Key Arguments

• He invokes a universal ontological pattern: 'in the whole of nature there is something that is matter ... for each genus (genos) (and this is what is potentially all those things [that are in the genus]), while there is something else that is causal and productive, because of producing them all'. This sets up a general schema of potential matter versus productive cause.
• He illustrates the productive principle by analogy with technē: it is 'which, for example, is the role of a craft in relation to its matter', suggesting that as craft organizes and actualizes raw material into a product, so a productive principle actualizes potentials in a genus.
• From this general schema he infers that 'so in the soul too there must be these differences (diaphora)', explicitly transferring the matter/producer distinction into the psychology of the soul.
• He then distinguishes two 'sorts' of understanding: 'there is one sort of understanding that is such by becoming all things, while there is another that is such by producing all things', marking a passive intellect that receives all forms and an active intellect that makes forms actually thinkable.
• He clarifies the productive intellect by a second analogy, this time with light: it produces all things 'in the way that a sort of state, like light, does, since in a way light too makes potential colors into active colors'. Just as light does not become colors but makes them actually visible, the productive intellect does not become its objects but renders them actually intelligible.

Source Quotes

III 5 But since in the whole of nature there is something that is matter | 430 a 10 | for each genus (genos) (and this is what is potentially all those things [that are in the genus]), while there is something else that is causal and productive, because of producing them all (which, for example, is the role of a craft in relation to its matter), so in the soul too there must be these differences (diaphora). 362 And in fact there is one sort of understanding that is such by becoming all things, while there is another that is such by producing all things in the way that a sort of state, like light, does, | 430 a 15 | since in a way light too makes potential colors into active colors. 363 And this [productive] understanding is separable, unaffectable, and unmixed, being in substance an activity (for the producer is always more estimable than the thing affected, and the starting-point than the matter), not sometimes understanding and at other times not.

III 5 But since in the whole of nature there is something that is matter | 430 a 10 | for each genus (genos) (and this is what is potentially all those things [that are in the genus]), while there is something else that is causal and productive, because of producing them all (which, for example, is the role of a craft in relation to its matter), so in the soul too there must be these differences (diaphora). 362 And in fact there is one sort of understanding that is such by becoming all things, while there is another that is such by producing all things in the way that a sort of state, like light, does, | 430 a 15 | since in a way light too makes potential colors into active colors. 363 And this [productive] understanding is separable, unaffectable, and unmixed, being in substance an activity (for the producer is always more estimable than the thing affected, and the starting-point than the matter), not sometimes understanding and at other times not. 364 But, when separated, this alone is just what it is.

Key Concepts

• in the whole of nature there is something that is matter | 430 a 10 | for each genus (genos) (and this is what is potentially all those things [that are in the genus]), while there is something else that is causal and productive, because of producing them all (which, for example, is the role of a craft in relation to its matter), so in the soul too there must be these differences (diaphora). 362
• And in fact there is one sort of understanding that is such by becoming all things, while there is another that is such by producing all things in the way that a sort of state, like light, does, | 430 a 15 | since in a way light too makes potential colors into active colors. 363

Context

Beginning of III.5 (430a10–15), where Aristotle applies his general hylomorphic pattern of matter vs. productive cause to the soul and introduces the distinction between a passive intellect that 'becomes all things' and an active intellect that 'produces all things', illustrated by the analogies of craft and of light.