This book investigates the various meanings of forgetting and their ethical dimension in the Daoist classic Zhuangzi. It responds to recent scholarship in the study of the ethics of forgetting, which has only emerged within the past two decades in the wake of the widespread memory-studies of the late 20th century. This book accomplishes two goals: First, it assimilates insights from contemporary scholarship, and specifically applies Ricoeur’s three areas of ethical examinations of forgetting, to the study of the Zhuangzi. It addresses a wide range of ethical themes related to acts of forgetting, such as the meaning of well-being and healing, the issue of personal identity and relational autonomy, the norm of spontaneity, naturalness and suitability, the capacities for being empathic, altruistic and responsive to others, and the values of accommodation, receptivity and all-inclusive friendliness. Second, it places forgetfulness in the wider context of the Zhuangzi’s ethical inquiry, and offers a novel understanding of this age-old notion and its exegetic tradition, bringing them into dialogue with Western philosophy and contributing to contemporary discourse on the ethics of forgetting. The first book to present a comprehensive examination on the ethical dimension and meanings of forgetting or forgetfulness in the Daoist philosophy of the Zhuangzi, this monograph will be of interest to researchers in Asian philosophy, religion and culture, moral philosophy or ethics, the study of memory and forgetting, and comparative or cross-cultural philosophy and ethics.

"A new ethics guideline for caregivers of "deeply forgetful people" and a program on how to communicate and connect based on 30 years of community dialogues through Alzheimer's organizations across the globe"--

Forgetting is usually juxtaposed with memory as its opposite in a negative way: it is seen as the loss of the ability to remember, or, ironically, as the inevitable process of distortion or dissolution that accompanies attempts to commemorate the past. The civic emphasis on the crucial importance of preserving lessons from the past to prevent us from repeating mistakes that led to violence and injustice, invoked most poignantly in the call of “Never again” from Holocaust survivors, tends to promote a view of forgetting as verging on sin or irresponsibility. In this book, Bradford Vivian hopes to put a much more positive spin on forgetting by elucidating its constitutive role in the formation and transformation of public memory. Using examples ranging from classical rhetoric to contemporary crises like 9/11, Public Forgetting demonstrates how, contrary to conventional wisdom, communities may adopt idioms of forgetting in order to create new and beneficial standards of public judgment concerning the lessons and responsibilities of their shared past.

Memory. A word so often said, often thought of, and continuously studied. Yet, we know relatively so little other than how vast and magnificent it is. In Who Will Remember You? A Philosophical History and Theory of Memory and Will, Israel B. Bitton, offers an interdisciplinary perspective that unifies philosophy of memory with history, neuroscience, culture and ethics, yielding novel insights into the elusive phenomena of memory, namely its universality. Bitton posits that the current and typical “misunderstanding of memory” stems from over-specialization in scientific research, a compartmentalization that does not support reaching holistic conclusions which are necessary for fully appreciating the totality of memory phenomena. No longer should memory be thought of as residing only in the brain, for the body is known to have memory too, but neither should it be thought of as exclusively human since it inheres in all matter as a physical and biological fact. Indeed, Bitton extends the philosophical and practical meanings of memory furthest in great detail, employing the latest research in neuroscience to support his case. In this work, Bitton traces the kernels of these ideas from the ancient Egyptians and Israelites all the way through to the modern period in philosophy, science and popular culture, demonstrating that his philosophical formulation has always been and remains accepted de facto by society as can easily be detected in various social trends. Upon offering his holistic account that considers the magnitude of memory phenomena across several disciplines, Bitton presents a novel theory that postulates the primary human drive as categorized by a will to significance, which, because of the universality of memory becomes a will to memorability. By placing the individual at the center of their own memory-reality, they can be empowered to safeguard, enhance, and extend the universal force of memory within and around them. From that vantage point, this book provides its audience with ideas meant to provoke and incite the readers’ own reflections on memory’s meaning and import as well as what it takes to be an ethical “memory agent” in an era of hyper-fake news.

A collection of essays from top scholars in the field of Religion and Ecology that stimulates the debate about the religious contribution to ecological debate.

Mediating Memory in the Museum is a contribution to an emerging field of research that is situated at the interface between memory studies and museum studies. It highlights the role of museums in the proliferation of the so-called memory boom as well as the influence of memory discourses on international trends in museum cultures.