Excerpt
As regards possibility, it raises no particular question, since
logical possibility is supratemporal and eternal. But with regard to
becoming–that is, the transition from possibility to actuality–the
question arises: what is the mechanism that initiates the chain of
becoming? In answering this question Aristotle proclaims: anankē
stēnai. The chain of motion must have a beginning; definition
must begin with the undefined; conceptualization must begin
from what is itself not conceptual.
Moreover, motion itself is caused by a first mover that is immediate
and itself unmoved. Aristotle calls this first mover noesis
noeseos noesis–thought thinking thought–but also pure act, as
Anaxagoras had already described it. It is none other than the
Imaginative thinking itself that projects a world: my world, the
world of the individual, of the subject who relates to the world and
thereby grants it existence. This Imaginative must not be either
likened to or confused with Kant’s inner sense, since our conception
differs substantially from his, although, strictly speaking, if
one insists upon classifications, our view of the human being and
of its relation to the world is indeed a subjective one. So-called
objectivism is nothing more than a more or less coherently articulated
fabrication.
The same Stagirite further maintains that the human being is
endowed with a poetic intellect, one that is impassible, eternal,
and indestructible. Yet these predicates inherently imply its divine
nature. Thus, thought thinking thought–nous apathētikos, as we
have already noted–is also called the higher or pure intellect. It
alone has access to the divine intellect, so that from time to time
the human being attains the state of noesis noeseos noesis, in which
thought thinks itself.
(If you like philosophy, this book is for you)
