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ONE OF THE TASKS OF MEMORY IS TO MAKE AVAILABLE TO US KNOWLEDGE that we have acquired in the past. Let us call this aspect of memory cognitive memory. This kind of memory clearly plays a crucial role in our life-as becomes apparent on those occasions when it lets us down. But by and large, and perhaps surprisingly, most of its time it does its job and the right piece of information comes to mind more or less when we need it. Cognitive memory has been of special concern to philosophers, psychologists, and cognitive scientists, who have fruitfully investigated how it works, how and where the information is stored, and how reliable it is. My concern in this paper will be different. There is another aspect of memory that is of equal importance: its role of transmitting responsibilities and commitments from the past. If cognitive memory tells us what we have learned in the past in order that we may better pursue our current projects, this aspect of memory-I will sometimes call it conative memory-constrains our pursuit of current projects. If cognitive memory is, by and large, good news, conative memory is, all too often, bad news. It reminds us of responsibilities that we have acquired and commitments that we have made, of that we ought to have done and did not, and it directs us toward certain actions that we have to do even though they conflict with our current desires and projects.
In the first part of this paper, I want to look more closely at this notion of conative memory, and examine its role in individual life. My main protagonists will be John Locke and Friedrich Nietzsche. Locke is significant for his recognition of the intimate relationship between memory, responsibility, and identity. While he did not formulate a conception of conative memory as such (although he came close), I will argue that his account of responsibility and identity requires it. Nietzsche was probably the first explicitly to recognize this concept when he argued that we need what he called a "real memory of the will" if we are to have "the right to make promises." In the second part of the paper, I extend the account of conative memory from the individual...