Academic scholarship on James Joyce’s work has shown over the past three decades a shift toward the local, and has highlighted the deep embeddedness of Joyce’s work in Ireland, especially Dublin. This may be viewed as a move away from earlier “universalist” or “globalizing” readings, where Joyce’s stature as a modernist, his formal experimentation, and his anticipation of later conceptions of literary textuality occupied centerstage. How do we think Joyce’s location in our present? What in Joyce can travel, in space and in time? This chapter focuses on the persistent preoccupation in Joyce’s work – notably Ulysses and Finnegans Wake – with recollection, especially with modes of remembrance that extend beyond individuals to encompass multiple levels of the past. It examines the afterlife of this concern in India by discussing Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable (English, 1935), Devanoora Mahadeva’s Kusumabale (Kannada, 1988), and Anand’s Vyasanum Vighneswaranum (Malayalam, 1996). Through a consideration of forms of narration emerging from contexts where the relationship between instituted archives and literary citation is rendered difficult, the chapter delineates “destitute” modes of recollection foregrounded in strands of Indian modernism.

Chapter 5 concludes the book with an analysis of the Maieutic section of the dialogue. It heralds a new beginning in the conversation, in which Socrates, having received at last Alcibiades’ full allegiance in question and answer, finally reveals to him his own being so as to secure commitment to a love that strives to grasp the totality of all that is, the highest expression of which is none other than the contemplative life. Self-knowing emerges as the zealous pursuit of the ultimate desideratum in the philosophical life, a striving that is akin to self-cultivation. Reason heals the soul, collecting it out of its opinionative and passionate dispersion, only to recognize, in the end, its synthetic activity is done in light of a higher grade of reality that transcends it, a reality in which it finally longs to participate; it yearns to become intellect.

‘Contested Concepts: Plutarch’s On Common Conceptions’ by Thomas Bénatouïl addresses the question of how ordinary concepts, for instance a layman’s concept of a spider, intersect with a zoologist’s concept of that insect. While from the epistemological point of view the latter’s concept should be allowed to prevail, from the point of view of semantics and the philosophy of mind it is not at all obvious that the scientific concept of spider should be allowed to rule over the corresponding lay concept, nor is it obvious that there is only one concept of spider whose content can be fixed for every context. Clearly, the Academics and the Stoics were aware of the importance of this and related problems. Plutarch’s dialogue On Common Conceptions, subtitled Against the Stoics, is a representative text of these schools’ respective stances, and its study by Thomas Bénatouïl aims to bring out both its historical significance and systematic interest.

In this chapter, we argue that a distinct concept of “aesthetic hope” emerges from the way Kierkegaard’s Aesthete treats hope [Haab] and its relationship to recollection [Erindring] in “The Unhappiest One” and “Rotation of Crops.” We first show that aesthetic hope is distinct from the two other kinds of hope discussed by Kierkegaard: temporal hope and eternal hope. We then consider the suggestion that aesthetic hope is also an expression of despair – an inverse hope against hope, which seeks to avoid disappointment by hoping for things that are in some sense certain. The aesthete’s recommendation that we hope in such a way illuminates Kierkegaard’s view of the “dialectic” of temporal hope and eternal hope. Finally, we explore the treatment of hope in Either/Or as essentially involving a controlled, attentional element that anticipates some contemporary trends in the philosophy of hope.

The intimate relationship between affect and the art of memory lies at the heart of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, this chapter argues, represented as a Platonic (and anti-Platonic) allegory of love. The art of memory – a colloquial term for an art or method that goes by many names, including artificial memory, the architectural mnemonic, and locational memory – is more than a rhetorical method of memorization, as traditionally understood. The origin story of the art of memory, its discovery by a poet who remembers a ruined edifice and the dead therein, instead suggests that this art was first and foremost a strategy of artistic creation: a poetics, as will be shown, whose affective power – the emotional force that makes it memorable by marking and moving both mind and body – derives paradigmatically from memories of love and stories about it. The ars memorativa meets the ars amatoria, the psyche and poetics, in Shakespeare’s Sonnets as throughout the poetic tradition that he remembers anew in metapoetic fashion.

This famous argument is important for understanding how, according to Socrates, we can inquire without the senses: the knowledge is already within us; the senses are merely necessary for triggering the beginning of inquiry. I argue that Socrates treats recollecting as an extended process. His claim is that learning is a type of recollecting that begins when we first perceive something and continues until we acquire knowledge of the relevant form. Moreover, I argue that Socrates is interested in a type of recollecting that involves perceiving one thing and bringing to mind another, which is the very standard by which one can judge the first. Socrates does not provide here an argument for accepting “Platonic forms,” where these are understood as including all of Plato’s central commitments about the forms. Instead, his argument highlights one key difference between ordinary objects and forms: that the latter do not change over time, whereas the former do.

In his Holy Sonnets, Donne seeks to forget rather than remember his sins, begging God for ‘a heavenly Lethean flood’ to ‘drown’ his ‘sin’s black memory’ and implying that his very salvation may depend upon it: ‘That Thou remember them, some claim as debt; / I think it mercy if Thou wilt forget’. Such a desire for divine oblivion would seem to be the very inverse of the theologian Dr Donne’s well-known assertion that ‘the art of salvation is but the art of memory’, yet, this chapter argues, they are intimately joined in the Holy Sonnets. This chapter explores how the speaker’s uncertainty about his salvation connects the ‘art of death’ (ars moriendi) with the ‘art of memory’ (ars memorativa) as a mnemonic poetics of ruin and recollection. The transformation of the art of memory into an art of salvation in Augustine’s Confessions is central not only to Donne’s reputation as a ‘second St Augustine’ but also to the poetics of memory that shape the Holy Sonnets. Donne constructs the Holy Sonnets as a memory theatre in which to enact the drama of salvation by performing the role of Doctor Faustus, a part drawn from both Augustine’s Confessions and Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus.

