Perception and hylomorphism. Receptive activity of senses in Aristotle´s De Anima II,5

EIRENE

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I n s t i t u t e f o r C l a s s i c a l S t u d i e sI n s t i t u t e o f P h i l o s o p h y o f t h e C z e c h A c a d e m y o f S c i e n c e s , P r a g u e

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PERCEPTION AND HYLOMORPHISM:RECEPTIVE ACTIVITY OF SENSES IN

ARISTOTLE’S DE ANIMA, II,51

ROBERT ROREITNERPrague

The subject of this paper is Aristotle’s account of perception, namely the percep-tion of proper sensibles (such as colours, sounds or odours). Aristotle’s approach is highly original: it is neither materialist nor phenomenological. He asks about the place of perception in the natural world, but he does not aim to reduce percep-tion to other physical processes. Perception is a distinctive natural phenomenon.

I will be dealing with a question treated extensively in recent scholarship: whether Aristotle’s basic characterizations of perception as “becoming similar” to the sense object2 or “receiving form without matter”3 are to be read “literal-ly”, “non-literally”, or in terms of “analogical” alteration.4 The fi rst approach (followed in this respect by some interpreters proposing a “third” way of read-ing) offers an analysis of perception as being a hylomorphic change, i.e. change with its material and formal aspect; “becoming similar” is to be understood as the material condition of perception, meaning either that the organ of sight, for example, literally becomes red when the animal perceives a red object or

1 I am grateful to Karel Thein and Hynek Bartoš for their comments on earlier versions of this paper. I also owe my thanks to two anonymous reviewers of Eirene for their valuable suggestions. All errors remain my own. This study was written within the Programme for the Development of Fields of Study at Charles University, No. P13 Rationality in human sciences, sub-programme “Transformations of ethics (classical inspirations in present moral and political philosophy)”.

2 DA II,5 418a3–6.3 DA II,12 424a17–21.4 The same question can be extended to Aristotle’s repeated assumption that perception is

“a kind of alteration” or “a kind of affection”, cf. DA I,5 410a25; II,4 415b24; II,5 416b34; Insomn. 2, 459b4; MA 7, 701b19–21; and Phys. VII,2 244b10–11. For a summary of the debate from an “analogist” position cf. CASTON 2005.

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that other, “analogical” material changes (unspecifi ed by Aristotle) are taking place in the eye; the perceptual awareness is, then, to be distinguished from these material conditions as their “form”.5 I will call this approach hylomor-phic. The “non-literal” reading,6 on the other hand, agrees that perception needs a body to be realised in, but assumes there is no material change occurring that could be distinguished from perceptual awareness: perception as such cannot be analysed into form and matter; there is no change constituting perception that could itself be perceived.

Thereby, as we will see, the fi rst approach in a way assimilates perception to changes initiated or “controlled” by living beings, such as house building,

5 Many non-reductivist interpreters share this view without taking part directly in the de-bate, cf. MODRAK 1987 or SILVERMAN 1989. SORABJI 1974 proposed the literal reading and defend-ed it in SORABJI 1991, 1992 and 2001, followed, among others, by EVERSON 1997. CASTON 1998, 2002 and 2005 modifi ed the position by claiming that there must be some material change, that is only “analogical” to the literal “taking on the quality” of the sense object. In this he is followed by CHARLES 2008, who, however, suggests that the unity between form and matter of change is much tighter. A view similar to Caston’s has most recently been defended by JOHNSTONE 2012 or BOWIN 2012a and 2012b, 279, cf. also BOLTON 2005. LORENZ 2007 also refuses “literalism” in its orthodox form; he develops a specifi c position (a) claiming that in any perception there is an extraordinary alteration which cannot be straightforwardly treated as the “form” of material assimilation (“It would… be a mistake to think that the agent’s imparting form to the patient, in Aristotle’s analysis, is meant to underlie the agent’s action, or the patient’s change, as matter to form”, 206) while, at the same time, (b) admitting that in any perception the sense organ might also undergo another “ordinary change”: it “affects the sense by altering it into operation” (211); in the end he leaves open the possibility that these two changes are related one to another as form to matter, while querying the hylomorphic account: “I do not mean to claim that Aristotle does in fact conceive of acts of perception as form–matter composites, only that this is a possibility that remains open” (214). On the one side this paper goes very much in the same direction as that of Lorenz in underlining the fact that the relation of non-material (“extraordinary”) change and respective material (“ordinary”) changes implied now and then by Aristotle’s analysis of per-ception cannot be easily squared into the traditional alternative of literal vs. non-literal reading. Perceptual activity can certainly be connected with material changes, as in Lorenz’s example of ice cube cooling perceiver’s hand, or in Aristotle’s discussion of smelling, succinctly analysed by JOHNSTONE 2012, and of taste treated in this context by BOLTON 2005, 226–227 or LORENZ 2007, 209 or in Aristotle’s account of dreams, especially in Insomn. 3, cf. VAN DER EIJK 1994, 183–193, or again in the case of eye’s moisture affected as moisture in GA V,1, underlined by CASTON 2005, 288–290. On the other side I lay more stress on the problematic character of the form-matter model for explaining how such ordinary changes relate to the extraordinary change. If the dis-tinction of form and matter appears inapplicable, then any account which takes ordinary changes as constitutive of perceptual activity bears the onus demonstrandi.

6 SOLMSEN 1955, 158–159; and 1961, 170 already pointed out that Aristotle’s hesitancy to describe the physiological processes constitutive for perception is signifi cant, for many Pre-Socratics alongside with Plato were much more explicit than Aristotle in giving details of what is happening in a body when it is perceiving. The non-literalist position was developed by BURNYEAT 1992, 1995, 2001, 2002, cf. 2008; BROADIE 1993 and JOHANSEN 1997, cf. also polemic of MAGEE 2000 with EVERSON 1997, and MURPHY 2005.

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nutrition or self-motion,7 while the second approach understands perception more in continuity with changes of non-living nature, such as heating or burn-ing. The diffi culty is that neither analogy can stand on its own: perception, for Aristotle, is an essential activity of animals but, at the same time, it is a change initiated by a sense object, not by a living being, as such.

In this paper, I propose a reading of DA II,5 focused on Aristotle’s use of both analogies for locating the peculiar place of perception in the natural world. Before reaching the main section of the paper (II), in which I argue the advantages of the non-literal approach to DA II,5, I formulate a general objection to the hylomorphic reading (I), which I further detail in the fi nal sections (III and IV).

I . I s p e rce p t ion a “ hylomor ph ic” cha nge?

When one asserts that Aristotle endorsed “hylomorphism”, it might be help-ful to make the assertion more specifi c. It is useful to distinguish, at least, between (A) hylomorphism of constitution and (B) hylomorphism of change. If the question is about Aristotle’s general doctrine, then B would be a much stronger position than A. A says that any being (on a certain level of reality) is a composite, i.e. can be described as a form realised in matter, while nothing is maintained about the way in which it changes. B, then, is an extrapolation of A: it presupposes that any change (of a certain domain) can be analysed in a similar way, i.e. that we can distinguish its formal from its material aspect. The range of A is well defi ned by Aristotle’s notion of the sublunary world (if we take the non-individualizing aether to not be matter in the proper sense).8 But how is the domain of B circumscribed?

In some cases both principles, A and B, obviously go hand in hand. A house is a shelter realised in stone, wood, etc. (A); house building as a kind of “simple

7 These are actually analysed by Aristotle in hylomorphic terms. Some proponents of the hylomorphic reading of perception, however, realise that the case of perception is not wholly equivalent with the case of house building, and its clear distinction of laying bricks (matter) – cre-ating new house (form). EVERSON 1997, 258–288, highlighting this difference, argued that the for-mal awareness “supervenes” on the material affection. MAGEE 2000 formulated strong objections as to why supervenience is not Aristotle’s doctrine (at least not in DA). In more general terms, supervenience was defended by WEDIN 1992 and CASTON 1993 in reaction to WARDY 1990.

8 So even the individual elemental beings, e.g. this clod of earth, are constituted as mixtures of all elements (as to their matter) while they behave each time as distinctive single elements (as to their form), cf. GC II,3 330b21–26; and GC I,7 324b18–19: fi re has its heat in matter. ACKRILL 1972–1973 and WILLIAMS 1986, however, show how slippery the sense of A becomes in the case of living beings.


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change” (generation) is, formally, a realisation (teleiōsis) of a shelter in stone, wood etc.,9 and this realisation occurs only through material processes, such as fi tting together stones or hewing a column (B).10 It is easy to see that any hylo-morphic being implies a hylomorphic change; namely, the change by which it is constituted.11 Further, it is clear that there are also other, “non-constitutive” changes with hylomorphic description; anger, for instance, is, formally, a desire for retaliation realised through the boiling of blood as its matter.12 So the do-main of B is, in this sense, “bigger”. But it might be that it is also “smaller” in another respect: it does not, perhaps, expand through all the sublunary world, as A obviously does.

