Rombeiro - Intelligible Species Mature Thought Henry of Ghent (Enrique de Gand)

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Journal of the History of Philosophy, Volume 49, Number 2, April 2011,
pp. 181-220 (Article)
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DOI: 10.1353/hph.2011.0063
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Intelligible Species in the Mature

Thought of Henry of Ghent
M i c h a e l E . R o m b e ir o *
there has been a renewed interest of late in the thought of Henry of Ghent.1
Scholars have recognized that Henry was an influential figure at the University of
Paris in the latethirteenth century and that his influence extended well past his
own generation. It is also widely acknowledged that Henrys thought developed
significantly over the span of his career.2 The critical edition of Henrys works
has proven to be crucial in assessing this development.3 Nonetheless there is
little consensus on the nature of the development, particularly with respect to
his theory of cognition. One reason for the diversity of opinions is that no single
trend can be identified in his doctrine as a whole; rather, distinct developments
can be traced in his metaphysics, his theory of truth and science, and his cognitive
psychology.4 Even within Henrys cognitive psychology there are distinct develop1
For a bibliography of works, translations, and studies, see Pasquale Porro, Bibliography, in
Henry of Ghent. Proceedings of the International Colloquium on the Occasion of the 700th Anniversary of his
Death (1293), ed. W. Vanhamel (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1996), 40534; and Bibliography,
in Henry of Ghent and the Transformation of Scholastic Thought: Studies in Memory of Jos Decorte, eds. Guy
Guldentops and Carlos Steel (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2003), 40926. For a bibliography
of sources published from 2003 to the present, see Gordon A. Wilsons webpage on Henry of Ghent
hosted by the University of North Carolina Ashevilles website, http://www2.unca.edu/philosophy/
hog/bibliography.html.
2
For a discussion of the development in Henrys thought, the textual problems in identifying that
development, and some of the relevant secondary literature on this issue, see Steven P. Marrone, Truth
and Scientific Knowledge in the Thought of Henry of Ghent [Truth and Scientific Knowledge] (Cambridge, MA:
The Medieval Academy of America, 1985), 111.
3
On the importance of the critical edition, see Bernd Goehring, Henry of Ghent on Cognition
and Mental Representation [Henry of Ghent on Cognition] (PhD diss., Cornell University, 2006),
2024; and Marrone, Henry of Ghent in Mid-career as Interpreter of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas
[Henry of Ghent in Mid-career], in Henry of Ghent. Proceedings of the International Colloquium on the
Occasion of the 700th Anniversary of his Death (1293), 19394.
4
Marrone (Truth and Scientific Knowledge, 14148) claims that Henry began in 1276 with an Augustinian epistemology (theory of truth and science) and an Aristotelian noetics (cognitive psychology),
which reversed by mid-career (1279/80) to an Aristotelian epistemology and an Augustinian-Platonic
* Michael E. Rombeiro is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at St. Josephs College of

Maine.
Journal of the History of Philosophy, vol. 49, no. 2 (2011) 181220
[181]
182 j o u r n a l o f t h e h i s t o r y o f p h i l o s o p h y 4 9 : 2 A p r i l 2 0 1 1
ments corresponding to the two main components of his account: his doctrine of
illumination and his theory of abstraction and the act of understanding.5 Much
of the scholarship has focused on the development in his theory of illumination.6
However, his account of the act of understanding and the role of intelligible species has also received significant attention.7
The landmark study on Henrys cognitive theory is that of Theophiel Nys, who
firmly established that Henrys view changed dramatically over his career, from
accepting impressed intelligible species in his early writings (1276) to rejecting
them completely by mid-career in Quodlibet IV (1279).8 Though most scholars
acknowledge that the intelligible species that once played a central role in Henrys
account was eliminated by the time of Quodlibet IV, there appears to be disagreement on the answers to the following questions raised by this change in Henrys
thought: (1) What is the motivating factor for the change? (2) What takes over the
causal function of the intelligible species in the act of understanding? (3) Does
this rejection of impressed intelligible species constitute a rejection of all species
at the level of the intellect?
Jean Paulus, in a critique of Nys, stresses the importance of considering developments in Henrys metaphysics in assessing the change in his cognitive psychology.
noetics. The change in noetics, Marrone argues, was influenced by a shift to a more Augustinian-Platonic
metaphysics. Marrones study establishes the diversity of influences at work in the various areas of
Henrys thought and the importance of delineating the development in each of those areas.
5
Jean Paulus holds that Henry moves away from an Augustinian doctrine of illumination (Henri
de Gand: Essai sur les tendances de sa mtaphysique [Henri de Gand ] [Paris: Vrin, 1938], 46), while embracing a purer Augustinianism in his initially Aristotelian account of the act of understanding (
propos de la thorie de la connaissance dHenri de Gand, Revue philosophique de Louvain 47 (1949):
495). Theophiel Nys (De werking van het menselijk verstand volgens Hendrik van Gent [De werking] [Leuven: Nauwelaerts, 1949], 11718, 12022), Raymond Macken (La thorie de lillumination divine
dans la philosophie dHenri de Gand [La thorie de lillumination], Recherche de thologie ancienne
et mdivale 39 (1972): 82112, in particular 8284, 9193), and Faustino A. Prezioso (La critica di
Duns Scoto allontologismo di Enrico di Gand [Padua: Casa Editrice Dott. Antonio Milani, 1961], 9597),
all maintain that Henry consistently held a doctrine of illumination throughout his career, although
that doctrine developed in accordance with the change in Henrys thought on the act of understandingthat is, from an Aristotelian explanation to a more Avicennian and Augustinian one. Marrone is
in basic agreement with Nys, Macken, and Prezioso, but although he acknowledges that illumination
still had a role in Henrys cognitive theory at the end of his career (Truth and Scientific Knowledge, 8), he
believes that that role became progressively weaker under the influence of Aristotles idea of scientific
knowledge (ibid., 147). More recently, Kent Emery Jr. (The Image of God Deep in the Mind: The
Continuity of Cognition according to Henry of Ghent, in Nach der Verurteilung von 1277: Philosophie
und Theologie an der Universitt von Paris im letzten Viertel des 13. Jahrhunderts; Studien und Texte [Nach der
Verurteilung von 1277], eds. Jan A. Aertsen, Kent Emery, Jr., and Andreas Speer. Miscellanea Mediaevalia 28 [Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2001], 59124, in particular 12324) reaffirms the Augustianian
Christian Platonism of Henrys epistemology, including the central role of illumination.
6
In addition to the above works, see Markus L. Frher, Henry of Ghent on Divine Illumination,
Bochumer Philosophisches Jahrbuch fur Antike und Mittelalter 3 (1998): 6985; and Robert Pasnau, Henry
of Ghent and the Twilight of Divine Illumination, Review of Metaphysics 49 (1995): 4975.
7
This area of Henrys thought is of particular importance because it seems to be the development
in his theory of abstraction that influences the modifications he makes to his doctrine of illumination.
As Macken states, La superstructure de la connaissance, qui tait lillumination divine naturelle, reste donc fondamentalement la mme, mais elle est adapte du fait que la structure sous-jacente, qui est lacceptation originelle de
la thorie de labstraction aristotlicienne, est modifie par le Quodl. IV (La thorie de lillumination, 93).
8
Nys, De werking, 7088. For the dating of Henrys works, see J. Gmez Caffarena, Cronologa de
la Suma de Enrique de Gante por relacin a sus Quodlibetos, Gregorianum 38 (1957): 11633.
henry of ghent on intelligible species
183
He claims that Henrys doctrine of esse essentiae implies that the objects of understanding, viz. universal essences, are of themselves present to the intellect; thus
there is no need to posit any mediating species.9 According to Paulus, this doctrine
allows Henry to shift his cognitive theory toward a more Augustinian view of the
intellect as active. Paulus claims that an Augustinian pays only lip service to the
Aristotelian notion of the soul as a tabula rasa that is passively acted upon by the
exterior world. In his view, the intelligible species is replaced by the cognitive act
itself.10 On the other hand, Steven Marrone emphasizes the development in Henrys
epistemology as the motivating factor in his elimination of intelligible species.11
Following Nys, he claims that the concept or verbum comes to replace impressed
species in Henrys thought, because the concept formed by the intellect takes on
the central role in comprehending the truth of things.12 Furthermore, Marrone
sees Henrys rejection of impressed intelligible species as a rejection of intelligible
species tout court.13 This is also the view of Raymond Macken, who states that it is
necessary to eliminate the word species from the status quaestionis, if one wants
to speak of the positions of Henry in his mature period, after Quodlibet IV.14
The views expressed by Paulus and Marrone are accurate to a certain extent.
Henrys causal account of the act of understanding does become more Augustinian in a number of ways, particularly in regard to the impassivity of the possible
intellect, although Paulus goes too far in implying that Henry is disingenuous in
his claims that the intellect is initially passive. Furthermore, the Augustinian verbum
becomes the central feature in his account of how the intellect arrives at quidditative knowledge of things, and in certain contexts there is a shift away from the
Aristotelian terminology of species toward the Augustinian notions of notitia and
verbum. And Macken is correct in suggesting that even the word species ought to
be set aside when discussing Henrys mature thoughtif species is understood
along Aristotelian lines as an inherent form received in the intellect that is distinct
in some way from the act of understanding.
However, these characterizations are also somewhat misleading. First, Henry
consistently maintains throughout his career that the possible intellect is passive
9
Paulus, propos de la thorie de la connaissance dHenri de Gand, 495: [I]l ny a nulle ncessit
que lessence intelligible soit rendue prsente lintellect humain ou anglique par lentremise de lespce intelligible.
Here Paulus seems to be overlooking the central role attributed by Henry to the phantasm of rendering the intelligible object present to the possible intellect.
10
Ibid.: Cest pourquoi, contrairement la tradition aristotlicienne qui mettait laccent sur la species,
comme condition de la connaissance, Henri se devait de restituer l acte cognitif lui-mme sa spontanit
et sa primaut.
11
See Henry of Ghent in Mid-career, 197203.
12
See, for instance, ibid., 19495, and Marrone, The Light of Thy Countenance: Science and Knowledge
of God in the Thirteenth Century [Light of Thy Countenance], vol. 2, Studies in the History of Christian
Thought 98, ed. Robert J. Bast (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 365.
13
Marrone (in Henry of Ghent in Mid-career) examines the critical edition of article 34 of
Henrys Summa, which shows that Henry made a number of revisions in an effort to expunge any reference to intelligible species: For the most part there is, in the finished text of article 34, no recourse to
an impressed intelligible speciesor to the word species at allfor the purposes of noetics (195).
14
Macken, La thorie de lillumination, 100: [I]l faut liminer le mot espce du status quaestionis,
si lon veut parler des positions dHenri dans son ge mr, aprs le Quod. IV.
in its initial act of simple apprehension. This doctrine never changes, regardless of
whatever emphasis comes to be placed on the active component of the intellects
operation. Second, the idea that the act itself or the concept or verbum comes to
replace the intelligible species in Henrys account confuses the causal role of the
intelligible species. The intelligible species is posited by medieval thinkers as a
principle of understanding, as that by which the intelligible object actualizes the
intellect and brings it into the act of understanding. It also serves to specify the
formal content of the intellective act. Because Henry rejects the intelligible species but continues to maintain the passivity of the possible intellect, he is left in
need of an efficient principle of the act of understanding. Clearly, the act itself
will not do, nor will the concept or verbum, if these terms signify some product or
terminus of the intellects activity. But such a concept or verbum is precisely what
Marrone says replaces intelligible species.15 The problem is that at the level of
simple apprehension Henry requires a formal element that initiates the knowing
activity of the intellect, not one that is its product.
In the present paper I examine Henrys doctrine on intelligible species and
his causal account of the intellects simple act of understanding. In section 1, I
establish that Henrys primary reason for rejecting what he calls impressed intelligible species is that he considers such species to be material in nature. Although
there is nothing surprising about a medieval thinker seeking to preserve the immateriality of the intellect by denying any sort of material reception of species,
Henrys position is unique in that the materiality of an impressed intelligible
species is connected to its ontological status as an accidental form inhering in a
subject. For Henry, any inhering species generated from the senses in the intellect would be a material species imparted through a material change. In section
2, following the work of Nys, I show how Henrys early treatment (127679) of
the souls knowledge of itself and of God becomes paradigmatic for all cases of
intellection, thus allowing him to dispense with intelligible species as causal principles. Henrys reasoning is that if the intelligible is present to the intellect, as is
the case with the soul and God, which are essentially present to the intellect, then
the intelligible itself can actualize the intellect and serve as the formal principle of
intellection, without any mediating species. Thus Henry reduces the causal role
of species to rendering the object present to the cognitive power. In section 3, I
examine Henrys doctrine on how the intelligible can be present to the intellect
in the phantasm and so can sufficiently move the intellect without the reception of
an inhering species in the intellect. I argue, therefore, that it is the phantasm that
effectively replaces the impressed intelligible species in Henrys mature account
15
Marrone, Henry of Ghent in Mid-career, 19495: Nys demonstrated that after Henrys earliest worksmost notably the first twenty articles of the Summa, which all scholars agree come down to
us in a version finalized before the composition of Quodlibet I in 1276in which he made extensive
use of the Aristotelianizing notion of an intelligible species impressed on the mind in intellection as
a means of knowing simple objects, he grew increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of any such
formal mediator in the process of cognition until he finally rejected it altogether. Instead, the formal
element of cognition at all levels was, Henry came to believe, an expressed concept or word, at once the
result of the knowing activity of the intellect and token of the formal presence of the known object within
the mental sphere [emphasis added].
185
of intellection. In section 4, I provide clarification of the terms species, notitia,

and verbum as understood by Henry.
I contend that Henry does not eliminate intelligible species altogether from his
account. Rather, he proposes a new conception of species, which he calls expressive
species, and which he relates in certain contexts to the Augustinian notions of notitia
and verbum. It is these intelligible species, present in the phantasm and received
in the intellect, that function as efficient and formal principles of intellection and
have a unique mode of existence in the intellect, which Henry calls objective
existence or existence as in a knower.16 Thus Henry reformulates the distinction
between the natural existence of forms in things and their cognitive existence in
knowers. By making inherence, as a form in a subject, characteristic of the natural
mode of existence, Henry sets off the object and its mode of existence from the
act of understanding, which inheres in the intellect. We find in Henry, then, a
distinction between intellective acts and their cognitive contentsa distinction
that has a significant impact on the cognitive theory of his successors.
1. the characterization of impressed species as

