Abstract
Is it possible to remember something that one has never directly experienced? Can I remember parts of a loved one’s life if I was not there with them? Our intellectual instincts immediately scream ‘No!’. It seems, at first blush, plainly absurd to say that one can remember something, having never had any sensory experience of the event in question. However, a more honest and personal investigation reveals that our previous desire to create a cut-and-dry definition of genuine remembering simply does not reflect the many ways we use and create memory in our everyday lives – most especially when remembering family and friends. By following my own personal story after the death of my grandfather, the philosopher Max Charlesworth, I hope to challenge our traditional epistemological definitions of memory by showing how – through indirect experiences via secondary sources – one can come to have genuine memories of loved ones, as well as highlighting why this is both beautiful and vitally important.
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- 1.
References to Bloch is of his translation of Aristotle’s De memoria et reminiscentia. The material herein from Bloch refers to De memoria 449b4–450a; 451b.
- 2.
By offering the term ‘familial’ I do not mean to restrict such memories solely to family members. Instead this category should be extended to any and all intimate, personal memory-images of close and important relations, which are very often, though not always, connected to a loved one.
- 3.
Moreover, as it moves further away in spacetime, it seems also to move further from a holistic sensory experience. For instance, watching the game at the ground offers a full gamut of visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory and somatosensory stimulation. On the other hand, listening to the wireless of course offers a much less holistic sensory impression of the game itself.
- 4.
For what else is there to do as a Carlton supporter when your team is but a shadow of its former self?
References
Bloch, D. (2007). Aristotle on memory and recollection: Text, translation, interpretation, and reception in Western scholasticism. Leiden: Brill.
Charlesworth, M. (1989). Life, death, genes and ethics: Biotechnology and bioethics. Sydney: Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Frise, M. (2017, June 30). Epistemology of memory. In Internet encyclopaedia of philosophy. http://www.iep.utm.edu/epis-mem/
Martin, C. B., & Deutscher, M. (1966). Remembering. The Philosophical Review, 75(2), 161–196.
Russell, B. (1921). The analysis of mind. Oxford: Allen & Unwin.
Sutton, J. (2016). Memory. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopaedia of philosophy (Summer 2016 ed.). https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/memory/
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Linger, A. (2019). Remembering Babo. In: Wong, P., Bloor, S., Hutchings, P., Bilimoria, P. (eds) Considering Religions, Rights and Bioethics: For Max Charlesworth. Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, vol 30. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18148-2_3
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