Medieval discussions of mental representation were constrained in essential ways by Thomas Aquinas' doctrine of intelligible species. Aquinas' view of a formal mediation of sensible reality in intellectual knowledge was not universally accepted. In particular, after his death, a long series of controversies developed about the necessity of intelligible species. (These were analyzed in the first volume of this study.) The first part of this book deals with Renaissance controversies, discussing Peripatetics, Neoplatonics, and a group of relatively independent authors. In the second part, developments of late Scholasticism, and the elimination of the intelligible species in modern non-Aristotelian philosophy are scrutinized. Particular attention is paid to the possible roots of the seventeenth-century theories of ideas in traditional philosophy.

This study examines the history of a fundamental problem in Aristotelian cognitive psychology, i.e. the nature and function of the mechanisms that provide the human mind with data concerning physical reality. Chapter I traces the Classical and Arabic prehistory of the Medieval doctrine of intelligible species. Scholastic discussions on formal mediation in intellective cognition were constrained in essential ways by Thomas. Chapter II analyzes his views on mental representation in the context of the reception of Peripatetic psychology in the West. The following chapters (III-V) examine the controversies about the necessity of intelligible species, from Aquinas' death to the 15th century. Another volume is planned, devoted to Renaissance discussions, developments of later Scholasticism, and the elimination of the intelligible species in modern non-Aristotelian philosophy.

(Peeters 1996)

entirety to contemporary readers." --Book Jacket.