material and the rejection of impressed
intelligible species
Henry discusses species as principles of cognition in accordance with the standard
Scholastic-Aristotelian view on the nature of cognition. According to Aristotle, in
every act of cognition, the knower in some way is the thing known. But the knower
cannot be the thing itself as it exists outside of the soul. Rather, the knower is in a
certain way the thing known by being informed by its form or species. Hence the
dictum: The stone is not in the soul, but the species of the stone.17 Thus Henry
16
The position of Jerome Brown (Intellect and Knowing in Henry of Ghent, Tijdschrift-voorFilosofie 37 [1975]: 490512, continued 693710), though not very precise, is accurate and perhaps
indicates why there is confusion about Henrys doctrine on intelligible species: (1) Henry has a
doctrine of species intelligibilis as an intrinsic part of his noetic. (2) This species intelligibilis is certainly
unlike its counterpart in Thomas Aquinas; unlike the species intelligibilis in Bonaventure; probably
unlike the species intelligibilis in any of his predessors [sic]. In short, it just behaves peculiarly (511,
n. 69). The essential point of Henrys species doctrine, that intelligible species exist in the intellect
not as accidental forms in a subject but as objects in a knower, is expressed clearly by Wouter Goris
and Martin Pickav, Von der Erkenntnis der Engel: Der Streit um die species intelligibilis und eine
quaestio aus dem anonymen Sentenzenkommentar in ms. Brgge, Stradsbibliotheek 491 [Von der
Erkenntnis der Engel], in Nach der Verurteilung von 1277, 132: Es drfte deutlich sein, dass sich Heinrich
nicht allgemein gegen eine species intelligibilis ausspricht. Einein seiner Terminologieuniverselle species
expressa ist sehr wohl an der intellektuellen Erkenntnis von sinnlich Gegebenem beteiligt, eine in den mglichen
Intellekt eingeprgte species jedoch niemals. . . . In der Ablehnung der im 13. Jahrhundert gngigen Vorstellung,
die Aufnahme einer species in den Intellekt vollziehe sich auf die Weise einer Einprgung, liegt der wesentliche
Punkt von Heinrichs Kritik: Die species wrde dann nmlich seiner Meinung nach wie eine akzidentelle Form
in einem Subjekt (in subiecto) existieren und nicht wie ein Objekt ut in cognoscente.
17
Henry makes reference to this teaching of Aristotle from De anima, III, c. 8 (431b2130) in a
number of places. For instance: Dicendum ad hoc secundum Philosophum in III De anima, quod intellectus
estquodammodo intelligibilia et sciens scibilia, et cum non sint nisi duo modo essendi, ut ibi dicit Commentator, necesse est ut intellectus et sciens sint intellectum et scibile extra animam aut forma eius. Res
autem ipsa non possunt esse. Necesse est ergo quod sint quodammodo forma et species eius, specie scilicet rei intellectae et scitae informati. Unde lapis non est in amina, sed species lapidis (Summa quaestionum ordinarium
[Summa], a. 3, q. 1 [Summa (Quaestiones ordinariae) art. IV, ed. Gordon A. Wilson, Henrici de Gandavo
maintains that nothing, therefore, can be the knowable, unless through its species
[the knowable] is naturally suited to be in the soul, so that through [that] species
the soul may be it in a certain way.18 So one key function of species in cognition
is to actualize the knowerthat is, to make it be the known in act.19 Another way
to characterize the manner in which the knower becomes the known is in terms
of assimilation. As Henry states, Every cognition is through the assimilation of
the knower to the known.20 This assimilation is brought about through a species.
Indeed, the function of a species as a principle of cognition depends on its capacity to assimilate.21 Consequently, species themselves are likenesses of the things
that are known: For a species is an image or idol of a thing by which the soul is
informed.22 So Henry adopts the standard account of species, at least in general
Aristotelian terms, as formal likenesses that actualize the cognitive powers and
specify cognitive acts.
Again following the common account, Henry identifies different levels of cognition: sense-perception, imagination, and intellectual apprehension. Species are
posited as causal principles at each of these levels and exist in (1) the medium,
(2) the sense organ, (3) the sense-memory, (4) the imagination, and finally (5)
the intellect. The first four types of species are considered sensible species insofar
as they bring about cognition of the object as a sensible particular. The species in
the intellect is an intelligible species through which the object is understood as
universal. Taking vision as a model for all sense-perception, Henry states that the
sensible, in this case color, first exists naturally in the colored object. This sensible
form has the power to generate an intentional likeness of itself in the medium and,
through the medium, in the organ of sight. Through an act of vision informed by
this species, the power of sight perceives the particular sensible object externally
present. Next, a species is generated in the power of memory, where it is retained.
From that species in memory a species is generated in the imaginative power,
which perceives, through an act of imagining informed by that species, the same
particular object but as absent.23
Opera omnia (Opera omnia) XXI (Leuven, 2005), 245, lines 2834]). See also Quodlibet [Quod.] IV,
q. 7 (93vS). All texts from Henrys Quodlibets are taken from Quodlibeta, 2 vols., ed. Iodocus Badius
(Paris, 1518; reprint, Leuven, 1961), unless otherwise noted. References to this edition include the
folio page number; the side of the page, r for the right side on which the page leaf is numbered and
v for the reverse side; and the section denoted by a capital letter.
18
Summa, a. 3, q. 1 (ed. Wilson, 245, lines 3436): Nihil igitur potest esse scibile, nisi quod per speciem
suam natum est esse in anima, ut per speciem anima quodammodo sit ipsum.
19
Quod. I, q. 1213 (ed. Raymond Macken, Opera omnia [Leuven, 1979], 5:79, lines 5354): Hoc
enim vero est, quod nihil intelligit nisi quodammodo est in actu quod intelligitur.
20
Summa, a. 1, q. 5 (ed. Wilson, 123, line 29): [O]mnis cognitio est per assimilationem cognoscentis
ad cognitum.
21
Quod. IV, q. 7 (94rY): [I]n hoc species est ratio cognoscendi quod est ratio assimilandi, quia econtra,
quod non est ratio assimilandi non est ratio cognoscendi.
22
Quod. I, qq. 1213 (ed. Macken, 82, lines 1213): Species enim est imago vel idolum rei qua anima
informatur.
23
Quod. IV, q. 21 (136vG): [S]ensibile, puta color, primo esse naturale habet in obiecta sua, et est in potentia
activa ut intentionaliter sibi simile generet in medio et a medio in organo visus. . . . [E]t formatur per ipsam visio,
id est, actio videndi, qua percipit virtus visiva sensibile particulare obiectum extra praesens, et abhinc generatur
in vi memoratitiva [lege memorativa] qui est specierum retentiva, et ab illa in vi imaginativa, qui speciei illius
informatione actu imaginandi percipit idem particulare secundum rationem particularis ut absens.
187
The apprehension of the object at the level of imagination is then followed by an

apprehension at the level of the intellect.24 The source of the intentional content
of the intellects act of understanding is the phantasm, the species of the object
in the imagination, in accordance with the Aristotelian dictum that phantasms
are related to the intellect as sensibles are to the senses.25 The problem, however,
is that the phantasm on its own is incapable of actualizing the intellective power.
As Henry explains, the movement of a power is in accordance with the mode of
its apprehension. The senses apprehend a thing as it exists in reality as singular
(sub ratione singularitatis) and so are moved by the thing itself according to its
singularity. But the intellect understands a thing under the aspect of universality.
Thus phantasms, which represent the object as singular, must have individual
conditions abstracted from them in order to represent the object as universal. As
apprehended in the imagination, phantasms are therefore only potentially intelligible and potentially capable of moving the intellect. Since everything understood
by the intellect comes from phantasms, a power is needed to make phantasms
actually universal and understood by abstracting them from material conditions.
This power is the agent intellect.26
Thus Henry states that two actions are necessary for intellection. The first is the
action of the intellect on the object, which is only potentially intelligible, making
it actually intelligible by abstraction. The second is the abstracted objects action
on the intellect in order to elicit from it an act of understanding. It is through this
latter action that the object informs the act of understanding. Thus the rational
mind is both passive insofar as it is moved by the understood object and active
insofar as it moves the object. Henry concludes that two powers must be posited:
the possible intellect and the agent intellect. The agent intellect abstracts an actually intelligible object from a potentially intelligible object and places it in the
possible intellect, the power by which one understands, drawing it out from the
potency of understanding into act. 27 The actual intelligible object abstracted from
the phantasm is an intelligible species that represents the object as universal.
Where Henry deviates from the standard view, as will be shown below, is in his
rejection of what he calls impressed intelligible species and his reformulation of the
nature of intelligible species. But an examination of his account of sense-perception
also reveals a fundamental departure from the Thomistic account, which is crucial
to understanding Henrys innovations at the level of intellection. He offers a brief
Ibid.: Post hanc apprehensionem sequitur apprehensio intellectiva.

uod. V, q. 14 (176vO): [S]ecundum Philosophum phantasmata se habent ad intellectum sicut sensibilia
Q
ad sensum. See Aristotle, De anima, III, c. 7 (431a14).
26
Ibid.: [I]ta quod phantasmata in imaginativa apprehensa non sunt nisi in potentia universalia: et in
potentia moventia intellectum. Propter quod cum intellectus noster possibilis non habet intellecta nisi a phantasmatibus, eget virtute quae phantasmata potentia universalia et intellecta abstrahendo ea a dictis conditionibus
materialibus faciat eas actu universalia et actu intellecta: quae appellatur intellectus agens.
27
Quod. IV, q. 21 (136vH): Una quae est prima intellectus circa obiectum quod de se non est nisi in potentia
intelligibile, ut per abstractionem fiat actu intelligibile. Alia quae est secunda, obiecti abstracti circa intellectum ad
eliciendum ex ipso actum intelligendi, quod iterato terminatur in idem obiectum, per quod informat intelligendi
actum; ut secundum hoc mens rationalis inquantum intellecta movent eam, est vis passiva; secundum quod moventur ab ea est vis activa. Ut ideo necesse est ponere in ea duas virtutes. . . . Et est intellectus agens abstrahens
de potentia intelligibili actu intelligibile, ponens illud ut obiectum intelligibile in intellectu possibili ut intelligente,
extrahendo ipsum de potentia intelligendi in actum.
24
25
treatment of sensation in Quodlibet V, q. 14 (1280/81).28 Presenting the teaching
of Aristotle in De anima, Book II, he states that the senses are in potency to two: (1)
to the sensible species and (2) to the act of sensing.29 In the first case, the sense
receives the intention of the sensible by which it becomes the sensible in a certain
way.30 This intentional reception of a sensible species occurs in the medium as well
and is characterized by Henry as a real alteration. The only reason that the medium
is not moved to an act of sensing is that there is no formal sensitive power in it.31
Now, it is possible to infer from this statement that the sensible species, which is
an intention of the sensible object, already has the nature proper to cognition.
Indeed, Katherine Tachau claims that the intentional existence of the sensible
species provided the basis for Henrys elimination of intelligible species, because
an intentio was precisely the kind of entity grasped by the intellect, at least in Avicennas and Alhazens psychology.32 In other words, a sensible species, insofar as
it is an intention, is already ordered to cognition and intellective apprehension.
She contrasts Henrys view of sensible species as having only intentional being
with those views that posit sensible species as having a certain material existence.
Because of the materiality of sensible species and the immateriality of the intellect,
those who take the latter view are led to posit a dematerialized species proper to
the intellect, namely, the intelligible species.
But, as I will show below, it is precisely because Henry views impressed sensible
species as material entities that he rejects their intelligible counterparts. Conversely,
proponents of intelligible species, in particular Albert the Great and Thomas
Aquinas, are not concerned about compromising the immateriality of the intellect
28
For a detailed treatment of sensation in the thought of Henry, see Jerome Brown, Sensation
in Henry of Ghent: A Late Medieval Aristotelian-Augustinian Synthesis, Archiv fr Geschichte der Philosophie 53 (1971): 23866.
29
Quod. V, q. 14 (176rL): [E]st in potentia ad duo: et ad speciem sensibilis: et ad sentire secundum actum.
30
Quod. V, q. 14 (176rM): Ad speciem sensibilis sensus est in potentia: quia recipiendo eius intentionem
fit non ipsum sensibile, vel tale aliquid secundum veritatem et perfectionem talis formae qualis est in sensibili
extra: sed sit ut sensibile recipiendo intentionem qua quodammodo est illud. The relation between intentio and
species in thirteenth-century philosophy can be somewhat confusing. In this text Henry refers to the
sensible species as an intention of the sensible thing. Given that sensible species exist in the medium
independently of any cognitive power, it follows that an intention can exist apart from a knower and
from the thing of which it is the intention. So Henrys use of intention here should not be confused
with its use in his doctrine on intentional distinction. According to that doctrine, an intention is
some aspect of a thing that can be conceived by the intellect apart from another aspect of that same
thing, although there is no real distinction between the two (see Quod. V, q. 6 [161vL]). For more on
Henrys intentional distinction, see n. 101 below. In the first text above, the meaning of intention is
simply that of likeness. Intention connotes the deficiency in being of a likeness compared to the thing
itself. This is why Henry says that in receiving the intention of the sensible the sense does not take on
its form according to the truth and perfection that it possesses in the external sensible. This meaning
of intention also corresponds to Roger Bacons explanation of why a species is commonly called an
intention: Intentio vocatur in usu vulgi naturalium propter debilitatem sui esse respectu rei, dicentis quod non
est vere res sed magis intentio rei, id est similitudo (De multiplicatio specierum I, c. 1, in Roger Bacons Philosophy
of Nature, ed. David Lindberg [Oxford University Press, 1983], 4, lines 5456).
31
Quod. V, q. 14 (176rM): [E]t fit secundum aliquam realem alterationem quae etiam fit in ipso medio:
quod ob hoc solum non potest immutari ad actum sentiendi: quia non est in ipso vis formalis sensitiva.
32
Katherine H. Tachau, Vision and Certitude in the Age of Ockham. Optics, Epistemology and the Foundations of Semantics [Vision and Certitude] (Leiden: Brill, 1988), 34.
189
by the reception of an intelligible species originating from the senses, because a

