Within the caring science paradigm, variations of a method of interpretation inspired by the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur's theory of interpretation are used. This method consists of several levels of interpretation: a naïve reading, a structural analysis, and a critical analysis and discussion. Within this paradigm, the aim of this article is to present and discuss a means of creating distance in the interpretation and the text structure by using narration in a poetic language linked to the meaning of the (...) text. Ricoeur's ‘Hermeneutical function of distanciation’ will be introduced, and this concept of distanciation will be illustrated with reference to narrations from a study of patient's life experiences living with chronic illness and home mechanical ventilation in Denmark. Distanciation in the interpretation objectifies the text, and narration in a poetic language creates a particular kind of mediation in the interpretation. That narration represents an interpreted understanding of the whole, which facilitates an appropriate and evocative presentation of the interpreted data. This way of objectifying the text through narration can contribute yet another perspective to Ricoeur's rich and varied theory of interpretation. (shrink)

Salvador Piá Tarazona’s book, El hombre como ser dual is an important methodical-thematic advance in the research of transcendental anthropology as much as it does not detain its focus on human nature nor its development , but rather on th readicality of personal intimacy and its openness to transcendence.

How many questions do we ask each day? Why do we ask them in the first place? Do we always ask because we're trying to learn something? Or are there some questions we don't expect to have answered - and some questions that simply can't be answered at all? What do our questions tell us about ourselves? Do they define who we are? Who asked the world's first question? Can anyone answer all these questions? Is that a stupid question, or (...) is it a really good one? And what does Pia Lauritzen, Aarhus University's questioner-in-chief, think of all of this? (shrink)

Im Zentrum des Bandes steht die Frage nach dem Zusammenhang von Erkenntnis- und Wissenschaftstheorie im Kontext der mittelalterlichen Rezeption der Texte des Aristoteles an Hof und Universitäten, und dabei insbesondere der für die Epistemologie einschlägigen Passagen in De anima und in den Zweiten Analytiken sowie ihre spätantike und arabische Vermittlung. In diesem komplexen Rezeptions- und vor allem Transformationsprozeß werden zugleich die wissenschaftlichen und gesellschaftlich-institutionellen Grundlagen für den okzidentalen Prozeß der Rationalisierung und der Aufklärung gelegt, deren "Dialektik" nicht nur die Geschichte (...) Europas bis zum heutigen Tag bestimmt. Die Beiträge des Bandes vermitteln damit nicht nur einen umfassenden und bisher in der Forschung in dieser Form nicht geleisteten Überblick über Reichweite und Grenzen der epistemologischen Debatten im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert sowie ihren jeweiligen historischen Ort in der Wissenskultur des Mittelalters, sondern stellen darüber hinaus in ihrer Gesamtheit auch einen Beitrag dar zu Fragen der Epistemologie der Gegenwart, etwa zum Problem der Axiomatik der Wissenschaften. Die Publikation schließt damit nicht nur ein Desiderat in der Erforschung der mittelalterlichen Philosophie, sondern bildet zugleich einen genuinen Beitrag zu gegenwärtigen Fragestellungen der Epistemologie. (shrink)

Altersarmut, Bildungsunterschiede, eine wachsende Kluft zwischen Arm und Reich - die deutsche Gesellschaft spaltet sich, und viele fordern mehr Soziale Gerechtigkeit. Die Autorin untersucht, wie sich das Verstandnis von Sozialer Gerechtigkeit in Philosophie und Politik gewandelt hat, und hinterfragt, inwieweit Politiker Soziale Gerechtigkeit als Akzeptanzmittel fur ihre Entscheidungen nutzen.

Exposition of the philosophy of syncriticism.

