Averroes on the Active Intellect as the Cause of Human Thought

Abstract Although he repeatedly revised his position on the active intellect’s role as a cause of sublunar existence, Averroes remained firm throughout his career regarding the active intellect’s nature. Like his predecessors among the Arabic Aristotelians, he consistently construed it as an incorporeal substance transcending the human soul; and he took for granted that it is the last link—or, in his Long Commentary on the De anima, which raises the material intellect to the status of the last of the eternal incorporeal substances, the penultimate link-in the hierarchy of incorporeal intelligences.