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Paul Ricoeur: Memory, History, and Forgetting

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              The following is a reflection on Paul Ricoeur,  Memory, History, and Forgetting.  I have been helped by the insights in a  book review  of Andrzej Wiercinski. I have also been aided by Hannah Arendt Ricoeur continues the project of  Time and Narrative  involving representation as part of a philosophy of time, thereby describing human existence as historical, and  Oneself as Another,  where the human capable of talking, narrating, acting, and making oneself responsible. He is developing a philosophical anthropology. In this book, the human being can make memory and history. However, his previous two works left an impasse with respect to memory and forgetting, the median between time and narrative. Throughout the book there are careful and close readings of the texts of Aristotle and Plato, of Descartes and Kant, and of Halbwachs and Pierre Nora. Ricoeur first takes a phenomenological approach to memory and mnemonical devices. The underlying question here is how a memory of
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Epiphany Moments

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       T he human need for cosmic connection is one that most, if not all, human beings will experience. Such a desire is a human constant. Modern life has led to reflection upon alienation, the alienation we experience from Space and Time, that is, from Nature and History, that we experience because of the loss of the language of transcendence reflected in the philosophical unwillingness to discuss the Infinite and Eternal that arises because of the dominance of science. Science makes space and time tools for us to manage, and in doing so has improved the human condition. To suppose that we can give rational expression to all things human is to deny the significance of feeling and desire in understanding who we are. The disenchantment of the world that has occurred in modern philosophy and science needs a re-enchantment of the world through all creative, artistic expression, which one could explore in music and art, but is also clearly shown in poetic expression. Poetry reveals that t
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Renee Girard and Mimetic Theory

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  Bibliography Girard, R. (1999, 2001).  I See Satan Falling Like Lightning.  (J. G. and Foreward, Trans.) Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Girard, R. (2013, 1997, 1972).  Violence and the Sacred.  (P. Gregory, Trans.) New York: Bloomsbury. Palaver, W. (2013).  Rene Girard's Mimetic Theory (Studies in Violence, Mimesis & Culture.  East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University. Pannenberg, W. (1998, 1991).  Systematic Theology.  Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. Taylor, C. (2007).  A Secular Age.  Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.     This exploration into the thought of Rene Girard will focus upon his insight into the mimetic cycle. While he discusses his personal conversion to Christ, it has little influence upon evaluating the validity of mimetic theory. I will focus upon the insights his theory yields in biblical and theological studies, especially related to St. Augustine. I express a caution. Girard offers a monolithic theory through whi
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