting to
⁴⁷ Blaise Romeyer, “Notre science de l’esprit humain d’après saint Thomas d’Aquin,”
Archives de philosophie 1/1 (1923), 32–55; “La doctrine de Saint Thomas sur la vérité,”
Archives de philosophie 3/2 (1925), 1–54; “Saint Thomas et notre connaissance de l’esprit
humain,” Archives de philosophie 6/2 (1928), 137–250; “À propos de S. Thomas et notre
connaissance de l’esprit humain,” Revue de philosophie 36 (1929), 551–73; Ambroise
Gardeil, “La perception expérimentale de l’âme par elle-même d’après Saint Thomas,” in
Mélanges Thomistes (Le Saulchoir: Kain, 1923), 219–36; “L’habitation de Dieu en nous,
et la structure interne de l’âme,” Revue thomiste 28 (1923), 238–60; La structure de l’âme et
l’expérience mystique, 2nd edn., 2 vols (Paris: J. Gabalda, 1927); “Examen de conscience,”
Revue thomiste 33 (1928), 156–80; “À propos d’un cahier du R. P. Romeyer,” Revue
thomiste n.s. 12 (1929), 520–32.
⁴⁸ For a new look at Gardeil, see Camille de Belloy, Connaissance de soi et connaissance
de Dieu selon Thomas d’Aquin: l’herméneutique d’Ambroise Gardeil (Paris: Vrin, 2014).
⁴⁹ See Cory, Aquinas on Human Self-Knowledge, esp. chs. 3–4.
think that the case of self-awareness is different: We experience something

incorporeal without being able to conceptualize it properly. This proposal
secured some measure of consensus in the early twentieth-century debate,
with both sides agreeing that for Aquinas, the embodied human knower can
cognize something that happens to be incorporeal, but not incorporeality itself.
As one polemicist, Peillaube, wrote in an entertaining display of the era’s
elegant acrimony: “Experience of the spirit, of spiritual realities? Yes.
Experience of the spiritual? No. And let us repeat: If some privileged
individual possesses such an exceptional experience, we beseech him to tell
us in positive terms what it is to be spiritual.”⁵⁰
Peillaube’s challenge disguises a crucial misconception about incorpor-
eality, which has severely hampered efforts to clarify Aquinas’s approach to
our intellect’s epistemic scope. The misconception only comes to light when
one further inquires: How exactly ought one to make sense of the claim
“I experience something incorporeal, but am incapable of conceptualizing
incorporeality” within the framework of Aquinas’s cognition theory? It is
not enough simply to make a distinction, if it does not line up meaningfully
with anything in Aquinas’s own system.
Given the relationship between access and conceptualizing discussed in
section 1b, there are two possible ways of accounting for the claim under
consideration. The first possible thesis is that although I experience my own
intellect in the act of thinking, the incorporeality of my intellect falls outside
the scope of my experience (and for that reason is not properly conceptu-
alized). The second possible thesis is that I do experience my intellect’s
incorporeality, but am unable to conceptualize it properly, because this kind
of being lies beyond the scope of my own intellect.⁵¹
A closer look at the first thesis shows why the very idea of a proper
concept of ‘incorporeality’ is misleading. Let us consider what it would
mean to say that I experience my intellect but not its incorporeality. The
assertion evokes familiar cases, in which someone experiences some x that
has some property P, but never experiences x as having P. For instance,
suppose Jane has seen birds, but never seen a bird hatching from an egg: She
has experienced a thing that has hatched from an egg, but not its hatching—
so she has no proper concept of ‘hatching.’ Similarly, the claim above might
be interpreted as meaning that I experience my intellect, which happens to
⁵⁰ Émile Peillaube, “Avons-nous l’expérience du spirituel” (in two parts) Revue de

philosophie 36 (1929), 245–67, 660–86; here 262 (my translation); see also 662–4.
Responding to Peillaube, Romeyer accepts the distinction, in “À propos de S. Thomas
et notre connaissance de l’esprit humain.”
⁵¹ Peillaube seems to suggest both at different points (“Avons-nous l’expérience,”
263–4).
have the property of incorporeality, without experiencing (and hence properly

conceptualizing) that property itself.
But now that things are put this way, the fundamental misconception is
abruptly laid bare. As a negative term, incorporeality is not some real
property or kind of being that we have failed to observe and that hence remains
hidden to us, like ‘human’ or ‘prickly’ or ‘three-dimensionally extended.’
Rather, the term ‘in-corporeal’ merely serves to differentiate its referent from
corporeal being, as when we say that a worm is ‘non-rational.’⁵² A worm’s
non-rationality is not some kind of actuality or being that could be the
object of experience or that could be conceptualized in positive terms. What
there is to experience and conceptualize in positive terms is the worm and its
various cognitive states and behaviors. After studying the worm, one can
infer that it is not rational. In doing so, one is not positing some ungrasped
or ungraspable worm-reality, but merely classifying the worm’s kind of
cognition, distinguishing it from rational cognitions. It would be absurd
to draw sweeping claims about the scope of the human intellect, or the
inherent transcendent mysteriousness of non-rationality, or the knowability
of worms, from the mere fact that it is impossible to observe a worm’s non-
rationality.
Similarly, the reason that I cannot conceptualize incorporeality in positive
terms is not that I am missing some conceptual content that would enable
me to conceptualize incorporeality properly. Rather, it is that there is
nothing positive to be said about incorporeality as such—not even for an
intellect much more powerful than ours—because incorporeality is not
some actuality in itself. What there is to experience and conceptualize and
discuss in positive terms is ‘intellectuality’, with its various positive features
which justify the claim that intellects are not corporeal (just as there is
nothing positive to be said about a scalene triangle’s inequality, except to cite
the triangle’s positive features such as the measurements of the sides, which
justify the claim that the triangle is not equal). The procedure that Aquinas
follows in discussing the nature and incorporeality of the human soul reflects
these constraints. For him, the human soul’s “specific difference”—its posi-
tive, distinctive feature—is intellectuality.⁵³ And it is on the basis of the soul’s
intellectuality that he argues that it is not corporeal. “Whence Aristotle . . .
demonstrates from the act of understanding the nature of the possible
intellect—namely, that it is unmixed [with matter] and incorruptible.”⁵⁴
⁵² On negative terms, see Sent. 1.13.1.4; 1.24.1.3, ad 1.

⁵³ See ST Ia.76.3, ad 4; and for discussion, Cory, Aquinas on Human Self-Knowledge,
ch. 7.
⁵⁴ SCG 3.46 [Leon. 14.123]; see also DV 10.8.
In short: It is a mistake to draw any conclusions for the scope of our

conceptualizing from the fact that we cannot properly conceptualize incor-
poreality in positive terms. The real question is whether we can properly
conceptualize “the kind of being that is not corporeal”—namely, intellec-
tual being. What there is positively to say about the kind of being that is
incorporeal concerns its intellectuality. Or to put it another way, the only
positive, proper content that could ever be supplied for the concept
‘incorporeal’ is precisely ‘intellectual’ and other content having to do
with intellectuality.
c. Conceptualizing a Kind of Being that is Not Corporeal