Democracy is increasingly being challenged, by disengagement and by anti-pluralist movements (Levitsky and Ziblatt in How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future, Viking, New York, 2018; Wikforss in _Därför demokrati. Om kunskapen och folkstyret_ [Because of this, democracy. On knowledge and people’s rule] Fri Tanke, 2021; Svolik et al. in J Democr 34(1):5–20, 2023). This article draws upon a theoretical discussion about democracy, pluralism, and threats to democracy. Departing from Dewey, Laclau, Mouffe, Young and Allen, we address democracy (...) as an ideology that centers around pluralism, or an ever-increasing inclusion of voices from the margins as its goal. We argue that perceiving democracy pedagogically as a pluralistic ideology would support students’ democratic citizenship and equip them for a world where threats to democracy are being reported. Employing a case study on Finnish social studies textbooks, we analyze how democracy as well as threats to democracy are discursively portrayed. Our study shows that the textbooks present democracy as predominantly institutional and static. We also find that while disengagement is portrayed as a problem for democracy, anti-pluralist movements are generally not referred to as a threat. Additionally, we examine a discourse in the textbooks that connects freedom of speech with democracy in a way that favors a multitude of opinions, even antidemocratic ones, over creating space for marginalized voices. Drawing on the theoretical discussion and the results of the analysis, we argue that a focus on pluralism as the core of democracy makes the opposition between restricting hate speech and advocating for democracy redundant. (shrink)

Pia Becker entwirft eine Konzeption von Patientenautonomie, die sich im Gegensatz zu in der Medizinethik bisher dominierenden Konzeptionen an der grundsätzlichen Fähigkeit des Patienten zur Autonomie orientiert. Ausgangspunkt bildet die Notwendigkeit der informierten Einwilligung, die neben der Patientenautonomie vor allem auch die körperliche Integrität des Patienten schützt. Als Adäquatheitsbedingungen dienen die beiden normativen Funktionen der Patientenautonomie als Barriere und Schlüssel einer medizinischen Behandlung. Diese Konzeption von Patientenautonomie hat den Vorteil, Patienten besser vor Überforderungen zu bewahren und deren Bedarf an Unterstützungsangeboten (...) zur Förderung der Patientenautonomie deutlicher hervorzuheben. (shrink)

Dance, as aesthetic self-expression, is a unique arts-based program that combines the physical benefits of exercise with psychosocial therapeutic benefits. While dance has also been shown to support empowerment, meaningful self-expression, and pleasurable experience, it is rarely adopted to support these aspects of engagement in the context of dementia care. The instrumental reduction of dance to its application as a therapeutic tool can be traced to the contemporary movement towards cognitive science with an emphasis on embodied cognition. This has effectively (...) elided a consideration of how the body itself, separate and apart from cognition, could be a source of intelligibility, inventiveness, and creativity. We argue for the need to broaden the therapeutic model of dance to more fully support embodied and creative self-expression by persons living with dementia. To achieve this, we explore how a relational model of citizenship that recognizes corporeality and relationality as fundamental to human existence brings a new and critical dimension to understanding the importance of dance in the context of dementia. Drawing on this model, we articulate a new kind of ethic characterized by a pre-reflective intercorporeal sensibility that requires the mobilization of public structures and practices to cultivate a relational environment for individuals living with dementia that supports human flourishing. (shrink)

The reliefs carved on the _vedikā_ of the Bharhut _stūpa_ in the Satna District of Madhya Pradesh are some of the earliest artworks extant in India to articulate the Buddha’s life stories and the essence of his teaching in a complex visual form. This article proposes that the reliefs from Bharhut depicting episodes from Śākyamuni’s life and _jātakas_ were informed by narrative practices established in the traditions of Buddhist recitation and performance. The inscriptions engraved on the Bharhut _vedikā_ that function (...) as labels for scenes, characters, and places, point to the use of specific storytelling strategies attested in oral recitation and picture scrolls that likely existed as aide-memoire. (shrink)

