DE ANIMA II 5

M.F. BURNYEAT

ABSTRACT
This is a close scrutiny of De Anima II 5, led by two questions. First, what can
be learned from so long and intricate a discussion about the neglected problem
of how to read an Aristotelian chapter? Second, what can the chapter, properly
read, teach us about some widely debated issues in Aristotles theory of percep-
tion? I argue that it refutes two claims defended by Martha Nussbaum, Hilary
Putnam, and Richard Sorabji: (i) that when Aristotle speaks of the perceiver
becoming like the object perceived, the assimilation he has in mind is ordinary
alteration of the type exempli ed when re heats the surrounding air, (ii) that
this alteration stands to perceptual awareness as matter to form. Claim (i) is
wrong because the assimilation that perceiving is is not ordinary alteration. Claim
(ii) is wrong because the special type of alteration that perceiving is is not its
underlying material realisation. Indeed, there is no mention in the text of any
underlying material realisation for perceiving.
The positive aim of II 5 is to introduce the distinction between rst and sec-
ond potentiality, each with their own type of actuality. In both cases the actual-
ity is an alteration different from ordinary alteration. Perception exempli es one
of these new types of alteration, another is found in the acquisition of knowledge
and in an embryos rst acquisition of the power of perception. The introduction
of suitably re ned meanings of alteration allows Aristotle to explain perception
and learning within the framework of his physics, which by de nition is the study
of things that change. He adapts his standard notion of alteration, familiar from
Physics III 1-3 and De Generatione et Corruptione I, to the task of accounting
for the cognitive accuracy of (proper object) perception and second potentiality
knowledge: both are achievements of a natural, inborn receptivity to objective
truth.
Throughout the paper I pay special attention to issues of text and translation,
and to Aristotles cross-referencing, and I emphasise what the chapter does not
say as well as what it does. In particular, the last section argues that the textual
absence of any underlying material realisation for perceiving supports a view I
have defended elsewhere, that Aristotelian perception involves no material processes,
only standing material conditions. This absence is as telling as others noted ear-
lier. Our reading must respect the spirit of the text as Aristotle wrote it.

Introduction
The negative message of De Anima II 5 is easy to state. This is the chapter
in which Aristotle informs us of his view that, although perceiving is tradi-
tionally thought to be a case of being affected by something, an alteration

Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2002 Phronesis XLVII/1

 DE ANIMA II 5 29

caused by the object perceived, it is only in a re ned sense of being

affected or altered that this is true. In the ordinary sense of these terms
they signify the loss of a quality and its replacement by another (oppo-
site or intermediate) quality from the same range (417a 31-2; 417b 2-3;
15; Ph. V 2, 226b 1-8; GC 1 7, 324a 5-14). That is not what happens in
perception, which is a different way of being affected and altered. Aristotle
concludes by saying that, for the discussion of perception now beginning,
we must go on using the language of being affected and altered, but under-
stand it in the light of the distinctions he has put before us in the main
body of the chapter (418a 1-3).
In other words, De Anima II 5 is the chapter in which Aristotle
expressly denies that perceiving is the sort of alteration or change of qual-
ity which a cold thing undergoes when it is warmed or a green thing when
it is coloured red.
The negative message of II 5 is of some signi cance for current con-
troversies about Aristotles theory of perception. Richard Sorabji has
defended, 1 and continues to defend,2 an interpretation whereby the alter-
ation Aristotle has in view, when he speaks of perceiving as alteration, is
an ordinary qualitative alteration that would be observable by scientists
who, unlike Aristotle, had instruments giving access to the inside of the
relevant organ. 3 Better equipped than Aristotle himself, these scientists
could observe one quality replacing another. They could measure the
change of temperature involved in feeling warmth; they could see or lm
the change of colour involved in seeing red; they could hear or record the
noises sounding in a listeners ear. On Sorabjis account, what goes on
inside the organ is an alteration a replacement of one sensible quality
by another of the same kind as the alterations that occur outside when
a cold thing is warmed or a green thing coloured red. My objection 4 is
that this is the sort of alteration that in II 5 Aristotle contrasts with the
sort that perceiving is, where the altered state is not lost (like the cold and
the green in the ordinary examples) but preserved (417b 3-4).
So much for the negative message of II 5. The positive alternative is
harder to grasp. If perceiving is not an ordinary alteration of the type

Accepted August 2001

1
In his Body and Soul of 1974; cf. Ross Aristotle pp. 136-7.
2
In his Intentionality of 1992; cf. also From Aristotle to Brentano (1991).
3
Sorabji Body and Soul pp. 49-50 with n. 22 and p. 64; Intentionality pp.
209-10.
4
Draft (originally composed and circulated in 1983) p. 19. But I went too far
when I denied that perceiving is alteration in any sense at all. Read on.
30 M.F. BURNYEAT

familiar from other Aristotelian writings such as the Physics and De

Generatione et Corruptione , what sort of alteration can it be?
One possibility is suggested by certain details in Aristotles account of
the sense organs. Let us be clear that when Sorabjis scientists observe
red replacing green within a perceivers eye, that is not the replacement
to concentrate on. Distinguish change of perception from the change which
is perception. When the eye sees rst green, then red, on Aristotles the-
ory its seeing green is one alteration, its seeing red another, and in each
case Aristotle will say that the alteration is the taking on of a colour ( rst
green, then red) by something transparent. But now, transparency is not
a quality on the same range as green and red. It is a neutral state, which
enables the eye to be receptive to all the differences in the colour range.
So perhaps the alteration which is seeing can be the literal coloration
Sorabji claims it to be and yet differ from ordinary alteration as de ned
in the Physics and De Generatione et Corruptione. It differs because what
is lost in the alteration is not an opposite or intermediate quality from the
same range as the colour replacing it.5
But this cannot be the positive message of II 5 either. Even if it were
true that perceiving is an alteration that differs from ordinary alteration
only in that it starts from a neutral, rather than from a contrary state, II
5 says nothing about the neutrality of the sense organs. Neutrality is rst
mentioned in II 8 (hearing depends on still air walled up inside the ear
420a 9-11), and becomes a major theme in II 10 (esp. 424a 7-10).6 I have
argued elsewhere that the neutrality of the sense organs is a vital clue for
understanding what happens when Aristotle sees red and hears middle C.7
But it is not relevant to II 5, which is a general introduction to the study

5
Sorabji himself, I should emphasis, does not in the writings cited above dwell on
the difference between altering from green to red and altering from transparent to red
(cf. Intentionality p. 212). I owe thanks to David Sedley for insisting that I do so.
But see now Sorabji Aristotle on Sensory Processes, preceded by Broackes.
6
This claim presupposes rejection of Hutchinsons proposal that III 12-13 belong
between II 4 and II 5, for the neutrality of the organ of touch is mentioned at III 13,
435a 21-4. But I do reject the proposal anyway, for two reasons. First, because
Hutchinsons transposition would have the result that the crucial idea of receiving form
without matter would make its initial appearance without context or explanation at III
12, 434a 29-30, not as II 12s generalisation from the preceding study of individual
senses. Second, because III 12-13 serve well enough where they are to round off the
treatise with a teleologically grounded sketch of relationships and dependencies
between faculties that have so far been analyzed on their own.
7
Burnyeat Remarks.
 DE ANIMA II 5 31

of animal perception. 8 In Aristotles order of presentation, re ning the notion

of alteration comes before his detailed account of the ve senses and their
organs. We should respect that order, not grab pieces of evidence indis-
criminately from all over the treatise. Otherwise we destroy the integrity
of one of Aristotles most carefully organized works. We may hope that
II 5 will eventually help us understand the role of neutrality. But rst we
must get clear about the positive meaning of alteration in the Aristotelian
theory of perception; in particular, we need to understand what Aristotle
means by saying that in perception the altered state is not lost, as hap-
pens in ordinary alteration, but preserved. And the best way to do that, I
propose, is by a close scrutiny of the actual process of re nement under-
taken in De Anima II 5.
It is a long chapter. By following it from beginning to end, we can see
the re ned notion of alteration emerging from the careful elaboration of
distinctions that went before. As often in philosophy, the meaning of the
conclusion is determined by the arguments, the message by the medium.
But I also have an independent interest in the medium. There is much
discussion nowadays about the problems of reading a Platonic dialogue,
but none about the problem: How should one read a chapter of an
Aristotelian treatise? Many of the doctrines, claims and distinctions found
in De Anima II 5 can just as easily be found elsewhere in the corpus.
Some of them the distinction between potentiality and actuality is a
prime example are so familiar that scholars seldom stop long enough
with the chapter to inquire, What are they doing here? How, in detail, do
they contribute to the nal result? To my knowledge, II 5 has never
received the kind of close scrutiny I offer here. I offer it not only in the
hope of settling some controversial questions about Aristotles theory of
perception, but also with the aim of drawing my readers into wider issues
about how an Aristotelian discussion works on the page.
In particular, I am interested in the function of the cross-references
to other parts of the chapter, to other parts of the treatise, and to other
treatises like the Physics and De Generatione et Corruptione . These cross-
references are not to be dismissed as due to a later editor. That may be
a plausible account for some of the cross-references in the corpus, but not
for those in II 5. Here they are woven too closely into the texture of the
discussion to be the work of anyone but Aristotle himself. Even if you

8
Cf. n. 14 below.
32 M.F. BURNYEAT

think the cross-references in the corpus do not in general contain the clues
scholars once hoped to nd for the chronological ordering of the treatises,
some of them may still offer guidance as to how a particular stretch of
writing should be read. If, as I shall argue, this is indeed the case for the
cross-references in De Anima II 5, the same may be true elsewhere.9
Finally, the text. Compared with other Aristotelian works, the De Anima
has a higher than average number of textual problems, and not only in
the third Book. It is all too easy to get used to Rosss OCT (or whatever
edition you normally work with) and forget how many philological-cum-
philosophical decisions are presupposed by the neatly printed page. Martha
Nussbaum writes,
The philosopher/scholar should be especially attentive to the critical apparatus
when working on the De Anima, and should think with more than usual care
about the alternatives that have been proposed, using, if possible, more than one
edition.10

I agree; there is much to ponder in the apparatus to II 5.11 The same holds,
I would add, for the nuances of alternative translations. Accordingly, my
footnotes will regularly call attention to differences of interpretation that
may result from one choice or another in matters of text and translation.
In addition, the two Appendices attempt to undo the effects of an emen-
dation by Torstrik which, even when it is not printed, has so skewed the
translation, and hence the interpretation, of the key lines 417a 30-417b 7
that a central Aristotelian doctrine is widely misunderstood.

Setting out the endoxa

I shall approach the chapter as a model example of Aristotelian dialectic
working to re ne the reputable opinions (endoxa) in this case the opin-
ions that surround the idea that perception is some sort of alteration. To
grasp the positive message of II 5 we need rst to ask what preliminary

9
In Burnyeat Map, chap. 5, I argue that the network of cross-references which link
the many treatises of the corpus to each other should be read non-chronologically, as
indications of the order of argument and exposition and hence of the appropriate order
of reading. Burnyeat Foundations is a particular case study of how this approach
applies to the physical works.
10
Nussbaum and Rorty, Introduction p. 2.
11
The most convenient account of the complicated manuscript tradition of the De
Anima is Jannone xxiv-xlv; Ross is no longer adequate.
 DE ANIMA II 5 33

understanding of perception and of alteration we should bring to our

reading of the chapter, and then watch carefully to see how, by the end,
that preliminary understanding is transformed. The transformation is dra-
matic. Its implications reach far beyond the controversy I began from.
We are to speak generally about all perception (416b 32-3). Book I of
the De Anima has reviewed a number of previous philosophers accounts
of perception. Aristotles highly schematised roll-call of reputable opin-
ions on the nature of soul sets out from the two great distinguishing marks
by which, he claims, earlier thinkers separated animate (ensouled) things
from inanimate ones: perception and movement (I 2, 403b 20-28). Perception,
in this discussion, is the basic cognitive capacity of soul. 12 Those who
looked to perception to explain the nature of soul were saying, in effect,
that to be animate is to have the means of getting information about the
world a view Aristotle will endorse in his own terms when he makes
the power of perception de nitive of what an animal is (II 2, 413b 1-4;
cf. GA I 23, 731a 24-b 5).
Some of these philosophers distinguish perception from other, higher
types of cognition; most according to Aristotle do not. 13 But it is common
ground between Aristotle and everyone else that the lowest level of cog-
nitive interaction with the environment is the level at which the senses
operate. In what manner the senses operate, what explains their operation,
how much information about the world they can deliver and in what form
it comes all of that is moot, to be discussed and determined between
now and the end of III 2.14 It is the rst two of these questions that II 5
will address.
As in Book I, so here we start from the reputable opinions on the
subject:

12
The conjunction of knowing and perceiving at 404b 9 (t ginskein ka t asy-
nesyai tn ntvn) is echoed by the cognitive vocabulary which predominates in the
sequel: 404b 17; 28; 405a 23; 28; 405b 8; 13-16; 21. The critical assessment in I 5
starts with the same conjunction at 409b 24-5 (n asyneta te tn ntvn ka kas-
ton gnvrz) and continues with a similar predominance of cognitive vocabulary: 409b
26; 30-31; 410a 8; 18; 24-6; 29; 410b 2-4; 9-10; 16; 411a 4-6; 24.
13
The Platonists do (I 2, 404b 25-30); the older philosophers do not (I 2, 404a 27-
b 6, discussed below; III 3, 427a 21-2; cf. Met. IV 5, 1009b 12-13).
14
The last sentence of III 2, So much, then, by way of discussion of the principle
by which we say that an animal is capable of perception (427a 14-16), closes the dis-
cussion begun at the beginning of II 5 and thereby credits all the intervening mater-
ial (including III 2s account of perceptual self-awareness) to the power of perception.
34 M.F. BURNYEAT

[1][a] Perception consists in15 being changed16 and affected, as has been said; for
it is held [b] to be some sort of alteration. In addition, some say [2] that like is
affected by like17 (416b 33-5).

That these claims are not yet endorsed in Aristotles own voice is con-
rmed by the back-reference as has been said, which reports Aristotles
report in I 5 of what had been supposed by reputable thinkers in the
tradition:
They suppose (titheasin) that perceiving is some sort of being affected ( paschein
ti) and changed (410a 25-6).

[1][b] has also been said before, but in a very different context (II 4, 415b
24) where it is clear that the word alteration (alloisis) carries a techni-
cal Aristotelian sense change of quality, presupposing his theory of cat-
egories, which no previous thinker could have intended. 18 Aristotles
doctrine that, besides generation and destruction, there are just three cat-
egorially distinct types of change locomotion (change of place), alter-
ation (change of quality) and growth/diminution (change of quantity)
was introduced without argument early in the treatise at I 3, 406a 12-13.

15
Translations of sumbanei n vary between consists in (Hicks, Hett, Ross in his
summary, Hamlyn, Barbotin) and expressions like depends on, results from
(Wallace, Rodier, Smith, Tricot). The causal implications of the latter are certainly
premature so early in the chapter. Consists in can be misleading in a different way,
as we shall see (p. 77 below), but it is vague enough to mean no more than that per-
ception belongs within the wider class of passive changes. I argue later for this under-
standing of [1][a] as a statement of classi cation.
16
The usual translation moved (Hicks, Smith, Hett, Hamlyn) is misleading for
several reasons, the most immediate being that [1][b] will subsume alteration under
kinesya te ka psxein. kinesyai must therefore correspond to knhsiw in the generic
usage exempli ed at I 3, 406a 12-13, not to knhsiw meaning spatial movement.
17
How to translate ka in the last sentence? Usually, it is taken as also: Some
add (Hicks, Ross), Some say too (Hamlyn; cf. Barbotin). But this tends to suggest
that the thinkers who propounded [2] did so in conjunction with [1][a] or [b]. I hope
to leave readers feeling that that is unlikely and irrelevant; for the dialectic of the
chapter, Aristotle needs only to have these opinions in play, not to have any one
thinker subscribe to the lot. Smith and Hett translate, Some say that like is affected
only by like, with ka intensifying the emphasis on likeness; this is what [2] amounts
to, as we shall see. Alternatively, my In addition is designed to keep ka as also
but give it wider scope: Another opinion in the eld is [2].
18
Some scholars (Rodier, Hamlyn) propose this passage as the target of the back-
reference as has been said attached to [1][a]. I hope to show that the shift from [1][a]
to [1][b] is not as innocent as they presume. But at least they stay within the treatise,
unlike Hutchinson p. 376, who targets Ph. VII 2, 244b 10-245a 2.
 DE ANIMA II 5 35

The conclusion to draw is that, whereas our preliminary understanding of

perception comes from reading the De Anima, our understanding of
alteration should have been formed already by studying works like the
Physics and De Generatione et Corruptione. 19
This creates a problem for our reception of [1][b]. [1][a] looks vague
and general: they suppose that perception consists in some change or other
in which the perceiver is passive. [1][b] makes this more precise, speci-
fying the change they have in view as alteration or change of quality. Both
statements present a reputable opinion from the tradition. With what right
does Aristotle substitute alteration for passive change when reporting
what other people think? Even if those earlier thinkers used alloisis or
related words in writing about perception, 20 why should their meanings be
con ned in his categories?
The relevant group of thinkers has been associated from the start with
the principle that like is known or perceived by like (I 2, 404b 17-18;
405b 15; I 5, 409b 26-8). Their position is summed up in the passage
already cited from I 5, where they are said to combine [1][a] with the
epistemological thesis,
[3] Like perceives like and knows like by virtue of being like it (410a 24-5).

