16. For a reconstruction of the process in semiotic terms, see Pellerey (1984).
17. “Intellectus possibilis intelligit hominem non secundum quod est HIC homo sed in quantum est HOMO simpliciter, secundum rationem speciei” (“The possible intellect understands man, not as THIS man, but simply as MAN, according to man’s specific nature”) (Contra gentiles II, 73).
18. “Singulare in rebus materialibus intellectus noster directe et primo cognoscere non potest. Cuius ratio est, quia principium singularitatis in rebus materialibus est material individualis, intellectus autem noster, sicut supra dictum est, intelligit abstrahendo speciem intelligibilem ab huiusmodi material. Quod autem a materia individuali abstrahitur, est universale. Unde intellectus noster directe non est cognoscitivus nisu universalium. Indirecte autem, et quasi per quandam reflexionem, potest cognoscere singulare, quia, sicut supra dictum est, etiam postquam species intelligibiles abstraxit, non potest secundum eas actu intelligere nisi convertendo se ad phantasmata, in quibus species intelligibiles intelligit, ut dicitur in III de anima. Sic igitur ipsum universale per speciem intelligibilem directe intelligit; indirecte autem singularia, quorum sunt phantasmata. Et hoc modo format hanc propositionem, Socrates est homo” (“Directly and immediately our intellect cannot know the singular in material realities. The reason is that the principle of singularity in material things is individual matter, and our intellect—as said before—understands by abstracting species from this sort of matter. But what is abstracted from individual matter is universal. Therefore our intellect has direct knowledge only of universals. Indirectly and by a quasi-reflection, on the other hand, the intellect can know the singular, because, as mentioned before, even after it has abstracted species it cannot actually understand by means of them except by a return to sense images in which it understands the species, as Aristotle says [in De anima III]. Therefore, in this sense, it is the universal that the intellect understands directly by means of the species, and singulars (represented in sense images) only indirectly. And it is in this way that it formulates the proposition, ‘Socrates is a man’ ”) (Summa Theologiae I, 86, 1 co.). “Species igitur rei, secundum quod est in phantasmatibus, non est intelligibilis actu.… Sicut nec species coloris est sensata in actu secundum quod est in lapide, sed solum secundum quod est in pupilla” (“Wherefore the species of a thing according as it is in the phantasms is not actually intelligible … even so neither is the species of color actually perceived according as it is in the stone, but only according as it is in the pupil) (Contra gentiles II, 59).
19. On this resolution of the contemplation of the concrete in the discursive act of judgment, which characterizes Thomistic epistemology and is important if we are to understand the type of aesthetic that derives from it, we dealt at length in chapter 7 of Eco (1956) (English translation Eco [1988]). In what follows we will have occasion to mention the article by Roland-Gosselin, “Peut-on parler d’intuition intellectuelle dans la philosophie thomiste?” In open polemic with Maritain’s positions, he concluded: “Sensation is an intuition of the sensible as such. Reflection, or psychological awareness, is an intuition of our acts, but determined primarily by their object. The other ‘views,’ more or less direct and immediate, that we have at our disposal do not attain the single reality. To reach concrete existence, that of things or the substantial existence of the ego, a detour or a discourse is called for.” [“La sensation est une intuition du sensible comme tel. La réflexion, ou conscience psychologique, est une intuition de nos actes, mais déterminée premièrement par leur objet. Les autres ‘vues’ plus ou moins directes et immédiates, dont nous disposons, n’atteignent pas la réalité singulière. Pour rejoindre l’existence concrète, celle des choses ou l’existence substantielle du moi, un détour, ou un discours s’impose à elles”] (Roland-Gosselin 1930: 730).
20. Only the external senses know individual things, but it is probably a metaphor to say that they know, because in fact they register and do not know themselves (Contra gentiles II, 66). On the limits of Thomistic epistemology, see also Mahoney (1982).
21. In Eco (1956) we stated that this reconsideration of the concrete object occurs for Thomas only in the act of judgment. We could hardly compel him to say more, but the fact remains that in this way too the enjoyment of the concrete always takes place at rarefied intellectual heights, where the thing is considered only through the reflexio on what is already a phantasm. Could Thomas have failed to recognize that the thing, even after having been known (and reduced it to a phantasm), could be reconsidered through an activity that brought the senses into play once more? Not that he could not rule out the possibility that, after perceiving a thing a first time, we might perceive it again other times. He probably considered this event as a second act of perception, no different from the first, and his theory of knowledge obviously had to define the act of perception in its basic dynamic, without worrying about how often a human being may accidentally happen to perceive something. Which would perhaps explain why he was not interested in the type of experience that modern aesthetic theories have chosen to call intuitive because it seemed too complex to consider it as part of a process beginning over and over again, made up of hypotheses, inferences, trial and error. To conceive of such an idea, he would have had to speak not only of the possibility of a reflexio ad phantasmata but also of a subsequent reflexio ad qualitates sensibiles. In other words, he would have had to understand the comprehension of an object, not as a simple act, a simplex apprehensio, but as a never-ending process. Concerned, however, with guaranteeing the truth of our every perceptive contact with reality, he does not go so far; indeed he could not go so far. If we were to go back and come to terms with sensible experience after having grasped the quidditas, as if we might have made a mistake, then the entire doctrine of the intellect would be in trouble.
22. See Summa Theologiae II–II, 45, 2. There are certain acts of virtue that we can judge and evaluate in the light of intellectual knowledge. But at the moment of acting, if the habitus is deeply rooted in us, the rule acts via a certain connaturality by which it is realized without our having a clear intellectual awareness. Knowledge by connaturality, if you like, but of a fixed rule, not the intuition of a hitherto unknown possibility of being. Sapientia is a gift of the Spirit, the connate ability to apply the right rule at the right moment. But sapentia presupposes the existence of fixed rules, plastically adaptable to contingent situations, but always in accord with a possibility that the intellect will subsequently be able to clarify. This is not the kind of knowledge that implies a reconstruction of the world along lines forever foreign to the intellect, understood by many of the Romantic and contemporary poets whom Maritain cites in support of his claims (from Novalis to Rimbaud and on to Char, Eluard, and John Crowe Ransom, etc.; see Maritain 1953: ch. 4).
23. It has been pointed out that the whole of Eckhart’s implied aesthetics consists in the depiction of a tension toward a goal that is never realized, an aspiration that never finds rest. It finds its typical expression in the disproportionate verticalities of the Rhine cathedrals, whereas Thomistic aesthetics reminds us of the more composed Italian Gothic in which beauty is measured on a more human scale, capable of being perceived and enjoyed without requiring a violent laceration of the imagination and the sensibility (cf. Assunto 1961).