Now, it can hardly be denied that there are natural changes which do not allow hylomorphic description. The heating of water by fi re is quite an obvious case of change which cannot be analysed into its material and formal aspects. “When a stove heats a kettle, its imparting the perceptible form of the hotness to the kettle is not what underlies the heating of the kettle as matter to form. It just is the heating of the kettle.”13 There is no process which we could name as the change through which the heating is realised. The change between cold and hot, implying a heating agent and a cold subject of the heating,14 is one of the basic changes occurring already on the level of the elements. The process-es connected with the innate heat seem to allow actually for a hylomorphic analysis as far as the concoction of food, for example, demands an appropriate heating of the nutriment, and thus is realised through it as much as the main-tenance of body is realised through concoction and distribution of the blood to all organs; this chain, however, must stop somewhere and the heating of the nutriment itself apparently cannot be analysed any further in this way. The only “middle” through which the heating of the one stuff by another (e.g. of water by fi re) passes is the middle temperature (water of 50 or 60 centigrade) but this change is a part and not the matter of the whole process (heating wa-ter to 100 centigrade). For us, the “matter” of this change would perhaps be the acceleration of the atomic movements, but for Aristotle, who assumes that

9 Phys. VII,3 246a17–18.10 Phys. I,7 190b2–11; cf. GC I,3.11 It is worth noticing, however, that the matter of constitution (A) and the matter of consti-

tutive change (B’), cannot simply be identifi ed. For living beings, specifi cally, these two matters are clearly distinct: a horse is made up of its equine body, but it is made out of katamēnia, cf. KOSMAN 1987, 361–362.

12 DA I,1 403a30–b1. Cf. Rhet. II,2 1378a30–33.13 LORENZ 2007, 205.14 Cf. Phys. III,3; GC I,7 and MARMODORO 2007 for a detailed analysis of the relation between

agent and the subject of change.

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even the transformation of water into air demands a persisting matter (which might be defi ned as a “wet stuff”),15 there seems to be no distinction between material and formal change implied in the basic alterations.

In anticipation of DA II,5 we can further consider such a change as burn-ing: would Aristotle say that it is realised through the heating of the combus-tible? Obviously, something can be infl amed only under the infl uence of fi re (or a fi ery matter), and fi re heats. But we should be careful not to induce our own view instead of Aristotle’s. For Aristotle, heating and burning are differ-ent and as it seems quite independent kinds of alteration that occur together not because one is the “matter” of the other, but because they both (together with the upward movement) characterise fi re.16 He does not assume that the for-mer is indispensable for the latter, i.e. that the combustible would be infl amed through being heated.

So, in Aristotle’s sublunary world there seems to be quite a wide range of changes that do not allow us to distinguish between their formal and their material aspect. It does not mean, however, that these changes are not en-mattered: it is something quite different to say that there might be a natural change without a body (which is nonsense, for even the transformation of one element into another implies a persisting material stuff) and to say that a change does not imply any material process as its constituent.

15 Cf. mainly Phys. I,7; GC I,3.16 In DA II,5 417a7–8 burning is categorised as a qualitative change on the grounds of there

being a kaustikon which kaiei a preexisting kauston (cf. Phys. VIII,1 251a16–17). This change is a good analogy for perception because kaiein, from Homer on, can mean both “infl aming” (initiating the process of burning) and burning itself: after infl aming, the object does not cease to be kauston (similarly as the perceiver does not lose his or her capacity when actually perceiv-ing). That’s why kaiein can also be described as the “nutrition” of fi re (cf. DA II,4 416a15–16): fi re perfectly pervades the kauston object (infl ames it throughout) without destroying its capac-ity to burn (Meteor. IV,9 387a19–21). The nutrition of fi re, however, cannot be compared with the animal nutrition in all its aspects, because unlike animal or plant fi re ceases to exist after burning its kauston down; it is aei gignomenon (cf. Juv. 5, 470a3–5) – just as perception, except that any kauston is consumed after some time. The close semantic bound between “burning” and “infl aming” has its good reason here: burning is nothing else than continuous infl aming (for Artistotle’s recognition of immediate qualitative changes cf. the case of freezing pond at Sens. 6, 447a1–3). In DC III,8 306b32–33 the capacity to infl ame/burn (kaustikē) is mentioned together with the capacities to move (upwards) and to heat as one of the three substantial charac-teristics of fi re: as much as the local movement is not realised through heating, the infl ammation and burning, apparently, is also not itself realised through heating or through local movement, although they all might occur at the same time (and although a local distribution of fi re can be benefi cial to infl aming more parts of the kauston and burning it down). PA II,2 648b24–26 contrasts explicitly the capacity to infl ame/burn with the capacity to be heated. For the general account of combustible matters and their constitution cf. Meteor. IV,9 387b18–388a9: to be com-bustible is for Aristotle a quality sui iuris.


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At this place it might be helpful to recall the distinction made by Burnyeat between “material” and “physical”, which is not always taken into con-sideration, but might be important in some contexts to understand Aristotle correctly.17 There are some “physical” changes, i.e. changes which, unlike the intellectual activity, are an integral part of the sublunary world and their subjects are without exception hylomorphic beings; and yet these “physical” changes have no distinguishable “material” aspect (let us call this set of changes nonB). The heating of bronze when it serves the purpose of fabri cating arms is the “material” aspect of smithery; but when it serves for nothing, for instance when a bronze helmet on soldier’s head is heated in the sun, it is neither “mat-ter” of any other change, nor has it any distin guishable “material” aspect. Both heating and smithery are, of course, “physical” changes, as much as perception is a physical change. But it is not immediately clear whether perception resem-bles, as to its “material” conditions, more the smithery or the heating. The con-tention between the hylomorphic and the non-literalist reading of DA II,5 and 12 can, accordingly, be formulated also in terms of the following question: does or does not perception belong to nonB?

But how to draw the division between hylomorphic and non-hylomorphic changes in Aristotle’s universe? This question is far beyond the scope of this essay. And yet, it is closely connected to the debate between literalism, the an-alogical approach and non-literalism,18 for the latter will deny that perception is a hylomorphic change19 while the two former views often base their readings of DA II,12 on an (explicit or implicit) claim about the extent of Aristotle’s hy-lomorphism, assuming that perception ranges among the hylomorphic chang-es.20 Now, we should be all the more careful here as such a claim supposedly expresses well our own intuitions.21 After Descartes we have perhaps peculiar

17 BURNYEAT 2001, 130. A similar distinction between “material” and “physical” is also sug-gested by FREUDENTHAL 1995, 34.

18 It is sometimes recognised that the famous contention represents at the same time a dis-agreement on the extent and sense of Aristotle’s hylomorphism, cf. JOHANSEN 1997, 291: “We are not betraying Aristotle’s hylomorphism, as Nussbaum and Putnam fear. We are insisting on hylomor-phism.” Though, while Nussbaum and Putnam assume that perception is a hylomorphic change, Burnyeat and Johansen claim that it is activity of hylomorphic beings, occurring necessarily in appropriate body, but without allowing itself the distinction between material and formal aspect.

19 This inference, however, does not imply “assimilating form to matter” (pace GRANGER 1993, 169–170).

20 Cf. e.g. EVERSON 1997, 230: “I shall argue that, according to Aristotle, a full explanation of natural change, including perceptual change, must make reference to the material constitution of the substance which changes as well as to its form.”

21 Cf. WILLIAMS 1986, 194: “We have more reason than Aristotle did to expect that for mental properties and activities in general there will be some corresponding truths about the Body.”

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reasons to analyse perception as a hylomorphic change that Aristotle would not necessarily share.22

My suggestion is that to decide this question Aristotle’s conception of per-ception should be considered in closer relation to his views on natural teleology, and especially to his account of the fi nal cause in the realm of non-living beings.

This is, of course, another highly controversial issue with the opinions rang-ing from the anthropocentric account23 to the absence of any teleology what-soever.24 In the course of the debate, however, some characteristics have been formulated which I believe allow us to grasp, at least broadly, the intrinsic teleo-logical character of the living beings and their activities in contrast to a reduced or absent teleology in the non-living nature. In developing this issue we may fi nd out that the hylomorphism of non-constitutive changes (changes in which an al-ready acquired potentiality is realised) is something that characterises primarily and perhaps only the activities initiated by animals or plants.

If it can be demonstrated (cf. section III) that Aristotle nowhere implies a hylomorphic analysis for the manifestation of higher-level qualities in gener-al (such as hardness or fragility), then the only relevant case of “hylomorphic” change in non-living nature is the change in which these higher-level qualities are constituted.25 The constitution of specifi c perceptual qualities may well be hylomorphic change of a kind, without implying that their manifestation also allows for an analysis into form and matter.

SLAKEY 1961, 470 observes that in contrast to Aristotle “[i]n modern times some kind of distinc-tion has already been made between the physiological condition of perception… and the psycho-logical or mental event of perception itself…” SISKO 1996, 140–141 warns that we are nowadays much less sensible to the important distinction between “requiring a body” and “involving bodily processes”. Similarly BURNYEAT 2001, 129–130.

22 That perception cannot be analysed as hylomorphic change was argued by SILVERMAN 1989, 274: “Sight… is not a material composite subject to hylomorphic analysis.” A similar doubt is formulated also by MORAVCSIK – CODE 1995, 130; COHEN 1995, 63; or ACKRILL 1972–1973, 68.

23 Cf. SEDLEY 1991.24 Cf. Tiberiou Popa’s dissertation on Meteorology IV. Commenting on the difference be-

tween organic and inorganic homoiomera he concludes that “such examples support… the view that Aristotelian natural teleology is confi ned to the realm of life and excludes mineralogy and meteorology” (POPA 2005, 162–163, n. 240).

25 The capacity of fi re, for instance, to make solid through heating is cited by BROACKES 1999, 80 in support of the hylomorphic reading. But if the hylomorphism of constitution does not imply the hylomorphism of manifestation (as section III argues), then this interesting case has no bearing on the correct understanding of a perceptual change. Cf. FREUDENTHAL 1995, 40–44 and 151–157 for a systematic reconstruction of the role played by the “natural heat” (under-stood as a “‘degree zero’ of [nutritive] soul” – ibid., 44) in constituting non-living homoiomera. Constitution and manifestation of higher-level qualities are distinguished as two altogether dif-ferent kinds of “changes” by POPA 2005, 110–111, cf. below.


