The term ‘Intellect’ traverses the depth-psychology corpus along several distinct but intersecting axes. In the Neoplatonic tradition, as articulated by Plotinus in the Enneads, Intellect (Nous) occupies a precise ontological rank — identical with Being itself, complete as a living totality, prior to Soul and superior to every particular intellective act. This metaphysical Intellect is not a faculty but a hypostasis, a self-contemplating whole that contains all Forms. The Philokalia tradition, by contrast, deploys ‘intellect’ (nous) as the supreme faculty of the human person — the eye of the soul, capable of perceiving invisible realities, subject to scattering through sensory attachment and passion, and recoverable through watchfulness, prayer, and dispassion. Here the primary drama is the intellect’s ascent toward divine union or its captivity to demonic distraction. Aristotle’s De Anima introduces the critical distinction between active and passive intellect, a division whose metaphysical consequences — including the possibility of the intellect’s separate survival — proved formative for every subsequent tradition. Bruno Snell tracks the historical emergence of ‘intellect’ as a Greek discovery, arguing it was not invented but disclosed through cultural self-recognition. Giegerich, from the Jungian wing, insists that thought — irreducible to any Jungian function — is the quinta essentia of psychic life. Together these voices make Intellect one of the most contested and stratified terms in the corpus.
The complex, so to speak, of them all, thus combined, is Intellect; and Intellect, holding all existence within itself, is a complete living being, and the essential Idea of Living Being.
Plotinus identifies Intellect as the hypostatic totality containing all existents, constituting a self-sufficient living whole identical with Being.
, The Six Enneads, 270thesis
Intellect as such being found identical with Being or Substance, and therefore prior to all the Existents, which may be regarded as its species or members.
Plotinus establishes the ontological primacy of Intellect over all its particular instantiations by identifying it with Being as such.
, The Six Enneads, 270thesis
Aristotle consistently maintained in this work and elsewhere that the capacity for thought is the part of the soul most likely to survive the death of the body.
Aristotle’s treatment of intellect in De Anima centres on the question of its separability and potential independence from the mortal body.
, De Anima (On the Soul), -350thesis
the active intellect here introduced a mere metaphysical ground for the operation of the intellect. Nothing in the chapter suggests for it a direct role in either the acquisition or the use of concepts.
The commentary on Aristotle’s Chapter Five clarifies that the active intellect functions as metaphysical ground rather than as a direct cognitive agent, contra Aquinas.
, De Anima (On the Soul), -350thesis
The eye perceives the visible; the intellect apprehends the invisible. The intellect that enjoys the love of God is the light of the soul. He who has such an intellect is illumined in his heart, and sees God with his intellect.
St Antony the Great defines the intellect as the organ for apprehending invisible, divine realities, superior in kind to sensory perception.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995thesis
The contemplation of sensible things is shared by the intellect and the senses; but the knowledge of intelligible realities pertains to the intellect alone.
The Philokalia draws a strict hierarchy in which the intellect’s highest function — knowledge of intelligible realities — exceeds and transcends all sensory mediation.
, The Philokalia, Volume 2, 1981thesis
Our intellect, because created in God’s image, possesses likewise the image of this sublime Eros or intense longing — an image expressed in the love experienced by the intellect for the spiritual knowledge that originates from it and continually abides in it.
The intellect is here understood as imago Dei, its defining characteristic being an eros or longing for spiritual knowledge that mirrors the divine archetype.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995thesis
Our heart is, therefore, the shrine of the intelligence and the chief intellectual organ of the body… we must look to see whether grace has inscribed the laws of the Spirit… in the heart.
Hesychast anthropology locates the intellect’s proper seat in the heart, making the return of the intellect from sensory dispersion into the heart the foundational ascetic act.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995thesis
The intellect was not ‘invented’, as a man would invent a tool to improve the operation of his physical functions… No objective, no aims were involved in the discovery of the intellect.
Snell argues that the intellect was discovered rather than invented by the Greeks, a discovery that was simultaneously both effective and affective — constituting the very thing it disclosed.
, The discovery of the mind; the Greek origins of European, 1953thesis
When God is apprehended by incorporeal beings — who are themselves intellects — and becomes intelligible to them to the degree to which they come into communion with Him, He illumines them from within, their intellects both apprehending Him and being nourished by Him.
The intellect is described as capable of being nourished by the divine Intelligible itself, establishing an intimate participatory epistemology.
, The Philokalia, Volume 2, 1981thesis
When a sparrow tied by the leg tries to fly, it is held back by the string and pulled down to the earth. Similarly, when the intellect that has not yet attained dispassion flies up towards heavenly knowledge, it is held back by the passions.
St Maximos the Confessor illustrates through vivid analogy how passion functions as a gravitational constraint on the intellect’s natural ascent toward divine knowledge.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995supporting
When passions dominate the intellect, they separate it from God, binding it to material things and preoccupying it with them. But when love of God dominates the intellect, it frees it from its bonds.
