Memory Studies http://mss.sagepub.

com/

Apology, historical obligations and the ethics of memory

Janna Thompson Memory Studies 2009 2: 195 DOI: 10.1177/1750698008102052 The online version of this article can be found at: http://mss.sagepub.com/content/2/2/195

Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com

Additional services and information for Memory Studies can be found at: Email Alerts: http://mss.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://mss.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Citations: http://mss.sagepub.com/content/2/2/195.refs.html

>> Version of Record - Apr 15, 2009 What is This?

Downloaded from mss.sagepub.com at WHEATON COLLEGE on January 26, 2012

Apology, historical obligations and the ethics of memory

JANNA THOMPSON, La Trobe University, Australia Abstract
This article defends a conception of citizenship and political solidarity that encompasses an ethics of memory and the recognition of obligations that come from history. It claims that citizens ought to remember the deeds of their predecessors and to apologize and make recompense for historical injustices. To establish that such obligations exist it is necessary to contend with a tradition of liberal philosophical thought that regards history as irrelevant to the duties of citizens and their relationship as members of a political society. Ahistorical liberalism not only fails to appreciate the importance to people of historical memories. It also faces serious philosophical and moral difficulties. The obligations and rights of citizens are best understood in the framework of a relationship of intergenerational cooperation that gives citizens duties in respect to the past as well as the future.

Key words
citizenship; historical memory; liberalism; social justice

The ethics of memory is about what individuals or groups ought to remember or forget, what they ought to do to enable this remembering and forgetting, and how they ought to respond to demands arising from memory. The memories I am concerned with in this article are shared memories of the historical past that play a role in forming the identity of individuals as members of a community. Being historical, they are not (at least for most existing people) recollections from experience. They are accounts of past events or people that are passed on from one generation to the next in a family, nation or some other intergenerational community by means of stories told by parents, teachers or community elders. What is important about these memories is their continuing signicance for members of a community a signicance that in some cases endures for many generations. These memories can be crucial to a groups identity. That their forebears achieved something, suffered for the sake of the community, made great sacrices, or were done
The Author(s), 2009. Reprints and permissions: http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav MEMORY STUDIES, 1750-6980, Vol 2(2): 195210 [DOI: 10.1177/1750698008102052] http://mss.sagepub.com

Downloaded from mss.sagepub.com at WHEATON COLLEGE on January 26, 2012

196

MEMORY STUDIES 2(2)

an injustice are not merely stories told by the old to the young or facts read in history books. They are dening features of a communal identity, a heritage that unites people in space and through time. The past, even events that took place centuries ago, can be vividly present for members of a community. The very existence of communities of some kinds, nations for example, depends on a shared heritage of memories of a historical past, whether the events related are real or mythical. The close relationship between historical memory and identity means that memories are motivating. They not only encourage group members to act in particular ways. They also predispose them to believe that they have obligations in respect to the past: to remember past people, to honour those who made sacrices for the sake of the community, to carry on the work of forebears, to revenge an injustice or to undo its effects, or to full a historic destiny. The problems caused by these conceptions of obligation are obvious. Historical memories have been the source of bloody conicts and acts of aggression and genocide. They have been used by unscrupulous political leaders to legitimate unjust acts or to prop up corrupt regimes. How to counter the hatred and rivalries stirred up by historical memories is a perplexing political problem. But the basic ethical issue, and the subject of this investigation, is whether obligations from history really exist whether there is ever a rational justication for accepting them, and if so, what they require.

AHISTORICAL LIBERALISM
On this matter, leaders and citizens of many countries are ambivalent. On one hand, they mostly agree that collective memory is important, that it is a source of national identity, that it creates unity and motivates communal sentiments, and governments in many countries concern themselves with how the past should be remembered. Leaders and citizens remember and take pride in the deeds that they regard as heroic or instrumental in building the nation. They think that they ought to remember and honour those who did these deeds. But they are predisposed to forget and put behind them the injustices committed by their nation or the past failures of its leaders and policies. This forgetting is reected in the way in which members of a society and their leaders often treat demands for recompense for injustices committed by citizens and ofcials of the past. In my country (Australia) the former Prime Minister brushed off requests to apologize for injustices committed against Aborigines by insisting that present-day Australians should not be required to make recompense for the wrongs of past generations (Howard, 1997). Policies toward indigenous people and other communities that have suffered from a history of injustice are often based on the assumption that history is irrelevant as a source of obligation or entitlement and that past injustices are best forgotten. Those who say that catering to collective memories of injustice encourages a victim mentality are in effect asserting that people ought to stop dwelling on the past and concentrate on the present and future. The idea that the past is irrelevant to creating a just society is also implicit in policies toward indigenous

