Volume 88, Issue 3

This paper is concerned with the central thesis of Aquinas's argument against the Averroist account of the intellect, which he often expresses by the claim, intellectus est forma corporis , “the intellect is the form of the body”. This claim is fundamental to Aquinas's philosophical psychology since it closely relates not only to his interpretation of Aristotle's position, but also to his attacks against the Averroist account of the intellect. However, this claim is quite subtle, and so there has been a debate between two contemporary scholars, Wéber and Bazán concerning the questions of what Aquinas means by the claim and what are his grounds for it. I will offer an interpretation that differs from theirs by arguing that both of them fail to explain Aquinas's genuine intention.

I argue that Fichte (rather than Kant or Hegel or some amalgam of the two) was the primary historical model for the ethical standpoint described in Kierkegaard's Either / Or II. I then explain how looking at Kierkegaard's texts with Fichte in mind helps in interpreting the criticism of the ethical standpoint in works like The Sickness unto Death and Concluding Unscientific Postscript , as well as the significance of the discussion of secular ethics in Fear and Trembling . I conclude with a brief look at the relevance for contemporary Kantian ethics of Kierkegaard's characterization and his criticism.

The broad discussion on false belief in the Theaetetus contributes strongly to the dialogue's inquiry on knowledge at all. It aims to elucidate the consequences of the fact that beliefs have a structure which can be expressed by „… is …” first observed in the final critique of the attempt to equate knowledge with perception. In the discussion on false belief, this structure proves to be part of a sufficient explanation of false belief, and to be a necessary feature of knowledge. The latter result gives rise to a new task in defining knowledge: to explain how a structured belief (that has just shown to be prone to error) can be „unerring”.

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