Avicenna Vs Aquinas Analysis

Both Avicenna and Thomas Aquinas articulately explain the nature of the Divine Intellect in their respective works The Salvation, “Metaphysics” and Summa Contra Gentiles: Book One: God. They offer arguments that contrast one another concerning the divine intellect, and in particular, God’s ability to intellect singulars. Despite the convincing nature of Avicenna’s proofs, Aquinas effectively proves God’s knowledge of singulars by a sound argument that supports God’s knowledge of singulars, a proof that necessitates this reality, and in turn, provides an argument that undercuts the necessity that God cannot intellect singulars. For this topic, complexity often ensues when explaining how an eternal and unchanging God knows the changing individuals that man experiences. As the foundation of the question …show more content…
The individual itself comes into existence when “[necessary causes] interact with one another until particular things come to exist as a result.” Avicenna’s specific term for the principle being is the “Necessary Existent,” to capture the concept that all being necessarily comes from the Necessary existent. From this idea, Avicenna describes the Necessary Existent’s intellecting powers, “It intellects by way of Itself anything of which it is a principle.” From thence, the Necessary Existent does not know singulars in themselves, by the fact that they are not eternal and unchanging in the intellect. For if the NE knows now that “A is”, but knows later that “A is not” (or “A does not exist”), Its knowledge changes, for both propositions are separate objects of the intellect. However, one can know in the universal way the fact that something exists and does not exist later, and the intellect does not change. The distinction lies between knowing a certain individual in time, and knowing at a certain time within certain circumstances that an individual exists. Thereby it knows the singulars, however Avicenna distinguishes our knowledge from