Between knowledge and sin: Representation of the five human senses from the Ancient to the early Modern period

Abstract

This article is devoted to understanding the five human senses in European philosophy, culture and art in the Early Modern period, which is associated with the teachings of Plato and Aristotle. They considered the senses from the point of view of knowledge about the four elements. Plato recognizes the vision as the noblest of the senses, as it is associated with the knowledge of the cosmos. He believes viciousness to come from the animal part of the soul, not the senses. Augustine in the description of the five human senses combined the principles of Plato, Aristotle and Christian’s ethics. He associated sense with sin, and the threat he believed to be “the temptation of the eyes”. Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas focused on the description of principles of operation of sensory organs and mechanical means of exposure to external physical environment. Scholastics have criticized five human senses due to the fact that they distort the perceived world, they relied on Aristotelian logic to arrive at knowledge. The author proves that in the Early modern period humanists and scientists actively revised all the faculties of the soul, including the five senses under the influence of Platonic philosophy. Bacon refers to the senses as “idols”, demanding repeatedly to recheck the data of the senses and the mind. This led to the recognition of observation and experience. The reorientation from the scholastic Aristotelian tradition to the mathematical Platonic tradition was also reflected in painting and the poetry. One example of this process can be of Shakespeare’s poetic reflection, where the objects of representation are the five senses. The poetic images of W. Shakespeare’s five senses correlate with the visual images of Rembrandt and Jan van Eyck.