Commentary Arist De Anima

The Commentary Thomas Aquinas completed on Aristotle's De anima is thought to be the first of some dozen such commentaries that he wrote toward the end of his short career. He may have produced this work in 1268 while teaching in the Dominican house of Santa Sabrina in Rome. Shortly thereafter he returned to Paris where he was swept into the Latin Averroist controversy, at the center of which was the proper interpretation of the De anima.

Avicenna and Averroes, the great Arabic commentators, read the De anima in such a way that intellect was taken to be a separate substance and not a faculty of the human soul. Some of Thomas's contemporaries, Masters of the Faculty of Arts, accepted the Avicennian and Averroist interpretations as good money and thus came to hold positions incompatible with their Christian faith.

What is the correct reading of the De anima? This commentary, composed before Thomas was caught up in the contemporary controversy, sets out to understand what it is that the text teaches. Many students of Aristotle have come to see this commentary as indispensable to reading the text aright.