The Ethics of Memory [Paperback]

Avishai Margalit (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0674013786 | ISBN-13: 978-0674013780 | Publication Date: March 15, 2004

Much of the intense current interest in collective memory concerns the politics of memory. In a book that asks, "Is there an ethics of memory?" Avishai Margalit addresses a separate, perhaps more pressing, set of concerns.

The idea he pursues is that the past, connecting people to each other, makes possible the kinds of "thick" relations we can call truly ethical. Thick relations, he argues, are those that we have with family and friends, lovers and neighbors, our tribe and our nation--and they are all dependent on shared memories. But we also have "thin" relations with total strangers, people with whom we have nothing in common except our common humanity. A central idea of the ethics of memory is that when radical evil attacks our shared humanity, we ought as human beings to remember the victims.

Margalit's work offers a philosophy for our time, when, in the wake of overwhelming atrocities, memory can seem more crippling than liberating, a force more for revenge than for reconciliation. Morally powerful, deeply learned, and elegantly written, The Ethics of Memory draws on the resources of millennia of Western philosophy and religion to provide us with healing ideas that will engage all of us who care about the nature of our relations to others.

(20021101)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Plato taught that the search for knowledge is tied up with memory, the effort to recall something we collectively knew. Freud took memory even further, positing that repressed memories are the key to shaping us as individuals and as a society. Margalit, a professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and author of The Decent Society, takes up these issues in respect to an idea of communal memory. Acknowledging that historical religions "can make a bid on moral memory," he instead poses a question: "Is there an ethics of memory?" His answer is a qualified yes, but it's the exegesis that is most compelling. Discussing memory's relation to emotions, morality, ethics and forgiveness, Margalit reads the Bible, writers (such as Wordsworth, Edward Albee and E.M. Forster), myths and other philosophers (Kant and Max Weber) in order to make his finely nuanced argument.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Margalit (philosophy, Hebrew Univ., Jerusalem) maintains that people sometimes have ethical obligations to remember past persons and events, but he is anxious to guard his own thesis from over-expansion. He distinguishes his position from religious doctrines that are bound up with the past, holding that an ethics of memory has secular sense. Further, he does not support traditionalism, that is, the retention of past institutions as a value in itself. He also warns of "moralism," by which he means "the disposition to cast judgments of a moral kind on what is unsuitable to be so judged." To counter moralism, he distinguishes between ethics and morality. The former deals with our relations to those with whom we have special ties; the latter, our obligations to humanity as a whole. Margalit maintains that we have ethical obligations to remember particular people and, more controversially, that a community can have, and ought to have, collective memories. The stricter obligations of morality involve issues of memory only in unusual circumstances. We are, for instance, obligated to remember the evils of the Nazis, since they endeavored to undermine morality altogether. This illuminating study is highly recommended. David Gordon, Bowling Green State Univ., OH
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (March 15, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674013786
• ISBN-13: 978-0674013780
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 5.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #321,416 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A philosophical and cultural delight., June 18, 2003

By 

Dr. Jeremy Rosen (London United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Ethics of Memory (Hardcover)

For someone who loves Philosophy and Judaism this book was a real delight. Margalit draws on Jewish and European cultural sources to examine both the nature of ethics as opposed to morality and the meaning and obligations of memory.
Usually cross cultural afficionados are caught in a philosophical world that has no use for religious traditions or vice versa. Here is a unique opportunity to revel in both.
Regardless of ones political or religious background or inclinations this book will resonate and stimulate.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ethically Amazing, May 29, 2007

By 

E. Silva (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Ethics of Memory (Paperback)

This has been a great book, full of insight and interest, the terms are well defined and easy to pick up at any time on almost any level. An interesting and captivating treatise on how important memory is, and how it relates to engaging in and caring for our world and each other. A great read that captivates and provokes thought on deeper levels.

Amazingly related to the authors heart is humanity and humanitarianism in everyday life, his humanitarianism though, does not detract from his capability but adds to it, as he rationalizes and attempts to make sense of one of the most personally overlooked aspects of life.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The limits of memory, October 28, 2010

By 

Aldo Matteucci (hikurangi) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Ethics of Memory (Paperback)

Memory accompanies us on the temporal path: it explains to us imperfectly how we got where we are and, in so doing, informs our choices. Our actions as individuals or members of a group are all strung along the temporal path: if society or a group is to endure, the past has practical implications for the future. Thus contracts endure, laws apply over time - in limiting our choices the past makes the future - and social life - predictable, hence possible. These are all practical issues, and for the good of society. Their justification is essentially rational and consequential.

Prof MARGALIT, however, asks a different kind of question: to what extent, however, do memories obligate us in a deontological way? Do we "owe" something unconditionally to the past, as an individual or member of a group? The question is difficult: for memories are in the realm of the contingent and particular, not the universal. If we accept that deontological obligations arise from memory, we may need to break with universal obligations, or rank them lower. And this notwithstanding the fact that memory is such a weak link to the past - memory is a place where fiction turns to self-serving myth.

The author attempts to demonstrate that next to (or better, higher than) unconditional obligations of a universal character (he calls this "morals") there are also unconditional obligations within a group (he calls this "ethics") - and if anything, they take priority. The reason being, says Prof. MARGALIT, that relations at the universal level are "thin", while relations at the group level are "thick" - like "blood is thicker than water". Shared memories commit those who hold them to each other in ways that shared humanity does not.

In ancient times heroes would sacrifice themselves for the group, asking to be remembered in return, or that their will be respected. How binding are such "contracts" with the dead"? This is no idle question, for the original contract may no longer suit the current context, or may reflect past errors in judgement. Are we to be bound today by the memory - even if the memory is no longer useful? The author's discussion of these questions is often rambling and confused, conflating what are social and personal obligations. It also mixes myth and history, leaving one perplexed as to the scope of such inter-temporal commitments.

The problem with "memory" is that it introduces an element of inconditional obligation into the moral choice. If good memories obligate, so do bad memories - in the latter case memory becomes an obligation for revenge. This, we'd agree, is not permissible.

Values are a blunt instrument: they are beyond rational argument. They brook no comparison among each other (should we save the mother or the child?). They adjust poorly to context (if a hospital has one bed and two critically ill people, who shall get preference?). To add group values to universal values would seems to me overloading the boat - we have enough value conflicts as it is, without adding to them. More pragmatically: "group memory" is inherently subject both to factual and political bias - I'd question its operability. Nationalism - which has roots in "group memories" has been seen, on closer inspection, to be an empty concept. Would memory do? A duck by any other name is still a duck.