sensible species, both in the medium and in the sense organs, already possesses a
degree of immateriality that allows it to function as a principle of cognitionthat
is, a sensible species is in itself sufficiently immaterial to actualize a sense power
and inform an act of sensing. This is not the case for Henry.33
Henrys statement in regard to the reception of sensible species in the medium
does indicate that he views sensible species as ordered to cognition, so that if the
medium possessed a sense power, it would be capable of perceiving sensible things
through these species. But the fact that the medium does not sense anything is
an indication to Henry that the reception of a sensible species is not the same
type of change as that which constitutes the act of sensing. The medium is not in
potency to this latter kind of change because it lacks the formal sensitive power
possessed by the senses. Thus, in addition to the change (immutatio) constituted
by the impression of a species,34 there is the further change that brings the sense
into the act of sensing. Both changes are caused by the external sensible thing,
which generates a species in the sense organ through the medium and through
that species moves the sense to the act of sensing.35
It is important to note here that Henry calls the first kind of change, that is,
the intentional reception or impression of a sensible species, a real change. In the
same question Henry also calls it a material change,36 and in Quodlibet IV, q. 21 he
calls it a natural change.37 He characterizes the reception of an impressed species
in this way because he wants to distinguish any natural, material changes that are
involved in and lead up to cognitive acts from the change that results directly in
a cognitive act. Now, this is a distinction common to most Aristotelian accounts
of cognition. What is peculiar about Henrys distinction is that he includes in the
category of material, natural change the reception of impressed sensible species
in the medium and sense organs, despite the fact that he acknowledges that such
species are received without matter.38 So, for Henry, not only is an impressed sensible species, despite its status as an intention, not the type of entity grasped by the
intellect, as Tachau claims, but it is not even the type of entity that is sufficiently
immaterial to inform the act of sense-perception.
It is for this reason that Henry is led to posit a new kind of species. In Quodlibet IV, q. 21, Henry specifies that the change resulting in the act of sensing also
involves the reception of a species, albeit a distinct kind of species. In fact, the two
33
Maurice de Wulf (tudes sur Henri de Gand [Paris, 1894], 78) comes to the right conclusion in
regard to Henrys statement that sensible species come to be in the medium through a real alteration
namely, that Henry sees the reception of sensible species as a sort of material change: Henri assimile
tort laction mcanique quune chose provoque sur les lements ambiants du monde matrial, la dtermination que
cette mme chose xerce sur nos sens. . . . Lanalyse de Henri est grossire. Saint Thomas dAquin avait mieux mis en
lumire le rle du principe organisant, en crivant: Ad operationem sensus requiritur immutatio spiritualis, per
quam intentio formae sensibilis fiat in organo sensus. For the reference to this text of Aquinas, see n. 44.
34
Quod. V, q. 14 (176rM): . . . talis immutatio per impressionem speciei . . .
35
Ibid. (176vM): [A] sensibili extra per medium generatur species eius in organo sensus particularis extra
et ipsum immutat ad actum sentiendi.
36
See n. 56.
37
See n. 40.
38
Quod. V, q. 14 (176vO): [S]ensibilia extra apprehensa a sensu sunt in materia et materialia et ut materialia apprehensa a sensu licet speciem sibi impressam recipit sine materia.
kinds of change are distinguished by the nature of the received species and the
mode in which the species is received: (1) reception of an impressed species (species
impressiva) as a form in a subject (in subiecto) and (2) reception of an expressive
species (species expressiva) as a form in a knower (in cognoscente).39
[A] sense has a received impressed species from the object by which it is led through
a natural change of the sense from potency into act, not only in order that potentially
informed it may be actually informed by the reception of an impressed species in a
subject, so that there be a stop there; but in order that further the potency of sensing may become actually sensing by the reception of an expressive species, not as in
a subject, but as in a knower.40
Henry characterizes the unique kind of change that constitutes cognition as reception of an expressive species as in a knower. This mode of reception is also described by
Henry as receiving an intention objectively.41 It corresponds to the peculiar mode
of existence according to which the known is in the knower: Every cognition is
such that the known according to its essence is in the knower; and not as in a
subject in which it inheres formally, but as in a knower objectively.42 The nature of
an expressive species will become clearer when it is considered in the context of
Henrys account of intellection. But Henrys introduction of this type of species
at the level of sensation establishes the key distinction between the objective mode
of existence according to which a cognitive object exists in a cognitive power and
the natural mode according to which a form inheres in a subject. Because of the
different modes of existence, the known-knower composite is of a different nature
than the usual form-subject composite.43 The main point of his doctrine is that the
species that actualize cognitive acts are not forms inhering in the cognitive power
as in a subject, as are impressed species. They are unique in nature and exist in a
unique way in the cognitive power.
The peculiarity of Henrys view on sensible species can be seen by contrasting
it with the view of Aquinas. According to Aquinas, the reception of a sensible form
39
On the variations of and difficulty in translating the terms impressiva and expressiva, see
Goehring, Henry of Ghent on Cognition, 325, n. 4; and Goris and Pickav, Von der Erkenntnis
der Engel, 129. I translate species impressiva as impressed species in order to avoid the awkwardness
of impressive species. But because one of my aims is to emphasize the difference between Henrys
expressive species and the expressed species introduced by Thomist commentators to refer to the
concept formed by the intellect, I translate species expressiva as expressive species.
40
Quod. IV, q. 21 (136vH): [S]ensus ab obiecto habet speciem receptam impressivam qua deducitur per
transmutationem naturalem sensus de potentia in actum non solum ut in potentia formatum actu informetur
receptione speciei impressivae in subiecto: ut ibi sit status: sed ut ulterius potentia sentiens fiat actu sentiens receptione speciei expressivae: non ut in subiecto sed in cognoscente.
41
Ibid.: [I]ntellectus agens facit intentiones in potentia intellectas intellectas actu: ita quod recipiat eas
obiective intellectus materialis et moveatur ab eis. Cf. Quod. V, q. 14 (176vO).
42
Quod. V, q. 14 (175rD): [O]mnis cognitio sic secundum quod cognitum secundum essentiam cogniti sit in
cognoscente. Et hoc non ut in subiecto cui inhaereat formaliter: sed ut in concipiente obiective [emphasis added].
43
Henry describes the composite of intellect and understood intention as follows: [F]iant in intellectu possibili non sicut in subiecto: sed sicut in cognoscente, ut sic componantur intellectus materialis et intentio
intellecta. Ita quod compositum non fit tertium ex eis sicut est de aliis compositis ex materia et forma (Quod. IV, q.
21 [137vH]). Henry makes a similar statement in Quod. IV, q. 8 (critical edition by Goehring in Henry
of Ghent on Cognition, lines 3438). He cites Averroes as his source. See Commentarium magnum in
libros de anima [Commentarium magnum], ed. F. S. Crawford (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Mediaeval
Academy of America, 1953), 386, lines 8084).
191
without matter in both the medium and sense organ is not a natural, material
change, but an intentional, spiritual change. He distinguishes two corresponding
modes of existence according to which forms are received and exist in a thing.
The form of color received in the pupil, for instance, has only a spiritual existencemeaning that the eye does not become colored like the sensible thing in
which the form of color has a natural existence.44 Now, in the case of sight, only
a spiritual change takes place in the medium and sense organ, whereas for the
other senses some sort of natural change is involved in the process leading up to
sensation.45 But even in the case of the other senses, the reception of the sensible
species or intention in the bodily organ is not a natural, material change. Nor is
there some underlying material change in the organ which stands to the act of
sense-perception as matter to form.46 Rather, the reception of the sensible species is a spiritual change, which is itself the act of sense-perception. This spiritual
change takes place in the bodily organ and results in an act of awareness because
a formal sense power exists in that organ. There are not two changes that occur,
one in the organ and one in the sense power. There is simply one intentional,
spiritual change in the composite of organ and power.47
Henry, on the other hand, appears to be uncomfortable with the idea that the
sort of change that results in cognition, what Aquinas calls a spiritual or intentional change, is the same sort of change that occurs in the material medium and
bodily organs. He is bound by the conventional usage of terms to refer to sensible
species in the medium and the sense organs as intentions and forms received
without matter. But for him, these terms do not imply an immaterial change or a
mode of existence proper to cognition. They indicate merely that we are dealing
with a special case of natural, material change. The intentional reception or impression of a species in the medium or in a sense organ is still a natural, material
44
Summa theologiae, I, q. 78, a. 3 ([Ottawa: Impensis Studii Generalis O. Pr., 1941], 475b2637):
Est autem duplex immutatio, una naturalis, et alia spiritualis. Naturalis quidem, secundum quod forma immutantis recipitur in immutato secundum esse naturale, sicut calor in calefacto. Spiritualis autem, secundum quod
forma immutantis recipitur in immutato secundum esse spirituale; ut forma coloris in pupilla, quae non fit per
hoc colorata. Ad operationem autem sensus requiritur immutatio spiritualis, per quam intentio formae sensibilis
fiat in organo sensus. Aquinas also describes the difference between the natural mode of existence and
the intentional, spiritual mode in terms of the difference in the material disposition of the patient:
Quandoque uero forma recipitur in paciente secundum alium modum essendi quam sit in agente, quia dispositio
materialis pacientis ad recipiendum non est similis dispositioni materiali que erat in agente, et ideo forma recipitur
in paciente sine materia in quantum paciens assimilatur agenti secundum formam et non secundum materiam; et
per hunc modum sensus recipit formam sine materia, quia alterius modi esse habet forma in sensu et in re sensibili:
nam in re sensibili habet esse naturale, in sensu autem habet esse intentionale siue spirituale (In II De anima, c.
24 (Opera omnia [Rome: Leonine Commission, 1882] vol. 45.1, 169, lines 4556)).
45
See In II De anima, c. 14 (ed. Leon., vol. 45.1, 127, lines 26265): Secundo apparet quod sensus
uisus est spiritualior ex modo inmutationis: nam in quolibet alio sensu non est inmutatio spiritualis sine naturali.
46
This doctrine of Aquinas is clear at least in the case of vision, hearing and smell: Organum vero
olfactus aut auditus nulla naturali immutatione immutatur in sentiendo, nisi per accidens (Summa theologiae,
I, q. 78, a. 3 [ed. Ottaviensis, 476a811]).
47
This reading of Aquinas on sense-perception is not uncontroversial, but is argued for convincingly
by M. F. Burnyeat, in Aquinas on Spiritual Change in Perception, in Ancient and Medieval Theories
of Intentionality, ed. Dominik Perler (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 12953. For a bibliography on this issue, in
addition to that found in Burnyeats article, see R. Pasnau, Theories of Cognition in the Later Middle Ages
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 42, n. 20.
change insofar as the form received exists as an inherent in a subject. Even if the
mode of inherence of such a species differs from the mode of a sensible form
in a thingclearly the form of red exists differently in air than in an appleit
is not yet the mode of existence that is properly cognitive. This is why one must
be careful with the term intentional in Henrys cognitive theory. An impressed
species is an intention, a likeness of a sensible thing; but it is a form with a natural
mode of existence. For this reason, Henry is led to posit another kind of change
and another kind of species that bring the sense powers into the act of sensing,
beyond the material reception of an impressed species in the sense organ. With
this further change, the form comes to exist objectively as in a knowerthat is,
as an expressive speciesand informs the cognitive act. Thus, for Henry, the key
distinction is not between the natural and the intentional existence of a form,
since intentional existence is a type of natural existence, but between the natural
and the objective existence of a form. The sensible forms in things and their
impressed species are natural forms, whereas expressive species are objective or
cognitive. Henrys account of sense-perception is, therefore, dualistic in that he
posits two changes in the sense: one natural on the part of the material organ and
one objective on the part of the formal power.48
But why does Henry conceive impressed sensible species as natural, material
forms? His understanding of impressed species seems to be influenced by the
perspectivi and the theory of the multiplication of species. There is no question
that Henry was aware of the perspectivist theory in general, and of Roger Bacon
and Alhazen in particular.49 Bacon defines species broadly as the first effect of
any naturally acting thing.50 According to his theory, sensible things generate
species in the immediately surrounding medium, which are then multiplied and
transmitted throughout the medium.51 Now, these species are indeed formal likenesses and images of sensible things and principles of cognition; however, Bacon
and the perspectivi do not restrict species to the order of cognition. Species denotes the power (virtus) by which a thing naturally acts upon its environment.52
That power can be efficacious beyond a things immediate boundaries by virtue
48
De Wulf (tudes sur Henri de Gand, 79) states that an impressed and an expressive species are
two logical aspects of the same actuality: the expressive species is merely the reaction of the cognitive
power to the impressed species in the organ. However, Henry clearly distinguishes two actualities
corresponding to two potencies in the senses (see n. 29). Furthermore, these potencies are reduced
to act through two changes: [I]n sentiendo, obiectum quod sentitur est illud quod immediate immutat sensum
duplici immutatione iam dicta (Quod. V, q. 14 [176vN]).
49
Tachau establishes this in Vision and Certitude, 31, n. 12.
50
De multiplicatio specierum, I, c. 1 (ed. Lindberg, 3, lines 2829): . . . primum effectum cuiuslibet
agentis naturaliter.
51
Ibid., II, c. 1 (ed. Lindberg, 90, lines 1124).
52
Lindberg (Roger Bacons Philosophy of Nature, lv) remarks on this development in the signification
of species: But with Grosseteste and Bacon, there is a significant broadening of the terms meaning. No longer does species apply merely to the perceptual realm; now it denotes the likeness of any
object, emanating from the object, whether or not a percipient being is present to receive it. Indeed,
the term likeness is no longer an adequate translation; the species is, of course, the similitude of the
object from which it emanates, but it is more than that; it is the force or power by which any object
acts on its surroundings. In short, the term has been appropriated by Grosseteste and Bacon to denote
al-Kindis universal force, radiating from everything in the world to produce effects.
193
of the transmission of species through the medium. Thus species are involved in
all natural change. Accordingly, as a species is the effect of a corporeal thing, it
itself is essentially corporeal.53
It is not surprising, then, that in light of this understanding of species and the
natural process by which they are generated through the medium, Henry conceives
of impressed species as material in nature. In fact, certain texts suggest that he
views sensible species as real material images, like those that appear in a mirror.54
Given that the reception of an impressed species is a natural, material change, the
multiplication of such species can continue as long as there is a material principle
in the receiver. Accordingly, Henry holds that the generation of species takes place
from the external sensible thing through the medium into the particular sense
organs and then through the nerves into the organ of memory. The impressed
species in the memory can then move the imagination to the act of imagining, just
as the external sensible object moves the particular senses to the act of sensing.55
But because the intellect is an immaterial power, the multiplication of impressed
species ends at the level of the imaginative memory.
But such a change comes about in any intellective power through the impression of
a species by no thing whatsoever, since it occurs only if it is material and through a
material change, and any intellective power is immaterial.56
Henrys concern here is that some mistakenly hold that the multiplication of species continues from the senses into the intellect. Tachau claims that Roger Bacon
is vague on this point, but that by the time Henry entered the discussion, most
Parisian scholars held that the process of multiplication did indeed continue
into the intellect, via the conversion of phantasms into intelligible species.57 She
53
Bacon (De multiplicatio specierum, III, c. 2 [ed. Lindberg, 186, lines 37]) refutes the opinion
of those who attribute a spiritual mode of being to species in the medium and in the sense: Secundo
considerandum an species agentis corporalis debeat dici res corporalis vel spiritualis, propter hoc quod multi solebant dicere quod species habet esse spirituale in medio et in sensu. Et patet quod est vere res corporalis, quia non
est anima nec intelligentia nec prima causa; sed omne aliud ab illis est vere res corporalis.
54
For instance, Summa, a. 33, q. 2 (Summa (Quaestiones ordinariae), art. XXXIXXXIV, ed. R. Macken,
Opera omnia XXVII [Leuven, 1991], 14243, lines 8085): [S]pecies illa, quae est illi in cuius scilicet oculo
recipitur ut in subiecto, sicut ratio videndi obiectum extra, et non ipsi obiectum visibile, alteri potest esse ut obiectum
in quo videt rem illam velut in imagine eius, licet ipsam non videat in se. Illa enim imago in oculo unius apparet
alteri tanquam in speculo, in qua potest videre ille de re visa, licet ut in imagine, quidquid videt iste in ipsa se
[lege re] visa extra. For the correction of se to re, see Goehring, Henry of Ghent on Cognition, 127.
Henrys depiction of a species as a real image in a mirror is further reinforced by his use of the term
idolum (see n. 22), which Bacon says is the term frequently used with respect to mirrors (see De multiplicatio specierum, I, c. 1 [ed. Lindberg, 4, line 47]). In contrast, Aquinas employs the term idolum in
the context of cognition only when discussing the view of Democritus, who maintained that cognition
occurs by means of the propagation of real images of the object (see Summa theologiae, I, q. 84, a. 6).
55
Quod. V, q. 14 (176vM): [S]icut a sensibili extra per medium generatur species eius in organo sensus
particularis extra: et ipsum immutat ad actum sentiendi: sic a sensu particulari extra species per medium numerorum [lege nervorum] intra generatur in organo memoriae. . . . Species existens in memoria immutat ad
actum imaginandi imaginativum, sicut sensibile extra immutat ad actum sentiendi sensum particularem. For a
treatment of Henrys doctrine on internal sensation, see Jerome Brown, Henry of Ghent on Internal
Sensation, Journal of the History of Philosophy 10 (1972): 1528.
56
Quod. V, q. 14 (176rM): Sed talis immutatio per impressionem speciei a nulla re omnino fit in quacumque vi intellectiva: quia non est nisi materialis et per materialem transmutationem: et quaelibet vis intellectiva
immaterialis est. Cf. Quod. IV, q. 21 (136vG).
57
Vision and Certitude, 31.
identifies Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas as offering the paradigmatic
elaborations of this process.58 For Henry, the generation or multiplication of
impressed species in the intellect would compromise the intellects immateriality. Following the terminology of Averroes, Henry calls the possible intellect the
material intellect,59 but he specifies that it is not material in the way that the senses
are material and so not subject to the impression of species through the natural,
material mode of change: The material intellect indeed receives no impressed
species from the object. . . . [The rational soul] has nothing impressed on it from
things through the senses.60
Yet Albert and Aquinas also maintain the Augustinian principle that corporeal
things cannot impress themselves on the intellect through the senses.61 They acknowledge that, despite their spiritual mode of existence, sensible species exist
in bodily cognitive powers and represent objects under particular material conditions. As such, these species are only potentially intelligible and incapable of
actualizing the possible intellect. But because sensible species, as forms received
without matter, already possess a degree of immateriality and intentional existence
proper to cognition, the agent intellect is able to act on the sensible species in the
imaginationnamely, the phantasmin order to generate an actual intelligible
species in the possible intellect. Thus corporeal things do not act upon the possible
intellect through the senses without the influence of the agent intellect.
Early in his career Henry adopted a similar account and posited such a species
in the intellect. By the time of his fourth Quodlibet in 1279, however, he had come
to reject any impressed intelligible speciesthat is, any species that is generated
58
Ibid., n. 14. However, Leen Spruit (Species Intelligibilis: From Perception to Knowledge [Leiden:
Brill, 1994], 207, n. 150) objects to this characterization and claims that Albert and Thomas do not
elaborate this process in terms of a multiplication theory, nor do they posit any impressed intelligible
species. There are, however, two distinct issues here. The first is whether Aquinas sees the conversion
of the phantasm into an intelligible species as a continuation of the multiplication of species into the
intellect. From Henrys point of view, the real generation of an intelligible species in the intellect,
which Aquinas clearly holds, is ipso facto a multiplication of species into the intellect. But even Aquinas
himself seems to view the generation and reception of intelligible species as part of the multiplication
process: Haec autem est actio corporis, quae non est ad transmutationem materiae, sed ad quamdam diffusionem
similitudinis formae in medio secundum similitudinem spiritualis intentionis quae recipitur de re in sensu vel
intellectu, et hoc modo sol illuminat arem, et color speciem suam multiplicat in medio (De potentia, q. 5, a. 8
[Quaestiones disputatae, vol. 2: Quaestiones disputatae de potentia, ed. P. M. Pession (Turin-Rome: Marietti,
1965), 152]) [emphasis added]. The second issue is whether the intelligible species in Aquinass doctrine is impressed. Here Spruit is correct. Aquinas does not posit any impressed intelligible species, if such
a species is a likeness of a phantasm imparted to the possible intellect solely through the proximate
agency of the imagination and the remote agency of the sensible thing. The action of the agent intellect
is necessary to produce an intelligible species in act, and so the reception of an intelligible species in
the possible intellect is not simply one more impression of a species in the process of multiplication.
59
For the source of the term intellectus materialis, see Averroes, Commentarium magnum, 8791 and
380. For Henrys explicit mention of Averroess distinction of three intellectsmaterial, agent, and
speculativesee Summa, a. 58, q. 2, ad 3 (Summa quaestionum ordinarium theologiae, ed. Iodocus Badius,
2 vols. [Paris, 1520; reprint, St. Bonaventure, NY: The Franciscan Institute, 1953], 131rL).
60
Quod. IV, q. 21 (136vH): Intellectus vero materialis ab obiecto nullam recipit speciem impressivam. . . .
[anima rationalis] nihil sibi habet de rebus per sensum impressum.
61
Augustine, De musica VI, c. 5, n. 812 (Patrologia Latina [PL], ed. J.-P. Migne [Paris,184464]
vol. 32, columns 116769); De Genesi ad litteram, c. 16, n. 3233 (PL 34, 46667); c. 20 (PL 34, 470);
De Trinitate X, c. 5 (PL 42, 977).
195
in the intellect as distinct from the phantasm and inheres in the intellect as a
form in a subject.62 The reason for Henrys denial of these species is that, under
the influence of the perspectivists, he had come to view any generation of species
originating from sensible things as part of the natural process of the multiplication of species. Because this process occurs through natural, material change, any
species generated as an inherent form came to be seen as impressed according
to the natural and material mode of existence and change. Thus to posit intelligible species as inherent forms in the intellect generated from sensible things
is to remain on the level of the natural, material mode of existence and change,
regardless of the causal activity of the agent intellect. This is where Henry breaks
with Aquinas. The cognitive mode of existence of a form is not simply a special
mode of inherence. Another type of species must be posited with a distinctively
cognitive mode of existence, which is received according to a distinctively cognitive
mode of changenamely, expressive species, which exist in the cognitive power
as in a knower, not as in a subject, and are received objectively, not naturally or
materially. Hence the union and assimilation of knower and known that is essential
to cognition is effected through expressive species, not impressed species.
This section has shown why Henry denied the possibility of impressed intelligible
species: impressed species are material and so would compromise the immaterial
nature of the intellect. The next two sections will establish why Henry thought that
impressed intelligible species are superfluous and expressive species are sufficient
to account for the act of understanding.
2. the object itself as the causal

