Aisthēsis

Perceiving the sensible

Aisthēsis is sense-perception, the soul’s reception of the forms of sensible things through the body. For Plato it yields only opinion, not knowledge, since its objects are always becoming and never simply are; the soul must turn from it toward the intelligible. Aristotle treats perception more generously, as the reliable starting-point of inquiry, but still ranks it below intellect, which grasps the universal that perception meets only in particulars.