ABSTRACT

In De Anima, Aristotle deals with the question of how the “psyche,” conceptualized by him as a nonmaterial entity with specific powers or a kind of life energy with certain potentialities, uses the material body of human beings and other animals to realize these potentialities or powers through and in their bodies. The psyche is the source of (1) our potentiality to feed ourselves, (2) our potentiality to perceive the world through our (five) senses (aisthetikon), (3) the powers to make representations of (phantastikon), (4) the power to think over (nous), and (5) the power to develop desires in (orektikon) this world-all on the basis of our sensations. Of all the senses, Aristotle considers touch to be the most fundamental because it forms the condition of our survival through reproduction (sex) and defense (violence). Though he did not see the other senses as variations of touch, as do some scholars today (see Chidester 2005; Verrips 2006), he understood our perception of the world through our five senses as an undivided whole. This is what he meant by aisthesis (directly related to aisthetikon): our corporeal capability on the basis of a power given in our psyche to perceive objects in the world via our five different sensorial modes, thus in a kind of analytical way, and at the same time as a specific constellation of sensations as a whole (e.g., an apple with a texture, a taste, a smell, a sound, and a visible shape and color). An apple makes an im-pression or has an im-pact (on us) as a whole and in different sensorial ways at exactly the same time.