MEMÓRIA E CARÁTER: ARISTÓTELES E A HISTÓRIA PESSOAL

For Aristotle, memory is not the conservation of the traces of the past and taking them again as objects only. His treaty “On memory and reminiscence” examines in a general trend the role of images in the exercise of thinking. Aristotle describes the process of reminiscence or remembrance, analyzing the voluntary organization of mental representations as well as its involuntary and pathological ways. At the same time, he explains both the way through which man can be the agent of his own representations and the principle of the relations one makes. As far as memory is concerned, Aristotle deals with critical questions for the definition of psychic states, for epistemology and for the conception of the self or personal identity. The analysis of memory and reminiscence drives us to a reevaluation of the aristotelic concept of character (hÕqoj), turning it into the basis and the agent of a personal history that cannot be abstracted from its psychophysical conditions.