principle of cognition
Because Henry came to view all inhering species as natural and material, it makes
sense that he would eventually deny the existence of any such species in the intellect. But that left him with the task of explaining how the intellect is actualized
and informed through a union with and assimilation to the intelligible, causal
functions for which intelligible species were usually posited. Henrys strategy can
be summarized as follows. (1) Reduce the role of all impressed species to that
of making the object present to a cognitive power; (2) show that once the intelligible is present to the intellect, the other functions for which impressed species
are posited can be sufficiently performed by the intelligible itself; and (3) explain
how the intelligible can be present to the intellect without an impressed intelligible species. The first two steps are considered in this section. The third will be
considered in section 3.
62
Marrone (Truth and Scientific Knowledge, 21) following Nys, attributes a doctrine of impressed intelligible species to the early thought of Henry, despite the fact that the expression impressed intelligible
species is not to be found in Henrys early work (see Nys, De werking, 57). It follows from Henrys later
characterization of impressed intelligible species as really distinct inhering species generated in the
intellect that he did in fact posit such species early in his career (see, for instance, Summa, a. 1, q. 11
[ed. Wilson, 181, lines 7576]: [G]eneratur species intelligibilis in intellectu). Furthermore, Henry does
mention a likeness impressed on the mind in Summa, a. 1, q. 2 (ed. Wilson, 58, lines 56869): Omnis
enim alia [similitudo] impressa [menti] a quocumque exemplari abstracto a re ipsa, imperfecta obscura et nebulosa est.
According to the common opinion, the function of an impressed intelligible
species is to make the essence of a thing present to the intellect. It is able to perform this function because it is a likeness of that essence.63 Now, throughout his
career Henry maintained that there are special cases in which the intelligible is
essentially present to the intellect, and in such cases no mediating species is required to bring about an act of understanding, the intelligible itself being capable
of actualizing and informing the intellect. It was in dealing with these special cases
that he developed a doctrine on the mode of understanding an object through its
presence.64 By providing an account of the unique mode by which the intellect is
actualized and informed by an intelligible that is essentially present, Henry was
in a position to extend this account to all cognitive acts, the only difference being
the mode by which the object is present to the cognitive power.
As early as Quodlibet I, qq. 1213 (1276), Henry rejects the need for any species in the separated souls understanding of itself. The separated soul is already
actually intelligible by virtue of its complete separation from matter and is present to itself. Thus it is able to understand itself and its essence without any other
species.65 Later, in Quodlibet III, q. 1 (1278/79), Henry extends this doctrine to
the created intellects understanding of God in the beatific vision.66 He does so
by distinguishing two modes by which the intellect is actualized by and united to
the intelligible. The first is through an informing species. The second is through
the presence of the intelligibles essence to the intellect. Since no species can
adequately represent the divine essence, it must be the case that it is somehow
directly present and united to the intellect.
[A]nd in this way the pure divine essence itself makes the intellect itself to be understanding in act, and makes the intellect as it were composite with it, that it may
be as it were the form of the intellect, not through an informing in natural being
[per informationem in esse naturali], but through a presence in intellectual being [per
praesentiam in esse intellectuali]. And it does so more truly than any intelligible species.67
Henry argues that any function performed by an informing species can be performed more perfectly by the very presence of the intelligible.68 Hence, through its
presence, the intelligible can function as a principle of understanding, be united
to the intellect, and bring it into the act of understanding.
63
Quod. V, q. 14 (175rD): [O]portet ergo quod fiat ei praesens per aliquid alterum quod sit aliquid sui.
Quod secundum usitatem opinionem species est intellectui impressa ut similitudo essentiae cognoscendae. Cf.
Quod. IV, q. 7 (94vA).
64
Nys (De werking, 6170) gives a clear presentation of this development in Henrys thought.
65
Quod. I, qq. 1213 (ed. Macken, 80, lines 7578): Quare, cum anima separata quantum est de se,
intelligibile quid est actu, quia omnino separata a materia et sibi ipsi summe actualis et praesens est, se ipsam per
se et suam essentiam inter omnes creaturas perfectissime et sine omni alia specie intelligit.
66
For more on Henrys doctrine on the beatific vision, see Christian Trottmann, Henri de Gand,
source de la dispute sur la vision rflexive, in Henry of Ghent. Proceedings of the International Colloquium
on the Occasion of the 700th Anniversary of his Death (1293), 30942.
67
Quod. III, q. 1 (48rV): [E]t sic ipsa pura essentia divina facit ipsum intellectum esse in actu intelligentem,
et facit quasi compositum intellectum cum ipso, ut ipsa sit quasi forma intellectus non per informationem in esse
naturali, sed per praesentiam in esse intellectuali. Et hoc verius quam faciat aliqua species intelligibilis.
68
Ibid.: Et sic illa praesentialitas intima facit ad actum intelligendi quicquid faceret informatio speciei, et
perfectius disponit ad ipsum eliciendum quam potest facere aliqua species informans.
197
Henry characterizes the two modes according to which the intelligible actualizes and is united to the intellect in terms of two modes of existence, natural and
intellectual. In the first, the intelligible is united to the intellect through an informing intelligible species, which Henry is still positing at the time of Quodlibet
III. This mode also applies to the union of sensible and sense, which is effected
by an informing sensible species. As seen above, Henry characterizes the reception of sensible species as a material, real, and natural change through which a
form comes to inhere in a subject. Here he describes the reception of intelligible
species as an informing in natural being. In the second mode, the intelligible (in
this case the divine essence) is united to the intellect through its presence in intellectual being. Again this appears to correspond to the mode that Henry will later
describe as objective reception of expressive species as in a knower69 and the
known according to its essence [being] in the knower . . . not as in a subject in
which it inheres formally, but as in a knower objectively.70
The key point of this doctrine is that once an object is present to a cognitive
power, it is able to move that power directly and bring it into an act of cognition,
without imparting an inhering form to it. As Paulus states, The fundamental
idea of Henry of Ghent is that the conditions of knowledge are brought together
when the reality to be known and the knowing power are present to one another,
no supplementary mechanism appearing necessary to effect their conjunction.71
Furthermore, all of the dicta regarding cognition are safeguarded by having the
intelligible itself perform any functions attributed to an impressed species. As
stated above, even though the divine essence does not inform the intellect through
a species, it is still able to actualize the intellect and to function as its form in a
certain way. Indeed, Henry states that through its presence it can function more
perfectly as the form by which the intellect understands, than through any species.
Henrys doctrine on how a created intellect can understand the divine essence is
not original in this regard. The idea that through its presence the divine essence
actualizes, is united to, and informs the created intellect according to a distinctively intellective mode is found in Aquinas.72 What is unique is his application
of this mode to all acts of intellection, thus making the mode according to which
the created intellect understands itself and the divine essence paradigmatic of all
intellectual cognition.
The extension of this doctrine to the intellectual cognition of external sensible
things occurs shortly after Quodlibet III in Summa, a. 33, q. 2 (1279). In this text
Henry addresses the assumption that the intellect cannot understand unless it is
brought from potency into act through an inhering form.73 In response, he invokes
See n. 40 and n. 41.
See n. 42.
71
Paulus, propos de la thorie de la connaissance dHenri de Gand, 495: Lide fondamentale
dHenri de Gand est que les conditions de la connaissance sont runies, lorsque la ralit connatre et la puissance connaissante se trouvent en prsence, nul rouage supplmentaire napparaissant ncessaire pour oprer leur
conjonction.
72
For instance, see Quaestiones diputatae de veritate, q. 8, a. 1 (ed. Leon. 22, 217, lines 16266; 218,
lines 198208; 219, lines 25570).
73
The source of this assumption, according to Henry, is Metaphysics IX, where Aristotle states that
being in potency is not brought from potency into act except through a form (see c. 8 [1048b24]).
69
70
the Aristotelian distinction between first and second act. Henry concedes that
the reduction into first act occurs only through an inhering form. But a thing in
potency to second act is reduced to act through its own form.74 Henry then applies
this distinction to sensation and intellection. The sense power is brought into first
act by the form of the sensible altering the sense power and impressing a formal
likeness on it. But the understanding potency is not efficiently brought into act
through some form impressed on it, but only by the intelligible itself objectively
present to the intellect, as a knowable to a knower, either in itself through [its]
essence, or in that quod quid est from it.75 Here Henry extends the manner by
which the intelligible can be present to the intellect. Not only can it be essentially
present in itself, but it can also be present in its quod quid est. As will be discussed
in section 4, the quod quid est or quiddity of a thing is expressed clearly through a
definition formed by the intellect, but it is also found confusedly in the phantasm.
Thus Henry appears to be applying to all intellective acts the mode by which the
intellect is actualized through the presence of the intelligible.
It is in Quodlibet IV, q. 7 (1279/80) that Henry emphatically denies impressed
species in the intellect and introduces the notion of expressive species. Again the
context is the consideration of whether the intellect needs to be informed by a
species in order to know itself, anything contained in its essence, or the divine
essence in the beatific vision. According to Henry, the truth of this view, namely,
that an object present to a cognitive faculty can actualize that faculty without the
impression of a form, is by no means obvious. There are some who maintain that
even in the case in which an intelligible is essentially present to the intellect, an
impressed intelligible species is still necessary for an act of understanding to take
place. They argue that because the created intellect is in potency to any act of
understanding, it must be determined to that which is understood by something
that makes it to be understanding in act. Such a determining principle unites the
intelligible to the intellect, becomes in a certain way the form of the intellect, and
assimilates it to the intelligible. This principle is nothing other than the intelligible
species, which informs the intellect and is impressed in it as in a subject.76
Henry argues that if a thing can be present to the intellect through its own essence, then no such informing species is necessary. The essence itself is better able
to carry out the functions necessary to bring about cognition than any inhering
74
Summa, a. 33, q. 2 (ed. Macken, 151, lines 214): De potentia igitur ad actum primum qui est esse,
nihil educitur nisi per formam, non eius quod est in potentia, sed alterius quod est in actu per illam formam. .
. . De potentia vero ad actum secundum qui est operari, educitur res per formam suam.
75
Ibid. (lines 2225): [P]otentia intelligens non educitur effective in actum per aliquam formam sibi
impressam, sed solummodo ab ipso intelligibili obiective, praesenti intellectui sicut cognoscibile cognoscenti, vel in
se ipso per essentiam, vel in eo quod quid est de ipso.
76
Quod. IV, q. 7 (93rP): [Q]uod quorumdam erat opinio de intellectu quocumque creato, quod ex se solum
in potentia est ad actum intelligendi quicumque; propter quod oportet ipsum determinari per aliquid ad illud
quod debet ab ipso intelligi, quo de potentia intelligente fiat actu intelligens. . . . [I]ta quod sine illo determinante
nullo modo quicumque potest intelligere. Et, ut dicunt, per huiusmodi determinans, intelligibile coniunctum est
intelligenti, . . . et est forma quodammodo intelligentis et unum cum ipso et simile ei. Tale autem determinans, ut
dixit illa opinio, non est nisi species intelligibilis informans intellectum et impressa ipsi ut subiecto.
199
species. Accordingly, the union of knower and known is better achieved by the
presence of the essence of a thing than by its species inhering in the intellect.
77
For such a thing that is present to the intellect through its own essence similarly is
more conjoined to it as its form existing in it, not as in a subject, as an impressed
form inhering and informing [it] to an act of being, but as an object in a knower,
as an expressive or representative exemplar form, present and moving [it] to an act
of understanding.78
Again Henry contrasts two modes of presence and union of a thing to a cognitive
power. According to the first, the thing is made present and united to the cognitive power through an inhering impressed species, through which it becomes
the form of the cognitive power and exists in it as in a subject. According to the
second mode, the thing is present through its essence and is united to the power
as its form and exists in it as an object in a knower. The essence itself is the form
of the cognitive power and as such is an expressive and representative form. The key
point here is that when a thing is essentially present to the intellect, it is already
conjoined to it as a form existing in it. In other words, an intelligible present to
the intellect constitutes in a certain way a unity with it.79 As Henry states, the essence itself is the expressive form in the intellect, present and moving it to an act
of understanding.
Now, Henry concedes that in the usual case of understanding an external thing
in the world, the essence of which is absent to the intellect, the intellect must be
determined to the intelligible through an intelligible species informing the intellect.80 But Henry redefines the nature of this species and its mode of informing
the intellect. His new position is that the only mode by which a thing may be united
to the intellect and exist in it is that characteristic of essential presencethat is,
that by means of an expressive species. He distinguishes between three meanings
of the term species in Augustines work. First, it signifies the form of a natural
thing, which it possesses in itself. Second, it signifies the likeness of the form of a
natural thing, informing the senses through an impression.
77
Quod. IV, q. 7 (94vA): Sic ergo de divina essentia praesente intellectui creato, ut visibili per essentiam, de
ipso intellectu sibi praesente per substantiam, ponimus quod sine omni specie media cognoscuntur ab intellectu.
Simili modo ponimus hoc idem de omni quod per suam essentiam preaesens est in intellectu quocumque modo. Et
ponimus omnia necessaria ad cognitionem et intellectum impleri per solum rei essentiam, propter quod videbatur
illis ponendam species; per ipsam enim essentiam rei praesentem intellectui determinabitur ad ipsam intelligandam
melius quam per speciem inhaerentem, ut dictum est.
78
Ibid.: Tale enim quod est praesens per suam essentiam intellectui: similiter est magis coniunctum ei, ut
forma euis existens in ipso, non ut in subiecto, tamquam forma inhaerens impressiva et informans ad actum
essendi, sed ut obiectum in cognitivo, tamquam forma exemplaris expressiva sive repraesentativa, praesens et
movens ad actum intellegendi.
79
Quod. V, q. 14 (174vY): Quod similiter [requiritur species] neque ex parte intelligibilis, ut per ipsam
preasens sit intelligenti et quodammodo unum cum ipso constituat.
80
Quod. IV, q. 7 (93vS): Quod bene verum est, quod potentiam intellectus oportet determinari ad intelligibile,
. . . et quod hoc fit semper per speciem intelligibilis informantem intellectum, quando res intellecta per essentiam
absens est intellectui.
In a third way species is said of the thing known as existing objectively in a knower,
as it is a knower, giving form to the act of understanding, but not as an impressed
form inhering in the understander.81
Thus the mode characteristic of an intelligible present through its essence is the
same mode according to which all intelligibles, even those that are not essentially
present, exist in the intellect and inform the act of understanding. This doctrine
reflects the mature thought of Henry on intelligible species. The intelligible object as it exists in the intellect as in a knower is itself the species that informs the
intellect and the act of understanding. As such it is an expressive, not impressed,
species.
In this way Henry is able to maintain that the principle of the act of intellection
is constituted by a union of intellect and intelligible.
The operation and perfection of the knower as it understands in act require two
things, namely, the intellective [principle] itself, which in itself can receive this perfection in its intellect as a passive power; and the intelligible itself, which can bring
about [agere] this perfection in the intellect as an active power and formal ratio in the
intellect in order to elicit that [perfection] from the passive power of the intellect
as a generated and natural operation of the composite of intellect and intelligible,
which by that operation is through itself understanding in act.82
Thus the intellect as a passive power receives its perfection, that is, its operation
of understanding, but that operation proceeds from the composite of intellect
and intelligible. Within that composite, the intelligible, insofar as it is an expressive species, acts as a formal principle that elicits the act of understanding from
the composite.
Interestingly enough, Henry applies the doctrine of expressive species even at
the level of sense cognition. Impressed sensible species are necessary only because
sensible things are not present to the sense faculties. They are made present by
the transmission of species through the medium, which requires a real separation
and generation of species in that medium. Although such species are received
without matter, they are still of the nature of impressed material species, according to Henry. Thus impressed species are particular to the medium and corporeal
organs. However, once the object of cognition is present to the sense power, no
further species of this kind is needed. The sense power is not informed by another
impressed species; rather, the medium by that species elicits an act of vision.83
The same is true of the internal medium between the sense organs and the organ
of the imagination:
And still further in the interior is the soul according to the power of imagination, such
that the medium inside, as well as outside, is informed by a visible species only, and
81
Ibid. (95vC): Tertio modo dicitur species res cognita, ut obiective existens in cognoscente ut est cognoscens,
dans formam ad actum intelligendi, non autem ut forma impressiva inhaerens intelligenti.
82
Quod. V, q. 14 (177vS): [O]peratio et perfectio intelligentis secundum actum ut est intelligens duo
requiruntur, scilicet, ipsum intellectivum: quod in se potest recipere talem perfectionem in suo intellectu tanquam
potentia passiva: et ipsum intelligibile quod potest agere in intellectu talem perfectionem tanquam vis activa et
ratio formalis in intellectu ad eliciendum ipsam de potentia intellectus passiva tanquam operationem factam et
naturalem compositi ex intellectu et intelligibili quod illa operatione est per seipsum secundum actum intelligens.
83
Summa, a. 58, q. 2, ad 3 (130rH): [M]edium specie illa actum visionis elicit.
201
not by a vision or [act of] imagination; [whereas] indeed that interior [is informed
by an act of] imagination or vision only, and not by the species per se.84
So a sensible species is multiplied through the internal medium, but once it reaches
the interior power of imagination it is not impressed on that power, because at
that point the object is already present to the power through the sensible species
in the proximate medium. The imaginative power is simply informed by an act of
imagination. Thus, in the cognitive process, impressed species are particular to the
medium and the sense organs, and are a means of rendering the object present
to the cognitive power.85 Once it is present, the object is united to the power as an
expressive species and functions as the formal principle that elicits and informs
the act of cognition; so no further mediating species is necessary.
3. the universal phantasm as substitute for

