Visits: 2623
“Memory, History, Forgetting” is one of Ricoeur’s best works weaving together a large number of historical and Philosophical threads into a royal garment fit for a Philosopher-King. The threads are of two kinds: powerful images and revelatory symbols. These threads stretch back to the Cave of Ariadne and Greek Consciousness but more importantly, in my opinion, they stretch forward to an ideal Aristotelian/Kantian future in which it is suggested all things will be well and all manner of things will be well.
Ricoeur presents us with one of the most powerful images symbolising History : that of Walter Benjamin’s account of Klee’s work “Angelus Novus”:
“A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread.This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise: it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.”(Benjamin, W., “Theses on History”, Illuminations, 253-64. Transl by Zohan, H., Edited by Arendt, H., New York Schocken books, 1969.)
Calling Angelus Novus “a painting” is, of course, stretching the classical concept to breaking point. What we see is, rather, an expressionistic experiment that is attempting to create images on a canvass by a technical process that is not a painting process. We see above Benjamin’s Rorschach-like interpretation of the image, which appears to involve a considerable amount of projection going far beyond the data on the canvas, but which nevertheless appeals to all who live in the Age of Discontentment. Benjamins interpretation is accepted under the warrant of poetic licence, and his words become a symbol of modernism from the 1920’s, along with T S Eliot’s “Waste land” and Wittgenstein’s “Tractatus” which the author claimed was a work containing the “final solution” for the problems of Philosophy.
Eliot in his poem about our unreal cities containing inhabitants whose “nerves are bad tonight” contains no angels, only departed nymphs, rats, the bones of the dead and the dry sound of thunder communicating divine messages. Perhaps Tiresias is Eliot’s Angelus Novus waiting in the underworld for travellers seeking directions. Tiresias needed no wings in his domain. The wreckage of History was of course growing in volume in the eyes of Benjamin. Even Benjamin, the lover and friend of Arendt, would soon be dead bones littering the waste land of the Juggernaut of War. He would supposedly commit suicide as the Nazis were closing in after his Marxist illusions had been shattered by the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and the terrorism of Stalin.
Wittgensteins Tractatus shattered the Aristotelian and Kantian critical solutions to the problems generated by the “Human Condition” into “logical atoms” which did not allow meaningful discourse on ethics, religion and the human condition in general. This was the era of atom bombs that would be used on defenceless civilian populations in the name of a “final solution” to the Japanese Problem.
Benjamins characterisation of Angelus Novus is a worthy image of history, for us, who live in the Age of Discontentment. Klee’s “angel-image” looks to be a relative of Janus, the Roman God of war, who appeared to be expecting the world to end with a bang and not a whimper: the kind of image suggesting fear in a handful of dust–all that was left of the “patient aetherised upon a table”. TS Eliot, before the dropping of the atomic bombs, went in search of what Ricoeur would call “happy memory” in his work “Four Quartets”. Transporting us from the Inferno to the Paradiso without stopping for a visit to Purgatoria, the Storm of the future carried Eliot to a peaceful Rose-Garden–the resting place for angels in 1941. It would be only 4 years to the dropping of the atomic bombs which blew this vision into dust. A purgation by fire:
“Ash on an old man’s sleeve
Is all the ash the burnt roses leave.
Dust in the air suspended
Marks the place where a story ended.
Dust inbreathed was a house-
The walls, the wainscot and the mouse,
The death of hope and despair,
This is the death of air.”
The spatio-temporal continuum, paradoxically, is the idea of time that perhaps serves as the best framework in which to answer Kant’s question “What can we hope for?”. The alternative cyclical Heraclitean view of time in which the road to the future is the same as the road to the past reminds one of the Freudian idea of the “compulsion to repeat” that best explains the road from the first world war to the dropping of the atomic bombs. The Logos of this journey is well captured in the final proposition of Wittgensteins Tractatus:
“Whereof one cannot speak thereof one must consign to silence”.
This was the final proposition of the final solution to the problems of Philosophy. On this view the propositions of ethics and religion lack meaning. This work clearly manifests what Heidegger would later refer to as a forgetfulness of being, refusing to contemplate the essential relations between logos and aletheia, which also were consigned to silence. It is certainly ironic that Philosophy, after the presentation of the final solution(in England) would be overshadowed by the Poetry of Eliot until, i.e., Wittgenstein attempted to repair the damage done by correcting his earlier views with later work that would never be published in his lifetime. We know Eliot studied the Philosophy of Bradley at Harvard and this was perhaps the closest he came to confronting directly the Critical Philosophy of Kant. Otherwise it was Dante rather than Greek literature that inspired his poetry.
