What is forgetfulness? How does it show? Is it a part of memory or can it be considered on its own? In the philosophical discourse forgetfulness is limited and the phenomenon is mostly portrayed as a pathological or obscure counterpart of memory. This portraying of forgetfulness can be seen as traditional way of describing it, but there is some philosophers who has spoken of forgetfulness in more fruitful ways. These ways are not to be interpreted as aspirations to decouple forgetfulness from memory, rather they are to be seen as attempts to interpret this relation on another basis. This basis has also led this essay towards an interpretation of forgetfulness' relation to truth. The aim of this essay is thereby to examine forgetfulness as phenomenon and its relation to truth. To approach these subject-matters I've taken Paul Ricoeur's Memory, History, Forgetting and Martin Heidegger's Being and Time to my help.

In Memory, History, Forgetting Ricoeur tries to portray forgetfulness as an essential part of human life that's not a deficiency, but nor is it intended to be seen as an incentive to forget. We are rather encouraged to remember, thereof his watchword “the obligation to remember” which is also linked to “the truth status of memory”.

Heidegger too considers forgetfulness in Being and Time as an essential part of the human life, or as he writes, of everydayness. Remarkably, Heidegger's translations of the greek words lēthē and its privation alētheia are translatable by him as the words for forgetfulness (concealment) and truth (unconcealment). This opens up a view on forgetfulness and truth as radically different from Ricoeur's and thereof the traditional. The disparity between the two philosophers allows this relation to point beyond the two of them as a possibility and a necessity to make room for forgetfulness as a multifaceted phenomenon in the philosophical discourse.