PAZ PEDREIRA DE FREITAS CATAPANO

This research aims to analyze the problem of “whether the angels know the singulars”, as it is proposed mainly at a. 2, q. 57 of Part I of Thomas Aquinas’ Sum of Theology. In comparing the angels with God, who knows the things as being their cause, and with men, who know the realm of the singular through their senses which access material reality, it appears as a problem the knowledge that the finite separate substances have of these individuals, insofar as they are themselves immaterial. At first, we inspect the way in which Aquinas formulates the two main alternative solutions to this problematic: the one attributed to Averroes, according to whom the immaterial does not know the individual; and Avicenna’s, according to whom the angels know the individuals as they are virtually present in their universal causes, just like the astrologist know of future eclipses through the astronomical science. Second, we inspect and explain Aquinas’ own answer, according to which, in the act of creating the angels, God provides them not only with the universal essences, but with the intelligible principles through which God himself operates in his intellect the individuation of his creation.