1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:04,040 Have you ever considered that almost every history 2 00:00:04,040 --> 00:00:06,879 book you've ever read is fundamentally a desperate 3 00:00:06,879 --> 00:00:10,519 attempt to stop time, like to stop it from completely 4 00:00:10,519 --> 00:00:13,000 destroying human memory? I mean, that is a fairly 5 00:00:13,000 --> 00:00:15,519 intense way to look at it. But honestly, it's 6 00:00:15,519 --> 00:00:17,199 entirely accurate when you really get down to 7 00:00:17,199 --> 00:00:19,600 the philosophy of it. Right. And to visualize 8 00:00:19,600 --> 00:00:22,460 this, I want you, the listener, to imagine a 9 00:00:22,460 --> 00:00:26,589 very specific slightly intimidating place. Oh, 10 00:00:26,589 --> 00:00:28,649 I know exactly the visual you're going for here. 11 00:00:28,690 --> 00:00:30,690 Yeah, it's perfect. So in the library of the 12 00:00:30,690 --> 00:00:34,229 Wiblingen Monastery in Ulm, Germany, there stands 13 00:00:34,229 --> 00:00:37,810 this superb Baroque sculpture. It is the dual 14 00:00:37,810 --> 00:00:40,710 figure of history. It's quite striking. It really 15 00:00:40,710 --> 00:00:43,049 is. Picture this. In the foreground, you have 16 00:00:43,049 --> 00:00:46,210 Cronos, the winged god of time. He's an old man. 17 00:00:46,570 --> 00:00:48,590 His brow is wreathed and his face looks utterly 18 00:00:48,590 --> 00:00:51,289 desperate and wild. Like he's in a frenzy. Exactly. 19 00:00:51,740 --> 00:00:54,320 and his left hand is gripping a large book, and 20 00:00:54,320 --> 00:00:56,500 his right hand is violently attempting to tear 21 00:00:56,500 --> 00:00:58,920 out a page. Which represents the destructive, 22 00:00:59,200 --> 00:01:01,240 devouring force of time. He's trying to rip the 23 00:01:01,240 --> 00:01:02,920 past away from us, you know, to just swallow 24 00:01:02,920 --> 00:01:05,599 it into the void. It is a profound and honestly 25 00:01:05,599 --> 00:01:09,219 unsettling visual anchor. But then, you look 26 00:01:09,219 --> 00:01:11,959 behind and slightly above the Old God, and you 27 00:01:11,959 --> 00:01:14,239 see the second figure. You see history herself. 28 00:01:14,379 --> 00:01:18,239 Yes, history herself. And her gaze is grave. 29 00:01:18,560 --> 00:01:21,000 It's searching. Her left hand reaches down and 30 00:01:21,000 --> 00:01:23,939 firmly, calmly, checks the destructive act of 31 00:01:23,939 --> 00:01:26,079 the Old God. She's physically stopping him. Right. 32 00:01:26,079 --> 00:01:28,799 She's stopping him from tearing the page. And 33 00:01:28,799 --> 00:01:31,739 in her right hand, she proudly displays her own 34 00:01:31,739 --> 00:01:33,939 instruments, which are the book, the ink pot, 35 00:01:34,140 --> 00:01:36,659 and the stylus. It's essentially a frozen battle, 36 00:01:36,760 --> 00:01:39,859 right? Between the ravages of time and the preservation 37 00:01:39,859 --> 00:01:43,120 of human experience. Cronos wants to devour the 38 00:01:43,120 --> 00:01:46,120 past and, well... History wants to write it down. 39 00:01:46,340 --> 00:01:49,120 And that tension between our lived fragile experiences 40 00:01:49,120 --> 00:01:51,840 that are constantly slipping away and the rigid 41 00:01:51,840 --> 00:01:54,280 enduring written records we create to save them 42 00:01:54,280 --> 00:01:57,260 is our mission today. It's a massive topic. It 43 00:01:57,260 --> 00:02:00,299 is. We are taking a deep dive into the historiographical 44 00:02:00,299 --> 00:02:02,519 thought of the legendary French philosopher Paul 45 00:02:02,519 --> 00:02:05,299 Rekoo. Specifically, we are going to rigorously 46 00:02:05,299 --> 00:02:08,340 unpack his monumental final major work, which 47 00:02:08,340 --> 00:02:10,979 is called Memory, History, Forgetting. And this 48 00:02:10,979 --> 00:02:13,500 is a heavy text. I mean, it's incredibly dense. 49 00:02:13,539 --> 00:02:16,250 Oh, totally. But whether you are a student of 50 00:02:16,250 --> 00:02:18,110 history, a professional trying to understand 51 00:02:18,110 --> 00:02:20,490 how narratives are constructed, or just someone 52 00:02:20,490 --> 00:02:22,689 insanely curious about how we actually remember 53 00:02:22,689 --> 00:02:25,909 the past, this deep dive is your shortcut. A 54 00:02:25,909 --> 00:02:28,409 shortcut to understanding the complex machinery 55 00:02:28,409 --> 00:02:31,169 behind the entire discipline of history. Exactly. 56 00:02:31,629 --> 00:02:34,449 We're going to explore how humanity transitions 57 00:02:34,449 --> 00:02:38,550 from the fading echo of a personal memory into 58 00:02:38,550 --> 00:02:41,430 the structured verified and written discipline 59 00:02:41,430 --> 00:02:43,810 that we actually call history. And to do this 60 00:02:43,810 --> 00:02:46,509 properly, we have to grasp the sheer ambition 61 00:02:46,509 --> 00:02:49,210 of Ricoeur's project. Like I said, this text is 62 00:02:49,210 --> 00:02:51,409 massive. Yeah. How does he even break it down? 63 00:02:51,650 --> 00:02:54,409 Well, Ricoeur navigates it by exploring three distinct 64 00:02:54,409 --> 00:02:57,330 yet deeply interwoven realms of human experience. 65 00:02:57,830 --> 00:03:00,090 He starts with the phenomenology of memory. Which 66 00:03:00,090 --> 00:03:02,469 means asking what it actually feels like to experience 67 00:03:02,469 --> 00:03:04,870 a memory from the inside. Yeah, exactly. Then 68 00:03:04,870 --> 00:03:07,229 he scales up to the epistemology of history. 69 00:03:07,520 --> 00:03:09,780 This is interrogating how history is actually 70 00:03:09,780 --> 00:03:11,900 made, how facts are verified in the archives, 71 00:03:12,039 --> 00:03:14,300 and how narratives are written. Okay, so from 72 00:03:14,300 --> 00:03:17,759 internal feeling to external process. Yes, and 73 00:03:17,759 --> 00:03:20,539 finally, he takes us into the ontology of the 74 00:03:20,539 --> 00:03:23,699 historical condition. This is asking the ultimate 75 00:03:23,699 --> 00:03:26,620 existential questions about what it means for 76 00:03:26,620 --> 00:03:30,139 us to exist as historical beings moving through 77 00:03:30,139 --> 00:03:32,900 time. Okay, let's unpack this because it's a 78 00:03:32,900 --> 00:03:34,599 lot and I think we need to start with the very 79 00:03:34,599 --> 00:03:36,879 foundation. Before we can even begin to talk 80 00:03:36,879 --> 00:03:40,340 about about historians in tweed jackets arguing 81 00:03:40,340 --> 00:03:43,039 over archival documents. We have to understand 82 00:03:43,039 --> 00:03:45,639 the raw material. The volatile material. Right. 83 00:03:45,800 --> 00:03:48,300 The raw, volatile material that history is built 84 00:03:48,300 --> 00:03:51,300 from. And that raw material is human memory. 85 00:03:51,659 --> 00:03:54,280 And Rekur argues that to understand memory, we 86 00:03:54,280 --> 00:03:56,419 have to go all the way back to our Greek philosophical 87 00:03:56,419 --> 00:03:58,439 heritage. He always goes back to the Greeks. 88 00:03:58,560 --> 00:04:01,580 He does. He points us to two rival, yet incredibly 89 00:04:01,580 --> 00:04:03,939 complimentary ways of looking at memory, one 90 00:04:03,939 --> 00:04:06,449 from Plato and one from Aristotle. Let's start 91 00:04:06,449 --> 00:04:08,490 with Plato. Oh, I love the Plato analogy here. 92 00:04:08,590 --> 00:04:11,009 It's brilliant. He gives us a metaphor in his 93 00:04:11,009 --> 00:04:13,650 dialogue, the theotetus, that is still mind blowing 94 00:04:13,650 --> 00:04:16,589 today. He describes the human mind as a block 95 00:04:16,589 --> 00:04:19,410 of wax. The famous concept of the tucos, right? 96 00:04:19,490 --> 00:04:22,769 The imprint. That's the one. Plato asks his listeners 97 00:04:22,769 --> 00:04:25,670 to imagine that our souls contain a literal block 98 00:04:25,670 --> 00:04:29,060 of wax. Now the quality of this wax varies wildly 99 00:04:29,060 --> 00:04:31,560 from person to person. Sure. When we experience 100 00:04:31,560 --> 00:04:33,920 something in the world, when we see a face, hear 101 00:04:33,920 --> 00:04:36,720 a conversation, or feel a sudden emotion, we 102 00:04:36,720 --> 00:04:39,680 hold this mental wax under our perceptions and 103 00:04:39,680 --> 00:04:42,199 we take a stamp from them. Think of it like pressing 104 00:04:42,199 --> 00:04:45,620 a heavy metal signet ring into hot malleable 105 00:04:45,620 --> 00:04:48,389 wax. That's a great way to picture it. As long 106 00:04:48,389 --> 00:04:50,689 as that image, that physical imprint, remains 107 00:04:50,689 --> 00:04:53,370 in the wax, we remember the event. If the wax 108 00:04:53,370 --> 00:04:56,069 moves over and the imprint is obliterated, well, 109 00:04:56,370 --> 00:04:58,889 we forget. It makes memory sound so tangible, 110 00:04:59,470 --> 00:05:02,670 you know? Like it's so physical, but also incredibly 111 00:05:02,670 --> 00:05:05,550 vulnerable, because wax is entirely subject to 112 00:05:05,550 --> 00:05:07,959 its environment. Exactly. It's fragile. Plato 113 00:05:07,959 --> 00:05:10,000 even jokes about this, doesn't he? He says if 114 00:05:10,000 --> 00:05:13,019 the wax is too soft, the imprint melts away quickly, 115 00:05:13,319 --> 00:05:15,339 like you learn something and immediately forget 116 00:05:15,339 --> 00:05:17,600 it. Right, and if the wax is too hard, the ring 117 00:05:17,600 --> 00:05:19,500 can't make a deep enough impression in the first 118 00:05:19,500 --> 00:05:22,139 place. You struggle to learn anything new. He 119 00:05:22,139 --> 00:05:25,319 even talks about people whose wax is shaggy or 120 00:05:25,319 --> 00:05:27,939 full of dirt and incurities, meaning their minds 121 00:05:27,939 --> 00:05:30,139 are cluttered and the imprints get all distorted 122 00:05:30,139 --> 00:05:32,959 and messy. Which is a remarkably apt description 123 00:05:32,959 --> 00:05:35,959 of cognitive overload, to be honest. Oh, exactly. 