History and Memory: Two Key Concepts

BELVEDRESI, ROSA

Gehnt

Congreso; Inaugural Conference of the International Network for Theory of History, The Future of the Theory and Philosophy of History; 2013

Modern Age is understood as Neuzeit because of the alleged gap between experience and expectation -that is the core of Koselleck's analysis. But future as "expectation" stands for a helpful category to think about individual life (in the sense of what existentialism called "project") and also a dimension which provides a clue for the collective meaning of historical experiences of an era. Future may be thought in terms of the uncertainty relative to what has not yet occurred as well as the background of shared historical experiences. This paper argues that future is meaningful as historical time. In order to do that, some concepts of speculative philosophy of history will be revisited. The aim will be to relate expectation of future to hope, as the latter can be understood in Kant's practical philosophy. It will be shown that an idea of future is necessary to grasp how societies build collective memory and deal with the (recent or distant) past. The different types of relations that can be established between memory and hope (that is to say, between past and future) will tell us what kind of future is conceivable for some group, generation or society. Some of these theses are illustrated with examples from the debates that arose in Argentina about strategies for remembering those events that happened during the last military government (1976-1983).