Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

Philosophers of memory have recent begun exploring the prospect that it may be legitimate to adopt different stances, to achieve different goals, when developing conceptions of memory (Craver 2020; McCarroll et al 2022). In this paper I argue for the importance of a stance that has yet to be considered: the social justice stance. I argue that theorists ought to aim to develop conceptions of memory that serve the purposes of social justice, and that it isn't a given that existing approaches will achieve this goal, without the explicit aim of doing so. This involves a significant reconceptualisation of the goals of philosophy of memory, and the parameters of what should be taken to be remembering.