Space, time and phantasms in Aristotle, De Memoria 2, 452B7-25

Classical Quarterly

Volumn 47, Issue 1, 1997, Pages 167-175

  Sisko, John E ^a  

^a Dept of Economics and Thomas Jefferson Program in Public Policy at the College of William and Mary   (United States)

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EID: 60950003111     PISSN: 00098388     EISSN: 14716844     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/cq/47.1.167     Document Type: Article

References (8)

1. In De Somno, Aristotle claims that the arche of perception is located in the region about the heart (462a1-5)
2. Thus, he thinks that changes in our bodily constitution explain differences in our ability to retain memories. Since he proposes that such changes can bring about the decay of existing phantasmata, he must think that phantasmata are marks in the proton aisthetikon. I have discussed the subject of the physiological status of phantasmata (together with the subject of the physiology of aisthesis) in 'Material Alteration and Cognitive Activity in Aristotle's De Anima', Phronesis 41.2 (1996), 138-57
3. See J. L. Beare, 'Notes on Aristotle's Parva Naturalia', Hermathena 10 (1897-8), 455-73
4. and W. D. Ross, Aristotle: Parva Naturalia (Oxford, 1955), pp. 249-52. The superiority of the Beare/Ross reconstruction over that found in Sophonias' commentary is demonstrated by Ross (p. 250). The main difficulties with the version in Sophonias are (i) it requires that mental images are larger than the external objects which they represent, and (ii) within it there are three letters (N, Ξ and P) which do not occur in any extant text
5. Besides Beare and W. D. Ross, see Richard Sorabji, Aristotle on Memory (Providence, 1972), pp. 18-21, 108-10
6. John Cooper, review of Sorabji in Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, 57 (1975), 66-8
7. The diagram is also discussed in G. T. R. Ross, Aristotle: De Sensu and De Memoria (Cambridge, 1906), pp. 275-83, 289-90
8. It should be noted that in his 1908 translation of the passage (reprinted in W. D. Ross [ed.], The Works of Aristotle, vol. III [Oxford, 1931]), Beare chooses not to transpose the letters at bl9 and b22