Ethics of memory and the ethics of remembering

Abstract

The article examines the ethics of memory and the ethics of remembering by asking which events communities are obliged to remember, how they ought to remember them, and what moral responsibilities arise from historical memory. Drawing on the reflections of Elie Wiesel, Avishai Margalit, and other thinkers, the author argues that memory is not merely the preservation of information or a form of historical knowledge. It generates obligations, shapes communal identity, and serves as a source of moral orientation. The ethics of remembering therefore includes decisions concerning education, public monuments, commemoration days, forms of historical narration, and what is often called “memory work,” particularly in relation to the Holocaust, the crimes of Nazism, and the atrocities of communist regimes. The central concept of the article is “tragic knowledge”: knowledge of events that should not have happened and that cannot be fully mastered or neutralized by reason. The author emphasizes that the memory of the Holocaust and other forms of radical evil remains disruptive: it exceeds the ordinary limits of argument, language, and rational explanation, and thus calls not only for analysis but also for humility, silence, and hope. By discussing the example of German Erinnerungskultur, the article reveals the tension between the need to integrate a tragic past into public life and the danger of “domesticating” it, thereby diminishing its moral disturbance. Ultimately, the article argues that the ethics of memory has not only epistemological and political dimensions but also spiritual ones.