St. Thomas Aquinas on the Immaterial Reception of Sensible Forms

Datos Bibliográficos

ID10696765
AutoresSheldon M Cohen (autor de correspondencia)
Año1982
Volumen91
Número2
Páginas193
Fecha de publicación1982-04-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe Philosophical Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0031-8108 • E-ISSN: 1558-1470
EditorialJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2184626
OpenAlexW2333199644
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas6

A ccording to St. Thomas there are two ways in which a thing It can receive a sensible form (Summa Theologiae, la, 78, A3).1 First, a thing can receive a sensible form according to a natural mode of being (esse naturale), heat in the thing heated. In this case the thing receiving the form acquires the form as a characteristic: the rock, receiving heat naturally, becomes hot. But sensation requires another mode of reception: otherwise all natural bodies would sense when they underwent alteration. Sensation requires a mode of reception in which a sensible form is received according to a spiritual mode of being (esse spirituale). When a sensible form is received this second way, the thing that receives the form does not become characterized by the form. The thing that sees a red rose somehow acquires the rose's redness, but it does not become red. Elsewhere Aquinas expresses this distinction as the distinction between the reception of forms materialiter and immaterialiter. Thus at ST, 84, A2 he tells us that things that receive forms only materially-plants, for exampleare not knowers; material things exist in knowers immaterialiter.2 The received interpretation of this distinction is given by D. W. Hamlyn in Sensation and Perception

Analytic philosophy · Contemporary philosophy · Epistemology · General interest · Theology · Historical Philosophy and Science · Medieval and Classical Philosophy · Medieval Philosophy and Theology · Philosophy