Intentionality and agent intellect

Abstract

This paper shows that man obtains his intelligible species from sensible reality by the action of the agent intellect. It also shows that in judgment there is a passage from the species towards the thing, passage made possible by a spiritual contact which transcends the species and is known as ‘intellective intentionality’. This contact presupposes that the intellect informs the senes in perception. In this life, every ascension of the soul towards purely spiritual reality starts in sense knowledge. But such ascension is possible because our mind participates in eternal Truth. This is made manifest in the immateriality of our concepts and in the formation of our intellect’s natural principles.