Background: Engaging in end-of-life care considerations is beneficial when the time is right. The purpose of this study is to provide a valid instrument to assess peoples readiness for end-of-life conversations before they are initiated.Materials and Methods: A community sample was recruited in study one for exploratory factor analysis of a 13-item questionnaire. In study two, psychometric properties were analyzed with structural equation modeling in a population affected by cancer. Convergent and discriminant validity were assessed with questionnaires measuring distress, depression, (...) anxiety, fear of progression, and distress of death and dying.Results: In study one exploratory factor analysis resulted in three subscales readiness, communication, and values with a possible common factor for a community sample. In study two the three-factor solution with 13 items was not supported for cancer patients. Factor structure was adapted to 12 items with one common factor readiness. Model fit was good: χ2 = 59.18, p>0.05, with χ2/df = 1.184, rRMSEA = 0.053, and rSRMR = 0.072. Convergent validity was supported by moderate correlations to trait gratitude, ratings of readiness to provide a living will or talk with family about the end of life. Divergent validity was supported by no or small correlation with distress, depression, general and death anxiety and fear of progression, respectively.Conclusions: Results support usage of the REOLC Scale in different settings with adapted factor structure. The questionnaire is interpreted as valid and reliable instrument to assess objective readiness for end-of-life conversations. (shrink)

This essay belongs to a more extended work focused on the idea of what is needed to begin globalizing justice. It is an essay that focuses on the normative conditions needed for a global public sphere. It is a historical reconstruction of how certain forms of communication in global times have ..

Der Beitrag von Claus Pias geht von zwei Beobachtungen aus: einem Zurücktreten des Medienbegriffs innerhalb medienwissenschaftlicher Forschung und eines Desinteresses sogenannter ›Digitalisierung‹ ihr gegenüber. Er untersucht, inwiefern Medientheorie (von McLuhan und Kittler bis zu den sogenannten Digital Humanities) durch einen starken Medienbegriff an der Herausbildung von Zeitsemantiken und Narrativen von ›Digitalisierung‹ beteiligt war und von ihnen profitiert hat. Als Konsequenz fordert Pias zu medienwissenschaftlicher Grundlagenforschung auf, die mit einer strategischen Revision und Aktualisierung von ›Medien‹ als Begriff und Gegenstand einhergeht. Der (...) Beitrag von Kathrin Peters stimmt mit dieser Lagebeschreibung nur teilweise überein. Die Skepsis gegenüber den Zukunfts- und Dringlichkeitsrhetoriken gegenwärtiger Digitalisierungsoffensiven wird von ihr geteilt, dass allerdings vor allem eine Medienwissenschaft des ›medientechnischen a priori‹ eine Antwort auf den gegenwarts- und an- wendungsfixierten Digitalisierungsdiskurs liefern könnte, erscheint Peters als zu kurz gegriffen. Andere medienwissenschaftliche Ausrichtungen sind dazu ebenso in der Lage: medienwissenschaftliche Analysen zu Kolonialität und Postkolonialität, feministische, gen- der- und queertheoretische Fragestellungen, eine medienwissenschaftlich informiert Wissenschaftsforschung und Affekttheorie – um nur einige zu nennen. Es geht um Konzepte von Medienwissenschaft als Fragestellung, die ihre Gegenstände in den verschiedensten Bereichen hervorbringen, dabei aber zugleich als Mittel und Mittler immer wieder unsichtbar werden. Debate: Media Studies without Media Claus Pias’ article starts out from two points of observation: a recession of the term media within the field of media studies and a dis- interest of the so-called digitalization in this particular term. Pias examines the impact media theory (ranging from McLuhan and Kittler to the so-called Digital Humanities) had on the development of time semantics and the narratives of ›digitalization‹ due to the use of a strong media term, and how media theory profited from it. mAs a result, Pias calls for establishing basis research in media studies, going hand in hand with a strategic revision and update of media, as a term as well as a subject. In her article, Kathrin Peters only partially agrees with this evaluation. She shares the scepticism concerning future-rhetoric as well as priority-rhetoric, both featuring heavily in current digital offensives; however, in her opinion it is not enough to hope for answers on today’s digitalization-discourse from media studies hailing the media-technical a priori. There are other approaches in media studies which are able to offer these answers: analysis of colonialism and post-colonialism, feministic, gender- and queer-theoretical questions, a media-informed science of knowledge and affect theory, just to name a few of them. It is all about concepts of media science being perceived as problems which bring forth their own subjects in various areas of research, yet as a tool as well as an intermediary, they are frequently overlooked. (shrink)

