 The analysis of this distinction is very brief, which has led to dispute as to what it means.Greek thought

While Greek commentators such as Alexander of Aphrodisias and Themistius were broadly silent on the active intellect (debate over this would only become heated in the thirteenth-century Christian West in the context of debates over whether Avicenna or Averroes provided the account of the working of the intellect that best cohered with Christian doctrine), they provided a great deal of commentary on the nature of the passive intellect.For Alexander of Aphrodisias, for instance, (who coined the term of the 'material intellect' for this power, a name later taken up by Averroes), the passive intellect was a separate intellect from the active.