The Moral Demands of Memory

Despite an explosion of studies on memory in historical and cultural studies, there is relatively little in moral philosophy on this subject. In this book, Jeffrey Blustein provides a systematic and philosophically rigorous account of a morality of memory. Drawing on a broad range of philosophical and humanistic literatures, he offers a novel examination of memory and our relations to people and events from our past, the ways in which memory is preserved and transmitted, and the moral responsibilities associated with it. Blustein treats topics of responsibility for one's own past; historical injustice and the role of memory in doing justice to the past; the relationship of collective memory to history and identity; collective and individual obligations to remember those who have died, including those who are dear to us; and the moral significance of bearing witness.

Jeffrey Blustein is Professor of Bioethics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Adjunct Associate Professor at Barnard College.

Acknowledgments	p. x
Preface	p. xi
Memory as a Subject of Evaluative Inquiry	p. 1
Elements of a morality or ethics of memory	p. 1
Nietzsche on the misuses of memory	p. 5
Monumental history and the influence of the past	p. 7
Antiquarian history and nostalgia	p. 8
The moderating role of critical history	p. 12
A surfeit of memory	p. 15
The dynamic of remembering and forgetting	p. 19
Collective memory	p. 19
Personal memory	p. 24
Memory as obligation	p. 29
Responsibilities of remembrance and taking responsibility for the past	p. 34
Memory, identity, and responsibility	p. 41
Going forward	p. 50
Taking Responsibility for One's Own Past	p. 57
A case example	p. 57
Some preliminaries about taking responsibility	p. 62
Three elements of taking responsibility for the past	p. 66
Retrospective construction of meaning	p. 66
Appropriation	p. 69
Thematization	p. 74
Interconnections	p. 76
Applying the analysis: The case of psychopharmacology	p. 77
Why we don't take responsibility for our past	p. 82
Humility and taking responsibility for one's past	p. 87
Self-forgiveness and taking responsibility for one's past	p. 92
Concluding thoughts on memory	p. 101
Doing Justice to the Past	p. 110
A historical example: The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921	p. 110
Types of groups	p. 119
Collections	p. 119
Socially unified groups and their importance	p. 120
Organized groups	p. 123
Collective responsibility for past wrongdoing	p. 125
Senses of collective responsibility	p. 125
Group identity over time	p. 127
A note about "different people choices" and groups	p. 131
Wronging groups	p. 132
Making sense of the past: Reconstruction and complications	p. 138
Responsibility and the construction of group identity	p. 144
Collective guilt and shame	p. 148
Doing justice to the past: The role of memory	p. 158
Memory and the demand for recognition	p. 158
Symbolic reparation and memory	p. 166
Ethics, Truth, and Collective Memory	p. 176
Memory and history/History and myth	p. 176
Collective memory and individual memory	p. 182
History, myth, and collective memory	p. 188
The interplay of history and myth in collective memory	p. 199
Margalit on the ethics and morality of memory	p. 204
Morality and collective memory	p. 211
Ethics and collective memory	p. 222
Conclusion	p. 228
The Responsibility of Remembrance	p. 240
Raising the issues: Absent friends, deceased friends	p. 240
Qualities and modes of remembering the dead	p. 247
Evaluative attitudes and remembering the dead: The case of love	p. 252
Consequentialism and an expressive account	p. 261
Consequentialism	p. 261
Expressivism	p. 266
The moral imperative to remember: Three arguments	p. 269
The rescue from insignificance view	p. 269
The enduring duties view	p. 273
The reciprocity view	p. 276
The three views in tandem	p. 281
Mourning and the death of parents	p. 282
Rituals of remembrance	p. 287
How long we must remember	p. 291
Memory and Bearing Witness	p. 301
Witnessing in the contemporary world	p. 301
The concept of bearing witness	p. 307
Testimonial authority	p. 310
Address and audience	p. 314
The need for testimony	p. 320
Some typological remarks	p. 322
Bearing witness to right and wrong, good and bad	p. 322
The witness' relationship to wrongdoing	p. 325
Bearing witness to one's convictions	p. 327
The symbolic value of bearing witness	p. 328
Witnessing, self-representation, and moral agency	p. 337
Proxies and the authority to bear witness	p. 345
Final thoughts	p. 355
Select Bibliography	p. 365
Index	p. 367
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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The Moral Demands of Memory

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