Downloaded from mss.sagepub.com at WHEATON COLLEGE on January 26, 2012

THOMPSON

HISTORICAL OBLIGATIONS

197

people and other minority groups that encourage them to give up their historical traditions and integrate into mainstream society. Adherence to an identity based on communal memory is assumed to get in the way of creating political solidarity and a just and equal society. Inconsistency in the treatment of history regarding it on the one hand as a source of pride, shame, obligation and entitlement, and on the other as something that ought to be irrelevant to collective identity and just social relationships could be understood as a failure of rationality resulting from a psychological tendency to remember good things about the past and to forget the bad. The cure would be to insistently point out the irrationality. But the problem has deeper roots in basic philosophical assumptions about justice, right and the proper basis for collective identity. In the Enlightenment culture that most westerners share, there is a tendency to discount the idea that obligations come from history. The philosophy of liberalism is concerned about the rights and duties that existing people owe to each other, how social wealth should be distributed, how wealth and well-being can be maximized, and, in recent times, how welfare can be sustained for future generations. The historical past doesnt seem to enter into conceptions of justice that concentrate on the rights and well-being of present and future people, and few liberal philosophers even consider the possibility that we might have duties to the dead or in respect to the historical past.1 According to philosophical liberalism, policies and institutions should be judged according to their effects on present and future people. According to liberalism, citizens and leaders can be held responsible only for the decisions that they have the power to affect.2 According to liberalism, tradition and the deeds and decisions of the past should not stand in the way of the freedom of citizens to determine their communal future through their democratic processes.3 So, when the Australian Prime Minister refused to apologize for historic wrongs to Aborigines on the grounds that Australians should not be expected to take responsibility for what their predecessors did, he was simply employing a common idea from the liberal tradition about the limits of collective responsibility. When he discounted historical claims and insisted that government policies should concentrate on improving the conditions of Aborigines as individuals, he was relying on a common liberal idea about what justice requires; and when people denigrate traditions that get in the way of a common acceptance of just relationships in a unied polity, they are expressing a liberal impatience with collective memory. Liberal ahistoricism, as I will call it, is dened by two propositions. The rst is that the institutions, principles and ideals of citizens of a liberal democratic political society can be justied without reference to the historical past. Their justication consists in how they promote satisfaction of interests or the autonomy of individual members. The second proposition is that citizens of such a polity have no collective historical obligations or entitlements. They cannot make any legitimate claims on the basis of their history or the deeds or suffering of their predecessors; and they have no obligations that arise from the historical past.4

Downloaded from mss.sagepub.com at WHEATON COLLEGE on January 26, 2012

198

MEMORY STUDIES 2(2)

IDENTITY AND CONSTITUTIONAL PATRIOTISM

Ahistorical liberalism is at odds with the way in which citizens commonly identify themselves as members of their political society. Patriots take pride in their nations history; they honour the achievements of their forebears; they are motivated by the desire to preserve a political heritage. So it seems reasonable that those political theorists who believe that identication with political institutions and ideals is a sufcient basis for national solidarity a form of allegiance that is commonly described as constitutional patriotism would regard historical memories as an important source of national unity. But many supporters of constitutional patriotism are also ahistorical liberals and are predisposed to ignore history or treat it with suspicion. One of these supporters, Andrew Mason, allows that citizens may identify with the historical processes that led to the emergence of the institutions that they value, but he does not think that it is necessary for them to do so: This is not unimportant in a world in which the history and development of many liberal-democratic institutions has been morally troubled [Fostering a sense of belonging] requires identifying with these institutions as they are here and now, not identifying with some process which is alleged to have brought them into existence. (1999: 2812) This description implies that the reasons citizens have for identifying with their institutions has to do with the way they operate here and now and not with their origins in the historical past. If the institutions and processes they identify with are exclusively concerned with promoting well-being and justice among existing (and future) people, it seems that supporters of constitutional patriots are also bound to accept the second proposition the denial of historical obligations and entitlements. Constitutional patriotism, treated as an ahistorical view of political identity, is an empirical and a normative doctrine. It is supposed to explain why citizens are prepared to accept the duties of citizenship why it is not necessary to fall back on the collective memory of a nation to explain this. But (as suggested by Mason) it is also supposed to be a normative thesis. It is recommended by him and others because it avoids the hostilities and grievances that are often the result of a historical identity, and because it better answers to the multicultural composition of most modern societies. The idea behind his recommendation of constitutional patriotism is that unity can be forged from diversity if citizens, including, presumably, indigenous people, can be persuaded to cease to nd their identity in the collective memory of their past and instead nd common ground in valuing their political institutions and building a just society together. Constitutional patriotism, as interpreted by Mason, is ahistorical. Therefore, it is notable that one prominent supporter of constitutional patriotism does not think that history can or should be forgotten. Jrgen Habermas, in his participation in the German historians debate of the 1980s, adamantly insisted that present-day Germans have an obligation to remember and appropriately come to terms with the injustices of the Third Reich. Younger generations, he says, must seek to reassure themselves about a