impressed intelligible species
Thus far what Henry considers to be the essential condition for intellectual understanding has been determined: the presence of the intelligible to the intellect.
Furthermore, that presence is not necessarily brought about by means of a form
or species inhering in the intellect. In fact, there can be no such species at the
level of the intellect. But how, then, do intelligibles in the external sensible world
come to be present to the intellect through the senses?
Henry addresses this question in Quodlibet IV, q. 21. After outlining the process
by which sensible species are generated in the medium, in the senses, and in the
imagination, he arrives at intellective apprehension and the relevant issue of the
question: in what way can the intellect understand something with the aid of the
senses and the imagination?86 He begins by stating that our possible intellect is
in the genus of passive powers in a certain way, since it receives the form it apprehends and is in potency to it, but is not changeable (transmutabilis) by it, since it
is not material like the senses.87 Because the intellect is immaterial, the change by
which it receives the form is not a typical natural change, as that which occurs with
the impression of sensible species in the senses. Henry then explains, as discussed
above, that the senses receive not only impressed species through a natural change,
but also expressive species, the latter bringing the senses into the act of sensing.88
The intellect, on the other hand, receives only expressive species.
The material intellect indeed receives no impressed species from the object, but only
expressive, by which one who understands potentially comes to understand actually;
84
Ibid. (130rG): Et adhuc in amplius interiori est anima secundum vim phantasiae: ita quod medium
tam intra quam extra informatur specie visibili tantum, et non visione aut phantasiatione: illud vero interius
phantasiatione aut visione tantum, et non specie per se.
85
Quod. XI, q. 5 (451rS): [S]olummodo ponimus [speciem mediantem] in sensu, quia sensibile in seipso
non potest esse praesens intra.
86
Quod. IV, q. 21 (136vGH): Post hanc apprehensionem sequitur apprehensio intellectiva de qua procedit
quaestio; et quaerit modum quo intellectus coniunctus possit aliquid intelligere adminiculo sensus et imaginationis
sive phantasiae.
87
Ibid. (136vH): [I]ntellectus noster possibilis est de genere virtutum passivarum quoquo modo [lege quodammodo]: quia scilicet recipit formam quam apprehendit et est in potentia ad eam; sed non transmutabilis ab ea
quia non est materialis sicut est sensus.
88
See n. 40.
for it must be according to some likeness that the intellect is related to intelligibles,
just as the sense is related to sensibles.89
So the possible intellect is indeed actualized by a form that is a likeness of the

intelligible, but that form is not an impressed inhering speciesit is an expressive
species. Now, this is not surprising in light of the fact that Henry has already made
this type of species, and its mode of informing a cognitive power, essential to all
cognitive acts. Even at the level of sensation the senses are reduced into the act of
sensing through an expressive species. The problem is that the actualization of the
intellect through an expressive species is only possible if the intelligible-in-act is
present. Henrys task, then, is to explain how particular intentions in the imagination, which are only potentially intelligible, are rendered actually intelligible.
Henry makes the standard Aristotelian comparison between the function of the
agent intellect and that of corporeal light in a number of texts.90 Light exercises a
twofold function: it actualizes colors, making them actual movers of the medium
and of the power of sight, and it illuminates the diaphanous medium and sight,
making them actually receptive of the intentions of colors. Likewise, the agent
intellect exercises a twofold function: it actualizes the phantasm by abstracting it
from material conditions, thereby making it universal and able to move the possible
intellect, and it shines forth in the possible intellect, making it receptive of those
universal intentions.91 At the heart of Henrys doctrine is the mode by which the
intellect receives and is moved by the form of the intelligible. In Quodlibet IV, q.
21, he states that the intentions in the imagination, as made actually intelligible
by the agent intellect, actualize the possible intellect and inform the act of understanding objectively, that is, according to the mode of an expressive species.
[S]o the agent intellect makes intentions understood in potency understood in act,
so that the material intellect may receive them objectively and be moved by them.92
Now this viewnamely, that the form or intention of the intelligible is received
only objectively in the possible intellectis a radical departure from the standard
Aristotelian account. According to the latter, the agent intellect acts on the phantasm and abstracts from it the universal, which then informs the possible intellect. That universal is generated and exists in the intellect as an inhering form,
distinct from the phantasm. Thus the abstraction of the universal simultaneously
presents the intelligible to the possible intellect and actualizes it by informing it.
According to Henry, the intelligible only informs the intellect objectively as an
expressive species. But this mode of informing requires that the intelligible first be
Quod. IV, q. 21 (136vH): Intellectus vero materialis ab obiecto nullam recipit speciem impressivam: sed
solum expressivam: qua de potentia intelligente fit actu intellegens; oportet enim quod secundum aliquam similitudinem sicut sensus se habet ad sensibilia, sic intellectus se habeat ad intelligibilia.
90
Aristotle, De anima III, c. 5 (430a1417).
91
Summa, a. 58, q. 2, ad 3 (130vDE): Comparat autem agentem luci quo ad duo, se habet enim agens
ad phantasmata: sicut lux ad colores: ad possibilem vero ut lux ad visum. Cf. Quod. IV, q. 21 (136vH); Quod.
V, q. 14 (176vO).
92
Quod. IV, q. 21 (136vH): [I]ta intellectus agens facit intentiones in potentia intellectas intellectas actu:
ita quod recipiat eas obiective intellectus materialis et moveatur ab eis [emphasis added].
89
203
present to the intellect. This means that with the abstraction of the universal the
intelligible object is made present to the intellect prior to informing and moving
it.93 But how can the universal be present to the possible intellect without being
generated and inhering in it?
In Summa, a. 58, q. 2 (1285), Henry states that the intelligible is present to the
possible intellect through what he calls the universal phantasm.
[The light of the agent intellect] abstracts the universal phantasm from the particular
phantasm and puts it before the possible intellect as its proper moving [immutativum]
object through which it is actually moved by intellection or the act of understanding
to a cognition, not of itself [i.e. of the universal phantasm], but of the universal thing
of which it is the species.94
In this text, Henry identifies the proper moving object of cognition with the
species that directly moves the cognitive power. Just as in sensation the sensible
thing moves the sense power through the sensible species generated in the sense
organ,95 so too in intellection the intelligible moves the possible intellect through
a speciesnamely, the universal phantasm.
But what exactly is a universal phantasm, where does it exist, and how does
it present the intelligible to the intellect? Henry claims that the agent intellect
abstracts the universal phantasm from the particular phantasm. In the text from
Quodlibet V, q. 14, considered above, Henry states that the agent intellect makes
phantasms universals in act, actual movers of the intellect, and understood
in act. In Quodlibet IV, q. 21, he says that imagined intentions do not move the
material intellect unless they are made universal in act by the agent intellect.96 The
agent intellect also makes potentially understood intentions actually understood.97
Thus the operation of the agent intellect makes the phantasm, the imagined intention, universal. The phantasm, as universal under the influence of the agent
intellect, then moves the possible intellect. The result of this motion is that the
universal object is understood in act by the possible intellect. But why does Henry
speak of the phantasm itself as universal, which seems oxymoronic, rather than
the phantasm as that from which the universal is abstracted?
The answer lies in Henrys explanation of a major difference between the
operation of material light with respect to colors and the operation of the agent
intellect with respect to phantasms. The species of colors are realities distinct from
the colors themselves: The species of color is abstracted from color by as it were a
kind of real separation and generation or multiplication of it in the entire medium
that is between the seen thing and that part of the eye in which lies the seeing
See n. 128 on how this is a priority at least in nature, if not in time.

Summa, a. 58, q. 2, ad 3 (130rHvH): [Lumen intellectus agentis] phantasma universale a particulari
abstrahit, et intellectui possibili proponit: ut obiectum propium illius immutativum: per quod actu immutatur
intellectione sive actu intelligendi ad cognitionem non sui, sed rei universalis cuius est species.
95
See n. 55.
96
Quod. IV, q. 21 (136vH): [I ]ntentiones imaginatae non movent ut obiecta intellectum materialem: nisi
quando efficiuntur in actu universales.
97
See n. 92.
93
94
power of the soul.98 Because the visible object can only move the power of sight
through the medium, the species of color by which it moves that power must be
abstracted from the object as a really distinct form that is generated through the
medium and into the organ of sight. The universal species, on the other hand, is
not really distinct from the particular phantasm.
Nor is the species itself, which is the universal phantasm, abstracted from the particular
phantasm through the mode of real separation or generation or multiplication in
the intellect . . . but only through a certain virtual separation of the material and
particular conditions . . . namely, the one by which it has the power of moving the
intellect.99
This positionnamely, that the agent intellect does not really separate anything
from the phantasm such that something real is generated in the intellectis in line
with Henrys rejection of any impressed intelligible species. The real generation of
a species as an inhering form in a subject is typical of the process of multiplication
of species, which takes place through material change. Thus the real generation
of any species in the intellect from the phantasm, even if it were under the influence of the agent intellect, would constitute a continuation of the multiplication
of species and a material alteration of the intellect.
Instead, Henry characterizes the abstractive operation of the agent intellect
as virtual separation. By virtual separation of the universal from the phantasm
Henry seems to mean that nothing real is produced or received in the intellect;
the phantasm is merely given the power (virtutem) to move the intellect. This
doctrine of virtual separation rests on what Henry calls the two rationes of the
phantasm. In Quodlibet VIII, q. 13 (1284), he states that the phantasm can be
considered in two ways:
In one way as it has the ratio of a phantasm and a particular. In another way as by the
previously mentioned stripping and abstraction it has the ratio of a universal, which
is called the universal of the phantasm, although it is not really other [aliud re] from
the phantasm itself.100
The universal and the particular are, therefore, the same in re insofar as both are
the same one phantasm. They differ, however, as two rationes of the phantasm.101
98
Summa, a. 58, q. 2, ad 3 (130rG): [I]psa species coloris abstrahitur a colore per quasi quandam separationem realem et generationem sive multiplicationem ipsius in totum medium quod est inter rem visam et id oculi
in quo viget vis animae visiva.
99
Summa, a. 58, q. 2, ad 3 (130rG): [N]ec ipsa species quae est phantasma universale, abstrahitur a
phantasmate particulari per modum separationis realis aut generationis aut multiplicationis in intellectu . . . sed
solum per quandam separationem virtualem conditionum materialium et particularium . . . qua scilicet habet
virtutem immutandi intellectum.
100
Quod. VIII, q. 13 (324vE): Dicendo quod phantasma potest dupliciter considerari. Uno modo ut habet
rationem phantasmatis et particularis. Alio modo ut per denudationem et abstractionem praedictam habet rationem
univeralis, quod appellatur universale phantasmatis: licet non sit aliud re ab ipso phantasmate.
101
The fact that the universal and the particular are the same in re in the phantasm, though
they differ in ratione, is tied to their identity in extramental reality: Hic vero non est aliud re phantasma
particulare, et species quae est phantasma universale: sicut nec res universalis est alia a re particulari (Summa,
a. 58, q. 2, ad 3 [130rG]). According to Henry, the universal and the particular in extramental reality
are only intentionally distinct: Et est triplex secundum quod sunt quaedam idem subiecto et differunt re quaedam
vero tantum intentione quaedam vero tantum ratione. . . . Secundo modo est abstractio universalis a particulari
(Summa, a. 48, q. 2, ad 2 [ed. Badius, 31rP]). On the difference between res, intentio, and ratio see
205
The phantasm considered under the ratio of particularity by the imagination is

a particular intention. The phantasm considered under the ratio of universality
by the intellect is a universal intention.102 The difference between the imagined
intention and the understood intention is rooted in the different rationes of the
phantasm. Thus the operation of the agent intellect produces a universal phantasm, which exists only in the imagination.
[T]he universal object exists to our intellect nowhere else than in the phantasm
which in the imaginative [power] has being only as in a knower.103
So the universal phantasm is itself an expressive species, which is present to the