Likeness for Aristotle tends to mean same in quality.21 Once we join

[1][a] with [3] we realise that the qualitative bias made explicit by [1][b]
was present all along.
Yes, but the two most prominent named members of the group,
Empedocles and Plato in the Timaeus,22 both account for perception by
the movement of microscopic ef uences and particles. In their case at
least, for Aristotle to explain [1][a] Perception consists in some sort of
passive change by [1][b] Perception is some sort of qualitative alteration
is to insist that, for the purposes of the present discussion, the meaning
of their ideas is to be xed by his physics, not theirs.23

19
See Ph. III 1, esp. 200b 32-201a 3; V 1-2; GC I 4; also Cat. 14.
20
See the quotations in III 3, 427a 23-6, and Met. IV 5, 1009b 18-25.
21
Cat. 8, 11a 15-19; cf. Met. V 9, 1018a 15-18; 15, 1021a 11-12.
22
They were named at I 2, 404b 8-18, as thinkers who make the soul out of their
favoured elements in order to explain perception and cognition; Aristotle returned to
them at 5, 409b 23-4.
23
There is a neutral use in which the family of terms psxein, pyow, pyhma does
not select for any category, and a narrower use in which they select for attributes in
respect of which a thing can alter and hence for the category of quality; cf. Ross ad
Met. V 21. [1][b] reads psxein in [1][a] more narrowly than Empedocles or Plato are
36 M.F. BURNYEAT

We need not be shocked to nd the reputable opinions served up

already cooked in an Aristotelian stew. It is well known that the same is
true of Aristotles treatment of his predecessors in the rst book of the
Metaphysics. My interest is in his presentation of the reputable opinions,
not their historical accuracy. Aristotle has objections of principle against
those who account for perception, or for other cases of being affected, by
appeal to what happens at the microscopic level (GC I 8), and he is tak-
ing those objections for granted here. That is the point to emphasise. From
page 1 of the De Anima, where knowledge of soul is introduced as one
of the most important and certainly the most dif cult of the tasks of nat-
ural philosophy (I 1, 402a 1-11), Aristotles physical theory is presup-
posed. His psychology is designed to be the crowning achievement of his
physics.24
A good example of psychologys intimate relation to the rest of Aristotelian
physics is coming up next. But rst, I want to pick out another feature of
[1][b]: the careful vagueness of the phrase some sort of alteration
(alloisis tis), which echoes and preserves the careful vagueness of the
phrase some sort of being affected ( paschein ti) in I 5s version of [1][a]
(410a 25, quoted above). 25 Alteration may carry its technical meaning
change of quality, but Aristotle intends to leave plenty of room for the
question what sort of change of quality perception is. The answer could
be that perception is a certain kind of alteration, a subspecies marked off
from others by an appropriate differentia. Alternatively, rather than a kind
of alteration, alloisis tis could mean an alteration of a kind, the tis

likely to have intended. A further narrowing takes place at Ph. VII 2-3, 244b 2ff.,
where alteration is con ned to changes in sensible quality and perception is included
under alteration (for discussion, see Wardy pp. 139ff.) To read this narrowest notion
of alteration into [1][a] from the start would be outrageously unfair to the thinkers
[1][a] reports. Yet it is the notion that Aristotle will obtain in II 5 by analysing per-
ception of a sensible quality as alteration by it.
24
The programme is mapped out in Meteor. I 1 (discussion in Burnyeat Foundations).
By physics in this paper I mean the Aristotelian study of nature (fusik ), not the
deeply anti-Aristotelian physics we have inherited from the 17th century; correspond-
ingly, the adjective physical means pertaining to Aristotelian physics and imports
no contrast with the mental. (In Draft I confusingly switched back and forth between
this and the modern usage of physical in contrast to mental; for amends and
clari cation, see Burnyeat Aquinas.)
25
This is the place to note Hickss comment ad 410a 25 that the ti in psxein ti
agrees with the in nitive taken as a noun; it is not an accusative governed by the
in nitive. There need be no signi cance in the variants te for ti at 410a 25 and ti for
te at 416b 33, but they are interesting nonetheless.
 DE ANIMA II 5 37

being an alienans quali cation to signal that perception is an alteration

only in an etiolated sense.26 I shall argue for the second: perception is an
alteration from which you cannot expect everything you would normally
expect from alteration.

Developing the aporia

After the reputable opinions, we expect a puzzle (aporia) to show that
they cannot all be true as they stand; some modi cation is required. In
fact, we know that already. To quote yet again, this time in full, from I 5:
Further, it is absurd for them to maintain, on the one hand, [*2] that like is unaf-
fected by like and, on the other, [3] that like perceives like and knows like by
virtue of being like it, while at the same time27 they suppose [1][a] that perceiv-
ing is some sort of being affected and changed, and so too is conceiving and
knowing (410a 23-6).

Never mind whether any one philosopher ever held this seemingly incon-
sistent triad of opinions; we are dealing with a dialectical construct, not
the stuff of history. The inconsistency is produced by adding in the prin-
ciple [*2] that like is unaffected by like. This has not been mentioned in
the De Anima so far. It comes from De Generatione et Corruptione I 7,
323b 1-15, which ascribes it to all previous thinkers except Democritus.28

26
A nice illustration of alienans tiw in DA is III 10, 433a 9-10: e tiw tn fan-
tasan tiyeh w nhsn tina, where the very next sentence makes clear that fantasa
is not really nhsiw. Cf. I 1, 403a 8-9; II 5, 417b 3 (echoing Pl. Euthd. 285b 1); III
3, 427a 19-20; 12, 434b 18.
27
At 410a 25 Rodier reads gr instead of the usual d, and Smith translates for.
gr has poor manuscript support, but at least it recognises that *[2] and [3] on their
own, without [1][a], make no absurdity. If you translate the d adversatively as but
or yet (Hamlyn, Hett, Hicks, Ross), you are liable to suggest that Aristotle supposes
*[2] and [3] do make an absurdity on their own. My rendering of d is modelled on
Siweks cum tamen.
28
This enables Hicks and Ross ad 410a 23 to agree that, if we go by Aristotles
testimony, the charge of inconsistency holds against everyone except Anaxagoras, who
denied that like knows like (I 2, 405b 14-15; 19-21), and Democritus. True enough,
if affected has the same meaning in [*2] and [1][a]; for example, if in both it means
simple qualitative alteration. But that only underlines once more how arti cial it is to
leave out microscopic events when reviewing earlier theories of perception. Again,
Joachim ad 323b 10-11 nds it strange that [2] should be attributed to Democritus
alone, given that Empedocles and others subscribe to [3] and Aristotle treats [3] as a
special case of [2]. But [3] does not instantiate [2] without [1][a] and a parallel assur-
ance that affected has the same meaning in both premise and conclusion. From the
38 M.F. BURNYEAT

De Generatione et Corruptione I 7, 323b 1-15, is also the source of the

opposite (Democritean) opinion [2] that like is affected by like, which
makes its rst appearance in the De Anima at the beginning of II 5. It is
entirely appropriate, then, that Aristotles next move in II 5 (417a 1-2) is
to send us to De Generatione et Corruptione I 7 for a general (katholou)
account of what [2] gets right and what wrong. The cross-reference to De
Generatione et Corruptione I 7 identi es the place where [2] and its con-
trary [*2] met head on and their con ict was resolved. The point of the
cross-reference is not to say If you are interested in this topic, you will
nd more about it in GC I 7, but You need to bear GC I 7 in mind as
you read DA II 5.29
Both the con ict and the resolution presuppose the previous chapter
of De Generatione et Corruptione, which isolated a narrow meaning of
being affected ( paschein) and a correspondingly narrowed meaning of
acting on ( poiein) meanings that apply only to alteration or change
of quality (I 6, 323a 16-20). 30 The chapter we are supposed to bear in
mind as we read DA II 5 is narrowly concerned with alteration. Aristotle
speaks in GC I 7 of agent and patient, acting on and being affected. But
he means agent and patient of qualitative change, altering and being
altered. Small wonder it has been hard to nd an explanation or justi-
cation in the De Anima for Aristotles tendency to construe his prede-
cessors in qualitative terms, as when he gives [1][b] as his gloss on [1][a].
The decision to concentrate on qualitative change was made elsewhere,
outside the De Anima.
It was not of course an arbitrary decision. De Generatione et Corrup-
tione is a work about the lowest level of Aristotles world, where the ele-
ments change into each other (elemental generation and destruction), act
on each other and on other things, and combine by mixture to form more
complex stuffs like bronze or esh. At this level quality is all-important.
Quality determines the elemental natures and explains their transforma-
tions and interactions. For the primitives of the theory are not the so-

point of view of historical accuracy, the chief victim of distortion is perhaps Plato: he
does at Tim. 57e 5-58a 1 propound a version of [*2], but for that very reason (and
others) he should not be treated as a straightforward adherent of [3]. For intellectual
knowledge, if not for perception, he has his own version of the assimilation story by
which Aristotle solves the pora (Tim. 90cd).
29
This was well understood in the ancient tradition. Witness the extra words
lekton d ka nn (vel sim.) sometimes found added after psxein at 417a 2 (details
in Philop. 290, 25-8; Rodier ad loc.; Jannones apparatus).
30
Cf. n. 23 above.
 DE ANIMA II 5 39

called elements, earth, air, re and water, but rather the four elementary
qualities hot and cold, wet and dry, hot and cold being active powers,
wet and dry passive which (a) explain the other tangible qualities that
differentiate bodies as bodies (GC II 2, cited at DA II 11, 423b 29), and
(b) determine through their four compatible combinations the essential
natures of earth, air, re and water (GC II 3). It is this qualitative physics
that Aristotle invokes for the study of perception. The lower is to help us
understand the higher. How?
What we should have learned from GC I 7 is that [*2] Like is unaf-
fected by like and [2] Like is affected by like each capture one part of
a larger truth. For an agent A to affect a patient P, A must assimilate P
to itself (homoioun heauti, 324a 10-11), as when re makes a cold thing
hot or warmer than it was before. A and P start off characterised by con-
trary predicates from the same range; they are thus generically alike,
speci cally unlike. When they meet, A is bound to act on P, and P is
bound to be acted upon by A, just because they are contrary to each other;
that is the nature of contrariety. So A and P end up with the same or
closer predicates of the range.
Two curious arguments support this analysis (323b 18-29). One is that
there could be no interaction between whiteness and a line, which con rms
the requirement of generic likeness. The second argument is that, if like-
ness rather than contrariety was the explanation of As affecting P, both
P and every other thing would continually affect itself (each thing is
always as like itself and as close to itself as anything could be!), and
nothing would be indestructible or unchange able. This supports the
requirement of speci c unlikeness. Combine generic likeness and speci c
unlikeness, and qualitative contrariety emerges as a fundamental explana-
tory principle of Aristotelian physics (323b 29-4a 14).31
My theme is the dependence of Aristotles psychology on (the more
elementary parts of ) his physics. What interests me, therefore, is to see
the second of the arguments just mentioned reappearing in DA II 5, 417a
2-6, as the puzzle which will show that the reputable opinions need
modi cation. Why are the senses not self-activating? They would be self-
activating if P perceives A because of the likeness between them: P, which
is always like itself, would continually perceive itself without needing an
external stimulus. It was GC I 7, 323b 1-15, which made clear that Like

31
Corollary: an organic unity cannot be affected by itself (Met. IX 1, 1046a 28; cf.
Ph. VIII 4, 255a 12-15).
40 M.F. BURNYEAT

is (un)affected by like is to be read causally: Like is (un)affected by like

because they are alike. All the De Anima has to do is take perceiving as
a special case of being affected and nd suitable values for P and A.32
The puzzle about the senses perceiving themselves is then a complete and
conclusive refutation of the initial set of reputable opinions, [1][a] and [2].
They cannot both be true as they stand.
But we already know from I 5 (above, p. 37) that if [1][a] is com-
bined with the opposite principle [*2] that like is unaffected by like, we
must give up or modify the reputable opinion which gave rise to this
whole discussion: [3] like perceives like. This is the moment for Aristotle
to reveal the truth that does justice to the truth in each of [1][a], [2], [*2],
and [3].

A preliminary lusis
The solution (lusis) which points the way forward is the assimilation story
from De Generatione et Corruptione. For P to perceive A, P and A must

32
(i) Editors standardly remark that for P Aristotle writes asyseiw (417a 3) but
means the organs rather than the faculties of sense, since it is the former that consist
of the same elements as external objects. Parallels can of course be found (see Hicks
ad loc.), but it seems important to add that there may be a philosophical reason for
the language used here. Aristotles target is a view he originally characterised (I 2,
404b 8ff.; 5, 409b 23ff.) by saying that those who explain soul by cognition of like
by like make the soul consist of their favoured elements, whether these are material
(Empedocles, etc.) or immaterial (the Platonists). They make the cognitive faculties
out of elements too (410b 22), and fail to give reasons for denying that the soul is
nothing but the elements it consists of (410b 10-12). I suggest, therefore, that for P
Aristotle writes ayseiw because that is what he means; it is his opponents who equate
asyseiw with the elements (cf. Plutarch of Athens apud Simplic. 118.8-10).
(ii) For A Aristotle writes the elements in virtue of themselves or their accidents
(417a 5-6). Ross is right, against Rodier and Hicks, that sumbebhkta here must cover
essential as well as accidental qualities of the elements, but wrong to see the dis-
junction as Aristotle hedging on which disjunct is more correct. It is not his doctrine
either that perception is always of the elements (which in Aristotelian compounds have
only potential existence), or that elements are ever perceived in virtue of themselves
( per se); the classi cation of sense-objects in II 6 would have them perceived acci-
dentally, in virtue of their sensible qualities, whether essential (earths dryness) or acci-
dental (its colour). I conclude that the clause n . . . totvn at 417a 5-6 states the
doctrine of Aristotles opponents, and that the disjunction recalls the problem posed
for Empedocles at I 5, 409b 31-410a 13, about how he can explain the perception of
compounds (which in his physics, as viewed through the Aristotelian eyes of Ph. II 1,
193a 21-8 and GC II 7, 334a 25-b 2, are accidental assemblages of elemental bits).
 DE ANIMA II 5 41

be unlike to begin with, so that A can affect P (because of the unlikeness

between them) and make P like itself. The perceiving is an assimilation
in which P becomes like A.
With [3] thus modi ed, the reconciliation of [2] and [*2] in GC I 7
allows [1][a] to stand unmodi ed but now unambiguously explicated by
[1][b]. For the upshot of the dialectic we have just been through is to
con rm that perceiving is an alteration in the technical Aristotelian sense
change of quality.
However, it is not until the end of the rst paragraph of II 5 that
Aristotle sums up the assimilation story:
[A] For this reason, in one way a thing is affected by like, and in another by
unlike, as we said;33 for it is the unlike which is affected, although when it has
been affected it is like (417a 18-20).

As the initial For this reason (dio) indicates, the lesson learned from De
Generatione et Corruptione I 7 is now embedded in a wider explanatory
context. The wider context is furnished by the all-pervasive Aristotelian
concepts of potentiality and actuality. 34 Aristotles immediate response to
the puzzle about why the senses are not self-activating was to conclude
that a perceiver as such is a potential being, not yet an actuality. That is
why it needs an external cause to start one perceiving exactly as com-
bustible fuel needs an actual re to set it blazing (417a 6-9). It is only
after perceiving and the senses have been connected to potentiality and
actuality (417a 9-18) that Aristotle reaches [A] and shows us he is pre-
pared to endorse [1][b] in his own voice. [1][b] is simply [A] applied to
perception.
This wider context for the assimilation story [A] does not come from
De Generatione et Corruptione I 7.35 The work to which Aristotles cross-

33
Hicks and Ross ad loc. refer to II 4, 416a 29ff., where [*2] makes its second
appearance in the treatise (line 32) and the dialectical treatment of con icting opin-
ions on nutrition exactly parallels the treatment of perception, the outcome being that
in nutrition a feeder assimilates food to itself and the food takes on the form of the
feeder. Hicks also entertains, but considers less probable, the idea that as we said
simply reiterates the reference to GC I 7. The question scarcely matters, since any
reader who has followed up the earlier cross-reference to GC will realise that DA II
4 itself rests on GC I 7, as well as the lengthy analysis of growth in GC I 5.
34
Hett begins a new paragraph at prton mn on (417a 14). Hardly obligatory,
but he is right that the argument takes a new turn here.
35
The only hint of potentiality and actuality there is the reference to t dunmenon
yermn enai at 324b 7-8. Then silence until the equally brief reference at GC I 9,
326b 31.
42 M.F. BURNYEAT

referencing now sends us (417a 16-17) is Physics III 1-3 on the nature
and de nition of change itself.36
What we should have learned from Physics III 1-3 is that alteration, by
virtue of being a kind of change, is a sort of actuality (energeia tis),
though an incomplete one (417a 16-17). The point is even more techni-
cal than it sounds. 37 Alteration, as a kind of change, is the actuality of the
alterable qua alterable (Ph. III 1, 201a 11-12): what alters does so because
it has a potentiality to be qualitatively unlike its present self, and the
process of alteration is the exercise or actuality of that potentiality, its
fullest manifestation. At the end of the process, when the subject has
become unlike it was, the potentiality which existed before and (more
fully) during the alteration is no more. It is exhausted, used up. A new
quality, which is a new potentiality for change, has replaced the old.
This is the reason why alteration is essentially incomplete. It is de ned
by and directed toward an end-state outside itself. Cold is a potentiality
for being warm. Being warmed, the actuality of that potentiality, is the
process of changing from cold to warm. But once a thing is warm, it is
no longer manifesting and no longer even possesses the potentiality for
being warm.38 It has the actuality of warmth instead. The cold has been
destroyed and replaced by its contrary. Alteration really alters.
The notion of incomplete actuality suggests a contrast with complete
actuality. This would be a process or activity which is not de ned by and

36
417a 16-17 virtually quotes Ph. III 2, 201b 31-2. But obviously the quotation
makes little sense without III 1 to explain it. Moreover Ph. III 3, on the identity of
changing and being changed and the location of both in the changed, will supply a
key doctrine for the theory of perception in DA III 2, 425b 26-6a 26. Note also the
supergeneralisation of which [A] is one instance at Ph. III 2, 202a 9-12. Accordingly,
I take the cross-reference to be Aristotles way of announcing that DA presupposes
Ph. III 1-3 as the unitary discussion it was written to be. That might explain why in
DA III 2 he feels no need to add a second cross-reference to the text he has already
told us to bear in mind.
37
For help with the technicalities I recommend Kosman Motion (pp. 40-50, 56-8),
followed by Waterlow chap. 3 and Hussey pp. 58-65. These authors all agree that the
traditional charge that Aristotles de nition of change is circular can be blocked if we
understand the relevant potentialities as potentialities for being, not as potentialities
for changing. I have not been persuaded by critics like Heinemann who continue to
prefer the latter. An obvious objection is that the actuality of a potential for changing
should be complete as soon as change begins.
38
See Ph. II 1, 201a 19-22; b 10-11, with Kosman Motion pp. 57-8, Waterlow
p. 115. Does this commit Aristotle to denying that if a thing is warm, it can be warm
(ab esse ad posse valet consequentia)? No. What it shows is that the concept of poten-
tiality on which Aristotelian physics is founded is not the bare concept of possibility.
 DE ANIMA II 5 43

directed towards an end-state outside itself. Rather, it is de ned by and

directed towards itself; its end is to engage in the activity itself, for its
own sake. In ethical and metaphysical contexts Aristotle often contrasts
activities which are their own end with those aiming at a further product
(e.g. EN I 1, 1094a 3-5; X 6, 1176b 6-7; Met. IX 8, 1050a 23-b 2), but
nowhere, so far I as know, does he call the former complete actuality.
The ancient commentators contrast change (kinsis) with complete actu-
ality (teleia energeia),39 but the closest Aristotle gets to doing so is in three
places, one far better known than the others.
(i) In Metaphysics IX 6, 1048b 18-35, actions which are their own end
are classed as actualities (energeiai) in a sense that excludes change (kinsis).
Change, being incomplete, is not energeia at all, not even incomplete actu-
ality. This terminological restriction on the scope of the term energeia,
unique in the extant corpus, 40 suggests that the passage was written as a
contribution to metaphysics ( rst philosophy) or ethics, not physics. For
in Aristotles physics the idea that change is (incomplete) actuality has a
foundational role. Thus (ii) he worries in Physics III 2, 201b 33-5, that
the notion of change is elusive, dif cult to grasp, because it cannot be
classi ed either as privation or as potentiality or as actuality un-
quali ed (energeia hapl). Yet if change is nothing real at all, physics will
have no subject matter to study. The one possibility remaining is that
change is a quali ed sort of actuality. So it becomes part of Aristotles
of cial de nition of change (reaf rmed as such at VIII 5, 257b 8-9) that
change is a quali ed actuality, intrinsically other-directed and incomplete.
But the Physics does no more than mention the contrasting idea of unquali ed
actuality.
(iii) De Anima III 7, 431a 6-7, contrasts change, as the actuality of
something incomplete, with the actuality of something complete or per-
fected, and calls the latter unquali ed actuality (h hapls energeia). In
(ii) and (iii), unlike (i), change remains actuality subject to the quali cation
that it is incomplete. It is incomplete because (as explained already at Ph.
III 2, 201b 32-3) the potential thing it is the actuality of is itself incom-
plete; the latter is incomplete, I take it, because it is not yet what it has
the potentiality to be. (ii) and (iii), because they do at least mention an

