Kirk Templeton, Avicenna, Aquinas and the Active Intellect

(This presentation was a part of CIIS Multiversity February 2008.)

The paper focuses on a critical change that transformed the way we understand cognition from the way it was understood in the ancient world and in the Islamic philosophical tradition. In keeping with the ACS mission to foster knowledge of and respect for diverse worldviews of religion, philosophy, and culture, Kirk’s study opens wider vistas for the understanding of consciousness by comparing the development of Western theories of cognition to those of other traditions.

“Avicenna, Aquinas and the Active Intellect” will be published this summer in the peer-reviewed Journal of Islamic Philosophy.

Kirk Templeton is in the doctoral program of Asian and Comparative Studies. He specializes in comparative studies of philosophical and theosophical systems of the cultures of the old Silk Route—Western Europe, the Mediterranean, the Middle East, Central Asia, India, and China: in other words, following the golden road to Samarkand. He arrived in the Bay Area just in time for the counterculture and has been here ever since. He has packed a number of different incarnations into this current life, having been a drummer, banker, swordsman, computer programmer, and horseman.