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PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS If there are two people, one of whom writes one part of a book and the other another part, then “we wrote that book” is not literally correct, but a synecdoche, inasmuch as the whole stands for the parts. Summa theologiae III, Q.67, a.6, ad 3 The present volume consists of English translations of the commentaries by Thomas Aquinas on the first two books of Aristotle’s Parva naturalia : De sensu et sensato and De memoria et reminiscentia. The translations are based on the critical edition of the commentaries published by RenéAntoine Gauthier, O.P., in 1985 in Volume 45.2 of the Leonine Commission ’s edition of Aquinas’s opera omnia. Gauthier’s edition includes critical texts of the Latin versions that Aquinas had of the Aristotelian works, as well as an informative introduction in French and valuable notes to the text in Latin. It is hoped that the present translations may be useful to readers interested in Aquinas’s thought, in the history of Aristotelianism, or in important pre-modern discussions of sensation and its objects and of memory and recollection. In imitation of the Leonine format, the words of the Aristotelian text that are repeated in the commentaries have been italicized. The translators would like to express their gratitude to the Leonine Commission for its kind permission to use the Leonine text. A possible source of confusion should be clarified. In the dominant traditional ordering of Aristotle’s works, De sensu et sensato, the sequel to De anima, is followed by De memoria et reminiscentia. Aquinas accepted this ordering and followed it in his commentaries on the three works. Toward the beginning of his commentary on De sensu et sensato, however, apparently under the influence of Averroes, he characterizes De memoria et reminiscentia as the second “treatise” of the “book” De sensu et sensato (see pp. 17, 24 below), and Gauthier’s edition accordingly presents a single commentary on two treatises of one book. But at the beginning ix of his commentary on De memoria et reminiscentia, Aquinas provides a commentator’s prologue, apparently signaling the beginning of a distinct commentary on a distinct work, and he now calls De memoria et reminiscentia a “book” (see p. 184 below). In keeping with Aquinas’s second thoughts, and with traditional Aristotelian and Thomistic scholarship , the present volume distinguishes two translations by two translators of two Thomistic commentaries on two Aristotelian works. ) _ I would like to thank Chad Engelland and Travis Cooper, who, at different stages, helped prepare the manuscript of the commentary on On Sense and What Is Sensed for publication. Kevin White ) _ I’d like to add a note of thanks to my wife, Carol, who has more than matched the job description of a good wife at the end of the book of Proverbs, and to our five new adopted children, Jacob, Jeremiah, Janea, David, and Hailey, who have added spice and energy to our lives. Edward M. Macierowski x PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...

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