Memory, Hearing and Learning in Aristotle

Abstract

The essay is intended to be a reflection and a proposal to interpret the link between memory, hearing and learning posited by Aristotle himself. It will try to show that this link opens up to a range on different disciplinary fields of Aristotelian philosophy, from psychology to gnoseology, physiology, teleology, zoology and anthropology, in an interweaving of correspondences and complementary suggestions. These different conceptual contexts will then be analysed singularly and comparatively, in the search, that is to say, for possible differences and similarities between them, to verify what consequences the resulting approaches have on the interpretation of the link in question. The analysis will also touch on the aspect for which it can be said that any défaillances concerning, in the human animal particularly, activities that, like these, involve sensory as well as mental operations, fall within its nature as an entity undergoing generation and corruption.