124 00:05:36,139 --> 00:05:38,560 Yeah. If I can drag Plato into the 21st century 125 00:05:38,560 --> 00:05:41,019 for a second, think about doom scrolling on a 126 00:05:41,019 --> 00:05:43,540 smartphone. Oh, that's a perfect comparison. 127 00:05:43,620 --> 00:05:46,000 We are bombarding our mental wax with thousands 128 00:05:46,000 --> 00:05:49,480 of tiny rapid fire imprints, a news headline, 129 00:05:49,800 --> 00:05:53,180 a funny video, an angry rant, a recipe. Our wax 130 00:05:53,180 --> 00:05:56,990 gets entirely shaggy. We can't form a deep, lasting 131 00:05:56,990 --> 00:05:59,569 imprint of any of it because the wax is just 132 00:05:59,569 --> 00:06:02,589 a chaotic mess of overlapping, shallow dents. 133 00:06:02,870 --> 00:06:05,189 That is exactly what it feels like. But beyond 134 00:06:05,189 --> 00:06:07,850 the vulnerability of the wax, Ricoeur zeros in 135 00:06:07,850 --> 00:06:10,370 on the massive philosophical puzzle here. The 136 00:06:10,370 --> 00:06:12,829 oporia, as he calls it. Right, the oporia. How 137 00:06:12,829 --> 00:06:15,610 do we represent an absent thing? When you look 138 00:06:15,610 --> 00:06:17,839 at an imprint in a piece of wax, You are looking 139 00:06:17,839 --> 00:06:20,060 at a physical presence. The dent is right there 140 00:06:20,060 --> 00:06:21,720 in front of you. But that dent is supposed to 141 00:06:21,720 --> 00:06:23,519 represent something that is entirely absent, 142 00:06:23,720 --> 00:06:25,939 something that is gone. The ring that made the 143 00:06:25,939 --> 00:06:28,939 dent is no longer in the room. This is the enigma 144 00:06:28,939 --> 00:06:32,339 of the icon, the mental image. And here is where 145 00:06:32,339 --> 00:06:34,920 things get really tricky. Because memory shares 146 00:06:34,920 --> 00:06:38,100 this exact same enigma with imagination. Both 147 00:06:38,100 --> 00:06:40,819 memory and imagination deal with conjuring an 148 00:06:40,819 --> 00:06:42,720 image of something that isn't currently in front 149 00:06:42,720 --> 00:06:45,430 of you. If I close my eyes right now and picture 150 00:06:45,430 --> 00:06:48,730 a giant neon purple elephant wearing a top hat, 151 00:06:49,290 --> 00:06:52,529 I am conjuring an image of an absent thing. Right. 152 00:06:52,949 --> 00:06:55,329 But if I close my eyes and picture my tenth birthday 153 00:06:55,329 --> 00:06:57,490 party, the cake, the friends who were there, 154 00:06:57,490 --> 00:07:00,310 I am also conjuring an image of an absent thing. 155 00:07:01,009 --> 00:07:03,470 So how in the world does the mind separate the 156 00:07:03,470 --> 00:07:06,009 two? And to explain the pragmatic difficulty 157 00:07:06,009 --> 00:07:08,389 of sorting this out, Plato gives us a second 158 00:07:08,389 --> 00:07:11,709 equally brilliant analogy, the model of the aviary. 159 00:07:11,819 --> 00:07:14,060 I love this one. He suggests that possessing 160 00:07:14,060 --> 00:07:16,360 knowledge or memories is like having a massive 161 00:07:16,360 --> 00:07:18,500 flock of birds trapped inside a cage in your 162 00:07:18,500 --> 00:07:20,839 mind. You have the birds, they are in your possession. 163 00:07:20,959 --> 00:07:23,000 But recalling a specific memory is like reaching 164 00:07:23,000 --> 00:07:25,680 your hands into that chaotic, fluttering, noisy 165 00:07:25,680 --> 00:07:28,800 cage and trying to catch one specific bird. Which 166 00:07:28,800 --> 00:07:31,439 sounds like an absolute nightmare, frankly. It 167 00:07:31,439 --> 00:07:33,699 highlights the phenomenology of mistakes, doesn't 168 00:07:33,699 --> 00:07:35,819 it? Yeah. Because sometimes you reach into the 169 00:07:35,819 --> 00:07:38,519 cage intending to grab a dove and in the chaos, 170 00:07:38,860 --> 00:07:40,879 you accidentally pull out a ring dove. You grab 171 00:07:40,879 --> 00:07:43,480 the wrong bird. You recall a false memory, you 172 00:07:43,480 --> 00:07:45,519 mix up two different events, or you accidentally 173 00:07:45,519 --> 00:07:47,579 grab a piece of imagination instead of a piece 174 00:07:47,579 --> 00:07:50,160 of memory. Plato's aviary perfectly captures 175 00:07:50,160 --> 00:07:53,560 the hunt. The active, sometimes frustrating search 176 00:07:53,560 --> 00:07:57,079 for the right recall. But Nakura points out a 177 00:07:57,079 --> 00:07:59,959 critical flaw in Plato's focus here. He does. 178 00:08:00,560 --> 00:08:03,120 By concentrating so heavily on the presence of 179 00:08:03,120 --> 00:08:05,639 the image in the mind, the physical dent in the 180 00:08:05,639 --> 00:08:08,379 wax or the bird in the hand, Plato misses the 181 00:08:08,379 --> 00:08:11,019 most crucial defining feature of what makes a 182 00:08:11,019 --> 00:08:13,220 memory a memory. And this is where Aristotle 183 00:08:13,220 --> 00:08:15,060 comes bursting through the door to correct the 184 00:08:15,060 --> 00:08:18,540 record. He really does. Ricoeur turns to Aristotle's 185 00:08:18,540 --> 00:08:21,699 parva naturalia, specifically his short, dense 186 00:08:21,699 --> 00:08:24,560 treatise on memory and recollection. Aristotle 187 00:08:24,560 --> 00:08:26,600 makes a definitive declaration that serves as 188 00:08:26,600 --> 00:08:29,420 the lodestar for Ricoeur's entire investigation. 189 00:08:29,800 --> 00:08:32,320 What is he saying? Aristotle states simply, all 190 00:08:32,320 --> 00:08:36,149 memory is of the past. Which sounds ridiculously 191 00:08:36,149 --> 00:08:39,309 obvious on the surface. All memory is of the 192 00:08:39,309 --> 00:08:42,230 past. Well, yeah, of course it is. It sounds 193 00:08:42,230 --> 00:08:44,929 obvious until you contrast it with Plato. Plato 194 00:08:44,929 --> 00:08:47,409 was obsessed with the fact that the image is 195 00:08:47,409 --> 00:08:49,850 present in your mind right now. Aristotle shifts 196 00:08:49,850 --> 00:08:52,450 the entire philosophical axis. He's looking at 197 00:08:52,450 --> 00:08:55,789 the timeline. Yes. He says, no, the defining 198 00:08:55,789 --> 00:08:57,889 mark of a memory isn't just that it's an image 199 00:08:57,889 --> 00:09:00,570 floating in your head. It is the temporal mark. 200 00:09:00,769 --> 00:09:04,169 It is the anteriority. Meaning? The thing remembered 201 00:09:04,169 --> 00:09:06,950 must bear the undeniable stamp of having happened 202 00:09:06,950 --> 00:09:10,870 before. Precisely. It requires an internal understanding 203 00:09:10,870 --> 00:09:14,029 of before and after. When you conjure that neon 204 00:09:14,029 --> 00:09:16,570 purple elephant, it lacks that temporal anchor. 205 00:09:16,730 --> 00:09:19,549 It just exists in a timeless realm of fantasy. 206 00:09:19,629 --> 00:09:22,350 But a memory comes with a distinct undeniable 207 00:09:22,350 --> 00:09:24,950 sensation that you have lived through this. It 208 00:09:24,950 --> 00:09:27,409 is an image characterized by its pastness. Exactly. 209 00:09:27,450 --> 00:09:29,470 Its pastness. Let me play devil's advocate for 210 00:09:29,470 --> 00:09:31,190 a second because this feels like slippery terrain 211 00:09:31,190 --> 00:09:33,710 to me. Sure. Go ahead. If memory is just a mangle 212 00:09:33,710 --> 00:09:36,649 image of an absent thing, and its only distinguishing 213 00:09:36,649 --> 00:09:40,090 feature from a pure fantasy is a feeling of pastness, 214 00:09:40,590 --> 00:09:42,750 how do we truly know we aren't just imagining 215 00:09:42,750 --> 00:09:44,990 it? That's a big question. Like, it's like finding 216 00:09:44,990 --> 00:09:47,470 an old photograph in an attic. There's no date 217 00:09:47,470 --> 00:09:49,490 stamped on the back, no writing, no context. 218 00:09:49,850 --> 00:09:52,210 It's just an image of people standing near a 219 00:09:52,210 --> 00:09:54,929 tree. How do you know it's a real memory of an 220 00:09:54,929 --> 00:09:57,509 actual event? And not just a fantasy, your brain 221 00:09:57,509 --> 00:09:59,509 cooked up and accidentally labeled with a past 222 00:09:59,509 --> 00:10:02,730 sticker. That hits the absolute core of the epistemic 223 00:10:02,730 --> 00:10:06,029 problem. Ricoeur faces this head on by examining 224 00:10:06,029 --> 00:10:08,809 what he calls the fundamental truth claim of 225 00:10:08,809 --> 00:10:12,210 memory. The truth claim? Yes. Every single time 226 00:10:12,210 --> 00:10:14,429 we remember something, there is an implicit claim 227 00:10:14,429 --> 00:10:17,029 being made by our own consciousness. Ricoeur 228 00:10:17,029 --> 00:10:19,450 calls this claim faithfulness. Faithfulness, 229 00:10:19,590 --> 00:10:21,889 okay. Memory inherently claims to be faithful 230 00:10:21,889 --> 00:10:24,509 to a reality that actually was. It is a search 231 00:10:24,509 --> 00:10:27,500 for truth. When you experience that moment of 232 00:10:27,500 --> 00:10:29,480 recognition, when you finally catch the right 233 00:10:29,480 --> 00:10:32,580 bird in the aviary, you feel a profound, almost 234 00:10:32,580 --> 00:10:35,559 bodily conviction that something actually happened. 235 00:10:35,600 --> 00:10:37,960 That you were implicated as an agent or a witness. 236 00:10:38,419 --> 00:10:41,779 Right. Imagination makes no such claim. Imagination 237 00:10:41,779 --> 00:10:44,759 revels in the unreal, the possible, the fantastic. 