Movements, Memory, and Mixture: Aristotle, Confusion, and the Historicity of Memory

Abstract

Aristotle frequently discusses specific material constraints on memory and recollection. This essay reinterprets his fluid physiological psychology of memory, which depends on the stability of bodily movements or traces, in light of his general theory of mixture. It proposes new ways to link memory and metaphysics in the Aristotelian tradition; counters a popular historical narrative which sets Aristotle at the origin of a static Western ‘archival model’ of memory; and suggests the relevance for contemporary philosophy and science of Aristotle’s view of the potential existence of movements in memory.