Critical and hylomorphic Philosophy had their own solutions to the problem of solipsism expressed in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. Wittgenstein’s later work continued the earlier concern with language and its meaning, but as part of the criticism of his earlier solipsism, grounded language in the Aristotelian idea of forms of life. Language now becomes less a question of “naming” and more a transactional “game”. Saying that one is in pain is now no longer a private affair occurring on the stage of ones own private theatre, it becomes more of a signal to someone to sympathise. This is in line with the Aristotelian essence-specifying definition of human being e.g. rational animal capable of discourse. Sympathy is an important telos for those life forms in pain that can speak:- much more important than a logical/theoretical account of the logical atoms of language. The world, in the later work, is no longer defined in its essence as a totality of facts: forms of life and language-games now become the central focus. Science and logical space are marginalised in favour of Social Science seen from a pragmatic transactional point of view. This was, however, sufficient to open up a life-space for the humanities and Hylomorphic and Critical Philosophy could once again breathe freely and speak about ethics, politics, and religion:
“How could human behaviour be described?Surely only by sketching the actions of a variety of humans, as they are all mixed up together. What determines our judgment, our concepts and reactions, is not what one man is doing now, but the whole hurly burly of human actions, the background against we see any action(Zettel 567)
568.Seeing life as a weave, this pattern(pretence, say)is not always complete and is varied in a multiplicity of ways. But we, in our conceptual world, keep on seeing the same, recurring with variations. This is how our concepts take it. For concepts are not for use on a single occasion.(Zettel)
Wittgenstein was himself conscious of the fragmented nature of his later work, complaining about its structure by describing it as an “album of sketches” but he was not prepared to involve himself in the metaphysical disputes involved with ethical, political, and religious theorising. His use of the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason, however, was in many respects very similar to the way in which both Aristotle and Kant used these principles. He acknowledges that his method, for example, has much in common with the method of Kant. There is, however, no metaphysical discussion of the nature of Being or Time, but his idea of language involved the recognition of the differences between the reporting and imperative functions which in turn would have permitted discourse on ethical, political and religious matters. He would not , however as the above quotes from Zettel indicate, look for any meaning or essence, beyond what the grammar of our terms provided us with. In this work he also provides us with an album of sketches related to the terms “imagination” and “remembering”. Here he points out that images are subject to the will and do not tell us anything about the external world. He also claims that when you say to someone that you are imagining something you are sending them a signal(Zettel 108e). For Wittgenstein, images are neither pictures nor hallucinations. The words “I remember us having dinner together” do not, he argues, describe or report the memory but are an expression or transcription of the memory. Here we should remember that, for Wittgenstein, language is merely a sophisticated extension of our instinctive life–a vicissitude of instinct. It is here however, that, accusations of relativity emerge. Where someone is certain someone else is not, he claims, and this is why our concepts are open ended. Nevertheless the hurly burly of action contains patterns which justify the use of certain concepts, i.e. forms of life are decisive in contexts of explanation and justification.
Ricoeur criticises the Cartesian account of memory and imagination, claiming that on this account, there is a difference between the “I” that remembers and the “I” that imagines. The suggestion of Decartes’ followers and some empiricists was that the “I” that remembers is “affected” by memory, rather than actively involved in the evocation of “memories”. This marginalisation of the function of memory was then counteracted or convoluted by a perspective that bore some relation to Aristotle’s hylomorphic view of remembering, namely, that imagination concerned itself with both phantasy and the fictional, the unreal, in contrast to the real of what is remembered. Ricoeur does not wholly commit himself to this position but does focus on what he calls Aristotle’s lodestar, namely:
“All memory is of the past”(Parva naturalia: On memory and recollection)
The above amounts to an essence-specifying definition of the function of memory and will serve as one foundation of Ricoeur’s account which stretches over the terrain of phenomenology, hermeneutics and eschatology. The Platonic problem of the presence of the absence of something, implying a past which is no longer present, is demystified by the idea of a conscious picture-image. The memory-image is characterised as necessarily pictorial, and this then leaves us with the problem of phenomenologically distinguishing the functions of remembering and imagining. Ricoeur discusses Plato’s account from the Theaetetus at length, and in this discussion it is obvious that Plato is concerned to give a “substantial” account in which the technological art of mimesis has a role to play. The idea, however, of the soul receiving an imprint from its experiences would have been a difficult one to assimilate in Aristotle’s hylomorphic account. This idea connects up to the Platonic idea of a craftsman(demiourgos)at work in relation to our souls: a work which produces a substantial “thing” or entity with certain substantial qualities. Aristotles account of the soul in his later work, however, no longer appears to be an immaterial substance but rather to be a principle working in the course of an actualisation process to actualise the human powers of discourse and rationality. The Platonic discussion clearly has both materialistic and dualistic elements construing the soul as some kind of immaterial substance connected in some way to the substrate of a body via the relation of “participation”. The idea of a physical “trace” in relation to the activity of the soul involved in “remembering” is left like a question-mark hanging in the air. Later Descartes would locate the “trace” in the pineal gland of the brain thus clearing the way for neuroscientists to speak with authority about neurones and protein networks being facilitated in the memory process.
