On Memory and Reminiscence
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~6,110 words · 29 passages
Cite this work
- APAAristotle. (n.d.). On Memory and Reminiscence. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/aristotle/on-memory-and-reminiscence
- MLAAristotle. On Memory and Reminiscence. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/aristotle/on-memory-and-reminiscence.
- ChicagoAristotle. On Memory and Reminiscence. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/aristotle/on-memory-and-reminiscence.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
How an image of the past is stored and what lets us find it again. Aristotle distinguishes memory — having the image — from recollection, which is going to look for it.
Context and history
The first text to treat memory as a technical problem rather than a gift, and the distinction between memory and recollection underlies all later psychology of the subject. It also contains the laws of association — similarity, contrariety, contiguity — that Hume would take up two thousand years later. Part of the Parva naturalia, the eight short works that continue the De anima by applying its theory to particular phenomena of the living body. They are transmitted as a group and read best together.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
But the point of capital importance is that (for the purpose of recollection) one should cognize, determinately or indeterminately, the time-relation (of that which he wishes to recollect). There is,-let it be taken as a fact,-something by which one distinguishes a greater and a smaller time; and it is reasonable to think that one does this in a way analogous to that in which one discerns (spacial) magnitudes. For it is not by the mind's reaching out towards them, as some say a visual ray from the eye does (in seeing), that one thinks of large things at a distance in space (for even if they are not there, one may similarly think them); but one does so by a proportionate mental movement. For there are in the mind the like figures and movements (i.e. 'like' to those of objects and events). Therefore, when one thinks the greater objects, in what will his thinking those differ from his thinking the smaller? (In nothing,) because all the internal though smaller are as it were proportional to the external. Now, as we may assume within a person something proportional to the forms (of distant magnitudes), so, too, we may doubtless assume also something else proportional to their distances. As, therefore, if one has (psychically) the movement in AB, Be, he constructs in thought (i.e. knows objectively) GD, since AG and Gd bear equal ratios respectively (to AB and BE), (so he who recollects also proceeds). Why then does he construct GD rather than Zh? Is it not because as AG is to AB,