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Refl exion on living beings and the way in which they initiate and “control” their activities can offer an intelligible account of the hypothetical necessity in change, i.e. of the fact that one change is initiated not for itself, but for the sake of a differently defi ned (or “higher”) “change” which cannot occur on its own. For example, to build a house, one must hew columns, lay bricks etc., to make a statue from stone one must sculpt it, moving an arm demands expansion of the innate pneuma, to survive one must maintain all the organs, and to do so it is necessary to bring blood to them, which again presupposes concoct-ing the nutriment properly. In all these cases the “formally” defi ned activities (building house, creating statue, grasping a pen, preserving health condition) presuppose (“hypothetically necessary”) changes which are neither identical to them by their defi nition, nor wholly independent of them, but rather constitute them as their “matter”. This appears to be a comprehensible account of what hylomorphic changes are.

It is indeed assumed by many scholars that what Aristotle defi nes as hy-pothetical necessity in Phys. II,8–9 and PA I,1 applies fi rst and foremost to the self-realisation of living beings.26 Life brings a new sort of complexity of change into the natural world: living beings can initiate changes for the sake of differently defi ned changes or activities, such as receiving and transform-ing external matter for the sake of maintaining one’s own body.27 It does not necessarily imply that there is no fi nal cause on the level of elements (and their inorganic composites). There actually seems to be such a cause as far as the elements in their mutual transformations “imitate” the eternal movements of heavenly bodies28 and as far as each of them is “directed” towards its “nat-ural place”.29 Yet there also seems to be an essential difference in that only the living beings are able to do something for the sake of effecting something else (a “higher” activity): the elements move to their natural place, but not for the sake of effecting differently defi ned activity which would be to their move-ments as form is to matter; the fi re heats necessarily everything in its surround-ing that is colder not in order to achieve something, but because just this is its

26 Cf. POPA 2005, 107–108 arguing that “conditional necessity” in its most basic form is “the principal key to integrating the two orders of dunameis (‘simple’ material dispositions and capacities of tissues to perform specifi c functions) into a unitary picture”. Thus on the level of “simple material dispositions” alone there is no “conditional necessity” at all. For a summary of the debate on hypothetical necessity in non-living nature cf. JOHNSON 2004, 149–158.

27 Plants seem to be specifi c in that their soul “coordinate” their nutrition, while they lack their proper inner heat.

28 Cf. GC II,10.29 For the both teleological aspects of elements cf. JOHNSON 2004, 140–149.

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nature.30 In both cases (motion and heating) the only “conditionality” implied is that the element has to arrive at the middle point of the trajectory or to in-duce the middle temperature, in order to arrive at the proper place or in order to make the other thing as hot as it can become. This minor change, obviously, does not stand to the major change as mater to form, but rather as part to whole.

The difference can be put in other terms as well: the inorganic bodies, which are not able to stop their changes, cannot change themselves, but are rather changed in accordance with (their) nature.31 The character of changes initiated by living be-ings, on the other hand, is substantially different because “they have their own in-ternal principles of motion and intrinsic ends”.32 David Balme characterised these changes in similar terms as “limited by soul”, or as “self-coordinated actions”.33

The point of these distinctions which could only be adumbrated here is the following. As perception is not initiated by the living being as such, the analysis of it as a hylomorphic change loses its intuitive ground. It does not mean that there would be no causa materialis of perception: this may, however, perhaps be defi ned simply in terms of “standing material conditions” (in the medium and in the sense organ) without implying any “ordinary change” as the material base of “formal” assimilation.34

There certainly is such an intuitive base for taking house building as hylomor-phic change: it is a “self-coordinated action” directed by a builder who realises the house building’s “formal” activity through other sorts of “material” chang-es.35 Thanks to this capacity in the builder one change has at the same time two aspects: formally, it is house building, while materially it is the fi tting together of the stones, the column-hewing, etc. On the other hand, burning (if it is not used by an external agent as a means for accomplishing something else) does not seem to allow such a hylomorphic analysis. Now, both house building and burning are used in DA II,5 to clarify certain aspects of perception, so that before taking house building’s hylomorphism as a model applicable to perception we would need at fi rst to justify that the two cases can actually be compared in this particular point. The heating of nutriment, boiling of blood, hewing of a column or expanding pneuma is the material aspect, hypothetically necessary for the agent to

30 Cf. Phys. VIII,4 255b5–12.31 That is how the difference is described by JOHNSON 2004, 140.32 JOHNSON 2004, 144. The term “intrinsic telos” is used also by MENN 2002, 118.33 BALME 1972, 93–96. Cf. Met. I,1 981b2–5 and DA II,4 415b15–21.34 Cf. LORENZ 2007, 205: “When a lavender bush imparts its olfactory form to your sense of

smell, this is not what underlies the activation of the sense as matter to form. It just is the activa-tion of the sense.”

35 Cf. Met. VII,7 1032b6–22.


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realise the change in its proper form of nutrition, anger, fabrication of artifacts or self-motion, respectively. Where there is no agent capable of “doing one thing for the sake of another”, there is no hylomorphism of this sort. But the agent (the effi -cient cause) of perception is a sense object, and so perception (of proper sensibles) cannot apparently be understood as a self-coordinated activity.36 Any argument for hylomorphism of perceptual change on grounds of analogy with nutrition, passion or house building, accordingly, does not seem to be valid or have any textual support.37 While there is a universal and comprehensible account of why these changes are hylomorphic, this account cannot hold for perceptual change.

I I . DA I I , 5: be t we e n bu r n i ng a nd hou se bu i ld i ng

In an infl uential article, Myles Burnyeat38 argued that the non-literal reading of perceptual isomorphism can fi nd substantial support in discussions of DA II,5,39 where Aristotle introduces “a new and radically different understanding of ‘al-teration’”, labeled as alloiōsis tis (416b34). According to Burnyeat, Aristotle here rejects the possibility that perception could involve any ordinary alteration and thus lays the groundwork for a correct understanding of his claim in DA II,12 that perception consists of “receiving form without matter”.40

36 This perception, especially when retained in the form of phantasma, might perhaps be described as “matter” of higher-level cognitive activities, such as thinking, in so far as thinking depends on phantasia. My point is only that the perception of proper sensibles (a) is already a psy-chic act, and (b) there is no good model developed so far for analysing it in hylomorphic terms.

37 DA I,1 does not prove that perception is a hylomorphic change (as suggested by JOHANSEN 2012, 168; CHARLES 2008; WEDIN 1988, 7; NUSSBAUM – PUTNAM 1992, 46–48; or EVERSON 1997, 244–245). Passions (pathēmata) at 403a16–403b2 are cited as an example of attri-butes of soul (pathē in the broad sense, 403a3–7) that are not separable from body. But, as other examples show (line at 403a13–15 and house at 403b3–7), the notion of inseparability is broader than that of hylomorphic change: perception can be inseparable in the sense of demanding a body while not implying any material process. BURNYEAT 1995, 420 and KING 2010, 21 argue for this conclusion by pointing to the distinction made between the erga and pathēmata of the soul at 403a10–11. Aristotle’s expression of the same idea in Somn. 1, 454a9–10 (“perception as activity is a kind of change [kinēsis tis] of soul through body [dia sōmatos]”) does not suggest any hylo-morphic view of perceptual change, neither. Aristotle could easily say that it is “a kind of change” of soul which occurs by means of change in body (cf. e.g. Phys. I,7 190b5–10 and the instrumen-tal dative used here to describe genuine hylomorphic changes, or VII,3 246a4–9 where the same idea is expressed by genitive absolute). Instead of that he only says that it occurs through body, without implying that the body necessarily changes in any “ordinary”, material way.

38 BURNYEAT 2002, 46.39 See already BURNYEAT 1992, 19.40 LORENZ 2007, 194 also argues (although with different consequences) that the concept of

extra-ordinary alteration defi ned in DA II,5 (and not the ordinary alteration) is crucial for under-standing perceptual assimilation in DA II,12.

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Burnyeat’s argument was widely contested, even by interpreters who admit that the controversy around DA II,12 is perhaps undecidable.41 His critics argued, in different ways, that DA II,5 says only that perception cannot be defi ned, for-mally, as ordinary alteration; now, it is already explicitly stated elsewhere by Aristotle that this kind of defi nition is not possible for activities such as house building: house building is not an alteration (alloiōsis) but a perfection (teleiōsis), and the builder is not affected (paschein) but passes to activity (metaballein eis energeian).42 The analogy between cognitive activities, i.e. thinking and percep-tion, and house building at 417b8–9, suggests, as Burnyeat’s opponents argue, that Aristotle’s rejection of perception’s being formally defi ned as ordinary alter-ation does not eliminate the possibility that perception is also, materially, ordi-nary alteration. For the most part they agree that the example of house building shows that Aristotle thinks of perception as a hylomorphic change. And, as Phys. VII,2–3 directly implies: “There is no inconsistency between something being a completion (teleiōsis) and its essentially being a matter-involving change.” 43 If this interpretation is correct, then DA II,5 illustrates rather the opposite of what Burnyeat believed to fi nd there.

However, this “compatibilist” reading of DA II,5 is based on a problematic understanding of alloiōsis in respect to the example of house building at 417b8–9. The interpreters mostly assume that house building is here taken by Aristotle as an example of preservative paschein and alloiousthai.44 This claim, however, presup-poses that the terms “alteration” and “being affected”, from which DA II,5 starts, are taken by Aristotle only in a very loose sense later in the chapter so that – in contrast to Phys. VII,2–3 – they apply to house building as well;45 it implies that

41 Cf. BOWIN 2011; or HERZBERG 2007, who tries to balance between the “spiritualist” and “literalist” readings by assuming that the only requisite “ordinary” change involves just main-taining the organ in the right condition.

