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What Happens to History: The Renewal of Ethics in COntemporary Thought
While the questions of ethics have become increasingly important in recent years for many fields within the humanities, there has been no single volume that seeks to address the emergence of this concern with ethics across the disciplinary spectrum. Given this lack in currently available critical and secondary texts, and also the urgency of the issues addressed by the critics assembled here, the time is right for a collection of this nature.
255 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 11, 2014
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October 11, 2022
What Happens to History is a compilation of essays on post-modern ethics. I decided to pick this up as I saw Tzvetan Todorov quoted in an article and wanted to read the book where the quote came from.
To be frank, not every essay is worth reading in this book. Several arguments are totally circular and don't contribute anything valuable to the discussion. Others are written so poorly, over-relying on the "I think" or "I propose" sentence structures that they are not really discussions about ethics but instead are pseudo-journal entries of pointless rambles about post-modernism.
The first essay by Tzvetan Todorov, "The Uses and Abuses of Memory," is the most thought provoking. His discussion on World War 2 and memory was eye opening. One of the most relevant sections was flushing out the final danger to memory, vulgarization:
"The day that "Nazi" becomes an insult synonymous with "bastard," the history of Nazism will have ceased to teach us anything. The past event must not be reduced to its own identity nor become diluted in endless generalization."
This essay should be mandatory reading for every history/philosophy/ethics course at university.
What Happens to History is an interesting concept but it isn't worth reading in its entirety. I think some of the essays could have been cut and better ones found to hone in on the theme of history and ethics. Or simply rename the book to the subtitle "The Renewal of Ethics in Contemporary Thought" as it would be more appropriate for the book as is.
To be frank, not every essay is worth reading in this book. Several arguments are totally circular and don't contribute anything valuable to the discussion. Others are written so poorly, over-relying on the "I think" or "I propose" sentence structures that they are not really discussions about ethics but instead are pseudo-journal entries of pointless rambles about post-modernism.
The first essay by Tzvetan Todorov, "The Uses and Abuses of Memory," is the most thought provoking. His discussion on World War 2 and memory was eye opening. One of the most relevant sections was flushing out the final danger to memory, vulgarization:
"The day that "Nazi" becomes an insult synonymous with "bastard," the history of Nazism will have ceased to teach us anything. The past event must not be reduced to its own identity nor become diluted in endless generalization."
This essay should be mandatory reading for every history/philosophy/ethics course at university.
What Happens to History is an interesting concept but it isn't worth reading in its entirety. I think some of the essays could have been cut and better ones found to hone in on the theme of history and ethics. Or simply rename the book to the subtitle "The Renewal of Ethics in Contemporary Thought" as it would be more appropriate for the book as is.
Displaying 1 of 1 review