Aristotle briefly distinguished a passive intellect, which becomes all things, from an active one, which makes all things, like light, and is separable and immortal. Arabic philosophers such as al-Fārābī and Avicenna made it a single cosmic intelligence illuminating human minds; union with it was a philosophical ideal.
Active intellect
The intellect that makes things knowable, in Aristotle; for some later thinkers a cosmic intelligence.
Also: agent intellect, nous poietikos