Francis of Marchia against the Unity of the Intellect

The article presents Francis of Marchia’s refutation of Averroes’ doctrine of the unity of the intellect. Marchia’s position is placed in the context of the Franciscan debate of his time. The author examines how Scotus, Auriol, and other early Scotists considered Averroes’ doctrine, highlighting the influence of Thomas Wylton’s question On the intellectual soul in this debate. Presenting Marchia’s solution, the author shows that Marchia considers monopsychism as a doctrine that contradicts individual experience and the formal union between the body and the intellectual soul; however, his focus is on the noetic aspects of the debate. Marchia provides a solution aimed at explaining how the order of knowledge achieves a truly universal reference to one intelligible object for all subjects, without denying that individual human beings are the true subjects of their own knowledge.