Work · Medieval & Scholastic
Questions on the Third Book of On the Soul
Lecture questions that defend, with Averroes, one separate intellect for all humans – most likely the target of Aquinas’ treatise of 1270.
Introduction
Lecture questions on the third book of Aristotle’s On the Soul, preserved as a student report and probably dating from the late 1260s. Siger asks whether the intellect is the form of the body, whether it is one in all humans and whether it is eternal, and he answers, following Averroes, that the intellect is a separate substance, one for the whole human species, which thinks in each person through that person’s images. The text was edited only in 1972, by Bernardo Bazán. Most historians take it to be the teaching Thomas Aquinas attacked in On the Unity of the Intellect against the Averroists (1270).
Connections
Builds on
- On the Soul (De anima)c. 350 BCE · Aristotle
- Long Commentaries on Aristotlec. 1190 · Ibn Rushd (Averroes)
More works by Siger of Brabant
As of November 2026 · Improve this page · How Agora is made