The place of emotions in aesthetic response has long been a topic in contemporary philosophical theorizing. One aspect of the debate in particular seems to have become a recalcitrant problem: when experiencing fiction, we experience emotional reactions towards what we know not to exist. Is this rational? In fact, is it even possible? This article deals with the so‐called “paradox of fiction” from the viewpoint of ancient poetics. In the first section, I survey some of the main arguments proposed to (...) (dis)solve the paradox in analytic philosophy. In the second and the third sections, I address what I consider two problematic assumptions of existing analytic approaches: their prescriptive, “essentialist” attitude and their exclusive focus on matters of content. By offering a brief sketch of the ancient principles of “likelihood” and “vividness”, I argue that they provide a direct and cognitively realistic answer to the paradox insofar as they account for the neutralization of doxastic features in imaginative acts and ground affective responses to fiction in the phenomenon of “aesthetic immersion”, explained in experiential, rather than representational, terms. (shrink)

Two studies investigated the interaction between utterance and scene processing by monitoring eye movements in agent–action–patient events, while participants listened to related utterances. The aim of Experiment 1 was to determine if and when depicted events are used for thematic role assignment and structural disambiguation of temporarily ambiguous English sentences. Shortly after the verb identified relevant depicted actions, eye movements in the event scenes revealed disambiguation. Experiment 2 investigated the relative importance of linguistic/world knowledge and scene information. When the verb (...) identified either only the stereotypical agent of a (nondepicted) action, or the (nonstereotypical) agent of a depicted action as relevant, verb‐based thematic knowledge and depicted action each rapidly influenced comprehension. In contrast, when the verb identified both of these agents as relevant, the gaze pattern suggested a preferred reliance of comprehension on depicted events over stereotypical thematic knowledge for thematic interpretation. We relate our findings to language comprehension and acquisition theories. (shrink)

The boundary work approach has been established as one of the main ways to study controversies in science. However, it has been proposed that it does not meet the power dynamics of the scientific field sufficiently. This article concentrates on the intertwining of boundary work and power. It combines the boundary work approach developed by Thomas Gieryn and the analysis of power in the work of Pierre Bourdieu. Based on a literature review and an analysis of a controversy over therapeutic (...) touch, it finds four forms of boundary work: intradisciplinary, interdisciplinary, between science and society, and between science and other knowledge systems. The article shows how the different forms of boundary work reveal multiple power struggles, hierarchisations and tensions. The controversy appeared in Finnish nursing science when the Finnish Association of Sceptics gave its annual Humbug Award to a book on therapeutic touch. The book was based on a master’s thesis at the University of Tampere department of nursing science. The nursing scholars in the department reacted abruptly and banned certain books, which astonished the students, and a lively public debate followed. In the debate, nursing science was both defended and challenged. The framework of the study shows that the boundary work approach can be used to study different aspects of power. The article proposes that the framework could be used in other controversies as well to study the layers of power in boundary work. (shrink)