39
So e.g. Themistius 18.20-37, 112.28-32; Philoponus 296.21-297.10; Simplicius (if
it be he) 264.23-6; Sophonias 66.14-17.
40
Or so I argue in Burnyeat A much read passage, where I also show that the
passage was not written for Metaphysics IX, even if (as I assume here) it is authen-
tic Aristotle.
44 M.F. BURNYEAT

unquali ed actuality that contrasts with the incomplete actuality of

change, offer a line of thought to which I must certainly return. Not so
(i), which rules itself out of the repertoire of passages relevant to the idea
of change as incomplete actuality. If from time to time in the sequel I
mention (i), I do so only to keep it at bay. Its in uence on interpretations
of II 5 has been a hindrance, rather than a help, to understanding the pos-
itive message of the chapter.
Back now to alteration. After reminding us that change is incomplete
actuality, Aristotle adds that the agent of alteration must already have in
actuality the quality the patient will acquire (417a 17-18, from Ph. III 2,
202a 9-13). This would allow him to reformulate the assimilation story
[A] for perception in terms of potentiality and actuality, as follows:
[P/A] The perceiver41 is potentially what the sense-object is actually, e.g. warm
or red, so perceiving is being assimilated to that object, altering to become actu-
ally warm or red.

Just that is the conclusion Aristotle states at the very end of II 5, 418a 3-
6, where as has been said refers back to the context we are discussing. 42
So this is a good place to review the results of the dialectic so far. At the
end of the rst paragraph of II 5 Aristotle has assembled all the equip-
ment he needs for a full formulation of [P/A]. Had he provided it at once,
without pausing to add the re nements of 417a 21-418a 3, we would still
have a remarkable account of perception.
The most remarkable feature is a causal scheme which explains why
one cannot perceive warmth or red unless something actually warm/red is

41
I write perceiver here for two reasons. First, to bracket the question whether a
perceiver is potentially F by virtue of having a sense which is potentially F or by
virtue of having an organ which is potentially F; since my opponent presses hard for
[P/A] to be a thesis exclusively about organs (Sorabji Body and Soul pp. 52-3;
Intentionality pp. 212-13; cf. Hamlyn pp. 104, 113), it is only fair to keep my lan-
guage as clean as I can. (For what it is worth, EN X 4, 1174b 17-8, implies that at
least in that context it does not matter which we say.) But second, perceiver may
well be the best translation for t asyhtikn in II 5. Thus at 418a 1 and 3, instead
of a reference to the perceptive faculty (Hicks, Ross, Tricot, Theiler, Barbotin), a
reference to the subject capable of perceiving (Rodier, Smith, Hett) would match the
preceding neuters t xon tn pistmhn (417b 5-6), t fronon (417b 8), t manynon
(417b 12); a similar translation at 417a 6 would match the following neuters to
kaustiko (417a 8), t dunmei koon ka rn (10-11); 417b 16 and 418a 1 will
fall into line later. II 3, 415a 6-7 is a nice example of a single sentence where both
meanings of the ikn ending are displayed.
42
So Rodier and Ross; Hicks is needlessly hesitant.
 DE ANIMA II 5 45

present to stimulate the appropriate sense. It is not just that some external
cause is needed for perception. Perceiving something is being assimilated
to it, e.g. being warmed or reddened, and the whole weight of Aristotelian
physics stands behind the demand that the cause of this alteration be
something actually warm or red.
What is more, the warm or red object acts as cause in virtue of being
warm or red. Not for Aristotle the modern idea that the object acts on the
perceiver in virtue of some non-phenomenal feature (molecular motion,
light re ectancy) on which its appearing warm or red depends. Aristotles
is a world in which, as I have emphasised before,43 colours, sounds,
smells, and other sensible qualities are as real as the primary qualities (so
called by us). They are real in the precise sense that they are causal agents
in their own right.44
An immediate corollary, to be announced in the next chapter II 6, is
that perception of such qualities as red and warmth is always true (418a
14-16; cf. III 3, 428b 18-19; 21; 27-8; 6, 430b 26-30; Met. IV 5, 1010b
2-3). This doctrine has provoked much puzzled discussion. It is seldom
recalled that, if seeing red is being reddened and assimilated to something
actually red, there is bound to be a match between the qualitative content
and the qualitative cause of sight. 45 In causing the perceiver to become
warm or red, sensible qualities cause themselves to be perceived as the
qualities they are. Conversely, to perceive is to be altered by the sensible
quality one has a perception of.

43
Draft pp. 21-2.
44
Essential reading on this topic is Broadie, interestingly (but in my view unsuc-
cessfully) challenged by Broackes.
45
We should not make too much of the solitary quali cation ti lgiston xousa
cedow at 428b 19; Aristotle himself ignores it at 21 and 27-8. Since Aristotle assumes
his readers will understand the quali cation, we should look for help within the chap-
ters between II 6 and III 3. There we nd II 9, 421a 9-26, on the inaccurate sense-
organs that make hard-eyed animals bad at discriminating colours and humans bad
at discriminating smells, though we do brilliantly with objects of touch. No need to
look ahead to the types of perceptual illusion discussed in De Insomniis 2, which are
hardly examples of the least possible error. No need to join the sophisticated revival
by Charles pp. 118-124 of Blocks teleological interpretation of proper object percep-
tion as true whenever all is functioning well. II 9s cases are genuine perceptions, not
mere illusory appearance, for they are appropriately caused (as illusions are not) by
the sensible form of the object perceived. Yet to hard-eyed animals that form appears
less bright, or less distinctly orange, than it actually is. Again, PA II 2, 648b 12-17,
mentions a case where the cause of a hot things feeling hotter than it should is the
perceivers condition, not their sense-organ. This is an exaggerated response to real
heat out there, not just the illusory effect of fever within.
46 M.F. BURNYEAT

This result sets the framework for the De Animas theory of perception.
All the talk of perceivers becoming like the object, of their being affected
by sensible forms and taking on the colour or smell perceived all this
derives from applying the assimilation story [A] to the special case of per-
ception, as spelled out in [P/A]. But perception is a very special case, as
we are about to see.
For Aristotle in II 5 does not proceed directly to a full formulation of
[P/A]. First comes a lengthy and complex analysis (417a 21-418a 3) of
different types of potentiality. When we do reach [P/A], at the very end
of the chapter, our understanding of what it means to say that the per-
ceiver is potentially what the sense-object is actually is quite different from
what it would have been had Aristotle derived his conclusion immediately
from [A].46 The difference brings with it, as a direct consequence, a new
and radically different understanding of alteration in our starting point
[1][b]. In one fell swoop all the evidence for the Sorabji interpretation is
turned to evidence for a different view. The rest of the De Anima must be
read in accordance with that different view, as must its sequel De Sensu,
which starts by announcing, All that has already been said about soul is
to be assumed (1, 436a 5; tr. Hett).

The demand for distinctions

We have learned a lot from De Generatione et Corruptione 1 7 and
Physics III 1-3. But it is not enough for more than a preliminary solution.
Aristotles directions to the reader are loud and clear:
To begin with let us speak47 as if being affected and being changed and actual
exercising (energein)48 are the same thing; for change is indeed a sort of actual-
ity (energeia tis), though an incomplete one . . .

46
Both Themistius 54.3-20 and Philoponus 289.31-2 have a sound appreciation of
the point.
47
Editors generally print lgvmen, both here and at 416b 32; an exception is
Jannone, who prints lgomen each time. lgomen makes reasonable sense: by speaking
in the simple way we are now (since 417a 6) speaking about potentiality and actual-
ity, we are ignoring the distinctions embarked upon at 417a 21ff. Correspondingly,
plw at 417a 22 refers to the way potentiality and actuality are spoken of in the pre-
ceding paragraph. Nonetheless, I prefer lgvmen in both places. The chapter is full of
more or less imperatival expressions: 417a 21; b 8; 11-12; 14; 30; 418a 2. They are
important guides to an intricate discussion.
48
Actual exercising is a compromise translation meant to bring out the connec-
tion, essential to this context, between actuality (nrgeia) and the exercise (nergen)
 DE ANIMA II 5 47

At the same time, however,49 distinctions should be made concerning poten-

tiality and actuality (entelecheia). For at the moment we are speaking50 about
them in a simple way51 (417a 14-17 . . . 21-22).

The discussion that follows sets out from a distinction between two types
of potentiality (417a 22-8; cf. 417b 30-32). 52 A distinction between two
types of potentiality implies a corresponding distinction between two types
of actuality. We will nd Aristotle unwilling to tell us as much as we
would like to know about the actuality side of the distinction.
His reticence on this point shows up already in the provisional assump-
tion that being affected and being changed and actual exercising (ener-
gein) are the same thing. In effect, he is asking us to suppose that there
is no such thing as complete or unquali ed actuality, 53 and a fortiori no
such thing as energeia in the exclusive sense of Metaphysics Y6. There is
only the incomplete actuality exhibited by a process of change which is
de ned by and directed towards an end-state outside itself. An extraordi-
nary request. What can it mean?
Putting that puzzle on hold for later, let us note that the simple way
of speaking which Aristotle refers to here is the way he introduced poten-

of an active or passive dnamiw; cf. Met. IX 8, 1050a 22-3. As a case of psxein , per-
ceptual sentience is passive, so I avoid the word activity.
49
d and ka function separately here (Denniston p. 305). d contrasts the distinc-
tions to follow with the simple way we have been speaking about potentiality and
actuality so far, while ka (for which the manuscript evidence is overwhelming) links
to the previous imperative lgvmen in 417a 14-16. We will distinguish different types
of potentiality and actuality as well as continuing to speak as if being affected and
being changed and actual exercising are the same thing.
50
Torstriks emendation lgomen (Just now we were speaking), adopted by Ross,
is not only unnecessary, but wrongly suggests that 417a 21 makes a complete break
with the previous paragraphs simple way of speaking. We shall see that the grad-
ual process of re nement begun at prton (417a 14) is still not completed when we
reach esayiw at 417b 29-30.
51
Hamlyns translation in an unquali ed way suggests that the contrast is poten-
tiality and actuality simpliciter vs. potentiality and actuality in some respect or with
some quali cation, as e.g. n plw vs. ti n at Met. VII 1, 1028a 31, or nrgeia
pl vs. nrgei tiw at Ph. III 2, 201ba 33-202a 3 (cited above). But here, as at 417b
2 and 30, to speak of X `plw is to speak of it without distinguishing kinds of X (cf.
III 2, 426a 26; EN II 7, 1108b 7-8); Philoponus 299.4 glosses the word as diorstvw.
Aristotle enjoins us to make distinctions, not to add quali cations to what has already
been said.
52
The parentheses that Ross, following Torstrik, prints around 417a 26-8 are unnec-
essary and serve to obscure rather than to clarify the message.
53
Well appreciated by Themistius 55.6-12 and Simplicius 120.13-14.
48 M.F. BURNYEAT

tiality and actuality in response to the puzzle about why the senses are
not self-activating. The puzzle shows that a perceiver as such is a poten-
tial being, not yet an actuality (417a 6-7, p. 41 above). The moral is that
we must recognise two meanings of nouns like sense, sight, and hear-
ing, corresponding to two meanings of the verbs in such sentences as P
perceives, P sees, P hears. In one meaning they signify a potentiality
or capacity for perceiving (P is a seer or hearer even when asleep), in the
other its actuality or exercise (417a 9-13).54 But To begin with ( prton)
marks all this as a preliminary formulation. And it is easy to see why
Aristotle should wish us to be aware of the preliminary character of his
remarks so far.
For if the potentiality here is the type discussed in Physics III 1-3, its
exercise will be the incomplete actuality of real alteration. The sense of
sight will be the eyes potentiality to be red instead of transparent or the
green it presently is. In short, the Sorabji interpretation will be correct.
But distinctions should be made. The sense of sight is not that type
of potentiality. Nor, consequently, is its exercise the incomplete actuality
of real alteration. The Sorabji interpretation stops with the preliminary
solution. Aristotle does not.

The triple scheme

More technicalities but this time Aristotle will lay them out on the
pages of the De Anima. We are to be introduced to the distinction that
tradition knows as the distinction between rst and second potentiality.
This is not a case where the lower is invoked to help us understand the
higher (cf. p. 39). On the contrary, the distinction developed here for
knowledge and perception is invoked in Physics VIII 4, 255a 30ff., to explain
the natural motions of earth, air, re, and water. That indeed is the only
other work outside the ambit of the De Anima where the triple scheme,
as I shall call it, is on display. 55

54
On the problematic sentence 417a 13-14, see Hicks ad loc. His hesitations about
adopting asyhtn from Alexander Quaest. III 3, 83.6 (with Torstrik, Frster, Ross)
seem to me unsound, as does the defence of the MSS asynesyai by Welsch pp.
103-4 with n. 3. Better still, I incline to think, is Rodiers solution: read asyhtn and
delete the whole sentence as a marginal note to the effect that the potential/actual dis-
tinction applies also to the objects of perception. Alternatively, emend to asyhtikn.
55
The brief allusion at Sens. 4, 441b 21-3, is clearly within the ambit of DA, pre-
supposing the careful elaboration of II 5.
 DE ANIMA II 5 49

Physics VIII 4 does not refer to the De Anima. It treats the distinction
between rst and second potentiality as a piece of conceptual equipment
available for use when needed: Since the potential is spoken of in more
than one way (255a 30-31). Yet the distinction is not explicitly marked
in Metaphysics V, Aristotles philosophical lexicon (compare V 12 with
V 7, 1017a 35-b 9). Nor, more strikingly, does it receive attention in
Metaphysics IX 6, 1048b 18-36, despite the connection scholars sometimes
draw between that text and the topics of De Anima II 5.56 Conversely,
there is no reference in II 5 to the distinction in Metaphysics IX 6 between
actuality (energeia) and change (kinsis). Let us read on.
Last time Aristotle set out from two meanings of perception verbs (417a
9-13). His new distinction is modelled on two meanings of the nouns and
adjectives which gure in such sentences as P is a knower (epistmon),
P has knowledge, and in more speci c attributions like P has the art of
literacy,57 P is a builder; the knowledge verbs come in later.58 In one
meaning, any member of the species Homo sapiens is thereby and from
birth a knower, because the capacity for thought and reasoning, which
differentiates human from beast, is also a capacity for knowledge. 59 In

56
See esp. Kosman Substance pp. 128-132. Ackrill pp. 160-162 was quite right
to disassociate the two texts.
57
I.e. P is able to read and write (Theiler translates wer das ABC inne hat). This,
rather than the more highbrow achievements of Alexandrian scholars, is the standard
meaning of grammatik in Aristotles day; LSJ sv aptly cite the de nition at Top. VI
5, 142b 31-4. It makes good, simple sense of the example at 417a 29: actively know-
ing this A means using ones knowledge to recognise the A one is reading or to cre-
ate the right shape when writing A. And it ts the suggestion in n. 73 below that the
passage we are embarking on echoes the Aviary section of Platos Theaetetus, where
reading letters is precisely what grammatikw is described as doing (198e).
58
At 417a 29 and b 8-11. Ph. VIII 4 also starts with the adjective. Aristotle might
well feel the verb pstasyai to be inappropriate for rst potentiality.
59
For thought (dinoia) and reasoning (logismw) as the differentia of human, see
II 3, 414b 18; 415a 7-11 (cf. I 5, 410b 24; II 2, 413b 12-13; 30; 414a 13; 3, 414a 32;
Met. I 1, 980b 27-8). My word also is intended to pass lightly over the problem of
xing the exact relation of thought and reasoning to the intellect (now); that, as
Aristotle keeps saying (415a 11-12 echoes I 4, 408b 13-29; 5, 410b 12-15; II 2, 413b
24-31) is another subject, for another discussion. Aristotles ka in t gnow toioton
ka lh at 27 is equally delicate. He cannot be alluding to the analogy between
genus and matter that he sometimes mentions but never rmly endorses (Met. V 28,
1024a 36-b 9; VII 12, 1038a 6-8; X 8, 1058a 1, 23-4), since gnow here is human
nature in its fully differentiated speci city (for the usage, cf. Met. V 28). The poten-
tiality for knowledge is intrinsic to the actuality that makes us human. From this some
will infer that the potentiality must be grounded in the lh of DA II 1, 412a 9-11 (cf.
50 M.F. BURNYEAT

the other meaning, someone who has acquired a sound knowledge of

letters is a knower, by virtue of having an ability they can exercise at will
(417a 22-8).
Both types of potentiality contrast with the actuality of someone exer-
cising their knowledge of letters. This last is the person who knows in the
proper sense of the verb (417a 29-30). 60 So there are three cases:

(1) (2) (3)

potentiality potentiality actuality
P is a knower P is a knower
P knows 61 P knows

