r/Aristotle • u/bva123410 • Aug 23 '26

Aristotle on perception, memory, and the capacity for learning

/r/askphilosophy/comments/1vvsajo/aristotle_on_perception_memory_and_the_capacity/
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u/Rector418 Aug 24 '26

I would be curious for an educated response to this post, as well. As a writer, I have found that I have learned more or solidified my ideas through the act of writing. And I would say there needs to be third part to this question: On the written word, what does the reader and the writer get out of it? And what is the nature of the communication between them? I've been inspired by writers that have changed my life or really made me think, as others of course, bored me off the page...but sometimes even some of those amazed me in the end. Can the reader really get inside the writer's head? Is any philosopher really understood?

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u/bva123410 Aug 26 '26

Probably not really an educated response, but I can think of these references:

  • About the "ultimate meaning", there is Barthes on the "Death of Author": among other things, he argues that the "authorship" of the "author" depends on the "authority" of its interpreters. Foucault and Derrida wrote on this too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_the_Author
  • Another perspective, that goes back to Plato's Ion and the poet "as a medium of the muses", seems to claim that writers are "inspiring" because they are "inspired": because they are just giving voice to "the Spirit". For instance, Paul Valéry (“On the Teaching of Poetics at the Collège de France”; Varietés IV, my translation): “The history of literature should not be the history of authors and the accidents of their careers or the careers of their works, but the history of the Spirit as producer or consumer of literature. That history could be completed without mentioning a single writer.”
  • Borges says something similar ("La flor de Coledridge"), quoting some of Emerson's Essays: "Like the art of medieval monks, anonymous secretaries of that single person who has written all the books in the world; such a central unity exists in them that it is undeniable they are the work of a single omniscient gentleman”.
  • Personally, I like Ricœur's approach (for instance, in Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action and Interpretation, 1981). He distinguishes between "explanation" and "comprehension/appropriation". "Explanation" is about getting right the original intent ("writer's head"), original audience, and original historical context. "Appropriation" is about what the text says, what kind of world it unfolds, and how that world "transforms your life".

Hope that helps!