Abstract

This chapter demonstrates why the commonsensical idea of forgetting as simply a vice is problematic. It presents some philosophical arguments for the positive role of forgetting. Forgetting can be understood in many ways, for example forgetting as a cause of memory-seeming, forgetting as a reliable process of justification, forgetting as an intellectual virtue, and forgetting as a way of liberation. The polysemy of forgetting can be traced back to Plato’s conceptual distinction between ἐπιλήθομαι and λήθη. It echoes with the many facets of forgetting by showing how the opposite of memory relates to different domains such as knowing and perception. Key to classifying the polysemy of forgetting is a taxonomy of forgetting according to the computational model of memory. It brings out how the tripartite stages of memory correspond to the different types of forgetting.