intellect, moves it, and informs it according to the mode of an expressive species,
that is, as in a knower. But how can the intelligible be present to the possible intellect if it exists only in the imagination? Does it not have to be received into the
intellect in order to be present to it? How can an object be present to two different
cognitive powers, the imagination and the possible intellect, through an intention
that exists in one and not the other?
Henry explains this as follows. The relation of the agent intellect to the possible
intellect is analogous to that of light to the diaphanous medium. But the key difference is that light is an accidental perfection of the medium and a form inhering
in it, whereas the agent intellect is not a perfection of the possible intellect, nor
is it an inhering form. The agent intellect is an active power consubstantial with
the possible intellect, and both are consubstantial with the intellective soul.104 The
also Summa, a. 21, q. 4 (ed. Badius, 127vS); Quod. V, q. 6 (161vLM); and Quod. X, q. 7 (ed. Macken,
16366). On Henrys doctrine on the intentional distinction, see Paulus, Henri de Gand, 22037;
Marrone, Truth and Scientific Knowledge, 11519; John Wippel, Godfrey of Fontaines and Henry of
Ghents Theory of Intentional Distinction between Essence and Existence, in Sapientiae procerum
amore. Mlanges Mdivistes offerts Dom Jean-Pierre Mller, O.S.B., Studia Anselmiana, vol. 63 (Rome,
1974), 289321; The Metaphysical Thought of Godfrey of Fontaines: A Study in Late-Thirteenth Century Philosophy (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1981), 8085; R. Macken, Les
diverses applications de la distinction intentionelle chez Henri de Gand, in Sprache und Erkenntnis im
Mittelalter: Akten des VI internationalen Kongresses fr mittelalteriche Philosophie, 29 August3 September 1977
[Sprache und Erkenntnis im Mittelalter], ed. Jan P. Beckmann and Wolfgang Kluxen, vol. 13.2 of Miscellanea Mediaevalia (Walter de Gruyter: Berlin, 1981), 76976; Brown, Sensation in Henry of Ghent: A
Late Medieval Aristotelian-Augustinian Synthesis, 25256; Henry of Ghent on Internal Sensation,
2425, in particular n. 38; Abstraction and the Object of the Human Intellect according to Henry
of Ghent, Vivarium 11 (1973): 80104, in particular 8587.
102
See n. 92 and n. 96.
103
Quod. V, q. 14 (176vR): [U]niversale obiectum intellectui nostro non alibi existit nisi in phantasmate
quod in vi imaginativa non habet esse nisi sicut in cognoscente.
104
Quod. V, q. 14 (176vO): [A]gens autem non est perfectio intellectus possibilis, neque ei inhaeret: sed solum
vis et potentia activa consubstantialis ei: sicut et uterque scilicet intellectus agens et possibilis, est consubstantialis
animae intellectivae. The consubstantiality of the intellective powers and the intellective soul is part of
Henrys wider doctrine on the relation of the soul to its powers. Henry denies any real distinction
between the soul and its powers (see Quod. III, q. 14 [67rS]). For more on this doctrine, see Jules Janssens, Some Elements of Avicennian Influence on Henry of Ghents Psychology, in Ibn Sn and his
Influence on the Arabic and Latin World (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 15569; Gordon A. Wilson, Henry
of Ghent and Ren Descartes on the Unity of Man, Franziskanische Studien 64 (1982): 97110; Armand
Maurer Henry of Ghent and the Unity of Man, Medieval Studies 10 (1948): 120; Mrio A. Santiago
de Carvalho, O que significa pensar? Henrique de Gand em 1286 e os horizontes da problemtica
monopsiquista: Contra fundamenta Aristotelis? Revista Filosfica de Coimbra 10 (2001): 6992; and
Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Godfrey of Fontaines, 2023.
agent intellect can act, therefore, only upon that which is present to the intellective soul. Since it acts upon the phantasm, the phantasm must already be present
to the intellective soul.
For with respect to phantasms, the agent intellect first makes them to be intelligibles
in act by shining as it were on those [phantasms] and by illuminating them, not by
going out from the possible [intellect], but by turning itself toward them, since the
imagined [objects] are in the same substance of the soul in which the phantasms
are. Second, it gives them the power to move the possible intellect according to
actindeed in as much as they are as it were imbued and mixed with the light of
the agent [intellect].105
Thus, according to Henry, the object in the phantasm is present to the agent intellect by virtue of its presence in the same substance of the soul. Now, because the
possible intellect is consubstantial with the agent intellect and with the intellective
soul, it follows that whatever is present to the agent intellect and to the intellective
soul is present to the possible intellect. So once the agent intellect shines on the
phantasm, abstracting the universal and making the phantasm intelligible in act,
the universal intelligible is present to the possible intellect and is able to move
it into actor, as Henry puts it elsewhere, the light of the agent intellect places
before the possible intellect the phantasm under the ratio of a universal species.106
Henrys position, then, is that the presence of the intelligible object in the phantasm eliminates the need for the possible intellect to be informed by an impressed
species. The function of making the known present to the knower is performed
sufficiently by the universal species in the phantasm under the influence of the
agent intellect. The mediation of impressed species in the case of intellection is,
therefore, superfluous and ought to be rejected based on the Aristotelian principle of economy.107 Thus, in Henrys noetic, the phantasm effectively replaces
the impressed intelligible species.108
Despite Henrys appeal to two formal aspects, or rationes, in the phantasm,
his notion of a universal phantasm remains problematic and becomes a target
Quod. XIII, q. 8 (ed. J. Decorte, Opera omnia XVIII [Leuven, 1985], 51, lines 6065): Circa
phantasmata enim quasi resplendendo super illa et illuminando ea, non egrediendo a possibili sed convertendo se
ad illa, quia in eadem substantia animae sunt phantasia, in qua sunt phantasmata, et intellectus agens. Primo
facit illa esse actu intelligibilia, secundo dat eis vim movendi secundum actum intellectum possibilem, in quantum
scilicet sunt quasi imbuta et commixta lumini agentis.
106
Summa, a. 58, q. 2, ad 3 (129vE): Sed lumen agentis splendens spiritualiter super illa [phantasmata]
. . . et sub ratione speciei universalis praeponit ea intellectui possibili.
107
Henry cites the principle of economy in a number of texts. For instance, Quod. IV, q. 7 (94vS):
[S]emper dignius est et melius ponere per pauciora et minora quae possibile est poni per illa, quam per plura. Superfluum enim est fieri per plura, quod potest fieri per unum aut per pauciora, sicut dicit philosophus in I Physic.
Quod. V, q. 14 (174rV): Quare cum non sit ponere aliquod esse frustra in fundamento naturae et creaturae,
nullo igitur modo ponendum est in virtute intellectiva esse aliquas huiusmodi species. See Aristotle, Physics I, c.
4 (188a17); VIII, c. 6 (259a8); Posterior Analytics I, c. 25 (86a33).
108
Marrone (Light of Thy Countenance, 365) claims that the concept comes to replace impressed
species as Henrys thought develops. But the shift in Henrys thought from an informing species to
the concept or word pertains to his epistemologythat is, the concept formed by the intellect comes
to play the central role in comprehending the truth of things. On the level of noetics, however, it is
clearly the phantasm that replaces the impressed species in its causal function of making the intelligible present to the possible intellect.
105
207
for his critics, particularly Duns Scotus. Scotus offers various arguments directed
against Henrys position on intelligible species. Among them are those focusing
on the idea that the phantasm can represent the object under diverse rationes.
Scotus argues that a species, as a certain kind of species, has a certain kind of
formality (ratio) of representing, and is related to an object under that formality.
Therefore, the same species cannot have two representational formalities, nor can
it be representative of two formalities in an object. But to understand an object
under both the formality of a universal and the formality of a singular requires
two representational formalities in relation to two representable formalities in the
object. Therefore, the same thing cannot represent in different ways. Consequently,
a phantasm, which of itself represents an object under the formality of a singular,
cannot represent it under the formality of a universal.109 Scotuss basic argument
is that a species is in itself a certain way of representing an object. If that same
object is to be represented in a different way, that is, under a formally different
aspect, then a different species is required. The same species cannot represent
an object in diverse ways.
It is important to note that Scotuss argument does not rest on the claim that a
species that exists in a material organ is incapable of representing an object as universal. Unlike typical Aristotelians, Henry does not maintain that the phantasm is a
representation that exists in a material organ. He is careful to distinguish between
the impressed species, which exists in the imagination materially as an accident in
a subject, and the object itself (or phantasm), which exists in the imagination as
an object in a knower. Abstraction, he claims, is only from the latter.
[I]n the imaginative power there are three: namely, [1] the impressed species from
the species existing in memory, without which nothing could be perceived on account
of its organic and material being; [2] the act itself of imagining; and [3] the third is
the imagined object itself. Of these, the species is [in] the imaginative [power] as an
accidental form in a subject; the act of imagining, as a motion in a moved [thing];
what is imagined, as an object in a knower. And though these three are in it, yet abstraction does not come to be from the impressed species, because the intellect does
not receive the impression of a material species, because it would then be alterable
and mutable, just like the senses. . . . [N]or does abstraction come to be from the
act of imagining for the same reason, but only from the imagined object, so that that
which is as a known in the knowing imagination in one way, comes to be as a known
in the knowing intellect in another way.110
109
Scotus, Ordinatio, I, d. 3, p. 3, q. 1, n. 352 (Opera Omnia III [Civitas Vaticana: Typis Polyglottis
Vaticanis, 1950], 211): [S]pecies ex hoc quod est talis species, habet talem rationem repraesentandi, et hoc respectu
obiecti sub tali ratione repraesentati; ergo eadem species manens, non habet duas rationes repraesentativas, nec est
repraesentativa respectu duarum rationum in repraesentabili. Sed intelligere obiectum sub ratione universalis et
singularis requirit duplicem rationem repraesentativam vel repraesentandi, et est respectu duplicis rationis repraesentabilis formaliter; ergo idem manens idem, non repraesentat sic et sic; ergo phantasma, quod de se repraesentat
obiectum sub ratione singularis, non potest repraesentare ipsum sub ratione universalis. Cf. Lectura, I, d. 1, p.
3, q. 1, n. 268 (ed. Vaticana XVI, 332); Quaestiones super secundum et tertium De anima, q. 17, n. 8 (ed.
C. Bazn et al., Opera philosophica V [Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press; St.
Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 2006], 17374).
110
Quod. IV, q. 21 (136vI137rI): [I]n virtute imaginativa sunt tria: scilicet species impressa a specie existente in memoria: sine qua nihil posset percipere propter esse suum organicum et materiale: et ipse actus imaginandi:
et tertium est ipsum obiectum imaginatum. Quorum species est imaginativa ut forma accidentalis in subiecto. Actus
imaginandi, sicut motus in moto. Imaginatum, sicut obiectum in cognoscente. Et cum ista tria sint in ea: abstractio
In this text Henry states that abstraction is from the imagined object. In the texts
considered above, he states that it is from the particular phantasm. Also, both the
phantasm and the imagined object are said to exist objectively in the imagination
as in a knower.111 It is evident, then, that Henry identifies the particular phantasm
with the imagined object itself. Hence it is not the case that the imagined object,
which exists in the imagination as an expressive species, is simply the intentional
content of the phantasm, whereas the impressed species is the material aspect of
the phantasm.112 The phantasm is itself the imagined object, or expressive species,
which is distinguished from the impressed species. Although the universal and
the particular are different rationes of the same phantasm, Henry stresses that the
imagined object and the impressed species are ontologically distinct. In fact, he
bases his threefold distinction above on the different ontological status of each
of the items in the imagination: the impressed species exists in the imagination
as an accidental form in a subject, the act of imagining as a motion in a moved
thing, and the imagined object as an object in a knower. There is a clear distinction between the impressed species and its mode of being, and the object and its
mode of being, which is that of an expressive species. This same distinction is also
found at the level of the senses where two distinct species, one impressed and one
expressive, actualize two distinct potencies, one in the corporeal organ and the
other in the formal sense power. Thus Henrys doctrine on the phantasm must be
understood in light of his dualistic account of sense-cognition.
Furthermore, if Henry thought of the phantasm as the type of representation
that has a material aspectthat is, if it were an intention with a material mode
of existencethen the phantasm would itself be an impressed species, since an
intention with a material mode of existence is precisely what Henry means by an
impressed species. Not only would this make the phantasm unsuitable for the
sort of abstraction that does not generate an impressed species in the intellect, but
a representation having a material mode of being would be capable of representing a universal, since Henry maintains that the same phantasm that exists in the
imagination and represents the object as particular also represents the object as
universal. But in Quodlibet IV, q. 21, he denies that a material species can represent
a universal. He argues that if the intellect were to perceive the object through an
impressed species, it would understand the object as a particular. Henrys argument
rests on the claim that an impressed species is particular in itself and is, therefore,
incapable of representing an object as universal.113 Now, Henry cannot mean that
simply because an impressed species exists as a particular form in a cognitive power,
tamen non fit neque a specie impressa: quia intellectus speciei materialis impressionem non recipit, quia esset vere
alterabilis et transmutabilis sicut sensus. . . . [N]eque fit abstractio ab actu imaginandi eadem ratione, sed solum
ab obiecto imaginato, ut illud quod est sicut cognitum in imaginativa cognoscente uno modo, sit ut cognitum in
intellectu cognoscente alio modo.
111
See n. 103.
112
For such an interpretation, see Goehring, Henry of Ghent on Cognition, 14156.
113
Quod. IV, q. 21 (137rI): Siqua enim esset, illa esset ratio concipiendi obiectum sub ratione particularis,
sicut et ipsa in se particularis est. This conclusion is part of a wider argument but is sufficient on its
own to establish the relevant point that the phantasm is distinct from the impressed species in the
imagination.
209
it is incapable of representing an object as universal. If that were the case, then the
same charge could be brought against Henrys universal phantasm, which exists
as a particular species in one imagination and as another particular species in
another imagination.114 What Henry means by the particularity of an impressed
species is its determinate material mode of being.
An argument found in Quodlibet V, q. 14 elucidates this point. Henry states
that an intelligible cannot exist in the intellect as a known object through an impressed species. This is because an intelligible can only be the object of the intellect under the ratio of a universal, but an impressed species can only represent a
thing under the ratio of a singular. Henry explains this limitation of an impressed
species as follows. Nothing is able to naturally produce an impression of its species
in another unless that thing exists in nature. But no species could be naturally
impressed in the intellect from a universal as it is universal in itself, but only as
it has determinate being in a particular supposit, since universals do not exist in
nature as universals, but only as determined in a particular supposit. Thus the
only species that can be impressed are those impressed by particulars and which
represent those particulars under the ratio of particularity. Such species can never
be representative of a universal under the ratio of universality.115
This line of reasoning provides a key insight into Henrys conception of impressed species. Impressed species are formal likenesses that are naturally produced by a thing and as such have a natural mode of existence, as forms inhering
in a subject, and represent that thing according to its natural mode of existence.
In other words, the mode of representation and the mode of existence of an impressed species correspond to the mode of existence of the thing from which it is
impressed, if the species is to be a true representation of that thing. Now, in the
case of sensible things, their natural mode of existence as particulars stems from
their material nature. Further, the natural process of the impression of species
occurs through material change. So, when Henry claims that the particularity of
an impressed species precludes it from representing a thing as universal, he is
referring to its determinate material mode of existence. In other words, an object
cannot be represented under the ratio of a universal by a representation with a
determinate material mode of existence.116 Thus there can be no impressed intel114
That charge could also be brought against the understood intention existing in the intellect,
since Henry acknowledges that it is many by virtue of being received in many intellects: [Intentio intellecta] est autem plures uno modo secundum recipiens, scilicet, secundum quod intellectus sunt plures in pluribus
(ibid.).
115
Quod. V, q. 14 (174vY): Sed intelligibile per speciem suam non habet esse apud intellectum ut obiectum
cognitum, quia non est obiectum nisi sub ratione universalis, et species impressa non potest esse repraesentativa
alicuius nisi sub ratione singularis. . . . [S]ed nulla species nata est imprimi in intellectu ab universali secundum
quod est universale in se, sed solum secundum quod habet esse signatum in supposito particulari, quia secundum
se non habet existere in rerum natura, sed solum ut signatum in supposito, et nihil natum est agere impressionem
suae speciei in alio, nisi secundum quod habet esse per existentiam in rerum natura. Sic autem non potest imprimere nisi speciem particularis sub ratione qua particulare est, quae numquam est repraesentativa universalis sub
ratione qua universale est.
116
Henry expresses this point in the following text, which states that if the intellect is to grasp
the object as universal, it must be immaterial in itself and devoid of any material impressed species:
Unde ut intellectus recipiat formas, secundum quod formae sunt, non secundum quod istae, et secundum quod
sunt intelligibiles in actu: non autem in potentia tantum, sicut oportet quod in substantia sua sit immaterialis,
ligible species in the intellect, and the phantasm, which is capable of representing
a universal, must be distinct from the impressed species in the imagination.
It follows, then, that the phantasm is not an intention that exists materially in a
cognitive power, but an intention with an immaterial mode of being, namely, that
of an expressive species.117 This view poses a challenge to interpreters of Henrys
cognitive theory because it is such a radical departure from the common Aristotelian notion of the phantasm. But a proper understanding of Henrys doctrine on
the phantasm is crucial to understanding his doctrine on intelligible species and
his rejection of the Thomistic view that the agent intellect acts upon the phantasm,
conceived of as an impressed sensible species in the imagination, in order to generate an immaterial intelligible species that inheres in the possible intellect.
To the mind of Henry, Aquinass view conflates the natural order with the
cognitive order in a number of ways. First, an impressed inhering species cannot
be generated in the possible intellect. Impressed species belong to the natural
and material order and are only capable of being received in the medium and
the senses because of their material nature. The immaterial nature of the intellect
precludes the reception of any impressed species. Second, an impressed intelligible species would be superfluous. Impressed species are means of rendering
the sensible object materially present to the sense powers. But what is essential
to cognition is not the natural union of knower and known through an inhering form, but the objective, or distinctly cognitive, union of knower and known
through the reception of an expressive species. Because the intelligible object is
present to the intellect in the phantasm, it need not be informed by an impressed
species, but only by an expressive species. Third, the target of the agent intellects
activity of abstraction is not the impressed sensible species in the imagination. The
abstraction of the intelligible object is not a real actionthat is, there is no real
separation that produces an inherent form in the intellect. Consequently, abstraction at the level of the intellect functions purely on the cognitive order of being.
The particular and material conditions that are abstracted by the agent intellect
from the phantasm are not the conditions of existence of the phantasm, but the
conditions of its representation. The phantasm already exists as an immaterial
cognitive entity, namely, as an expressive species. Identified as the imagined object, the phantasm is a sort of pure objective content, as opposed to an inherent
form with objective content. The agent intellect acts on this objective content,
separating the material and particular conditions from it and making it universal.
Because impressed sensible species do not possess the mode of existence proper
to cognition, that is, objective existence, or existence as in a knower, their mode of
representation is fixed by their determinate mode of existence as inherent forms
in a particular material subject.
At this point, the distinctiveness of Henrys cognitive theory can be stated clearly.
His elimination of impressed intelligible species is not simply a matter of parsimony.
ut neque sit de potentia materiae, neque eam habeat partem sui, supra dictum est de angelis, sic oportet quod in
sua substantia sit denudus ab omni specie impressiva eorum quae sunt nata ab ipso intelligi (Quod. IV, q. 21
[137rIrK]).
117
Again, see n. 103.
211
His reformulation of intelligible species as expressive and his doctrine of how the
universal can be present in the phantasm are not mere technical adjustments to
the standard view. Henry recasts the distinction and relation of the cognitive and
the natural order. Aquinas distinguishes between natural change and the natural
existence of a form, on the one hand, and intentional change and the intentional
existence of a form, on the other. But his account of cognition is strongly rooted
in his account of nature. Species are still forms that inhere in the medium and in
cognitive powers as accidents in a subject, albeit in a peculiar way such that they
bear intentional content. Aquinas has no problem attributing intentional-spiritual
existence to species in the physical medium and sense organs because cognition
is part of the natural order. Henry, however, draws a much sharper distinction
between cognition and nature. Species that inhere in the physical medium and
sense organs are natural, material, and even intentional insofar as they bear cognitive content; but they are not objective, cognitive realities, because inherence
is a mode of existence proper to the order of nature. For this reason, a new type
of species that is distinctively cognitive must be introduced, namely, expressive
species. Expressive species do not have the ontological status of inherent forms
with objective content; their ontological status is simply that of an object in a
knowerin other words, a sort of pure objective content. That content is always
tied to a real inherent, either an act of cognition or a habit, but is ontologically
distinct from it nonetheless.118
Henrys idea of objective existence goes on to influence the thought of his
successors, particularly Scotus. Although Scotus reasserts the need to posit an
intelligible species as an inhering form in the intellect, he maintains the distinction between the intelligible species or the act of understanding and its objective
or intentional content. He also attempts to work out more clearly the ontological
status of objective being and its relation to real being.119 Thus Henrys distinc118
Scott M. Williams (Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, and John Duns Scotus: On
the Theology of the Fathers Intellectual Generation of the Word, Recherches de Thologie et Philosophie
mdivales 77(1) (2010): 3581, in particular 50, n. 29) cites a text where Henry distiguishes between the
ontological status of an intellectual habit and that of its cognitive content: Quod. XI, q. 7 (459rRvX).
He also points out a key text where Henry divides the esse existentiae of a thing into two: unum in intellectu ut in cognoscente, quod est diminutum esse existentiae rei. . . . Aliud vero est in re exterius, quod est verum
esse rei (Summa, a. 28, q. 6 [ed. Badius, 169vI]). Thus the being a thing has in the intellect is indeed a
mode of existence, which Henry describes as diminished in contrast to the true being a thing has
in the external world. For more on objective existence, or esse cognitum, in the wider scope of Henrys
metaphysics, see Richard Cross, Henry of Ghent on the Reality of Non-Existing PossiblesRevisited,
Archiv fr Geschichte der Philosophie 92 (2010): 11532, in particular 12630.
119
See Peter King, Duns Scotus on Mental Content, in Duns Scot Paris, 13022002. Actes du
colloque de Paris, 24 septembre 2002, ed. O. Boulnois et al., vol. 26 of Textes et tudes du Moyen Age (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), 6588. King claims that Scotus introduces the distinction and terminology of
subjective vs. objective presence: Scotus therefore coins a new vocabulary. Since the real attribute
characterizing the intellect is present in it as in a subject, or subjectively, Scotus declares the intentional
attribute that characterizes the intellect, by contrast, to be present objectively (79). But this distinction
and terminology is clearly found in Henry (see n. 42). King also attributes the phrase esse obiectivum to
Scotus (79, n. 25). Although Henry does not seem to use this exact form of the phrase, he does use
the phrase existens obiective (see n. 81 and n. 123) to signify the same idea. King also states that Scotus
invents the notion of mental content (66), which rests on the further claim that Scotuss ideato
distinguish acts of thinking from their contentis new and startling (77). But again this distinction
is found in Henry, who states that an expressive species informs the act of understanding, which in
tion between a cognitive act and its objective content and his notion of objective
existence are historically significant contributions to the philosophical problem
of intentionality.
4. expressive species and the augustinian

