








































© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2009, Unit 6, The Village, 101 Amies Street, London SW11 2JW

[Expo. 3.2 (2009) 229–237] Expositions (print) ISSN 1747-5368  
doi:10.1558/expo.v3i2.229 Expositions (online) ISSN 1747-5376 

Book Reviews

Bound to Remember

GrEGory HoSkINS

Villanova University

Jeffrey Blustein. The Moral Demands of Memory. New york: Cambridge 
University Press, 2008. $24.99 pb. ISBN-13: 9780521709729.

The scope of Jeffrey Blustein’s The Moral Demands of Memory is  
immense. His overall project in the book is to examine

[H]ow and why memory should be preserved and transmitted, … the 
reciprocal relationship between memory and [individual and collec-
tive] identity and the moral significance of this relationship, and … 
the moral responsibilities associated with memory. (2)

However, in the course of his investigations he takes up such sub-
stantive sub-issues as: the necessity and obligation for individuals and 
for groups to actively take responsibility for the past; the links between 
historical injustice and collective identity and the role of memory in 
doing justice to the past; the relations between myth, collective mem-
ory, and historical inquiry; the responsibility to remember the dead 
and especially those closest to us; and the obligation to bear witness to 
the past. In what follows I do not attempt to survey the entire book; 
rather, I limit myself to highlighting what I take to be three distinc-
tive, significant features of his analysis: the necessity and obligation 
to actively take responsibility for one’s individual, particular past; the  
obligation to remember the dead, and especially those to whom Blus-
tein refers as the “dear departed”; and, finally, the possible role of shame 
in the context of attempts to do justice for past collective injustice. To 
underscore the timely relevance of Blustein’s book, I will organize my 
review around two events reported in the general media during the 
Spring of 2009.

C



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In February 2009 the New York Times reported in the “City” section 
of the paper on the strange case of Hannah Upp. Upp can remember 
going out for a jog along riverside Drive on August 28, 2008, but she 
remembers nothing again until waking up in an ambulance on Septem-
ber 16, three weeks later, after having been fished out of the Hudson 
river. Her doctors informed her that she suffered from a rare condition 
called “dissociative fugue,” a form of amnesia in which a person forgets 
her personal identity from anywhere between a few minutes to several 
years. About the experience of which she has no memory, Upp com-
mented, “It’s weird. How do you feel guilty for something you didn’t 
even know you did? It’s not your fault, but it’s still somehow you. So 
it’s definitely made me reconsider everything. Who was I before? Who 
was I then—is that part of me? Who am I now?”

Upp’s question, “Who am I?” captures the stakes of the link between 
memory and personal identity that Blustein explicates in the first and 
the second chapters of his book. Since John Locke, philosophers have 
recognized that memory constitutes a key component in the unity and 
continuity of the “biographical self,” of personal identity in the sense 
of “the characteristics, actions, and experiences that make someone 
the person she is” (41). A loss of memory would thus “confound our 
sense of who we are,” as evidenced in Upp’s questions (43). Not only is 
memory a necessary component of personal identity, but being respon-
sible and taking responsibility for our past are essential features of the 
ethical life, of self-knowledge and of self-respect and esteem. To quote 
Blustein at length:

[T]aking responsibility for one’s past is morally important and desir-
able for the individual to do … For it is also a way of taking oneself  
seriously and is necessary if one is to have a realistic, responsible con-
ception of oneself. Its importance is to be explained, therefore, partly 
in terms of what is essentially to leading a good human life, because 
these are plausibly regarded as constitutive ingredients of it. A person 
who does not come to terms with and take responsibility for important 
aspects of his past, or who selectively and defensively takes responsi-
bility for only certain portions of it, will likely have only a superficial 
understanding of his abilities, inclinations, and attitudes. (40)

It is a curious feature of Upp’s experience that she feel ethically impli-



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cated for presumably the difficulties she caused for her family, friends, 
and the authorities: “It’s textbook that you feel shame, you feel em-
barrassed, you feel guilt—all things I’ve definitely felt.” We can make 
sense of her feelings of responsibility to some extent if we attend to the 
process of taking responsibility for one’s past. 

