C´lío: Did the history in the west become a place of memory?

Abstract

The work explores the changing relationship between history and memory through the time. It studies the change from a vision of history as a magistra vitae to the vision of history as a new religion, with scientific aspirations. In other words, the passage from the ancient regime of historicity, in which the present was enlightened by the past, to the modern regime, in which the present was enlightened by the future. In another perspective, the rise of the triumphant history as the ruler of time, in a sequence dominated by the ideas of evolution and progress organizing the human course from the immobile primitive peoples to the ever-changing civilized ones. However, the train of history derailed and the long dominion of Clio was obscured by the rise of another muse, his mother: «mnemosine». Memory claimed its rights after the cataclysms of the 20th century and now dominates over history in old Europe. However, in the context of a now plural world, with a change from a singular idea to a plural idea of «civilization», a new conception and a new role await history. This new role, however, will hardly be designed in the workshops of Europe.