No reader of the De Anima can fail to notice that we have met this scheme
before. In II 1, however, the emphasis was on (2) and (3) as two types of
actuality, not on (1) and (2) as two types of potentiality. As knowledge
possessed is to knowledge in use, so is soul, i.e. the organised set of func-
tional capacities which comprise the form or life of a living thing, to the
actual exercise of those capacities. Knowledge possessed was the model
used to help us understand the de nition of soul as the rst actuality of
a natural body which is potentially alive (412a 22-28). But nowhere in
II 5 is (2) clearly called actuality. 62
Another innovation in II 5 is that the model of knowledge is explicitly
extended to (1). This would not have suited the earlier context, where the
explanandum was life as such and Aristotle intended to assert that the only

Philop. 305.34-306.7); they can render ka and so. Others will be happy to leave lh
in its abstract meaning potentiality (Bonitz 785a 46-56). Themistius 55.20-21 para-
phrases mn ti t gnow toioton ka fsiw to nyrpou, w enai dektik pistmhw.
60
The reason why this is the proper (kurvw) meaning of the verb is doubtless that,
as actuality, it is de nitionally and teleologically prior to the correlative potentiality
(II 4, 415a 17-20; Met. IX 8, 1049b 10-17; 1050a 7-12).
61
The implication that P knows can be entered under (2), with the verb in a poten-
tial sense, is con rmed by the more speci c verbs at 417b 8-11.
62
The two places where one might think to nd (2) so called are debatable. At
417a 30-32 nerge& is written into the text by the Torstrik-Ross emendation I reject
in Appendix 1. At 417b 13 to ntelexe& ntow may in fact correspond to ntelexe&
v n at 417a 29 and refer to the exercise of knowledge involved in the activity of teach-
ing (cf. Ph. III 3, 202b 7; Philop. De aeternitate mundi 71.4-7; Soph. 67.5). Ph. VIII
4, 255a 35-b 1, does put actuality and potentiality together: ggnetai nerge& t
dunatn, oon t manynon k dunmei ntow teron ggnetai dunmei. Another pas-
sage I would cite for the combined description is DA III 4, 429b 5-9, but not every-
one recognises that this is about knowing in sense (2).
 DE ANIMA II 5 51

body which is potentially alive is one that is actually alive (II 1, 412b 15-
17; 25-6). It is certainly not true that P is a knower in sense (1) implies
P is a knower in sense (2).
It is important to appreciate these differences between II 1 and II 5, and
the reasons for them, before adopting the technical terminology that tra-
dition has devised for the triple scheme:

(1) (2) (3)

rst potentiality second potentiality
rst actuality second actuality

Of the four labels, rst actuality is the only one found in Aristotle him-
self, and that only in DA II 1 (412a 27; b 5). But there is ample
justi cation for the others and they make it easier to give a crisp state-
ment of the issue before us: Which type of potentiality does [P/A] refer
to, rst or second?
Aristotles answer will be second (417b 17-18). But rst he explains
why it matters. It matters because there is an important difference between
the type of change or alteration involved in passing from (1) to (2) and
the type involved in passing from (2) to (3). That is why the emphasis in
II 5 is on rst and second potentiality. Change is the actuality of the poten-
tial qua potential (Ph. III 1, 201a 10-12, p. 42 above). So to understand
a change one has to understand what sort of potentiality it is the actual-
ity of. The difference between rst and second potentiality will be spelled
out in terms of the difference between passing from (1) to (2) and pass-
ing from (2) to (3). We shall then know all that II 5 has to tell us about
the difference between the actualities corresponding to the two types of
potentiality.

A warning
As just hinted, the long intricate process of re nement that lies ahead will
not reach completion within II 5. Aristotles directions to the reader are
again loud and clear:
But there may [will in most translations] be an opportunity another time for a
full clari cation (diasaphsai) of these matters; for the present, let it be enough
to have got this far in drawing distinctions63 <that we can say the following:>

63
The sentence nn d divrsyv tosoton implies that the process of distinguish-
52 M.F. BURNYEAT

Since we do not in fact speak of the potential in a simple way, but would say
that a boy is potentially a general in one meaning, and that an adult is poten-
tially a general in another meaning, so it is [i.e., in both ways; most translations
have in the latter way]64 that we speak of the perceiver65 (417b 29-418a 1).

417a 21 called for distinctions concerning potentiality and actuality. But

by the end of II 5 only the potential has been properly dealt with. Indi-
cations and implications for a corresponding contrast between two types
of actuality have been plentiful, as we shall see, but they have not been
fully clari ed. Concerning actuality, the discussion remains incomplete.
The essential incompleteness of II 5 has not been appreciated. Since
antiquity scholars have felt free to draw on all they know about Aristotle
to expound his meaning here. This paper will be more circumspect.

ing could be taken further, although we will not do that now. Accordingly, I take
per mn totvn in the preceding sentence to refer to the distinctions called for at 417a
21-2 and elaborated in the sequel. These have been the main subject of the preceding
discussion, but on another occasion they could be more fully clari ed than they have
been so far; after all, we are still speaking as if being affected and changed and actual
exercising are the same thing. The language ts this suggestion: divrsyv echoes
diaireton at 417a 21, ox plo here picks up plw there. I thus reject Simplicius
in uential note (125.11-12), which refers per totvn to the last section of the previ-
ous paragraph: Concerning how the universal and contemplation is up to us: he will
speak more clearly about them in Book III. Following Simplicius, translators com-
monly render esayiw as later (sc. in DA), treat gnoit n as future indicative (only
Smith writes may), and send us to III 4 or III 4-5 for the promised clari cation. An
additional reference (Philop. 308.20-2, Soph. 69. 37-9) to the little that Aristotle has
to say about the practical intellect in III 7 is presumably motivated by the immedi-
ately preceding remark (417b 26-8) about pistmai (probably arts such as literacy or
building) that deal with sensible things. The dif culty is that nothing in Book III could
really be described as a full clari cation of the issue Simplicius is interested in. When
he reaches III 4, Simplicius does not remind us of the promise he made at II 5, for
the good reason that III 4 does not explain the point that contemplation is up to us,
but merely states once again that this is so (429b 7). Given Simplicius gloss on per
totvn, the only reasonable comment is that of Ross: It may be doubted whether A.
has any particular passage in mind; he perhaps never gave the elucidation he intends
to give. The references in Bonitz 358a 28-33 (to which add Ph. I 9, 192a 34-b 1,
looking forward to rst philosophy) show that kairw alludes to a unspeci ed occa-
sion outside a given treatise more often than to a de nite place within it.
64
The minority of translators (Wallace, Smith, Ross) who refer otvw to both mean-
ings of potential, not just the last, would of course agree that what an animal is born
with and lives by is a second potentiality. But before birth comes the prth metabol
of 417b 17, and we shall nd that this passage from being a rst to being a second
potentiality perceiver has a role of its own in the re nement process.
65
On translating t asyhtikn, see n. 41 above.
 DE ANIMA II 5 53

Because I am interested in the question how to read an Aristotelian chap-

ter, I propose to take Aristotle at his word: II 5 does not contain every-
thing he has to say about the triple scheme. And when I do draw on other
works, it will often be to contrast what they say with Aristotles meaning
here.

Two types of potentiality, two kinds of transition

Aristotle continues in terms of the model. A knower in sense (1) has a
potentiality to be a knower in sense (2), viz. someone who has been
altered through learning and has repeatedly changed from a contrary con-
dition (417a 30-32). 66 The second conjunct of this speci cation brings out
a point which is more fully analysed elsewhere, in the discussion of the
priority of actuality to potentiality at Metaphysics IX 8, 1049b 29-50a 2.
Just as an apprentice learns to be a builder by building, though not yet
with the nished skill of the master, so pupils learn arithmetic or literacy
by gradually acquiring, and exercising themselves in, bits of knowledge
they were ignorant of before. It is true that one cannot exercise an art one
does not have, but it is sophistry to infer from this that one cannot learn.
By a contrary condition, therefore, Aristotle means ignorance of this or
that aspect of the knowledge to be learned. The second conjunct explains
that learning is a stage by stage process, a growth of knowledge. 67
By contrast, a knower in sense (2) has a potentiality to be someone
who knows in sense (3), viz. someone who has changed in another way:
from having and not exercising the art of arithmetic68 or literacy to exer-
cising it (417a 30-b 2).69

66
This is construal (B) of the sentence 417a 31-2, defended in Appendix 1.
67
Thus ka is epexegetic of di maysevw (Smith translates i.e.); this construal
makes intelligible the variant metabllvn for metabaln. Cf. EN II 4 for the paral-
lel point about acquiring a virtue.
68
Read riymhtikn for the MSS asyhsin (following Themistius paraphrase
55.28, Torstrik and Ross, against Rodier, Hicks, and most scholars since), or perhaps
accept Theilers ingenious suggestion rymhsin. Despite the majority preference, and
despite Philoponus testifying to asyhsin as early as 529AD (De Aet. Mundi 69.26),
conservative policies are indefensible in this case, for two reasons. (a) The MSS illog-
ically (as Hicks concedes) anticipate in the model the thing the model is designed to
illuminate, thereby making asyhsiw an instance of pistmh (!) and wrecking the step
by step articulation of Aristotles argument. (b) A marginal note inspired by 417b 18-
19 could so easily cause corruption. A third ground for the emendation is canvassed
n. 73 below. Alternatively, just delete tn asyhsin .
69
This is construal (B) of the sentence 417a 32-b 2, defended in Appendix 1.
54 M.F. BURNYEAT

This explanation of the difference between the two potentialities (1) and
(2) continues the pattern we are familiar with. A potentiality is de ned by
what it is a potentiality to be in the present case a knower in sense (2)
or a knower in sense (3). At the same time, the difference between being
someone who knows in sense (2) and being someone who knows in sense
(3) is articulated as that between having been altered through learning and
having changed in a different way. Senses (2) and (3) of P knows are
speci ed as the results of two types of change. Ultimately, then, the two
potentialities we are interested in are differentiated as potentialities for
being the result of two types of change. 70 That is why Aristotles next
move (417b 2) is to say, Being affected is not simple either.71 The dis-
tinction between two types of potentiality leads into a corresponding dis-
tinction between their actualities: two types of being affected or altered,
one of which might be said not to be alteration at all (417b 5-7). Aristotle
will deny that the exercise of knowledge is alteration (417b 8-9). But he
will refuse that option for perception, preferring to speak in terms of two
types of alteration (418a 1-3). Let us do the same.
At this stage the rst type of alteration is assumed to be the ordinary
alteration we studied in the Physics, where indeed learning is a standard
example of alteration; 72 modern readers have to suspend their post-
Cartesian inclinations and accept that Aristotelian physics puts learning
on a par with being warmed. That done, we can focus in DA II 5 on how
the second type of alteration diverges from the rst. The second is the
novelty we need to understand.
We have already seen that ordinary alteration involves the loss of one
quality and its replacement by another opposed quality from the same
range. Aristotle makes the point vivid here by calling it a sort of destruc-
tion by the opposite (417b 3).73 As one learns, ignorance gives way to

70
Not, please note, as potentialities for two types of change, on pain of the circu-
larity that Kosman Motion showed the way out of.
71
od picks up plw at 417a 22.
72
Ph. III 3, 202a 32ff. is the most conspicuous case, but there are many others; cf.
the miscellany of changes listed at 1, 201a 18-19.
73
Such language is for obvious reasons not common in Aristotles discussions of
non-substantial change (Ph. I 9 and GC I 4 are exceptions motivated by their con-
text). In n. 26 I suggested that fyor tiw is an echo of Pl. Euthd. 285b 1 (cf. 283 cd),
where fyron tin refers to the destruction involved in becoming wise and good,
i.e., to manynein in one of the two senses (learning and understanding) which the
sophists confuse and Socrates distinguishes in the dialogue. Well might Aristotle recall
the Euthydemus here, for his model for the two senses of alteration tallies exactly
 DE ANIMA II 5 55

knowledge like cold to warmth. At the end of the process the ignorance,
like the cold, is extinguished and destroyed. It has been replaced by its
opposite, knowledge in sense (2).
But it is obvious that knowing in sense (3) is not opposed to knowing
in sense (2) as the latter is to ignorance. Linguistically, the termini of the
transition between (1) and (2) are marked by contrary descriptions: igno-
rant vs. knows. The termini of the transition between (2) and (3) are
both marked by the same word knows. We have been told that (3) is
the proper meaning of the word (417a 29). That establishes a difference
in meaning between (2) and (3), but not an opposition. On the contrary,
Aristotle insists that the termini of the transition between (2) and (3) are
like each other: both are to be described as knowing, save that one is
knowing potentially, the other actually (417b 4-5). Rather than a destruc-
tion, the second type of alteration is better called a preservation (stria,
417b 3) of the state it starts from. Whereas learning destroys ignorance,
as warming something destroys its potentiality to be warm, knowing in
sense (3) preserves the knowers sense (2) potentiality to be someone who
knows in sense (3).
Much more is in play here than the common observation that knowl-
edge be it of languages, sciences, or skills is kept up and perhaps
even strengthened by exercise and use.74 No doubt Aristotle has that in
mind, but he is also applying a fundamental principle of his physics: no
alteration without contrariety.
Then why call the transition from (2) to (3) an alteration at all? Preservation
sounds more like the opposite of alteration than a species of it. The answer
is again to be found in a fundamental principle of Aristotelian physics.
Epistemic states like knowing arithmetic and being literate are disposi-
tional states (hexeis) which belong to the category of quality. 75 Standardly
in Aristotle, any change in the category of quality is an alteration. 76 As

with Platos two senses of manynein. In the related passage from the Aviary section
of the Theaetetus (198d-199a) the examples are riymhtikw and grammatikw,
which may support the emendation defended in n. 68. Unlike Aristotle, Plato in the
Theaetetus does not distinguish senses of know (only senses of have), but he does,
as in the Euthydemus, anticipate Aristotles two types of transition with the ditt yra
of 198d.
74
Pl. Smp. 208a; Theaet. 153b.
75
In Cat. 8 knowledge-terms are a main focus of attention.
76
Particularly relevant here are the de nition of alteration at GC 1 4, 319b 6-14,
and the use of learning as a prime example of alteration at Ph. III 3, 202a 32ff.
(n. 72 above). Not relevant (yet) is the non-standard passage Ph. VII 3, 247b 1-8a 9,
which argues not only that the transition from (2) to (3) is not alteration, but also,
56 M.F. BURNYEAT

Alexander drily remarks, the transition from (2) to (3) is certainly not
growth or spatial movement.77 Then it must be an alteration of some kind.
For it is the rm doctrine of Aristotles Physics (III 1, 200b 33-201a 3,
repeated DA I 3, 406a 12-13) that there are no (non-substantial) changes
besides change of quality, quantity and place. Aristotle, it appears, has a
compelling reason of theory to say that the transition from (2) to (3) is
an alteration, as well as a compelling reason (the absence of contrariety)
for saying it is not.
This should help explain why at 417b 5-7 he offers two alternative ways
of describing the transition from knowing in sense (2) to knowing in sense
(3).78 Either (a) it is not an alteration at all, or (b) it is a different kind of
alteration. In favour of (a), he ampli es the point just made about the sim-
ilarity of the termini by saying that the knowers transition to knowing
in sense (3) is an advance into itself and into actuality (417b 6-7) a
surprisingly lyrical phrase, which I shall take up when we return to per-
ception. In favour of (b), he adds nothing, and hardly needs to: that preser-
vation is different from ordinary alteration is plain to see.
There is of course one way Aristotle could escape the dilemma. He
could deny that the transition from (2) to (3) is a change of any kind. But
already at II 4, 416b 1-3, we read that a carpenter is not affected by the
material he works on; he merely changes (metaballei monon) from inac-
tivity to activity. Merely changing, without being affected, is not the same
as not changing. So the same choice applies: either (a) the builders switch
to activity is not alteration, but an advance into himself, or (b) it is a
different kind of alteration. When Metaphysics IX 6 presents its distinc-
tion between actuality (energeia) and change (kinsis), seeing and the
exercise of knowledge appear as paradigm examples of actuality in con-
trast to change. But, to repeat, there is no hint of that distinction anywhere
in II 5. On the contrary, the distinction between the two transitions is intro-
duced as a distinction between two kinds of being affected ( paschein, 417b
2) in keeping with the provisional assumption of 417a 14-15 that the
only actuality there is is the incomplete actuality exhibited by a process
of change which is de ned by and directed towards an end-state outside
itself.

contrary to II 5s assumptions so far, that the transition from (1) to (2) is not alter-
ation either.
77
Quaest. III 2, 81.25-6; cf. III 3, 84.16-17, where poin must be a slip (by scribe
or editor) for posn.
78
For defence of the usual view that this transition is what Aristotle means to be
describing, see Appendix 2.
 DE ANIMA II 5 57

It is critically important that we respect Aristotles reticence here.

Remember the warning I gave earlier. The question to ask is: Why does
II 5 not announce that perceiving and the exercise of knowledge are exam-
ples of unquali ed actuality, which is its own end, hence not examples of
change, which is de ned by and directed towards an end-state outside
itself? On the one hand, Aristotle will shortly say it is not good to call it
alteration when a knower exercises their knowledge (417b 8-9). On the
other hand, for perception he ends up saying that, due to the lack of spe-
cialist vocabulary, we have to go on using the language of alteration and
being affected, so please remember not to give those verbs their standard
meaning (418a 1-3). Why tolerate for perception the unclear language
rejected for knowledge? What would Aristotle lose if he simply gave up
the language of alteration and found new terms to characterise perceiving?
These questions would be pressing even if we did not know that else-
where Aristotle distinguishes between unquali ed actuality and the
quali ed (incomplete) actuality of change, and once offers special termi-
nology (energeia vs. kinsis) to mark the difference. Readers who have
that knowledge must be especially careful to let Aristotle not use it here.
Fortunately, some materials for answering our questions are given in II
5, 417b 19-28 the passage which leads up to Aristotles nal decision
on how perceiving is best described. After expounding the triple scheme,
with its several morals, Aristotle returns to perception. In terms of the
triple scheme, the passage from (1) to (2) from lacking to possessing
the power of perception is effected as part of the embryological devel-
opment initiated by the male parent. Consequently, we and other animals
are born with the power of perception already at second potentiality.
Hence actual perceiving, the exercise of our sensory powers, is to be
ranked with (3), the exercise of knowledge (417b 16-19). But, Aristotle
continues (19-20), there is a difference (diapherei de). A difference, that
is, between using ones senses and using ones knowledge.

