This essay seeks to add to a growing body of literature in philosophy of education that focuses on issues of historical consciousness and remembrance and their connections to moral education. In particular, I wish to explore the following questions: What does it mean to maintain a tension between remembering and forgetting tragic historical events? And what does an ethical stance that seeks to maintain this tension provide us? In what follows, I first describe two contemporary approaches to cultivating historical consciousness (...) and advocate for the need to integrate the insights from both these strands rather than choosing between them. Based on some of the insights of Nietzsche, Arendt and other thinkers, I then explore the notion of forgetting while highlighting its educational and moral significance. In order to further explore the moral significance of forgetting, I highlight some of the similarities and differences between forgetting and the virtue of forgiving. Next, I consider the case of The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa as a contemporary example of an attempt to strike a balance between remembering and forgetting. I conclude this essay by briefly outlining some of the advantages of an ethic of remembering and forgetting. (shrink)

We argue that many of the benefits theorists have attributed to the ability to forget should instead be attributed to what psychologists call the “fading affect bias,” namely the tendency for the negative emotions associated with past events to fade more substantially than the positive emotions associated with those events. Our principal contention is that the disposition to display the fading affect bias is normatively good. Those who possess it tend to lead better lives and more effectively improve their societies. (...) Secondarily, we note that if Julia Driver’s moral theory is correct, then the disposition to display the fading affect bias is a moral virtue. (shrink)