So in evaluating whether the usual link between access and conceptualizing
is disrupted in the case of self-awareness, let us reformulate the two possible
theses considered above, in terms of intellectuality rather than incorporeal-
ity. Could Aquinas hold either (1) that we experience something intellectual
without experiencing intellectuality; or (2) that we do experience intellec-
tuality, but it remains beyond our powers to conceptualize?
Rephrased this way, the first thesis is clearly incompatible with Aquinas’s
remarks about self-awareness. On his view, self-awareness occurs precisely
in encountering oneself as understanding, i.e., exercising intellectuality:
“No one perceives herself to be understanding except from understanding
something: for understanding is prior to understanding oneself to be under-
standing; and therefore the soul manages actually to perceive itself existing,
by that which it understands or senses.”⁵⁵ On this construal, to be self-aware
just is to experience one’s own actualized intellectuality (which is not to
say that one distinctly and definitively understands what intellectuality is).
So our own intellectuality cannot be something that escapes the scope of
our experience.
The second thesis (denying that we can properly conceptualize our own
intellectuality) is incompatible with Aquinas’s remarks about defining the
intellectual soul. As we saw in section 1b, definitions imply proper and
positive conceptual content. So on his view, if we can define the intellectual
soul, then we can also properly and positively conceptualize it. Now in fact,
Aquinas explicitly states that we can define the nature of our own souls.⁵⁶
Definitive knowledge of “what the soul is” (quid sit anima),⁵⁷ even reaching
⁵⁵ DV 10.8 [Leon. 22/2.321:229–34]; and see also ST Ia.88.2, ad 3, cited in note 60.
⁵⁶ See ST Ia.76.3, ad 4.
⁵⁷ DV 10.8 describes how the “human mind is defined by specific or generic cogni-
tion” [Leon. 22/2.322.247.49], and how “one knows scientifically (scitur) what the soul is
and what its per se accidents are” [Leon. 22/2.321]; see also SCG 3.46 and ST Ia.87.1.
the status of “science of the soul” (scientia de anima),⁵⁸ is one of the two
main kinds of self-knowledge that he attributes to us in our embodied state.
He sharply contrasts our ability to define the human soul with our inability
to define higher incorporeal substances, e.g., angels: “The angel cannot be
properly defined. For we do not know what the angel is, but can only get
hints of it through various negations and indications. But the soul is defined
as the form of the body.”⁵⁹ Since Aquinas thinks we can define the intellectual
soul, then he must accept that we can conceptualize our own intellectuality
properly, on its own terms, without having to rely on conceptual content
borrowed from experiences of corporeal essences.
Moreover, Aquinas insists repeatedly that our own intellectuality does not
exceed our own cognitive abilities: “The human soul understands itself by its
understanding, which is its proper act, perfectly demonstrating its power
and nature.” (He immediately adds, however, that this self-understanding
does not enable us to cognize angels “perfectly,” whose power and nature are
disproportionate to the power and nature we experience in ourselves—more
on this in section 3.)⁶⁰ Again, in DV 10.8, an objector worries that self-
awareness would require the intellect to “inform itself,” resulting in an
absurdity: The intellect-as-known would be simpler than (and therefore
not ontologically proportionate to) the intellect-as-knower, per impossibile
since they are in reality one and the same thing. In his response, Aquinas
explains why his account of self-awareness does not make the intellect be
simpler than itself, essentially agreeing that it would be absurd to posit a
disproportion between the intellect itself qua “known” and the intellect’s
intellective abilities qua knower.⁶¹ And in responding to another objection
in the same article, he describes the human intellect’s self-knowledge as an
“intellectual vision,” while asserting the broader principle that there can be
no intellectual vision unless the knower and known are proportionate to
each other.⁶² On his view, then, it appears that our own intellectuality does
not fall outside our own powers of conceptualization.
⁵⁸ DV 10.8, ad 8 s.c. [Leon. 22.2/325:521–4]: “The science of the soul is most certain,
because each one, within himself, experiences himself to have a soul and experiences acts
of the soul to inhere in himself”; see also InDA 1.1.
⁵⁹ QDDA 7, ad 16 [Leon. 24/1.62:470–4].
⁶⁰ ST Ia.88.2, ad 3 [Leon. 5.367]; and Sent. 3.23.1.2, ad 2, stressing the proportion-
ality of knower and known in our self-knowledge but not in our knowledge of angels, in
response to objections 1–2, which claim that since the soul cannot know angelic essences,
it also cannot know what is present in its own soul. In contrast, on the neo-Scholastic view
expressed by Peillaube, “while our soul is substantially united to a body, it is not currently
proportioned to grasp itself in its own spirituality” (“Avons-nous l’expérience,” 263,
translation mine).
⁶¹ DV 10.8, arg. 16 and ad 16. ⁶² DM 16.8, ad 2.
Aquinas’s doctrine of self-awareness, then, provides the crucial counter-

example to the Sense-Gatekeeper view. The activated human intellect experi-
ences something that is not corporeal (itself), and this experience provides
content for conceptualizing the incorporeal soul on its own terms: content that
is not and could not be acquired via sensation, though its acquisition is
dependent on the intellect’s actualization by corporeal quiddities. There is,
in fact, “something in the intellect”—the content of our concept ‘intellectuality,’
taken from the intellect’s self-experiencing—that was not “first in the senses.”
In other words, while sensation is a precondition for the acquisition of this
conceptual content, that content was not originally the content of sense-
experience.
And thus to grasp ‘intellectuality,’ in short, is precisely to conceptualize a
non-corporeal kind of being as it is in itself. Incorporeality is not, for
Aquinas, a kind of mystery-being that surpasses and dazzles our embodied
intellects. No intellect, no matter how powerful, could form a positive
concept of incorporeality, because there is no positive characteristic in a
thing that is its “incorporeality.” What there is positively to know in an
incorporeal entity is merely intellectuality. And that is something we experi-
ence, and for which we have a positive and proper concept.
Of course, that does not mean that self-awareness is sufficient for the
human soul to intuit everything there is to know about itself (including that
it is not corporeal), any more than a few rhinoceros sightings would make
Jane an expert. For Aquinas, it is always the case that we first know things
indistinctly and then refine our knowledge through further experience
and reasoning.⁶³ Similarly, self-awareness only generates a very indistinct
and impoverished concept of our own intellectual, incorporeal being. But
because we thereby conceptualize that intellectual, incorporeal being prop-
erly, on its own terms (instead of cobbling together content from experiences
of other entities), the door is open to the possibility of defining this kind of
being much later, after much strenuous reasoning,⁶⁴ and recognizing that it
cannot fall into the same genus as corporeal being.
3. H U M AN S A N D T H E I N C O R P O R E AL “ ABO V E ”
a. Central Intelligence Puzzles

From what we have just seen, then, it is clear that when Aquinas remarks
pessimistically on what we know of “immaterial substances” that “transcend
⁶³ ST Ia.85.5. ⁶⁴ DV 10.8, ad 8 s.c.

sensibles,” he is not referring to the knowledge we have of our own incorporeal

soul. Instead, I argue, he is referring to our knowledge of a kind of incorporeal
substance, namely, the “separate substances” that are ontologically superior to
the human soul, i.e., angels and God. (In fact, in giving examples of “imma-
terial substances” that can be known only by negation, he never includes the
embodied human soul.⁶⁵)
These “higher” incorporeal entities are incorporeal in the sense that they
are ontologically complete without matter—unlike the human soul, which
despite being incorporeal in the sense that its existence does not depend on
being materially instantiated, nonetheless is by nature a hylomorphic form
and hence remains ontologically incomplete without material instantiation.⁶⁶
Aquinas explicitly links their ontological superiority with the epistemic chal-
lenges they pose to us: It is because they are “higher intelligibles,” “existing
above the human soul,” that the owlish eyes of our intellect cannot bear
them.⁶⁷ Hence, not only are we incapable of defining their essences⁶⁸—but
we even fail to know anything of their essences.⁶⁹ Indeed, “we do not cognize
them except by negation.”⁷⁰
Clearly, we are at a serious epistemic disadvantage in approaching such
entities. But why? And what exactly is the disadvantage? In uncovering how
the human intellect is situated vis-à-vis incorporeal realities, it is our last
remaining task to determine how, exactly, we are epistemically situated
relative to these “higher” entities—more specifically, the angels that Aquinas
identifies with the subsistent intelligences of “the philosophers.”⁷¹
⁶⁵ See for instance SCG 3.41–5, QDDA 16, QDSC 10, ad 7. In ST, the discussion of
how we cognize “immaterial substances” in Ia, q. 88, is set under the heading of “how the
human soul cognizes that which is above itself, namely, immaterial substances,” and
comes after the discussion of self-knowledge in Ia, q. 87.
⁶⁶ ST Ia.75.7, ad 3.
⁶⁷ Aquinas discusses the owl analogy at length in commenting on its source in InMeta
2.1, nos. 282–6; and takes it up also in Sent. I.17.1.4; DV 8.3, ad 5; SCG 3.45; QDSC
10, ad 7; ST Ia.88, proem., etc.
⁶⁸ The attention he devotes to establishing this thesis seems excessive unless one is
familiar with the historical background: One of the views that entered the thirteenth-
century Parisian academy with the Arabic-to-Latin translation movement was the view
that ultimate human beatitude consists in the contemplation of separate intelligences
other than God, and that this contemplation is achievable exclusively by philosophical
means (see Sent. IV.49.2.1 for his summaries of the various arguments on offer). So
Aquinas’s denial that we can experientially grasp angelic quiddities is charged with
implications about key topics such as human teleology and its completion by grace.
⁶⁹ See note 92. ⁷⁰ See note 5.
⁷¹ For an evaluation of the philosophical argumentation in Aquinas for the existence of
such finite self-subsisting intelligences, see Gregory Doolan, “Aquinas on the Demon-
strability of Angels,” in Hoffmann (ed.), A Companion to Angels in Medieval Philosophy,
13–44.
At first, it looks as though the obstacle to our grasping angelic essences is

