Modelling the memory and anticipation of pleasure: comments on James Warren’s ‘Memory, Anticipation, Pleasure’

In his ‘Memory, Anticipation, Pleasure’, James Warren describes two models for how ancient philosophers understood the memory and anticipation of pleasure and pain. According to the first, memory and anticipation allow us to re-live or pre-live temporally remote affections; according to the second, an experience at t₁ might have a different and opposite affective character to the anticipation of that experience at t_-1, or the recollection of it at t₂. This response analyses Warren’s characterization of the two models and the fit between the models and the texts Warren surveys. It shows that the first model in particular struggles to fit many of the texts, with the distinction between the two models threatening to collapse. The chapter ends with a provisional suggestion as to how the distinction between Warren’s two models might be preserved.