Memory from the perspective of the many-minded Plato, Aristotle, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas

Abstract

Memories encompass the most diverse individual and collective experiences, safeguarding a large list of experiences, recorded by facts, moments, events, knowledge and even by the dreams experienced, so that our way of using these memories is directly linked to our relationship with the world, with our learning and with our particular perception. When dealing with memory, Plato uses the idea of a block of wax present in the soul of each individual, where certain images are imprinted, which are not the same for everyone. For Aristotle, it is not memory, but the work of memory that distinguishes us from other animals, what he calls revocation. From the Aristotelian point of view, only human beings have the possibility of making the revocation. St. Augustine deals with a space that he calls "palaces of memory", making the reference that the spirit is the very memory of the human being. St. Thomas Aquinas considered that the object of memory would be the past, so that memory would be particularly, for him, an internal sensitive power and also an intellectual power. In fact, it can be said that memory, which also creates our identity, is lived and experienced in a very peculiar way within each human subjectivity.