238 00:10:45,440 --> 00:10:47,940 Memory stubbornly demands to be recognized as 239 00:10:47,940 --> 00:10:50,340 faithful to a prior reality. But that demand 240 00:10:50,340 --> 00:10:52,820 for faithfulness is incredibly fragile, isn't 241 00:10:52,820 --> 00:10:56,059 it? Because we already know the wax melts. We 242 00:10:56,059 --> 00:10:58,799 know the wrong bird gets caught. We know memories 243 00:10:58,799 --> 00:11:01,200 can be manipulated. Very easily manipulated. 244 00:11:01,379 --> 00:11:03,480 If you're listening to this, you know for a fact 245 00:11:03,480 --> 00:11:05,620 you've had arguments with friends where we remember 246 00:11:05,620 --> 00:11:08,080 the exact same event completely differently. 247 00:11:08,320 --> 00:11:10,679 Which is why Rick Hur spends significant time 248 00:11:10,679 --> 00:11:13,820 outlining the abuses of memory. The demand for 249 00:11:13,820 --> 00:11:16,799 faithfulness is often thwarted. Consider blocked 250 00:11:16,799 --> 00:11:19,259 memory where profound trauma forces the mind 251 00:11:19,259 --> 00:11:21,799 to hide the imprint to protect the psyche. or 252 00:11:21,799 --> 00:11:24,500 manipulated tumourie, where ideology, suggestion, 253 00:11:24,659 --> 00:11:27,299 or gaslighting twist the imprint into something 254 00:11:27,299 --> 00:11:30,100 unrecognizable. Ricoeur also discusses obligated 255 00:11:30,100 --> 00:11:32,600 memory, which is highly relevant today. Think 256 00:11:32,600 --> 00:11:34,659 about the intense political battles over how 257 00:11:34,659 --> 00:11:37,059 history textbooks are written. That is a society 258 00:11:37,059 --> 00:11:39,220 attempting to obligate its citizens to remember 259 00:11:39,220 --> 00:11:42,440 an event in one specific approved way, often 260 00:11:42,440 --> 00:11:45,529 at the expense of other truths. Exactly. Because 261 00:11:45,529 --> 00:11:47,570 lived memory is so vulnerable to the ravages 262 00:11:47,570 --> 00:11:50,789 of Kranos, humanity realizes it cannot rely on 263 00:11:50,789 --> 00:11:53,970 it alone to preserve the past. The demand for 264 00:11:53,970 --> 00:11:56,649 faithfulness requires a more rigid, objective, 265 00:11:56,950 --> 00:12:00,470 externalized system. And that system is history. 266 00:12:01,070 --> 00:12:03,149 Which brings us to the massive second act of 267 00:12:03,149 --> 00:12:06,830 Ricoeur's thought. We're leaving the internal psychological 268 00:12:06,830 --> 00:12:10,110 world of the mind and entering the external physical 269 00:12:10,110 --> 00:12:13,460 world of the historiographical operation. Because 270 00:12:13,460 --> 00:12:16,019 human memory is vulnerable to the melting racks, 271 00:12:16,340 --> 00:12:18,940 we need a way to stabilize it. Ricoeur breaks down 272 00:12:18,940 --> 00:12:20,980 how historians actually build the stability, 273 00:12:21,019 --> 00:12:23,159 starting with the documentary phase. But before 274 00:12:23,159 --> 00:12:25,379 a personal memory can ever become a historical 275 00:12:25,379 --> 00:12:28,179 document, it has to cross a bridge. It has to 276 00:12:28,179 --> 00:12:30,879 become a testimony. Testimony is the vital transition 277 00:12:30,879 --> 00:12:33,460 point. It is the exact moment when declarative 278 00:12:33,460 --> 00:12:36,539 memory exteriorizes itself. An internal, private 279 00:12:36,539 --> 00:12:39,039 recollection becomes an external, social act. 280 00:12:39,159 --> 00:12:41,000 And when someone gives testimony, whether in 281 00:12:41,000 --> 00:12:43,129 a courtroom to a journalist or just telling a 282 00:12:43,129 --> 00:12:45,570 story at a dinner party, they are making a profound 283 00:12:45,570 --> 00:12:48,250 double claim. Right. The first part of the claim 284 00:12:48,250 --> 00:12:51,350 is factual and spatial. I was there. The witness 285 00:12:51,350 --> 00:12:53,590 is declaring their physical presence at the event. 286 00:12:53,950 --> 00:12:56,450 They experience the shock of the event, the imprint 287 00:12:56,450 --> 00:12:58,950 in the wax firsthand. And the second part of 288 00:12:58,950 --> 00:13:01,809 the claim is deeply relational. It's a demand 289 00:13:01,809 --> 00:13:04,330 directed straight at the listener. The witness 290 00:13:04,330 --> 00:13:07,470 is saying, believe me. I was there. Believe me. 291 00:13:07,629 --> 00:13:10,490 It is a demand for trust. This operates on a 292 00:13:10,490 --> 00:13:12,850 fiduciary level, a bond of trust between the 293 00:13:12,850 --> 00:13:15,269 speaker and the listener. The witness is essentially 294 00:13:15,269 --> 00:13:17,789 saying, I am offering you my faithful recall, 295 00:13:17,789 --> 00:13:19,549 and if you doubt me, ask someone else who was 296 00:13:19,549 --> 00:13:22,389 there. This is the raw, beating heart of historical 297 00:13:22,389 --> 00:13:25,309 material. But historiography cannot just rely 298 00:13:25,309 --> 00:13:27,629 on oral testimony floating around in the ether. 299 00:13:27,929 --> 00:13:30,809 No, spoken words vanish the second they are uttered. 300 00:13:30,950 --> 00:13:33,669 The testimony must be captured. It must be inscribed. 301 00:13:34,169 --> 00:13:36,649 We have to talk about writing. We are transitioning 302 00:13:36,649 --> 00:13:38,610 from the spoken word to the written archive. 303 00:13:38,879 --> 00:13:41,299 And to illustrate the danger of this transition, 304 00:13:41,720 --> 00:13:43,519 Ricoeur brings up another incredible myth from 305 00:13:43,519 --> 00:13:46,220 Plato, this time from the dialogue Phaedrus. 306 00:13:46,840 --> 00:13:49,899 It's the story of the Egyptian god, Thuth. Yes. 307 00:13:50,519 --> 00:13:52,759 Plato tells a story about Thuth, who invents 308 00:13:52,759 --> 00:13:54,940 writing and presents it to the king, Thamus. 309 00:13:55,659 --> 00:13:58,220 Thuth says, this invention will make the Egyptians 310 00:13:58,220 --> 00:14:01,200 wiser and will improve their memories. But King 311 00:14:01,200 --> 00:14:04,519 Thamus rejects it. He says writing is a pharmacon. 312 00:14:04,600 --> 00:14:08,120 Exactly. Now, in Greek, pharmacon is a fascinating 313 00:14:08,120 --> 00:14:10,919 dual -edged word. It means two contradictory 314 00:14:10,919 --> 00:14:14,000 things simultaneously. It is remedy and it is 315 00:14:14,000 --> 00:14:16,320 a poison. It is the ultimate metaphor for the 316 00:14:16,320 --> 00:14:19,159 archive. Writing is a remedy because it cures 317 00:14:19,159 --> 00:14:22,120 the immediate frailty of human memory. It prevents 318 00:14:22,120 --> 00:14:24,919 the wax from melting entirely. It preserves the 319 00:14:24,919 --> 00:14:27,279 testimony long after the witnesses die. Right. 320 00:14:27,299 --> 00:14:30,100 It is the crutch that allows our fading recollection 321 00:14:30,100 --> 00:14:33,389 to survive across centuries. But Plato warns 322 00:14:33,389 --> 00:14:36,649 that it is also a poison. Why? Because once you 323 00:14:36,649 --> 00:14:38,769 write something down, you begin to rely on the 324 00:14:38,769 --> 00:14:41,009 external mark rather than your internal living 325 00:14:41,009 --> 00:14:43,549 capacity. You weaken your own mind by outsourcing 326 00:14:43,549 --> 00:14:45,850 your memory to a piece of parchment. It's the 327 00:14:45,850 --> 00:14:48,190 smartphone GPS effect. Oh, that's such a good 328 00:14:48,190 --> 00:14:50,169 point. Before we had smartphones, we had to build 329 00:14:50,169 --> 00:14:52,370 internal maps of our cities. We had to remember 330 00:14:52,370 --> 00:14:54,950 landmarks and street names. Our internal memory 331 00:14:54,950 --> 00:14:58,289 was strong. Now, the GPS is a remedy. We never 332 00:14:58,289 --> 00:15:00,789 get lost. But it's also a poison, because if 333 00:15:00,789 --> 00:15:03,250 the battery dies, we have no idea where we are. 334 00:15:03,429 --> 00:15:06,289 We've outsourced our spatial memory to a machine. 335 00:15:06,490 --> 00:15:09,190 That perfectly illustrates the pharmacon. But 336 00:15:09,190 --> 00:15:11,509 Ricoeur highlights an even deeper danger in this 337 00:15:11,509 --> 00:15:14,090 transition, something profoundly important for 338 00:15:14,090 --> 00:15:17,289 the historian. When a spoken testimony is written 339 00:15:17,289 --> 00:15:20,129 down and placed in an archive, it becomes what 340 00:15:20,129 --> 00:15:23,059 he calls an orphan text. I find this analogy 341 00:15:23,059 --> 00:15:25,539 so powerful. Think about a normal conversation. 342 00:15:25,659 --> 00:15:27,679 When someone tells you a story face to face, 343 00:15:27,840 --> 00:15:30,360 you can stop them. You can ask for clarification. 344 00:15:30,879 --> 00:15:32,320 Right. Wait, what do you mean by that tone of 345 00:15:32,320 --> 00:15:34,179 voice? Are you sure it was a Tuesday? Exactly. 346 00:15:34,480 --> 00:15:36,700 The speaker is physically present to defend their 347 00:15:36,700 --> 00:15:40,240 words, to provide context, to correct your misunderstandings. 