Differences between knowing and perceiving

The difference has to do with the causality of the two cases. Exercising
knowledge is something we can do at will (417b 19-26), but perceiving
is not up to us; it depends on an external agent, the particular object per-
ceived (417b 20-26). 79 This difference implies another. For the knower, the

79
Both points featured earlier in the chapter (417a 7-8; 27-8), but only now are
they brought together to make the contrast.
58 M.F. BURNYEAT

transition between (2) and (3) is not a passive change, hence not a change
at all as change is understood in Physics III 1-3. For the perceiver, on the
other hand, the transition between (2) and (3) is a passive change, as [1][a]
proposed, and within the framework of Aristotelian physics the only
change it can be, as [1][b] explained, is alteration. If the external objects
of perception are agents (ta poitika, 417b 20), perceivers must be patients
in something like the sense of De Generatione et Corruptione I 7.80
We can now see what Aristotle would lose by giving up the language
of alteration. He would cut the links with the dialectic of De Generatione
et Corruptione I 7 and the categorial analysis of change in Physics III
1-3. He would be set adrift, not merely from the reputable opinions he
began with, but from the entire project of comprehending perception
within the framework of the physics he develops in the De Generatione
et Corruptione and Physics by analysis, systematisation and re nement of
reputable opinions from the earlier tradition. He would have to tear up the
De Anima and start again.
There would also be an epistemological loss. Perception is a power of
receptivity, not of autonomous activity. To perceive is to submit to being
in-formed (as we still say) about the particular objects around us, by the
agency of the very objects we receive information about. Such receptiv-
ity is necessary for perceptions content to be objective truth. It is objec-
tive because it is determined by the particular external object which causes
the perception, rather than by factors internal to the perceiver. Ultimately,
the role of [P/A] is to account for the cognitive accuracy of perception by
treating the determination of perceptual content by the object perceived as
a special case of assimilation or alteration. And for this it is essential to
retain the idea that perception is some sort of passive change with a par-
ticular external cause.
Aristotles solution is to keep the language of alteration, without which
perception would no longer be covered by the pattern of explanation
expounded in De Generatione et Corruptione I 7 and Physics III 1-3, but
to re ne the meaning of alteration so that it signi es a (2)-(3) transition
rather than the ordinary change it signi es elsewhere. To prepare for this,
he must introduce the triple scheme without giving the impression that a
(2)-(3) transition is incompatible with dependence on a particular external
cause. That, I propose, is (part of the reason) why he makes no use of

80
Contrast Rodier ad 417b 20: Les sensibles ne sont pas, proprement parler, les
agents de la sensation, puisque celle-ci nest point une passion, mais le passage lacte
des facult s du sujet. That is not Aristotle but Plotinus, e.g. Enn. III 6.1, IV 6.2.
 DE ANIMA II 5 59

the distinctions he draws elsewhere between unquali ed and incomplete

actuality, energeia and kinsis. (More on this later.)
But the triple scheme is introduced in terms of knowledge. This may
be in deference to its Platonic ancestry,81 but the fact remains that from
417a 22 to 417b 16 the focus is exclusively on knowledge and how to
describe the two transitions involved in its acquisition and use.82 Now if
the point of the exercise is to elaborate a model that can be applied to
perception (from 417b 16 onwards), then the knowers two transitions
must themselves be described in terms compatible with an external cause.
This makes for strain. Aristotle issues several caveats about the lan-
guage he nds himself using: it is not really appropriate to knowledge.
But the chief sign of strain is the tortuous prose. I have already written
two appendices and numerous footnotes to extricate his meaning from var-
ious textual and grammatical thickets. This is one of the densest stretches
of the corpus. I hope that my readers will be encouraged to push on by
the suggestion that the dif culty of Aristotles writing is due to the
dif culty of the philosophical task he has undertaken.

How not to speak of knowing

It is not good (ou kals echei) to call it alteration when a knower (to
phronoun) exercises their knowledge (417b 8-9). Teaching is not the
right (dikaion) word to describe what brings a second potentiality knower
to the actuality of knowing in sense (3) (417b 9-12).83
There is a background to this rather muted criticism. In Aristotles book
lots of people do speak of knowing as alteration. Metaphysics IV 5 quotes
Empedocles, Democritus, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, and Homer to illus-
trate the claim, In general, because they suppose that knowledge ( phronsis)
is perception, and that perception is alteration, they say that what appears

81
Cf. n. 73 above.
82
Recall n. 68 above.
83
At Pl. Theaet. 198e learning from oneself is not right either. Whether we keep
the MSS gon or change it to gein and then delete kat (Torstrik, Ross), the verb
suggests without quite entailing a causal agent distinct from t noon ka fronon
and parallel to the causal agent in the contrasting description at 12-13. What could
the non-teaching causal agent be that brings a knower to the actuality of knowing in
sense (3)? Torstrik suggested a geometrical gure (cf. this A at 417a 29), Philoponus
304.7 t pisthtn t asyhtn. Other scholars tactfully refrain from asking the
question. Torstrik also thought it mad to describe t gon as didaskala (hence his
emendation t gein). I prefer the tortuosity of the MSS.
60 M.F. BURNYEAT

to perception is necessarily true (1009b 12-15). 84 DA III 3 cites similar

evidence for the even more tendentious statement, The ancients say that
knowing (to phronein) and perceiving are the same (427a 21-2). III 3
itself harks back (427a 17-19; 28-9) to the roll-call of earlier opinions in
Book I, and at I 2, 404a 27-b 6, we nd Democritus and Anaxagoras
attacked for equating nous with soul generally, which implies that they
see no difference between perception and higher forms of cognition. In
sum, if perception is alteration, and perception is not different from higher
forms of cognition, all cognition is alteration.
Now the aim of Aristotles review of previous opinions about soul is
to pro t from what was well said (kals eirmena) by his predecessors
and to guard against what was not well said. In the course of Book I sev-
eral highly reputable opinions are rejected as not well said (I 3, 407a
2-3; 5, 411a 24-6). The audit continues in Book II (2, 414a 19-20; 4, 415b
28-6a 3; 416b 8-9). The criticism at 417b 8-9 is thus the latest in a
sequence, couched in similar language to the rest. For knowledge, it
seems, the language of alteration is ruled out.
This is con rmed by the argument. In full, what Aristotle says is, For
this reason [sc. because of the preservative character of (2)-(3) transitions]
it is not good to call it alteration when a knower exercises their knowl-
edge any more than when a builder builds. Contrary perhaps to modern
expectations, and against the grain of ancient prejudice, the builder func-
tions here as the more obvious case of non-alteration. If the builder does
not alter, but merely changes from inactivity to activity, then the knowers
passage to activity is not alteration either. The premise was laid down in
the previous chapter (II 4, 416b 1-3). The new conclusion extends the les-
son from productive skills to higher cognition generally. 85
Such scrupulosity about the language appropriate to exercising knowl-
edge serves to highlight the contrast with Aristotles treatment of the lan-
guage appropriate to perceiving. At 417b 5-7 he gave us a disjunction:

84
Truth follows alteration because Aristotle assumes his own causal scheme (pp.
44-45 above). Hence he must restrict alteration in its re ned meaning to the per-
ception of proper objects, otherwise all perception whatsoever would be true, contrary
to DA III 3, 428b 18-30. The restriction hardly needs to be made explicit because com-
mon sensibles like size and motion do not belong to the category of quality and so
cannot be agents of Aristotelian alteration. For a valuable discussion of these matters,
see Caston.
85
It is instructive to compare the clear appreciation of the arguments structure in
Waterlow p. 187, n. 19, with Alexander Quaest. III 2, 81.27-82.7, and Simplicius
123.10-14, whose prejudices show in their taking the builder to be the less obvious
case because he uses his body. Themistius 56.5 has it right.
 DE ANIMA II 5 61

either (a) not an alteration at all or (b) a different kind of alteration. He

has now shown that for knowing he prefers (a). But throughout the De
Anima and related works perception is classi ed as a sort of alteration
(alloisis tis). I infer that the point of the disjunctive formulation was to
make (b) available for the special case of perception. Perceiving is to be
different both from the exercise of knowledge, which is not alteration at
all, and from the ordinary alterations with which Sorabji and the PreSocratics
have confused it.

A further re nement
Although teaching is not the right word to describe what brings a sec-
ond potentiality knower to the actuality of knowing in sense (3), it is the
right word to describe what brings a rst potentiality knower to the state
of knowing in sense (2). But even here the implication that to teach some-
one is to alter them can be misleading. For the pupil, whom we have hith-
erto considered under the description ignorant, is also a knower in sense
(1).86 When the pupil is so considered, the termini of the (1)-(2) transition
are no longer marked by contrary descriptions, but by the same word
knower, in different but compatible senses. Just this was Aristotles
ground for saying that the (2)-(3) transition is either not an alteration or
a different kind of alteration. By parity of reasoning he can repeat the
move for the (1)-(2) transition: either (a) learning ought not to be called
being affected at all, or (b) there are two types of alteration (417b 12-15).
These are not the same two types of being affected or altered as the
two distinguished at 417b 1-7.87 There ordinary alteration, due to contra-
riety, served as foil to preservation. Here it is foil to what I shall call
development.

86
At 417b 12 k dunmei ntow (sc. pistmonow) refers to rst potentiality, whereas
at b 10 the same phrase signi ed second potentiality. Torstrik excised the later occur-
rence as ungrammatical, a scribes erroneous repetition. He was right that t k
dunmei ntow manynon is oddly phrased, wrong to apply the knife. The oddity
con rms Aristotles determination to treat the two potentialities and the two transi-
tions as parallel.
87
Hence the textual crux at 417b 14: Should sper erhtai be printed, or left out
on grounds of falsehood? Hayduck p. 11 was the rst to say, delenda videntur, quo-
niam diserte quidem nihil tale supra scriptum videmus. But this is to understate the
case for omission. Not only has Aristotle not previously said, or even hinted, that the
(1)-(2) transition is not psxein, but 417a 30-b 3 deliberately treats it as psxein in
contrast to the (2)-(3) transition. Some respectable MSS omit the words, as do Rodier,
62 M.F. BURNYEAT

Ordinary alteration Aristotle now describes, less vividly than at 417b

3, as change towards negative conditions (417b 15). What he means is
the familiar story we read before. Alteration is coming to be qualitatively
unlike ones present self. At the end of the process, what was e.g. cold is
not cold, but warm: the negation is not 88 signi es that one quality has
been replaced by another. Alteration, as we saw earlier, really alters.
Such alteration may well be temporary. Warmth, being a potentiality
of the same type as the cold which preceded it, is a potentiality to be cold
again. In normal circumstances you can expect a warm thing to change
back to cold. That is why, when Aristotle formulates the contrast between
two types of alteration at 417b 15-16, the results of ordinary alteration
like warmth or cold are termed diatheseis (his word for temporary condi-
tions), but the results of the (1)-(2) transition to knowing in sense (2) are
called hexeis (his word for rmly xed dispositional states).89 In normal
circumstances you can expect a knower not to change back to ignorance.
This is not to deny that knowers can lose their knowledge through dis-
use, forgetfulness, disease, etc. but to insist that knowledge is not a
potentiality to be ignorant as before in the way warmth is a potentiality
to be cold again. 90 Knowledge, like virtue, like life itself, is a potentiality
of a different type.
That, of course, is the thought with which we started drawing distinc-
tions concerning potentiality and actuality. What we are now discovering

Hicks, Smith, Ross editio maior, Siwek. No commentator witnesses for them until
Sophonias 67.24 in the 14th century, long after the MSS they appear in. The only pub-
lished defence I know for printing sper erhtai is De Corte pp. 193-4 (followed in
the translations of Tricot and Barbotin), according to whom the phrase applies, not to
the whole thought 417b 12-4, but more narrowly to toi od psxein faton and
most especially to od: the (1)-(2) transition also is a case where it is appropriate to
say, as was said about the (2)-(3) transition earlier, This is not being affected either.
The outcome is much the same as it would be if sper erhtai could be paraphrased
by parity of reasoning. But I nd it hard to take od here otherwise than as not at
all (note the variant odn), and easy to imagine a reader writing sper erhtai in
the margin in an effort to chart the course of an intricate argument. After all, Ross
remains unclear enough to suppose that sper erhtai would change from false to
true if, following a suggestion of Frster, was put before instead of after the words.
88
sterhtikw in its standard logical meaning = pofatikw (see Bonitz sv.).
strhsiw as that from which change begins is not to the point, nor, pace Them. 56.6-
12, Philop. 304.16-22 and Rodier, is change to strhsiw in the sense of a bad condition
like blindness or disease. What is needed is a calm version of 417b 3s fyor tiw.
89
The contrast between diyesiw and jiw is most fully developed at Cat. 8, 8b 26-
9a 13.
90
Recall n. 38: Aristotelian potentiality is more than bare possibility.
 DE ANIMA II 5 63

is that the difference extends to rst potentiality as well. That too is a dif-
ferent type of potentiality from the warmths and colds of ordinary alter-
ation. Aristotle does not spell out the implications of the difference. We
must do it for ourselves.
If being a knower in sense (2) is not the negative of being a knower
in sense (1), the latter potentiality does not have to be lost, used up or
destroyed when knowledge is acquired. Nor can it be lost in the ordi-
nary way if being a knower in sense (1) is an intrinsic part of human
nature (417a 27); otherwise, it would be death to gain knowledge. 91 Hence,
as the ancient commentators saw, if gaining knowledge is a change at all,
it should be described as developing or perfecting the nature one already
has. 92 Whereas ordinary alteration involves attributes accidental to a
things nature, Aristotle speaks of the type of alteration that results in epis-
temic states (hexeis) as a change towards nature (417b 16). There is a
sense in which the learner, as well as the fully formed expert, quali es
for that lyrical phrase an advance into itself.93 Indeed it is Aristotles
view that the potentialities a biologist has to deal with are in general such
that a thing can be nearer or further from itself rather as, if you are a
sleeping geometer, you are further from yourself than you are when awake
but not theorising (GA II 1, 735a 11-7).
So much for option (b): distinguishing ordinary alteration and devel-
opment. The alternative (a) is to say that gaining knowledge is not an
alteration, not a case of being affected at all. Elsewhere, at Physics VII
3, 247b 9-8a 9, this is the option Aristotle prefers.94 He prefers it on the
ground that gaining knowledge is in truth a coming to rest, i.e. a cessa-
tion of change, rather than a change. Let me pause to wonder what this
might mean.95

91
Recall n. 73 and Dionysodorus threat to Cleinias. That a knowers rst poten-
tiality is preserved was appreciated by Plotinus, Enn. II 5.2.23-6. In general, if rst
potentialities were not preserved, Aristotle could not say that the only body which is
potentially alive is one that is actually alive (II 1, 412b 25-6).
92
Perfecting is standard in the ancient commentators, implying that ka tn fsin
is epexegetic of tw jeiw: Alex. Quaest. III 2, 82.13-17; 3, 84.27; Them. 56.12; Philop.
304.24. For the reverse epexegesis, cf. Met. XII 3, 1070a 11-12: d fsiw tde ti
ka jiw tiw ew n.
93
Philoponus 304.26-8 agrees.
94
Accordingly, Simplicius 123.34-5 assumes a licence to draw on Physics VII in
interpreting this part of DA II 5.
95
For antecedents, see Pl. Phdo 96b, Crat. 437ab. For help with the peculiarities
of the argument in Physics VII 3 and its wider context, see Wardy pp. 209-39. Like
him (pp. 86-7 et passim), I do not make the standard assumption that Physics VII is
an early work.
64 M.F. BURNYEAT

At rst sight the idea seems bizarre, especially if the example to hand
is an individual item of knowledge such as knowing that 7 + 5 = 12 or
knowing how to spell Theaetetus. Why not keep to the view we met ear-
lier at 417a 31-2, that learning is a series of changes from ignorance to
knowledge of this or that aspect of the subject under study?
But consider the examples used to illustrate the triple scheme: knowing
arithmetic and knowing ones letters. The question When did you acquire
the ability to read and write? or When did you get to know the multi-
plication table?, like the question When did you form the habit of drink-
ing tea in the mornings?, could be answered When I was ve or In
1994, but not, as could be the case with individual items of knowledge,
On my fth birthday, let alone At 8.00 a.m. on Tuesday 13 September,
1994. Just as a habit begins when you stop doing things differently, so
knowledge of the whole subject begins when you stop making mistakes,
when the last bit of ignorance is changed to knowledge. While the last
mistake and its correction are determinate, exactly datable events, that
they are indeed the last can be veri ed only in retrospect some indeter-
minate time later. When knowledge is conceived as the mastery of a whole
complex domain, it becomes reasonable to invoke the dictum There is no
coming to be of being at rest (Ph. VII 3, 247b 12) to support the claim
that gaining knowledge is not a change but the cessation of change.
But now it seems unreasonable not to say the same about individual
bits of knowledge: knowing that 7 + 5 = 12, knowing how to spell
Theaetetus. They are hexeis too (417a 32) habitus as the Latin trans-
lators say. They too begin when you stop making mistakes, when the last
false judgement on the matter gives way to a consistent pattern of correct
judgement. In this case what is true of the whole domain of knowledge
is true of its parts: the passage from (1) to (2) is not an alteration, because
it is not a change but the cessation of change.
None of this is on display in De Anima II 5. All more reason to infer,
as before, that the point of the disjunctive formulation Either (a) not a
being affected at all or (b) there are two types of alteration is to make
(b) available for the special case of perception. The considerations I put
together to help explain why (a) might be Aristotles preferred option for
the passage to knowing in sense (2) could not possibly be applied to an
animals acquisition of sensory powers in the period between conception
and birth.96 That is undeniably the result of change. It is the end-result of

96
EN II 1, 1103a 26-b 2, expressly forbids applying the model of knowledge-acqui-
sition to the acquisition of sensory powers; cf. also Met. IX 5, 1047b 31-5.
 DE ANIMA II 5 65

the series of changes by which the form of the male parent is taken on
by the female material so as to constitute an animal, i.e. a perceiver. It is
the rst change ( prt metabol, 417b 17) in the strong sense that the
embryo is rst an animal when perception rst occurs (GA V 1, 778b
33-4). The previously plant-like organism was a rst potentiality per-
ceiver. The transition to being a second potentiality perceiver is not the
coming to be of a new entity, but neither is it a straightforward case of
an existing subject exchanging one quality for another. Rather, the sub-
ject arrives at a new phase of its own existence. Such a change towards
nature, a real advance into itself, is no ordinary alteration. 97

Recapitulation
It is time to take stock again. De Anima II 5 has separated three different
things under the title alteration. I shall give them numbers and names:
(Alt1) ordinary alteration is the replacement of one quality by a contrary quality
from the same range;
(Alt2) unordinary alteration is the development of the dispositions which perfect
a things nature;
(Alt3) extraordinary alteration is one of these dispositions passing from inactiv-
ity to exercise.

