Since Antiquity, "active cognition" has been a problematic notion in Aristotelian scholarship. Part of the problem is the definition of what counts as "active". In the first part of this paper I shall offer a short survey on various contenders for "active" perceptual cognition defended in recent interpretations of Aristotle, by way of introduction to the more complicated problems of "active" intellectual cognition. In the second part of the paper I will offer-in outline-my interpretation of Aristotle's theory of intellectual cognition, which takes the most recent findings in the area of perceptual cognition as a starting point. Here I pursue the analogy that Aristotle sets up between perception and intellection throughout the De anima.In the third part of the paper I shall examine a number of influential accounts of active intellectual cognition found in the corpus of Alexander of Aphrodisias, in particular Mantissa 2-5 (also known as De intellectu). These accounts each develop the analogies offered in Aristotle's De anima III.5 in their own way.
The "Activity" of Perceptual Cognition in AristotleAccording to Aristotle all cognition, both perceptual and intellectual, has different stages of "activity" or rather "actuality", "actualisation", or "completion" (energeia, entelecheia) which correspond to preceding stages of potentiality. 1 At birth all healthy and unimpaired animals are composites of a soul that possesses the power of perception in (first) actuality, and a body equipped with the necessary sense organs. Each organ is ready to perceive its own special objects (the eyes see colour, the 1 The central chapter where Aristotle applies, and adapts, the notions of potentiality and actuality to psychology is De anima II.5, for which see, e.g., Burnyeat (2002) and Johansen (2012). For my own approach to the topic see De Haas (2018b).