348 00:15:40,679 --> 00:15:42,840 But once that testimony is written down and the 349 00:15:42,840 --> 00:15:45,860 author is gone, the text is detached from its 350 00:15:45,860 --> 00:15:49,159 parent. It is an orphan. It sits in a cold, silent 351 00:15:49,159 --> 00:15:52,529 room. completely defenseless, waiting for a historian 352 00:15:52,529 --> 00:15:55,309 to adopt it, interrogate it, and try to understand 353 00:15:55,309 --> 00:15:57,429 it. The text can no longer raise its hand and 354 00:15:57,429 --> 00:15:59,830 say, actually, you're misinterpreting me. Which 355 00:15:59,830 --> 00:16:03,789 places a monumental, almost terrifying responsibility 356 00:16:03,789 --> 00:16:07,129 on the historian. The historian enters the archive 357 00:16:07,129 --> 00:16:09,830 not just as a passive reader, but as an active 358 00:16:09,830 --> 00:16:12,480 interrogator. Recour references the great French 359 00:16:12,480 --> 00:16:15,700 historian Marc Bloch here. Bloch famously said 360 00:16:15,700 --> 00:16:17,740 that the good historian is like the giant in 361 00:16:17,740 --> 00:16:21,000 the fairy tale, the ogre. The ogre. Yes. The 362 00:16:21,000 --> 00:16:23,179 historian knows that wherever he catches the 363 00:16:23,179 --> 00:16:25,940 scent of human flesh, there his quarry lies. 364 00:16:26,299 --> 00:16:29,519 It's such a visceral, aggressive image. The historian 365 00:16:29,519 --> 00:16:31,860 isn't just looking for dusty paper or administrative 366 00:16:31,860 --> 00:16:34,460 data. There is sniffing out the human beings 367 00:16:34,460 --> 00:16:37,070 trapped inside the ink. History isn't fundamentally 368 00:16:37,070 --> 00:16:39,769 about dates of battles or shifting weather patterns. 369 00:16:39,870 --> 00:16:42,809 It's about humans acting in time. The document 370 00:16:42,809 --> 00:16:45,330 is just the scent left behind by human activity. 371 00:16:45,450 --> 00:16:47,169 Through there more, we must recognize that the 372 00:16:47,169 --> 00:16:49,049 archive itself, the physical place where these 373 00:16:49,049 --> 00:16:51,710 orphan texts live, is not a neutral space. Not 374 00:16:51,710 --> 00:16:54,350 at all. Lacour leans heavily on the thinker Michel 375 00:16:54,350 --> 00:16:56,590 de Certeau to explain this. Certeau pointed out 376 00:16:56,590 --> 00:16:58,470 that the archive is not just a building with 377 00:16:58,470 --> 00:17:00,309 temperature -controlled rooms and neat folders. 378 00:17:00,509 --> 00:17:03,080 It is a deeply social place. It is an institution 379 00:17:03,080 --> 00:17:05,920 governed by strict rules, power dynamics, funding, 380 00:17:06,099 --> 00:17:09,180 and ideologies. The very act of archiving is 381 00:17:09,180 --> 00:17:12,460 an act of selection. Someone, some institution, 382 00:17:12,819 --> 00:17:14,980 decided this piece of paper was worth preserving 383 00:17:14,980 --> 00:17:18,220 for eternity and that piece of paper was garbage. 384 00:17:18,559 --> 00:17:21,019 Archiving is literally the physical act of setting 385 00:17:21,019 --> 00:17:24,299 things aside in a protected space. It is an organized 386 00:17:24,299 --> 00:17:27,700 inclusion. And by definition, an organized inclusion 387 00:17:27,700 --> 00:17:30,619 is simultaneously an organized exclusion. You 388 00:17:30,619 --> 00:17:33,119 can never archive everything. Every archive is 389 00:17:33,119 --> 00:17:35,380 defined just as much by what was thrown away, 390 00:17:35,480 --> 00:17:37,319 what was deemed unimportant by the ruling class 391 00:17:37,319 --> 00:17:40,140 or the institution, as by what was kept. The 392 00:17:40,140 --> 00:17:42,180 French historian Pierre Nora put it brilliantly, 393 00:17:42,579 --> 00:17:44,799 archive as much as you like, something will always 394 00:17:44,799 --> 00:17:47,359 be left out. This brings us to the critical threshold 395 00:17:47,359 --> 00:17:50,259 of documentary proof. The historian takes these 396 00:17:50,259 --> 00:17:52,480 orphan texts, these highly selected remnants, 397 00:17:53,000 --> 00:17:55,480 and subjects them to rigorous methodical critique. 398 00:17:55,640 --> 00:17:57,460 They don't just accept the bleemee of the testimony. 399 00:17:57,640 --> 00:18:00,240 No, they cross -examine documents against each 400 00:18:00,240 --> 00:18:03,180 other. They check a tax receipt against a diary 401 00:18:03,180 --> 00:18:05,700 entry against a birth record. They strip away 402 00:18:05,700 --> 00:18:07,940 the initial credulity of the witness and replace 403 00:18:07,940 --> 00:18:10,799 it with a critical methodology. This is how a 404 00:18:10,799 --> 00:18:14,359 fragile, subjective memory is verified and stabilized 405 00:18:14,359 --> 00:18:17,369 into an objective historical fact. But Rakir 406 00:18:17,369 --> 00:18:20,250 is incredibly rigorous, and he refuses to let 407 00:18:20,250 --> 00:18:22,910 us neatly tie a bow on this process. He forces 408 00:18:22,910 --> 00:18:26,349 us to confront instances where this entire archival 409 00:18:26,349 --> 00:18:28,589 machinery breaks down. He brings up a heavy, 410 00:18:28,950 --> 00:18:31,710 profound limit case here. The testimonies of 411 00:18:31,710 --> 00:18:34,289 the Holocaust. He looks deeply at writers like 412 00:18:34,289 --> 00:18:36,730 Primo Levi, survivors of the death camps. Yes. 413 00:18:36,869 --> 00:18:39,509 The Shoah presents a profound, almost insurmountable 414 00:18:39,509 --> 00:18:42,029 crisis for the standard historiographical operation. 415 00:18:42,690 --> 00:18:44,950 The traditional archival process relies heavily 416 00:18:44,950 --> 00:18:47,269 on a shared framework of human understanding. 417 00:18:47,549 --> 00:18:49,390 Right. When an ordinary witness says, I was there 418 00:18:49,390 --> 00:18:51,950 regarding a political debate, a riot, or even 419 00:18:51,950 --> 00:18:54,529 a standard military battle, the historian has 420 00:18:54,529 --> 00:18:57,490 a general baseline of human behavior, motivation, 421 00:18:57,650 --> 00:18:59,950 and suffering to contextualize that document. 422 00:19:00,109 --> 00:19:02,470 But the testimonies of the extermination camps 423 00:19:02,470 --> 00:19:05,910 transmit an experience of systematic industrialized 424 00:19:05,910 --> 00:19:08,670 inhumanity that completely shatters the bounds 425 00:19:08,670 --> 00:19:11,470 of ordinary shared understanding. They are true 426 00:19:11,470 --> 00:19:14,410 limit experiences. They resist being neatly folded 427 00:19:14,410 --> 00:19:17,410 into an archival folder and cross -examined like 428 00:19:17,410 --> 00:19:19,930 a standard medieval receipt for grain. The sheer 429 00:19:19,930 --> 00:19:22,569 horror, the degradation, and the unprecedented 430 00:19:22,569 --> 00:19:25,690 nature of the extermination camps define normal 431 00:19:25,690 --> 00:19:28,650 historical explanation. When a survivor says 432 00:19:28,799 --> 00:19:31,460 Believe me, the historian struggles because the 433 00:19:31,460 --> 00:19:34,000 reality being described is almost literally unbelievable 434 00:19:34,000 --> 00:19:36,619 to a mind that hasn't experienced it. It poses 435 00:19:36,619 --> 00:19:40,059 a severe problem of reception. How does a historian 436 00:19:40,059 --> 00:19:42,400 sitting in a comfortable, quiet reading room 437 00:19:42,400 --> 00:19:44,859 truly read a text born from an experience that 438 00:19:44,859 --> 00:19:46,819 fundamentally destroyed the concept of the human? 439 00:19:46,910 --> 00:19:49,670 It forces historiography to realize that while 440 00:19:49,670 --> 00:19:52,309 the archive is powerful, it has absolute limits 441 00:19:52,309 --> 00:19:54,630 when confronted with the extremes of human trauma. 442 00:19:54,930 --> 00:19:57,089 But the testimony of the survivor stands as a 443 00:19:57,089 --> 00:19:59,890 searing, unending challenge to the cold, rational 444 00:19:59,890 --> 00:20:03,009 machinery of documentary proof. The archive cannot 445 00:20:03,009 --> 00:20:05,710 easily digest the Shoah. It remains an open wound 446 00:20:05,710 --> 00:20:08,529 in the historical record. It's a haunting realization. 447 00:20:08,990 --> 00:20:11,410 It reminds us that history isn't just a math 448 00:20:11,410 --> 00:20:14,450 problem to be solved. But the historian, bound 449 00:20:14,450 --> 00:20:17,940 by their duty to the past, must press on. Let's 450 00:20:17,940 --> 00:20:20,359 assume they have gathered the documents, they 451 00:20:20,359 --> 00:20:22,940 have navigated the archives, they have established 452 00:20:22,940 --> 00:20:25,680 the raw facts, they know the what. But you can't 453 00:20:25,680 --> 00:20:28,880 just hand a reader a pile of verified archival 454 00:20:28,880 --> 00:20:31,180 papers and call it history. That's just a database. 455 00:20:31,460 --> 00:20:33,299 Exactly. You have to answer the question, why? 456 00:20:33,680 --> 00:20:36,180 Why did this event happen? And here's where it 457 00:20:36,180 --> 00:20:38,940 gets really interesting. We move to the next 458 00:20:38,940 --> 00:20:42,420 vital phase, explanation and understanding. The 459 00:20:42,420 --> 00:20:44,720 transition from the what to the why. The historian 460 00:20:44,720 --> 00:20:47,299 must forge logical connections between the isolated 461 00:20:47,299 --> 00:20:49,599 facts they found scattered in the archive. They 462 00:20:49,599 --> 00:20:52,200 have to start utilizing the connective word because. 463 00:20:52,400 --> 00:20:55,559 But as Recuer brilliantly dissects, the word 464 00:20:55,559 --> 00:20:58,599 because in history is a chameleon. It means entirely 465 00:20:58,599 --> 00:21:00,720 different things depending on the specific phenomenon 466 00:21:00,720 --> 00:21:02,420 you are analyzing. Let's break that down with 467 00:21:02,420 --> 00:21:04,960 an example. If I say the bridge collapsed because 468 00:21:04,960 --> 00:21:07,299 the steel beams rusted, that's one very specific 469 00:21:07,299 --> 00:21:11,410 type of because. But if I say. The general invaded 470 00:21:11,410 --> 00:21:13,670 the valley because he wanted to secure the lucrative 471 00:21:13,670 --> 00:21:15,970 spice trade route. That's a totally different 472 00:21:15,970 --> 00:21:18,190 type of because. You've just beautifully illustrated 473 00:21:18,190 --> 00:21:21,190 the difference between a causal law and a teleological 474 00:21:21,190 --> 00:21:23,769 reason. A causal law belongs to the realm of 475 00:21:23,769 --> 00:21:27,450 the natural sciences. X caused Y due to a physical 476 00:21:27,450 --> 00:21:30,789 regularity or a structural force like rust weakening 477 00:21:30,789 --> 00:21:33,849 steel. But a teleological reason involves human 478 00:21:33,849 --> 00:21:37,380 intentionality, motivation, and desire. Person 479 00:21:37,380 --> 00:21:40,579 X did Y because they desired a specific future 480 00:21:40,579 --> 00:21:43,880 outcome Z. For a long time, philosophers fiercely 481 00:21:43,880 --> 00:21:45,980 debated whether history should act like a hard 482 00:21:45,980 --> 00:21:48,559 science and only look for massive impersonal 483 00:21:48,559 --> 00:21:51,460 puzzle laws, or if it should act more like psychology 484 00:21:51,460 --> 00:21:54,019 and only look at individual human intentions. 