Aristotle explains perception and thought through analogies to wax-imprinting and writing tablets

Evidence

Perceiving and thinking are not explicable in terms of the ordinary, everyday varieties of shaping such as, say, manufacture or the way a form is impressed on a medium. Yet it is by analogy with these procedures (which thus constitute the terms of reference for the second analogy) that Aristotle proposes to reveal the signification of those forms of πσειν and νεργε!ν which are inherent in the mechanisms of sensation and intellection. Thus the image of the imprinting of a ring in wax and that of the writing tablet serve as explanatory paradigms for both processes. … To begin with let us speak as if there were no difference between being moved or affected, and being active, for movement is a kind of activity – an imperfect kind, as has elsewhere been explained. Everything that is acted on or moved is acted upon by an agent which is actually at work. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 409

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

• XREF: These are the technical Aristotle passages (De Anima 417a, 424a, 429a) whose implicit semantic history the chapter title ‘Hegel’s misreading’ targets.

Related

• Aristotle models thought on sensation, both being acts of receiving form (similarity 0.79)
• Hegel’s reading of Aristotle may yield an anthropological interpretation of substance itself (similarity 0.79)
• For Aristotle, thought engenders itself through being touched by the thinkable (similarity 0.79)
• Sensation is fundamentally defined as a species of alteration (similarity 0.79)
• Hegel rejects the tabula rasa reading of Aristotle’s tablet analogy (similarity 0.79)