42 Cf. Phys. VII,3 246a17–20; and DA II,4 416a34–b3.43 CHARLES 2008, 23. The same reasoning can be found in: SISKO 1996, 142; EVERSON 1997,

93–94; CASTON 2005, 271; HEINAMAN 2007, 166; HERZBERG 2007, 116–117; SORABJI 2001, 59; POLANSKY 2007, 237–238 or BOWIN 2012a, 97.

44 Cf. HERZBERG 2007, 113, who states that “der Baumeister als Beispiel für jene Gattung von Veränderung angeführt wird, von der nicht angemessen ist, sie ‘Veränderung’ zu nennen”. CASTON 2005, 267–268: “In the passage at issue, Aristotle uses the example of a builder when he is building to help explain the sense in which the transition from (ii) to (iii) is different from other alterations.” HEINAMAN 2007, 178: “Strong evidence to support our understanding II,5’s refi ned alterations to consist in a class of actualities rather than transitions to actuality is the analogy Aristotle draws between thinking and house building at 417b8–9.” Cf. also SORABJI 1972, 37 and MENN 2002, 128. Only BOWIN 2011 and 2012a, as far as I know, does not ground his argument for compatibilist reading on this analogy.

45 Cf. WEDIN 1988, 33: “Thus, actual exercises of faculties are said to involve πάσχειν (being affected) or ἀλλοιοῦσθαι (being altered) by courtesy only.”


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only in this looseness can the notion of preservative paschein and alloi ousthai be applied to perception as its (all too) formal defi nition; hence, the way is open for the assumption of ordinary alteration as the matter of perception.

But a closer reading shows that Aristotle does not explicitly say that house building is alteration or affection in any sense. And it would, in fact, be very strange if he did, because (a) at the opening of DA II,5, where perception is al-ready called “a kind of alteration” and is said to consist in a kind of paschein, alloiōsis obviously has a much narrower meaning of passive qualitative change, inapplicable to house building in any reasonable way. This is confi rmed by the analogy with burning at 417a7–9, which underlines the need of an external acting sense object for the actualisation of perception.46 Another reason is (b) that the broad sense of alloiōsis, implied by the compatibilist reading, has no clear parallel anywhere else in Aristotle’s extant work.47

Burnyeat’s critics must presuppose that paschein and alloiōsis are used by Aristotle throughout DA II,5 in at least two disconnected senses, so that burning at 417a7–9 and house building at 417b8–9 are both treated as alloiousthai and paschein by way of pure homonymy. It is only this homonymy, which is nowhere suggested by Aristotle himself, that allows them to fi nd in DA II,5 a place for a hylomorphic analysis of perception, i.e. for its being (formally) an extraor-dinary “alteration” and at the same time (materially) an ordinary alteration. Burnyeat, by contrast, fi nds in DA II,5 a strategy which is at least conceptu-ally more coherent, although philosophically delicate: the ordinary concept of alteration, developed in GC I,7 and Phys. III,1–3, is taken as the starting-point and then modifi ed throughout the chapter to account in the end for the peculiar

46 Cf. POLANSKY 2007, 227–228; or LORENZ 2007, 192: “Like burnable fuel, it [i.e. to aithē-tikon] is actualised only by suitable external causes.” This analogy contrasts perception with both house-building (which certainly needs an external building material, but which is initiated by the builder himself) and thinking (which differs from perception just by not being in need of anything external at all, cf. DA III,3 427b17–20).

47 Paschein is normally used in the specifi c sense that implies the analysis of GC I,7, not in the broad sense of pathē of DA I,1 (or GC I,3). Moreover, throughout Met. V even the term pathos is characterised as an attribute of an object moved (by something else) insofar as it is moved (1020b17–19, cf. 1022a15–17), while the general sense of any attribute is reserved for the term “quality” (to poion). Similarly, alloiōsis in Met. V,14 and 21 is closely related to this specifi c no-tion of pathos. GC I,4, the only complex study of alloiōsis, is to be understood in connection with the reciprocity between to poioun and to paschon discussed in GC I,7 (auxēsis, a self-coordinated activity, is, signifi cantly, treated apart from alloiōsis in GC I,5). This is confi rmed by Phys. VII,3 245b3–8, where alloiōsis is explicitly bound to paschein in the narrow sense of being affected by an external object and contrasted with the more general notion of attribute (hexis) and its change. On these grounds house building is clearly not an alteration (246a17–18) while perception, al-ready in Phys. VII,2–3, is called a kind of alteration (244b10–13, 247a6–7). The task posed by DA II,5, in my understanding, is to prove that this attribution was justifi ed and to show why.

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case of receptive (cognitive) activities of the soul.48 In so far as perception (at least of proper sensibles) is to be explained49 as pathos induced by a sense ob-ject, the concept of extraordinary alteration which defi nes it is still substantially affi ned with the ordinary alterations such as burning; hence, there is defi nitely more than homonymy between them. There is no point, accordingly, in calling house building an “alteration”, while the whole point of DA II,5 is to fi nd a way in which perception can be characterised as a kind of alteration.

The emphasis, I think, should be laid on the fact that house building at 417b8–9 is not introduced as an example of preservative paschein or ex-traordinary alloiousthai, but as a case of energeia induced by the subject it-self,50 which can thus be no paschein or alloiousthai at all.51 Thus, (1) there is the same contrast between house building and perception as there was in Phys. VII,2–3, for perception, unlike house building, is an energeia induced

48 BURNYEAT 2002, 71, cf. 45, 58, 69: Aristotle “wants both second potentiality perception and fi rst potentiality intellect to be powers of receptivity, rather than of autonomous activity”. Cf. MAGEE 2000, 323; and BERNARD 1988 for a detailed treatment of perceptual Rezeptivität. The obvious difference between perceptual and intellectual receptivity (the former demanding presence of an external physical object, while the latter being independent of such a cause, and yet described by Aristotle as receptivity towards the noēta) would demand an analysis of its own.

49 Cf. 417b32–418a3; and BURNYEAT 2002, 83.50 The contrast between house building and “passive” (i.e. receptive) capacities was suc-

cinctly expressed by BEERE 2010, 11–12, cf. 24 in terms of what is in charge (kurios – Met. XII,9 1074b19) of the relevant activity: the house builder, unlike the perceiver, is himself in charge of his house-building activity. In this respect the perceptual and intellectual activities can be together contrasted with house building as far as they are both defi ned in terms of receptivity towards aisthēta and noēta, respectively, who are “in charge of” them.

51 My only objection to Burnyeat’s article (2002) would be that he takes too ambiguous a position as to whether extra-ordinary alterations include just receptive (cognitive) activities, or whether they comprise other activities, too, such as house building. On the one hand, Burnyeat emphasises that the motivation for developing the new concept of extra-ordinary alteration in DA II,5 is “to do justice to the receptivity of perception” (69). On the other hand, at some places Burnyeat treats the notion of extra-ordinary alteration as equivalent with a more general notion of transition from second potentiality to second entelechy (cf. 55–56), so that house building would fall under extra-ordinary alterations (in this Burnyeat is followed by JOHANSEN 1997, 11–12, 269–271). The reactions of other scholars reveal this ambiguity: so for example HERZBERG 2007, 100 reproaches Burnyeat in that he applies “the second kind of alteration” to cognitive fac-ulties only; while HEINAMAN 2007, 186 believes that “Burnyeat understands the points made about potential knowledge in 417a21–b2 to be setting out characteristics that hold generally for fi rst and second potentiality.” On my reading, the second tendency present in Burnyeat’s article seriously impaired its import. To allow the notion of extra-ordinary alteration to be extended as far as to comprise house building means to deplete it of its specifi c content; and this helps the critics to say: well, perception is extra-ordinary alteration, but it is just a very formal defi -nition which – exactly as in the case of house building – does not exclude another, material, description.


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by an external sense object:52 similarly, the potentiality of a combustible is actualised only by fi re coming from the outside. This is the relevant sense of saying that perception is a kind of alteration. But, on the other hand, (2) house building, as a self-coordinated activity, serves also to contrast perception against ordinary alterations which are, unlike perception, no energeiai of soul at all. Provided that perception is an energeia of soul and is, thus, essen-tially preservative paschein (and not the paschein belonging to a combustible which, sooner or later, is consumed in its own actualisation) it must be defi ned only as a kind of alteration.

The diffi culty and depth of DA II,5 would thus lie in its mirroring con-struction: (1) to understand rightly how unique perception is among the ente-lechies of soul we must turn to the opening sections which, following ancient traditions,53 introduce perception as a sort of alteration and paschein;54 (2) to understand, on the other hand, how unique and extraordinary alteration per-ception is, we must turn to that part of the chapter where it is characterised as a second entelechy of soul. The actual perception is a receptive entelechy, and there is nothing comparable in Aristotle’s natural world.55 Perception lies right at the intersection of second entelechies and passive alterations: it is animal activity, and at the same time it is change produced by an external sense object.

52 Cf. the contrast made between house building and perception in EN X,4 1174a14–29: while horasis is by itself an energeia, oikodomikē is realised only as a process (kinēsis), i.e. through ordinary changes. The question of the relation between perception as alloiōsis tis and perception as energeia is a diffi cult one. The unity of kinēsis and energeia (cf. DA II,5 417a14–17), however, must clearly take two very different forms in the case of perception and in the case of house building, respectively: while house building is always only an imperfect energeia, being realised through ordinary changes, perception is a perfect energeia, and yet it is a kind of alloiōsis, in so far as it is produced by an external agent (cf. EN X,4 1174b14–15.32; 1175a3–4). If this is correct, then the objective of DA II,5 is nothing less than to fi nd a philo-sophical account of receptive activity.