485 00:21:54,480 --> 00:21:56,680 Ricoeur, drawing on philosophers like G .H. von 486 00:21:56,680 --> 00:21:59,440 Wright, argues that historical explanation fundamentally 487 00:21:59,440 --> 00:22:02,430 requires a mixed model. You simply can't separate 488 00:22:02,430 --> 00:22:04,349 them in the real world. Think about the general. 489 00:22:04,809 --> 00:22:06,970 His teleological desire to invade the valley 490 00:22:06,970 --> 00:22:09,190 is entirely constrained by the causal reality 491 00:22:09,190 --> 00:22:11,509 of how fast his horses can physically run, how 492 00:22:11,509 --> 00:22:13,509 much grain his army needs to eat, and whether 493 00:22:13,509 --> 00:22:16,160 a storm wiped out his supply lines. The historian 494 00:22:16,160 --> 00:22:19,440 has to constantly weave the physical, structural 495 00:22:19,440 --> 00:22:22,220 constraints of the world with the psychological, 496 00:22:22,619 --> 00:22:24,880 intentional motivations of the people living 497 00:22:24,880 --> 00:22:27,079 within it. And this intricate weaving is what 498 00:22:27,079 --> 00:22:29,920 Ricoeur calls the intertwining of explanation 499 00:22:29,920 --> 00:22:32,519 and understanding. You explain the structural 500 00:22:32,519 --> 00:22:35,039 causes, the economics, the demographics, the 501 00:22:35,039 --> 00:22:37,880 geography, but you must deeply understand the 502 00:22:37,880 --> 00:22:41,019 human agents who navigated, suffered under, or 503 00:22:41,019 --> 00:22:43,619 exploited those structures. Tracing this leads 504 00:22:43,619 --> 00:22:46,339 Ricoeur to examine a fascinating evolution in 505 00:22:46,339 --> 00:22:49,160 the history of history itself. He looks at how 506 00:22:49,160 --> 00:22:51,859 the French animal school completely revolutionized 507 00:22:51,859 --> 00:22:54,180 the discipline in the 20th century. Right. They 508 00:22:54,180 --> 00:22:56,259 famously moved away from what we call great man 509 00:22:56,259 --> 00:22:59,180 history, the idea that history is just a sequence 510 00:22:59,180 --> 00:23:02,140 of decisions made by kings, popes and generals. 511 00:23:02,299 --> 00:23:04,460 They started looking at the long, slow, deep 512 00:23:04,460 --> 00:23:06,599 forces of history. They introduced the vital 513 00:23:06,599 --> 00:23:09,619 concept of the history of mentalities. They realized 514 00:23:09,619 --> 00:23:12,240 that you couldn't adequately explain the past 515 00:23:12,240 --> 00:23:14,440 through the conscious, rational decisions of 516 00:23:14,440 --> 00:23:16,920 a few leaders. You had to investigate the collective 517 00:23:16,920 --> 00:23:20,259 psychology, the shared beliefs, the fears, and 518 00:23:20,259 --> 00:23:22,700 the unconscious habits of ordinary people over 519 00:23:22,700 --> 00:23:25,680 very long periods of time. But Ricoeur notes 520 00:23:25,680 --> 00:23:27,900 that the term mentalities was eventually seen 521 00:23:27,900 --> 00:23:31,500 as a bit too vague and static. So historiography 522 00:23:31,500 --> 00:23:34,000 evolved again, moving from the study of mentalities 523 00:23:34,000 --> 00:23:36,700 to the study of representations. I want to spend 524 00:23:36,700 --> 00:23:38,660 some real time on this because it's a massive 525 00:23:38,660 --> 00:23:41,380 shift in how we view the past. It's the difference 526 00:23:41,380 --> 00:23:43,960 between stating the hard economic facts of a 527 00:23:43,960 --> 00:23:46,440 16th century village, how many tons of wheat 528 00:23:46,440 --> 00:23:50,099 they grew, what the exact tax rate was, and understanding 529 00:23:50,099 --> 00:23:52,920 how a local miller in that village actually read 530 00:23:52,920 --> 00:23:59,819 and interpreted his world. He acts based on his 531 00:23:59,819 --> 00:24:02,220 mental representation of the world. He acts based 532 00:24:02,220 --> 00:24:04,859 on his religious beliefs, his local superstitions, 533 00:24:05,180 --> 00:24:07,339 his understanding of feudal fairness, his view 534 00:24:07,339 --> 00:24:10,000 of the nobility, and the rumors he hears at the 535 00:24:10,000 --> 00:24:12,279 Tavern. To answer why the Millers suddenly joined 536 00:24:12,279 --> 00:24:14,759 a violent revolt, the historian cannot just point 537 00:24:14,759 --> 00:24:18,019 to a 5 % tax increase on grain. The historian 538 00:24:18,019 --> 00:24:21,319 has to reconstruct the specific lived representations 539 00:24:21,319 --> 00:24:24,180 of past people. Consider the archival work required 540 00:24:24,180 --> 00:24:26,460 for that. To find the tax increase, you look 541 00:24:26,460 --> 00:24:29,380 at a ledger. But to find the Miller's representation, 542 00:24:29,740 --> 00:24:31,799 the historian has to look elsewhere. They have 543 00:24:31,799 --> 00:24:34,240 to dig through local church confessions, records 544 00:24:34,240 --> 00:24:37,180 of witchcraft trials, folk tales, or municipal 545 00:24:37,180 --> 00:24:39,779 court transcripts about a stolen pig. They are 546 00:24:39,779 --> 00:24:42,640 piecing together a worldview. People act based 547 00:24:42,640 --> 00:24:44,799 on how they represent the world to themselves, 548 00:24:45,140 --> 00:24:47,819 and the historian must represent those representations. 549 00:24:48,400 --> 00:24:51,400 To capture this staggering complexity, the historian 550 00:24:51,400 --> 00:24:54,859 has to employ what Ricker calls the play of scales. 551 00:24:55,759 --> 00:24:58,319 You cannot understand the individual miller by 552 00:24:58,319 --> 00:25:00,920 only looking at the macro level of global trade 553 00:25:00,920 --> 00:25:03,799 routes over three centuries. You have to actively 554 00:25:03,799 --> 00:25:06,099 adjust your lens. It's exactly like changing 555 00:25:06,099 --> 00:25:08,180 the focal length on a camera depending on what 556 00:25:08,180 --> 00:25:10,960 truth you are trying to capture. Historians constantly 557 00:25:10,960 --> 00:25:13,220 shift these focal lengths. Sometimes they use 558 00:25:13,220 --> 00:25:15,740 a macro lens. They look at the slow creep of 559 00:25:15,740 --> 00:25:19,039 inflation across Europe over 300 years due to 560 00:25:19,039 --> 00:25:21,579 silver arriving from the New World. This massive 561 00:25:21,579 --> 00:25:25,180 scale reveals undeniable structural truths, but 562 00:25:25,180 --> 00:25:27,839 it completely obscures individual human faces. 563 00:25:28,339 --> 00:25:31,579 Then they switch to a microlens, a practice known 564 00:25:31,579 --> 00:25:34,460 as microhistory. They zoom in on the specific 565 00:25:34,460 --> 00:25:37,480 daily choices, the local court records, the petty 566 00:25:37,480 --> 00:25:40,819 grievances of a single individual like your 16th 567 00:25:40,819 --> 00:25:43,779 century miller. This scale reveals the intense, 568 00:25:44,160 --> 00:25:47,200 messy, unpredictable reality of human agency 569 00:25:47,200 --> 00:25:50,579 and negotiation. Each scale reveals different 570 00:25:50,579 --> 00:25:52,799 truths and each requires a different blending 571 00:25:52,799 --> 00:25:55,339 of the because, the causes, and the reasons. 572 00:25:55,460 --> 00:25:58,019 So let's take stock. The historian has survived 573 00:25:58,019 --> 00:26:00,299 the archives, they've gathered their orphan texts, 574 00:26:00,440 --> 00:26:02,220 they've zoomed in and out with their macro and 575 00:26:02,220 --> 00:26:04,900 micro lenses, blending structural causes and 576 00:26:04,900 --> 00:26:06,720 human reasons to explain why it all happened. 577 00:26:06,960 --> 00:26:09,119 The blueprint of the past is complete. But the 578 00:26:09,119 --> 00:26:11,500 building isn't built yet. The history still doesn't 579 00:26:11,500 --> 00:26:13,279 exist for you, the reader, sitting in your armchair 580 00:26:13,279 --> 00:26:15,660 at home. It doesn't exist until it is written 581 00:26:15,660 --> 00:26:18,440 down into a book. And this brings us to the scriptural 582 00:26:18,440 --> 00:26:21,289 or literary phase. the historian's representation. 583 00:26:21,609 --> 00:26:23,670 This is the moment the historian actually sits 584 00:26:23,670 --> 00:26:26,690 down at the keyboard to write the text. And immediately, 585 00:26:27,250 --> 00:26:30,369 a massive philosophical suspicion arises. What's 586 00:26:30,369 --> 00:26:32,349 the suspicion? Once the historian begins to write, 587 00:26:32,470 --> 00:26:35,410 they are forced to employ narrativity. They must 588 00:26:35,410 --> 00:26:38,269 use emplotment. They have to take the messy, 589 00:26:38,509 --> 00:26:41,069 chaotic, overlapping reality of the past and 590 00:26:41,069 --> 00:26:43,369 give it a clean beginning, a structured middle, 591 00:26:43,710 --> 00:26:45,950 and a definitive end. They have to use rhetoric. 