simply that we have no experiential access to angels.⁷² As we saw in section 1a,
experiential access to some extramental x implies x’s action on the intellect.
And, for Aquinas, all natural causal action on our intellects in this life comes
through the senses and imagination. He insists that even when angels act
upon us, they do so by causing changes in our senses or imaginations.⁷³ So if
angels do not act on embodied intellects, we cannot properly conceptualize
them, nor define their essences.
But lack of experience cannot be the whole story—in fact, Aquinas’s
position on what and how we can conceptualize concerning angels is much
more complicated. One clue is that for Aquinas, even when the disembodied
human soul finally experiences angels in the afterlife, it remains at a cognitive
disadvantage because of its lower ontological status: “The mode of the
substance of a separate soul is below the mode of an angelic substance,
though it conforms to the mode of other separate souls. And therefore it
perfectly cognizes other separate souls, but cognizes angels imperfectly and
deficiently.”⁷⁴
Another, even more important, clue is that Aquinas is much more
pessimistic about our embodied knowledge of angels than he ought to be,
if the difficulty were merely a lack of experience. Our character Jane, lacking
experience of rhinoceri, can still grasp “something of” their essence when she
conceptualizes them positively as ‘animals,’ which they have in common
with the pigs she does experience. So one might expect that our own self-
knowledge should provide a positive reference point for conceptualizing
“something of” an angelic essence that our souls have in common with
them, e.g., intellectuality. Even if we cannot grasp the specifically angelic
way of being intellectual, surely we should be able to conceptualize
“something of” angelic essences positively by comparison with human
souls, insofar as both have a generic intellectuality in common, as some
scholars have suggested.⁷⁵
Now Aquinas was in fact familiar with just such a line of reasoning from
Augustine: “Just as the mind gathers knowledge of corporeal things through
⁷² Thus Aquinas denies in ST III.30.3, ad 1 that we “intellectually see” them in this

life; see also the intuitus mentis in Sent. 1.2.1.5, expos.; SCG 3.45’s repetition of videre;
and the use of percipere in SBDT, Prooem. A number of other reasons that he gives for our
difficulties in knowing angels also amount to a denial of experiential access: e.g., that
angels fall outside the proper object of our embodied intellects (Sent. 4.49.2.1); that
angelic substances do not act on the senses (ST Ia.88.1); that angels, being already
intelligible by nature, cannot be made intelligible by our agent intellect (DV 18.5).
⁷³ See ST Ia, q. 111, and DM 16.12. ⁷⁴ ST Ia.89.2 [Leon 5.375].
⁷⁵ See, e.g., Pasnau and Shields, The Philosophy of Aquinas, 66; Galluzzo, “Aquinas on
the Genus and Differentia,” 344.
the senses of the body, so [it gathers knowledge] of incorporeal things through
its own self.”⁷⁶ And curiously, when Aquinas discusses this Augustinian
argument, his portrait of our knowledge of angels looks considerably more
optimistic. On the one hand, he insists that knowledge of our own intellec-
tuality does not enable us to define angelic quiddities (the same, of course, is
true of any case where the knower has no experiential access of the quiddity to
be defined), “for the act of understanding, whence we derive our scientific
knowledge of our soul’s quiddity, is far removed from the intelligence of a
separate substance.”⁷⁷ On the other hand, he agrees that our self-knowledge
does play an important role in our conceptualizing of angels. We could not
even grasp angels as intellects at all, “if our soul did not cognize, from its own
self, what intellectual being is.”⁷⁸ It is even the case that “by what we know of
our soul’s quiddity, we can arrive at scientific knowledge of some remote
genus of separate substances.”⁷⁹ In one of the most optimistic formulations,
from ST Ia.88.1, ad 1, he goes so far as to say that Augustine is right, “to the
extent that, as the philosophers also say, the science of the soul is a certain
principle for cognizing separate substances. For by cognizing itself, our soul
achieves a certain cognition of incorporeal substances, to the extent that it is
able, though not so as to cognize them simply and perfectly by cognizing
itself.”⁸⁰ In these passages, Aquinas seems to allow that, due to what we have
in common with them, we can conceptualize angels vaguely and in positive
terms—which seems strangely inconsistent with his much more pessimistic
claim that we cannot know anything of their quiddities and cognize them
only by negation.
So Aquinas’s treatment of our knowledge of “higher” incorporeal entities
poses three puzzles for us to solve. First, what is the status of our concepts of
these higher intelligences? Second, what explains the alarming looseness in
Aquinas’s optimistic and pessimistic descriptions? Third, given that even in
his most optimistic moments, he insists that we cannot know what is
distinctive of angelic intelligence in this life, how can he justify his extensive
treatments of their substance, mode of operation, willing, etc.? (Indeed, he
even seems to push his position to the point of incoherence by invoking
these detailed treatments in order to explain why we cannot know anything
about angelic quiddities!)
⁷⁶ Augustine, De Trinitate 9.3.3 [Mountain, 296], cited by Aquinas specifically in

connection with knowing angels in SCG 3.46 and ST Ia, 88.1, arg. 1; see also ST Ia.88.2,
arg. 3 and QDDA 16, arg. 8.
⁷⁷ SCG 3.46 [Leon. 14.123]; see also ST Ia.88.1, ad 1.
⁷⁸ InDA 1.1 [Leon. 45/1.5–6:118–22]; SCG 3.46; ST Ia.88.1, ad 1.
⁷⁹ SCG 3.46 [Leon. 14.123]. ⁸⁰ ST Ia.88.1, ad 1 [Leon. 5.365–6].
b. The Two Kinds of Genus–Species Relationships

The key to all three puzzles lies in Aquinas’s distinction between composite
and simple quiddities, which he associates with two different ways of
differentiating species within a genus.
The quiddities of material substances, Aquinas explains, are composite,
i.e., composed of a genus and a specifying difference, which are related to
each other as indetermined to determiner, or material to formal. “In material
things, that which determines [that thing] to a specific grade, namely form,
is other than what is determined, namely matter: whence the genus is
taken from the latter, and the difference is taken from the former.”⁸¹ (The
‘matter’ and ‘form’ here are not the prime matter and substantial form
that constitute the physical substance, but rather genus and specifying
difference—e.g., ‘animal’ and ‘rational’—which are two formalities with
a material-to-formal-type relationship inasmuch as one formality is ren-
dered determinate by the other. Nevertheless, only the quiddities of
material substances are composed in this way, for reasons that cannot be
discussed here.⁸²)
The crucial point here is that in composed quiddities such as ‘rhinoceros,’
the genus and specifying difference represent two distinct formalities: ‘animal’
and a specifying difference that can be labeled ‘DiffR.’ (Although I properly
conceptualize ‘rhinoceros,’ I cannot define it!) One of those formalities, the
genus ‘animal,’ is something that ‘rhinoceros’ and ‘pig’ have in common,
meaning that rhinoceri and pigs are animals equally and to exactly the same
extent. What distinguishes rhinoceri and pigs is not anything in their
animality as such, but rather the addition to their animality of formal
determinations (DiffR and DiffP) that exclude each other.⁸³ To put it
another way, ‘rhinoceros’ has more formality or actuality than ‘animal,’
and this formality over and above that of ‘animal’ is contributed by DiffR,
which makes animality determinately “rhinocereic.”⁸⁴
In contrast, Aquinas holds that quiddities that have no relation to matter,
i.e., those of angelic intelligences, are simple. Their determinacy is not
⁸¹ ST Ia.50.2, ad 1 [Leon. 5.6].

