What is an intellectual "turn"? The Liber de causis, Avicenna, and Aquinas's turn to phantasms

Abstract

This paper seeks to elucidate Aquinas's "turn to phantasms" by investigating what he means by "turning". It argues that the key to the underlying conceptual framework of "intellectual turning" is found in two Islamic sources that were immensely influential on thirteenth - century Latin philosophical psychology, and that present specific technical concepts of "turning" as a kind of dependence: the anonymous Liber de causis, and the Persian philosopher Avicenna's Liber de anima. This paper, then, aims at recovering this underlying historical paradigm, by examining how these two key sources conceive of "turning" and how Aquinas incorporates their insights into his account of the "turn to phantasms".