Downloaded from mss.sagepub.com at WHEATON COLLEGE on January 26, 2012

THOMPSON

HISTORICAL OBLIGATIONS

199

historical heritage which they, as citizens and members of a collective political life, must inherit in one way or another (2001: 29). And the dead victims of injustice have a claim to the weak anamnestic power of a solidarity that later generations can continue to practice only in the medium of a remembrance that is repeatedly renewed, often desperate, and continually in ones mind. This remembrance, he thinks, is necessary so that their descendants can breathe in our country (1992: 231). His insistence that Germans need to be concerned about their historical heritage can be interpreted simply as a warning that their institutions and practices may still be affected by some of the failings that made the injustices of the Third Reich possible. When history is relevant, citizens and leaders ought to learn from it. This does not require a collective historical memory, as I have described it, or the existence of historical obligations. But when Habermas insists that Germans owe it to the dead victims to appropriately remember the past and suggests that their duty to descendants of victims involves proper acknowledgment of the wrongness of what was done, and perhaps some other forms of recompense, he is claiming that remembrance should play a central role in the political life of Germans and by implication, the citizens of other nations and that they have historical obligations to remember and to make recompense for historical wrongs. Some commentators identify a tension between Habermass insistence on the existence of historical obligations and his constitutional patriotism (Booth, 2006: 64ff). Why should people who identify with their institutions or processes believe that they have an obligation to make recompense for the injustices of their predecessors? The problem seems especially obvious in the case of the Germans, who now have liberal institutions that are very different from the unjust institutions of the Third Reich. Why should present-day German citizens who identify themselves with their constitution or institutions take any responsibility for what was done under the Third Reich? Similarly Australians might ask why contemporary Australians who live under different institutions from those that existed when most of the injustices against Aborigines were committed should accept an obligation to make recompense for these injustices. Indeed, if Germans or Australians are supposed to be concentrating on making their society just for present and future citizens, then why should they accept any historical obligations at all? Liberalism is a broad church and I belong to one of its congregations. I also sympathize with the attempt of supporters of constitutional patriotism to nd a basis for political solidarity that is not nationalistic that is, one that does not depend on relationships of blood or the sharing of a common ethnic culture. My aim has been to show that accepting liberal ideas of justice and citizenship requires the acceptance of historical obligations in particular duties of reparation for past injustices (Thompson, 2003). In this article, my concern is also with historical memory: why it should be respected and what should be remembered. I will argue that Habermas is right to think that an adherence to liberal-democratic institutions or processes brings with it responsibilities of memory and recompense. Constitutional patriotism, contrary to the views of some its adherents, requires a historical identity.

Downloaded from mss.sagepub.com at WHEATON COLLEGE on January 26, 2012

200

MEMORY STUDIES 2(2)

SUPERSEDING HISTORY
Let us begin by identifying some of the difculties with ahistorical liberalism. In his discussion of the claims of indigenous Americans to land that was unjustly taken away from their ancestors, David Lyons tells the following story (1982: 373ff). Suppose that a gang of pirates invaded and settled on an island, conquering the native people, conning them to the most barren part of the island, exploiting their labour and taking the wealth of the land for themselves. That the pirates wronged the native people is obvious and justice requires that what was illegitimately taken ought to be returned, along with compensation for damage and distress. But, as in so many cases, justice was not done and time passed. Fortunately, the descendants of the pirates were very different in their moral attitudes from their forebears. They instituted reforms, ensuring that the descendants of the native population had equal rights and opportunities, and now, a few generations later, people with a pirate ancestry and people with an indigenous ancestry are equitably sharing the wealth of the island. In this situation, Lyons argues, the injustices of the past have been transcended. The descendants of the original inhabitants cannot make any legitimate claims on the basis of history. Indeed, it would be unjust if they claimed the island for themselves on the basis of their ancestors possession. And it would be counter-productive, indeed wrong, for them to maintain a historic grievance against these descendants. Both groups should regard their history as irrelevant as far as their relationship is concerned. Lyons assumes that we will agree with this, and turns to the situation in the real world where the consequences of invasion, depredation, colonial imperialism, dispossession and discrimination continue to affect adversely the lives of indigenous people. Lyonss argument is that if we think that history is irrelevant to the duties and claims of people on the island of the pirates, then we should also think that history is irrelevant to the duties and claims of present indigenous and non-indigenous Australians, Americans, New Zealanders or Canadians. Citizens have a duty of justice to overcome the disadvantages suffered by the descendants of those wronged in earlier generations to ensure that they get their fair share of the opportunities and wealth of their society. Lyons believes that the land that indigenous Americans claim ought to be given to them but not, he makes it clear, because they have a historical entitlement to possess it, but because the possession of land will help to overcome their disadvantages. The position that Lyons is advocating is a clear example of the kind of ahistorical liberalism that Mason defends. The principles and institutions that citizens ought to endorse are those that ensure that they receive their fair share according to their economic needs and their situation. To justify these principles and institutions they need not make references to their history, but to liberal principles of fair distribution. They are not entitled to make claims on the basis of history; nor do they have historical obligations. Collective memory is irrelevant to their duties as citizens. To identify the weaknesses of ahistorical liberalism it will be worthwhile considering why we might disagree with Lyons about the irrelevancy of collective memory for the particular cases he has in mind the treatment of indigenous land claims. From the inadequacies of his account, we can derive a general criticism of ahistorical liberalism.

