Brzemię przeszłości. Zło jako przedmiot interpretacji historycznej

The goal of the book is to challenge the theoretical perspective ensuing from the notion of "heritage", as well as to support the view that the "burden" category enables a more comprehensive description of our relations with the past. In the first part I formulate postulates for reflecting the past and receiving historical narrations. I emphasise the need for consideration revealing the forgotten evil that was done and caused suffering in the past. What is more - I am in favour of forgetting understood as generation, in the subject of reception, of internal tension between identification with the evil of the past and distancing from it. The second part of this work comprises an analysis of historiosophical aspects of considerations by M. de Certeau, W. Benjamin and J. Derrida. De Certeau pinpoints the relations between one's freedom and his relation to the evil of the past. Derrida underlines the need of active criticism of the past and the contents of its message, whose aim, however, is to salvage from it what could provide a sense of direction to our freedom. Benjamin suggests that this criticism would be so much more valuable if it was motivated by our love for past generations. The third part of the work tackles the issues pertaining to the historiographical inter-pretation of evil. I demonstrate how a historian's research in the past evil and experiencing it by the people long gone is not only a cognitive practice but also it entails facing an existential risk by the researcher. In addition to that I argue that what could contribute to creating trust today are histo-riographic forms of narrations that resemble testimonies made by witnesses of the past, which I have defined as the "substitute testimony".