53 Cf. DA II,7 419a17–18; II,12 424a17–19, 424b16–17.54 Cf. LORENZ 2007, 194: “Perception crucially involves, and perhaps in some sense just is,

a peculiar kind of affection undergone by the sense in question in which it ‘rises into itself and into actuality’, without losing any quality, and does so by the agency of a suitable sense -object.”

55 Thinking set apart. Perhaps the most crystalline expression of the idea of receptive activity is to be found in Fr. IV (BARBOTIN 1954) by Theophrastus (= Prisc. 28,20–23; Them. 108,15–17). What Theophrastus formulates here for intellect must hold for perception as well (cf. Them. 108, 1–3): it is apathēs in so far as it is no ordinary kinēsis; but it is pathētikos “hōs energeia”: “in the sense of being a [receptive] activity”. An echo of this Aristotelian thought can still be found – in spite of Plotinus’ proof of the essential impassibility of soul – in Sentence XVIII by Porphyry, who – “reifying” the idea of DA II,5 – distinguishes between passivity (paschein) of bodies on one side and of incorporeal beings on the other side. The passive (receptive) states of the incor-poreal (ta pathē) are characterised just as energeiai.

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DA II,5 can thus be understood as Aristotle’s most comprehensive attempt (so far as we know)56 to tackle this peculiar chiasma of his natural world.

I I I . Re s t r ic t ion s on t he ef f ica cy of se n s ib i l i a

The argument developed in this paper can be taken as a supplement to Sarah Broadie’s account of the impossibility to distinguish the form and matter of perception.

She analysed Aristotle’s “perceptual realism” into two assumptions which seem incoherent from a modern point of view: (1) perception is defi ned as an animal’s “being acted on perceivingly by the sensible object”,57 existing prior and independently from the act of perception; but (2) without there being per-ceivers the perceptual qualities “would do nothing and stand in no connection with anything”.58 She called these two principles, respectively, “the causality of sensibilia” and “the restricted effi cacy of sensibilia”.

The fi rst of these principles already, if valid, offers a strong argument for there being no constitutive material process implied by perception. Analysing perception into an ordinary material affection and the awareness of sensible quality as the “form” realised through it, implies, according to Broadie, a depar-ture from Aristotle’s assertion that the sensible qualities themselves are the ef-fective causes of perception. If the effect of a visible object, for example, is articulated in terms of unspecifi ed “primary qualitative changes”, then it is not as coloured that the object produces perception, so that Aristotle would at once assert that the objects of vision have their colours independently of perceivers and yet that they affect perceivers by other means. But:

This is absurd because it ascribes colors, etc., to physical things while at the same time implying that the colors are incapable of making themselves known to per-cipients – percipients who are meanwhile experiencing colors as a result of quite other causes! A color that is real but incapable of being seen is more repugnant to the intellect than a color (considered as an external quality) that gets itself seen without mediation by special physiological events.59

56 Cf. BURNYEAT 2002, 69: “We do not know what Aristotle would have done with the option he is beginning to develop.”

57 BROADIE 1993, 144; cf. BURNYEAT 2002, 76, for a defi nition of perceiving as “being ap-peared to” so and so (e.g. “redly”).

58 BROADIE 1993, 148.59 BROADIE 1993, 145.


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Reactions to Broadie’s article have shown that there is one more way of under-standing Aristotle’s perceptual realism which was not taken into account by her and whose adequacy, or “repugnance to the intellect”, is thus yet to be considered. Why should not we say that colour is actually capable of making itself known, but only through mediating material processes? If there is a reason to reject this possibility, this would present another “restriction” on the “effi cacy of sensibilia”.

Victor Caston60 argued for this possibility, i.e. for what we could call a dou-ble effi cacy of sensibilia or, more precisely, for the possibility to distinguish between form and matter of their effi cacy.61 Once again, house building is taken as the model for understanding perception: “One could infer that just as color alone is the proper effi cient cause of seeing, so seeing alone is the proper ef-fect of color. Still nothing follows about the presence of underlying material structures or changes. This is clear, once again, from the case of building“.62 Caston’s point is that perceptual realism can be maintained without rejecting the material base of perceptual affection. To accept this, we only need to assume that the sensible quality is capable of making itself known through (mediating) material processes – something that Broadie apparently overlooked in her defi -nition of “the causality of sensibilia”. Exactly as the builder brings a house to its perfection through mediating processes, the colour can “makes us” see through material processes entering from a medium to our organs.To support this kind of perceptual realism, Caston refers to Aristotle’s con-ception of “higher-level qualities”, including perceptual qualities, discussed prominently in GC II,2 and Meteor. IV,8–9.63 His argument is that (a) clearly “these higher powers can be said to come from the elemental qualities”64 and yet (b) they cannot be “reduced to them”.65 So, why, analogically, would not (c) perceptual realism allow a form-matter distinction of effi cacy in sensibilia?

60 Cf. also GRANGER 1993; BROACKES 1999; and COHEN 1995, 75.61 Another proponent of the double effi cacy of sensibilia would be SILVERMAN 1989, who

argues that the perceptual agency of a sense object consists in communicating an abstract ratio of dark and light through other changes in the medium transmitting the same ratio to the percipient.

62 CASTON 2005, 271. For a similar attitude cf. MODRAK 1987, 58. Another sort of departure from “perceptual realism” would be the one presented by JOHANSEN 2012, 205–210, who asserts that perception has not one, but two effective causes.

63 EVERSON 1997, 103–138 also argues for the double effi cacy of sensibilia on grounds of this connection with other higher-level qualities.

64 This thesis is denied by Broadie according to GRANGER 1993, 162: “Hence, colours and the other proper sensibles of Aristotle’s psychology do not depend upon primary qualities for their existence or their causal effi cacy.” I cannot see how the fi rst sort of dependence could be denied (and I do not think Broadie actually denies it); from its approval, however, one can infer no such dependence for sense-objects’ manifestation.

65 CASTON 2005, 274.

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I believe that both assertions (a) and (b) are true, but that the conclusion (c) does not follow. It does not follow because there is a difference between, say, a stone’s being hard and its actual acting as hard, i.e. the difference between a (second) potentiality and a (second) actuality of higher-level qualities, between their con-stitution and their manifestation. If we focus on this difference we realise that there is no support in GC II,2 or Meteor. IV,8–9 for the double effi cacy of sen-sibilia. The “higher-level” qualities are all potentialities to receive certain affec-tion (paschein), which distinguishes them already from perceptual qualities that are able to affect perceivers (poiein).66 But, more importantly, “higher-level” affective potentialities are surely determined by (even if not reducible to) ele-mental qualities as far as their emergence (constitution) is concerned, and yet Aristotle nowhere assumes that their actualisation (manifestation) implies, as its material base, the actualisation of those qualities which allowed them to emerge or any other “ordinary” change.

Take as an example piece of clod dried by the sun so that it becomes hard and fragile. One has to admit that this constitution of “hardness” and “fra-gility” can be treated as “hylomorphic” process of a kind, even though it is to be understood in terms of simple, not of hypothetical necessity: no one would say that the clod in this case is heated and dried for the sake of becoming hard and fragile, rather as it is heated and dried it incidentally becomes hard and fragile, for this is, in the case of a clod, the necessary consequence of its heating and drying, even when it is not intended. The very same change which could be effected for the sake of its result if the heated and dried object were a vase put in the sun intentionally by a potter occurs here only incidentally, without the teleo logical grounding which it could have. There are innumera-ble cases of such processes: wood becomes combustible by drying, a poker or a stone becomes red when heated by fi re, and so on. It is possible to say that also the clod, for example, is hardened through heating, even if the word “through” has a different meaning here than when one says that the potter makes a vase solid through heating it. We might, accordingly, call this kind of processes incidentally hylomorphic changes. The question we must ask now is whether the manifestation of the resulting qualities (dryness, fragility, red colour etc.) allows at least for this kind of hylomorphic analysis.

It is trivial to see that when clod’s fragility is to be manifested this manifes-tation demands no drying or heating as its material base any more. Does it de-mand, then, some other change which could successfully be taken as its “matter” at least in the incidental sense?

The answer proves to be elusive, for on the one hand the manifestation of thing’s fragility is an obviously material phenomenon with material defi nition

66 Meteor. IV,8 385a1–5.


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(if we take “fragile” to be translation for thrauston, then fragility is manifested iff the thing is broken to at least three pieces);67 on the other hand, however, it does not seem that the actualisation of “fragility” could easily be understood as the “form” of this material process. When it comes to the manifestation of higher-level qualities Aristotle does not speak anymore in terms of one process occurring through another, not even in a qualifi ed sense, as he could freely talk about the thing being solidifi ed or hardened through being heated and dried.

Tiberiou Popa in his commentary on Meteorology IV68 characterised the man-ifestation of higher-level qualities as instantaneous actualisation in contrast to the constitution of these qualities which is realised in “gradual processes”. When something fragile is broken, this manifestation itself does not imply any gradual change as its material base, even though it can be defi ned in purely material terms.

We may develop this consideration a step further and notice that such an in-stantaneous actualisation demands two things: (a) there has to be another object present in respect to which the fragile object can manifest its fragility; and (b) the two objects have to be put in contact by a change: in the case mentioned, this change might be a local movement of the fragile object towards the other one (the clod falling to the ground) or vice versa (a stone falling on the clod).