The Kantian and Aristotelian idea of the self causing itself to do something, e.g. causing itself to choose to go to the agora, is lost in this materialistic jungle of processes and traces. Aristotle, in his reflection on memory in the work cited above, speaks specifically of the memory of the past in the soul distinguishing itself from the presence of future expectation and present sensations/perceptions. We differ from the animals, Aristotle argues, because we “perceive time” and he means by this that we sensibly distinguish a now from before and after. He distinguishes between those humans with retentive memories and those humans who recall things easily. He also distinguishes remembering from imagining by referring to the relation of the image recalled to something else that has been experienced in the past. Hallucinatory images are not so related to the past or the future (where the image is of what one intends to do). There is no stable relation to the perception of time when someone is hallucinating, and to that extent this experience constitutes a dream-like sensory landscape. Such images can dissipate as quickly as they are formed, e.g Macbeth’s dagger. They do not endure ,and are in a state of Heraclitean flux, largely beyond the control of the subject. In Aristotle’s terms, such images fail to form memories, i.e. imprint themselves on the material substrate of the soul. A memory-image, then, is very like a photo of which we exclaim “That is him!”. Here we are not dealing with a generic image of a human being. Similarly, expectations may be related to images of the future which, in Wittgenstein’s language, are pictures of what we wish to bring about in the future. If the will is engaged with this image, the reality principle is involved in the experience, if not, and the future is merely wished for as part of a wish fulfilment, it is the pleasure-pain principle that is operative.
Some animals possess memory but animals do not possess the power of recollection. Recollection, Aristotle argues is a kind of inference resulting from a process of investigation. Only rational animals capable of discourse who have the power of deliberation have this power of recollection. The investigation is a kind of search for an image imprinted in a corporeal substrate. Those of melancholic disposition, Aristotle claims, may have difficulty with exercising the power of recollection. Presumably, in such cases energy regulation difficulties make the recollection process difficult for melancholics because the power is conditional upon the capacity to maintain the investigative deliberative process until the “inference” is made. In such souls there may well be a flow of insubstantial images that are directed neither at the past nor at the future: such images are part of the operation of the pleasure-pain principle that underlie fantasy-laden mental activity.
The problem of the will “searching” for a material/mental trace is resolved in Aristotle’s hylomorphism by appealing to the material and efficient conditions or causes(aitia) postulated in explanations that belong in contexts of exploration/discovery. Remembering, or memory, Ricoeur maintains, also relates to formal and final causes(telos) that belong in contexts of explanation/justification. Ricoeur refers to the telos in terms of what he calls “the happy memory” associated with the contentment associated with a formal “inference”.
The “wreckage” confronting Angelus Novus is clearly a symbol of the unhappy memories associated with History and this “work” of art may be as close as one can get to representing the relation of a divine being to History. The “strangeness” of this work may be partially a result of the attempt to represent History as it figures in the world of an infinite being. Only finite beings such as rational animals capable of discourse possess the powers of remembering and recollection. One of the important conditions for the existence of the phenomenon of the “happy memory” is that of the memory being “faithful to the past”. The role of testimony in the authentication of historical accounts is also referred to in Ricoeur’s account. It is the feature of the faithfulness of testimony to the past which Ricoeur connects to the duty we all possess not to forget terrible crimes against humanity. Such faithfulness thus connects to truth (aletheia) which in turn correctly presupposes both the enduring of entities in the stream of experience and the beginning and end of the existence of such entities.