Downloaded from mss.sagepub.com at WHEATON COLLEGE on January 26, 2012

THOMPSON

HISTORICAL OBLIGATIONS

201

IDENTITY, HERITAGE AND MEMORY

The position that Lyons wants to refute is the libertarian thesis that rights of property persist through the generations irregardless of changes brought about by time. If someone had a rightful title to something but was wrongly dispossessed then, according to Nozick, a philosophical defender of libertarianism, his/her heir is entitled to have it returned or be appropriately compensated; and neither the passage of time nor the present interests or needs of others can prevail against this claim (Nozick, 1974: Chapter 7). Lyons as a left liberal cannot countenance Nozicks denial of the claims of distributive justice, and this motivates him to deny that the dispossession of indigenous people in past generations gives their descendants a right to repossession. If they have a right to land this must be justied on the basis of a need for resources rather than by reference to a historical entitlement. However, a justication of land rights that appeals to economic needs rather than history does not answer to the interests of most indigenous communities. If the only purpose is to provide indigenous people with their share of wealth and opportunities, it might be better to give them something other than the land that they are claiming indeed to encourage them to leave the lands where their ancestors lived and to go where there are jobs and social services. But this is not what many indigenous people want or need. The land is important to them because it belonged to their ancestors; because it is associated with their tradition; because it contains sites that have been sacred to them for generations; because it contains the graves of their ancestors; or for other reasons that have to do with their collective memory. Indeed, maintaining their heritage is for them a need. Taking their claims seriously does not require that we adopt a Nozickian view of property and reparation, but it does require that we appreciate and respond appropriately to their reasons for making their claims. Historical memory is often central to the desires and demands not only of indigenous people, but also of members of communities of other kinds. Their justication for maintaining what they value is intrinsically historical. People value their cultural or political traditions not merely because they regard them as good, feel comfortable with them, or because their culture provides them with conceptions of the good that they can use to give meaning to their own lives, but because these traditions constitute their heritage. The value of their society or culture derives in part from its history and the deed of their forebears, and their belief that they ought to maintain it and pass it on to their children is motivated by their relationship to past generations. Any attempt to overcome present injustices that ignores this relationship would be disrespectful, and thus unjust. Historical memory has other implications for accounts of obligation in a political society. In the tale of the pirates, their victims and descendents, what seems important is not merely how people are now situated, but how they got that way. If, for example, the descendants of the native people obtained a fair share because they resisted oppression and fought for their rights thus forcing the descendents of pirates to make concessions, then this history of struggle is likely to be important to their identity, and they are likely to think they have a duty to remember it and to honour those who took

Downloaded from mss.sagepub.com at WHEATON COLLEGE on January 26, 2012

202

MEMORY STUDIES 2(2)

part in it. They are also likely to insist that the descendants of the pirates remember it too, and that the struggle for equality should be commemorated on state occasions and taught to schoolchildren. If the descendants of the native people obtained their fair share simply because the descendants had a change of heart as Lyons presents the matter it nevertheless seems reasonable for the descendants of victims to insist that the injustices of the past should be remembered so they and their descendents can feel comfortable in their country, as Habermas puts it. In the real world, where indigenous people are very far from being equitably treated, a policy that ignores history and simply treats them as another group of disadvantaged citizens would be unjust. People who belong to communities that have been persecuted for generations are likely to believe with justication that their present disadvantages are inseparably connected to the injustices committed against their forebears. Their understanding of their present situation is historical and any attempt to compensate them must address this history not merely as a cause of present disadvantages, but as something that is intrinsic to the way that people see themselves and their lives. These remarks should be sufcient to establish that historical memory cannot be ignored in government policies and programmes, and that respect for people and their communities requires respect for, and appropriate response to, the way that they value their traditions and history. Lyonss position seems inadequate, and even insensitive, because it ignores the way in which people value history and regard it as a source of obligation and entitlement. But pointing this out does not establish that ahistorical liberalism is wrong.

