"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

"There is always something more to be discovered in a text by Paul Ricoeur."

Journal of Literature and Theology

"Ricoeur writes the best kind of philosophy—critical, economical, and clear."

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

"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 | The Times Higher Education Supplmenet