Aristotle’s De memoria et reminiscentia (“On Memory and Recollection”) is the oldest surviving systematic study of the nature of human memory. Forming part of Aristotle’s other minor writings on psychology that were intended as a supplement to his De anima (“On the Soul”) and known under the collective title Parva naturalia, Aristotle’s De memoria et reminiscentia gave rise to a vast number of commentaries in the Middle Ages. The present volume offers new knowledge on the medieval understanding of Aristotle’s theories on memory and recollection across the linguistic traditions including the Byzantine Greek, Latin and Arabic reception.

Véronique Decaix is associate professor in Medieval Philosophy at the University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Her research focus is on psychology during the Middle Ages, more precisely on intentionality in cognitive processes such as sensation, memory, dream and intellection. She has recently published a monograph on Dietrich of Freiberg (Vrin, 2021).

Christina Thomsen Thörnqvist is professor of Latin (University of Gothenburg) and specializes on the Latin reception of Aristotle’s syllogistic theory and his natural philosophy. She has recently a major research project on the Greek, Latin and Arabic reception of Aristotle’s Parva naturalia (Representation and Reality 2013-2019) and is now heading a project on the medieval reception of Aristotle’s logic (Filling the Gap: Medieval Aristotelian Logic 1240–1360, 2019–2024).

Table of Contents

  • Christina Thomsen Thörnqvist, Preface
  • Véronique Decaix, Introduction
  • Mika Perälä, Aristotle’s Three Questions about Memory
  • Alexandra Michalewski, Writing in the Soul. On Some Aspects of Recollection in Plotinus
  • Tommaso Alpina, Retaining, Remembering, Recollecting. Avicenna’s Account of Memory and Its Sources
  • Carla Di Martino, Mémoire, représentation et signification chez Averroès. Une proposition de lecture
  • Joël Chandelier, Memory, Avicenna and the Western Medical Tradition
  • Julie Brumberg-Chaumont, The First Latin Reception of the De memoria et reminiscentia: Memory and Recollection as Julie Brumberg-Chaumont, Apprehensive Faculties or as Moving Faculties?
  • Véronique Decaix, What Is Memory of? Albert the Great on the Proper Object of Memory
  • Sten Ebbesen, Memory Is of the Past
  • Christina Thomsen Thörnqvist, Aristotle and His Early Latin Commentators on Memory and Motion in Sleep
  • Dafni Argyri, The Byzantine Reception of Aristotle’sDe memoria
  • Bibliography
  • Index