Memory and distinction between soul and body in Saint Augustine and Bergson

Abstract

The present work has as objective to do a brief analysis concerning how Saint Augustine and Bergon consider the question of the nature of memory and the distinction between soul or spirit and body. For Saint Augustine the soul is, following the logic of the metaphysics that was being built since before him, the motor principle of the body, where reside all the mental faculties. Thus, the sensation, the perception and also the memory are faculties of the soul, that uses the body to execute them. The body is tool for the execution of these faculties. Bergson retakes this discussion establishing a distinction between spirit and body, considering the memory as a faculty irreducible to the pure cerebral mechanism.