“On Touch and Life in the De Anima.” In Phenomenology and the Metaphysics of Sight, edited by Antonio Cimino and Pavlos Kontos, (Leiden: Brill Academic Publisher, 2015, 69-94).
Although Aristotle is often thought to give canonical voice to the priority of vision as the most noble of the human powers of perceiving, this article demonstrates that in Aristotle, touch has a priority vision lacks.
By tracing the things Aristotle says about touch in the De Anima and specifically the manner in which he identifies touch as a kind of mean condition, this essay argues that a deeper understanding of the nature of touch connects us humans more deeply to animal life and the natural world we inhabit.
This essay is part of a collection edited by Antonio Cimino and Pavlos Kontos and published by Brill Academic Publishers entitled Phenomenology and the Metaphysics of Sight.
The publisher has agreed to allow me to post my chapter here on Humanities Commons in its post production form.