Aristotle rst distinguished (Alt1) and (Alt3), with learning as his example
of (Alt1). Then he distinguished (Alt1) and (Alt2), with learning now an
example of (Alt2). The ultimate aim was to exhibit an animals acquiring
of sensory powers as a case of (Alt2), their exercise as a case of (Alt3).
Neither is the ordinary alteration (Alt1) that we studied in De Generatione
et Corruptione I 7 and Physics III 1-3. Biology often requires more re ned
notions of alteration than were needed for the elemental level of De
Generatione et Corruptione I 7 and the very general discussion of Physics
III 1-3.
But if we are as mindful of the lessons of those chapters as Aristotle
expects us to be, we will see that a distinction between three types of
alteration implies a corresponding distinction between three different types

97
The de nition of alteration at Ph V 2, 226a 26-9, explicitly excludes change
involving t poin n t os&, i.e. the differentia. Is Aristotle thinking ahead to the
unordinary alterations involved in generation? Burnyeat Foundations offers several
examples where GC I thinks ahead to the conceptual needs of other physical works,
including those of DA II 5.
66 M.F. BURNYEAT

of potentiality. Alteration is the actuality of the alterable qua alterable (Ph.

III 1, 201a 11-12; p. 42 above). If there are three such alterations, there
must be three types of potentiality for the three alterations to be the actu-
alities of:
(Pot1) the ordinary potentiality of a hot thing to be cold or of a cold thing to be
hot;
(Pot2) the rst potentiality, grounded in a things nature, to be a fully developed
thing of its kind, capable of exercising the dispositions which perfect its nature;
(Pot3) the second potentiality of a developed thing to remain a fully developed
thing of its kind by exercising, and thereby preserving, the dispositions which
perfect its nature.98

Pulling all the threads together, we could draw up the following schedule
of actualities:
(Act1) is the actuality of (Pot1), and proceeds towards the replacement of (Pot1)
by a contrary potentiality of the same kind;
(Act2) is the actuality of (Pot2), and develops the dispositions which perfect the
subject as a thing of its kind;
(Act3) is the actuality of (Pot3), and contributes to the continued preservation of
the dispositions which perfect the subject as a thing of its kind.

Aristotle does not pull all the threads together in this way. Having dis-
tinguished different types of potentiality, he does not move on to differ-
ent types of actuality, but asks us to be content with the distinctions he
has drawn so far (417b 29-30). Thereby he avoids a number of compli-
cations which would delay his getting into the detailed study of percep-
tion that II 5 is meant to introduce. In particular, he avoids having to take
cognisance of the fact that we are still speaking as if being affected and
being changed and actual exercising (energein) are the same thing (417a
14-16). We have made distinctions, but in terms which leave unchallenged
the idea that (Alt1), (Alt2 ) and (Alt3) are all examples of change (kinsis)
in the sense of Physics III 1-3: actuality (energeia) which is incomplete
in the sense that it is directed towards a result beyond itself (417a 16;
p. 42 above). The very words alteration and being affected imply as
much, especially when II 5 is read in proximity to De Generatione et
Corruptione I 7 and Physics III 1-3.

98
To the texts already mentioned add II 4, 416b 14-17, on the preservative func-
tion of the nutritive soul.
 DE ANIMA II 5 67

Now elsewhere Aristotle insists that seeing, for example, is not incom-
plete in the sense just given. It is complete at every moment, i.e. it is not
intrinsically directed towards any result besides and beyond itself; its goal
is simply to see what is there to be seen (Met. IX 8, 1050a 23-5; EN X
4, 1174a 13-b 14; EE II 1, 1219a 16). On several occasions he cites a
logical rule that holds for perception verbs like to see and to hear, as
well as for verbs like to contemplate which refer to the exercise of the-
oretical knowledge: at the same time one fs and has fed (SE 22, 178a
9-28; Sens. 6, 446b 2-6; Met. IX 6, 1048b 23-34). The idea is that there
is no moment of fing at which the goal of fing is not achieved. 99 This
does not immediately show that seeing is a counter-example to II 5s pro-
visional assumption that being affected, being changed and actual exer-
cising (energein) are the same thing. For (Alt3) is the transition to seeing,
not seeing as such. But it does show there are a number of issues in II 5
that further distinctions might address. In particular, we would like to
know more about the relation between seeing and the transition to seeing.
Meanwhile, Aristotle offers the alternative of saying that (Alt3) is not
alteration at all (417b 6). He offers the same alternative for (Alt2) (417b
13-14), where the illustrative example is learning. But in Metaphysics IX
6 learning is classed as change or kinsis: it is as incomplete, because
intrinsically directed to a result beyond itself, as slimming and building
(1048b 24-5; 29). As already mentioned (p. 49), Metaphysics IX 6 is inno-
cent of the distinction between rst and second potentiality and so has no
basis for separating (Alt2) from ordinary alteration (Alt1). It is safe to con-
clude that Metaphysics IX 6 is not the place where Aristotle undertakes
the further analysis that would complete the process of re nement begun
in De Anima II 5.
Nor is Metaphysics IX 8, 1050a 23-b 2, where seeing, an activity that
contains its own goal, is contrasted with building, which aims at a prod-
uct beyond itself. That too is innocent of the distinction between rst and
second potentiality. Remember that Physics VIII 4 is the only other place
in the extant corpus where the distinction between rst and second poten-
tiality can be found (p. 48 above). If there are any further re nements,
they must be sought within the ambit of the De Anima.

99
More accurately, there is no moment at which the immediate goal of fying is
not achieved. Aristotle does not deny that the goal of seeing and other cases of per-
ceiving may itself be the means to some further goal: Met. I 1, 980a 2-6, EN I 4,
1096b 16-19.
68 M.F. BURNYEAT

In search of more
This brings me back to De Anima III 7, 431a 4-7, mentioned earlier
(p. 43). III 7 is a collection of fragmentary scraps often thought to have
been put together by an early editor.100 I prefer to treat it as a sort of
folder kept by Aristotle himself for storing bits and pieces which might
in due course be integrated into the treatise.101 But whatever its origin and
status, the passage in question shows how Aristotle may once have
thought to continue the process of re nement begun in II 5:
In the case of sense, on the one hand,102 clearly the perceiver already was poten-
tially what the object perceived makes it to be actually; for it [the perceiver]103
is not affected or altered. This must therefore be a different kind of change
(kinsis) [or: some kind of thing different from change].104 For change is [or: was
agreed to be]105 the actuality of the incomplete. Actuality unquali ed, the actual-
ity of what is completed/ perfected (tetelesmenou), is different.

Here, as in Physics III 2, Aristotle makes explicit what other texts merely
imply, that incomplete actuality contrasts with a different sort of actual-
ity: actuality unquali ed, actuality simpliciter, or, as the ancient com-
mentators put it, complete actuality. In effect, he takes up the option of

100
So Torstrik, followed by Ross, who is in turn followed by Hamlyn.
101
Burnyeat Map chap. 3 introduces the concept of an Aristotelian folder to help
account for the peculiarities of Met. VIII 3-5.
102
There is no d to answer this mn. The fragment is itself a torso.
103
Menn p. 110 n. 49 is exceptional in taking the asyhtn as the subject of the
verbs, not the asyhtikn, so that Aristotle argues from the objects not changing to
the conclusion that the perceiver is the passive partner in the encounter. It is true that
the object does not change (otherwise perception would always mislead), but the fact
that the perceiver is changed is not in dispute and needs no argument. The dispute is
about the manner of its changing, which our fragment (as traditionally understood)
begins to clarify. Smiths translation best captures the direction of inference indicated
by gr: from the absence of alteration to the reason why no alteration is needed, viz.
the sense is already potentially what the object makes it to be actually. Hicks and the
French translators get much the same effect by saying that the object merely brings
the potential into actual exercise. (As before, I render t asyhtikn by perceiver:
nn. 41, 65 above.)
104
So, rather plausibly, Ross and Hamlyn.
105
A number of MSS omit n after nrgeia at 7. It is very wrong if editors who
print the word (= all editors save Ross) then cite II 5 as the implied back-reference
(so Rodier, Smith, Hett). There is nothing in II 5 about the incompleteness of the sub-
ject of change. Supposing n does refer to another text, not just to established doc-
trine, a better candidate is Ph. III 2, 201b 32-3, to which (as we saw) II 5 itself refers.
That does mention the incompleteness of the subject of change.
 DE ANIMA II 5 69

saying that the transition to perceiving is not an alteration at all, but an

advance into oneself, a perfected disposition springing to its proper actu-
ality. The transition may still (depending on how we translate) count as
some sort of change (kinsis), but if it does, it is a different kind of change
from those of Physics III 1-3 because a perceiver is not altered when they
perceive something; like the builder of De Anima II 4, they merely switch
from inactivity to exercise, from potentiality to the actuality of the power
of perception. One commentator hails this passage as Aristotle discarding
at last much of what he had said earlier about perception being some sort
of alteration. Another denounces it, for that very reason, as an interpola-
tion. 106 Both reactions are too quick. We do not know what Aristotle
would have done with the option he is beginning to develop. All we have
is the one brief fragment, either because Aristotle wrote no more or
because the continuation was lost. In the extant corpus, II 5s process of
re nement is nowhere carried to completion.107
In this situation all we can do is observe Aristotle at work in II 5 and
speculate about why he takes the re nement no further. He asks his read-
ers to join with him, initially, in speaking as if being affected and being
changed and actual exercising are the same.108 This is an invitation to
cooperate, not an attempt to deny, or to disguise, the difference between
complete and incomplete actuality. It is a request to readers who do have
some sense of what would be involved in a full clari cation to keep that
knowledge in abeyance for a while, so that II 5 can set out such distinc-
tions as are relevant for the purpose to hand. I have already proposed that
the immediate purpose is to do justice to the receptivity of perception (p. 45,
p. 58). On that, more shortly. I want rst to add a more distant goal.
Look again at the passage (417b 29-418a 1) where Aristotle warns that
the process of re nement is to remain incomplete. Two types of poten-
tiality are mentioned. Clearly, they are the two potentialities of the triple
scheme: (Pot2) and (Pot3). A boys eligibility for being a general is con rmed,
not cancelled, when he reaches the age at which he can actually be
elected.109 (Pot1) has been left behind. When Aristotle says that we must

106
Hamlyn ad loc.; Webb p. 27, n. 14.
107
I suspect that a stronger statement is in order: it was not carried further in any
work available to Simplicius and Philoponus but not to us. Cf. n. 63 above.
108
Recall n. 47s defence of the reading lgvmen.
109
I suppose this to be a genuine analogy in which nmow is invoked to illustrate
fsiw and dnasyai refers to legal capacity. This gives force and point to the phrase
tn n lik& nta. The age in question is not known for certain, but at Athens it was
probably at least 30 (Rhodes pp. 510-11). Thus the analogue for a rst potentiality
70 M.F. BURNYEAT

go on speaking of the perceiver as being affected and altered (418a 2-3),

Sorabjis ordinary alteration is not even a candidate for being the sort of
alteration he has in view. Only (Alt2) and (Alt3) are pertinent, the one for
the acquisition of sensory powers, the other for their exercise.
They continue to be pertinent until De Anima III 4, where perception
becomes the model for knowing, instead of the other way round, and the
acquisition of knowledge is treated as a special case of being affected
(paschein ti, 429a 14-15; b 24-6; 29).110 The word alteration is not used,
but learning is analysed, in terms strongly reminiscent of [P/A], as an
assimilation in which the intellect comes to be actually, instead of poten-
tially, like its object; in other words, as the unordinary alteration (Alt2) it
was said to be in II 5.
Thus II 5 sets the framework for studying both the most basic cogni-
tive capacity of soul and its highest. At birth perception is a second poten-
tiality, intellect a rst potentiality. Both are to be included in Aristotelian
physics. However, unlike modern proponents of naturalized epistemol-
ogy, Aristotle is acutely concerned to x the limits of physical science,
lest no scope be left for rst philosophy.
The locus classicus for the worry is De Partibus Animalium I 1, 641a
32-b 12, where Aristotle argues that if intellect (nous) falls within the
scope of physics, so too do its objects, the intelligibles (ta nota), and
physics will aspire to be a theory of everything. His response is that
physics, natural science, does not deal with all soul, but only with soul
that is a principle of change: Not all soul is nature, phusis (641b 9-10).111
Physics extends as far as change extends and no further (Met. VI 1; cf.

perceiver (i.e. a newly conceived embryo in the womb prior to the rst change of
417b 15-16) is a newly born male whose legal standing is such that, if and when he
reaches the stipulated age, he will acquire the further capacity for a passive change,
being elected, into a busily active of ce. A non-legal acquired capacity for general-
ship would presumably be some skill or experience such as Nichomachides boasts of
at Xen. Mem. III 4.1; being of a certain age is no doubt a necessary condition for that
sort of quali cation, but it is hardly suf cient.
110
On psxein ti Hicks ad 429a 14 rightly recalls his note ad 410a 25, cited above
n. 25. Aristotles addition ti toioton teron (429a 14-15) con rms that it is a very
special case.
111
Does this exclude all now, or only the active exercise of second potentiality
now? If the former, PA is inconsistent not only with DA, but also with the Physics
attitude to learning. The related worry at GA II 3, 736b 5-8, is answered by the famous
statement that now enters yrayen (27-9), from outside: a statement which can per-
fectly well refer, not to a magic baptism, but to second potentiality now acquired
through the agency of a teacher.
 DE ANIMA II 5 71

Ph. II 2). For nature, the object of physics, is a principle of changing and
resting (Ph. II 1, 192b 21-2).
I can now present the hypothesis which explains, I believe, both the
intricacy of II 5 and its reticences. The reason why II 5 takes the
re nement process no further than it does, why only incomplete actuality
is considered, why the discussion is full of quali cations and alternatives,
why the writing is so tortuous, and nally, why this paper has to be so
long, is that Aristotelian physics is by de nition the science of things that
change. If physics is to study the (2)-(3) transition involved in perceiving
and the (1)-(2) transition involved in learning, it must treat them as types
of change, where change means passive change. That, I propose, is why
II 5 distinguishes two special types of alteration, (Alt3) and (Alt2), while
acknowledging, in the disjunctions of 417b 6-7 and 12-15, the legitimacy
of perspectives from which neither would be alteration or any kind of pas-
sive change.
I do not mean that physics cannot study the active agency which brings
change about. Of course it can, and must, do that. But Aristotle has good
epistemological reasons for putting the two transitions on the passive side
of this correlation. He wants both second potentiality perception and rst
potentiality intellect to be powers of receptivity, rather than of autonomous
activity. 112 Both are capacities for being in-formed by an object, a sensible
form in the rst case, an intelligible form in the second. Both perceptual
content and conceptual content must be determined from outside if the
content is to be objective truth.113 Aristotle holds strong views on this
determination being something that occurs naturally as part of the life
cycle of animate beings, both the rational ones and the non-rational per-
ceivers. His task in II 5 and III 4 is to re ne the basic explanatory notions
of his physics to the point where the attainment of truth, by sense-per-
ception or by intellect, can be accounted for as some sort of natural phys-
ical change.
But the further re nements undertaken in III 4 are another subject, for
another and more controversial discussion. 114 All I need say here is that

112
The key terms are dektikn, dxesyai , linked to the notion of form without mat-
ter rst introduced at II 12, 424a 18-19; cf. 424b 1-2; III 2, 425b 23-4; 12, 434a 29-
30. The parallel is drawn for the intellect at III 4, 429a 15-18. Remember that it is
proper (dion) to a human to be zon pistmhw dektikn, an animal receptive of
knowledge (Top. V 4, 132b 2-3, et al.).
113
For the parallel, see III 6, 430b 27-30, disregarding Rosss daggers.
114
Note especially psxein p to nohto (429a 14) instead of the teacher nor-
mally presupposed as the agent of assimilation (cf. the surprising suggestion at Met.
72 M.F. BURNYEAT

for the highest, as for the lowest, types of cognition Aristotle intends to
make serious use of the assimilation story to explain the cognitive accu-
racy of sense and intellect. The word must (anagkaion) in We must go
on using being affected and being altered (418a 2-3) is the must of
hypothetical necessity: those verbs really are needed for the explanatory
goals of the De Anima. Aristotle is not normally shy of inventing new ter-
minology. If he refrains from invention here, preferring to re ne existing
notions, it is for a reason. New words could not draw on the explanatory
power of the familiar theorems from De Generatione et Corruptione I 7
and Physics III 1-3.
This takes us back to the problem raised earlier (p. 67) about how the
transition to seeing, an example of (Alt3), relates to seeing as such, which
is complete at every moment. Seeing is the end-state without which the
transition would not count as any sort of alteration. But it is an end-state
instantaneously achieved. When Aristotle says there is no coming to be
(genesis) of seeing, any more than of a geometrical point or arithmetical
unit (Sens. 6, 446b 3-4; EN X 4, 1174b 12-13), he means that there is no
time-consuming process that precedes the seeing. What precedes is noth-
ing but the animals enduring capacity to see: in II 5s terms, a second
potentiality. (Alt3) is as limiting a case of alteration as ingenuity could
devise.
But I hope to have made clear that Aristotle has theoretical reasons for
devising it. The language of alteration directs attention to the causal agent
responsible for getting itself perceived. Perception is not up to us, and
it is cognitive of sensible qualities in our environment precisely because
it is not up to us. II 5s careful analysis of the transition to perceiving
helps to ensure that from now on, when we meet simpler statements which
ignore the transition and describe perceiving itself as alteration or being
affected,115 we hear them as: Perception is special sort of qualitative
change induced by the actual quality it is a perception of . Provided this
is understood, the (instantaneous) transition to perceiving and perceiving

I 1, 980b 21-5, that animals without hearing do not learn). Ph. VII 3, 248a 2-3 is a
partial exception: remzetai prw nia mn p tw fsevw atw, prw nia d p
llvn. More considerable is DA III 4, 429b 9: mayen e`ren. The difference
between teacher and intelligible form disappears when we view the teacher, in the per-
spective of Ph. III 1-3, as bringing the form to the learner as the builder brings the
form of house to the bricks.
115
Examples from later within DA: II 11, 424a 1-2; 12, 424a 22-4; III 12, 435a 1
(cf. Insomn. 2, 459b 4-5). Examples from elsewhere (to be discussed below): MA 7,
701b 17-18; Ph. VII 2, 244b 10-11.
 DE ANIMA II 5 73

can be allowed to merge. And it can be left to other works (Ethics and
Metaphysics), where the causality of perception is less important, to make
capital of the point that there is no moment of perceiving at which its goal
is not achieved.