⁸² For further discussion, see Galluzzo, “Aquinas on the Genus and Differentia,”
345–50.
⁸³ QDDA 7, ad 18.
⁸⁴ As Aquinas explains, however, the composition of genus and difference should not
be construed as corresponding to two distinct and composed natures in the thing. Rather,
a rhinoceros has one nature, ‘rhinoceros,’ which is a determination of animality; see SCG
2.95; InMeta 7.9; and for discussion, Galluzzo, “Aquinas on the Genus and Differentia,”
345–50—but see also note 91.
attributable to the composition of undetermined + determiner.⁸⁵ “In

immaterial things, that which determines is not other than that which is
determined. Rather, each one according to itself holds a specific grade
among beings. And therefore, among such beings, genus and difference are
taken, not from what is other and other (aliud et aliud), but from what is one
and the same, differing only in our consideration.”⁸⁶ “According to metaphys-
ics and natural [science], which considers what is real, genus and difference
must be grounded on diverse natures. And in this way we can say that there is
no genus and difference for spiritual substance, but only forms and simple
species.”⁸⁷ We cannot help treating angelic quiddities as though genus and
difference were distinct formalities in them (we will see in a moment why, and
what implications there are for our conceptualizing them). But in reality, an
angelic quiddity is “determinate by itself, nor does it have to have two parts, a
determining and a determined.”⁸⁸
What differentiates angelic species, in short, is their determinate intensity
of perfection within the genus ‘intellect’: An angelic species is “higher” in the
genus to the extent to which its native intellectuality is “more perfect” than
others. To put it another way, each angelic quiddity is a discrete, utterly
simple, and wholly unique intellectual quantum.⁸⁹ One angelic species, say,
‘Gabrielity,’ does not have a kind of being that another, say, ‘Michaelity,’
lacks. All angelic species have the same kind of being, i.e., intellectuality—
nothing more and nothing less. ‘Michaelity’ and ‘Gabrielity’ are distin-
guished only insofar as ‘Michaelity’ represents a more perfect and simple
actualization of the same kind of formality that Gabriel has. Aquinas explains
these degrees of perfection as degrees of intellectual actuality: namely,
increasingly superior intelligences are increasingly virtuosic in their under-
standing, understanding more of reality in an increasingly simple intuition,
“needing fewer forms [i.e., intelligible species] to complete them.”⁹⁰ (The
⁸⁵ Angels themselves are not absolutely simple: Aquinas posits in them the composition of
essence and existence, potency and act, distinguishing them from God, who is not so
composed (see, e.g., ST Ia.50.2, ad 3). It is worth noting, too, that each angel has a unique
quiddity, i.e., each angelic quiddity is instantiated once, since for Aquinas, matter is necessary
for multiplication of individuals within a species; ST Ia.50.4; QDSC 8, ad 4; SLDC 9.
⁸⁶ ST Ia.50.2, ad 1 [Leon. 5.6]; see also SCG 2.95.
⁸⁷ QDDA 7, ad 17 [Leon. 24/1.62:476–82]. ⁸⁸ SCG 2.95 [Leon. 13.568].
⁸⁹ QDDA 7, ad 6 [Leon. 24/1.61:383–92] emphasizes that the gradation of angelic
perfection is not a gradation in terms of “participating a form in different ways, as wood
participates in white,” but rather a gradation of “perfection of forms.” The point, I take it,
is that Aquinas prefers to say that one angel is more perfect in its intellectuality than
another, rather than that one angel is more an intellect (“more” a member of the genus
intellect) than another.
⁹⁰ QDDA 7 [Leon. 24/1.60:304–8]; see also Sent 2.3.1.3; QDDA 7, resp and ad 5;
SCG 2.95–6.
human intellectual soul also has a place on this spectrum, which we will
discuss in section 3c.)
Now the crucial idea here emerging is that species-differentiation happens
differently within the two main genera of ‘substance.’ In the genus of ‘body,’
species-differentiation is “horizontal/additive.” The determinacy of each
species implies formality over and above that of the host genus. Thus each
species is constituted as a determinate kind of being by a specifying differ-
ence added to a genus. By contrast, in the genus ‘intellect,’ species-
differentiation is “vertical/quantitative.” The determinacy of each intellec-
tual species is not attributable to any formality over and above ‘intellectual,’
but consists merely in having that intellectuality to a unique degree of
perfection.
The upshot is that intellectual (incorporeal) quiddities are related to the
genus ‘intellect’ differently than corporeal quiddities are related to their
genera, such as ‘animal’ or more remotely ‘body.’ The composite quiddities
‘rhinoceros’ and ‘pig’ are animal in the same way but distinguished by their
specifying differences, which are contrary formalities. So they are differen-
tiated in that they are different kinds of animals, not in that one represents a
“higher degree of animal perfection” than the other. In contrast, the simple
angelic quiddities ‘Michaelity’ and ‘Gabrielity’ are distinct in that intellec-
tuality in one is more perfect (more comprehensively actualized) than in the
other, not in that their intellectuality is additionally determined by contrary
formalities.⁹¹
⁹¹ My interpretation of Aquinas on this point is significantly different from that of

