Memory, History, Forgetting (Paperback)

~ Paul Ricoeur (Author), Kathleen Blamey (Translator), David Pellauer (Translator)
Key Phrases: mnemonic phenomenon, mnemonic phenomena, documentary phase, The Historical Condition, The Critical Philosophy of History, The Historian's Representation (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"His success in revealing the internal relations between recalling and forgetting, and how this dynamic becomes problematic in light of events once present but now past, will inspire academic dialogue and response but also holds great appeal to educated general readers in search of both method for and insight from considering the ethical ramifications of modern events.... It is indeed a master work, not only in Ricoeur's own vita but also in contemporary European philosophy." - Library Journal "Ricoeur writes the best kind of philosophy - critical, economical, and clear." - New York Times Book Review"

Review

"This Ricoeur masterpiece is really three independent, closely related books: a phenomenology of memory, an epistemology of the historical sciences, and a hermeneutics of forgetting." (Choice 20050930)

"There is always something more to be discovered in a text by Paul Ricoeur." (Journal of Literature and Theology 20051021)

"Ricoeur writes the best kind of philosophy-critical, economical, and clear."-New York Times Book Review (New York Times Book Review )

"Ricoeur labors as an incomparable mediator of often estranged philosophical approaches, always in a manner that compromises neither rigor nor creativity." (Christian Century )

"Ricoeur unpacks and explores the theoretical junctions and disjunctions through which both philosophers and the public have moved as they contemplate and re-experience major ethical events that shape the individual's self-perception and form the evolving identity of culture. Ricoeur's style here is both leisurely and comprehensive, opening up each new avenue of theory by explaining which philosophic tenets and texts inform his narrative. His success in revealing the internal relations between recalling and forgetting, and how this dynamic becomes problematic in light of events once present but now past, will inspire academic dialogue and response but also holds great appeal to educated general readers in search of both method for and insight from considering the ethical ramifications of modern events. The epilog turns to the subject of forgiveness, that "horizon common to memory, history and forgetting," and thus out from the self to the world again. Originally published in France in 2000, this work has won various literary and scholarly prizes. It is indeed a master work, not only in Ricoeur's own vita but also in contemporary European philosophy."--Francisca Goldsmith, Library Journal (Francisca Goldsmith Library Journal )

"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." (Martin Evans History Today )

"Memory, History, Forgetting is an exceedingly serious study: serious in the . . . sense of being thoughtful, thorough, with a good sense of what is important."--Times Literary Supplement (Avishai Margalit Times Literary Supplement )

"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." (Paul Jackson Totalitarian Movements and Politcal Religions )

"Moving. . . . it provides strong ethical advice for today as official commemoration brings the memory of some European genocides to the fore while maintaining a persistent silence on others. Ricoeur's closing words on the link between amnesty and amnesia are the legacy we can take from this book. The boundary between the two can be preserved, he writes, through the work of memory, complemented by the work of mourning, invoking a type of forgetting understood not as silence but as a statement in a pacified mood, without anger -- an enunciation to be understood not as a commandment, but as a wish."--Luisa Passerini, Times Higher Education Supplement (Luisa Passerini The Times Higher Education Supplmenet ) --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 624 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press (August 15, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226713423
• ISBN-13: 978-0226713427
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #47,650 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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61 of 62 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best book on history so far this century, July 17, 2007

By	Rev. Cherrycoke (United States) - See all my reviews

This, the last book written by the great French philosopher Paul Ricoeur, is an amazing achievement. Readers be warned: this is no easy romp through historiography or memory studies. It is a deeply philosophical meditation on the meaning of history and historicism as an act of remembering, an act of inscribing time, a way of participating in Being, and a way of negotiating competing claims for justice and acts of witnessing. Typical of Ricoeur's argumentation, the book sets out competing definitions (representation vs. recollection, explanation vs. understanding, phantasm and eikon, mneme vs. anamnesis, habit vs. memory, evocation vs. search, retention or primary memory vs. reproduction or secondary memory, reflexivity vs. worldliness, etc.). It does not resolve these oppositions, but painstakingly shows the aporias centralized in the opposition of terms and posits a tentative ethical response. Ricoeur is too smart to posit easy solutions to some of the most profound questions of human existence--mainly, what is history and how can it provide any foundations for knowledge and ethical action in the world? The erudition of this text is massive; Ricoeur references hundreds of theorists and philosophers from Plato to Foucault, from ontology to cognitive science. Predictably for those of us who have grown to respect the humanity of Ricoeur's position, the writing is never arrogant, never one-sided, always on the side of humane negotiation, life, human flourishing. In contrast to politicized polemics of academic historicist theory, this book recognizes, articulates, and teaches one about the almost overwhelming complexity of history as an idea, as a form of memory, and as evidence for witnessing and justice. In contrast to easy but hip pronouncements about the end of history, history as just another form of fiction, and history as "always political"--all implying that history is a tainted vehicle of ideological coercion that we can somehow do without--Ricoeur asks what else we *have* to connect our recollections of meaningful events to any kind of social action and collective sense of being.

If you want an education in some of the major positions in historiography, this book will give it to you, but it is no survey. It is a philosophical work, one that attempts to convey both the difficulty of the question and the necessary tenuousness of any real, ethical solution. Graduate students should be made to read this book if only to teach them what intellectual thought should look like--thought that works its way slowly and carefully through ideas instead of zooming through sources in order to construct a macrocosmic but sexy "new idea."

The incredible care with which analysis is conducted in each of this book's sections makes it impossible to summarize it meaningfully. Ricoeur wants to connect memory, history, and social remembrance in such a way that they avoid the easy, and often dangerous, sidetracks of commemoration or historicism as mere explanation. He wants a humanized history based in lived memory that can be used to create common ground between people as well as viable evidence in the negotiation of justice claims. Whether he gets this is debatable, but the attempt is honorable.