Unforgettable and the Unhoped for

The Unforgettable and the Unhoped For is the first English translation of awork by JeanLouis Chretien one of Frances leading phenomenologists. Chretienunfolds t... » 

The Unforgettable and the Unhoped For is the first English translation of awork by JeanLouis Chretien one of Frances leading phenomenologists. Chretienunfolds the ideas of memory and loss of the immemorable and of hope in amanner that opens a phenomenological path to the heart of classical thought.This line of reflection places him in the company of Emmanuel Levinas JeanLucMarion and Michel Henry in attempting to join philosophy and religion afterKant Nietzsche and Heidegger.The extremities of time exceed our memory and expectation. For philosophybeginning with Plato the truth of being is immemorable and cannot berediscovered except in passing through forgetfulness. How are we to understandthis first forgetting? Modern analyses live from a denial of loss everythingwould be unforgettable and is always preserved in memory.For Christian thought to hope against all hope and to remember the origin aretwo essential acts of faith. Memory must die in order to be reborn in order topurify itself of all nostalgia and become memory of the promise. Augustine andJohn of the Cross after Philo the Jew teach us what contemporary thought hasbegun to rediscover only the Other is unforgettable for it alone is unhopedfor. «