O estatuto da sensibilidade no processo de atualização intelectiva: a noção de materia causae

Abstract

This dissertation aims to expose how Thomas Aquinas qualifies the causal relationship between sensible knowledge, specifically ghosts, and the intellectual activity now expressed in the concept of materia causae. In the Summa Theologiae, question 84, article 6, Aquinas admits the concept of materia causae in opposition to the notion of total and perfect cause of intellectual knowledge as a way of safeguarding the maxim that a corporeal thing cannot act on an incorporeal thing. Thus, the relationship between phantoms and intellectual activity establishes a paradox when we consider the principle established by Aquinas. Therefore, to philosophically demonstrate that ghosts are the cause of intellectual knowledge, we will analyze Aquinas' comments to book V of Metaphysics by Aristotle, De Causis and De principiis naturae ad fratrem Sylvestrum, in order to understand how Aquinas conceives the notion of cause and its axioms. From the notion of instrumental agent treated in De Verit. q. 10, a. 6, add. 7 and, furthermore, from the elasticity that characterizes the notion of cause in the Corpus Thomisticum, is possible to affirm that ghosts are the cause of sensible knowledge, without contradicting the principle that limits the action of a corporeal thing on an incorporeal thing.