DEALING WITH MEMORY

Jeremy Waldron agrees that respect for individuals requires respect for their collective historical memories: To neglect the historical record is to do violence to [the identity of a community] and thus to the community that it sustains. And since communities help generate a deeper sense of identity for the individuals they comprise, neglecting or expunging the historical record is a way of undermining and insulting individuals as well. (1992: 6) Unlike Lyons, Waldron recognizes that respect for historical memory is something that people need. But like Lyons, he wants to reject the idea that present members of communities are owed reparation for the unjust dispossession of their forebears. Historical injustices, he believes, are superseded in the course of time and as the result of changes that time brings. So his insistence that historical memory ought to be respected can be best interpreted as a way of responding to the need for recognition of present community members. We ought to apologize and make token compensation for historical wrongs not because we have a historical obligation to do so but because this is the best way of meeting this need. If we are successful, historical grievances will no longer blight our relationships with descendants of victims of

Downloaded from mss.sagepub.com at WHEATON COLLEGE on January 26, 2012

THOMPSON

HISTORICAL OBLIGATIONS

203

injustice and historical memory will cease to be a motivation for their demands. This conception of obligation gives us a duty of memory, but only in so far, and as long as, this is necessary for meeting the needs of present people. The desire to heal relationships with people who are motivated by their historical memories is respectful in the sense that it takes into account their feelings and point of view. But it does not take seriously their claim that they are owed something as a matter of justice: for example, that we have a historical obligation to apologize for injustices of our predecessors and make recompense. While respectfully acknowledging their point of view, we might remain convinced that they are wrong to think that we have such an obligation. We might hold the view that it would be better if they were not so much motivated by their historical memories and hope that our response will enable them to overcome their obsession with their history. If there were another psychological cure for this obsession, we might adopt it. This way of looking at the matter is in line with the defence that some theorists have provided for constitutional patriotism. Ciaran Cronin (2003) treats constitutional patriotism as the desirable culmination of a historical development. Nationalism or a patriotism that is predicated on the historical identity and unique destiny of a people may have been necessary at one time in order to ground the idea of citizenship in a modern state, he says. But nationalism has become problematic: the source of discrimination and conict within the state and aggression in international relations. Once the status of citizenship has taken root in the legal and political cultures of constitutional democracies democracy can itself shape the identities of citizens while gradually sloughing off its historical dependence on the ambivalent concept of the nation (2003: 3). An ahistorical political identity, in other words, is what citizens ought to adopt. But because of historical contingencies some people are slower to adopt this identity than others or have more difculty doing so. They remain tied to an identity with a historical people whether this is a nation or some other historical community. Waldrons conception of respectful treatment might be put forward as a way of overcoming this barrier to a united citizenry who, when freed from bonds of memory, are able to identify with the processes and institutions of their polity. This way of regarding and treating claims based on history is in fact not very respectful. If, for example, people realize that we are apologizing for a historical wrong just to make them feel better or to overcome their xation with history, they would probably not regard it as acceptable as a true apology. But pointing this out is not sufcient. To explain what is wrong with this treatment of their demands we have to attack ahistorical liberalism directly.

INTERGENERATIONAL RELATIONSHIPS, MEMORY AND IDENTITY

According to ahistorical liberalism, a political society is identied by its institutions, processes and the ideals that these institutions and processes are supposed to realize not by its history or by reference to an intergenerational lineage. If citizens are

Downloaded from mss.sagepub.com at WHEATON COLLEGE on January 26, 2012

204

MEMORY STUDIES 2(2)

constitutional patriots, they value these institutions, processes and ideals. There are several things that are not explained by this conception of identity. One of them is why citizens should value their particular political society. If they value it simply because it has liberal institutions, this does not give them a reason to be especially concerned about their polity as opposed to other societies that have liberal institutions, perhaps institutions that are less imperfect. If they value it because they feel comfortable with its institutions or because it promotes their own interests, their attachment is not sufcient to explain why they should ever sacrice their comfort or interests for its sake. It is not an attachment that anyone would call patriotism. Another matter that ahistorical liberalism leaves in the dark is why citizenship is something that should be passed on from citizens to their descendants. Margaret Canovan (2000) asks why constitutional patriots couldnt adopt a convention of determining the next generation of citizens by choosing from young people inside and outside of their borders individuals who strongly identify with the institutions and ideals of the polity. She thinks that the fact that no one would take this proposal seriously is a mark against constitutional patriotism. Citizenship in every country depends largely on birth. To the vast majority of citizens the polity is ours because it was our parents before us (2000: 418). We can put it more strongly. Parents are entitled to assume that their children will be its citizens. The children of citizens are entitled to this status. It would be wrong to deny it to them. These two points against ahistorical liberalism have a common theme. Both of them suggest that if citizens identify with their polity this cannot merely be explained by their adherence to the abstract values that their institutions happen to embody. My hypothesis is that a communal identity, including an identity with a polity, is an attachment to a group in which members conceive of themselves as participating in relationships of intergenerational cooperation. What makes people care about their particular society is that these relationships are always particular each society has its own history of foundation, struggle, reform, peril and survival. Citizens inherit the project of building, maintaining and reforming their institutions from their predecessors and pass on the entitlements and responsibilities of their political society to their successors. These successors include their descendants for it is natural for citizens to assume that these descendants are entitled to obtain the institutions that they and their forebears cooperated to maintain. Even left liberals such as Lyons and Waldron, who are ambivalent about inheritance in other contexts, assume that citizens are entitled to pass on their political institutions to their descendants, and indeed are responsible for ensuring that this inheritance is well maintained. Constitutional patriotism, properly conceived, is identication with an intergenerational community that has roots in the historical past as well as an extension into the future. There are three closely related reasons why a political society, and indeed many other communities, are essentially intergenerational (and thus why identity with these communities always does, or should, involve having a historical identity). One of them is the fact that generations overlap: the older members pass on skills, values and practices to the young, who eventually take over responsibility for the institutions that they have been brought up to understand and value. Liberals agree that people generally have the

