Abstract

An important role of memory, both individual and collective, is to remind us of what we owe to the past. To understand this role, we need to conceive memory not merely in cognitive terms, but also as what Nietzsche called "memory of the will." It is this "conative" aspect of memory which explains the link between memory and identity. There still remain problems of how to explain how a collective memory "of the will" is transmitted over long periods of time, and how to explain certain familiar pathologies. In the later parts of the paper, I look at Jan Assmann's important contributions to this question.