  Does the disassociation of man from his intellect mean that human beings have knowledge of which they are unaware? How is this possible given that the intellect has the property of consciousness? After all, it does not make any sense to say that one knows something of which he is totally unaware. And yet this is precisely what Dietrich claims. Burkhard Mojsisch draws attention to the fact that in identifying the agent intellect with the abditum mentis (the hiddenness of the mind) of St. Augustine Dietrich establishes a distinction between what Mojsisch calls “transempirical consciousness” and empirical consciousness. Mojsisch argues that Dietrich held such a position because it is the agent intellect itself that grounds empirical consciousness. Since empirical consciousness is the function of the possible intellect according to Dietrich, and since in his Neoplatonic hierarchy the agent intellect being the cause of the possible intellect must be superior to it, it follows that empirical consciousness is due to the causal action of the agent intellect. Although this is not the place to pursue a detailed philosophical analysis of Dietrich’s theory, it should be pointed out that his position fits the facts of common sense and is concordant with some contemporary theories of mind. We surely maintain that we know things that we are unaware of when we are, for example, asleep or simply not thinking of them at the moment but could recall them from memory. Peter Geach in his book Mental Acts develops an analysis of concepts as capacities that are exercised or consciously manifest themselves in acts of judgment. And capacities, one could argue, need not be continuously exercised to be capacities. Thus it is with regard to Dietrich’s theory of the agent intellect; it need not always and everywhere be completely operative upon the possible intellect. Indeed, it can remain a “hiddenness of the mind” for the entirety of a person’s life and still be a reality about the person. Anyone who has ever had the dubious privilege of teaching in a modern university knows this to be a truism that borders on the obvious.