Conclusion
We may now return to perception for the decisive announcement at 418a
1-3:
Since we have no names to mark the difference between them [sc. rst and sec-
ond potentiality],116 but our distinguishing has shown that they are different and
in what way they are different, we must go on using being affected and being
altered as if these words < still> had their standard meaning.117

The long delayed statement of [P/A] follows immediately (418a 3-6),

linked by the back-reference as has been said to the original formulation
of the assimilation story [A] at 417a 18-20.118 But what it means for the
perceiver to be potentially such as the sensible object is actually, to be
affected and altered by the sensible object, so as to be assimilated to it
all of that is dramatically different from what it would have been before.
New meanings of potentiality have been distinguished, and we have seen
how they bring with them new, non-standard meanings of being affected
and being altered. Hence there will be new meanings also for assi-
milation and its speci c varieties: being made red, being warmed,

116
What is missing is not one name for the difference (Hicks: as this distinction
has no word to mark it), but two names, one for each of the items distinguished
(Barbotin: puisque ces diff rentes acceptations nont pas re u de noms distincts).
Presumably, this remark of Aristotles was the cue for the later tradition to come up
with the terms rst and second potentiality. Carteron translates Ph. VIII 4, 255b
9-10, as if that (admittedly suggestive) text already had the terms, but to my knowl-
edge they are rst attested in Alexander (cf. Quaest. III 3, 84.34-6; 85.25-6).
117
w kuroiw nmasin is usually translated as if these words were the proper
terms. But the references in Bonitz, sv. kriow show that a krion noma is a word
used in its ordinary, standard, or accepted meaning, as opposed to a word that requires
explanation (glssa) or a word used in a transferred meaning (metafor). Either way
the implication of w, as earlier at 417a 14, is negative: perception is not properly
called psxein and lloiosyai , or (on the rendering I prefer) is so called only in a
non-standard meaning of the verbs. I write go on using to bring out the point that
the novelty is not the verbs, which have been in use since the beginning of the chap-
ter, but (as the ancient commentators agree) their non-standard meaning.
118
Cf. n. 42 above.
74 M.F. BURNYEAT

sounding Middle C. By the end of II 5 the familiar theorems from De

Generatione et Corruptione I 7 and Physics III 1-3 have been lled with
a whole range of new meanings undreamed of in earlier philosophy.
The result is that perception is alloisis tis in the alienans sense, an
alteration of a sort: an alteration from which you cannot expect every-
thing you would normally expect from alteration. You cannot expect the
perceiver to be really altered, really reddened at the eye; seeing red is not
at all like a case of internal bleeding. You cannot even expect the alter-
ation to take time, as ordinary changes do (Ph. V 1, 224a 35).
Nevertheless, you can still expect from perceiving some of the things
you would normally expect from alteration. The term has not lost all con-
nection with the lessons of the other physical works. You can expect this
type of alteration to be caused by a sensible quality, which determines the
qualitative character of the effect in the perceiver in such a manner that
the perceiver is in some new sense assimilated to it. To see a red object is
to be reddened by it in a way (cf. the alienans quali cation estin hs at
III 2, 425b 2-3).119 To feel the warmth of a re is to be warmed by it, but
not in the way the cold room or your chilled hands are warmed by it.120
Naturally, readers will ask: But what are these new ways of being red-
dened and warmed? II 5 does not say. Our chapter is a general introduc-
tion to the study of perception and cognition. It distinguishes between the
two non-standard types of alteration that are pertinent to the De Anima,
(Alt3) and (Alt2), by contrasting each in turn with ordinary alteration (Alt1).
The main positive message of II 5 is that the new meanings exist: [P/A]s
description of perceiving as assimilation is to be understood as referring

119
Webb p. 38 with n. 101 resists the alienans interpretation here and translates it
is true that it is coloured, on the grounds that LSJ and Bonitz cite no case of stin
w = pvw in a genuine Aristotelian work. Evidently, he wants a case of stin w by
itself, like stin pou at Pol. IV 5, 1299b 28, as opposed to sti mn w . . . sti d
w o. An unreasonable demand, but easily met by reading Aristotle, e.g. Met. VII 10,
1035a 14 with 2-4; X 9, 1058b 16.
120
The idea that perception of hot and cold is intuitively a favourable, perhaps the
most favourable case, for the Sorabji interpretation should dissolve on inspection of
PA II 2, 648b 11-649b 8, where Aristotles discussion of the many meanings of hot
begins (648b 12-15) with a distinction between imparting heat and being hot to the
touch (= tn fn yermanein, 649b 4-5). This text establishes beyond question that
in Aristotles mind heating the room and heating the touch are two quite different
things; Johansen pp. 276-280 has a good discussion of the point, while Burnyeat Aquinas
presents Aquinas as an Aristotelian thinker who accepts that perceiving heat is always
accompanied by actual warming, but not that the warming underlies the perception as
matter to form.
 DE ANIMA II 5 75

to extraordinary alteration (Alt3), a (2)-(3) transition, and hence to a new

way of being reddened or warmed. If you want to know more about what
such assimilations amount to, read on. Many of the answers are in II
7-11, where Aristotle studies the individual senses one by one, with II 12
the general summing up. But he continues to add to the picture in Book
III (III 3, 428b 10ff., on appearance, phantasia, is a vital contribution) and
in the De Sensu. If we respect the authors order of presentation, we will
learn soon enough.
In a study of II 7-8121 I have argued that according to the Aristotelian
theory of perception the effect that colours and sounds have on the rele-
vant sense-organ is the same as their effect on the medium. Suppose Aristotle
sees a red object. The effect of the red colour is a quasi-alteration, as I
there call it, in which neither the medium (obviously) nor the eye ( pace
Sorabji) turns red, but red appears to Aristotle through the medium at his
eye. All Sorabjis scientists would see, given an instrument for looking
into the transparent jelly of Aristotles eye, is: the red object Aristotle sees
(if they look from behind) or the esh around the transparency. Just as
the power of vision is preserved by its exercise, so the eye preserves its
neutral state of transparency when Aristotle sees rst green, then red.122
Precisely because transparency lies outside the colour range, transparent
stuff is the ideal material base for a second potentiality which is to be pre-
served, not lost, on each and every occasion of perceiving. Precisely
because transparency is a standing material condition for eyes to have the
power of sight, and analogous conditions apply to the other sense organs,
these organs must remain perceptibly neutral throughout. Thus the trans-
parent stuff within the eye would not even exhibit to scienti c observa-
tion the sort of borrowed colours one sees on a TV screen, a white wall
illuminated by red light, or a sea whose surface viewed from a distance
shows a tinted sheen; borrowed colours are no easier to see through than
inherent colours. 123 All that happens when Aristotle sees red is that (to use

121
Burnyeat, Remarks.
122
In both sense and intellect pyeia is a condition of receptivity: III 4, 429a 15-
18; 29-31. With svthra at 417b 3 compare svzmenon in the description of the organ
of taste at II 10, 422b 4, and Magee pp. 318-9 in contrast to Broackes pp. 66-7.
123
Thus II 5 does, as I hoped p. 31, help us to understand the importance of the
neutrality of Aristotelian sense-organs. The TV analogy has often been put to me as
an example of (Alt3) compatible with literal coloration. The seas sheen, discussed at
Sens. 3, 439b 1-5, is Sorabjis starting point for his new approach in Aristotle on
Sensory Processes.
76 M.F. BURNYEAT

a more recent jargon) he is appeared to redly by an actually red object,

and is so appeared to because the object is red. This gives the sense in
which he is reddened by the red object, and comes (instantaneously) to be
like it. The objects redness appears to him. He is aware of red.
We should be careful not to think of Aristotles awareness of red and
the reds appearing to him as two events, one of which causes the other.
Physics III 3 lays it down that correlative cases of acting on and being
affected (e.g. teaching and learning) are one and the same event, taking
place in the patient, described from different points of view. And this
physical principle is invoked in the key doctrinal passage DA III 2, 425b
26-426a 26, to give the result that Aristotles seeing red is identical with
the red objects action of appearing to him. The cause of this doubly
described but single event is the objects redness.
Of course, Aristotle might be appeared to redly because of some inter-
nal condition or disease; this might happen even when he has a red object
in view. But that would not be seeing red: Appearance is not the same
thing as perception (Met. IV 5, 1010b 3). Seeing red is being appeared
to redly by a red object in the external environment, because it is actu-
ally red.124 Proper object perception is always true. Extraordinary alter-
ation is an accurate awareness of objectively real sensible qualities in the
environment. That is how the re nements of II 5 allow the general prin-
ciples of Aristotelian physics to account for the basic cognitive function
of soul.

Two controversial morals

The Sorabji interpretation combines two claims: (i) that ordinary alteration
is what Aristotle requires for perception, (ii) that its role is to stand to
awareness as matter to form.125 I have shown that a careful reading of II
5 makes (i) untenable. I then went beyond II 5 to argue, with the help of
a previous study of II 7-8, that the alteration relevant to perception, extra-

124
The because-clause could be used to rule out the case of a white object appear-
ing red because it is bathed in a red light, or grey because it is seen at a distance.
Aristotle touches on such issues at Met. IV 5, 1010b 3ff., but he nowhere speci es
further conditions external to the perceiver (besides the presence of light) for seeing
red.
125
References for (i) in n. 3 above; for (ii), see Body and Soul pp. 53-6; Intentionality
pp. 208-9. (i) is a position that Sorabji shares with Slakeys well-known paper, (ii) an
addition which avoids Slakeys conclusion that ordinary alteration (the eyes going lit-
erally and visibly red, etc.) is all there is to perception on Aristotles account.
 DE ANIMA II 5 77

ordinary alteration (Alt3), is itself the awareness of sensible qualities in

the environment. From this it follows that (ii) is untenable as well: extra-
ordinary alteration is not the underlying realisation of awareness, but
awareness itself. My nal point is that the untenability of (ii) can be estab-
lished from within II 5, without the extra illumination from later chapters
of the De Anima.
Let us go back to the beginning:
[i][a] Perception consists in (sumbainei en) being changed and affected, as has
been said (416b 33-4).

The translation consists in126 may suggest that the change in question is
the underlying realisation of perception. But the back-reference as has
been said is to I 5, 410a 25-6, They suppose that perceiving is some sort
of being affected and changed, where the is sounds more like the is
of classi cation than the is of composition. The same goes for [1][b],
Perception is some sort of alteration. But this is not decisive. Considered
on their own, both the I 5 and the II 5 versions of [1][a] could be taken
either way.
Considered in the full context of II 5, however, [1][a] and [b] are
unmistakably statements of classi cation. The whole business of the
chapter is with types of alteration. Learning, the transition from (1) to (2),
is unordinary alteration (Alt2), and this is a distinct type of alteration
because it is the development of a rmly xed dispositional state (hexis)
which perfects the subjects nature. Aristotles example is learning to be
literate, which culminates in being able to read and write. It would be
nonsense to say that developing the ability to read and write, an unordi-
nary alteration (Alt2), stands to learning ones letters as matter to form. It
is what learning to be literate is. In the statement Learning is some sort
of alteration, the is is clearly the is of classi cation, not the is of
composition.
By parity of reasoning, it should be nonsense to say that extraordinary
alteration, a (2)-(3) transition, stands to perceiving as matter to form.
Extraordinary alteration is what perceiving is, not some underlying reali-
sation for it. The is in [1][b] is like the is in Alteration is a sort of
change, not like that in Anger is boiling of the blood around the heart.
It is the is of classi cation, not the is of composition. 127

126
For the alternatives, please reread n. 15.
127
Cf. Philoponus 290.4-5: on asyhsiw llovsiw, d llovsiw knhsiw,
asyhsiw ra n t lloiosya te ka kinesya sti.
78 M.F. BURNYEAT

This conclusion does more than complete my refutation of the Sorabji

interpretation of Aristotles theory of perception. It bears also on a wider
controversy, of larger philosophical signi cance.
Martha Nussbaum and Hilary Putnam have defended, 128 and continue
to defend,129 the thesis that Aristotles psychology is an ancient version of
what modern philosophers know as the functionalist solution to the mind-
body problem. For the solution itself, as a solution suited to modern
physics for the mind-body problem bequeathed to us by Descartes, I have
much admiration. My objection to the Nussbaum-Putnam thesis130 is that
Descartes problem presupposes Descartes rejection of Aristotelian physics,
a rejection we all share today. Aristotles account of the soul-body rela-
tion cannot be resurrected to help in the modern war against Cartesian
dualism because, as I have emphasised throughout this paper, Aristotles
psychology is designed to be the crowning achievement of his physics,
and his physics is irretrievably dead and gone. I am all in favour of set-
ting up comparisons between ancient and modern philosophy. But what I
think we learn from comparing Aristotle and modern functionalism is how
deeply Descartes in uence has settled in ordinary consciousness today.
So large a claim is obviously not one I can take further here.131 But it
so happens that the Sorabji interpretation of the is in [1][b] is a main
prop for the Nussbaum-Putnam thesis. They need an underlying realisa-
tion for perception if perception in Aristotles theory is to conform to, and
con rm, the general functionalist pattern: constant form in variable mat-
ter. [1][b] is the star witness for their case. So if, as just argued, II 5
makes Sorabjis point (ii) untenable, the Nussbaum-Putnam thesis is seri-
ously undermined.
Admittedly, Nussbaum and Putnam do not cite [1][b] from the De
Anima. They adduce the same proposition as it appears (in the plural) at
De Motu Animalium 7, 701b 17-18: Perceptions are in themselves alter-
ations of a sort (alloiseis tines).132 But it is the same proposition, and I

128
Putnam Papers 2 pp. xiii-xiv; Nussbaum De Motu p. 69 with n. 14 et passim.
129
Nussbaum-Putnam.
130
Draft p. 16, p. 26.
131
But see Burnyeat Aquinas. Nussbaum-Rorty is a splendid symposium on the
issues involved. For an introduction to functionalism and its varieties, I recommend
Block (the idea of Aristotle as the father of functionalism achieved textbook status in
Blocks Introduction: What is functionalism? at pp. 171, 177, citing Hartman chap. 4).
132
Nussbaum-Putnam p. 39, the key item in their Exhibit A but in my own trans-
lation, to be compared with Nussbaums in her De Motu: sense-perceptions are at
once a kind of alteration (p. 42), aistheseis are a certain type of qualitative change
 DE ANIMA II 5 79

have been arguing that DA II 5 is Aristotles of cial account of how it

is to be understood. 133 So if Sorabji falls on claim (ii), Nussbaum and
Putnam fall with him.134 The (extraordinary) alterations which perceptions
are do not serve as the underlying material realisation of perception. They
belong on the side of form rather than matter. As Aristotle will put it in
the well-known passage II 12, 424a 17-24, the alterations are the receiv-
ing of sensible form without matter.135 That is what Aristotelian percep-
tion essentially is.
The De Motu Animalium version of [1][b] does, however, add some-
thing important to the picture we have formed so far. The question at issue
in the context is, How do animals get moving? Aristotle cites automatic
puppets and other mechanical systems as analogies to illustrate how a
small initial change can produce a variety of larger changes further on in
the causal chains for which the mechanisms are designed (701b 24-6)

(p. 147), perceptions just are some sort of alteration (p. 151). Nussbaum-Putnam
p. 39 paraphrase the rst of these as perceptions just are (ousai), are realized in, such
alloiseis. The crux is eyw, which I take to mean directly, in their own right, in
contrast to the alterations caused by perceptions mentioned in the previous sentence.
(A good illustration of this logical sense is Met. VIII 6, 1045a 36-b 6; more in Bonitz
sv.) A helpful parallel is Poet. 10, 1452a 12-14: es d tn myvn o mn plo, o
d peplegmnoi: ka gr aprjeiw n mimseiw o myo esin prxousin eyw osai
toiatai. lgv d pln mn prjin ktl .
133
Nussbaum De Motu pp. 151-2 agrees that we are dealing with a clear recapit-
ulation of the DA position on perception. The cross-references between the two trea-
tises support this. While DA III 10, 433b 19-30, looks forward to the account of
animal movement in MA, MA 6, 700b 4-6, looks back to DA on the question whether
the soul is itself moved (Bonitz 100a 45 refers us to II 2-3; Nussbaum ad loc. to
I 3-4; Burnyeat Map chap. 5, n. 72, to III 9-11), and if so, how, while b 21-2 looks
back to DA III 3 on the differences between appearance, perception, and intellect.
Nussbaum pp. 9-12 draws the chronological conclusion that MA is a late work. I pre-
fer to emphasise that, whatever the dating of individual works, readers of MA are
expected to have studied DA as carefully as readers of DA are expected to have stud-
ied GC and Ph.
134
Nussbaum argues for reading [1][b] with the is of composition in her De Motu
pp. 146-52 (cf. pp. 256-7). Nussbaum-Putnam p. 36 distance themselves from Sorabjis
account of perceptual assimilation (previously accepted by Nussbaum), but at p. 40
they endorse his (i) and (ii), merely substituting a different set of underlying ordinary
alterations to make them true. Their substitute alterations (heating and chilling and
resultant changes of shape in the bodily parts) cannot, as Sorabjis ordinary alterations
can, provide a material account of the difference between seeing red and feeling
warmth for the good reason, I believe, that Aristotle invokes heating and chilling to
explain how perceptions produce animal movement (see below), not to explain the ini-
tial perceiving.
135
Notice psxei (i.e. lloiotai) at 424a 23.
80 M.F. BURNYEAT

just as, if the rudder shifts a hairs breadth, the shift in the prow is con-
siderable (701b 26-8, tr. Nussbaum). The key idea is the incremental
power of certain types of causal chain.
When Aristotle comes to apply this idea to animal movement, he men-
tions several alterations. The rst alteration is (a) the heating and cooling
of bodily parts, which causes them to expand, contract, and change their
shape (701b 13-16). 136 He then adds that such alterations 137 may in turn
be caused by any of three things, each of which either is or involves alter-
ation. (b) Perceptions are in themselves alterations of a sort (701b 17-
18), and (c) there are the alterations which, he now argues, are involved
in (i) the appearing or (ii) the conceiving of something hot or cold, either
pleasant or painful (701b 18-23). 138 The novelty is to see extraordinary
alterations (b) listed alongside ordinary alterations (a) as members of the
same causal chain. 139
Another place where this happens is Physics VII 2. Physics VII 3 was
mentioned earlier for its claim that gaining knowledge is not an alteration,
because it is not a change but the cessation of change. In the previous
chapter, by contrast, Aristotle insists that when an animate thing perceives,
no less than when an inanimate thing is warmed or cooled, this is an alter-
ation of a sort: The senses too are altered in a way (244b 10-11). 140

136
I agree with Nussbaum ad loc. that in 16 lloioumnvn is epexegetic of di
yermthta ka . . . di cjin.
137
lloousi with no object speci ed at 16 because Aristotle is moving to the
causes of the alterations (a) just mentioned.
138
At line 20 Nussbaum excises yermo cujro on the grounds that it is hard
to make sense of the words: Aristotle nowhere suggests that the hot and the cold
have, in themselves, any particular motivating power as objects of thought. Their inclu-
sion probably originated in a gloss by a scribe anxious to indicate that yermn went
with d, cujrn with fobern (Nussbaum Text p. 152). A reasonable excuse for
the editorial knife, but one that can be rebutted by making sense, as follows. Precisely
because the hot and the cold have no motivating power in themselves, but only in
relation to the agents situation (yermn does not go with d in a heatwave), Aristotle
makes separate mention of the cognitive content and the emotional aspect. (The claim
in Nussbaum-Putnam p. 43 that Aristotle nowhere separates the cognitive and the emo-
tional in this way is falsi ed even for perception by DA II 9, 421a 7-16; III 7, 431a
8-17.) Since hot and cold are opposites, one might paraphrase, hot or cold, whether
it be the hot which is pleasant and the cold frightful or the other way round.
139
I suppose that alterations (c) are to be understood in the light of the doctrine
that thinking, the exercise of intellect, requires fantsmata (DA III 7, 431b 2-9; 8,
432a 8-10), fantsmata in turn being likenesses of the perceptual alterations from
which they derive (III 2, 429a 4-5).
140
lloiontai gr pvw ka a asyseiw. For discussion, see Wardy pp. 144-9.
 DE ANIMA II 5 81

It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the Aristotelian universe would

collapse if perception could not legitimately be treated as alteration along-
side ordinary alterations like heating and cooling; for perception so character-
ised has a pivotal role in the Physics grand argument for the existence
of a rst, unmoved cosmic mover.
I take these two texts (MA 7, Ph. VII 2) as some con rmation for my
hypothesis that it is the needs of physics that lead Aristotle to classify per-
ception as alteration and (passive) change. To return brie y to De Motu
Animalium: if Aristotelian physics is to account not only for perception,
but for the role of perception in determining animal movement, percep-
tual awareness must itself be a physical change one of the small initial
changes that set the series going. Nowadays the favoured alternative
would be to treat perception as a place-holding term for whatever it is
in the animals physiology (let the scientists nd out) that starts it mov-
ing. That is functionalism. It is not Aristotle, for it rests on the post-
Cartesian assumption that terms like perception and awareness belong
to our mental vocabulary in contrast to the vocabulary of the physical sci-
ences.141 No wonder modern scholars have had dif culty translating [1][a]
and [b]. Perception is some sort of alteration seems to subsume the men-
tal under the physical. But for Aristotle the physical does not contrast with
the mental in the way we are used to.142 His psychology, to say it for the
third time, is the crowning achievement of his physics.