Galluzzo, who is puzzled by why Aquinas distinguishes material vs. incorporeal quiddities
as composed vs. simple, when genus and difference even in material quiddities never map
onto a real composition of natures in the corresponding material substances (see note 84,
and Galluzzo, “Aquinas on the Genus and Differentia,” 354). As a solution, Galluzzo
proposes that for both material and incorporeal quiddities, genus and difference never
correspond to a real composition of natures in the relevant substances, but they always
correspond to a real composition of some sort—a matter–form composition for material
quiddities, and an essence–existence composition for incorporeal quiddities (355–8). On
his reading, then, angelic quiddities are (like material quiddities) composed of genus and
difference, a composition that corresponds to the composition of existence and essence in
angels (358). I cannot see how this reading can be reconciled, however, with the explicit
contrast that Aquinas draws between angelic and material quiddities precisely with respect
to whether their genus and difference are really or only rationally distinct, e.g., in QDDA 7,
ad 17 and ST Ia.50.2, ad 1 (Galluzzo’s attempt at reconciliation in 353 does not account
for the contrast being drawn in precisely that way). Without getting into too much detail,
I think Galluzzo’s interpretation misses the point of Aquinas’s insistence that differenti-
ation among material species is “founded upon diverse natures” whereas differentiation
among intellects is founded “upon one nature” (QDDA 7, ad 17, cited at note 108).
I agree with Galluzzo that the “diverse natures” in question are not ‘animality’ and
‘rationality,’ but I am not convinced by his suggestion that instead they are matter and
form. Rather, as I read Aquinas, the “diverse natures” are, e.g., ‘rhinoceros’ and ‘pig,’ each
Now what is interesting for our purposes is the conclusion that Aquinas
draws for our conceptualizing of composite vs. simple quiddities. A compos-
ite quiddity, he explains, can be known partially (vaguely), whereas a single
quiddity must be known wholly or not at all. In other words, composite
quiddities can be conceptualized vaguely when we grasp one of the parts of
the quiddity. And hence even if Jane lacks a proper concept of ‘rhinoceros,’
she is still able to properly conceptualize “something of” its quiddity when she
conceptualizes it as ‘some kind of animal,’ drawing the conceptual content of
‘animal’ from her experiences of other kinds of animals.⁹² This part of the
quiddity ‘rhinoceros’ is one that it shares in common with ‘pig’: rhinoceri and
pigs are equally and in the same sense animals. Consequently, Jane can
prescind from the determining formality of ‘pig’ to arrive at the indeterminate
formality ‘animal,’ and apply this conceptual content ‘animal’ to rhinoceri
without needing to make any further qualification. The experience that
enables her to conceptualize properly the animality of ‘pig’ is sufficient to
enable her to conceptualize properly the animality of ‘rhinoceros.’ And hence
she properly conceptualizes some part of the quiddity ‘rhinoceros’ without
properly conceptualizing ‘rhinoceros’ (since she has no experience of
rhinoceri).⁹³
of which is in itself one nature, and diverse from the other. Their diversity consists in the
fact that the kind of being that rhinoceri have is not found in pigs (‘pig’ and ‘rhinoceros’ are
opposed); and yet they have a certain commonality, since both rhinocereity and pigness are
determinations of animality. This relationship between commonality and diversity is
expressed by a real distinction between genus and difference in their respective definitions.
In the case of angels, however, there is no kind of being in Gabriel that is not found in
Michael—the only real kind of being they have is ‘intellect.’ So there is no diversity
in their formalities that could ground a real distinction between genus and difference in
them.
⁹² InPostAn 2.7 [Leon. 1*/2.199:126–39], stating that one way of “knowing some-
thing without knowing perfectly what it is” is to know “something of the essence,” e.g.,
“comprehending that something is a human because it is rational, without cognizing
whatever else completes the essence”—which he denies is possible in knowing simple
quiddities; see also InMeta 9.11. Aquinas also relies on this distinction between simple
and composite quiddities in responding to an argument attributed to Ibn Bājjah (Avem-
pace) in Averroes’s Long Commentary on De anima, namely, that once one has abstracted
composite quiddities, one can simply continue abstracting the “quiddity of a quiddity”
and then the quiddity of that quiddity, until one arrives at a simple quiddity. But
repeating Averroes’s critique, Aquinas argues that simple quiddities are “in every way
dissimilar” to composite quiddities. So the proper concept of a simple quiddity cannot be
gotten by abstraction from a composite quiddity. See, e.g., Sent. 4.49.2.1; DV 18.5, ad 6;
SCG 3.41; and criticizing Aquinas’s misconstrual of Ibn Bājjah, see Wirmer, “Avem-
pace—ratio de quiditate.”
⁹³ In fact, Aquinas holds that conceptual vagueness always precedes conceptual dis-
tinctness even for entities that we do properly conceptualize; for details, see InPhys 1.1;
SBDT 6.3; ST Ia.85.3; InPostAn 2.7–8.
In contrast, the simple quiddities of angelic intelligences cannot be

conceptualized partially (i.e., vaguely) in this way. What distinguishes
‘Gabrielity’ from ‘Michaelity’ is a difference in degree of perfection, which
does not introduce into Gabriel any additional formality distinct from
intellectuality. There is no formal characteristic in ‘Gabrielity’ that could
be set aside to reveal some undetermined part common to all intellects.⁹⁴ As
a result, unlike in ‘rhinoceros,’ there is no generic part in an angelic essence
that could be properly conceptualized while leaving vague the specific
determination. So, Aquinas concludes, one either conceptualizes an angelic
essence wholly, or not at all: “One cannot cognize something of the
substance of a simple thing unless one cognizes the whole.”⁹⁵
How then would Aquinas analyze the statement, “At least I know that
these higher entities are intellectual, even if I don’t know what is distinctive
of these kinds of intellects”? In section 3d, we will investigate further. For
now it is merely enough to emphasize that, on his view, when we do
approach angels this way, something different is happening from when
Jane cognizes ‘rhinoceros’ as ‘animal.’ Before examining what the difference
is, however, we need to look more closely at where the human soul fits into
the genus ‘intellect.’
c. Situating the Human Intellect in the Scale of

Intellectual Perfection
Now according to Aquinas, human intellectual souls and angels are mem-
bers of the same metaphysical genus ‘intellect.’⁹⁶ So the human intellectual
soul has a place on the continuum of intellectual perfection—but a special
one. To use the analogy of the number line, angels occupy the degrees of
intellectual actuality “1, 2, 3 . . . ,” whereas the human soul occupies position
“0.” Or as Aquinas puts it: The human intellect is related to the genus just
“as prime matter” is related to the genus ‘body.’ It is a potency for intellec-
tual actuality, and becomes actualized only when it has received an intelli-
gible species and is thinking about something.⁹⁷
⁹⁴ See QDDA 6, ad 16 [Leon. 24/1.53:366–70], denying that “intelligibility is common

to many (convenit multis) in the manner of one form of a species distributed among many
according to a division of matter; rather, it is diversified according to a diversity of forms.”
⁹⁵ See the texts cited at note 92.
⁹⁶ Aquinas asserts this through his career; for one early example, see Sent. 3.13.2.2, ad
qc. 1. In contrast, physical things and angels only share a logical genus; see ST Ia.88.2,
ad 4. Metaphysical vs. logical genera are discussed in section 3d.
⁹⁷ E.g., Sent. 2.3.1.3; QDDA 6, ad 16 (speaking of a forma communis for both); QDDA
7; ST Ia.87.1. He attributes to Averroes the idea that there is something parallel to prime
matter in the intellectual genus.
What this means is that the only intellectual actuality that we have is
necessarily composed—i.e., composed of the “matter” of our intellectual
potency, and the “form” that is the intelligible species abstracted from
sensation. (Similarly, physical substances have actuality only as composed
of prime matter and substantial form.) All our intellectual actuality is
composed in this way and hence dependent on the reception of a form
abstracted from sense-experience. In contrast, an angel just is a simple
intellectual form. An angel, on Aquinas’s view, must use a received intelli-
gible species to cognize things other than itself, so its manner of cognizing
other things is composite. But in itself it has—or better is—a non-composed
intellectual actuality, whereas in itself the human soul merely has an intel-
lectual potency whose actualization is wholly dependent on the reception of
abstracted forms.⁹⁸
The composite and sense-dependent nature of our intellectual actuality
radically shapes how we understand: the kinds of intelligible species that we
use and how they represent essences, the vagueness of the concepts we
acquire from a first acquaintance with essences, the use of reasoning to
acquire more knowledge.⁹⁹ In his early texts Aquinas goes so far as to
characterize the human–angel difference in terms of a classical distinction
between “reason” and “intellect.”¹⁰⁰ And thus how we conceptualize
intellectuality—indeed, our very definition of intellectuality—is dependent
on our experience of being intellectual in an embodied way, with all the
partiality, discursivity, and dependence on sensation that this mode of
understanding entails.¹⁰¹ Nothing in my embodied and sense-oriented
experience of my own thinking conveys what the utterly simple thoughts
of separate intelligences are like. “The human soul understands itself by
its act of understanding, which is its proper act, perfectly demonstrating
its power and nature. But neither by this nor by anything else found in
material things can we perfectly cognize the power and nature of imma-
terial substances, because their powers are not adequated to something of
this sort.”¹⁰²
In placing human souls at position “0” (sheer potency for intellectual
actuality) in the genus ‘intellect,’ therefore, Aquinas seeks to achieve an
extremely delicate harmonization among three theses: (1) Humans are
authentically intellectual creatures; (2) Humans are not intellectual in the
⁹⁸ See, e.g., ST Ia.87.1.

