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In Praise of Forgetting: Historical Memory and Its Ironies

By (author) David Rieff

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A leading contrarian thinker explores the ethical paradox at the heart of history's wounds The conventional wisdom about historical memory is summed up in George Santayanaâ€™s celebrated phrase, â€œThose who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.â€ Today, the consensus that it is moral to remember, immoral to forget, is nearly absolute. And yet is this right? David Rieff, an independent writer who has reported on bloody conflicts in Africa, the Balkans, and Central Asia, insists that things are not so simple. He poses hard questions about whether remembrance ever truly has, or indeed ever could, â€œinoculateâ€ the present against repeating the crimes of the past. He argues that rubbing raw historical woundsâ€”whether self-inflicted or imposed by outside forcesâ€”neither remedies injustice nor confers reconciliation. If he is right, then historical memory is not a moral imperative but rather a moral optionâ€”sometimes called for, sometimes not. Collective remembrance can be toxic. Sometimes, Rieff concludes, it may be more moral to forget. Â Ranging widely across some of the defining conflicts of modern timesâ€”the Irish Troubles and the Easter Uprising of 1916, the white settlement of Australia, the American Civil War, the Balkan wars, the Holocaust, and 9/11â€”Rieff presents a pellucid examination ofÂ the uses and abuses of historical memory. His contentious, brilliant, and elegant essay is an indispensable work of moral philosophy.