The intellect’s bondage or liberation is determined entirely by whether passion or love of God holds dominion over it.
, The Philokalia, Volume 2, 1981supporting
The intellect has to exert itself to oppose the downward drag of the senses; and this contest and battle against the body continues until death.
The intellect’s struggle against the senses is presented as a lifelong contest, requiring sustained ascetic effort rather than any once-for-all liberation.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995supporting
the intellect has by withdrawal and uplifting from all material conditions… the Intelligence uncovers to it many things… the soul knows the First Being and itself in its essence by its own reflection upon itself.
Von Franz draws on Avicenna via the Aurora Consurgens to describe the intellect’s capacity for self-reflective ascent, linking it to the intellectus agens and to Jung’s concept of synchronicity.
, Aurora Consurgens: A Document Attributed to Thomas Aquinas on the Problem of Opposites in Alchemy, 1966supporting
When through diligent cultivation of the virtues they have swept the soot of the passions from their intellect, and have made it like a pure, resplendent mirror, they receive the knowledge of divine things.
The purified intellect is figured as a mirror in which divine knowledge is imprinted, making virtue-practice the necessary precondition for intellectual illumination.
, The Philokalia, Volume 2, 1981supporting
Since God, as sovereign King of all, is primordial Intellect, He possesses within Himself His Logos and His Spirit, coessential and coeternal with Him.
God is identified as primordial Intellect, establishing the theological ground from which the doctrine of the intellect as divine image derives its force.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995supporting
noos may be said generally to be in charge of intellectual matters, and thymos of things emotional. Yet they overlap in many respects.
Snell maps the ancient Greek differentiation between noos (intellect) and thymos (emotion-impulse), noting their functional overlap in early Greek thought.
, The discovery of the mind; the Greek origins of European, 1953supporting
man alone has to synienai, intelligence… Like Heraclitus he places man in the middle between the deity and the beasts.
Snell traces Alcmaeon’s tripartite hierarchy — beast, human, divine — in terms of cognitive capacity, placing human intelligence between animal sensation and divine comprehension.
, The discovery of the mind; the Greek origins of European, 1953supporting
thought is not a ‘function,’ even though what JUNG called the ‘thinking function’ is of course one moment in developed, explicit thought. Thought is, as I said earlier, the quinta essentia of, and beyond, all four functions.
Giegerich argues forcefully against reducing intellectual thought to a Jungian typological function, claiming it is the soul’s quintessential activity that transcends the fourfold schema.
, The Soul’s Logical Life Towards a Rigorous Notion of, 2020supporting
precisely this blinding of the usual intellectual mind and the blunting of its sharp edge permits us to say, with Wordsworth, ‘I saw them feel.’ … a softer sensibility in intellect itself that can receive and understand the authentic tidings of invisible things.
Hillman recovers a ‘mythic sensibility intellect’ that exceeds the sharp analytic mind, capable of perceiving the invisible inwardness of things through imaginative receptivity.
, The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling, 1996supporting
if the intellect has once determined the will to utter some false judgement… when the will first begins to make an effort not to persevere in its error, by what is it being determined to do so?
Descartes’ interlocutor interrogates the precise relationship between intellect and will in the generation and correction of false judgement.
, Meditations on First Philosophy, 2008supporting
if someone has in their intellect the idea of some machine devised with extraordinary complexity, we are certainly quite justified in asking what is the cause of this idea.
Descartes argues that ideas existing in the intellect require causal explanation even when they lack external existence, defending the objective reality of mental content.
, Meditations on First Philosophy, 2008supporting
he alone has glimpsed the holy of holies who, with his natural thoughts at rest, contemplates that which transcends every intellect.
The mystical summit of prayer is described as a state that transcends even the intellect, pointing toward an apophatic dimension beyond noetic activity.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995aside
Without the power of intelligence there is no capacity for spiritual knowledge; and without spiritual knowledge we cannot have the faith from which springs that hope whereby we grasp things of the future.
The intellect’s power of intelligence is positioned as the root faculty enabling the entire chain of spiritual knowledge, faith, and hope.
, The Philokalia, Volume 2, 1981aside
Buddhi is a construction of conscious being which quite exceeds its beginnings in the basic chitta; it is the intelligence with its power of knowledge and will.
Aurobindo equates buddhi with intelligence as a conscious spiritual power that organises and surpasses the lower mental faculties.
, The Synthesis of Yoga, 1948aside
GUARD OF THE HEART, OF THE INTELLECT (phylaki kardias, nou): see Watchfulness.
The glossary of the Philokalia identifies watchfulness as the practice of guarding both the heart and the intellect, treating their protection as a unified ascetic discipline.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995aside