The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Memory

Memory occupies a fundamental place in philosophy, playing a central role not only in the history of philosophy but also in philosophy of mind, epistemology, and ethics. Yet the philosophy of memory has only recently emerged as an area of study and research in its own right.

The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Memory is an outstanding reference source on the key topics, problems and debates in this exciting area, and is the first philosophical collection of its kind. The forty-eight chapters are written by an international team of contributors, and divided into nine parts:

• The nature of memory
• The metaphysics of memory
• Memory, mind and meaning
• Memory and the self
• Memory and time
• The social dimension of memory
• The epistemology of memory
• Memory and morality
• History of philosophy of memory.

Within these sections, central topics and problems are examined, including: truth, consciousness, imagination, emotion, self-knowledge, narrative, personal identity, time, collective and social memory, internalism and externalism, and the ethics of memory. The final part examines figures in the history of philosophy, including Aristotle, Augustine, Freud, Bergson, Wittgenstein and Heidegger, as well as perspectives on memory in Indian and Chinese philosophy.

Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy, particularly philosophy of mind and psychology, the Handbook will also be of interest to those in related fields, such as psychology and anthropology.

Sven Bernecker is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Irvine, USA and the University of Cologne, Germany. He is the author of Reading Epistemology (2006), The Metaphysics of Memory (2008), and Memory: A Philosophical Study (2010), and is co-editor with Duncan Pritchard of The Routledge Companion to Epistemology (2011).

Kourken Michaelian is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Otago, New Zealand. He is the author of Mental Time Travel: Episodic Memory and Our Knowledge of the Personal Past (2016), and is co-editor with Stanley B. Klein and Karl K. Szpunar of Seeing the Future: Theoretical Perspectives on Future-Oriented Mental Time Travel (2016).