Nietzsche and the nihilstic force of the will to power and Collingwoods thesis that almost anything can be counted as historical evidence for anything sets the relativistic scene for Ricoeurs reflections. The categorical powers of understanding, judgement and reasoning are marginalised and called into question during Ricoeurs sceptical exploration of the trans-scientiifc discipline of History.

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Delphic Podcast

The Work of remembering is not a work of the imagination but involves memory understanding, judgement and reasoning. Non Historical narratives may use the power of imagination to a greater degree when communicating aesthetic ideas of the artist via their works of art but here too there is a distinct presence of imperatively driven rational judgements.

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Delphic Podcast

The civilising process is discussed in relation to modern relativising ideas and connected to a "rationalising process" rather than categorical rationality of the kind we encounter in the works of Aristotle and Kant. The Aristotelian "actualisation process, whilst not related to "mentalities" as characterised in Ricouers account is however related to the development of powers of mind such as sensibility, understanding and reason.

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Delphic Podcast

Augustine asks the aporetic question "What is Time?", rejects the Aristotelian account that refers to external motion and insists instead upon some sort of "distention" of the soul. Historical documents are constructed in a context of explanation/justification and occur in a community of critics who are testing the veracity of these documents in accordance with a number of different principles.

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Delphic Podcast

The school of inwardness was created by the thought of St Augustine, Descartes Hoobes, Locke and a number of 20th century Analytical Philosophers seeking to escape the "idealism" of Hegels Phenomenology as well as the Phenomeologists of the 20th century seeking to restore the work of Hegel to a prominent place in the History of Philosophy. The Later work of Wittgenstein, criticising his own earlier logical solipsism created a logical space for the reemergence of Aristotelian and Kantain Ciritical Philosophy.

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Delphic Podcast

Memeory has an aspect of something happening to one when one has learned something but it also has a more active aspect which Freud referred to as the "work of remembering" in his work with his patients suffering from various pathological conditions. Lockes attempt to epistemologise memory by making it a psychological part of the identity of a man reduces the wider focus of thinkers like Aristotle, Kant and Freud.

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Delphic Podcast

The Angel of History confronts the growing volume of debris of our modern era in the spirit of T S Eliots "Waste Land". Hannah Arendts voice of discontent is echoed by her lover Benjamin who commits suicide because the Marxist vision has disappointed and the Nazis are closing in on him. Ricoeur argues that it is the duty of human psuché to remember crimes committed against humanity.

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Delphic Podcast

The Identity of a human is of course connected to the particular memories that human possesses but memory as such is not a part of the unique essence of being human since some animals aslo have memories. Augustines conception of Time is invoked by the phenomenologists as a competing account to those accounts we find in Aristotelian Hylomorphic and Kantian Critical Philosophy. Narrative and time are linked in Ricoeurs account in ways that neither Aristotle nor kant would find plausible.

http://michaelrdjames.org

Delphic Podcast