Abstract

In his short treatise De memoria et reminiscentia Aristotle makes an implicit distinction between two kinds of memory: rational „recollection" and non-rational „memory" . To twentieth-century readers such a dichotomy of memory comes rather as a surprise. This is the reason why the dichotomy of memory has not been interpreted correctly. For the most part it even passed unnoticed. In this essay two aspects of this distinction are examined. First, it is established what is meant by μνἠμη and avdfivTjais , and how these activities are related to each other. Memory turns out to be an animal function belonging to the perceptive part of the soul. It is a continuous having of perceptual and theoretical impressions, which is periodically activated. Recollection must be an exclusively human capacity, as it is connected to the rational part of the soul. To recollect is to retrieve a lost item by trying to associate still disposable ones to it. Thus memory and recollection are shown to be mutually independent mnemonic operations in their own right. Secondly, it is argued that Aristotle did not conceive this theory of memory in an intellectual vacuum, by the sole use of open-minded observation. As is shown in an analysis of Plato's Meno, Aristotle's theory should be considered as a systematizing elaboration of certain platonic intuitions concerning memory. Nor did Plato's intuitions spring from a purely scientific interest in the phenomenon of remembering. They for their part are zparergon of his engaged thought on the nature of knowledge and learning