Among Thomas Aquinas’s 13th and 14th century critics, some of them targeted his Aristotelian view that the human intellect does not cognize individuals of a material nature. To many of his readers, Aquinas’s stance on this point seems to be indefensible for it is an obvious fact that we think about individuals. In this essay, I argue Aquinas’s view has been misunderstood, both by his critics and by many Thomists that have come to his defense. I distinguish two important aspects of Aquinas’s approach to this problem. First, I highlight the co-operative function different cognitive powers perform with respect to the unified cognitive operations of the human being. Second, I examine in detail Aquinas’s account of human sensing, perceiving, understanding, reasoning, thinking, and cognizing individuals by the co-operative cognition of their external senses, the cogitative power (vis cogitativa), and the possible intellect—among other powers. I show that a proper understanding of the coordinated operations of the possible intellect and cogitative power reveals that Aquinas in fact has a complex and coherent account of how the human being—but not the possible intellect—perceives, thinks, understands, and reasons about individuals.
