Abstract

God has recognized man to be qualified for attaining a perfectional form of the rational soul due to his piety and balanced constitution. This soul, which is a spiritual faculty, enables man to have universal and particular perceptions and influence meanings and forms.This rational soul has two faculties. He perceives the universals with one of them and act upon his ideas with the other. The former is called theoretical intellect. According to the common Peripatetic theory, universal knowledge is attained through connection to the Active Intellect, which contains all universal perceptual forms. In this way, in order to perceive the universals, the soul turns to its superior world, i.e., the world of separate intelligences. The faculty by which the rational soul becomes involved in though-related activities is called the practical intellect. Such activities are performed through developing particular ideas concerning practical affairs.