Active Intellect as the Unmoved Mover in Aristotle's De Anima 3.5

In his account of human reasoning in De Anima (On the Soul), Aristotle posits that upon truly understanding something (grasping its essence), the mind literally becomes that thing. But what does it mean for the mind to become the object of thought? When we think about a square, what does it mean for the mind to become that? Aristotle's concept of the Unmoved Mover can be used to answer this question. The Unmoved Mover is divine thought, and serves as the source of all primary motion in the universe. The activity of the Unmoved Mover is thought thinking itself, and exists atemporally, or outside of time. In De Memoria (On Memory), Aristotle defines memory as having phantasia-the ability to retain and recall sense perceptions-in addition to a conception of time. In my paper, I argue that upon truly understanding something, the mind's activity is identical to that of Aristotle's Unmoved Mover: it exists outside of time, and thus, we can have no memory of it. I support my thesis by exploring the properties of Aristotle's Unmoved Mover, which act as a framework for understanding his account of knowledge and thought in humans. I also examine his definitions of separability to see how these may or may not be separable. I then analyze Aristotle's infamous passage De Anima 3.5, in which he defines Nous Poietikos (active intellect) and Nous Pathetikos (passive intellect), which I interpret to be divine and human intellect, respectively. This is followed by a description of how time plays an integral role in memory, which provides a mechanism for interpreting true human understanding as identical to the divine activity of the Unmoved Mover.