In the Summa Theologiae, Thomas Aquinas states that the “aspect of pastness” involved in memory is a certain kind of cognitive object — i.e., an intention — apprehended by the “estimative power.” All told, however, Aquinas mentions this idea precisely once. In this article, I construct an account of the idea that pastness is an estimative intention by drawing upon texts in which I argue that Aquinas develops this idea, albeit without invoking the terminology of the estimative intention. I conclude (...) that, by identifying the aspect of pastness as an estimative intention, Aquinas neatly synthesizes the Aristotelian and Arabic traditions on memory. (shrink)

In this paper, we show that there are some strong philosophical and exegetical reasons to argue that according to the view developed in the first chapter of Aristotle’s De Memoria, the objects of memory are non-present, or absent, things and events rather than our past acts of awareness of them. We argue that on Aristotle’s account, the objects of memory can be particulars or universals, perceptibles or intelligibles, and that all these kinds of things are past in the same sense, (...) namely, in the sense of previously having been present to the perceiver or knower. Aristotle’s claim that we remember that we previously learned or saw something is the description of how, rather than what, we remember. Keywords: Aristotle, memory, past, pathos, present. (shrink)

Taking its cue from a passage in which the late pagan Neoplatonist Damascius criticizes his predecessor Proclus, this paper explores the way that ancient philosophers understood the soul’s access to its own tacit contents through the power of memory. Late ancient discussions of this issue respond to a range of passages in Plato and to Aristotle’s On Memory. After a survey of this material it is shown that for Damascius, but not Proclus, memory requires a distinction between the subject and (...) object of remembering. This means that there can be no memory involved in self-thought, such as occurs in intellect, but only in soul. In conclusion, the paper draws attention to a parallel discussion in Augustine, who, like Proclus, thinks that self-thinking can be understood as a function of memory. (shrink)

Proceedings of the annual congress of the Finnish Philosophical Association in 2013. Theme: memory.

Este artículo presenta algunas de las visiones filosóficas más influyentes sobre la memoria, la verdad y la justicia en el Medioevo cristiano. En todasellas están presentes, en proporción diferente, las dos tradiciones dominantes, el neoplatonismo y el aristotelismo. San Agustín, Avicena y Tomás de Aquino encarnan perspectivas crecientemente desplatonizadas sobre la memoria. En cuanto al concepto de verdad, tanto el modelo teocéntrico de Agustín como el adecuacionista de Tomás son expresiones de una corriente principal que declina en el siglo XIV. (...) Finalmente, mientras que Agustín introduce de modo crítico la definición ciceroniana de la justicia, basada en la teoría grecorromana de la ley natural, Aquino coordina sistemáticamente teísmo cristiano, ley natural y naturalismo político aristotélico. (shrink)