⁹⁹ As extensively discussed in QDDA 17, ad 1; see also SCG 2.94.
¹⁰⁰ Sent. 2.9.1.4.
¹⁰¹ Sent. 1.3.4.3 [Mandonnet 1.118]: “In the definition of the act of understanding,
the phantasm must be included, which is its object.”
¹⁰² ST Ia.88.2, ad 3 [Leon. 5.367]; Sent. III.23.1.2, ad 2; ST Ia.88.2, s.c.
same way that angels are intellectual¹⁰³ (in order to exclude a substance-
dualist view of the soul as essentially a weak angel joined to a body);
(3) Intellectual essences are distinguished by degrees of perfection, not by
differentiating forms.
Re (1): The authenticity of our intellectual nature is secured by the fact
that we can be in the intellectual genus in any sense at all. Even at position
“0,” our souls occupy the same continuum that angels are on relative to each
other, and have a potency for acquiring an intellectual formality that angels
already naturally possess.
Re (2): At position “0,” human souls are distinguished from angels in a
different way than one angel is distinguished from another. “0” and “1”
represent potency and minimal actuality, whereas “1” and “2” represent
weaker and stronger actualities. The lower angel is merely less simple
(having less unified and universal knowledge) than a higher. But humans
understand in a different (composite) mode of intellect altogether.
Nevertheless, re (3): Although ‘simple’/‘composite,’ or ‘angelic’/‘human,’
or ‘embodied’/‘separate’ represent distinct modes of intellection, they do not
correspond to distinct formalities added to a common generic intellectuality.
Rather, they represent irreducibly distinct intellectual quiddities at distinct
degrees of perfection. Another way of saying this is that ‘composite’ does not
designate something over and above our intellectuality, in such a way that we
could set it aside in order to uncover a generic ‘intellectuality’ that angels
and humans have in common and that is essentially indifferent to further
specification.
d. Puzzle 1 Solved: Composite Intellects

Conceptualizing Simple Ones
The pieces are now all in place to solve our first puzzle: namely, what are
the precise limitations on our conceptualizing of incorporeal substances
“above” us?
Recall that since we have no experience of higher intelligences, we can
conceptualize their quiddities only improperly, by comparison either to
corporeal things or to our own intellectuality. Comparisons to corporeal
things are not informative at all, since one could say only that angelic
intelligences are not like bodies. Our only lifeline to conceptualizing angels
in positive terms comes through comparisons to our own intellectuality—
but these are problematic for a different reason. Although our intellects
differ “only” by degree from angelic intelligences, the difference between
¹⁰³ E.g., ST Ia.75.7, ad 3; QDDA 7.

those particular degrees is the difference between potency and act, resulting
in different modes of intellection. Consequently, we can apply to angels the
concept ‘intellectual’ acquired through self-awareness—but only if we neg-
ate the composite, sense-dependent, gradually actualized mode of intellec-
tion that we find in ourselves. “We tend to define simple things by negation:
e.g., ‘A point is that which has no parts.’ This is not because negation is part
of their essence, but because our intellect, which first apprehends compos-
ites, cannot arrive at a cognition of simples except by removing the com-
position.”¹⁰⁴ Hence, we cannot do without negation in conceptualizing
higher incorporeal entities, for Aquinas. Even when we describe their
quiddities or mode of intellection as ‘simple,’ we are effectively conceptual-
izing them as ‘intellects, but not ones whose activity involves composition.’
In knowing material quiddities, this reliance on negation would not be so
bad: It is after all how Jane knows something of the quiddity ‘rhinoceros,’
when she conceptualizes it as ‘a kind of animal, different from a pig.’ But in
negating the body-bound character of our knowing, a further deficiency
unavoidably occurs: We are forced to conceptualize the genus ‘intellect’
improperly as though it were the kind of genus divided by different and
opposed formalities rather than by degrees of perfection within a single
formality. In doing so, we treat ‘embodied, compositely-acting’ as though it
were a formality over and above intellectuality that is opposed to some
unknown corresponding formality in angels—and we treat intellectuality
as something indeterminately common that angels and humans have in the
same way. So when we say that angels are intellects, but deny that they
have the same mode of understanding as we do, Aquinas explains that we are
instituting a distinction of reason (setting up specific differences within
the genus ‘intellect’ as though to differentiate opposing kinds of being),
where in reality there is just one kind of being differentiated by degrees of
perfection. “[In immaterial substances, genus and difference] differ only in
our consideration. Insofar as our intellect considers [an immaterial quiddity]
as indeterminate, it takes on the account of a genus; but insofar as the
intellect considers it as determinate, it takes on the account of a difference.”¹⁰⁵
Consequently, we are worse off vis-à-vis those higher intelligences than
Jane is vis-à-vis rhinoceri when she conceptualizes them merely as ‘a sort of
animal, different from a pig.’ ‘Animal’ is something that is indeterminately
common to both pigs and rhinoceri in the same way, such that what
distinguishes them is their determinate form of animality. That is why,
despite not properly conceptualizing ‘rhinoceros,’ she can still properly
¹⁰⁴ ST Ia.10.1, ad 1 [Leon. 4.94]; see also Ia.85.8; DV 1.5, ad 15.

¹⁰⁵ ST Ia.50.2, ad 1 [Leon. 5.6]; see also SCG 2.95.
conceptualize “something of” it, i.e., its genus. In contrast, intellectuality is

not something angels have in the same way as we do. Hence, when we
negate the imperfections of our own understanding in order to conceptualize
them as generically ‘intellectual,’ we are not in fact properly conceptualizing
“something of” angelic quiddities. Instead, we are creating a conceptual
schema that lets us classify them by treating them in a composed way that
is foreign to their quiddities.¹⁰⁶
Notice that as long as our concept ‘intellectuality’ refers merely to a
certain kind of soul—what we experience in self-awareness—no such prob-
lem occurs. A problem emerges only when we prescind from our own mode
of intellection to construe ‘intellectuality’ as a genus that includes other
members higher than our own souls. We can only take this step by substi-
tuting what Aquinas calls a “logical genus” for a “metaphysical genus.” In
explaining how angels and human souls can be said to be different species of
intellects, he writes:
Genus and difference can be understood in two ways. In one way, according to a real
consideration by metaphysics and natural [science], and in this way, genus and
difference must be grounded on diverse natures. And in this way nothing stops us
from saying that there is no genus and difference for spiritual substance, but only
forms and simple species. In another way, according to a logical consideration; and in
this way genus and difference need not be founded on diverse natures, but on one
nature in which there is considered something proper and something common. And in
this way nothing stops us from positing genus and differences in spiritual substances.¹⁰⁷
[...]
When speaking naturally, the differences must be contraries . . . but in a logical
consideration any opposition of any sort will suffice for the differences, as occurs
in the differences of numbers, in which there is no contrariety. And something
similar holds true for spiritual substances.¹⁰⁸
The point is that although our intellects and angels belong to the same
metaphysical genus (as we saw earlier), in order to make sense of higher
incorporeal entities in our own way, we have to negate the limitations we
find in our own intellectuality, just as if human and angelic intellectuality
were diversified through opposed differences. In doing so, we adopt a
“logical consideration,” which is blind to the way in which different species
¹⁰⁶ In ST Ia.50.2 [Leon. 5.6], denying that intellectual distinctions always correspond
to real distinctions in things, Aquinas says that “because angelic substances are above our
intellect, it cannot achieve apprehending them as they are in themselves, but [only]
according to its own mode whereby it apprehends composite things.” See also ad 1,
quoted repeatedly above.
¹⁰⁷ QDDA 7, ad 17 [Leon. 24/1.62:475–89].
¹⁰⁸ QDDA 7, ad 18 [Leon. 24/1.62:490–8].
are opposed to each other within a given genus—or in other words, we

