Can forgetting be constructive? - The hermeneutics of memory, forgiveness and reconciliation

Małgorzata Hołda

doi:10.21697/2019.55.1.01

Published: 2019-03-31

Vol. 55 No. 1 (2019)

Can forgetting be constructive? - The hermeneutics of memory, forgiveness and reconciliation

Małgorzata Hołda

Studia Philosophiae Christianae

Section: Papers

https://doi.org/10.21697/2019.55.1.01

Abstract

In his hermeneutics of memory, Ricoeur points to the dialectic character of the interrelation between remembering and forgetting. He abandons an understanding of forgetting as limited only to oblivion, or to deletion in the Bergsonian use of the term. He supplants the negativity of forgetting by the productivity of disremembering, and stretches forgetting to its reserve, to the dynamic unveiling of the details of past events, with varied degrees of truthfulness and accuracy. This article attempts to demonstrate that the positivity of forgetting in the context of reconciliation is a tangible possibility. Forgetting is viewed here as a positive, constructive faculty, which influences the future, makes it possible to create and shape it, and is opposed to a slavish adherence to memory anchored wholly in the past. The totality of the anchorage in the past results in an exclusive focus on remembering, and causes the impasse of being entrapped in a disconsolate past. We ascertain that forgetting is not a failure but rather a productive possibility, either self- -creative or purgative, to educate oneself and the Other towards a more promising future.

Keywords:

forgetting, forgiveness, philosophical hermeneutics, reconciliation, Ricoeur Paul

Download files

PDF

Citation rules

Hołda, M. (2019). Can forgetting be constructive? - The hermeneutics of memory, forgiveness and reconciliation. Studia Philosophiae Christianae, 55(1), 5–26. https://doi.org/10.21697/2019.55.1.01

Cited by / Share

References

Arendt H., The Human Condition: Second Edition, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2013.
Google Scholar

Augé M., Oblivion, trans. by Marjolijn de Jager, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 2004.
Google Scholar

Bergson H., Matter and Memory, trans. N.M. Paul, W.S. Palmer, Dover Publications Inc., Mineola (NY) 2004.
Google Scholar

Borges L., Funes the Memorious, in: Labyrinths: Selected Stories and other Writings, eds. D.A. Yeats, J.E. Irby, New Directions, New York 1962, 59–66.
Google Scholar

De Brigard F., Is memory for remembering? Recollection as a form of episodic hypothetical thinking, in: Synthese 191(2014)2, 155–185.
Google Scholar

Demakis J., The Ultimate Book of Quotations, Raleigh: Lulu Enterprises Inc., New York 2012.
Google Scholar

Dessingué A., Towards a phenomenology of memory and forgetting, Études Ricoeuriennes / Ricoeur Studies 2(2011)1, 168–178.
Google Scholar

Dessingué A., The Ethics of Memory in My Heart of Darkness, in: (Post)Colonial Histories – Trauma, Memory and Reconciliation in the Context of the Angolan Civil War, eds. B. Jager, S. Hobuß, Transcript-Verlag 2017, 81–98.
Google Scholar

Duffy M., Paul Ricoeur’s Pedagogy of Pardon. A Narrative Theory of Memory and Forgetting, Continuum, London – New York 2011.
Google Scholar

Galloway A., Collective remembering and the importance of forgetting: a critical design challenge, http://bit.ly/spc55-1-h1
Google Scholar

(Post)Colonial Histories – Trauma, Memory and Reconciliation in the Context of the Angolan Civil War, eds. B. Jager, S. Hobuß, Transcript-Verlag 2017.
Google Scholar

Heaney S., The Cure at Troy: A Version of Sophocles’s Philoctetus, Faber & Faber, London 1990.
Google Scholar

Hutcheon,L., A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction, Routledge, London – New York 2004.
Google Scholar

Kaplan D., Ricoeur’s Critical Theory, SUNY Press, Albany (NY) 2012.
Google Scholar

MacCammon L., Justice and Fundamental Anthropology: Uncovering Essential Connections with Paul Ricoeur, http://www.jcrt.org/archives/03.1/maccammon.shtml.
Google Scholar

Marcel G., The Mystery of Being, Henry Regnery Company, Chicago 1950.
Google Scholar

Mersky M., Who Decides Whether to Remember or Forget?, https://www.ictj.org/debate/article/remember-or-forget.
Google Scholar

Niebuhr H.R., The Irony of American History, Chicago University Press, Chicago 2010.
Google Scholar

Ricoeur P., Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, trans. by D. Savage, Yale University Press, New Haven (CT) 1970.
Google Scholar

Ricoeur P., Fallible Man, revised translation by Charles A. Kelbley, Fordham University Press, New York 1986.
Google Scholar

Ricoeur P., Memory, History, Forgetting, trans. K. Blamey, D. Pellauer, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2004.
Google Scholar

Ricoeur P., Oneself as Another, trans. K. Blamey, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1992.
Google Scholar

Ricouer P., Memory, History, Forgiveness: A Dialogue between Paul Ricoeur and Sorin Antohi, Janus Head 8(2005)1, Trivium Publications, 14–25.
Google Scholar

Templeton M. J., Discovering Laws of Life, Continuum, London – New York 1995.
Google Scholar

Todorov T., The Poetics of Prose, Cornell University Press, Ithaca (NY) 1977.
Google Scholar