Abstract
Scholarship on Aristotle’s theory of visual perception has traditionally held that Aristotle had a single, static, conception of light and that he believed that illumination occurred prior to and independent of the actions of colours. I contend that this view precludes the medium from becoming actually transparent, thus making vision impossible. I here offer an alternative to the traditional interpretation, using contemporary conceptual tools to make good philosophical sense of Aristotle’s position. I call my view the ‘ecological’ interpretation. It postulates two conceptions of light: non-visible mobile propagated light and visible static illumination produced by the interaction of propagated light with the environment’s coloured textured surfaces. I argue that these contemporary conceptual tools can find a foothold in and consistently enrich Aristotle’s extant position and that, with their aid, we can restore coherence to his theories of light and vision.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Anna Marmodoro for providing invaluable feedback on earlier drafts of this paper and to an audience at the Cambridge Faculty of Classics for their thought-provoking questions and suggestions. I would also like to thank Sean Kelsey, who first discussed Aristotle’s account of light with me on a late summer afternoon several years ago, as well as the anonymous reviewer of this journal for their insightful challenges and comments.
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