David Bloch

Aristotle on Memory and Recollection: Text, Translation, Interpretation, and Reception in Western Scholasticism

Based on a new critical edition of Aristotles De Memoria and two interpretive essays, this book challenges current views on Aristotles theories of memory and recollection, and argues that these are based on misinterpretations of the text and Aristotles philosophical goals.

The text of Aristotle's De sensu and De memoria

L’article examine la tradition textuelle du De sensu et du De memoria dAristote a partir de tous les manuscrits du xe au xive siecle. En sappuyant sur de nouvelles collations de ces manuscrits et une documentation etendue, l’auteur montre qu’un stemma coherent les comprenant en totalite peut etre etabli avec d’importantes consequences pour les editions critiques de ces textes.

Robert Grosseteste's Conclusiones and the Commentary on the Posterior Analytics

This article examines the nature of Robert Grossetestes commentary on Aristotles Posterior Analytics with particular reference to his “conclusions” (conclusiones). It is argued (using book 1, chapter 2, of the commentary as a case study) that the simple demonstrative appearance of the commentary, which is very much the result of the 64 conclusions, is in part an illusion. Thus, the exposition in the commentary is not simply based on the strict principles of the Posterior Analytics and on the proof-procedures of Euclidean geometry; rather the commentary is a complicated mixture of different elements of twelfth-century texts and the scholarship of Grossetestes day.

Ancient and Medieval Theories

Memory and recollection have always been important in very different areas of human experience, and this has profoundly influenced the history of these concepts. Because of this, different traditions of memory and recollection have existed throughout the history of ideas, sometimes taking parallel courses, at other times intersecting with and influencing each other. A purely philosophical tradition was shaped in particular by, and with constant reference to, Plato and Aristotle, and this tradition created different concepts to be used in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of science. A rhetorical conception of memory was shaped in a second tradition by ideas like the ones that we find in Cicero’s works and in the Rhetoric to Herennius, but, in contrast with the other views on memory, this was not a dynamic conception, and it remained basically unaltered throughout Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Finally, an ethical tradition that treated memory as part of human prudence had many different sources of inspiration, but perhaps the most important were Plato, Cicero, Neoplatonic authors and Augustine.

John of Salisbury on Science and Knowledge

Knowledge is by nature uncertain. This is something that John of Salisbury strongly believes, and it has profound consequences for his general views on science and knowledge. John considers himself an Academic skeptic and as such certain knowledge is unobtainable, except by the intervention by God. The Metalogicon is particularly concerned with adopting Aristotles theories, most of which seem to be considered by Aristotle as well as by John the foundation of science, knowledge and education. But Aristotle himself was not a skeptic, so John faced a difficult task, to combine his skepticism with an Aristotelian theory of science and knowledge. Whereas the Augustinian and Boethian views would be natural for Johns contemporaries, such a conception of knowledge and wisdom, a conception that is found scattered particularly throughout Books 1 and 4 of the Metalogicon , might seem difficult to combine with Johns skeptical and Aristotelian dialectical views. Keywords: Aristotelian theory; Augustinian; Boethian; John of Salisbury; knowledge; Metalogicon; science; skepticism