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.

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.

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.

PrefacePart I - On Memory and RecollectionChapter 1. Memory and ImaginationReading GuidelinesThe Greek HeritagePlato: The Present Representation of an Absent ThingAristotle: "Memory Is of the Past"A Phenomenological Sketch of MemoryMemories and ImagesChapter 2. The Exercise of Memory: Uses and AbusesReading GuidelinesThe Abuses of Artificial Memory: The Feats of MemorizationThe Abuses of Natural Memory: Blocked Memory, Manipulated Memory, Abusively Controlled MemoryThe Pathological-Therapeutic Level: Blocked MemoryThe Practical Level: Manipulated MemoryThe Ethico-Political Level: Obligated MemoryChapter 3. Personal Memory, Collective MemoryReading GuidelinesThe Tradition of InwardnessAugustineLockeHusserlThe External Gaze: Maurice HalbwachsThree Subjects of the Attribution of Memories: Ego, Collectives, Close RelationsPart II - History, EpistemologyPrelude History: Remedy or Poison?Chapter 1. The Documentary Phase: Archived MemoryReading GuidelinesInhabited SpaceHistorical TimeTestimonyThe ArchiveDocumentary ProofChapter 2. Explanation/UnderstandingReading GuidelinesPromoting the History of MentalitiesSome Advocates of Rigor: Michel Foucault, Michel de Certeau, Norbert EliasVariations in ScaleFrom the Idea of Mentality to That of RepresentationThe Scale of Efficacy or of CoercivenessThe Scale of Degrees of LegitimationThe Scale of Nonquantitative Aspects of Social TimesThe Dialectic of RepresentationChapter 3. The Historian's RepresentationReading GuidelinesRepresentation and NarrationRepresentation and RhetoricThe Historian's Representation and the Prestige of the ImageStanding ForPart III - The Historical ConditionPrelude: The Burden of History and the NonhistoricalChapter 1. The Critical Philosophy of HistoryReading Guidelines"Die Geschichte Selber," "History Itself""Our" ModernityThe Historian and the JudgeInterpretation in HistoryChapter 2. History and TimeReading GuidelinesTemporalityBeing-toward-DeathDeath in HistoryHistoricityThe Trajectory of the Term GeschichtlichkeitHistoricity and HistoriographyWithin-Timeness: Being-"in"-TimeAlong the Path of the InauthenticWithin-Timeness and the Dialectic of Memory and HistoryMemory, Just a Province of History?Memory, in Charge of History?The Uncanniness of HistoryMaurice Halbwachs: Memory Fractured by HistoryYerushalmi: "Historiography and Its Discontents"Pierre Nora: Strange Places of MemoryChapter 3. ForgettingReading GuidelinesForgetting and the Effacing of TracesForgetting and the Persistence of TracesThe Forgetting of Recollection: Uses and AbusesForgetting and Blocked MemoryForgetting and Manipulated MemoryCommanded Forgetting: AmnestyEpilogue: Difficult ForgivenessThe Forgiveness EquationDepth: The FaultHeight: ForgivenessThe Odyssey of the Spirit of Forgiveness: The Passage through InstitutionsCriminal Guilt and the ImprescriptiblePolitical GuiltMoral GuiltThe Odyssey of the Spirit of Forgiveness: The Stage of ExchangeThe Economy of the GiftGift and ForgivenessThe Return to the SelfForgiving and PromisingUnbinding the Agent from the ActLooking Back over an Itinerary: RecapitulationHappy MemoryUnhappy History?Forgiveness and ForgettingNotesWorks CitedIndex