Ricoeur criticises some of the work of Husserl for being committed to the “metaphysics of the present”: a target that Heidegger also aimed at. What is clear is that the Husserlian account of the Lebenswelt and time-consciousness does not fit comfortably with either the Aristotelian or Kantian analyses of sensible memory. Kant, as we have indicated in our previous work(A Philosophical History….vol 4) distinguishes clearly between physical anthropology and pragmatic anthropology. This distinction is of an ontological nature insofar as Psychological reflection is concerned. Kant characterises this distinction in terms of that which happens to man, and that which man makes of himself. The former belongs in the domain of observation by a spectator . The latter requires transcendental accounts that explain and justify, rather than explore and discover. Kant in his work “Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view”, like Aristotle, places memory and productive imagination in relation to the will but he places the reproductive imagination into a category of “unfaithful” images:images that are not revelatory of anything external to themselves. The degree to which these unfaithful images “play with” the human being is the extent to which that human being’s mind is deranged(either temporarily or permanently). Kant is here presupposing the “faithful” operation of inner intuition or Time which knows the “now” in relation to the before and after.
Historical memory is, of course, related as much to Space as it is to the faithful representation of time. Facts of history are essentially related to Places, and ones knowledge of them. These facts, however, also relate to the actions of significantly located actors, to their decisions, their speeches, their deeds, and and the consequences of all these activities. We are again confronted with that difficult dialectic of events and actions we discussed in Volume 4 of our work “A Philosophical History of Psychology…”. Events appear to be that which necessarily happens to us, whilst actions are, on the other hand, that which the agent does—each of these alternatives fall on different sides of Kant’s ontological distinction. Observation obviously plays an important role in relation to the consequences of actions and also therefore plays an important role in the conversion of actions into events, but there is nevertheless a residue of meaning that is not quite captured in such transcription. This transcription, Ricoeur argues does not quite know what to do with witnesses and their verbal testimony in relation to recorded events that have become historical under the 30 year rule. Presumably they can be recorded and be referred to in 30 years time, but this does appear to limit somewhat attempts to historically justify the occurrence of “terrible” events such as crimes against humanity. There is no doubt that that we see the testimony of victims as a moral explanation and moral “evidence”, but in the end the historian must refer back to faithful documents in archives rather than the truth of the statements being made in the public domain now. This is one reason why legal prosecution of the perpetrators of crimes against humanity are so important . Such trials produce “faithful” documents for the archives. There are certain things which mankind has a duty not to forget.
Where events and actions occur they are as important in History as the date at which they occurred, because such knowledge also plays a role in the search for further evidence if it is needed. The “fictional” character of myth may be connected to this lack of connection with Place, relying as it sometimes does on a belief expressed by “Once upon a time”. Such displaced narratives fail to become “faithful” documents, and become curiosities. Homers account of the deeds of Agamemnon and Achilles long remained a curiosity until archeology uncovered evidence that the places referred to in Homers narratives, actually existed. Achilles was a real hero of his time and Agamemnon was a real and powerful King that are now part of our Historical space-time continuum.
Ricoeur discusses Aristotle’s Poetics in relation to Historical memory. He argues that History is related to recollection and involves attaching “pure memory” to images: a process that involves the establishment of the faithful images in a present, thus converting the image into an operation resembling perception.(P52) Fiction, Ricoeur argues, is a narrative that occurs in accordance with some kind of contract between the writer of a text and a reader which involves a de-realisation of the images therein: an agreement that suspends belief in the reality of the verbal expression of these “images”. Ricoeur elaborates upon this point in relation to Bergsons account imagination and remembering:
“At one end: “To imagine is not to remember. No doubt a recollection as it becomes actual, tends to live in an image: but the converse is not true, and the image, pure and simple, will not be referred to the past unless, it was in the past that I sought it, thus following the continuing progress which brought it from darkness into light”(P.52)
Fiction is thus distinguishable from History but it does not, Ricoeur argues, fall into the same category as hallucination. In hallucination there is no intention, as Aristotle put the matter, of “placing before the eyes”–a process that makes absent things visible. Kant will claim in relation to hallucination that the image “happens” to the subject and it will endure just so long as a cognitive activity does not replace it, e.g. Macbeth’s dagger. Hallucinatory daggers owe their existence to seismic events occurring in a stratum of the mind over which we have no direct control. Macbeth’s reaction: “Is this a dagger I see before me?” is a question that begins a cognitive process that sets off in search of the reality of the dagger. The vision of the dagger, for Kant, is an event of the reproductive imagination steered by the energy regulation principle, whilst the motor response of attempting to grab the dagger, is a voluntary willed action steered by the reality principle. The surprise involved at the failure to complete the action involves also the pleasure-pain principle which ends in the judgement: “There is no dagger before me!”
This first chapter has been Ricoeur’s response to the epistemological dilemmas occurring in relation to imagining and remembering. The following chapters will widen his concern into pragmatic and eschatological issues.