HomeEntertainmentPaul Audi, philosopher. ...

Paul Audi, philosopher. “You want to forget, is that possible?”

With philosopher and researcher Paul Audi, we question the permanence of memories.
Illustration by Stefan Manel

Philosophical meetings of Monaco 1/6.- Exclusively for Madame Figaroand in collaboration with PhiloMonaco Week, which takes place from June 11 to 16, six philosophers subtly shed light on the essence of being. Today, Paul Audi* questions the permanence of memories.

If in order to act people must remember and therefore recognize what they already know, they must also forget their past if it prevents them from living. Some memories really can be deadly. Some pasts can, if not kill, at least shatter or paralyze when they lead us to the side of our history and its reworking to the detriment of our future, which is the “will of chance.” And, in fact, who doesn’t want to have life ahead of them? But is that possible when memories are like heavy weights tied to your ankles, keeping your head under water?

I, for one, value oblivion more than I hate my childhood. I no longer want to know anything about what he has given me to experience, except the desire to end the demonic power of the past called repetition. I certainly imagine that the bad memories are there, and that they are so bad that they like to stay within my reach in case the masochist in me gets the idea to join them. The return of the Rejected would mean the triumph of fate. Because the past itself is destiny.

” data-script=”https://static.lefigaro.fr/widget-video/short-ttl/video/index.js” >

Involuntary memory

And, according to Kundera, destiny is what life turns into when the image of life separates from life and dominates it. So much so, he adds, that there is no changing it, especially since the picture of life has meanwhile become more real than it is supposed to be. What terrifies me is that life creates a frozen frame from which I can no longer reinvent myself and thus surprise myself. But “the past is an intruder that cannot be suppressed,” as Javier Marías says.

And in fact, as with Proust, we sometimes experience involuntary memory, those spontaneous memories that suddenly rise to the surface in response to a given perception or sensation. Just next to this involuntary memory, and next to voluntary memory, which sometimes requires enormous effort to find, for example, a word we think we have on the tip of our tongue, and next to involuntary forgetting, which has pathological aspects, there is voluntary forgetting.

This stubborn refusal to remember, which psychologists advise against, has an ethical significance when it puts itself in the service of becoming, that is, it cries out: “Vade retro, damn the past! I will not allow the vampire that you are to swallow a drop of my blood.’ The problem, however, remains that if we don’t want to remember something, we have to remember it. that in order to get rid of an unwanted person, you should already have him in front of you. If it is voluntary, forgetting therefore seems, if not impossible, then at least paradoxical. So forgetting is to be desired rather than desired. What is desire really, if not waiting for a miracle?

” data-script=”https://static.lefigaro.fr/widget-video/short-ttl/video/index.js” >

Paul Audi is a philosopher, author Disturbing identity

(Éditions Stock) and professor-researcher at the PHILéPOL Research Center of the Sorbonne Paris-Descartes University.

PhiloMonaco Week is organized from Tuesday June 11 to Sunday June 16 by Rencontres Philosophiques de Monaco, chaired by co-founder Charlotte Casiraghi. Free and open to all. In the program: ecology, education, care, woman, art of living and the pleasure of philosophizing.
The matches are broadcast live and replayed on philomonaco.com

Source: Le Figaro

- A word from our sponsors -

Most Popular

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

More from Author

- A word from our sponsors -

Read Now

Blackpink’s Jennie joins the list of ‘best albums of 2025, so far’

Blackpink member Jennie enters the list of 'best albums of 2025, so far' pleasing criticism; look!DIVA! With great influence on the music industry, Rolling Stone magazine shares annually in early June the 66 albums considered by its critics the best of the year so far. Including all...

5 Pixar movies that everyone needs to watch

In addition to Toy Story, who was the studio's first long -term movie; Check out 5 more Pixar animations that everyone needs to watch!How many Pixar movies have you watched? The studio, which emerged independently on February 3, 1986 launching only short films, took an important step...

What films make up the age of Disney’s Renaissance?

Find out what are the films responsible for composing one of the most loved eras by fans of Disney productions: the RenaissanceWith over 100 years of history, Disney is one of the main companies of world entertainment. Over the course of a century, the studio was responsible...