When this consideration is applied to coloured or potentially sounding objects, the manifestation of the sensible quality in this case will demand: (a) a perceiver without whose presence the quality has nothing in respect to which it could be mani-fested (just as the fragile object would never actualise its fragility in the vacuum); and (b) the light actualising the transparent medium (and sense organ) of vision, or a strike69 actualising the resonant medium (and sense organ) of hearing, respective-ly. The fact that a strike, unlike the light, actualises the resonant medium gradual ly should not lead us to assume that this actualisation is the material change con-stitutive of hearing, for in the case of seeing the actualisation of medium occurs as instantaneous qualitative change and it is no part of actual seeing but only its prerequisite making the medium ready to mediate perception of colours. This com-parison suggests that it indeed might have well been Aristotle’s view that without the presence of a perceiver there is no perceptual change at all (neither “formal” nor “material”) going on in either of the two cases, even when the medium is already actualised (actually transparent or resonant). The situation is similar to the clod moving at high speed through empty space; this clod also does not actualise its fragility in any respect until it meets a hard object; its motion is a prerequisite, but no constitutive part for the manifestation of its higher-level quality.

67 Meteor. IV,9 386a13–14.68 POPA 2005, 108–111.69 Cf. DA II,7 420a19–26.

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Now, as we have already noted, the manifestation in the case of a fragile thing can be described in purely material terms. Should we therefore take our analogy a step further and say that perceptual change as manifestation of a high-er-level productive quality will, accordingly, also allow for a material descrip-tion? We should not, because this would actually undermine the comparison. When Aristotle accounts for the manifestation of fragility in terms of breaking (diairesis) into at least three pieces, he does not introduce this change (breaking) as the material condition of proving to be fragile (i.e. of manifestation), but as its very defi nition which is both formal and material, or rather which does not allow the distinction between form and matter. Proving to be thrauston means nothing more and nothing less than breaking into at least three pieces and there is no oth-er change mentioned by Aristotle which would allow to distinguish “matter” and “form” of this breaking. Both (the breaking and the manifestation) fall in one. The manifestation of fragility thus cannot be analysed as a hylomorphic change.

It is true that there are higher-level qualities whose manifestation does not fi t so well with Popa’s criterion of instantaneity. The elasticity (i.e. the capacity to be bent or straightened),70 for example, seems to be manifested in a gradual change from straight to bent position or the other way round, that is not instan-taneously. Be that as it may, it seems obvious at least that this (gradual) mani-festation can be no better analysed into its formal and material aspect. What we might fi nd at the most are fractions or parts of the very same change.71

To sum up, it appears that while the constitution of so called higher-level qualities72 is an incidentally hylomorphic process, their manifestation is not hy-lomorphic change in any sense.

Thus if we take the other higher-level qualities as a model for the causal-ity of perception (the sensibilia being actually counted by Aristotle as high-er-level productive qualities at 385a1–4), what is implied is rather the opposite of what Caston tried to show by this comparison. Although sensible (productive)

70 Meteor. IV,9 385b29–386a9.71 The manifestation of fl exibility would in this respect be similar to the case of fi re heating

water discussed above in the section I.72 It might be objected to my argument that in his “list” of passive qualities (Meteor. IV,9

385a12–18) Aristotle introduces also the capacities to be solidifi ed, melted and softened by heat, which in the accepted terminology would have to be treated as “lower-level” qualities, i.e. as ca-pacities for constitution of the higher-level qualities; their “actualization”, accordingly, could be analysed as incidentally hylomorphic change. It is to be noted, however, that Aristotle’s aim here is not so much to give a systematic categorization of qualities as to list the qualities which “most differentiate the homogenous natural bodies”. Thus I believe that Popa’s suggestion (cf. POPA 2005, 80–81) to use the distinction of fi rst and second potentiality for the sake of sorting out the qualities discussed in Meteor. IV remains rewarding. It allows us, among other things, to defi ne the set of constituted qualities whose manifestation cannot be treated as hylomorphic change.


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qualities, thus, appear to be dependent on material processes as to their consti-tution, when they are actualised, this actualisation should not imply any gradual change as its material base – just as the actualisation of (affective) higher level qualities does not imply any such change.

This consideration confi rms what has been suggested already in the sec-tion I: the actualisation of higher-level, acquired capacities seems to allow for hylomorphic analysis only in the case of living beings when they themselves “control” such an actualization. They and they only are able to actualise their capacity (their “intrinsic end”) by means of hypothetically necessary chang-es which might reasonably be called “matter” when the actualisation itself is treated as “form”.

If the argument of this section is valid, then the principle of restricted effi ca-cy of sensibilia should be extended to the following form: (a) without perceivers, the sensible qualities do nothing, and (b) not even the presence of a perceiver can make them act through material changes.

So, we may conclude, the possibility which Broadie did not consider, i.e. that the colour could make itself known through material processes, is no less “repugnant to the intellect” than the possibility that colour, being real, could not make itself known at all.73 This “repugnance” consists in the following: sensi-bilia, understood in this way, would be assimilated to agents of self-coordinated changes. But if the distinction outlined in the section I is well-grounded, then this assimilation would make sensibilia similar to living beings at the expense of their kinship with other higher-level qualities of the non-living nature.

I V. Not e on DA I I ,12 a nd odou r s

The non-literalist strategy for reading DA II,12 is consistent with what has been said so far. It is true that tangible objects and savours also affect the objects that are unable to perceive (424b12): fi re heats water and the laurel, for instance, gives taste to soup.74 What is the effective cause of these alterations? There seems to be no other way out than to say that it is the heat and the savour itself (b12–13). The same is the case for odours and sounds (b14–16) with the exception, per-haps, that only some tangible qualities affect non-perceiving objects universally (everything in the sublunary world can be heated or cooled), while there are special conditions for odours, sounds or savours.75

73 Cf. BURNYEAT 1995, 410: “We must not ask why, in virtue of what, colour is capable of setting transparent in motion. That is the nature of colour.”

74 Cf. Sens. 4, 441b17–19.75 To this cf. Sens. 4, 441a20–23.

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However, to understand the climax of the second book correctly it is important to notice that when referring to this kind of changes Aristotle omits the condition which he emphasised above in respect to perceptual change (b7–8): “ei osfranton osmē”, “as much as the odour is something capable to produce smelling”. Under this condition, we read, the osmē can affect only what is capable of smelling, and not for example a soup. However, there is obviously a way in which an odour can affect objects without any sense of smell, too. The decisive question, then, is whether this affection and the perceptual affection are somehow interdependent, or whether each stands on its own, the former as an ordinary, the latter as an ex-traordinary alteration (b16–17): “What, then, is to smell apart from being affected in (this) way?”76 In other words: is there something which allows us to distinguish smelling (through air) from becoming odorous (of air)? Aristotle’s answer suggests that the perceptual affection is indeed a specifi c and autonomous kind of affection: “to smell”, as we have read at b5–6 already, is “to be affected by an odour” – as much as it is capable of producing perception; to be affected in this way is “to be appeared to so and so”, i.e. to perceive. Air, when it does not serve as a medium (and an odour, for example, is acting on it), is affected in a very different way: it becomes perceptible. But it means that at the same time it loses its capacity to function as a medium, which presupposes just that it has no odour of its own. Air ceases to be the medium of smelling, when it itself becomes an odorous mixture.77

So, the conclusion of DA II,12 seems to be clear on at least two points: 1) it implies that when air becomes odorous it is, by defi nition, a different kind of affec-tion than in the case of smelling through air,78 and 2) Aristotle does not imply that the former is presupposed as “matter” of the latter. One can object, nevertheless, that, because the para at b17 allows both readings (“apart from” and “besides”), DA II,12 does not deny the dependence of one affection upon the other, either. But, taking into account Aristotle’s conception of perceptual media as necessary for distance senses to be actualised, it appears impossible that smelling would imply literal becoming odorous of air. If it did, then all the air between me and the sense-object (and the air in my nostrils as well) would have to become odorous;

76 Paschein ti in this sentence corresponds to pathōn ti in what precedes, meaning the way in which air becomes odorous. For the sense of para cf. JOHANSEN 1997, 279, n. 20, who provides evidence showing that para has quite an ordinary meaning of “apart from” and does not neces-sarily imply (as “besides” does) that both paschein and osmasthai are “two aspects of exercising smell”, cf. SORABJI 1995, 219–220 (and SORABJI 1974, 68). The commentary tradition seeing in DA II,12 a distinction between two different and independent effi cacies of sense objects, with only one concerning actual perception, goes back at least to Philoponus (In Aristotelis De anima, 443); cf. also BURNYEAT 1993, 24.

77 Cf. Sens. 5, 443a11–13.78 Cf. BROADIE 1993, 153: “What Aristotle says about the air which becomes smelly is simply

that it becomes perceptible in a certain way. That is all.”


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but if this were to happen, then the smelling could not occur any more, as there would be no air by which I could smell the object or the odorous air;79 thus, the af-fection supposed to make perception possible would make it, rather, impossible.80

While the strict literalist understanding of smelling based on DA II,12 can thus be ruled out, the interpretation in terms of analogical modifi cations proves to be attractive, especially when Aristotle’s discussion of smelling in DA II,9 and Sens. 5 is taken into consideration. Aristotle recognises, among other things, that some odours can actually harm or even kill men and also the animals which do not inhale.81 Here we have an obvious case of an odour affecting an animal through air, while this affection does not (only) make it perceive, but die. This appears to be clear evidence that odours affect animals and other objects not only perceptually and not only in making them odorous while mingling with them, but also in another, “ordinary” way. This capacity of odours is described by Aristotle in terms of certain “dryness”82 and is treated as very closely relat-ed to perception. Consequently it seems reasonable to see the function of this “dryness” in literal drying the medium, and thus accomplishing the “material” change through which odorous objects make animals perceive.83

Such an interpretation was defended recently in Johnstone’s detailed study of smelling. He claims that “the fl avoured dry thing I smell at a distance interact[s] with the moist intervening medium of air or water… by drying it to some ex-tent and presumably in some highly determinate way.”84 Hereby the perceptual quality is transmitted by means of an ordinary change through the medium up to the perceiver: “As a result of being dried, the medium of smell acquires the pow-er to act in the same way on the sense-organ. Thus fi nally, the organ of smell becomes dry in the way the odorous object already is.”85 This process, according

79 Cf. DA II,7 419a12–15 and 419a25–33; II,11 423b7–8 and 423b18–27. This paradox is for-mulated also by Theophrastus in his polemic against the Empedoclean theory of aporroai, cf. De Sens. 13 and 19.