592 00:26:46,160 --> 00:26:49,079 metaphors, and stylistic flair to make the text 593 00:26:49,079 --> 00:26:52,180 engaging and readable. But wait, if the historian 594 00:26:52,180 --> 00:26:54,660 has to write a narrative with a carefully structured 595 00:26:54,660 --> 00:26:57,259 plot and literary tropes, aren't they just writing 596 00:26:57,259 --> 00:27:00,299 a novel? Doesn't emplotment inherently turn reality 597 00:27:00,299 --> 00:27:02,519 into fiction? Life doesn't actually happen with 598 00:27:02,519 --> 00:27:05,519 a neat narrative arc. There is no background 599 00:27:05,519 --> 00:27:07,640 music. There are no tidy conclusions in real 600 00:27:07,640 --> 00:27:10,359 life. It's just one thing after another. So if 601 00:27:10,359 --> 00:27:13,039 a historian forces the messy past into a structured 602 00:27:13,039 --> 00:27:16,200 story, Aren't they fundamentally falsifying it? 603 00:27:16,500 --> 00:27:18,859 You are echoing the exact challenge raised by 604 00:27:18,859 --> 00:27:20,680 the narrativeist school of philosophy in the 605 00:27:20,680 --> 00:27:23,420 late 20th century, championed by thinkers like 606 00:27:23,420 --> 00:27:26,420 Hayden White. White famously argued that historical 607 00:27:26,420 --> 00:27:28,880 writing is essentially a form of verbal fiction, 608 00:27:29,339 --> 00:27:31,980 determined more by literary tropes like tragedy, 609 00:27:32,240 --> 00:27:35,420 comedy, or satire than by objective reality. 610 00:27:36,140 --> 00:27:38,880 Ricoeur takes this critique incredibly seriously, 611 00:27:39,019 --> 00:27:41,460 doesn't he? He does. He readily admits that history 612 00:27:41,460 --> 00:27:44,470 is utterly dependent on narrative forms. It uses 613 00:27:44,470 --> 00:27:47,690 the exact same literary toolbox as fiction, but 614 00:27:47,690 --> 00:27:50,630 Ricoeur rigorously defends the discipline against 615 00:27:50,630 --> 00:27:53,089 the charge that it is merely fiction. He argues 616 00:27:53,089 --> 00:27:55,349 that history uses narrative and rhetoric not 617 00:27:55,349 --> 00:27:58,450 to invent a fake escapist world, but as necessary 618 00:27:58,450 --> 00:28:00,750 cognitive instruments to make the actual past 619 00:28:00,750 --> 00:28:03,960 readable. The plot is not a falsification. It 620 00:28:03,960 --> 00:28:06,700 is a tool used to synthesize the complex web 621 00:28:06,700 --> 00:28:09,500 of because we just discussed into a comprehensible 622 00:28:09,500 --> 00:28:11,460 structure for the human mind. So the difference 623 00:28:11,460 --> 00:28:13,799 isn't in the literary tools used, but in the 624 00:28:13,799 --> 00:28:15,839 intent and the claim of the writing. This is 625 00:28:15,839 --> 00:28:17,759 where Ricoeur introduces what I think is one 626 00:28:17,759 --> 00:28:21,019 of his most vital, beautiful concepts, standing 627 00:28:21,019 --> 00:28:23,660 for, or in the original French, representance. 628 00:28:24,279 --> 00:28:27,240 Representance. It serves as the ultimate philosophical 629 00:28:27,240 --> 00:28:30,500 defense of historical truth. Ricoeur explains 630 00:28:30,500 --> 00:28:32,480 that when you walk into a bookstore and pick 631 00:28:32,480 --> 00:28:36,099 up a history book, there is a tacit, deeply ingrained 632 00:28:36,099 --> 00:28:39,319 contract between you, the reader, and the historian 633 00:28:39,319 --> 00:28:41,559 who wrote it. This contract is fundamentally 634 00:28:41,559 --> 00:28:43,539 different from the one you make with a novelist. 635 00:28:43,859 --> 00:28:46,740 When I open a fantasy novel, I willingly suspend 636 00:28:46,740 --> 00:28:50,299 my disbelief. I agree to enter a fake world with 637 00:28:50,299 --> 00:28:53,319 dragons and wizards solely for the sake of entertainment 638 00:28:53,319 --> 00:28:56,299 or thematic exploration. The author isn't claiming 639 00:28:56,299 --> 00:28:58,880 the dragons exist. But history demands a specific 640 00:28:58,880 --> 00:29:01,720 referent. The historian is making a solemn promise 641 00:29:01,720 --> 00:29:03,779 to the reader. They are saying, I have been to 642 00:29:03,779 --> 00:29:05,960 the archives. I have gathered the testimonies. 643 00:29:05,980 --> 00:29:08,539 I have constructed my explanations using causes 644 00:29:08,539 --> 00:29:11,759 and reasons. And now the literary construction 645 00:29:11,759 --> 00:29:15,099 I am offering you is an honest, rigorous reconstruction 646 00:29:15,099 --> 00:29:17,259 of what actually occurred. The text is intended 647 00:29:17,259 --> 00:29:19,500 to stand for the past. It takes the place of 648 00:29:19,500 --> 00:29:21,599 the absent past for the reader. This takes the 649 00:29:21,599 --> 00:29:24,279 place of the actual past for you. That is a massive, 650 00:29:24,539 --> 00:29:27,960 heavy promise to make. But how does recur philosophically 651 00:29:27,960 --> 00:29:31,539 justify? that ink on a page can truly stand for 652 00:29:31,539 --> 00:29:34,599 something that is entirely gone. He does it by 653 00:29:34,599 --> 00:29:37,119 exploring the complex dual nature of the past 654 00:29:37,119 --> 00:29:40,720 itself. The past has two faces. On the one hand, 655 00:29:40,859 --> 00:29:43,880 it is no longer. It is abolished, elapsed, gone 656 00:29:43,880 --> 00:29:47,049 forever. You cannot physically visit the 16th 657 00:29:47,049 --> 00:29:49,529 century to verify the Miller's motives. The people 658 00:29:49,529 --> 00:29:52,109 are dead. The buildings are crumbled. It is negatively 659 00:29:52,109 --> 00:29:53,990 gone. But on the other hand, the past is having 660 00:29:53,990 --> 00:29:56,809 been. It actually happened. And no one, no matter 661 00:29:56,809 --> 00:29:59,069 how powerful, can make it so that it didn't happen. 662 00:29:59,450 --> 00:30:01,750 The having been is a positive, indestructible, 663 00:30:01,990 --> 00:30:04,650 permanent reality. The historian's representation, 664 00:30:04,910 --> 00:30:07,009 their written narrative, reaches into the archive, 665 00:30:07,190 --> 00:30:09,970 grabs onto the positive, indestructible reality 666 00:30:09,970 --> 00:30:12,250 of the having been, and pulls it through the 667 00:30:12,250 --> 00:30:14,400 negativity of the no longer. The text stands 668 00:30:14,400 --> 00:30:17,079 as an icon, a faithful representative of that 669 00:30:17,079 --> 00:30:19,279 indestructible reality. So we've walked through 670 00:30:19,279 --> 00:30:22,359 the entire factory floor of history. We've seen 671 00:30:22,359 --> 00:30:25,319 the raw shaggy wax of memory turn into testimony 672 00:30:25,319 --> 00:30:28,200 demanding to be believed. We watched it get locked 673 00:30:28,200 --> 00:30:30,220 away in the physical and social space of the 674 00:30:30,220 --> 00:30:32,980 archives, becoming an orphan text waiting to 675 00:30:32,980 --> 00:30:35,650 be interrogated by the ogre. We explored how 676 00:30:35,650 --> 00:30:38,470 historians zoom in and out with macro and micro 677 00:30:38,470 --> 00:30:41,269 lenses, weaving structural causes and human reasons 678 00:30:41,269 --> 00:30:43,950 to find the because. And we saw how they used 679 00:30:43,950 --> 00:30:46,470 narrative and plot men to create a text that 680 00:30:46,470 --> 00:30:48,890 solemnly contracts to stand for the indestructible 681 00:30:48,890 --> 00:30:51,730 reality of what has been. It's an incredible 682 00:30:51,730 --> 00:30:54,450 intellectual achievement, but now recur to something 683 00:30:54,450 --> 00:30:57,079 shocking. Having built this massive, impressive 684 00:30:57,079 --> 00:30:59,519 edifice, he forces us to step outside of it, 685 00:30:59,799 --> 00:31:02,039 look at it from a distance, and ask, what are 686 00:31:02,039 --> 00:31:04,700 its flaws? What are the limits of this entire 687 00:31:04,700 --> 00:31:06,920 enterprise? So what does this all mean in the 688 00:31:06,920 --> 00:31:09,420 grand scheme of things? This brings us to the 689 00:31:09,420 --> 00:31:11,819 critical philosophy of history. Ricker transitions 690 00:31:11,819 --> 00:31:14,579 from epistemology, the mechanics of how we know, 691 00:31:14,900 --> 00:31:17,359 to a critical hermeneutics, interpreting the 692 00:31:17,359 --> 00:31:19,660 limits and boundaries of our knowledge. He sets 693 00:31:19,660 --> 00:31:22,000 his sights on a particular philosophical danger. 694 00:31:22,190 --> 00:31:25,230 the arrogance of modernity. He specifically critiques 695 00:31:25,230 --> 00:31:28,210 a concept that arose in German philosophy, particularly 696 00:31:28,210 --> 00:31:30,769 around the time of Hegel, called Die Geschichte 697 00:31:30,769 --> 00:31:33,490 des Selber, which translates to history itself. 698 00:31:33,769 --> 00:31:36,250 History itself capitalized like a living entity. 699 00:31:36,430 --> 00:31:38,930 Yes. It's the idea that history is no longer 700 00:31:38,930 --> 00:31:41,349 just a plural collection of localized stories 701 00:31:41,349 --> 00:31:44,369 about the past. It becomes a collective singular. 702 00:31:44,890 --> 00:31:47,589 It becomes an overarching, unified, rational 703 00:31:47,589 --> 00:31:51,769 process moving relentlessly toward a grand destination. 