This article contributes to the current discussion on interdisciplinarity in the health research field. It focuses on the relationship between nursing research and gender research. Nursing research is a ‘health sciences’ field which draws from the social sciences, the humanities, and biomedicine. Previous research shows the difficulties that social scientists face in their efforts to integrate with biomedical scientists. The aim of this article is to analyse nursing researchers’ views about one potential collaboration partner in the social sciences and humanities: (...) gender research. The study draws its theoretical insights from research within the sociology of science. It uses ideas about the intertwining of power and knowledge, which is especially emphasised in the works of Pierre Bourdieu. The research material consists of 180 abstracts of nursing research articles that argue in some way about the relationship between nursing research and gender research. The Scopus database was selected because it covers nursing research in a broad sense. The scope of the study is long. The close reading of abstracts is inspired by rhetorical discourse analysis. We found three clearly different but also overlapping discourses that justified gender perspectives in nursing research: Gender research helps to highlight the socio-political context in nursing research; Gender research develops or reforms the nursing research tradition; and Gender research exists as a form of critique within nursing research. Most of the nursing research abstracts regard gender research positively for both external and internal reasons. The abstracts also demonstrate the tensions in the relationship and discuss the views and reasons that generate scepticism towards gender research in nursing research. (shrink)

Die Arbeit zur regionalen Variation der Intonation bietet einen Forschungsüberblick über existierende Studien zum Thema und widmet sich dann der Analyse der Intonation der kölnischen Regionalvarietät auf der Basis von spontansprachlichen Daten. Die Analyse kombiniert Methoden des autosegmental-metrischen Ansatzes mit denen der Interaktionalen Linguistik. Da sich der autosegmental-metrische Ansatz in den letzten Jahren zum gängigen Beschreibungsansatz in der Intonationsforschung entwickelt hat, ist auf diese Weise eine Vergleichbarkeit der verschiedenen Untersuchungsergebnisse gewährleistet. Der Ansatz der Interaktionalen Linguistik erlaubt es darüber hinaus, die (...) tatsächliche Verwendungsweise der Intonationsverläufe durch die Interaktionsteilnehmer aufzuzeigen. Im Zentrum des Interesses stehen zwei steigend-fallende Konturen, die typisch für das Kölnische sind. Sie werden auf phonetischer, tonologischer und phonologischer (d.h. konversationell-funktionaler) Ebene analysiert. Die Arbeit verdeutlicht die große Bandbreite formaler Variation und zeigt, wie die Beteiligten Intonation als Ressource zur Gestaltung der Interaktion nutzen. (shrink)

The subject of gender violence is complex because our conceptions of what constitutes violence have historically evolved. Therefore, I propose that we should try to understand gender violence neither in abstract nor in essentialist ways, but within historical frameworks and through concrete examples. In this essay I will focus on a historical genealogy of our moral views about gender violence, and, in particular, on the figure of what we call today “rape.” The question of rape is but one example of (...) the long history of gender violence. However, this example is important to understand how violence and gender violence are related to specific conceptions of political and sexual sovereignty. My claim is that we need to pay attention to how is it possible to understand the role of imagination to interpret gender violence nowadays. My conclusion is that the moral filters that configure our “feminist imaginary” have changed our views about rape. (shrink)

Leonardo Polo proposes a new interpretation of the demonstration of God's existence. This demostratión is based on the awareness of the creature's being and it is reached in the first dimension of the abandon of the mental limit, the method proposed by L. Polo.

One challenge to the concept of human dignity is that it is a rootless notion invoked simply to mask inequalities that inevitably exist between human beings. This privileging of humans is speciesist and its weak point is the profoundly disabled human being. This article argues that far from being a weak point, the profoundly disabled person is a source of strength and witness to the intrinsic dignity that all human beings have by virtue of being human. The disabled represent the (...) reality of human existence that is both strong and fragile. Although human dignity can be understood philosophically its depth is rooted in Christian theological insights. The profoundly disabled occupy a privileged position and share in a theology of mission since they testify to the interdependence of every human being and human dependence on God to a myopic world that only values strength, autonomy and independence. Content Type Journal Article Category Article Pages 185-203 DOI 10.1558/hrge.v17i2.185 Authors Pia Matthews, Theology, Philosophy, and History, St Mary’s University College, Waldegrave Road, Strawberry Hill, TW1 4SX Journal Human Reproduction & Genetic Ethics Online ISSN 2043-0469 Print ISSN 1028-7825 Journal Volume Volume 17 Journal Issue Volume 17, Number 2 / 2011. (shrink)

