Memory, History, Forgetting

by Ricoeur, Paul

• ISBN13: 9780226713427
• ISBN10: 0226713423
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-08-15
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

Why do major historical events such as the Holocaust occupy the forefront of the collective consciousness, while profound moments such as the Armenian genocide, the McCarthy era, and France's role in North Africa stand distantly behind? Is it possible that history "overly remembers" some events at the expense of others? A landmark work in philosophy, Paul Ricoeur's Memory, History, Forgetting examines this reciprocal relationship between remembering and forgetting, showing how it affects both the perception of historical experience and the production of historical narrative.Memory, History, Forgetting, like its title, is divided into three major sections. Ricoeur first takes a phenomenological approach to memory and mnemonical devices. The underlying question here is how a memory of present can be of something absent, the past. The second section addresses recent work by historians by reopening the question of the nature and truth of historical knowledge. Ricoeur explores whether historians, who can write a history of memory, can truly break with all dependence on memory, including memories that resist representation. The third and final section is a profound meditation on the necessity of forgetting as a condition for the possibility of remembering, and whether there can be something like happy forgetting in parallel to happy memory. Throughout the book there are careful and close readings of the texts of Aristotle and Plato, of Descartes and Kant, and of Halbwachs and Pierre Nora.A momentous achievement in the career of one of the most significant philosophers of our age, Memory, History, Forgetting provides the crucial link between Ricoeur's Time and Narrative and Oneself as Another and his recent reflections on ethics and the problems of responsibility and representation.

Author Biography

Paul Ricoeur (1913–2005) was the John Nuveen Professor in the Divinity School, the Department of Philosophy, and the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. His books include Oneself as Another, the three-volume Time and Narrative, and The Just, all published by the University of Chicago Press. Kathleen Blamey teaches philosophy at California State University, East Bay and has taught at the American University in Paris. David Pellauer is professor of philosophy at DePaul University.

Table of Contents

Preface	xv
PART I ON MEMORY AND RECOLLECTION	1	(132)
Chapter 1 Memory and Imagination	5	(51)
Reading Guidelines	5	(2)
The Greek Heritage	7	(14)
Plato: The Present Representation of an Absent Thing	7	(8)
Aristotle: "Memory Is of the Past"	15	(6)
A Phenomenological Sketch of Memory	21	(23)
Memories and Images	44	(12)
Chapter 2 The Exercise of Memory: Uses and Abuses	56	(37)
Reading Guidelines	56	(2)
The Abuses of Artificial Memory: The Feats of Memorization	58	(10)
The Abuses of Natural Memory: Blocked Memory, Manipulated Memory, Abusively Controlled Memory	68	(25)
The Pathological-Therapeutic Level: Blocked Memory	69	(11)
The Practical Level: Manipulated Memory	80	(6)
The Ethico-Political Level: Obligated Memory	86	(7)
Chapter 3 Personal Memory, Collective Memory	93	(40)
Reading Guidelines	93	(3)
The Tradition of Inwardness	96	(24)
Augustine	96	(6)
Locke	102	(7)
Husserl	109	(11)
The External Gaze: Maurice Halbwachs	120	(4)
Three Subjects of the Attribution of Memories: Ego, Collectives, Close Relations	124	(9)
PART II HISTORY, EPISTEMOLOGY	133	(148)
Prelude History: Remedy or Poison?	141	(5)
Chapter 1 The Documentary Phase: Archived Memory	146	(36)
Reading Guidelines	146	(1)
Inhabited Space	147	(6)
Historical Time	153	(8)
Testimony	161	(5)
The Archive	166	(10)
Documentary Proof	176	(6)
Chapter 2 Explanation/Understanding	182	(52)
Reading Guidelines	182	(6)
Promoting the History of Mentalities	188	(12)
Some Advocates of Rigor: Michel Foucault, Michel de Certeau, Norbert Elias	200	(9)
Variations in Scale	209	(7)
From the Idea of Mentality to That of Representation	216	(11)
The Scale of Efficacy or of Coerciveness	218	(3)
The Scale of Degrees of Legitimation	221	(2)
The Scale of Nonquantitative Aspects of Social Times	223	(4)
The Dialectic of Representation	227	(7)
Chapter 3 The Historian's Representation	234	(47)
Reading Guidelines	234	(4)
Representation and Narration	238	(10)
Representation and Rhetoric	248	(13)
The Historian's Representation and the Prestige of the Image	261	(13)
Standing For	274	(7)
PART III THE HISTORICAL CONDITION	281	(226)
Prelude The Burden of History and the Nonhistorical	287	(6)
Chapter 1 The Critical Philosophy of History	293	(50)
Reading Guidelines	293	(3)
"Die Geschichte Selber," "History Itself"	296	(9)
"Our" Modernity	305	(9)
The Historian and the Judge	314	(19)
Interpretation in History	333	(10)
Chapter 2 History and Time	343	(69)
Reading Guidelines	343	(9)
Temporality	352	(17)
Being-toward-Death	352	(9)
Death in History	361	(8)
Historicity	369	(13)
The Trajectory of the Term Geschichtlichkeit	370	(6)
Historicity and Historiography	376	(6)
Within-Timeness: Being-"in"-Time	382	(11)
Along the Path of the Inauthentic	382	(2)
Within-Timeness and the Dialectic of Memory and History	384	(9)
Memory, Just a Province of History?	385	(4)
Memory, in Charge of History?	389	(4)
The Uncanniness of History	393	(19)
Maurice Halbwachs: Memory Fractured by History	393	(4)
Yerushalmi: "Historiography and Its Discontents"	397	(4)
Pierre Nora: Strange Places of Memory	401	(11)
Chapter 3 Forgetting	412	(45)
Reading Guidelines	412	(6)
Forgetting and the Effacing of Traces	418	(9)
Forgetting and the Persistence of Traces	427	(16)
The Forgetting of Recollection: Uses and Abuses	443	(14)
Forgetting and Blocked Memory	444	(4)
Forgetting and Manipulated Memory	448	(4)
Commanded Forgetting: Amnesty	452	(5)
Epilogue Difficult Forgiveness	457	(50)
The Forgiveness Equation	459	(11)
Depth: The Fault	459	(7)
Height: Forgiveness	466	(4)
The Odyssey of the Spirit of Forgiveness: The Passage through Institutions	470	(8)
Criminal Guilt and the Imprescriptible	471	(3)
Political Guilt	474	(2)
Moral Guilt	476	(2)
The Odyssey of the Spirit of Forgiveness: The Stage of Exchange	478	(8)
The Economy of the Gift	479	(2)
Gift and Forgiveness	481	(5)
The Return to the Self	486	(7)
Forgiving and Promising	486	(3)
Unbinding the Agent from the Act	489	(4)
Looking Back over an Itinerary: Recapitulation	493	(14)
Happy Memory	494	(3)
Unhappy History?	497	(3)
Forgiveness and Forgetting	500	(7)
Notes	507	(100)
Works Cited	607	(20)
Index	627