notions of notitia and verbum
Certain scholars maintain that by the time of Quodlibet IV Henry had replaced
the intelligible species, characterized as an impressed form, with the more Augustinian principles of notitia or verbum, characterized by Henry as an expressive
form or species.120 Now, there is no question that Henry posits expressive species
in the place of any sort of impressed species at the level of the intellect. However,
the identification of expressive species with the verbum or notitia can be misleading, unless the various meanings of these terms are considered. The problem is
that in Henrys account, there are different types of verbum and notitia. Commonly
understood, a verbum is a concept generated by the intellect and, indeed, Henry
employs it in this sense. But this type of verbum is not the type of expressive species that stands in the place of impressed intelligible species. As argued above,
the universal phantasm exercises the causal functions of an intelligible species
in Henrys noetic. In order to understand how Henry expresses this doctrine in
Augustinian terms, attention must be given to Henrys definition and usage of the
terms verbum and notitia and how they are related to expressive species.121
Henrys clearest and most detailed discussion of these terms occurs in Quodlibet
IV, q. 8. The question considers whether the blessed who understand God through
His essence form in themselves a verbum about God. In the contra of the question
turn informs the intellect by inhering in it: [A]ctus intelligendi elicitus in intelligente ex tali unione informatur
secundum speciem et formam non impressivam: sed expressivam talis obiecti: et ipse actus informat intellectum
tanquam operatio intrinseca ei inhaerens (Quod. IV, q. 7 [93vV]); see also n. 123. Marrone (Truth and
Scientific Knowledge, 7273) also finds in Henry this distinction between the act of understanding and
its formal (or mental) content and notes its importance to his thought: As Henry saw it, the act by
which the intellect came to understand had to be distinguished from the formal contentin Henrys
words, the expressed form (forma expressiva)that constituted the essential reality of actual understanding. It was this formal content that provided the metaphysical kernel of knowing, in relation to
which such potencies and acts as habitual knowledge and the act of understanding could be situated.
120
For this view, as stated by Marrone, see n. 15. The term notitia is often translated by scholars
as concept. This is an accurate translation insofar as Henry uses the term to signify the content or
object of a cognitive act, which is the thing understood or conceived. However, Henry also refers to
the cognitive act itself as a notitia (see n. 123). Furthermore, in the Thomistic tradition, the term
concept signifies primarily an intention produced through the possible intellects activity of defining, which involves composition and division. But this is precisely the signification to which Henrys
notion of notitia should not be limited. I argue below that notitia also signifies, for Henry, a principle
of the act of understanding with respect to which the possible intellect is passive. Thus, in order to
avoid this confusion, I leave the term notitia untranslated. I also leave the term verbum untranslated,
as do most other scholars.
121
For Henrys doctrine on verbum and notitia, see Giorgio Pini, Henry of Ghents Doctrine of
Verbum in its Theological Context, in Henry of Ghent and the Transformation of Scholastic Thought: Studies
in Memory of Jos Decorte, 30726; Jerome Brown, The Meaning of Notitia in Henry of Ghent, in Sprache
und Erkenntnis im Mittelalter, 99298; G. Cannizzo, La dottrina del verbum mentis in Enrico di Gand,
Revista di Filosofia Neoscolastica 54 (1962): 24366; Goehring, Henry of Ghent on Cognition, 161206;
Henry of Ghent on the Verbum Mentis, in A Companion to Henry of Ghent, ed. Gordon A. Wilson, vol.
23 of Brills Companions to the Christian Tradition (Leiden: Brill, 2011); and Nys, De werking, 99115.
213
and in his initial response, Henry denies that the divine essence is known through
any form expressive of God. The problem for Henry is that there are a number
of texts in Augustines De Trinitate that state that there is a verbum involved in the
beatific vision. Henry addresses this difficulty by distinguishing various senses of
the term verbum. He states that, according to the view of Augustine, a verbum is
a notitia formed in the intelligence [intelligentia] from the thing whose notitia we
have in memory [memoria].122 Now, notitia in the intelligence denotes two items:
(1) the act itself of understanding, and (2) that by which the act of understanding is informed. The first does not of itself contain the notion of verbum, except
by virtue of that which informs it, namely, the thing understood existing in the
understander, not as an impressed form, but objectively as an expressive form.123
Hence, the notitia that is a verbum is an expressive species as defined in the previous
question: The thing known as it exists objectively in a knower, as it is a knower,
giving form to the act of understanding.124 Further on in q. 8, Henry adds a third
possibility to the meaning of verbum: one should know that not only the notitia
that is the object-form to the intellect is called a verbum, nor even the notitia that is
its act informed by the object, but also the intellective power itself, as it is informed
by the act informed by the object.125 Thus, in terms of the elements involved in
intellection, verbum signifies primarily (1) notitia as the object informing the act
of understanding as an expressive form or species, and derivatively (2) notitia as
the act itself of understanding, or (3) the intellect itself as informed by the act of
understanding.
According to the Augustinian doctrine, the verbum, or notitia in intelligence, is
formed from the notitia in memory. It must be noted that the Augustinian conception of memory is more extensive than the Aristotelian one. Intellectual memory
is not merely the capacity to recall things previously understood. For Henry, the
power of memory is essentially the possible intellect as perfected by the presence
of the object and in potency to the act of understanding. Thus memory is operative
even in ones initial encounter with an object. On the other hand, the possible
intellect, as moved and perfected by that same object in an actual act of understanding, is considered the power of intelligence.126 The object is a notitia both as
122
Quod. IV, q. 8 (ed. Goehring, lines 7981): Ecce expressa sententia Augustini quid appelleret verbum,
quoniam formatam notitiam in intelligentia de re cuius notitiam habemus in memoria.
123
Ibid., lines 7985, 8991: In qua notitia intelligentiae est duo considerare, scilicet ipsum noscendi sive
intelligendi sive cogitandi actum, et id quo informatur. Quorum primum, ut iam dixit Augustinus, ex se non habet
rationem verbi nisi in potentia. Quod ergo habet rationem verbi, hoc non est nisi ratione eius quo informatur. . . .
[E]t est illud informans res intellecta existens obiective in intelligente, ut forma expressiva non impressiva.
124
See n. 81.
125
Quod. IV, q. 8 (ed. Goehring, lines 36871): [D]icitur verbum non sola notitia quae est forma obiecta intellectui, nec ipsa notitia quae est actus eius informatus per obiectum, sed et ipsa potentia intellectiva, ut
informata est per actum informatum ab obiecto.
126
Ibid. (lines 12023): In quantum enim [obiectum] habet esse praesens intellectui possibili ut intelligenti in
potentia perficit memorativam intellectualem; inquantum vero immutat ipsum eliciendo actum intelligendi terminatum ad id ipsum ut est praesens in memoria, est perfectio intelligentiae. For more on Henrys characterization
of the possible intellect as memory and intelligence, see Brown, Intellect and Knowing in Henry of
Ghent, 50310, in particular 5034, where he states, The prior minimal conditions, however, are
established by intellectual memory. Henry is not speaking here of the act wherein something which
is already known is retained by us; what he is talking about is the act wherein something which is
it is present to the intellect and as it informs the act of understanding.127 Because
the latter notitia arises in some sense from the former, the latter is considered the
offspring or verbum of the former.
Now, that universal object, as it is present to memory and is its perfection, according
to one mode of knowledge or notitia, is said to be a habitual notitia existing in memory;
and that very thing, in as much as it actually moves the intelligence and the act of
understanding is terminated in it, according to another mode of notitia, is said to be
an actual notitia in the intelligence, and because it comes to be in the intelligence
through that which previously in nature, if not in time, has been present in memory,
from where it moves the intelligence, Augustine says that it is a notitia from a notitia,
and that very thing as it exists in memory is a parent with respect to itself, and as it
exists in intelligence is like an offspring and verbum.128
Thus notitia can refer to the universal object as it is present to the intellect, or to
the universal object as it moves the possible intellect, elicits an act of understanding, and informs that act. Notitia in the latter sense can be considered a verbum
in as much as it is the offspring of the prior notitia in memory. The act itself of
understanding is also considered a notitia, in a third sense of the term, and also a
verbum, but only derivatively.129
Now, Henry applies these three senses of notitia and two senses of verbum
to three different stages of understanding, which can be a source of confusion in
interpreting his doctrine. In order to delineate these stages, Henrys distinction
between simple notitia and scientific or declarative notitia must first be stated. The
initial act of understanding elicited by the universal phantasm under the influence
of the agent intellect is merely a simple notitiathat is, a comprehension of simples
in which only that which is true (id quod verum est) is perceived under the aspect
of a universal, just as it is perceived by sense and imagination under the aspect of a
particularand not the truth itself (ipsa veritas). Scientific or declarative notitia,
however, does not consist in the perception of that which is true, since in that case
it would be found in the cognitive sense powers; rather, it consists in the perception of truth. The former is the initial confused understanding of the thing, the
presently taking place is being kept present so that it may be actually understood. Intellectual memory
at this stage is memory of the present; it is that whereby I am able to keep in mind: (1) the agent
intellects operation; (2) the actualizing of the universal-in-potency in the phantasm; (3) the actualized
universal. The possible intellect is, therefore, a vis memorativa insofar as the intelligible is present to it
and it maintains that intelligible within itself as a formal principle by which the act of understanding
is elicited from the intellect.
127
This would seem to follow from the fact that, according to Henry, the object present to the
intellect is already in some sense united to it. See n. 79.
128
Quod. IV, q. 8 (ed. Goehring, lines 12837): Illud autem obiectum universale, ut est praesens memoriae
et perfectio eius, secundum unum modum scientiae sive notitiae, dicitur esse notitia habitualis existens in memoria
et id ipsum in quantum actu movet intelligentiam et ad ipsum actus intelligendi terminatur. Secundum alium
modum notitiae dicitur esse notitia actualis in intelligentia et quia fit in intelligentia per hoc quod prius natura
etsi non tempore habet esse, ut dictum est, praesens in memoria, unde movet intelligentiam, ideo dicit Augustinus
quod est notitia de notitia, et est id ipsum re ut est in memoria, parens respectu sui ipsius, ut est in intelligentia,
velut proles et verbum.
129
Ibid. (lines 13840): Tertio autem modo dicitur notitia ipse actus intelligendi qui etiam quandoque ab
Augustino dicitur verbum, sed hoc non nisi in quantum informatur obiecto quod proprie habet rationem verbi,
ut iam dicetur.
215
perception of that which is true, whereas the latter is the clear understanding
of its quiddity or essence, the perception of truth itself.130
This distinction provides the basis for Henrys application of the Augustinian
notions of notitia in memory and notitia in intelligence to three stages of understanding. In the first stage, the notitia in memory is the universal object present to
the possible intellect. As seen in the previous section, the universal object is present to the intellect in the universal phantasm in the imagination. The object then
moves the intellect and elicits an act of understanding. The act of understanding
and the object informing it are both considered a notitia in intelligence.131 The
object as a notitia in intelligence is also an expressive species, since the object
insofar as it informs any cognitive act is by Henrys definition an expressive species.132 This first stage is that of simple notitia. Now, Henry goes on to state that
verbum properly speaking does not apply to simple notitia. But loosely speaking
he does call the simple notitia in intelligence a verbum insofar as it proceeds like
an offspring from the notitia in memory and is a notitia from a notitia.133 He also
refers explicitly to a verbum of simple intelligence, which is the twofold notitia,
the act of understanding and the object perceived, that follows from the notitia
of memory, the universal incomplex object made present to the possible intellect
by the agent intellect.134
In the next stage of understanding, the intellect actively inquires into the quiddity of the thing understood. Henry explains that while the intellect is operating
in order to grasp the quiddity of a thing, its acts are vague and unformed and,
130
Ibid., (lines 14349): [N]otitia illa solummodo simplicium est comprehensio in qua non percipitur nisi
id quod verum est sub ratione universalis, quemadmodum percipitur a sensu et ab imaginativa sub ratione particularis, non autem ipsa veritatis, ut saepius in aliis quaestionibus exposuimus. Scientia autem proprie dicta non
consistit in perceptione euis quod est verum, quia sic esset in cognitiva sensitiva, sed solum in perceptione veritatis.
Cf. Quod. II, q. 6 (ed. R. Wielockx, Opera omnia VI [Leuven, 1983], 32, lines 5771): [P]er cognitionem
[intellectus] convertit se super obiectum, non solum percipiendo id quod verum est , a quo movetur . . . sed ipsam
veritatem, quae est quidditatis rei intellecta. Proprium enim obiectum intellectus est quod quid est; Summa, a. 58, q.
2, ad 3 (131rK): Idem vero intellectus . . . informatur notitia declarativa determinata et terminata ad definitivam
rationem sive quod quid est eius quod confuse cognitum est. For more on the distinction between id quod verum
est and ipsa veritas at this stage of Henrys career, see Marrone, Truth and Scientific Knowledge, 7389.
131
Quod. IV, q. 8 (ed. Goehring, lines 22835): [P]rimo modo notitia in intellectu dicitur obiectum
universale: ut praesens intellectui: et perfectio memoriae. . . . Ista autem notitia sicut obiectum movet aciem
intelligentiae ad se conversae: et elicit ex ea actum intelligendi: qui etiam dicitur notitia alio modo: et notitia de
notitia. Et terminatur actus ipse in obiectum ipsum ut in comprehensum ab intelligentia: et sic illud obiectum
dicitur esse notitia in intelligentia: et procedens secundum dictum modum a notitia quae praecessit in memoria.
132
For Henrys definition of expressive species, see n. 81. It ought to be sufficiently clear from the
previous sections of this article that Henry does not restrict the term expressive species, as do later
Thomists, to a concept formed by the intellect that expresses the quiddity of a thing, or, in Henrys
terms, a notitia declarativa. In Quod. IV, q. 21, Henry clearly states that both the senses and the intellect
are initially brought into an of cognition by the reception of an expressive species (see n. 40 and n. 89).
133
See n. 128. It is evident in this text, in which Henry calls the actual notitia in intelligence a
verbum, that he is referring to simple notitia, since he goes on to state that this mode of informing
the memory and intelligence through notitia is not yet scientific knowledge (see Quod. IV, q. 8 [ed.
Goehring, lines 14043]).
134
Quod. IV, q. 8 (ed. Goehring, lines 24549): [I]n concipiendo verbum praedictum simplicis intelligentiae, intellectus agens ponit ut praesens memoriae obiectum universale incomplexum, ex quo sicut ex notitia
memoriae procedit duplex notitia intelligentiae, scilicet ipse actus intelligendi et ipsum obiectum perceptum.
therefore, cannot be said to be a notitia, nor can they be called a verbum. But once
the intellect has conceived a verbum of truth that expresses the quiddity, that act of
understanding is called a scientific notitia, and so too the concept itself, or verbum
of truth, in which the act is terminated as in its object.135 In terms of the Augustinian parent-offspring metaphor, the notion of parent belongs to the possible
intellect, its simple notitia, and the confusedly known object, whereas the notions
of offspring and verbum belong to the same intellect informed by a declarative
notitia, and the definitively known object.136 In terms of the notions of memory
and intelligence, the notion of memory belongs to the intellect when, following
its investigation of a things quiddity, it has a notitia that is a complex universal
object. The intellect is considered intelligence when from this notitia of memory
proceeds a double scientific notitia in the intelligence, namely, the complex act
of understanding and the object itself as a conceived verbum.137
The third stage of understanding is reached once a scientific habit is formed.
In the second stage the actual scientific notitia or verbum proceeds for the first time
from the complex object produced by the intellects investigation. After a number
of such acts of understanding, a scientific habit is formed from which acts of understanding and scientific verba are elicited.138 Thus, at this stage, the three modes
of scientific notitia are the habit in intellectual memory, the verbum conceived in
the intelligence from the notitia in memory, and the act itself of understanding,
which is also called a verbum insofar as it is informed by the conceived verbum.139
Henry concludes this exposition by remarking that in this way necessarily two
kinds of verbum are conceived in the intellect before a verbum can be conceived
from a scientific habit, indeed even before [a scientific habit] can be generated.140
The first verbum is the simple notitia in intelligence; the second is the declarative
or scientific notitia in intelligence prior to the formation of a habit.
135
Ibid. (lines 23844): Cum est in pertractando et discurrendo, actus sui vagi sunt et informes, nec dicuntur
esse notitiae, neque etiam possunt aliquo modo dici verbum, secundum quod determinat Augustinus. Sed cum post
perscrutationem concipit verbum veritatis de eo quod quid est, ille actus intelligendi dicitur notitia scientialis, et
similiter ipse conceptus ad quem terminatur ut ad obiectum qui est verbum veritatis.
136
Summa, a. 58, q. 2, ad 3 (131rK): Et sic ex parte parentis se tenent intellectus possibilis et ipsa notitia
simplex, et ipsum obiectum confuse cognitum. . . . Ex parte vero prolis et verbi se tenet intellectus idem ut est
informatus notitia illa declarativa, et ipsum obiectum cognitum in sua definitiva ratione.
137
Quod. IV, q. 8 (ed. Goehring, lines 24953): [S]ic in concipiendo istud verbum scientiale intellectus
componentis ipse intellectus sui investigatione habet ut praesens in memoria illam notitiam ut obiectum universale
complexum, ex quo sicut ex notitia memoriae procedit duplex notitia scientialis in intelligentia, scilicet ipse actus
intelligendi complexus, et ipsum obiectum ut verbum conceptum. The universal object is complex at this point
because the verbum that expresses a things quiddity is its definition, which involves an act of judgment
or composition; e.g. Man is a rational animal.
138
Ibid. (lines 25257): [D]uplex notitia scientialis in intelligentia, . . . quod adhuc praecedit omnem
habitum scientiae, . . . est primum principium ad generandi . . . habitum scientiae, ex quo ulterius pro tanto
quod est generatus absque alio discursu eliciuntur actus intelligendi quibus verba scientifica eliciuntur ex scientia
quae latet in habitu memoriae.
139
Ibid. (lines 22427): Unus enim modus notitiae, quae est scientia, est habitus intellectualis latens in
memoria intellectuali. Alio modo verbum conceptum ex illo in intelligentia. Et tertio modo ipse actus intelligendi
quo concipitur, qui non potest dici verbum nisi ea ratione qua verbo conceptus informatur.
140
Ibid. (lines 25960): Et sic necessario duplex genus verbi concipitur in intellectu antequam possit concipi
verbum ex habitu scientiali, immo etiam antequam habeat generari.
217
Although Henry is willing at times to refer to the simple notitia as a verbum, he