Restoring our biological cycles to heal ourselves, our culture, and our planet Shows how, just like the tides and the moon phases, both women and men have biological cycles of growth and renewal necessary for healthy bodies and minds. Explains how the seclusion of women during menstruation and of men during vision quests offers a cleansing process for body and mind to awaken innate creativity and sensitivity, re-attune us with the deeper rhythms of the body and nature, and restore harmony (...) between the divine feminine and divine masculine. Reveals how the need for sacred retreat was forgotten when the divine feminine was suppressed by patriarchal culture. All of life is interwoven into a living system of cycles, from Earth's seasons to the enzymatic pathways that provide energy to a cell. Waxing and waning from times of growth to times of rest, renewal, and healing, cycles map the most auspicious time for everything in life. Both women and men have biological cycles of active growth and quiet renewal, led by our hormones. By understanding how everything in life moves in cycles, you can become more aware of and comfortable with your own cyclic nature, something that has been forgotten by the modern world's linear views of time. Drawing on the wisdom of ancient cultures, the natural cycles of life, and her own groundbreaking research, Pia Orleane, Ph.D., offers a template for how we can restore balance to our emotions and health, ease tensions between the sexes, and heal our fractured culture by honoring divine feminine consciousness and re-embracing natural cycles, including our innate need for rest and retreat. She explains the biology of how our bodies operate by hormones released in cycles and shows how balanced hormones help eliminate anger, depression, insomnia, anxiety, and fatigue. Exploring ancient traditions and rituals surrounding blood and sacred retreat, she explains how the seclusion of women during menstruation and of men during vision quests offered a cleansing process for body and mind, alone time to clear suppressed emotions, awaken our innate creativity and sensitivity, re-attune us with the deeper rhythms of the body and nature, and restore harmony between the genders and balance between the divine feminine and masculine. Outlining the sacred retreat process, the author explores dream cycles, divine sexuality, and practices for reconnecting to nature, increasing creativity and intuition, and clearing suppressed emotions. She also looks at the benefits for women and men of separate sleeping during menstruation. Through this wisdom, we can restore our natural cycles, allow the divine feminine to once again blossom alongside the divine masculine, and, with the return of balance, heal our world and our hearts. (shrink)

In this article I deal with Kant's concept of reflective judgment, and recover it through its links to the aesthetic dimension as its fundamental scenario. Then I go on to explain why Hannah Arendt understood this important Kantian connection, and why she thought it would allow her to develop it through a political dimension. Last, having reviewed both Kant and Arendt's contributions to the concept of reflective judgment, I recover my own input to the concept by showing its linguistic dimension (...) based on the Heideggerian notion of world-disclosure. With this in mind, I show how the concept of reflective judgment is the most suitable to analyze evil actions. (shrink)

Emotion Review, Volume 13, Issue 4, Page 277-281, October 2021.

This paper sets out to conduct an embodied and situated aural analysis of what silence in Northern Norway is about, with the aim of bringing forward the background noise. The paper brings together theories on construction of the rural, time-space relations, soundscape ecology, and on affect and power, and it merges academic traditions about how to communicate findings from non-visual biased studies. This interdisciplinary framework provides a novel structure for both analysing material and communicating findings from embodied studies of listening (...) out. The study found that silence in Northern Norway is about not listening to the economy of scale, to the commodification of the natural conditions and the suppression of lifestyles and territory. The paper illustrates how power is an inherent part of listening and how listening is a practice that is enacted to create emotions that are associated with a specific time-space relation. (shrink)

