Introduction

Ever since the seventeenth century the followers of John Locke, among European aestheticians, have accepted the premise that perception and action are separate concepts. Perception has appeared as the result of some external ‘impression’ on the sense organs of the perceiving body. Action has been understood as the response to a received sensory ‘impression’ impacting on the body from the outside. The belief that the perceiving body should absorb an external sensory ‘impression’ has connoted perception with passivity, and action as the separate, sequential and active counterpart of perception. However, the sensualist belief in the separateness of perception and action is far from obvious. The question is: how did the sensualist belief come into existence? Put differently: what were the social and cognitive foundations of perception and action up until the end of the seventeenth century, that is, in the Middle Ages broadly conceived? This chapter presents a history of the changing ways of interconnecting perception with action in the course of the Middle Ages, with a focus on the use of the eyes and the ears. The history of the responses to external ‘impressions’ on the other sense organs will be reviewed in the third chapter.

Humans select objects to see and hear out of the myriad visible and audible things in the world in accordance with changing standards of perception. Within any given period, the standard of perception may or may not be explicit. If it is explicit, it can be traced in normative or theoretical texts, which are usually laid down in writing. Such texts are usually scrutinised in the context of the history of aesthetic theory. If it is not explicit, it has to be reconstructed from extant pieces of art and music in the same way as the grammar of a spoken language can be reconstructed from its use. Thus pieces of art and music follow a standard of perception, even when explicit norms are not on record. In terms of the history of perception, the processes of making explicit a standard for perceiving art and music reflect in themselves changes of perception.