Reminiscence

REMINISCENCE. - In a generic sense (from re-miniscor) it denotes memory, recollection.

In philosophy the term (Gk. ἀνάμνησις) had a technical meaning in Platonism, where it denoted the mind's process from sense perception to the recollection of the idea (v.): "It is proper to man to understand by means of the idea (εἶδος), which from many sense representations arrives at rational unity: and this is nothing other than r. (ἀνάμνησις) of those things which our soul once saw, when it was in the train of a god" (Phaedr., 249 c; cf. ibid., 250 a;

(Int. Ene. Catt.)

REMIGIUS, bishop of REIMS, saint - St. R. heals a blind man, by René Levieux (1625-98) - Rome, church of St. Louis of the French.

and Men., 81 c, 86 a-b). In Aristotle, once Plato's gnoseological-metaphysical meaning had fallen away (which was accepted later, as it seems, in early Augustinian thought: cf. Ch. Boyer, L'idée de vérité dans la philosophie de St Augustin, 2nd ed., Paris 1941, pp. 213-15), r. is understood in an exclusively psychological sense. Unlike memory (ἐνδική), which is the passive preservation and recognition of previous contents of consciousness, r. is the active process of recalling and reviving the past. It is therefore a "search" (ἐνδικός τις) and almost "a kind of syllogism" (συλλογισμός τις), so that while memory belongs also to the brutes, r. is proper to man, who possesses the faculty of deliberating (De mem. et remin., ch. 2, 253 a 7 ff.; cf. the commentary of St. Thomas, lect. 8, ed. Spiazzi, Turin 1949, no. 398 ff., and Sum. Theol., 1a, q. 78, a. 4). A distinction, moreover, that is secondary, inasmuch as, given the evident active character of human memory, r. can be understood as memory itself in act, according to the physio-psychic laws (including therein the directing power of the self-conscious subject) conditioning the association of the contents of consciousness.

The Aristotelian sense, which has not entirely disappeared (it was taken up, among others, by Rosmini), is nevertheless very rare today and has in fact yielded to an opposite meaning. According to E. Baudin (Corso di psicologer, Ital. trans. by G. Lorenzini, Florence 1948, p. 283), r. is "an evocation without recognition," that is, an unnoticed one, of memories already buried. This meaning is alive in current language, which designates as r. the spontaneous re-presenting to consciousness of data and representations (phrases, sayings, texts...) previously had, but not recognized as such ("unconscious" r.). In current usage r. also means "uncertain, vague recollection"; but this meaning is, for the most part, not accepted in psychology.

Ugo Viglino