The influence which Plato’s theories of eros and philia exerted on Plutarch’s Advice to a Bride and Groom, On Isis and Osiris and his Dialogue on Love (Erotikos/Amatorius) are examined in light of the enormous chronological, cultural and philosophical distance between Plato and Plutarch. Plutarch’s methodological approach, reconciling his own opinions with the diverse views – which he saw as authoritative – expressed by Plato in the Symposium, Phaedrus and Laws, is considered. In his Advice to a Bride and Groom, Plutarch’s presentation of a philosophically informed love within marriage is presented as a counterpart to the early stages of Plato’s lover. Similarly, On Isis and Osiris, also presents a ‘companionate marriage’. However, the Erōtikos is the most important Plutarchan work dealing with Platonic love. Here Plutarch must prove not only that married love is natural, and homosexual love against nature (though he does not condemn it as a general principle), but also that women are worthy of love, and, if not already virtuous, can through the influence of the lover be brought towards virtue. The extent to which Plutarch rewrites the Platonic dialogues on eros in a new way, set in the imperial Roman world, is demonstrated.

The chapter aims to show that Plato’s engagement with mystery cults – the Eleusinian mysteries and Orphic cults in particular – can illuminate centrally important topics of Plato’s philosophy, including his conception of the philosophical life, its relation to the human good, the role of memory in the knowledge of the Forms, and the soul’s kinship to the divine. It explores why and how Plato presents philosophy as the true initiation which can fulfil the promise of the mystery cults to offer the best human life and afterlife. It analyses why and how Plato describes the knowledge of the Forms on the model of the direct encounter with the divine at the culmination of a mystery ritual. It further suggests that the ‘birth’ announced at the highest point of the Eleusinian mysteries can shed new light on the role of ‘giving birth’ at the culmination of the philosophical life in the Symposium. Finally, it shows how Pythagorean and Orphic focus on memory offered Plato a framework to develop his account of the relationship between the soul and the divine Forms, reincarnation, and the fate of our soul in the afterlife.

In the Meno, Socrates considers, and replies to, Meno’s paradox. According to the paradox, whether or not one knows something, one can’t inquire into it. The paradox has been understood in a variety of ways: some think it is invalid; others think it is valid but unsound; those who favor the second option disagree about what the false premise is. I argue that, as Socrates understands the paradox (but not, perhaps, as Meno does), it is valid but unsound: not knowing doesn’t preclude inquiry, since one can inquire on the basis of true beliefs that fall short of knowledge. Socrates develops this theme in the geometrical discussion with one of Meno’s slaves. Another part of his reply is the theory of recollection, which is often thought to posit innate knowledge. I argue, however, that, though the theory of recollection posits prenatal knowledge, it doesn’t posit innate knowledge. I also set the paradox in a broader context, exploring the Meno’s views on inquiry, definition, knowledge, and belief.

This chapter presents the second part of The Sickness unto Death, “Despair as Sin,” as the Aufhebung or recontextualizing of the first part in which the concept of sin does not function.  Both parts portray the self as existing “before God,” but that concept is so indeterminate in the first part that it fits just as well with Spinoza’s or Hegel’s “God” as with the biblical God Kierkegaard has in mind. Sin, along with essentially related concepts such as atonement and forgiveness, is the decisive category that distinguishes biblical religion (Jewish or Christian) from “theologies whose foundations are scientific naturalism (Spinoza) or socio-historical pantheism (Hegel). The latter are “Socratic” in that they rely on some version of recollection theory (Reason), while the former rests on a concept of revelation that is not reducible to a truth already within us. Reason turns out to be as sectarian as the faith that rests on some extra-rational revelation. While both parts of the text are psychological/phenomenological, neither permits the reduction of despair to depression.

Age-related changes in memory are a common but worrisome occurrence in many people’s lives. However, these changes are not ubiquitous. Healthy aging appears to impact memory for associative/relational details, i.e., the ability to recollect, more so than memory for item information. We propose that alterations in the recruitment of prefrontally mediated cognitive control processes, such as strategy use and inhibitory control, underlie these age-related memory deficits in healthy adults. These processes are particularly critical for remembering specific relational details and for being able to resolve interference between competing memories. Critically, evidence suggests that while there are large individual differences in the impact of aging on memory, various methods of support/intervention can improve memory performance in healthy older adults. We discuss how recent developments in neuroscience analysis methods have enhanced our understanding of how aging affects the control processes that support episodic learning and retrieval. We further suggest that future studies should test more diverse samples of adults and assess the role of lifestyle factors on individual differences in patterns of episodic memory performance and supporting brain activity and structure.

This chapter traces the evolution of human memory from Aristotle’s theory of recollection to current versions of Frederic Bartlett’s theory of memory as a reconstruction rather than reproduction of the past. Through constant updating of its content, memory serves an adaptive purpose. The chapter describes Endel Tulving’s definition of what memories are and outlines Larry Squire’s taxonomy of declarative and nondeclarative memory. It describes the stages of the memory process, the brain regions that mediate them and how they become dysfunctional in disorders of memory capacity and content. The reconstructive model serves as a theoretical framework for discussing metaphysical, ethical and legal issues regrading normal and abnormal memory, as well as interventions to improve, restore, weaken or erase memories.