Finale
Before I stop, a word about an objection often put to me: Even if per-
ceiving as such is not ordinary alteration, it might still involve ordinary
alterations in the body, or other changes of a non-qualitative kind. After
all, neither the builders transition to activity nor his building is alteration
or passive change, but that does not exclude his getting hot and bothered
on site.
I agree that De Anima II 5 shows only that the Sorabji interpretation is

But I prefer Rosss translation of asyseiw as senses to Wardys sense-organs,

which allows him to interpret the statement as referring, albeit vaguely, to ordinary
alterations in the body.
141
Readers may like to compare my remarks on the Ramsey sentence in Draft
p. 22 with the assumption at Nussbaum-Putnam p. 40 that committing Aristotle to
reductive materialism is the only alternative to understanding the is of [1][b] as the
is of composition.
142
More on this in Burnyeat Aquinas.
82 M.F. BURNYEAT

wrong. Claim (i) is wrong because the assimilation that perceiving is

not ordinary alteration (Alt1). Claim (ii) is wrong because the extraordi-
nary alteration (Alt3) that perceiving is is not its underlying material real-
isation. From this it obviously does not follow that no underlying reali-
sation is needed for extraordinary alteration (Alt3) itself. The extraordinary
alteration which perceiving is does require certain standing conditions
in the organ transparency for example. Why not material processes as
well? II 5 on its own does not rule out the involvement of some (as yet
unspeci ed) ordinary alteration, or some non-qualitative change, which
stands to the extraordinary alteration (Alt3) that perceiving is as matter to
form. What II 5 shows is that the assimilation re ned in the course of the
chapter cannot itself play such a role; the perceivers becoming like the
object perceived is not a material process but belongs on the side of form.
This leaves logical space for a material realisation of perception, a space
that commentators can ll with coded messages, vibrations, or any other
processes they fancy.143
But Aristotle goes on speaking of perception as alteration and not
speaking of it as anything else. We have just seen him still at it in De
Motu Animalium. He leaves no textual space for anything but alteration
and remember that in his physics alteration is an irreducible type of
change, one of the only four types there are.144 We have watched Aristotle
extending his notion of alteration, originally de ned in De Generatione et
Corruptione I for cases like a res heating a cold room, to t the alter-
ation by which a perceiver sees red. He has taken care to specify the
re nements needed for the purpose. The presumption is that in other
respects the analogy between heating and perceiving holds good.
Let me push this point a little further. Aristotles story about the heat-
ing action of re is logically compatible with an underlying process in

143
Sorabji Intentionality p. 210 lists various suggestions that have been made,
with references. Two cautions are in order. First, anyone who chooses a process that
Aristotle would count as knhsiw had better not combine it with the idea that per-
ceiving is nrgeia in the sense which Met. IX 6 contrasts with knhsiw, lest they coun-
tenance a matter-form marriage between logically incompatible partners. Second, there
is a widespread illusion that Aristotles methodological remarks in DA I 1 positively
demand some concomitant material change underlying perception. Nussbaum-Putnam
appreciate that the claim has to be argued for, not assumed. I argue the contrary in
Remarks p. 433 with n. 38.
144
Cat. 14, 15a 17-27, expressly rejects the idea that alteration necessarily involves
some non-qualitative change. The only place to suggest otherwise is Ph. VIII 7, 260b
7-13, disarmed by Furley p. 134.
 DE ANIMA II 5 83

terms, say, of molecular motion. But it is perfectly clear that heating for
Aristotle is a primitive, elemental process which needs no further mater-
ial changes to explain it. Anyone who proposed otherwise, to bring
Aristotle nearer to modern views, would violate the spirit of his texts. The
same is true, I submit, of Aristotles theory of perception, which takes up
more pages in the De Anima (not to mention De Sensu) than any other
topic. If so extended a treatment leaves no textual space for further mate-
rial changes underlying the alteration which is perceiving, we should take
the author at his word. He has said what he has to say about perception.
Extraordinary alteration (Alt3) is where he means to stop.
The merit of the Sorabji interpretation is that it accounts for Aristotles
continuing use, throughout the De Anima and related works, of the qual-
itative language of alteration as the lowest level description of what hap-
pens in perception. Anyone who claims to interpret Aristotle, not just to
make up a logically possible theory inspired by Aristotle, must match
Sorabjis achievement over the same range of texts. No responsible inter-
pretation can escape the question this paper has been discussing: Given
that perception is to be wholly explained as some sort of alteration, which
sort is it? Sorabjis ordinary alteration, or the extraordinary alteration I
have laboured to bring to light in De Anima II 5? Within the text as
Aristotle wrote it, tertium non datur. 145

Appendix 1: 417a 30-b 2

mfteroi mn on o prtoi kat dnamn pistmonew, ll mn di maysevw
lloivyew ka pollkiw j nantaw metabaln jevw, d k to xein tn
riymhtikn tn grammatikn, m nergen d, ew t nergen, llon trpon.

30 o [prtoi] kat dnamin pistmonew <nerge& ggnontai pistmonew>

Torstrik: o prtoi, kat dnamin pistmonew <ntew, nerge& ggnontai
pistmonew ,> Ross 32 On preferring riymhtikn to the MSS reading
asyhsin, see n. 68

145
This paper originally took shape in seminars at Princeton (1989), Harvard
(1991), and Pittsburg (1992); to the senior and junior members of those audiences,
many thanks for helping me clarify my ideas and improve my arguments. Thanks also
to later audiences in St Petersburg and at a conference in Basel on ancient and
medieval theories of intentionality. Individuals who gave challenging criticism and
useful comments include Sarah Broadie, Victor Caston, David Charles, Dorothea
Frede, Michael Frede, Thomas Johansen, Geoffrey Lloyd, Martha Nussbaum, Ron
Polansky, Malcolm Scho eld, David Sedley, Richard Sorabji, K. Tsuchiya, Robert
Wardy.
84 M.F. BURNYEAT

Modern discussion of this densely concentrated passage begins with Torstrik.

On the received text, mfteroi o prtoi is the subject of the sentence at
30, bifurcating into mn as the subject of the sentence at 31, d the
subject of the sentence 31-b 2. To this Torstrik had two objections.
To begin with, he said, the rst sentence is ridiculously repetitive: we
have just been told not only that but how (1) and (2) are potential know-
ers. Then, more damagingly, with mn as subject (referring to rst poten-
tiality) di maysevw lloiwyew is in predicate position, but it is absurd
to say of a newly born infant mn (sc. sti) di maysevw lloivyew.
The future perfect llioivsmenow would t, but not lloivyew. (Theiler
does in fact read and translate lloivyhsmenow . . . metabaln.)
After much thought (diu haec animum sollicitum habuerant: sentiebam
corruptelam, medela in promptu non erat), Torstik found a solution:
desideratur notio transeundi. If di maysevw lloivyew is what the infant
becomes, instead of what the infant already is, the dif culty disappears.
Torstrik proceeded to write the idea of transition into the text by emen-
dation. Ross does the same, rather more neatly in that he does not have
to excise prtoi or shift kat dnamin pistmonew to subject position.
Most editors and translators suppose that the Torstrik-Ross meaning can
be got out of the text as it stands, without emendation.
But how? The only scholar to explain is Hicks:
There is no verb in this sentence (sc. ll mn ktl.). We cannot supply kat
dnamin pistmvn st from the last sentence because of the participles lloivyew
and metabaln. The effect of these participles is best shown if we supply ggne-
ta i pis t mvn , but the one [becomes possessed of knowledge] after
modi cation . . . the other . . .

Call this construal (A). It has been followed, without further discussion,
by nearly every translator since. It can also claim ancient precedent: both
Alexander Quaest. III 3, 83.27-30 and Philoponus 300.8-30 take this line,
which Philoponus expounds again with especial clarity at De Aeternitate
Mundi 69.4ff., dating from 529AD (our earliest MS of DA is E, 10th cent.);
his quotation of our passage at 69.22-70.1 and 71.17-20 con rms that he
read it in the form it has come down to us, without supplementation.
The other ancient commentators are less de nite. Themistius 55.25
writes ll mn detai maysevw ka tw kat myhsin lloisevw . . .,
but this is paraphrase (inexcusably adopted by Rodier for his translation).
Simplicius 121.29-30, writing ll mn teleiomenow lloisei t di
tw maysevw, seems to fall to a version of Torstriks second objection:
even the present participle teleiomenow is inappropriate to a newly born
infant. Sophonias 66.38-67.4 is interestingly obscure: mfteroi mn on o
prtoi kat dnamin pistmonew, ll mn prtvw, d deutrvw, ka
 DE ANIMA II 5 85

mn di mayevw lloivyew ka pollkiw j nantaw metabaln jevw,

d k to xein tn asyhsin telean tn grammatikn m nergen d. It
is time to reopen the issue.
I agree that Hicks was right to say we cannot supply kat dnamin
pistmvn st. But he was also right to expect the missing verb to be
carried forward from the previous sentence; that would be more normal
than leaving readers to supply a wholly new verb like ggnetai. Hence
what I propose we supply after mn is: kat dnamn stin. kat dnamn
stin lloivyew is a perfectly proper thing to say of Torstriks infant. The
child is now potentially (not of course actually) someone who has been
altered through learning.
Next, I supply after d not just kat dnamn stin, but kat dnamn
sti metabaln. Hicks ad 417a 32 already saw the need to supply a par-
ticiple from the mn sentence as well as a main verb. He chose meta-
baln, rather than lloivyew, but without explaining why. Three reasons
can be given: (a) the construction k . . . ew is standard for metabllein
(Ph. III 5, 205a 6; V 1, 224b 7-10; VI 5, 235b 6, etc.), and already in
417a 31 j goes with metabaln; (b) the emphasis on opposition in the
immediate sequel (417b 2-3) implies that what the llon trpon is other
than is (not learning but) changing from an opposite state; (c) metabaln,
as the more general term, gives a better lead in to the disjunction either
not an alteration or a different kind of alteration (417b 6-7) - it would be
odd to say of a transition introduced as an alteration that either it is not
an alteration or it is a different kind of alteration.
Such is the construal adopted in the main text of this paper. Call it con-
strual (B). Here is a translation to t:
Both the rst two are potentially knowers, but the former <is potentially> some-
one who has been altered through learning, i.e. someone who has repeatedly
changed from an opposite state, the latter <is potentially someone who has changed>
in another way, viz. from having knowledge of arithmetic or letters without exer-
cising it to the actual exercise.

It is just possible that this is what Sophonias is saying. It is quite proba-

ble that Themistius construed the same way before paraphrasing (legiti-
mately enough) potentiality as lack or strhsiw.
Let me now list the differences between construal (A) and construal
(B). (A) spotlights the changes, (B) the results which the two potentiali-
ties are potentialities for; (B) articulates the two potential senses of P is
a knower in terms of two different things the knower has a potentiality
to be, (A) describes the two types of transition that take P from (1) to (2)
and from (2) to (3). Neither construal makes for elegant Greek, but to
understand Aristotles Greek philology must ascend to the condition of
86 M.F. BURNYEAT

philosophy, and the central philosophical point about potentiality is that

it is a potentiality to be, not to become, unlike ones present self (p. 43,
p. 54 above). Until Kosmans Motion this was seldom recognised. Once
the point is taken, construal (B) may be recommended on philosophical
grounds, as well as because it is more economical (I submit) in its philo-
logical demands.
There is a second philosophical reason for preferring construal (B).
From a technical point of view the predicate at 30 is pistmonew, not kat
dnamin pistmonew. The correct parsing of the sentence is not Both are
potentially-knowers, but Both are-potentially knowers, with kat
dnamin modifying the copula (esn understood). Not only does Aristotle
in his logic standardly treat the modal adverbs necessarily and possi-
bly as copula-modi ers, but metaphysically (to come closer to present
concerns) potentiality and actuality are for him modes of being (Metaph.
V 7, 1017a 35-b 2; VI 2, 1026b 1-2; IX 1, 1045b 33-4; XII 5, 1071a
3-5). The triple scheme presents three different ways of being a knower,
and it is the two ways of being-potentially a knower that our passage dis-
tinguishes. Accordingly, kat dnamn esin should be treated as a unit
and carried forward as a unit from 30 to 31 and 31-2. If this means allow-
ing the adjective pistmvn to extend to knowing in sense (3), Aristotle
implies that it may so extend when he writes lgomen . . . pistmona ka
tn m yevronta, n dunatw yevrsai (Met. IX 6, 1048a 34-5; cf. 8,
1050b 34-1051a 2, perhaps EN VII 3, 1147b 6, and Alex. Quaest. III
25-6, Them. 55.23-4, Philop. De Aet. Mundi 71.12-13).
My third reason for advocating construal (B) is structural. It offers a
steadily developing exposition. First the triple scheme with its two types
of potentiality (417a 22-9); then a further articulation (not a mere repeti-
tion, as Torstrik complained) of the two potentialities as potentialities for
being the results of two types of alteration (417a 30-b 2); nally an
account of the alterations themselves which are the actualities of these
potentialities (417b 2-7). Construal (A) merges the second stage with the
third and thereby misses one of the ner details in Aristotles gradual
unfolding of his contrast.
The only other scholar to have seen that the passage requires rethink-
ing in the light of the point that potentiality is potentiality to be is Mary
Louise Gill. She translates (p. 176) as follows:
Now both of the rst are potential knowers, but the one, having been altered
through learning and often changed from an opposite state <is a potential knower
in one way>, the other from having arithmetical or grammatical knowledge but
not exercising it to the exercise <is a potential knower> in another way.
 DE ANIMA II 5 87

Construal (C), as this may be called, starts by challenging Hicks claim

that we cannot supply kat dnamn stin pistmvn. Hicks objection is
met by shifting lloivyew and metabaln to subject position, agreeing
with mn (it remains unclear whether d also has a participle attached).
The result is interpreted by Gill to mean that both mn and d have the
potentiality to be knowers in sense (2); they have the same potentiality
but in different ways. In consequence, Gill denies (pp. 178-80) that the
rst potentiality is lost when the learner becomes a knower in sense (2).
Aristotle denies it too, according to my account in the main text - but
later at 417b 12-16 and not ( pace Gill) for all potentialities whatsoever.
In any case, the objection to construal (C) is that, once the past partici-
ple lloivyew is moved to subject position, Torstriks infant causes trou-
ble again. The newly born have the potentiality to be knowers in sense
(2), but the alteration that achieves this goal should be in the future, not
the past tense.

Appendix 2: 417b 5-7

yevron gr gnetai t xon tn pistmhn, per ok stin lloiosyai (ew
at gr pdosiw) teron gnow lloisevw.

Hicks, followed by Tricot and Barbotin, would supply pistmon as com-

plement to ggnetai, with yevron denoting the manner of becoming: For
it is by exercise of knowledge that the possessor of knowledge becomes
such in actuality. The more usual construal takes yevron as complement
to ggnetai: the possessor of knowledge in sense (2) comes to be actively
knowing in sense (3). Hicks says that ggnetai is an odd verb to use, if
we bear in mind ma noe ka nenhken. Indeed it is. The oddity is part
and parcel of a deliberate strategy whereby II 5 refrains from invoking
the idea of unquali ed (complete) as opposed to incomplete actuality, or
of nrgeia in a sense that excludes knhsiw. Instead, Aristotle intends to
keep both perception and intellectual learning within the scope of physics
by re ning the ordinary scheme of De Generatione et Corruptione I 7 and
Physics III 1-3.
Gill pp. 222-6 departs further from the usual construal of these lines by
denying that Aristotle makes any reference to the transition from (2) to
(3). Taking as the antecedent of per not ggnetai understood as referring
to transition, but either yevron or yevron ggnetai understood as mere
periphrasis for yevre, she holds that the activity itself (3), not the transi-
tion to it, is what is here said to be either not an alteration or at least
another kind of alteration. My objection is that on anyones account of
88 M.F. BURNYEAT

the earlier lines 417a 30-b 2 (see Appendix 1), they include a contrast
between the transition from (1) to (2) and that from (2) to (3). In which
case it is strained not to let yevron gnetai refer to the latter transition.

All Souls College

Oxford

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