formulate the commonality between human and angelic intellects in terms
of the logical genus ‘intellectual.’ This logical consideration, broadly speak-
ing, effectively “flattens” the disproportion between the two kinds of genera
with their different kinds of divisions. (In fact, logical consideration is also,
for Aquinas, what we use when we treat core metaphysical notions such as
‘substance’ or ‘act’ as univocal across both the genera of ‘body’ and ‘intel-
lect.’)¹⁰⁹ This flattening move offers the advantage of a universal conceptual
schema that enables us to extend our concept ‘intellectual’ to higher incor-
poreal entities. The disadvantage is that this schematizing artificially treats
angelic quiddities as harboring the very complexity that differentiates our
intellects from them. But we have no choice but to accept this disadvantage
if we are to conceptualize them at all. And so we conceptualize these higher
intelligences not only improperly (as is the case whenever we do not know
something through its own likeness), but also incommensurately, in a manner
that does not “fit” their metaphysical stature.
To put it another way, in this embodied state of life, we have a proper
concept of the incorporeal entity that is our intellect, but not of ‘intellectu-
ality’ as a genus encompassing both composite and increasingly simple degrees
of perfection. Though our concept of the intellectual genus to which angels
belong is not false or misdirected, it is still incommensurate with the reality it
attempts to fit. And thus when a philosopher were to say that “at least I know
that such higher beings are intelligences, even if I do not know what their
intellectuality is like,” she is not really properly conceptualizing their higher
genus, but applying to them a logical schematic that mischaracterizes the way
in which an angelic species of intellectuality is opposed to ours, and to each
other. She has, so to speak, a 2D concept of a 3D reality.
It is important to note that this failure in proper conceptualization and
reliance on “logical consideration” is the result of attempting to conceptu-
alize angels by comparison to our own intellects, while lacking any experi-
ence of those higher intelligences. So this particular deficiency does not
persist in the afterlife, when, for Aquinas, the separated human soul does
experience and hence properly conceptualize angels. Even then, however, he
insists that the soul “imperfectly and deficiently” cognizes angels, because it
remains ontologically “lower” than them and must cognize them “in the
mode of its own substance.”¹¹⁰ He does not, however, speculate about what
¹⁰⁹ For discussion of metaphysical vs. logical genera and the relevant texts, see Gregory
Doolan, “Aquinas on Substance as a Metaphysical Genus,” in Doolan (ed.), The Science of
Being as Being: Metaphysical Investigations (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of
America Press, 2012), 99–128.
¹¹⁰ See ST Ia.89.2, cited at note 74.
this imperfection precisely entails; in any case, it is a moot point for our
conceptualizing of incorporeal entities in this life.
e. Puzzles 2 & 3 Solved

At this point, we can propose an answer to the second puzzle, namely: What
accounts for the curious mix of pessimism and optimism that Aquinas
displays in characterizing our knowledge of the incorporeal entities
above us?
First, I suggest that Aquinas’s pessimistic remarks about angels as know-
able to us only “by negation” can be understood as referring to the role of
negation in our conceptual approximation of these higher intelligences. On
this construal, the pessimism does not run quite as deep as it might have at
first seemed. As it turns out, Aquinas’s view is not that the only things we can
say about higher intelligences are negative. Rather, he holds that we cannot
include them under our concept ‘intellectual’ without negating the imperfections
of our own intellectual condition. (And of course anything we say about them
by comparison to bodies must be negative.) Negation is a starting point, but
importantly, any negation does leave us with a positive conceptual remain-
der, purging the discursivity and image-dependence in order to isolate the
intuitive, instantaneous aspects of understanding as we experience it (even
though, as it turns out, this “remainder” can only legitimately be applied to
angels through a “logical consideration”).
A second set of pessimistic remarks is likewise susceptible to a similarly
more moderate interpretation, in light of the previous section’s conclusions.
For instance, when Aquinas says that we “do not know something of
immaterial substances unless we know them wholly,”¹¹¹ I argue that he is
referring to the metaphysical genus of intellectuality, excluding the kind of
vague (but proper) conceptualizing of the genus that Jane has when she
grasps ‘rhinoceros’ as ‘animal.’ As seen above, in excluding our own imper-
fections from the concept ‘intellectuality,’ we smuggle an assumption of
composition back into the concept. The very attempt to escape our cogni-
tive limitations merely reintroduces the same limitations—so that any
concept of intellectuality we apply to higher incorporeal entities remains
necessarily inadequate to its object. In the present state, we are simply
incapable of conceptualizing intellectuality according to its own proper
mode of being, as something that exists at higher degrees of perfection.
(Even in writing those words, the composite structure of language itself
¹¹¹ See texts in note 92.

forces me to describe degrees of perfection as something positive added to a

generic intellectuality.)
But Aquinas certainly does not wish to exclude the legitimacy of approaching
‘intellectuality’ as a logical genus. In fact, the legitimacy of logical consid-
eration is precisely what he is granting, on my view, when he surprisingly
asserts that we can “arrive at knowing some remote genus of separate
substances.”¹¹² A logical consideration allows us to use distinctions of
reason to make sense of these higher realities according to our own
mode of understanding, “flattening” the different modes of diversification
whereby simple and composite quiddities are opposed. To put it another
way: While denying that we can conceptualize incorporeal quiddities even
vaguely as they are in themselves “in 3D,” Aquinas leaves room for our
conceptualizing them incommensurately “in 2D.”
This moderate pessimism about our knowledge of “higher intelligibles,”
therefore, leaves room for a kind of cautious optimism concerning the
possibility of an imperfect knowledge of angels, as when Aquinas writes
that “we cannot grasp angels perfectly on account of their excessive bright-
ness,”¹¹³ or that we “cannot understand them primarily and per se according
to the mode of cognition that we experience in ourselves.”¹¹⁴ The reason,
I think, is that despite being compelled to approach these higher intelli-
gences through a merely logical consideration, our souls really do share a
metaphysical genus with them. Our degree of intellectual perfection may be
the lowest degree possible—a potency actualized only in composition with
abstracted forms—but composite intellectuality constitutes a genuine
degree of intellectuality nonetheless. Through self-awareness, we have a
proper concept of a species of being within the same genus to which angels
also belong. It is precisely our own proper concept of incorporeal, intellectual
being that enables us to construct the logical genus ‘intellectual’ to extend to
angels. Without that proper concept, we would perhaps be able to reason to
the existence of something non-bodily, but we would have nothing positive
to say about it at all. Certainly, whatever we say positively about such
entities is said incommensurately with their real mode of being—
nevertheless, we do have something positive (if imperfect) to say about
them, drawing on the conceptual content acquired in self-awareness.
Hence “by knowing what the soul is, we arrive at knowing some remote
genus of separate substances.”
Against this background, the third puzzle practically solves itself: Given
Aquinas’s insistence that we cannot in this life know what is distinctive of
¹¹² SCG 3.46 [Leon. 14.123]. ¹¹³ SLDC, Prooem. [Saffrey 2:3–5].
¹¹⁴ ST Ia.88.1 [Leon. 5.365].
angelic intelligence, how can he justify his extensive treatises on angelic

modes of knowing and willing? In particular, do his arguments against their
conceivability not assume some prior knowledge of what they are?
The solution is that everything that Aquinas says positively about
angelic knowing is supposed to be derivable from the remainder that is
left after negating the features of our intellectuality that are specifically
bound to imagination, temporality, embodiment, composition, potency, etc.
His doctrine of angelic nature is thus the doctrine of what a non-imaginative,
non-embodied, non-composite, permanently actualized intellectuality might
be and how it might function, within a set of key constraints derived from
basic assumptions about the hierarchy of being and the fittingness of the order
of the universe that a good God creates.¹¹⁵ For instance, if reasoning presup-
poses a vague starting point, and angels do not conceptualize vaguely (since
Aquinas links vagueness with the use of universals abstracted from sense), then
one might conclude that angels do not reason. This negation leaves intuitive
understanding (intelligere) as its remainder, which is precisely what Aquinas
takes to be typical of angelic understanding. At the same time, that remainder
is still intuitive understanding conceived in the way in which we experience it
in ourselves, and attributed to angels as though it were something that we
share in common with angels. So anything that we say positively in this way
about higher incorporeal entities is true only within the framework of logical
consideration, and remains incommensurate with the reality of intuitive
understanding as expressed in angelic degrees of perfection.
Still, in denying that we can properly conceptualize angels, does Aquinas
presuppose some sort of unallowable concept of what angels are like in
themselves? I do not think so. Recall that for Aquinas, some terms that
originally appear to denote positive properties are actually analyzable as
negations: When a Neoplatonist philosopher says that a self-subsisting
intelligence is simple, the content of the term ‘simple’ is really just ‘not
composite.’¹¹⁶ And Aquinas holds, following Aristotle’s cue, that the
¹¹⁵ We can see these constraints operative in Aquinas’s characterization of how angels
know material things, for instance in ST Ia.57.1–2. Strictly speaking, the negating of
sense-dependence can only justify saying that angels do not know material things through
species abstracted from sense-experience, without providing any basis for determining
how angels do conceptualize material things (if at all). But by introducing the principle
that “what is contained in lower things deficiently and partially and in multiplicity, is
contained in higher things eminently and by a certain totality and simplicity” (Ia.57.1
[Leon. 5.69]), Aquinas can draw the further conclusion that angels do have a way of
accessing material realities, and (by combining this with his doctrine of God’s creative
knowledge) suggest a mechanism, i.e., they are imprinted with intelligible species reflect-
ing God’s creative knowledge of material realities.
¹¹⁶ See ST Ia.10.1, ad 1, cited at note 104.
inconceivability of angelic quiddities to us in this life is derivable from their

