Senso, materia e intenzione. Tommaso d'Aquino su De anima, II, 12

This paper attempts to investigate Aquinas’ explanation of the Aristotelian definition of perception as the capacity of receiving the perceptible forms without their matter. It argues that for Aquinas (just as for the ancient Neoplatonist commentators) perception does not require an underlying material process and it rather refers to a basic power or faculty of the soul, which would ultimately have a celestial origin under the control of the Prime Mover. This astrologization and theologization of Aristotle’s theory allows Aquinas to insert sensibility into a hierarchy of forms exceeding progressively the corporeal matter, attributing to it a certain degree of immateriality. Such move makes Aquinas one of the protagonists of the process of reinterpretation and dematerialization of Aristotle that had started with the late-ancient interpreters and culminates in the medieval Aristotelianism