The Ethics of Memory

Avishai Margalit

Caring is a demanding attitude toward others. Some of us are by inclination good-hearted people, who may have a diffused benign attitude toward our fellow human beings in general. But this diffused good will does not amount to that unselfish heed to the particular needs and interests of others that caring requires. The snag is not that it is hard to like people we don't know: caring does not necessarily require liking. What we find hard is the attention that is implied by caring. Women may be better at dividing their attention than men, and thus more able to c are for others than men, as Carol Gilligan used to argue. But even Mother Theresa lacked the resources to pay attention to everyone. Along with Dostoyevsky, we are suspicious of those who care for humanity in general but who do not care for any human being in particular. We should be even more suspicious of those who pay attention only to what they feel toward others but are incapable of paying attention to others; in short, we should be suspicious of sentimentalists.

Are we wrong to judge our life by the way we remember it rather than by the way we experience it? The so-called scientific picture says yes; the literary picture says no. And I say (timidly perhaps) that the truth is in a combination of the two--a picture, that is, that can combine our experienced life, which is colored by moods, with our remembered life, which contains emotions. There is, however, one other picture that I would like to mention, which challenges the assumption taken for granted both by the scientific and the literary images. The common assumption is that life should be measured by addition, not by subtraction, and that the difference between the two pictures is in what it is that should be added. The scientific picture contends that the addition should encompass all the experiences in one's life, remembered as well as unremembered. The literary picture, in contrast, contends that the addition should comprise all the highlights that are remembered and that go into a coherent story of one's life.

The hope with which I credit moral witnesses is a rather sober hope: that in another place or another time there exists, or will exist, a moral community that will listen to their testimony. What is so heroic in this hope is the fact that people who are subjected to evil regimes intent on destroying the fabric of their moral community easily come to see the regime as invincible and indestructible and stop believing in the very possibility of a moral community. Being a helpless inmate in a Nazi concentration camp or a Bolshevik gulag can make you believe that the thousand years Reich or the unstoppable juggernaut of the communist triumph is just the way of the world. The disparity of power between victim and perpetrator confirms every minute what seems to be the invincibility of the regime. Under such adverse conditions, to believe in what would under normal circumstances be a rather reasonable belief--namely, that the evil power is limited and temporary--is hard indeed. The belief, under such conditions, in the possibility of a moral community calls for a veritable leap of faith. But then the moral witness does not have to have the assured confidence of a sleepwalker that is manifested by a religious witness.

In the 'enlightened' picture, truth is given in principle to all; truth is on the surface. Even expert scientific knowledge is not esoteric knowledge but is in principle knowledge open to all. In the final analysis, the authority of the 'new knowledge' hinges only on observations. In this new picture, the reliability of hearsay testimony is tested by sampling the witness's statements against our observations.

The comparison between the God who remembers man and the mother who remembers the child of her womb is interesting. In Hebrew the words rehem (womb) and rahamim (mercy) stem from the same root. Mercy is returning those who are far away to their source, the womb. Hence, the act of remembering is an act of mercy and grace.