In his De philosophia, Varro lists 288 philosophical schools on the highest good before presenting Antiochus’s doctrine as the only true one. One of the particularities of his moral doxography consists in including cynicism which has never been mentioned in the previous moral sources. This paper therefore aims to show that the De philosophia represents a major turning point for the Roman reflection on cynicism. First, Varro defines cynicism as a simple way of life (habitus) and not a doctrine (ratio) (...) so that it could be adopted by all other philosophies. In fact, by ‘reducing’ cynicism to a way of life Varro makes it compatible with his conception of the highest good based on social duties. In that respect, his position on cynicism is opposite to Cicero’s who, in his De officiis, considers cynicism as a dangerous philosophy for Roman values. Finally, Varro uses cynicism as a conceptual tool for thinking, in philosophical terms, one of the most important issues that run through all his work: the relationship between happiness and Ancient Roman simplicity, especially in the context of Roman decadency. For instance, in Varro’s Menippean Satires, Cynics’s destitution partly reminds of the Ancient Romans’ austerity. Therefore, by mentioning cynicism in his moral doxography, Varro gives an original and Roman treatment of the Antiochian inquiry into the concept highest good. (shrink)

In responding to Mathias Beck's thought-provoking article, it seems helpful to begin with an outline and comments on Beck's case as I understand it. For me, this overview throws up three problematic areas that I explore further under the headings of 1. examining the New Testament evidence, 2. sin as disobedience, and 3. obedience, grace, and freedom. Clearly, the author's thoughts in all their nuances are not always adequately accessible in translation. Nevertheless, I hope that I have grasped the main (...) thread of his argument. If I am right in my interpretation then Beck still has work to do to clarify and make explicit what is not only barely implicit but what is obscured by his central theme: that obedience to God's will is the mainstay of our relationship to God. (shrink)

This innovative volume will be welcomed by moral and political philosophers, social scientists, and anyone who reflects seriously on the twentieth century's heavy burden of war, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and other evidence of people's desire to harm one another. María Pía Lara brings together a provocative set of essays that reexamine evil in the context of a "postmetaphysical" world, a world that no longer equates natural and human evil and no longer believes in an omnipotent God. The question of how (...) and why God permits evil events to occur is replaced by the question of how and why humans perform radically evil acts. (shrink)

Traditional interpretations of Aristotle’s theory of perception mainly focus on uncovering the underlying mechanisms that are at stake when perceivers are affected by sensible qualities. Investigating the nature of sense perception is one of Aristotle’s main worries and one that he explicitly relates to the question of its causes (e. g.Sens. 436a16–17, 436b9) and its ends (e. g.de An. 434a30 ff.). Therefore I suggest that, in order to fully explain Aristotle’s view of perceptual phenomena, the possibilities, the constraints, and the (...) goals defined by the embodied and situated engagement of perceivers with the external world must be taken into account. Accordingly, in this paper, I provide an affective reading of Aristotle’s theory of perception. I shall ask what, in addition to functioning sense organs and appropriate response mechanisms, the perceiver contributes to perceptual content. Specifically, I propose to shed light on the significance of perceptual experience for the perceiver and I aim to show that, according to Aristotle, one’s biological and personal qualities are perceptually relevant, meaning that they underpin perception, rather than coming into play after perception has occurred and its objects have been discerned. The paper is divided into two parts, respectively dealing with sensory affections and more complex affective phenomena. As regards the domain of primal sense perception, I will focus on smell as a representative example: since Aristotle identifies it as the least developed of human sensory faculties, it will serve as a revealing illustration of how sense perception is informed and qualified by what, drawing on contemporary philosophical terminology, I will call ‘perceptual interests’, viz. the affective sense of what is at stake in the living being’s interaction with the environment. I will then proceed to consider the way more complex affective phenomena underpin perception by examining the case of emotions and that of virtues of character. By showing how perception is affectively inflected and how emotion is rooted in perception’s bodily nature, I aim to sketch out the general lines along which I believe that the Aristotelian theory of perception should be approached. (shrink)