Memory, History, Forgetting
- Contents
- Review Quotes

Part I - On Memory and Recollection
Chapter 1. Memory and Imagination
Reading Guidelines
The Greek Heritage
Plato: The Present Representation of an Absent Thing
Aristotle: "Memory Is of the Past"
A Phenomenological Sketch of Memory
Memories and Images
Chapter 2. The Exercise of Memory: Uses and Abuses
Reading Guidelines
The Abuses of Artificial Memory: The Feats of Memorization
The Abuses of Natural Memory: Blocked Memory, Manipulated Memory, Abusively Controlled Memory
The Pathological-Therapeutic Level: Blocked Memory
The Practical Level: Manipulated Memory
The Ethico-Political Level: Obligated Memory
Chapter 3. Personal Memory, Collective Memory
Reading Guidelines
The Tradition of Inwardness
Augustine
Locke
Husserl
The External Gaze: Maurice Halbwachs
Three Subjects of the Attribution of Memories: Ego, Collectives, Close Relations
Part II - History, Epistemology
Prelude History: Remedy or Poison?
Chapter 1. The Documentary Phase: Archived Memory
Reading Guidelines
Inhabited Space
Historical Time
Testimony
The Archive
Documentary Proof
Chapter 2. Explanation/Understanding
Reading Guidelines
Promoting the History of Mentalities
Some Advocates of Rigor: Michel Foucault, Michel de Certeau, Norbert Elias
Variations in Scale
From the Idea of Mentality to That of Representation
The Scale of Efficacy or of Coerciveness
The Scale of Degrees of Legitimation
The Scale of Nonquantitative Aspects of Social Times
The Dialectic of Representation
Chapter 3. The Historian’s Representation
Reading Guidelines
Representation and Narration
Representation and Rhetoric
The Historian’s Representation and the Prestige of the Image
Standing For
Part III - The Historical Condition
Prelude: The Burden of History and the Nonhistorical
Chapter 1. The Critical Philosophy of History
Reading Guidelines
"Die Geschichte Selber," "History Itself"
"Our" Modernity
The Historian and the Judge
Interpretation in History
Chapter 2. History and Time
Reading Guidelines
Temporality
Being-toward-Death
Death in History
Historicity
The Trajectory of the Term Geschichtlichkeit
Historicity and Historiography
Within-Timeness: Being-"in"-Time
Along the Path of the Inauthentic
Within-Timeness and the Dialectic of Memory and History
Memory, Just a Province of History?
Memory, in Charge of History?
The Uncanniness of History
Maurice Halbwachs: Memory Fractured by History
Yerushalmi: "Historiography and Its Discontents"
Pierre Nora: Strange Places of Memory
Chapter 3. Forgetting
Reading Guidelines
Forgetting and the Effacing of Traces
Forgetting and the Persistence of Traces
The Forgetting of Recollection: Uses and Abuses
Forgetting and Blocked Memory
Forgetting and Manipulated Memory
Commanded Forgetting: Amnesty
Epilogue: Difficult Forgiveness
The Forgiveness Equation
Depth: The Fault
Height: Forgiveness
The Odyssey of the Spirit of Forgiveness: The Passage through Institutions
Criminal Guilt and the Imprescriptible
Political Guilt
Moral Guilt
The Odyssey of the Spirit of Forgiveness: The Stage of Exchange
The Economy of the Gift
Gift and Forgiveness
The Return to the Self
Forgiving and Promising
Unbinding the Agent from the Act
Looking Back over an Itinerary: Recapitulation
Happy Memory
Unhappy History?
Forgiveness and Forgetting
Notes
Works Cited
Index
"Paul Ricoeur’s book Memory, History, Forgetting, is without a doubt a vital contribution albeit one that fits into a particular mould, namely that of a heavyweight Gallic intellectual in the time honoured tradition of Jean-Paul Sartre, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida. . . . This is one of the most thought-provoking books I have read for some time. . . . From the outset Ricoeur displays a breathtaking array of learning with careful and close readings of Saint Augustine, Aristotle, Plato, Descartes, and Kant. . . . [This book] ranks as a momentous achievement which deserves a wide audience in the English speaking world."
“Memory, History, Forgetting is not an easygoing work, and many will doubt its direct relevance to the working practices of historians and social sciences, viewing it rather as an esoteric discussion for philosophers. This would be to neglect an important piece of reflective thinking on the nature of historiographical problems.”
Philosophy: Ethics | General Philosophy | Philosophy of Mind
Religion: Religion and Society
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