Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- PART I THE CRITICAL TEXTS OF ANTIQUITY
- Introduction
- PART II THE PRACTICE OF MEMORY DURING THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION FROM CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY TO THE CHRISTIAN MONASTIC CENTURIES
- Introduction
- PART III THE BEGINNINGS OF THE SCHOLASTIC UNDERSTANDING OF MEMORY
- Introduction
- PART IV ARISTOTLE NEO-PLATONISED: THE REVIVAL OF ARISTOTLE AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF SCHOLASTIC THEORIES OF MEMORY
- Introduction
- 15 Arabic and Jewish translations of sources from antiquity: their use by Latin Christians
- 16 John Blund, David of Dinant, the De potentiis animae et obiectis
- 17 John of La Rochelle
- 18 Averroes
- 19 Albert the Great
- 20 Thomas Aquinas
- PART V LATER MEDIEVAL THEORIES OF MEMORY: THE VIA ANTIQUA AND THE VIA MODERNA.
- Introduction
- Conclusion: an all too brief account of modern theories of mind and remembering
- Bibliography
- Index
19 - Albert the Great
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- PART I THE CRITICAL TEXTS OF ANTIQUITY
- Introduction
- PART II THE PRACTICE OF MEMORY DURING THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION FROM CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY TO THE CHRISTIAN MONASTIC CENTURIES
- Introduction
- PART III THE BEGINNINGS OF THE SCHOLASTIC UNDERSTANDING OF MEMORY
- Introduction
- PART IV ARISTOTLE NEO-PLATONISED: THE REVIVAL OF ARISTOTLE AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF SCHOLASTIC THEORIES OF MEMORY
- Introduction
- 15 Arabic and Jewish translations of sources from antiquity: their use by Latin Christians
- 16 John Blund, David of Dinant, the De potentiis animae et obiectis
- 17 John of La Rochelle
- 18 Averroes
- 19 Albert the Great
- 20 Thomas Aquinas
- PART V LATER MEDIEVAL THEORIES OF MEMORY: THE VIA ANTIQUA AND THE VIA MODERNA.
- Introduction
- Conclusion: an all too brief account of modern theories of mind and remembering
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Coming from a generation of theologians who wrote treatises on the De Anima linked with tracts De Bono et Virtutibus, Albert the Great included in his De Bono a discussion of memory, both from the standpoint of psychology and from that of Cicero's Rhetoric and the De Inventione. As was clear in earlier tracts like that of John of la Rochelle, memory and reminiscence were already linked with the virtue of prudence, following John of Damascus's classification of the virtues. Whilst memory, according to Albert, is said to pertain to the sensible part of the soul, prudence pertains to the rational part since, we are told, according to Aristotle's definition, reminiscence pertains to the rational part and hence is the type of memory which constitutes a part of prudence. By this Albert means to distinguish the stored results of the human estimative cogitation which judges the intentions of sensible experience, from the subsequent activity which leads to an attempt by reason to recall the mental similitude engendered by imagination's similitude. Prudence is for Albert a moral habitus and hence reminiscence is a psychological habitus, an active, discontinuous, syllogistic search amongst mental similitudes, whereas the recollection of impressions and events of the past is not a habitus in and of itself.
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- Information
- Ancient and Medieval MemoriesStudies in the Reconstruction of the Past, pp. 416 - 421Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1992