Downloaded from mss.sagepub.com at WHEATON COLLEGE on January 26, 2012

THOMPSON

HISTORICAL OBLIGATIONS

205

right to bring up their children to appreciate the things they value which are likely to include the traditions and customs of their community. Children are entitled to reject this inheritance, but their right to receive it should not be questioned.5 Another factor that makes communities inherently intergenerational are the intergenerational interests of their members. Individuals have concerns about events or states of affairs that are likely to occur after their deaths and sometimes believe that they are entitled to make demands of their successors. For example, people are often concerned about the well-being of their descendants, the survival of their communities and their values, and can reasonably demand of their political successors that they maintain the conditions that will enable their descendants to ourish and allow people to maintain communities and pursue their values. People make agreements and sign contracts that they think their successors ought to keep or they make wills that they want their survivors to honour. They undertake projects that they want future people to be able to continue. A society that is able to full such future-directed demands and desires must be one that continues through the generations; and it must also be one that maintains through its institutions and people a memory of the past and a commitment to fullling legitimate demands of people now dead. The third factor that requires an intergenerational identity is that building, maintaining and reforming institutions is by its nature an intergenerational task. Contrary to the myth of the social contract, political institutions cannot be built from scratch in each generation. They have to be adapted to changing conditions, to be corrected for failings, to respond to changing conceptions of justice. Some generations may have to make great sacrices to defend them, to correct their faults, or to avoid disaster for future generations. People of different times may have different, even contrary, ideas about what they want from their institutions, but the fact that they are engaged in the task of altering or reforming the institutions that they inherited gives them reason to regard themselves as being engaged in a common cooperative project.

HISTORICAL OBLIGATIONS
An intergenerational community gives intergenerational duties to its members. No one doubts that citizens have responsibilities to future generations. And, though less often discussed, they also have obligations in respect to past generations. Those who identify with their community are predisposed to accept duties to remember and honour those who made signicant contributions. They have good moral reasons for doing so. If some participants in a cooperative endeavour are forced to shoulder unusual burdens or if they do more than their fair share, then it is reasonable to think that they deserve credit and if they are dead they deserve to be remembered and appropriately honoured. Moreover, a generation whose members have made great sacrices can legitimately demand that their successors remember what they did. It is true that citizens are likely to have different ideas about who ought to be remembered and honoured. For example, those on the political left are likely to have different historical heroes from those on the political right. This difference of opinion is not a bad thing. It ensures that

Downloaded from mss.sagepub.com at WHEATON COLLEGE on January 26, 2012

206

MEMORY STUDIES 2(2)

people who made contributions of many different kinds will be suitably remembered. But it also means that there are bound to be debates among citizens about what should be remembered, and this throws doubt on any attempt by governments to dictate how history should be remembered or taught. If people value their institutions, they will regard themselves as having a responsibility to maintain them and pass them on to their successors. But since these institutions are valuable not merely because they manifest liberal values, but also because they are the product of intergeneration cooperation in which members of each generation struggle to build, reform, protect and maintain them, citizens are predisposed to believe that by continuing this endeavour they are fullling a duty to carry on the work of their predecessors. Conservatives and more radical liberals are likely to differ in their views about the traditions and institutions that they inherit. Traditional conservatives are inclined to be reverent about their inheritance; left liberals are more likely to be critical. But both groups are engaged in an intergenerational project of building, reforming and maintaining institutions and both have reason to regard their relationship with past generations as a partnership that gives rise to obligations.6 Citizens in a society that is essentially intergenerational have responsibilities in respect to both the future and the past and this has implications for the way in which their polity should act as an agent in respect to other polities and intergenerational communities. If we take it as morally axiomatic that communities ought to respect each other, at least as long as there is no reason not to do so, a polity ought to take into account in its dealings with other communities the fact that their members have intergenerational concerns and responsibilities. It should be assumed that they are concerned with the well-being of their descendants; that they have things of value that they think they ought to transmit to them; and that they have duties in respect to past generations. Respecting such a community requires respecting and allowing for the existence of these concerns and responsibilities. In the framework of relationships of respect between intergenerational communities, making a long-term commitment to a community, whether this takes the form of a treaty or a more informal understanding, is of the nature of a promise that future generations are morally bound to keep, so long as the agreement remains fair and relevant. And if the promise is broken, recompense is owed, and the responsibility for making amends is also inherited. Lyonss account of what is owed to indigenous Americans ignores this intergenerational obligation and thus misconstrues the nature of the duty that the American, and other governments, owe to many indigenous communities because of agreements made in the past. Honouring these agreements does not necessarily mean that the original terms must be fullled we do not have to subscribe to Nozicks strictly historical conception of justice but it requires an appropriate recompense for violations of agreements. If we accept that intergenerational communities ought to act in ways that are respectful of the intergenerational concerns and responsibilities of each others members, they should not only keep intergenerational agreements. They should also be prepared to make such agreements when this is appropriate, and failure to do so is a wrong that may require recompense. The fact that British and colonial governments

