THE ETHICS OF MEMORY AND THE AESTHETICS OF FORGETTING IN CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHICAL DISCOURSE: KEY ASPECTS

Abstract

The article offers a philosophical analysis of the interaction between the ethics of memory and the aesthetics of forgetting within contemporary philosophical discourse, focusing on the interpretation of individual and collective experiences of the past. It is argued that the problem of memory cannot be reduced to an abstract normative demand to preserve historical events, since memory as a form of lived experience is always structurally intertwined with forgetting. The study demonstrates that the ethics of memory emerges as a normative and value-oriented dimension of responsibility for the interpretation, representation, and transmission of traumatic historical experience, particularly experiences of war, violence, and mass social trauma, and performs a critical function with regard to ideological and manipulative practices of engaging with the past.
Special attention is paid to the analysis of the aesthetics of forgetting as a form of symbolic transformation of experience, realized in artistic, cultural, and memorial practices through fragmentation, silence, negative representation, and distancing. It is shown that forgetting in this dimension does not necessarily imply the loss or negation of memory, but may perform a productive and therapeutic function by enabling the processing of experiences that resist full representation or rational comprehension. At the same time, the ambivalent nature of the aesthetics of forgetting is emphasized, along with the risks of its transformation into an instrument of depoliticization of historical experience or symbolic displacement of responsibility.
The article substantiates that memory and forgetting should be understood not as a binary opposition, but as complementary mechanisms in the formation of cultural identity and memory politics. The analysis of concrete configurations of their interrelation is presented as a methodologically productive approach to understanding contemporary strategies of commemoration, historical responsibility, and engagement with traumatic pasts in post-traumatic societies.