The Alexandrists were a school of

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass id ...

philosophers who, in the great controversy on the subject of personal immortality, adopted the explanation of the ''De Anima'' given by

Alexander of Aphrodisias Alexander of Aphrodisias ( grc-gre, Ἀλέξανδρος ὁ Ἀφροδισιεύς, translit=Alexandros ho Aphrodisieus; AD) was a Peripatetic philosopher and the most celebrated of the Ancient Greek commentators on the writings of Aristotle ...

. According to the orthodox

Thomism Thomism is the philosophical and theological school that arose as a legacy of the work and thought of Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), the Dominican philosopher, theologian, and Doctor of the Church. In philosophy, Aquinas' disputed question ...

of the

Catholic Church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical Greece, Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatet ...

rightly regarded reason as a facility of the individual soul. Against this, the Averroists, led by

Agostino Nifo Agostino Nifo ( Latinized as Augustinus Niphus; 1538 or 1545) was an Italian philosopher and commentator. Life He was born at Sessa Aurunca near Naples. He proceeded to Padua, where he studied philosophy. He lectured at Padua, Naples, Rome, ...

, introduced the modifying theory that universal reason in a sense individualizes itself in each soul and then absorbs the active reason into itself again. These two theories respectively evolved the doctrine of individual and universal immortality, or the absorption of the individual into the eternal One. The Alexandrists, led by

Pietro Pomponazzi Pietro Pomponazzi (16 September 1462 – 18 May 1525) was an Italian philosopher. He is sometimes known by his Latin name, ''Petrus Pomponatius''. Biography Pietro Pomponazzi was born in Mantua and began his education there. He completed ...

, assailed these beliefs and denied that either was rightly attributed to Aristotle. They held that Aristotle considered the soul as a material and therefore a mortal entity which operates during life only under the authority of universal reason. Hence the Alexandrists denied that Aristotle viewed the soul as immortal, because in their view, since they believed that Aristotle viewed the soul as organically connected with the body, the dissolution of the latter involves the extinction of the former.

References

Attribution: * Christian philosophers {{Christianity-stub