Imaginationem continui
My new favorite text for studying my thesis topic is De Veritate. I've found that the principle Aristotle lays down in the first book of the Physics is always true for men: sense of the particular, understanding is of the universal. A consequence of this is that the intellect and the imagination are bound up in such a way that the former never acts at all without using the latter.
There is one point where st. Thomas says the imagination is necessary to know things. For it is of the nature of things to exist in particular rather than in the universal, thus the intellect does not hold things most truly and completely. Thus the imagination is at work providing the here and now which accompanies every nature in reality. He makes the simpler argument tha whenever we want some to understand something, we provide them with examples that their imagination can grasp.
Although all of this is a it complicated, it seems consistent and proportionate to the way we know. For this reason I wonder why others have posited that individuals are the object of the intellect. I still haven't completely answered how it is that we propositions about singulars but I think I'm approaching it.
This is turning out to be a response not only to Leibniz, but really to all of the philosophers who fail to distinguish the imagination and the intellect. Still much more to understand.
It is wonderful to see that all of these considerations in De Veritate are ordered to understanding and loving the Triune God without whom all is in vain.
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