704 00:31:51,900 --> 00:31:54,380 and modernity declared itself to be the pinnacle 705 00:31:54,380 --> 00:31:57,099 of this process. Modernity claimed to possess 706 00:31:57,099 --> 00:31:59,880 total self -reflection to understand the whole 707 00:31:59,880 --> 00:32:02,420 of the past from the ultimate superior vantage 708 00:32:02,420 --> 00:32:05,400 point of the present. Rekura calls this a dangerous, 709 00:32:05,720 --> 00:32:09,019 overreaching hubris. It is the arrogance of thinking 710 00:32:09,019 --> 00:32:11,839 humanity has become the total object and the 711 00:32:11,839 --> 00:32:14,539 total subject of a perfectly understandable historical 712 00:32:14,539 --> 00:32:16,759 march. It's the arrogance of thinking we have 713 00:32:16,759 --> 00:32:18,759 the final word that we've figured it all out. 714 00:32:18,900 --> 00:32:21,680 But Ricoeur brings us back down to earth by examining 715 00:32:21,680 --> 00:32:24,200 the practical, everyday limits of historical 716 00:32:24,200 --> 00:32:26,720 judgment. And to clarify what a historian actually 717 00:32:26,720 --> 00:32:29,960 does, he asks us to compare them to another vital 718 00:32:29,960 --> 00:32:34,220 societal role. Let me pose this to you. If I'm 719 00:32:34,220 --> 00:32:37,220 a historian and my job is to cross -examine witness 720 00:32:37,220 --> 00:32:40,259 testimonies, evaluate conflicting evidence, weigh 721 00:32:40,259 --> 00:32:42,779 human motivations, and make a definitive judgment 722 00:32:42,779 --> 00:32:45,339 about who started a war or who caused a famine, 723 00:32:46,019 --> 00:32:48,519 how am I not just a judge wearing a tweed jacket? 724 00:32:48,740 --> 00:32:51,240 What is the actual difference between a historical 725 00:32:51,240 --> 00:32:54,099 verdict in a book and a legal verdict in a courtroom? 726 00:32:54,480 --> 00:32:57,640 It is a brilliantly provocative comparison because 727 00:32:57,640 --> 00:33:00,039 the surface similarities are undeniably strong. 728 00:33:00,720 --> 00:33:02,839 Both the judge and the historian rely on the 729 00:33:02,839 --> 00:33:05,660 exact same raw materials. Testimony, documentary 730 00:33:05,660 --> 00:33:08,099 proof and cross -examination. Both deal with 731 00:33:08,099 --> 00:33:11,200 competing, often contradictory narratives. Both 732 00:33:11,200 --> 00:33:13,660 have the heavy responsibility of separating truth 733 00:33:13,660 --> 00:33:16,440 from lies. But Record dismantles this comparison 734 00:33:16,440 --> 00:33:18,960 by meticulously examining their fundamental goals, 735 00:33:19,299 --> 00:33:21,099 their constraints, and their relationship to 736 00:33:21,099 --> 00:33:23,559 time. Let's analyze the judge first. A judge 737 00:33:23,559 --> 00:33:26,359 operates under an imperative, inescapable deadline. 738 00:33:26,700 --> 00:33:29,799 The trial must end. A decision must be made, 739 00:33:29,960 --> 00:33:32,880 even if the evidence is slightly ambiguous. The 740 00:33:32,880 --> 00:33:35,359 judge or jury must reach a definitive binary 741 00:33:35,359 --> 00:33:38,779 verdict. Guilty or not guilty. And the ultimate 742 00:33:38,779 --> 00:33:42,480 goal of the judicial process is to assign individual 743 00:33:42,480 --> 00:33:45,779 localized responsibility in order to administer 744 00:33:45,779 --> 00:33:48,680 punishment or restitution. The scope is narrow, 745 00:33:49,000 --> 00:33:51,400 the deadline is fixed, and the outcome is penal. 746 00:33:51,900 --> 00:33:54,180 Now contrast that entirely with the historian. 747 00:33:54,319 --> 00:33:56,279 The historian operates in a completely different 748 00:33:56,279 --> 00:33:58,619 temporal reality. They have the ultimate luxury, 749 00:33:59,019 --> 00:34:02,140 the luxury of time. There is no imperative deadline 750 00:34:02,140 --> 00:34:04,140 to solve the puzzle of the French Revolution. 751 00:34:04,700 --> 00:34:07,140 If the evidence is ambiguous, the historian can 752 00:34:07,140 --> 00:34:09,579 simply state that it is ambiguous. Furthermore, 753 00:34:09,760 --> 00:34:12,039 the historian's verdict is never, ever final. 754 00:34:12,340 --> 00:34:15,260 It is inherently provisional. It is always open 755 00:34:15,260 --> 00:34:17,480 to revision by future historians who might find 756 00:34:17,480 --> 00:34:20,019 a new cache of letters in an archive or apply 757 00:34:20,019 --> 00:34:22,420 a new microlens to the data. And most importantly, 758 00:34:22,579 --> 00:34:24,920 the historian's goal is not to punish. You don't 759 00:34:24,920 --> 00:34:27,139 write a history book to put a dead 16th century 760 00:34:27,139 --> 00:34:29,820 king in jail. You write it to understand. The 761 00:34:29,820 --> 00:34:33,250 goal is to provide an impartial, broader. deeply 762 00:34:33,250 --> 00:34:36,489 contextualized understanding. Rekoo calls this 763 00:34:36,489 --> 00:34:39,449 liberal memory. The historian seeks to untangle 764 00:34:39,449 --> 00:34:41,909 the vast complexities of human action that the 765 00:34:41,909 --> 00:34:43,929 courtroom is forced to aggressively simplify. 766 00:34:44,550 --> 00:34:47,489 The judge, pressed by the needs of society, must 767 00:34:47,489 --> 00:34:50,530 cut the knot. The historian, granted the luxury 768 00:34:50,530 --> 00:34:53,829 of time, wants to slowly untie the knot, examine 769 00:34:53,829 --> 00:34:56,269 every thread, and see exactly how it was woven. 770 00:34:56,489 --> 00:34:59,170 That distinction is incredibly clarifying. It 771 00:34:59,170 --> 00:35:01,769 removes the burden of ultimate moral arbitration 772 00:35:01,769 --> 00:35:04,230 from the historian, allowing them to focus on 773 00:35:04,230 --> 00:35:07,110 comprehension. But if history isn't just a slower, 774 00:35:07,150 --> 00:35:09,530 more thorough courtroom, what is its deepest 775 00:35:09,530 --> 00:35:12,769 existential purpose? Why do we feel this profound, 776 00:35:13,010 --> 00:35:15,170 relentless compulsion to write down the past? 777 00:35:15,510 --> 00:35:18,090 This brings us to the final, most profound sections 778 00:35:18,090 --> 00:35:20,690 of Ricoeur's thought, the ontology of history. 779 00:35:21,449 --> 00:35:23,110 What does it actually mean to be a historical 780 00:35:23,110 --> 00:35:25,789 being, to exist within time? To answer this, 781 00:35:26,030 --> 00:35:28,570 Ricoeur engages in a deep, rigorous, and challenging 782 00:35:28,570 --> 00:35:30,750 debate with the philosopher Martin Heidegger, 783 00:35:31,010 --> 00:35:33,110 specifically focusing on Heidegger's masterpiece, 784 00:35:33,670 --> 00:35:36,389 Being and Time. Heidegger asked a fundamental 785 00:35:36,389 --> 00:35:38,849 ontological question. What is the nature of human 786 00:35:38,849 --> 00:35:41,789 existence? He argued that our most authentic 787 00:35:41,789 --> 00:35:44,230 orientation toward time is not looking backward 788 00:35:44,230 --> 00:35:46,550 at the past, but looking forward to the future. 789 00:35:47,210 --> 00:35:50,130 Specifically, looking forward to our own inevitable, 790 00:35:50,409 --> 00:35:53,000 inescapable death. Heidegger famously called 791 00:35:53,000 --> 00:35:55,559 this being toward death. Hold on. If you're listening 792 00:35:55,559 --> 00:35:58,099 to this on your commute to work, why does this 793 00:35:58,099 --> 00:36:00,920 Heideggerian concept matter to how you read a 794 00:36:00,920 --> 00:36:03,079 biography of Abraham Lincoln? What does your 795 00:36:03,079 --> 00:36:04,760 own death have to do with studying the past? 796 00:36:05,239 --> 00:36:08,119 Heidegger argues that the only way to live authentically 797 00:36:08,119 --> 00:36:11,000 is to fully consciously confront the fact that 798 00:36:11,000 --> 00:36:14,059 your time is finite. Your existence is bounded 799 00:36:14,059 --> 00:36:16,199 by death. Because of this focus on the future 800 00:36:16,199 --> 00:36:19,030 limit, Heidegger views history which is inherently 801 00:36:19,030 --> 00:36:21,309 retrospective, constantly looking backward over 802 00:36:21,309 --> 00:36:24,389 your shoulder as a secondary, derivative, or 803 00:36:24,389 --> 00:36:26,989 even inauthentic way of dealing with time. For 804 00:36:26,989 --> 00:36:29,090 Heidegger, authentic time is the anticipation 805 00:36:29,090 --> 00:36:31,130 of your own death. Spending your time looking 806 00:36:31,130 --> 00:36:33,250 backward at dead people is a distraction from 807 00:36:33,250 --> 00:36:35,730 your own existence. But wait, I have to push 808 00:36:35,730 --> 00:36:38,710 back on Heidegger here, on recur's behalf. Doesn't 809 00:36:38,710 --> 00:36:40,769 the historian deal with death all the time? They 810 00:36:40,769 --> 00:36:43,030 aren't avoiding it. They literally spend their 811 00:36:43,030 --> 00:36:45,869 entire professional lives studying dead people. 812 00:36:45,940 --> 00:36:50,039 dead empires, dead ideas. How is that a distraction 813 00:36:50,039 --> 00:36:52,880 from death? And that is exactly Ricoeur's beautiful, 814 00:36:53,239 --> 00:36:56,639 powerful counter -argument. He absolutely refuses 815 00:36:56,639 --> 00:36:59,380 to let Heidegger dismiss history as an inauthentic 816 00:36:59,380 --> 00:37:02,880 distraction. Ricoeur counters by saying, yes, history 817 00:37:02,880 --> 00:37:05,519 deals intimately with death, but not just as 818 00:37:05,519 --> 00:37:08,300 a future inevitability for the self. History 819 00:37:08,300 --> 00:37:10,820 provides what Ricoeur calls a scriptural tomb for 820 00:37:10,820 --> 00:37:13,900 the dead. A scriptural tomb. A tomb constructed 821 00:37:13,900 --> 00:37:16,289 out of writing. Think about what a physical tomb 822 00:37:16,289 --> 00:37:19,110 or a grave does in human society. It honors the 823 00:37:19,110 --> 00:37:21,849 dead, yes, but it also separates them from the 824 00:37:21,849 --> 00:37:23,630 living. It gives them a designated place. It 825 00:37:23,630 --> 00:37:26,250 says, you are gone, but you are not erased from 826 00:37:26,250 --> 00:37:28,530 the earth. By writing history, the historian 827 00:37:28,530 --> 00:37:31,210 performs an act of sepulcher. They give the dead 828 00:37:31,210 --> 00:37:34,090 a specific place in the text. And by giving the 829 00:37:34,090 --> 00:37:36,610 dead a designated place in the past, the historian 830 00:37:36,610 --> 00:37:39,030 simultaneously creates and clarifies a space 831 00:37:39,030 --> 00:37:41,389 for the living in the present. History is the 832 00:37:41,389 --> 00:37:44,329 ultimate, continuous act of mourning and honoring 833 00:37:44,329 --> 00:37:46,630 those who came before us. It's an act of paying 834 00:37:46,630 --> 00:37:50,309 a debt. We owe them that tomb. Ricoeur elaborates 835 00:37:50,309 --> 00:37:52,769 deeply on this concept of our debt to the past. 836 00:37:53,369 --> 00:37:55,690 We are not self -created entities floating in 837 00:37:55,690 --> 00:37:58,429 a vacuum. We are instituted by the generations 838 00:37:58,429 --> 00:38:01,389 that preceded us. We inherit their language, 839 00:38:01,530 --> 00:38:03,969 their political institutions, their unresolved 840 00:38:03,969 --> 00:38:07,090 conflicts, their art, their triumphs. Acknowledging 841 00:38:07,090 --> 00:38:09,730 this mass of debt is what truly makes us historical 842 00:38:09,730 --> 00:38:12,750 beings. And fulfilling this debt leads to a concept 843 00:38:12,750 --> 00:38:16,110 Rukua borrows from Surin Kierkegaard, repetition. 