80 Cf. DA II,9 421b17–18: the object of smell becomes imperceptible when put into direct contact with the organ of smelling, just as in the case of other distal senses.

81 DA II,9 421b23–26; cf. Sens. 5, 444b30–34. Cf. also Aristotle’s account of why one group of odours is healthy for men (Sens. 5, 444a9–27). Men only can enjoy odours of fl owers due to the size and excessive humidity of their brains (444a34–b2).

82 Already in DA II,9 422a6–7.83 The fact that man and other sanguineous animals have to inhale to smell something (i.e.

initiate a local change), is explicitly put aside by Aristotle as an incidental feature: perhaps, he says, the reason is just that these animals have to open a “lid”, cf. Sens. 5, 444b21–24. It is general ly agreed that smelling does not imply any local movement of air or of something through the air, cf. JOHNSTONE 2012, 169.

84 JOHNSTONE 2012, 169.85 JOHNSTONE 2012, 170.

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to Johnstone, represents “the material aspect of the perception of odour”, while the odorous object “acts on the perceiver” also “formally by activating his or her capacity to perceive odour”, so that we can characterise Aristotle’s account as “genuinely hylomorphic”.86 Once more the “double effi cacy” is ascribed to sensible objects, now with an apparently strong textual support.

It is not possible to discuss Aristotle’s conception of smelling in detail here.87 However, I would like to point out at least one thing that makes me doubt Johnstone’s hylomorphic reading. What he takes as the starting point, namely that the odorous object, as odorous, affects perceivers through “drying” the medium, is nowhere put by Aristotle exactly in these terms, and I think from good reasons. The causal model applied for the perception of odours ap-pears to be more complicated.

The assumption that “the medium of smell becomes dry, to some extent and presumably in some determinate way, when it is acted on by an odorous object”,88 is inferred by Johnstone from the last sentence of DA II,9: “Odour be-longs to/is of the dry (esti hē osmē tou xērou) as fl avor belongs to/is of the moist; and the organ of smell is potentially of this kind.”89 Even when it is granted that the second part of the sentence implies that the organ of smell has to be potentially dry, i.e. actually moist, it does not follow that smelling is realised through the medium being dried by the odorous object and drying the organ of smell in turn. If it were so, it would be strange that Aristotle does not specify “in what extent” and “in which determinate way” the medium is dried, for, put in these terms, it would imply that both air and water are becoming dry when functioning as the medium of smell: the question then would just be how we are to conceive of this “dried air” or “dried water” capable of drying organs.

I agree that Aristotle’s analysis implies some “ordinary” changes going on in the medium of smell and even inside perceiver’s body. Though these appear to be elusive as to their proper nature, and so does their exact relation to per-ceptual activity.

There are two remarkable things about the role played by the medium of smell. (1) When characterising the interaction between the medium and the odorous ob-ject, Aristotle ascribes a productive role either to both sides or to the medium alone. It is the medium which is capable to “wash” or “rinse” “the fl avoured dryness”.90

86 JOHNSTONE 2012, 172.87 For a different view of the topic see JOHANSEN 1996 and 1997, 226–251, and in a part also

BURNYEAT 2001.88 JOHNSTONE 2012, 162.89 DA II,9 422a6–7.90 Sens. 5, 443a1–2.


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The medium is said to “be affected in a way” by this “fl avoured dryness”, but also to be able to “derive something” (apolauein) from it.91 (2) The sensible quality itself, the odour, is not something which simply inheres in the odorous object, as in the case of colours. The odours are not so much directly acting on and through the medium as being fi rst realised in it. The odour is defi ned as “the nature of the fl avoured dryness [being] in something moist”.92 And later on, “the odorous” is even described in terms of a process as the “solving and washing of the dryness in the moist and the fl uid”.93

What I would like to suggest is that the “ordinary” interaction between odor-ous thing and medium is perhaps not to be understood as the “material” aspect of odour’s manifestation, but rather as the process of odour’s constitution. Odours are possessed by odorous objects only in a potential form, similar in a way to co-lours that remain in potentiality when there is no light. There is, however, a big difference between the two cases: in presence of light colour becomes capable of producing perception in perceivers, while still inhering in the coloured object; odour, by contrast, is realised, and becomes capable of affecting perceivers per-ceptually, only when emerging in the medium.

This should not come as a surprise when Aristotle’s conception of fl avour is taken for granted: “and fl avour is just this: the affection emerging (gignom-enon) in the moist under the infl uence of this dry, the affection, I say, which is capable of altering (alloiōtikon) the sense of taste from potentiality into ac-tuality.”94 Both, fl avour and odour, are conceived as something which emerg-es (gignetai) in water and air or water, respectively, and which does not in-here in fl avoured and odorous objects as colours inhere in coloured objects.95 The difference is that while fl avour demands an actual dissolution of the dry in the wet (which can pointedly be characterised in terms of a mixture),96 odour is defi ned only in terms of a process, as a kind of “dissolving” and “washing”, while the odorous object itself remains unaffected by the moist medium and the nature of the dryness is, somehow, still preserved in the moist (the odour is

91 Sens. 5, 443b3–5.92 Sens. 5, 443a8.93 Sens. 5, 445a13–16.94 Sens. 4, 441b22–24.95 Cf. JOHANSEN 1996, 12, distinguishing “the changes that generate fl avour or odour” (9)

as “washing” and “liquefaction”. We could formulate the distinction more generally between “emerging” and “inhering” sensible qualities which would not coincide with the distinction made explicitly by Aristotle between distance and contact senses. Sounds would, then, supposedly range together with odours and fl avours among the “emerging” sensibles, while colours and most of the haptic qualities would be categorised as “inhering”.

96 DA II,10 422a13–14. Cf. JOHANSEN 1996, 15–16 and 1997, 237–242; JOHNSTONE 2012, 146.

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defi ned just by the presence of the dryness in the moist). While fl avour emerg-es in the moist as in its proper matter, odour is something that only “passes through” it as through its medium, while at the same time inhering nowhere but in this very passing: odour, unlike colour, and in a higher degree than fl a-vour, is by its proper nature something transient.

This difference between fl avour and odour, it seems, is also the right clue for understanding the last sentence of DA II,9: fl avour belongs to the moist, for “the fl avoured dryness” has been dissolved in it (it has the moist as its proper matter), while odour belongs to the dry, for “the nature of the dryness” is still preserved in what may be called the medium of smell when “the dryness” is con-tinuously “being washed” by the moist. It is only in its interaction with the moist that “the fl avoured dryness” is realised either as fl avour or as odour, in other words: the testable (or smellable) in so far as testable (or smellable) is (being) constituted. It is (being) constituted as something capable to manifest itself in affecting perceivers and altering them into activity. Thus far fl avour and odour “are almost the same affection”, but they are (realised) in different things (ouk en tois autois):97 fl avour as an affection belonging to the moist in which the fl a-voured dryness has been dissolved; odour as something emerging in the process of “washing” and “dissolving” fl avoured dryness by the moist.

The account of emerging sensibles seems to be relatively unproblematic in the case of fl avour: it acts on a perceiver by direct contact when it is generated on tongue.98 But what about odours which are now said both to emerge in the moist and to be mediated through it, while we have already seen that air (or water) cannot mediate odours by becoming odorous itself?

I cannot agree with Johansen’s interpretation of the “transodorance” as directly analogical with transparence, so that odour “is ‘in’ air or water in the way that colour is in the transparent medium”.99 It appears that while col-our is only mediated by the transparent (as much as fl avour is only generated in the moist), odour is both generated in and mediated by moist air or water. Here the stress should be laid on the intermediate position of smelling be-tween contact and distance senses.100 On the one hand, smelling appears to be a distance sense because, unlike touch and taste, it demands a medium which does not itself share in the mediated quality. On the other hand, it differs from hearing and seeing by the fact that it is not the odorous object alone which

97 Sens. 4, 440b30–31.98 Discussion of whether the manifestation of contact sensibles does or does not necessarily

imply an ordinary change as its material base has to be left aside here.99 JOHANSEN 1996, 14.100 Sens. 5, 445a5–9.


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makes perceivers smell: while a rose is red on its own and a drum (hit by stick) emits a sound itself (the medium does nothing more than mediate this quali-ty), the moist, in Aristotle’s account, has an essential role in producing odour. This role is stressed just at the point where Aristotle defi nes the intermediate position of smell: the odorous is the “solving” (baphē) or “washing” (plusis) of the dryness in the moist. So, Aristotle does not say that the odorous object itself affects perceivers through drying the moist medium. The interaction be-tween the odorous object and the moist is giving rise to the odour capable of affecting perceivers. We might presume that this interaction, which is to be understood as a very special but still “ordinary” change, occurs throughout the moist between the object and the perceiver, and even inside perceiver’s own body (in nostrils and perhaps even in the brain). The occurrence of this change is obviously not dependent on the presence of the perceiver, but in its absence the emerging quality remains unrealised (or more precisely: it is realised as the fi rst, but not as the second actuality): there is, in fact, no perceptual change in proper sense, but only a change in which odour’s capacity to affect perceiv-ers emerges, without becoming, however, any standing quality of the moist (as is the case of taste). On how this capacity is realised (how the emerging odour is manifested) Aristotle does not say a word in Sens. 5.

