The Peripatetic axiom is: "Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses" (Latin: "''Nihil est in intellectu quod non sit prius in sensu''"). It is found in
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas, Dominican Order, OP (; it, Tommaso d'Aquino, lit=Thomas of Aquino, Italy, Aquino; 1225 – 7 March 1274) was an Italian Dominican Order, Dominican friar and Catholic priest, priest who was an influential List of Catholic philo ...
's ''De veritate, q. 2 a. 3 arg. 19''.
Aquinas adopted this principle from the
Peripatetic
Peripatetic may refer to:
*Peripatetic school
The Peripatetic school was a school of philosophy in Ancient Greece. Its teachings derived from its founder, Aristotle (384–322 BC), and ''peripatetic'' is an adjective ascribed to his followers.
...
school of
Greek philosophy
Ancient Greek philosophy arose in the 6th century BC, marking the end of the Greek Dark Ages. Greek philosophy continued throughout the Hellenistic period and the period in which Greece and most Greek-inhabited lands were part of the Roman Empi ...
, established by
Aristotle
Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of ...
. Aquinas argued that the existence of God could be proved by reasoning from sense data. He used a variation on the Aristotelian notion of the "
active intellect The active intellect (Latin: ''intellectus agens''; also translated as agent intellect, active intelligence, active reason, or productive intellect) is a concept in classical and medieval philosophy. The term refers to the formal (''morphe'') aspec ...
" ("intellectus agens") which he interpreted as the ability to
abstract universal meanings from particular empirical data.
[''Macmillan Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (1969), "Thomas Aquinas", subsection on "Theory of Knowledge", vol. 8, pp. 106–107.]
References
{{Reflist
Empiricism
Thomism
Concepts in epistemology
Aristotelianism