In chapter two, titled indeed “Taking responsibility for one’s own 
Past,” Blustein explicates key features of this process. Unlike merely  
accepting, however willingly or grudgingly, one’s responsibility for the 
past, taking responsibility for the past is an action implicating one’s 
agency that has “forward-looking” dimensions. He explains, “As a for-
ward task, it involves two stages: a voluntary undertaking and a com-
mitment to follow through, and it entails a readiness to answer for or 
give an accounting of our failures to do so” (65). There are, for prima-
rily analytic purposes, three elements of taking responsibility for the 
past. First, taking responsibility for the past involves the “retrospective 
construction of meaning” (66–69). The specific details of the past are 
not changed—this is not an aspiration towards affecting an impossi-
ble backward causality—but the significance, the point or lesson, of 
the past is altered in light of “one’s present choices and actions.” For  
instance, the lesson a person derives from a particularly uncomfortable 
memory of a failed venture may change from “never try that again” to 
something like, “try that again, but be careful not to make the same 
mistakes.”

The second element of taking responsibility for the past involves  
“appropriating” it (69–74). This process of appropriation involves  
“actively taking up the past and annexing it to and integrating it with 
the present.” A person can appropriate past events in which one’s agency 
is directly or indirectly implicated. To mitigate the undeniable volun-
taristic character of taking responsibility for one’s past Blustein points 
out that we can take responsibility for past events in which one suffered 
some event or the actions of another or others, and he associates this  
entire process with having a proper sense of “humility,” with recogniz-
ing that “one’s agency is impure and that one’s control is limited, not 
only by one’s physical characteristics and the things that befall one but 
also by one’s prior exercises of agency” (90–91). Although it would be 
morally perverse to claim, for example, that Upp is directly responsi-



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ble for her actions during the lost time, she seems to be compelled to  
become, in Blustein’s words, “active with respect to it by what [she] 
does now, by including it within the ambit of [her] agency.” Finally, 
the process of taking responsibility for the past involves “thematiza-
tion” (74–76). To thematize one’s past is to narrate it; it is to organize 
the events in one’s life into meaningful patterns, to identify “motifs 
and patterns” in one’s past and to draw connections between them. We 
“make sense of the present in the light of some aspect of one’s past,” 
he explains. That Upp is appropriating and thematizing her past is evi-
denced in part by her claims that in the weeks following her return, 

I’ve gotten a time to really appreciate what normal life is like. I’ve never 
had a moment in my life where I’ve just stopped and said, hold on, let’s 
re-evaluate everything … If you work through it, you can usually go 
on to live a normal life.

It is not a coincidence that Blustein’s explication of the process of 
taking responsibility for one’s past primarily concerned taking respon-
sibility for what we might call the difficult past. People are much more 
likely to embrace their past achievements and moments of joy and to 
attempt to evade, elide, or otherwise ignore past suffering or failure. 
Therefore, the most original, I believe, and provocative component of 
Blustein’s project is a sustained analysis of our obligations of remem-
brance in relation to those with whom the language of “obligations 
of remembrance” loses whatever negative connotations it might carry: 
our friends and especially the “dear departed, person we have loved, 
cherished, and/or esteemed, and who have no just been significant in 
our lives but have mattered to us, and who have no passed away” (245; 
Blustein’s italics). Citing kierkegaard, Blustein argues that the efforts 
to remember the dear departed are a work of love in which we value the 
person now dead as she was when alive (253–257). 

Blustein divides the arguments for our obligations to remember the 
dead into two categories: consequentialist and expressivist arguments.  
With the first category of arguments, the possible benefits fo fulfill-
ing the obligation are decisive. There are, for example, political and/
or therapeutic reasons to remember the dead because “doing so can be 
expected to promote or embody a better state of affairs [now and in 
the future] than available alternatives.” With the second category of 



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arguments, the character or quality of our various relationships to the 
living and the dead are significant. According to Blustein, “we ought to 
remember the dead not (or not only) because we ought to bring about 
certain consequences … but because certain attitudes are called for  
toward the dead and we express them in how we remember” (266). 
Blustein offers three expressivist arguments for the obligation to  
remember the dear departed (261–266). The first argument is the 
“rescue from insignificance view.” We remember the dead in order to  
express respect for the dignity of that person having existed and there-
by to affirm “that their lives had a point not even death can reduce 
to insignificance” (272–273). The second argument is the “enduring  
duties view.” We have, he argues, “duties appropriate to the dear  
departed flow [that] from or instantiate duties of love and honor, among 
others” (273). Finally, Blustein argues for the “reciprocity view.” We  
remember the dead because we too hope to be remembered. Although 
the reciprocity view resembles a consequentialist argument, it is not 
(simply) one because in desiring to be remembered as well a person 
expresses a “fidelity to the tradition of remembering” itself (280). 