If this interpretation is correct, then Aristotle’s account of the material pro-cesses connected with smelling (and tasting) does not imply hylomorphic anal-ysis of smelling (or tasting) itself. These processes can be understood as related only to the constitution of respective sensible qualities and not to the way in which the constituted qualities (however transient they might appear) affect per-ceivers, i.e. the way in which they “alter the sense from potentiality into actual-ity”, for this question is here explicitly put aside by Aristotle.

Both processes – the dissolution of the fl avoured dryness in the moist con-stituting actual fl avour as a standing quality of the moist, and the “rinsing” or “washing” of the fl avoured dryness by the moist in which actual odour constant-ly “emerges” – can occur, as it appears, automatically, without a presence of any perceiver. This also can be a criterion for not taking them as “material” base of tasting and smelling: they have nothing to do with the manifestation of sensible qualities, they constitute them.

So, the distinction between constitution and manifestation of higher-level qualities proves to be useful for understanding both the capability of an odorous object to make other objects odorous and the peculiar kind of change occuring in the “medium” of smelling. Neither of these changes shows any commitment on Aristotle’s side to the hylomorphic analysis of perception.

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Conclu s ion

I have argued that the debate on the character of perceptual changes can profi t from a general consideration of the extent in which the hylomorphic analysis can be applied not only to beings but also to changes. To draw the division line correctly, it is necessary to understand how the teleological explanation, according to Aristotle, applies to the living and to the non-living nature. It appears that in the latter the only processes permitting such analysis are the in-cidentally hylomorphic changes by which new qualities are constituted. These qualities can be understood as (second) potentialities to act or to be acted on in particular way. The realisation of these potentialities (manifestation of the con-stituted qualities) seems to defi ne the gulf between the living and non-living things: only what lives can realise its potentiality (to grow, maintain its organs, move itself etc.) through changes which can be understood as the “material” base of this realisation. In other words: on the level of “manifestation” there seem to be no hylomorphic changes but those “controlled” by living beings. This consideration, if correct, should make us pause before explaining percep-tion in terms of hylomorphic change.

When we turn with this in mind to DA II,5, it proves implausible to interpret the concept of “extraordinary change” as just the “formal” aspect of percep-tion, allowing for a complementary account of “material” processes condition-ing the passing from potentiality to actuality. What Aristotle is proposing here (whether it might or might not lead to a still “credible” philosophical conception) seems, in fact, more “radically new”. The way in which perceptual capacities are realised in actual seeing, hearing, and so on, cannot be subordinated to the way in which a builder realises his or her craft when building house through lying one brick upon another. More attention has to be paid to the analogy with burn-ing which suggests that in the case of perception we have to do with a natural phenomenon very unlike any self-coordinated activity. One point of this analogy might just be that there is no way how to draw a line between the actualisation of perception (of proper sensibles) and the alteration that makes it possible, be-tween its “form” and its “matter”. Both characteristics – perception being an alteration, a passive change caused by an external object, and perception being essential activity of animals – seem to be bound more intimately one to another, defi ning the peculiar character of perception as a receptive activity.

In last two sections, I defended the impossibility of analysing perception into form and matter against several objections that were formulated by pro-ponents of literalist or analogical reading. Ranging the sensibilia among high-er-level qualities treated in GC II,2 and Meteor. IV,8–9 does not suggest that we should understand their manifestation in terms of affecting perceivers through causing other material changes. A consideration of such qualities as fragility


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or fl exibility leads to rather different fi ndings: the manifestation of these quali-ties, even though they are constituted in incidentally hylomorphic processes, has no other change as its material base. Aristotle’s “chemistry” does not offer any model for considering manifestation of sensibilia in hylomorphic terms.

It has to be acknowledged that Aristotle recognises “ordinary” changes which are in some way connected to perception: when I am feeling coldness of an ice cube in my hand, the hand, at the same moment, is literally becoming cold; to taste sugar I have to melt it on my tongue; odours can have benefi cial effects on cold and moist human brains, while some of them harm animals; fl avoured and odorous objects can hand their qualities over to other objects; a drum is not sounding before hit by stick; Aristotle seems to recognise even some material affection of eye’s moisture connected presumably somehow with seeing; in his treatment of dreams and memory he describes various obviously material pro-cesses going on in blood. The fact that there are such changes, however, does not imply yet that they “constitute” perception (or phantasia) as its “matter”. It appears, in fact, that these changes cannot be treated together and theorised under any single principle (such as hylomorphism of perceptual change). Their causes and roles are actually very diverse, so that each of them demands an analysis of its own. A special attention among these deserve, I think, the pro-cesses of “washing” or “rinsing” related to odours. They are particularly elusive, because smell is treated as the “intermediate” sense and the role of the moist ca-pable of this “washing” is peculiar: it appears to be a medium vis-à-vis the con-tact senses, but when compared with hearing and seeing the mediation does not seem to be its only function. In contrast with the existing non-literalist account I think that we should acknowledge this “washing” or “rinsing” as an “ordinary” (however strange) kind of change, which is (in part) realised also in absence of perceivers. But this should not lead us to understand it as the material base of perception, for the odours capable of actually affecting perceivers only emerge through this change.

Thus the argument put forth in this paper as a whole does not pretend to prove that the non-literalist interpretation as developed so far is necessarily the right reading. Its aim was to present an objection to the understanding of perception as a hylomorphic change – an assumption shared by literalist and some analogical readings.

If there are no material changes, according to Aristotle, constitutive for per-ception, and it can still be defi ned as a kind of alteration, then we should recog-nise in DA II,5 two intimately interrelated strategies: not only the concept of al-teration is modifi ed to account for the extraordinary case of perceptual activity; it is also the concept of soul’s activity which demands a modifi cation to account for the peculiar, receptive, nature of perception.

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Su m m a r y

This paper is meant as a contribution to recent scholarly debate on the liter-al, non-literal and analogical reading of Aristotle’s assertion in DA II,12 that perception consists of “receiving forms without matter”. It focuses on Myles Burnyeat’s interpretation of DA II,5 and of the notion alloiōsis tis. I discuss sev-eral attempts to disprove the non-literalist argument that in this chapter Aristotle defi nes a new concept of (“extraordinary”) alteration, which is not bound to any “ordinary” alteration in the way in which form is bound to matter. In gener-al terms I formulate an objection to the literalist presumption (shared by some of those who suggest an “analogical” reading) that perception is a hylomorphic change. There are, apparently, in Aristotle’s sublunary world of natural compos-ites changes that cannot be analysed into form and matter. I give some reasons for believing that perception ranks among these changes. If this reconstruction is true to Aristotle’s position, then in DA II,5 he offers his most refi ned charac-terization of the peculiar place that perception as a receptive activity occupies in the natural world.

Keywords: perception; hylomorphism; alteration; receptivity

ROBERT ROREITNER, Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague, Nám. J. Palacha 2, 116 38 Prague, Czech Republic,[email protected].

CONTENTS

HISTORY AND HISTORIOGRAPHY

EPHRAIM DAVID: An Oligarchic Democracy: Manipulation of Democratic Ideals by Athenian Oligarchs in 411 BC 11

PAVEL NÝVLT: Sparta and Persia between the Second and the Third Treaty in 412/411 BCE: A Chronology 39

MATĚJ NOVOTNÝ: Andocides on ἀτιμία and the Term πρόσταξις 61

STANISLAV DOLEŽAL: Rethinking a Massacre: What Really Happened in Thessalonica and Milan in 390? 89

LITERATURE AND PHILOLOGHY

JAN M. KOZLOWSKI: Κ-Σ-Γ-Ν-Τ-Ν: Callimachus’ Epigram 1,16 Pfeiffer 111

WALTER LAPINI: Cicerone, Tusculane, V,94 e il fr. 62 Us. di Epicuro 114

PAOLA GAGLIARDI: Virgilio e l’Arcadia nell’ ecl. 10 130

PHILOSOPHY

VOJTĚCH HLADKÝ: Empedocles’ Sphairos and its Interpretations in Antiqui-ty, I: Aristotle and the Neoplatonists 149

MARIA MARCINKOWSKA-ROSÓŁ: Aristotle’s Rejection of an Infi nite Body: An Interpretation of Physics, III,5, 205a25–28 165

ROBERT ROREITNER: Perception and Hylomorphism: Receptive Activity of Senses in Aristotle’s De Anima, II,5 176

KAREL THEIN: Aristotle on Why Study Lower Animals (De Partibus Ani ma-lium, I,5, 644b22–645a36) 208

ARCHAEOLOGYKONSTANTINOS FILIS: Karabournaki: The Transport Amphorae from a Semi-Subterranean Structure in Trench 27/89d 233

SANJA PILIPOVIC: Sette divinità planetarie: esempio di corazza da parata da Castra Tricornia (Mesia Superiore) 266

JAN BOUZEK: Lieux de Mémoire in History and Archaeology: A Field of Pos-sible Collaboration? 285

JAN BOUZEK – VICTORIA CHYSTYAKOVÁ – PETRA TUŠLOVÁ – BAR-BORA WEISSOVÁ: New Studies in Black Sea and Balkan Archae ology 298

DISCUSSION

ANTHONY DUPONT: Was There an Africitas theologica? A Preliminary In-quiry into the Regional Specifi city of the North African and Augustinian Theo-logy of Original Sin and Grace (ca. 200–450 CE) 317

REVIEWS

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Mirko Canevaro, The Documents in the Attic Orators: Laws and Decrees in the Public Speeches of the Demosthenic Corpus (with a chapter by E. M. Har-ris). Oxford 2013 (Matěj Novotný) 341

Bernd Steinbock, Social Memory in Athenian Public Discourse. Ann Arbor 2013 (Pavel Nývlt) 345

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BOOKS RECEIVED 365

Perception and hylomorphism. Receptive activity of senses in Aristotle´s De Anima II,5

Documents

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