On Memory
Let us call it the gift of the Muses’ mother, Memory, and say that whenever we wish to remember something we see or hear or conceive in our own minds, we hold this wax under the perceptions and ideas and imprint them on it as we might stamp the impressions of a seal ring. Whatever is so imprinted we remember and know so long as the image remains; whatever is rubbed out or has not succeeded in leaving an impression we have forgotten and do not know.
~ Plato, Theaetetus (191c)
As I sift through my recollections, I recognize my interest in understanding where and how we develop and maintain our memories. I was always fascinated by Plato’s idea that memory is the soul’s remembrance of innate knowledge from before birth. For him, learning is essentially recollecting what the soul already knows but has forgotten after being born. I am not arguing for or against the existence of the soul, but I wonder why certain things come to mind out of nowhere. My experience of unexpected memories may be my mind’s spontaneous retrieval of unconscious or hidden experiences, triggered by subtle cues or emotional resonances—some sounds, images, smells, or even simple words.
Bergson’s concept of duration and pure memory offers insight here: memories are not stored like files but exist continuously in a virtual state. Sometimes they emerge spontaneously, as something in the present moment resonates with the past. But let me not go ahead of myself.
Before sharing my thoughts and experiences, I turn to the French philosopher Henri Bergson. He was born in 1859 in Paris to a Polish Jewish father and an English mother, one of seven children. At the age of 19, Bergson became a French citizen and that same year was accepted at the École Normale, known for its contributions to philosophy, mathematics, and physics. Initially trained in mathematics, he graduated at 22 and began teaching and writing. His first scholarly publication, in 1886 when he turned 27, focused on hypnosis—a topic that foreshadowed his interest in unconscious memories. His interest in memory led to his second book, Matter and Memory, the work that first drew me to his thought.
Bergson died in 1941 and, for a time, disappeared from the philosophical scene. Declining physical health, rising antisemitism, and the shift toward analytical philosophy and logical positivism—removed from Bergson’s focus on intuition and immediate experience—contributed to his eclipse.
Yet in the 1960s, interest in Bergson reemerged, largely through the influence of the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995). This revival resonated with contemporary concerns about rapid technological advancement and social fragmentation. Bergson’s appreciation of creativity, freedom, and the evolving human experience once again felt important and relevant.
My interest in Bergson’s concept of memory relates to his articulation of memory as a “privileged problem,” which allows us to think and speak seriously about unconscious states of being. For Bergson, reflecting on the past honors the past’s genuine existence. Creatively, he not only links past and present but also opens toward the future. I see this linkage as allowing our memories not to remain frozen in the past but to become significant for the future.
For Bergson, time is central to memory. Intuitive and subjective perception of time is, in his view, the source of self-understanding. He rejected the positivistic notion of time as merely scientific, mechanistic, and measurable by the clock. Discrete, homogeneous units of time, external to human experience, cannot account for the complexity of lived experience. Instead, he connects time to duration: continuous, qualitative time that cannot be broken down into equal parts. To me, this view favors creativity and spontaneity and recognizes that time is more than quantifiable units—just as memory is more than mere data storage.
Bergson’s view was later abandoned again, criticized as too individualistic and inattentive to social contexts. One of his critics was Maurice Halbwachs.
Halbwachs was born in Reims in 1877 to a Catholic Alsatian family. At 21, he entered the École Normale, studying philosophy under Bergson, who left a strong mark on him. Yet under the influence of Émile Durkheim, Halbwachs turned to sociology. While he rejected Bergson’s focus on the individual as too subjective, he retained traces of Bergson’s thought—especially the appreciation of the intuitive nature of remembrance, even within a social framework.
Halbwachs’ view of memory both attracts and repels me. He underscores collective memory and the necessity of social frameworks. He downplays Bergson’s emphasis on subjective time by arguing that most memory is rooted in a social context, with the exception of dreams. Dreams, in his view, are chaotic, fragmented, and unstable; they cannot support the coherence that social memory provides.
While Halbwachs rejected much of Bergson, he did not erase him. He admitted that collective memory unites its members and allows them to draw strength from one another, but insisted that individuals remember as members of a group. Where Bergson sought spiritual self-understanding, Halbwachs analyzed memory from a scientific vantage point. He distinguished historical from autobiographical memory. Historical memory, he argued, can be accessed through records—documents, photographs, archives. But in my case, where records are absent, where the only trace of relatives is two dates with nothing between them, I wonder: what good is this collective historical memory when the archive itself is erased?
Halbwachs argued that memories endure through commemorations, rituals, enactments. Again, I ask: how, when all I know of some relatives is a date of birth and a date of death, often the same month in June 1941? Who would be the coherent body of people to sustain this memory for me? What happens to those of us removed from such collective contexts?
Halbwachs saw dreams as meaningless fragments because they lack other human actors. But are our waking memories always cohesive and structured? Or are they, as Bergson suggests, fragmented and layered?
As I read Halbwachs, I return to Bergson’s distinction between habit memory and pure memory. It seems Halbwachs dwells only on habit memory—instrumental, socially reinforced memory that serves the purpose of creating and maintaining social bonds. Even his autobiographical memory, less instrumental than historical memory, still reinforces community ties. But what about those of us whose ties were severed, who cannot reinforce them through shared rituals or conversations? Are we left only with fading fragments?
Halbwachs admitted that autobiographical memories are richer and more meaningful than historical ones, and that early memories are especially impactful. He also noted that certain collective memories resurface depending on present circumstances. A heavy rain reminded me of my parents’ displacement during Hurricane Katrina—not because Katrina itself reappeared, but because the sound evoked sensations that carried me back. But how does this fit within collective memory?
For Halbwachs, dreams and contemplative memories serve only to escape society. And yet, he moved closer to Bergson when he admitted that some early-life memories belong only to us. Still, he insisted that escape from one society is an entry into another. But what happens when we migrate? I carry the collective memories of one society with me. Do I build new ones in the society I joined at 28? Can they coexist?
Halbwachs argued that collective memory binds us together through intimate remembrances, because we must tread the same path that others would have taken in our place. But how does this work for those who move from place to place? Who treads the same path as us? Fellow travelers? Do we share collective memories with those who also left their societies behind?
Halbwachs insisted that personal recollections are always social. In discussing family, he wrote that a child outside the family environment is only a fragment detached from a whole. Family, he argued, is a microcosm of society, and its customs and rules precede us. But what if one’s family is dysfunctional, fractured by upheaval, or something one wishes to escape? And what of the family one enters by choice, by marriage? My thoughts turn to my mother’s words when she told me she did not want another child—me. And to my aunt Tirzah, about whom I know only dates of birth and death.
So am I truly aligned with Halbwachs? Or is it still Bergson to whom I turn when I think about memory?
What draws me to Halbwachs is his loyalty to his wife’s family: when he went to Lyon to ask why his in-laws had been taken by the Gestapo and killed, he himself was arrested and sent to Buchenwald, where he died. What draws me to Bergson, despite his complicated relationship with his own Judaism, is his refusal—for a long time—to act on his desire to convert to Catholicism once antisemitism intensified.
Do these affectionate attributions confirm Halbwachs’ notion of collective memory? Are they, in the end, what shape and define my own choices?