Volume 97, 2023
The Human Person
Patrick Corry
Pages 111-123
https://doi.org/10.5840/acpaproc2025623174
Aristotle¡¯s Perceptual Realism in De anima III.1¨C2
This paper argues that Aristotle in De anima is a direct realist about sense perception: the senses immediately perceive not only accidental qualities but independent beings. This thesis is supported primarily through an analysis of Aristotle¡¯s condensed argument in DA III.1 that there can be no separate sense for common sensibles (such as number, shape, or motion). Against a more common reading of this passage, I argue that Aristotle intends to demonstrate that positing a separate sense for common sensibles entails a contradiction. This reconstruction of Aristotle¡¯s argument in III.1 requires that Aristotle holds that the unity of simultaneous perception is grounded in the unity of objects perceived. I then show that this position helps us to understand the logical progression from DA III.1 to III.2, and to find in III.2 a theory of perception according to which perceptual activity is at once perception itself and the activity of the thing perceived. This principle grounds Aristotle¡¯s position that the senses perceive things themselves directly.