Aquinas vs. Avicenna on the Habitual Intellect | Stephen Ogden

Avicenna (Ibn Sina) propounds an epistemology that is largely dependent on emanation from a single, separate, and eternal intellect, the Active Intellect (AI). Quite generally, he argues that the AI, which is fully actual, is necessary to move our merely potential intellects into actuality. Though I argue that he is closer to Thomas Aquinas than the latter thought, at least with respect to our first acquisition of intelligibles through abstraction, the two still disagree regarding previously known intelligibles: Avicenna denies that intelligibles can be stored in first actuality in the human intellect, while Aquinas affirms it. But Avicenna's reasons are quite faithfully Aristotelian, and it is difficult to see why and how Aquinas can oppose them.