simplicity—which on his view follows¹¹⁷ from their complete non-
association with matter. Thus our inability to conceptualize angels properly
follows, ultimately, from the denial that they are embodied intellects.¹¹⁸
4 . C O N C LU S I O N
As we now see, it is not the case that for Aquinas “nothing is in the intellect
that was not first in the senses,” regardless of whether ‘in the senses’ is taken
in reference to experiential access or conceptual content or both. Rather, in
Aquinas’s more cautious wording, the senses are the “principle” or “origin”
of all our understanding. By “origin” he means more specifically that in this
life, the senses (through imagination with the help of the agent intellect) are
the activators of intellectual understanding—not that they are gatekeepers
that restrict the intellect to experiencing and properly conceptualizing
sensible objects alone. The senses, on Aquinas’s view, are the means whereby
extramental objects act on our intellects, causing in us “their own likenesses.”
These likenesses, or intelligible species, are what inform our intellectual
potencies, actualizing in us the composite and sense-dependent intellectual
actuality that is characteristic of embodied knowers. In this actualized state,
however, our embodied intellects experience themselves and acquire a proper
concept of the kind of being that is intellectual and incorporeal in just this
limited, composite, sense-dependent way. Through self-awareness, occasioned
by the senses, the scope of our intellects extends into the incorporeal—or to put
it in positive terms, the intellectual—realm.
Aquinas’s concerns about our ability to conceptualize incorporeal things
in this life, then, have to do with entities that are ontologically superior to
our intellects: i.e., simpler, more actualized, having no association with or
relation to or tendency toward matter at all. And the barrier to our concep-
tualizing them properly is not their inaccessibility to sense per se, but the
¹¹⁷ It follows for reasons that we cannot address here.

¹¹⁸ Interestingly, even the notion of degrees of perfection as a way of differentiating
species within a genus seems to be something that Aquinas thinks is conceptually
derivable from the order among material substances. Although the genus of material
substances is divided and subdivided by differences of form, these differences of form also
are organized according to degrees of perfection: e.g., broadly, elements, mixed bodies,
plant, and animals; a similar ordering is found even within the sub-genera (see QDDA 6).
So it seems that even the notion of the incorporeal genus as organized in terms of degrees
of perfection is reached as the “positive remainder” after negating contrariety of form
(which Aquinas associates with material composition) as a principle of differentiation
within a genus.
superiority of their degree of ontological perfection relative to our own. In

approaching them, we are failed by the strategies that we use to conceptu-
alize vaguely corporeal quiddities that we have never experienced, and which
persistently assume composition and contrariety of form. Thus, we suffer
from a persistent conceptual inadequacy when we attempt to extend to them
the concept of ‘intellectual’ derived from self-awareness: “When [our intel-
lect] understands simple things that are above itself, it understands them
according to its own mode, namely, in a composite way.”¹¹⁹ Even in the
afterlife, when we are supposed to be able to cognize angels experientially, so
that we no longer need to conceptualize them vaguely by a logical genus, we
still only “know them imperfectly and deficiently.”
On Aquinas’s account, then, what limits the scope of the embodied
intellect is not fundamentally the distinction between corporeal and incor-
poreal, sensible and non-sensible—but rather the distinction between com-
position and simplicity, between intellectual potency and simple intellectual
actuality, between what is equal to or below us as knowers and what is
ontologically “above.”¹²⁰
University of Notre Dame
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¹²⁰ I am grateful to the workshop participants at the Martin Center for Medieval
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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 20/6/2018, SPi

Is Anything in the Intellect that

Therese Scarpelli Cory

¹ Aquinas, SBDT 6.2 [Leon. 50.164:71–2]; see similar remarks in DV 12.3, ad 2; DV

Empiricism and Knowledge of the Incorporeal in Aquinas 101

⁵ InDA 3.5 [Leon. 45/1.227:183–92].

102 Therese Scarpelli Cory

scholarship, the senses have maintained their role as exclusive purveyors of

Empiricism and Knowledge of the Incorporeal in Aquinas 103

it is just that we cannot grasp them without reference to corporeal realities.¹¹

104 Therese Scarpelli Cory

Empiricism and Knowledge of the Incorporeal in Aquinas 105

how intellectual conceptualizing works in Aquinas, a topic that has received

¹⁷ Therese Cory, Aquinas on Human Self-Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University

106 Therese Scarpelli Cory

incorporeal, but because they are ontologically disproportionate to the kind of

In inquiring into the scope of our embodied intellects, it is useful to

Empiricism and Knowledge of the Incorporeal in Aquinas 107

108 Therese Scarpelli Cory

Empiricism and Knowledge of the Incorporeal in Aquinas 109

determinately “rhinocereic” agent.²⁸ In this way, the “same speciﬁc ratio”

b. How Access Affects Conceptualizing

²⁸ See, e.g., DV 10.6, ad 7.

110 Therese Scarpelli Cory

about rhinoceri. A concept can also be usefully enriched by negations that

³⁰ See SCG 3.39.

Empiricism and Knowledge of the Incorporeal in Aquinas 111

³⁴ SBDT 1.1.2, ad 5 [Leon. 50.85:183–6]: “When something is not cognized by its

112 Therese Scarpelli Cory

Figure 1 Albrecht Dürer, ‘The Rhinoceros’, 1515

Empiricism and Knowledge of the Incorporeal in Aquinas 113

directly acquainted from experiences of other animals, such as pigs.³⁷

³⁷ InPostAn 2.7, n. 6 [Leon. 1*2.199:139–47]: “Someone who cognizes that something

114 Therese Scarpelli Cory

have a distinctive gait. But lacking experience of rhinocereity, no matter how

c. Are the Senses My Intellect’s Gatekeepers?

Empiricism and Knowledge of the Incorporeal in Aquinas 115

necessary for intellectual experience; and hence (b) a corresponding restric-

⁴¹ DV 18.5, ad 6 [Leon. 22/2.547:254–548:261]; see also Sent. 4.49.2.1; SCG 3.41.

116 Therese Scarpelli Cory

a. Accessing the Incorporeal Intellect

Empiricism and Knowledge of the Incorporeal in Aquinas 117

b. Conceptualizing the Incorporeal? A Misconception

118 Therese Scarpelli Cory

think that the case of self-awareness is different: We experience something

⁵⁰ Émile Peillaube, “Avons-nous l’expérience du spirituel” (in two parts) Revue de

Empiricism and Knowledge of the Incorporeal in Aquinas 119

have the property of incorporeality, without experiencing (and hence properly

⁵² On negative terms, see Sent. 1.13.1.4; 1.24.1.3, ad 1.

120 Therese Scarpelli Cory

In short: It is a mistake to draw any conclusions for the scope of our

c. Conceptualizing a Kind of Being that is Not Corporeal

Empiricism and Knowledge of the Incorporeal in Aquinas 121

122 Therese Scarpelli Cory

Aquinas’s doctrine of self-awareness, then, provides the crucial counter-

a. Central Intelligence Puzzles

⁶³ ST Ia.85.5. ⁶⁴ DV 10.8, ad 8 s.c.

Empiricism and Knowledge of the Incorporeal in Aquinas 123

sensibles,” he is not referring to the knowledge we have of our own incorporeal

124 Therese Scarpelli Cory

At ﬁrst, it looks as though the obstacle to our grasping angelic essences is

⁷² Thus Aquinas denies in ST III.30.3, ad 1 that we “intellectually see” them in this

Empiricism and Knowledge of the Incorporeal in Aquinas 125