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Ought We To Forget What We Cannot Forget? A Reply To Sybille Schmidt, Attila Tanyi

Attila Tanyi

This is a short response to Sybille Schmidt's paper (in the same volume) "Is There an Ethics of Forgetting?". The response starts out by admitting that forgetting is an essential function of human existence, that it serves, as it were, an important evolutionary function: that it is good, since it contributes to our well-being, to have the ability to forget. But this does not give us as answer, affirmative or not, to Schmidt’s title question: “Is There an Ethics of Forgetting?” The main impediment to answering this question, certainly to answering it in the affirmative, seems to be a problem …