Volume 7, Issue 1, 2010
Alexander Baumgarten
Pages 9-27
„Πλὴν τῆς γῆς". Le sens du toucher et l'unité thématique de traité De l'âme d'Aristote
In this paper I shall debate the thesis according to which in the Aristotelian treatise On Soul the sense of touch works as a kind of knot for the knowledge faculties and, implicitly, as a unity for the entire treatise: it has a primitive function in the feeding process, it also represents a starting point for both the faculty of motion and knowledge, then relates itself symmetrical to the sense of vision through the typology of the intermediaries and to the intellect through the criterion of nonbeing, and finally reveals to the receiver a kind of truth that has no more the false as an alternative. On the other hand, the intellect recovers in its own faculty the sense of touch by recreating its functions in the connection between intellect and the indivisible intelligibles. Given these relations, the sense of touch represents the main connection of the treatise's large themes from the question of motion to that of knowledge and it is also literally (certain aristotelian remarks
over the theme of earth being taken into consideration here) related to the living body.