The Ethics of Memory

By Avishai Margalit

Book Overview

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0674013786
• ISBN13: 9780674013780
• Release Date: March 2004
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.1" x 7.4"

Customer Reviews

Ethically Amazing

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.

A philosophical and cultural delight.

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.