Ordine, intelligenza e intelligibilità del cosmo nel De anima di Aristotele (III 4-5)

In my paper I will try to develop an analysis of three of the most important chapters of Aristotle’s De anima: the 4th, 5th and 6th chapters of the III book, where Aristotle offers his treatment of the topic of intellect (noûs). Without entering into the details of the history of the interpretation of this text, I will propose to identify the so called “passive intellect” with some distinctive features of the power of phantasìa or imagination, and the so called “productive intellect” with the surrounding cosmic environment, which, in virtue of its regularities, produces the ordered habitats which will act on the sensory power of the human being and which, in producing the sensory experiences of the human being, will make his/her mind grow from the status of passive intellect to the status of intellectus in habitu.