The theme of Volume 3 of the Edgar Wind Journal is cultural memory.

In the English introduction to A Bibliography on the Survival of the Classics, Edgar Wind explains Aby Warburg’s notion of memory in the following terms:

"It is not sufficient, however, to state the problem of ‘historical memory’ in abstract philosophical terms. It is necessary to observe in detail how that memory actually functions. For this purpose, any historical material might supply a significant group of data. However, the material here selected under the name of the ‘survival of the classics’ must seem of particular relevance to any student – or patient – of European history. The word, ‘survival’, to be sure, is a biological metaphor. When we speak of ‘survival of the classics’, we mean that the symbols created by the ancients continued to assert their power upon subsequent generations; – but what do we mean by the word ‘continue’? Is their significance constantly retained? Or is it not rather forgotten at times, regained and transformed at others? And what are the conditions, what are the effects of ‘forgetting’ and ‘remembering’?"

These were the questions that Warburg aimed to answer, to investigate, for example, the way "the Olympian gods were revived in the Renaissance as aesthetic ideals" and the way "they came to survive in the Middle Ages as astrological and magical demons".

We ask for contributions that address the notion of cultural memory, or social memory, from any perspectives – for example, anthropology, art history, cultural history, philosophy of mind, and psychology.