Downloaded from mss.sagepub.com at WHEATON COLLEGE on January 26, 2012

THOMPSON

HISTORICAL OBLIGATIONS

207

in Australia avoided making treaties with Aborigines does not mean that present-day Australians have no duties of recompense for invading their land and taking their resources. The failure to respect Aboriginal communities was a serious act of injustice that requires an apology and appropriate forms of recompense. The fact that presentday people were not responsible for committing wrongs against Aborigines is irrelevant. Many of the obligations and responsibilities of people in an intergenerational polity are intergenerational. We have a responsibility for undoing the wrongs of our predecessors just as we have a responsibility for continuing their efforts to build and maintain just institutions.7

POLITICAL CHANGE AND HISTORICAL OBLIGATIONS

Individuals have historical responsibilities, according to my account, because as citizens they belong to an intergenerational partnership. They do not have a blood guilt because of the sins of the forebears. They acquire obligations because they share responsibility for the maintenance of institutions, for honouring those who made great contributions to the fullment of this responsibility, and for making recompense for the wrongs that were done by their institutions or by those who were given the responsibility of managing them. I have argued that constitutional patriotism a patriotism that tries to avoid an appeal to membership in a nation of blood ought to recognize the importance of historical memories and responsibilities. But my account seems to encounter the problem posed for Habermas. Why should citizens of the existing German state be required to take responsibility for the wrongs committed by the Third Reich? And why should Australian citizens regard themselves as responsible for wrongs committed by colonial governments or the British? Let us consider rst how we can make sense of Habermass insistence that Germans ought to remember the injustices of the Third Reich and make appropriate recompense to victims or their descendants. There are two ways of making sense of this duty in the framework that I have proposed. The rst endorses the view that the present Germany polity is a completely new political formation that has no connection to the institutions of the Third Reich. But even if this is accepted, this new state has to demonstrate its ability and willingness to act as a responsible intergenerational agent. This is necessary, as Habermas says, so that victims and their descendants can live comfortably in the country and so that polities and communities outside German borders can trust in Germanys commitment to just relationships. Living comfortably in or with a country does not merely mean having a belief that existing institutions are just. It means that people have reason to think that their families, their polity and other intergenerational groups that they care about will be treated justly in the future that Germans are committed to maintaining a society in which the injustices of the past will never be repeated. An obvious way to demonstrate an intergenerational commitment to just institutions is to take responsibility for remembering the injustices of Third Reich and making compensation to the victims and the families.8

Downloaded from mss.sagepub.com at WHEATON COLLEGE on January 26, 2012

208

MEMORY STUDIES 2(2)

This conception makes memory and recompense into a special responsibility of German citizens only because their polity must show itself to be a responsible international and intergenerational agent. The reasons for accepting this responsibility are forward looking. People do not have to suppose that they have inherited responsibilities from their political predecessors. For they have no political predecessors going back beyond the formation of the Bundesrepublik (or the German Democratic Republic). But this way of viewing the matter seems implausible. It is more reasonable to adopt the second course: to view present German institutions as being grounded on institutions and practices that existed before the Nazis and which continued to exist in a distorted and degraded form during their rule. Generational overlap and the continuity that institutions must maintain even through change (as discussed above) make this view of the matter more plausible. The second way of understanding why Germans have responsibilities of memory and recompense is that they have an intergenerational responsibility for repairing, reforming and maintaining the institutions they have inherited and thus for acknowledging and making recompense for past failures of these institutions to be just. In the Australian case, there is no doubt that present citizens have inherited institutions and practices from a past that goes beyond the formation of the Australian Federation and that there is a generational continuity that links colonial citizens to contemporary Australians. No one doubts that the responsibilities of the colonial administrations were taken over by the states and later the federation of an independent Australia, or that the responsibility of the separate states for Aboriginal affairs was taken over by the Commonwealth. These responsibilities include obligations in respect to the past.

CONCLUSION
In this article, my main purpose is to attack ahistorical liberalism to show on the basis of beliefs that are central to liberal philosophy that the assumptions made by a historical liberals are wrong. What makes, or ought to make, citizens value their polity is not merely the nature of their institutions, but also the fact that they are products of intergenerational cooperation, and the existence of this intergenerational relationship give citizens duties to remember past sacrices and to make recompense for past injustices. Historical memory should not be regarded as something that members of some communities indulge in for psychological reasons. Nor is it something that belongs specically to communities of blood. To remember is an obligation that those who value their community and their relationships ought to accept. They are obliged to remember the sacrices that were made by their predecessors for the sake of the community, but they are also obliged to remember the unjust things that these predecessors did. How citizens should respond to those who have a historical memory of the wrongs done to their forebears is something that I have not explored in detail. But as members of an intergenerational community, it is clear that they should be prepared to apologize and make some form of recompense.