844 00:38:16,530 --> 00:38:18,769 Now when we say repetition, we don't mean doing 845 00:38:18,769 --> 00:38:20,849 the exact same thing over again like a broken 846 00:38:20,849 --> 00:38:23,070 record or being doomed to repeat the past, right? 847 00:38:23,110 --> 00:38:25,849 No, it is a much deeper, more dynamic philosophical 848 00:38:25,849 --> 00:38:28,449 concept. Think back to our 16th century Miller. 849 00:38:29,030 --> 00:38:30,989 For the people who lived in the past, their future 850 00:38:30,989 --> 00:38:33,789 was not predetermined. When the Miller woke up 851 00:38:33,789 --> 00:38:35,690 in the morning of the revolt, he didn't know 852 00:38:35,690 --> 00:38:39,099 how it would end. His life was full of open possibilities, 853 00:38:39,519 --> 00:38:42,519 anxieties, terrible risks, and uncertainties. 854 00:38:42,880 --> 00:38:45,000 Repetition in history means that the historian 855 00:38:45,000 --> 00:38:48,360 attempts to reawaken that contingency, to realize 856 00:38:48,360 --> 00:38:50,519 anew the possibilities that were open to the 857 00:38:50,519 --> 00:38:53,019 people of the past. To understand them not as 858 00:38:53,019 --> 00:38:55,139 inevitable stepping stones leading to our present, 859 00:38:55,619 --> 00:38:59,260 but as living, breathing agents who faced a completely 860 00:38:59,260 --> 00:39:02,630 unknown future. We repeat their potential. We 861 00:39:02,630 --> 00:39:05,230 bring them back to life in the text, not as static, 862 00:39:05,230 --> 00:39:08,130 inevitable facts, but as subjects capable of 863 00:39:08,130 --> 00:39:10,730 action and choice. But as we reach the pinnacle 864 00:39:10,730 --> 00:39:13,250 of this philosophical mountain with recur, we 865 00:39:13,250 --> 00:39:15,489 have to look back at the two massive forces we've 866 00:39:15,489 --> 00:39:18,510 been tracking this entire time. Memory and history. 867 00:39:18,690 --> 00:39:21,829 We have lived subjective, fragile, passionate 868 00:39:21,829 --> 00:39:25,309 memory. And we have objective, analytical, verifiable 869 00:39:25,309 --> 00:39:28,030 written history. After all this, is there a winner? 870 00:39:28,309 --> 00:39:31,230 Do they ultimately merge into one perfect understanding? 871 00:39:31,409 --> 00:39:33,869 Recour concludes that this is an undecidable 872 00:39:33,869 --> 00:39:36,670 rivalry. It is a permanent, irresolvable tension. 873 00:39:37,170 --> 00:39:38,789 History must constantly try to correct memory 874 00:39:38,789 --> 00:39:41,670 to cure its illusions, to verify its passionate 875 00:39:41,670 --> 00:39:44,010 claims against the cold, hard documents of the 876 00:39:44,010 --> 00:39:46,389 archives. History stands there and tells memory, 877 00:39:47,090 --> 00:39:49,690 you are flawed, your wax is melting, you are 878 00:39:49,690 --> 00:39:52,849 biased, let me show you the receipts. But memory 879 00:39:52,849 --> 00:39:55,889 constantly protests history's cold clinical analysis. 880 00:39:56,170 --> 00:39:59,250 Memory shouts back, you have the documents, but 881 00:39:59,250 --> 00:40:01,829 I had the experience. You are leaving out the 882 00:40:01,829 --> 00:40:04,369 blood, the tears, the sheer terror of what it 883 00:40:04,369 --> 00:40:06,510 actually felt like to be there. They are locked 884 00:40:06,510 --> 00:40:09,650 in a necessary embrace. History desperately needs 885 00:40:09,650 --> 00:40:12,309 memory because memory provides the raw material 886 00:40:12,309 --> 00:40:14,789 and the fundamental bodily conviction that the 887 00:40:14,789 --> 00:40:17,489 past actually happened. Without memory, history 888 00:40:17,489 --> 00:40:20,409 is just an empty abstract exercise. But memory 889 00:40:20,409 --> 00:40:22,710 desperately needs history because without the 890 00:40:22,710 --> 00:40:24,929 critical archive, without the cross -examination, 891 00:40:25,210 --> 00:40:28,010 memory devolves into myth, manipulation, and 892 00:40:28,010 --> 00:40:30,530 dangerous error. They complete each other through 893 00:40:30,530 --> 00:40:33,130 their conflict. It has been an absolutely massive 894 00:40:33,130 --> 00:40:35,429 journey today. We started with Plato's vulnerable 895 00:40:35,429 --> 00:40:38,070 block of wax, examining the sheer fragility of 896 00:40:38,070 --> 00:40:39,750 holding an image of the past in our minds while 897 00:40:39,750 --> 00:40:41,690 trying to catch the right bird in the aviary. 898 00:40:42,070 --> 00:40:44,210 We followed that fragile memory as it crossed 899 00:40:44,210 --> 00:40:46,750 the bridge into testimony, demanding to be believed. 900 00:40:46,900 --> 00:40:49,019 We watched it get locked away in the physical 901 00:40:49,019 --> 00:40:51,579 and social space of the archives, becoming an 902 00:40:51,579 --> 00:40:54,320 orphan text waiting to be interrogated by the 903 00:40:54,320 --> 00:40:56,960 historian. We explored how those historians zoom 904 00:40:56,960 --> 00:41:00,559 in and out, using macro and micro lenses, blending 905 00:41:00,559 --> 00:41:03,519 structural causes and human reasons to find the 906 00:41:03,519 --> 00:41:06,119 because. We saw how they weave those becauses 907 00:41:06,119 --> 00:41:09,079 into a narrative that solemnly contracts to stand 908 00:41:09,079 --> 00:41:11,199 for the indestructible reality of what has been. 909 00:41:11,460 --> 00:41:14,139 And finally, we saw how this entire enterprise 910 00:41:14,139 --> 00:41:16,460 isn't just an academic exercise for scholars, 911 00:41:16,860 --> 00:41:19,500 but an existential duty for all of us. A way 912 00:41:19,500 --> 00:41:21,659 of paying our debt to the dead by building them 913 00:41:21,659 --> 00:41:24,760 a scriptural tomb. It is a profound, towering 914 00:41:24,760 --> 00:41:27,079 architecture of human thought. Ricoeur shows us 915 00:41:27,079 --> 00:41:29,500 that history is not just a dusty record of what 916 00:41:29,500 --> 00:41:32,780 happened. It is a vital ongoing moral and philosophical 917 00:41:32,780 --> 00:41:35,690 operation that defines who we are. But I want 918 00:41:35,690 --> 00:41:37,909 to leave you with one final provocative thought 919 00:41:37,909 --> 00:41:40,730 to mull over, drawing on the very end of Ricoeur's 920 00:41:40,730 --> 00:41:43,869 text. We have spent an hour talking deeply, rigorously 921 00:41:43,869 --> 00:41:46,190 about memory and history. But what about forgetting? 922 00:41:46,630 --> 00:41:49,010 We almost always think of forgetting as the enemy. 923 00:41:49,610 --> 00:41:51,690 We view it as Kronos tearing the page out of 924 00:41:51,690 --> 00:41:53,969 the book. We see it as a failure of the brain, 925 00:41:54,190 --> 00:41:57,110 a loss, the destruction of the trace. But Ricoeur 926 00:41:57,110 --> 00:42:00,269 suggests an incredible, almost beautiful paradox 927 00:42:00,269 --> 00:42:02,920 at the end of his work. He suggests that forgetting 928 00:42:02,920 --> 00:42:06,139 is not just a void. It is also a massive hidden 929 00:42:06,139 --> 00:42:10,179 reserve. It is the deep, unfathomable ocean that 930 00:42:10,179 --> 00:42:12,880 actually makes memory and even the possibility 931 00:42:12,880 --> 00:42:14,880 of forgiveness possible. Think about it. You 932 00:42:14,880 --> 00:42:17,320 cannot possibly remember everything. If your 933 00:42:17,320 --> 00:42:19,820 wax retained every single imprint with equal 934 00:42:19,820 --> 00:42:22,280 clarity, your mind would be paralyzed. You would 935 00:42:22,280 --> 00:42:24,260 have a map as large as the territory it covers, 936 00:42:24,260 --> 00:42:26,059 and you wouldn't be able to navigate your life. 937 00:42:26,539 --> 00:42:29,099 Forgetting clears the space for us to live, to 938 00:42:29,099 --> 00:42:32,059 act, to recall what truly matters. So I challenge 939 00:42:32,059 --> 00:42:34,380 you, next time you forget a detail of your own 940 00:42:34,380 --> 00:42:37,420 past, a conversation or a childhood event, ask 941 00:42:37,420 --> 00:42:40,260 yourself, is it truly erased by the old God of 942 00:42:40,260 --> 00:42:43,099 time or has it just returned to the deep silent 943 00:42:43,099 --> 00:42:45,739 reserve that makes you who you are? It's a powerful 944 00:42:45,739 --> 00:42:48,500 question to carry with you. It really is. Thank 945 00:42:48,500 --> 00:42:50,739 you for taking this deep dive with us. We respect 946 00:42:50,739 --> 00:42:53,579 your time. We admire your curiosity and we hope 947 00:42:53,579 --> 00:42:55,280 to keep the spirit of exploration alive.