ABSTRACT
The notion of a "duty to remember" has gained currency in the West in recent decades, a development that can be traced in no small measure to the role it has played in reflections on how to respond to the Nazi extermination of Jews, Gypsies, and other so-called undesirables during World War II. This chapter shows historical continuities and shifts of meaning between different instantiations of the duty that will provide a fuller picture of its nature and moral basis. It analyzes the concept of a duty to remember by posing several questions. The common element among all particular conceptions of a duty to remember is that remembrance is morally imperative, non-optional, or not morally elective, and that omitting to remember whatever it is that one is obligated to remember is strongly morally criticizable. For ethicists who are primarily concerned about the good of the agent, empirical psychology offers some support for a duty to remember.
