Aristotle And Plotinus On Memory

ISBN: 9783110214628 出版年：2009 页码：280 King, Richard A H De Gruyter

Two treatises on memory which have come down to us from antiquity are Aristotle′s "On memory and recollection" and Plotinus′ "On perception and memory" (IV 6); the latter also wrote at length about memory in his "Problems connected with the soul" (IV 3-4, esp. 3.25-4.6). In both authors memory is treated as a ′;modest′ faculty: both authors assume the existence of a persistent subject to whom memory belongs; and basic cognitive capacities are assumed on which memory depends. In particular, both theories use phantasia (representation) to explain memory.Aristotle takes representations to be changes in concrete living things which arise from actual perception. To be connected to the original perception the representation has to be taken as a (kind of) copy of the original experience - this is the way Aristotle defines memory at the end of his investigation.