Hash for February 13, 2009

- Discussing blogs about all sorts of wonderfulness.

- Kevin will talk on Yates's Chapter 2+3.

-Memory, imagination, and soul - Both connected by Aristotle and Plato. Can't have one without the other. Connected like the trinity.

-pg. 33: Memory is mental images of things past and imagination.

-"Imagination acts as your one hour photo for your memory."

-pg. 37: Faedras. "Memory....is the ground work of the whole." The ground work of the trinity. And if soul is you very essence, and memory is its groundwork, memory is given a HUGE role.

-"Knowledge is a statue that you use your imagination to create a cast around, then you use your memory to create a mold around the cast and keep its image there." I imagined a totem pole with a huge cast around it, then a lot of clay to get a mold around that. ;)

-Chapter 3: Roman memory knowledge put to the back shelves until two monks made it important again. Had same connection ideas with trinity and all, but they took it farther by asking why the memory to soul is important. Pg. 65.

Wonderful outline of the subject of the art of memory on Wikipedia....good for studying for test...... can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_of_memory

Yates is far more interested in Plato (influenced Renaissance) than she is in Aristotle (influenced Middle Ages).

Neoplatanism (important):a philosophical system, originated in the 3rd century a.d. by Plotinus, founded chiefly on Platonic doctrine and Oriental mysticism, with later influences from Christianity. It holds that all existence consists of emanations from the One with whom the soul may be reunited.

Freud says you can remember all the way back to your birth. Psychoanalysis is a memory analysis in its purest form. Jeung says you can remember everything before you were born too, all the way back through the human race.

Anamnesis - Recollection of everything that has been forgotten....EVERYTHING!

Gnosticism - Says there's a spark of divinity in us all (the epiphany)

Plato knows we fell from perfection into this nasty world of muck and sin.

Plato says your wings want to come back and that's why your shoulders itch when you remember something.

Lethe - river of forgetfullness

Mnemosiny - river of remembrance


Hamlet, Jesus, and...... uh oh, talking crazilyof communion and cannablism and the power of eating Jesus and becoming one with him.

Hamlet, Jesus, and Krishna - Remembrance

Chapter 2 in Yates is ended by Augustine. He realized memory is not just an item in persuading and working stupidly... it is a key component of reality.

- Augustine converted to Christianity... because he READ A BOOK!

Memory is essential.... look at his passages in Yates on pg. 47.

****HOMEWORK - REGROW YOUR WINGS IN MEMORY - AND BRING A QUESTION TO NEXT CLASS FOR THE TEST. Not TOO trivial and multiple choice.****

Books around:
-Commentary on Plato's Symposium on Love: Marsilio Ficino, tn. by Sears Jayne