Id Quo or Id Quod: The Early Albertus Magnus on the Function of the Intelligible Species

For those generally familiar with Aquinas’s thought, it is well known that St. Thomas, along with many of his contemporaries, adheres to a species-model of cognition, according to which an item called a species (sensible or intelligible) plays a central role in the mechanism of cognition. A species is supposed to play a sort of representational function (taking “representational” very broadly so as to remain neutral with respect to substantive accounts of representation, cf. Pasnau (1997: 16-18)) that enables the cognizing subject to have awareness of/access to information about extramental objects. But Aquinas famously denies that the species (focusing specifically here on the intelligible species) is the primary object of cognition, or “that which” (id quod) is cognized. Instead, the species is supposed to be “that by which” (id quo) an object is cognized, while the primary object or id quod of cognition is the object of which the species is a likeness (similitudo) or representation.

This distinction and the overall species-model would be controversial in thinkers following Aquinas (cf. Pasnau (1997) on this controversy. The same work also illustrates recent scholarly discussion on how exactly Aquinas’s distinction is to be interpreted). In my experience, the distinction is also much less explicit and prominent in St. Thomas’s teacher, Albertus Magnus. But here is one text in St. Albert’s early work De homine where he is clearly grappling with the issue:

“If we speak properly, the intelligible species is not the matter of consideration, about which (circa quam) the consideration is, but rather [the matter of consideration] is the thing, of which that species is, as also in sight the visible species is not the matter about which sight is, but rather the thing seen. But if this response doesn’t work, then it should be said that it is otherwise in motions of the soul and in motions of exterior bodies. For a body does not move itself, such that it is [both] mover and moved, and yet the intellect in considering is converted upon itself, such that it is [both] considering and considered, both mover and moved” (ed. colon., 433 lns.56-65).

This passage is a response to an objection arguing that the intelligible species cannot be an efficient cause of thought (or “consideration), because the intelligible is the “matter about which the consideration is,” and one and the same thing in the same activity cannot be both the matter and the efficient cause.

In response, St. Albert considers two possible routes to take. The first foreshadows Aquinas’s later distinction, although perhaps not as fully/explicitly developed yet. According to it, the intelligible species is not the “matter” of consideration, or that about which we think in consideration, since properly speaking the matter is the thing itself. In other words, when I think about dinosaurs, I’m not properly thinking about the intelligible species of dinosaurs in my intellect, I’m thinking about dinosaurs, the actual extramental animals. So, since the intelligible is not the matter, it can be an efficient cause. Even though the text does not use the language of quo est (although in the response to the next objection, Albert does seem to use it), it is clear that on this route, the intelligible species is supposed to play something along the lines of that function (Albert clarifies elsewhere in the same article what causal role precisely the intelligible plays — it is not fully correct to identify it with the efficient cause).

But St. Albert seems to be slightly uncertain about this route, at least as a response to the objection.. He follows it with the reservation “sed si non fiat vis in hoc” and adds a second option, according to which principles which apply to bodies might not apply to motions/activities in the soul. In particular, the soul in a certain respect can be both “mover and moved,” because the soul (apparently unlike bodies), can be “converted upon itself.” This is a technical phrase in medieval thought that can be tricky to parse out. We can glean a bit more by looking to what follows the above passage:

“And this happens not according to the same [respect], but since the intelligible species has a twofold consideration. For it is a species of the thing (species rei) and a species of the intellect (species intellectus). But it is a species of the thing, as into which it leads through this that it is the ratio and quiddity of the thing. But it is a species of the intellect as a form perfective of its potency, and so it can be in consideration mover and moved; mover as form of the intellect, but moved as it is form of the thing. And if it is objected that form and matter do not coincide in the same thing, it is to be said that this is true of the matter from which (ex qua) a thing is, but not of the matter about which a work (opus) is, because that is frequently the object of the work, which through the intention of its species moves the worker” (ed. colon. 433 ln.66 – 434 ln.8).

So the intellect in the activity of consideration can be both mover and moved, but not in the same respect, because the intelligible species has a “twofold consideration.” It is a species/form both of the intellect, and of the extramental object. As species/form of the intellect, it actualizes the potency of the intellect and hence is mover. But as species/form of the thing, it is moved by the thing (through the “intention of its species”).

It is not entirely clear how this second route differs from the first with respect to the status/function of the species. Once again, the matter circa quam seems to be identified with the extramental object; and, in fact, here the species seems to be even more explicitly granted a quo-est like function, as that which “leads into” the thing, and as that “through which” the object moves the worker (or, in this case, cognizer). The question is what work the “being converted upon itself” is doing in this second response. The idea almost seems to be that the intellect considers the intelligible species itself as its object, but since the species is the species of the external thing, it thereby becomes aware of the external thing as well. This model sounds much more Augustinian in character (I would not be surprised if there were thinkers in the vicinity of Albert espousing similar views, but I need to check further on that), but the details are not fully explicated in the present text.