C

In the same month that Blustein finished writing the preface of his 
book—February 2007—the International Committee of the red 
Cross submitted a confidential report to the American Central Intel-
ligence Agency on the treatment of fourteen “high value detainees” 
in CIA custody. That report was leaked to Mark Danner, a profes-
sor of Journalism at Berkeley and of Foreign Affairs, Politics, and the  
Humanities at Bard, who then made the findings public in the Spring 
of 2009. The descriptions of detainee treatment in that report, along 
with descriptions of treatment included in the US Senate Armed Serv-
ices Committee’s investigation titled “Inquiry into the Treatment of 
Detainees in US Custody” released in April of 2009, include, in the 
words of the ICrC report, “descriptions of treatment and interroga-
tion techniques—singly, or in combination—that amounted to tor-
ture and/or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”

Although the practice of torture was officially ended by President 
Barack obama on his first day in office in January 2009, the issue, 



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explains Danner, “could not be more important, for it cuts to the basic 
question of who we are as Americans.” The issue also goes to the heart 
of Blustein’s analysis contained primarily in chapter three, “Doing 
Justice to the Past.” In this chapter he is concerned with understand-
ing the relationship between collective identity, past injustice, and the 
processes of taking responsibility for, of doing justice to, that past. 
To his credit, Blustein does not uncritically draw an analogy between 
individuals and groups, but he does argue that the processes by which 
individuals take responsibility for their past can “illuminate” the proc-
esses by which groups do justice to their past: 

Collective appropriation of the wrongs of the past is similar in the 
following (limited) respect: it opens up possibilities for managing the  
influence of the past and enables the construction of a future that 
is not merely an uncritical recapitulation of the past. Furthermore, 
although it may be unfair to blame a group for wrongs done in the 
past, we may be justified in blaming a group for failing to collectively 
exercise its capacity to determine what its influence and significance 
will be and for failing to fulfill its duties of response. (148)

It is not possible to summarize all of the issues raised and arguments 
offered by Blustein in this chapter and in the fourth, “Ethics, Truth 
and Collective Memory,” and so in what follows I offer an outline of 
what I take to be one of the most significant and under-theorized issues 
that he analyses: the possible role of collective shame in motivating the 
process of doing justice for past injustice. 

The notion of collective shame, according to Blustein, does not entail 
a commitment to some mysterious “collective consciousness that exists 
independently of human minds.” rather, it is “a function of the under-
standing, psychological resources, and common knowledge of mem-
bers of a group” (151). Following Bernard Williams, Blustein explains 
that shame concerns what a group is—it implicates the identity of the 
group, and it follows upon the recognition of a debt and responsibil-
ity that we receive—whereas guilt concerns what a group has done—it 
implicates collective agency. 

Blustein’s analysis of collective shame is nicely nuanced. He elucidates 
the genuine notion of collective shame by distinguishing it from other, 
inadequate characterizations of group shame. Collective shame is not 



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“aggregated individual shame,” the shame “experienced by people who 
happen to be members of the same group” (152). What is missing 
from aggregated individual shame is mention about what specifically 
the individuals are ashamed and how this shame specifically concerns 
being a member of that group. However, collective shame is also not 
“aggregated membership shame,” shame “experienced by members of 
a group in relation to some (the same) action or practice of it” (154). 
The intensity of identification with a group can vary, and members 
who do not feel a strong allegiance to the group may not be disposed to 
feel anything in relation to it. More importantly, aggregated member-
ship shame can occur even if only a few members of the group know 
or are aware of that about which they are ashamed. Genuine collective 
shame, in contrast, is “openly communicated and communally shared” 
(155). Consequently, Blustein defines genuine collective shame in the 
following manner:

Shared membership shame: group shame is truly collective when and 
only when there is shame over something the group has done that is 
widespread among the members of the group, the shame is publicly 
expressed and socially unifying, and it is aroused by actions or prac-
tices that call into question the group’s fidelity to its collective norma-
tive self-conception. (156)

The question of the guilt of those who authorized, carried out, or 
who had the power to try to prevent (doctors, lawyers) the torture of 
detainees in American custody to one side, it is of course very much an 
open question whether the majority of Americans have or will experi-
ence a shared membership shame that motivates them—that motivates 
us—to do justice to those we tortured. It is to Blustein’s credit that he 
has emphasized the vital importance of these issues and has provided 
us the conceptual tools to think through them.

C
In the opening pages of The Moral Demands of Memory, Blustein iden-
tifies his target readership: philosophers working in the analytic, or the 
Anglo-American, tradition. Although, as he acknowledges, the subject 
of memory has a long history in certain branches of philosophy, such 
as in metaphysics and epistemology, “evaluative inquiry about memory 



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has been curiously neglected” by these philosophers (1). Philosophers 
trained in traditions that have not, for the most part, neglected evalua-
tive inquiry about memory—for example, existential phenomenology, 
hermeneutics, or critical theory—will likely find many of the rudimen-
tary moves, and especially the work in the first chapter, “Memory as a 
Subject of Evaluative Inquiry,” unremarkable though competent. Fur-
ther, philosophers not accustomed to confining their thinking within 
strict disciplinary boundaries will likely be surprised by the absence of 
references to important thinkers of memory and identity who blur the 
distinctions between philosophy and theology. Blustein credits John 
Locke with linking identity to memory, but Augustine of Hippo also 
raised these issues, over a thousand years earlier, in Book X of his Con-
fessions, as he wandered through the vast fields of his memory in search 
of himself and his God. Furthermore, along with Nietzsche, Wal-
ter Benjamin deserves credit for insisting that we late/post-moderns 
should attend to the demand for rectifying justice. Benjamin’s famous 
observation on the moral-political call for justice that comes out of the 
past—“our coming was expected on earth. Then, like every generation 
that preceded us, we have been endowed with a weak messianic power, 
a power on which the past has a claim. Such a claim cannot be set-
tled cheaply”—could have served as an apt header for Blustein’s third 
and fourth chapter. Despite these limitations, Blustein’s book could 
productively be read alongside Paul ricoeur’s similarly concerned but 
simultaneously more comprehensive and more detailed study Memory, 
History, Forgetting (2004).

Given his range of concerns, it is perhaps inevitable that Blustein’s 
analyses are frequently schematic. However, this lack of detailed argu-
mentation is mitigated to a large extent by a clear, accessible exposi-
tion supplemented with copious, detailed endnotes. Large sections of 
The Moral Demands of Memory, and particularly those outlined above 
above, are thought provoking and insightful. Blustein’s book deserves a 
readership greater than the one he intended. 

References

Danner, Mark

2009 The red Cross Torture report: What It Means. The New York Review of 



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Books, Vol. 56, No. 7, April 30. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22614. 

International Committee for the red Cross

2007 report on the Treatment of Fourteen “High Value Detainees” in CIA 
Custody. http://www.nybooks.com/icrc-report.pdf.

Marx, rebecca and Vytenis Dibziulis 

2009 A Life, Interrupted. New York Times, March 1, City Section. http://www.
nytimes.com/2009/03/01/nyregion/thecity/01miss.html?emc=eta1

ricoeur, Paul

2004 Memory, History, Forgetting. Tr. by kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer. 
Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.

https://webaccess.villanova.edu/owa/redir.aspx?C=1880e513a8824ab69c25603b45261dd4&URL=http%3a%2f%2fwww.nybooks.com%2farticles%2f22614
https://webaccess.villanova.edu/owa/redir.aspx?C=1880e513a8824ab69c25603b45261dd4&URL=http%3a%2f%2fwww.nybooks.com%2ficrc-report.pdf
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/nyregion/thecity/01miss.html?emc=eta1
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/nyregion/thecity/01miss.html?emc=eta1