Downloaded from mss.sagepub.com at WHEATON COLLEGE on January 26, 2012

THOMPSON

HISTORICAL OBLIGATIONS

209

Acknowledgments
An earlier version of this paper was presented at a Symposium on Historical Memory and Social Justice, 1415 March 2008, at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia. I thank the organizers of the symposium, Klaus Neumann and Chris Healey, and the other participants for their feedback and encouragement.

Notes
1 One of the most important liberal philosophers of the 20 century, John Rawls (1971, 1993), does not even consider the possibility that citizens might have duties in respect to the historical past. Some liberals think that we could have duties to the dead (Feinberg, 1984: Chapter 2). But they are not at all concerned with historical memory or historical obligations of other kinds. 2 Liberal views of collective responsibility generally insist that individuals share responsibility only if they contributed, or could have contributed, to the outcome which is clearly impossible in the case of historical events. For example, Joel Feinberg (1968) thinks that opportunity to control is a necessary condition for holding individuals collectively responsible. 3 The assumption behind social contract theory, which has played a central role in liberal philosophy, is that existing members of a society are entitled to determine their political arrangements and commitments for themselves, irregardless of the deeds or decisions of their predecessors. 4 To be sure, liberals would allow that people ought to be punished for their past misdeeds and that reparation is owed to victims. But they are disposed to put time limitations on retributive and reparative justice. The claims of victims become less compelling as time passes and conditions change. 5 If the inheritance is pernicious then of course there is reason to try to prevent parents from passing it on to their children. But liberals should not be quick to make this judgment. One of the wrongs done by Australian officials in taking half-caste children from their Aboriginal parents is that they violated the entitlement of parents to pass on their culture to their children and their childrens entitlement to receive it (Thompson, 2000). 6 I am echoing the well-known statement of Edmund Burke (1968: 1945) that a society is a partnership between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born. But it is not necessary to be a traditional conservative in order to endorse this idea. 7 The views in these paragraphs are defended in more detail in Thompson (2003). 8 The desire to demonstrate that the new Germany was a responsible nation seems to have motivated Adenauers offer to pay reparations to victims of the Nazis through the Israeli government (Barkan, 2000: Chapter 1).

References
Barkan, E. (2000) The Guilt of Nations: Restitution and Negotiating Historical Injustices. New York, London: W.W. Norton. Booth, W.J. (2006) Communities of Memory: On Witness, Identity and Justice. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Downloaded from mss.sagepub.com at WHEATON COLLEGE on January 26, 2012

210

MEMORY STUDIES 2(2)

Burke, E. (1968) Reflections on the Revolution in France. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Canovan, M (2000) Patriotism is Not Enough, British Journal of Political Science 30(3): 41330. Cronin, C. (2003) Democracy and Collective Identity: In Defence of Constitutional Patriotism, European Journal of Philosophy 11(1): 128. Feinberg, J. (1968) Collective Responsibility, Journal of Philosophy, 65(21): 67488. Feinberg, J. (1984) Moral Limits of the Law, Vol. 4: Harm to Others. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. Habermas, J. (1992) The New Conservatism: Cultural Criticism and the Historians Debate, ed. S.W. Nicholsen. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Habermas, J. (2001) On the Public Uses of History, in The Postnational Constellation, pp. 2637. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Howard, J. (1997) Opening Address to the Australian Reconciliation Convention, 26 May, Melbourne, Australia. Available at: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/other/IndigLRes/car/1997/4/ pmspoken.html Lyons, D. (1982) The New Indian Claims and Original Rights to Land, in J. Paul (ed.) Reading Nozick, pp. 35579. Oxford: Blackwell. Mason, A. (1999) Political Community, Liberal-nationalism and the Ethics of Assimilation, Ethics 109(2): 26186. Nozick, R. (1974) Anarchy, state and utopia, Basic Books, New York. Rawls, J. (1971) A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rawls, J. (1993) Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press. Thompson, J. (2000) Injustice and the Removal of Aboriginal Children, Australian Journal of Professional and Applied Ethics 2(1): 213. Thompson, J. (2003) Taking Responsibility for the Past: Historical Injustice and Reparations. Cambridge: Polity. Waldron, J. (1992) Superseding Historic Injustice, Ethics 103(1): 428.

JANNA THOMPSON is an Associate Professor in philosophy at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. She is the author of Taking Responsibility for the Past: Historical Injustice and Reparations, Integeration Justice and other books and articles on intergenerational justice and historical obligations. Address: Philosophy, La Trobe University, Bundoora, Australia 3083. [email: j.thompson@latrobe.edu.au]

Downloaded from mss.sagepub.com at WHEATON COLLEGE on January 26, 2012