On Aristotle's Highest Entity And Nuss

It was a long-standing debate whether Active Nous belongs to a person's rational ability or belongs to the supreme substance.This paper focuses on Aristotle's "Supreme Substance"and "Nous".In the twelfth volume of Metaphysics,he also referred to the supreme substance as Nous.In Soul Theory,he divided Nus into the Active Nous and Passive Nous.But Aristotle himself did not quite clearly point out the relationship between Nous and Nous as the supreme substance.This paper attempts to tease out the relationship between Aristotle's supreme substance and the active nous and reveals Aristotle's unique understanding of the nature of human reason.According to Aristotle's discussion of " Supreme Substance" and "Nous",the supreme substance is the research object of metaphysics,and nous is not only Aristotle's concept of psychology,but also is the key to understand Aristotle's metaphysics.Aristotle thinks that the real research object of metaphysics is the supreme substance,but he does not discuss directly from the supreme substance in Metaphysics instead,he leads to the highest entity step by step through the analysis of the causal structure of the general substance.when he established that the unmoved Mover was the supreme substance,Aristotle begins to discuss supreme substance from different aspects.First of all,from the perspective of the relationship between potential and actuality,he thinks that the supreme substance is unmoved Mover and has pure actuality.Thus Aristotle establishes the whole metaphysical system,which is an orderly existence system centered on supreme substance.Corresponding to this metaphysical system,Aristotle has a different understanding of knowledge,It reveals what Aristotle seek is knowable thing "in the nature of sense",which is the knowledge of things "in the quality of sense”.Just as Aristotle calls the supreme substance the unmoved Mover from the perspective of potential and actuality,he also calls supreme substance is nous which has pure actuality.At the same time,he divides the rationality of human in "on soul" into the passive nous and active nous,among which has the pure actuality and immortality.In other words,the active nous is what Aristotle called the supreme nous in"metaphysics ",it also reflects Aristotle's understanding of the nature of human reason.Like Aristotle's existent system,Aristotle's rational view is a rational view centered on "the supreme substance",which is different from view of modern rationalist.So,Aristotle think that nous is the essence of human reason.The rational soul of man only share with nous,in other words,the nature of human reason is not explained within the scope of subjectivity.So Human reason itself is not self-sufficient and could be independent from Nous,and the reason don't have right to set the standard of truth for the world.In order to understand Aristotle's understanding of the nature of reason,the author used some length to review the comment of the active intellect of the medieval philosophy.Although Farabi?Avicena and Thomas's interpretation is different from Aristotle's,they all agree that the essence of reason is only to be understood in the context of supreme substance.Finally,rethinking Aristotle's understanding of the nature of reason is meaningful and enlightening to the present With the development of modernity,it brought some drawbacks.So some western philosophers begin to reflect on understanding of modern ego.By Aristotle's understanding of nous,to examines the modern rational View established by Descartes will help us find a new way to understand the our-self.