points out that this is a distortion of the meaning of the term. In Quodlibet VI, q.
1 (1281/82), Henry states the proper use of the term verbum.
Hence those who say that the first simple notitia conceived in the intellect of the thing
understood is a verbum, stray greatly from the notion of a verbum. . . . [T]his notitia is
a certain simple manifestation of the thing. But the verbum is something declarative
and manifestive of it, as providing in itself a greater manifestation of the thing. The
intellectual operation is incomplete in the first notitia, and complete in the verbum.141
Thus, properly speaking, a verbum is not the initial simple notitia of the thing understood, but the declarative or scientific notitia. Hence, one ought not to confuse
the notitia, expressive species, or verbum at the level of simple understanding with
the notitia, expressive species, or verbum at the level of scientific understanding. Not
only are the two distinct in terms of the degree to which each manifests the thing
understood, but also in terms of the relation of each to the possible intellect.
In an act of simple understanding, the possible intellect is completely passive,
whereas the universal object in the phantasm and the agent intellect are active.142
Once the intellect is informed by a simple notitia, it turns its focus on itself, on its
act of understanding, and on the object understood, in order to be informed by
a declarative notitia, or verbum. This act of turning is the possible intellects first
action, but further discursive acts are necessary in order to form a declarative or
scientific notitia.143 Thus the declarative notitia is a product of the possible intellects
activity and is generated from the initial simple notitia. This is another reason why
only the declarative notitia is properly called a verbum: a verbum is a concept produced by the intellect.144 It is important to recall, though, that the verbum formed
141
Quod. VI, q. 1 (ed. G. Wilson, Opera omnia X [Leuven, 1987], 16, lines 2531): Unde multum
deficiunt a ratione verbi, qui dicunt quod prima notitia simplex concepta in intellectu de re intellectu verbum est.
. . . [E]t est ista notitia quaedam simplex rei manifestatio. Verbum autem est quiddam declarativum et manifestativum eius tamquam praebens in se ampliorem rei manifestationem. Et est in prima notitia operatio intellectualis
incompleta, et in verbo completa.
142
Quod. V, q. 25 (204rI): [Phantasmata] movent intellectum possibilem simplici intelligentia: in quo
intellectus noster pure passivus est et universale activum. Summa, a. 58, q. 2, ad 3 (131rL): Intellectus autem
possibilis licet sit materia respectu formarum universalium et intelligibilium, et passivus atque receptivus, et nullo
modo in intelligendo simplicia simplici notitia est activus: sed solummodo activae sunt species universalis phantasmatis: aut ipsa res universalis et ipse intellectus agens.
143
Summa, a. 58, q. 2, ad 3 (130vHI): [C]um [intellectus] est informatus simplici intelligentia, statim
convertit seipsum super se et super actum intelligendi et super obiectum intellectum, ut ipsum informet notitia
declarativa quae dicitur verbum. Et est ista conversio primo actio sua, sed quia ab eo ad quod convertitur non
statim informatur notitia declarativa, ulterius agit in negotiando circa intelligibilia intellecta simplici notitia, ut
intellecta fiant notitia declarativa.
144
In Summa, a. 58, q. 1 (124rK), Henry distinguishes what may be called a word of the object
from a word of the intellect. The former is the thing understood as it comes to exist in the intellect
through an act of understanding caused by the object itself acting on the intellect. The latter is the
thing understood as it comes to exist in the intellect through an act of understanding formed and
caused by the intellect itself. Thus even in later writings Henry was willing to extend the term verbum
to the simple notitia caused in the intellect by the universal object, but only in a qualified sense: Sed
in intelligente potest esse intellectum operatum dupliciter. Uno modo ab aliquo obiecto agente in intellectum, ut per
actum intelligendi quem format in intellectu habeat esse intelligens secundum actum et ipsum obiectum intellectum
in intelligente. Sed non ut verbum intellectus in huiusmodi intellectu habent esse actus intelligendi aut ipsum
obiectum, quia non est ab ipso intellectu actus intelligendi in intellectu formatus, sed ab obiecto. Propter quod si
verbum diceretur, potius diceretur verbum obiecti quam intellectus.
by the intellect denotes two items: the act itself of understanding and the object
that informs that act. The declarative act of understanding, through which the
quiddity of a thing is grasped, is another accident inhering in the intellect, in addition to the initial simple act of understanding.145 The object, however, informs
the declarative act as an expressive species, that is, objectively as in a knower.146
The verbum is generated, therefore, as an expressive species informing an act of
understanding.
The varied usage of the terms notitia and verbum in Henrys writings can
make interpreting his doctrine rather difficult. Particularly confusing is how the
elements of his account expressed in Augustinian terms correspond to those same
elements expressed in Aristotelian terms. Yet, from a careful analysis of the texts,
Henrys doctrine may be summarized as follows. The intelligible object is first made
present to the possible intellect through the universal expressive species existing
in the imagination.147 This species is simply the phantasm itself under the ratio of
a universal, which is produced by the action of the agent intellect. This species
is also considered a simple notitia in intellectual memory. The intelligible object
then moves the possible intellect and elicits an act of understanding. The object
now exists in the intellect as an expressive species informing the act of understanding, which, in turn, informs the intellect as an inhering accident. Both the
act of understanding and the informing species are considered a simple notitia in
intelligence. Moreover, this species can be called a verbum broadly speaking, and
so too by extension the act itself and the intellect, but not in the proper sense of
verbum. Once the possible intellect is passively informed by the object in this way,
it then becomes active and forms a verbum, or declarative notitia, which expresses
the quiddity of the thing understood and exists in the intellect as another inhering
act of understanding informed by an expressive species. The intellect informed
by a simple notitia is considered both memory and parent with respect to the
same intellect as informed by a declarative notitia, the latter playing the role of
intelligence and offspring. Thus the declarative notitia produced by the possible
intellect is the verbum properly speaking.
So in what sense, then, can the verbum, notitia, or expressive species be said to
replace the impressed intelligible species in Henrys account? As argued in section 3, the universal phantasm takes on the functions of the intelligible species
by presenting the intelligible object to the intellect, moving the intellect into the
act of understanding, and informing that act. The universal phantasm is a simple
notitia in intellectual memory and an expressive species in the imagination. The
species through which it informs the act of understanding is a simple notitia in
intelligence, an expressive species, and loosely speaking a verbum. But the expres-
145
Quod. VI, q. 1 (ed. Wilson, 19, line 86): [Verbum est] aliud accidens inhaerens intellectui praeter
accidens simplicis notitiae.
146
See n. 123.
147
The universal species in the imagination, the notitia in intellectual memory, is indeed an
expressive species, since it exists in the imagination according to the mode of existence proper to an
expressive species, that is, as in a knower (see n. 103). However, it is only an expressive species in the
intellect when it informs the act of understanding as a notitia in intelligence.
219
sive species that is the verbum properly speaking, the declarative notitia, does not
serve the same causal functions as the intelligible speciesit is not the species
that initially actualizes and informs the possible intellect; rather, it is a product of
the possible intellects activity.
conclusion
I have argued that in his mature thought Henry of Ghent retains a version of
intelligible species, which he calls expressive and which function as formal and
efficient principles of understanding. These expressive species are first actualized
as the universal phantasm in the imagination, from where they move the possible
intellect, elicit an act of understanding, and inform that act. The mode according to which an expressive species informs the intellect and its act is the same as
that of the paradigmatic case in which the intelligible is essentially present. Just
as the essentially present intelligible object is itself able to move and inform the
intellect objectively as an expressive species, so too the universal expressive species
present to the intellect in the imagination is able to move and inform the intellect
according to that same objective mode.
Because Henrys doctrine on expressive intelligible species bears little resemblance to any traditional medieval Aristotelian notion of intelligible species, one
may be tempted to say that he eliminates intelligible species altogether from his
cognitive account. This would be an accurate characterization insofar as he rejects intelligible species as inhering forms generated in the intellect. However, it
would be inaccurate insofar as Henry retains intelligible species as formal eliciting
principles of the act of understanding. Furthermore, one must be careful not to
assume that Henrys critique that impressed intelligible species would constitute
a continuation of the material process of multiplication of species in the intellect
implicates the doctrine of Aquinas in an obvious way, since the latter characterizes
both sensible and intelligible species as intentional, immaterial forms. Henrys
break with Aquinas on intelligible species must be understood in light of his more
fundamental departure from Aquinas on the nature of cognitive being. Likewise,
a clear understanding of Henrys innovative doctrine of expressive species and
objective existence is crucial to assessing his influence on the theories of his latethirteenth and early-fourteenth-century successors.
On a final note, one may wonder whether there are any legitimately Aristotelian elements in Henrys account of cognition, or whether it is the case, as Paulus
claims, that as an Augustinian he pays only lip-service to Aristotelian notions. I
would argue that one reason that his account can be perplexing at times is that
Henry genuinely attempts to provide a theory of intellection that is at once authentically Aristotelian and Augustinian. On the one hand, he is committed to
the doctrine that the intellect passively receives the intelligible form by which it
operates. However, the nature of the possible intellects passivity with respect to
the simple act of understanding needs to be evaluated, I would contend, in light
of Henrys dualistic account of sense-perception. This calls for a close examination
of Henrys doctrine on cognitive operation and on the nature of the composite
of intellect and intelligible form from which the act of understanding is elicited.
In particular, the efficient causal picture must be assessed in light of later writings, such as Quodlibet XI, q. 5 (1287/88), in which the Augustinian language
of excitation and inclination is introduced to describe the movement of the
cognitive power by the object, language which suggests an essentially active cognitive power. It is indeed questionable whether Henrys reading of Aristotle and his
incorporation of Aristotelian elements into his mature theory of cognition can
be considered Aristotelian in any true sense of the term. It would seem, then,
that his theory does not fit easily into any of the standard categories. Accordingly,
when approaching the writings of Henry of Ghent, one ought to keep in mind
his independence as a thinker and the uniqueness of his synthesis of Aristotelian
and Augustinian principles.148
148
I would like to thank the anonymous referees for the Journal whose comments on an earlier
draft of this article contributed greatly to its improvement.

Rombeiro - Intelligible Species Mature Thought Henry of Ghent (Enrique de Gand)

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Intelligible Species in the Mature

* Michael E. Rombeiro is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at St. Josephs College of

henry of ghent on intelligible species

henry of ghent on intelligible species

of intellection. In section 4, I provide clarification of the terms species, notitia,

1. the characterization of impressed species as

henry of ghent on intelligible species

The apprehension of the object at the level of imagination is then followed by an

Ibid.: Post hanc apprehensionem sequitur apprehensio intellectiva.

henry of ghent on intelligible species

by the reception of an intelligible species originating from the senses, because a

henry of ghent on intelligible species

henry of ghent on intelligible species

henry of ghent on intelligible species

2. the object itself as the causal

henry of ghent on intelligible species

henry of ghent on intelligible species

henry of ghent on intelligible species

3. the universal phantasm as substitute for

So the possible intellect is indeed actualized by a form that is a likeness of the

henry of ghent on intelligible species

See n. 128 on how this is a priority at least in nature, if not in time.

henry of ghent on intelligible species

The phantasm considered under the ratio of particularity by the imagination is

So the universal phantasm is itself an expressive species, which is present to the

henry of ghent on intelligible species

henry of ghent on intelligible species

henry of ghent on intelligible species

4. expressive species and the augustinian

henry of ghent on intelligible species

henry of ghent on intelligible species

henry of ghent on intelligible species

Although Henry is willing at times to refer to the simple notitia as a verbum, he

henry of ghent on intelligible species

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