Forgetfulness as Knowledge: The Philosophical Value of Letting Go
- Anisa Chandra
- Nov 24, 2025
- 5 min read
Updated: Dec 1, 2025
By: Anisa Chandra
If I told you to think of the smartest person you knew, why would you call them smart? Is it because they can solve the hardest math problems, remember the most flashcards, or successfully land a job at NASA? Even if it isn’t, chances are it’s something that relies on memory. It’s because of this that we tend to see forgetfulness as a loss — if knowledge is based on how well we can memorize things, then forgetting, the opposite of memorization, must make us stupider. However, this couldn’t be further from the truth.
According to Merriam-Webster, knowledge is “the range of one’s information or understanding.”(1) According to my mom, knowledge is when I get an A on my math test. While both of these definitions differ, they share a common assumption: knowledge relies on memory. This is supported by several articles as well — according to Professor Ross Cunnington, “knowledge…must be stored somehow in the brain for recall and use later.”(2) But as smart as this assumption may seem, it’s false. The idea that knowledge relies on memory ignores memory overload, the irrelevance of all information, and the impracticality of total recall. Professor Carl Hendrick confirms this theory, stating that, “Forgetting…is what allows us to compress, to prioritise, to abstract, and to find meaning in the mass of experience.”(3) Though this may seem extreme, think for just a moment about the other extreme — someone who could never forget. You’d be haunted by embarrassing moments, thoughts of total doom, and insecurity, up until your final moments. Nothing would be enjoyable because you’d spend your time living in the past, in contrast to the present, and you’d be incapable of experiencing pure joy. What an incredible existence!
Since the time of Sophocles, an ancient Greek thinker known for writing famous plays such as Oedipus and Antigone, knowledge has been associated with what we can remember. To quote the man himself, “...writing…will introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it: they will not practice using their memory.”(4) The man was so into memory, he looked down upon writing! But just a couple of centuries later, philosophers realized their error in their ways. The creation of Chinese Daoism, around the 2nd century, emphasized forgetting. Zhuangzi, one of Daoism’s many founders, told followers that they could only get a glimpse of their true selves if they were willing to forget everything else. And though this may seem contradictory at first — I mean, how could you realize who you really were if you forgot everything about yourself? — forgetting unnecessary information is what allows you to develop character, grow as a person, and, as every TikTok influencer likes to tell you, live life to the fullest. One thousand years later, Friedrich Nietzsche, known for the statement that “God is dead,” had come around, and the importance of forgetting had travelled down the Silk Road and made its way into Europe. In his book On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life, Nietzsche wrote, “...a man who possesses no trace of the power to forget…no longer believes in his own existence…he…loses himself in the stream of becoming…”(5) Similarly to what Zhuangzi argued, when we focus on ourselves instead of the constant stream of things happening around us, we become the best people we can be.
But this concept isn’t just proved by philosophical studies, it’s proved by scientific ones as well. According to a study done by Cambridge University, titled Forgetting and Inhibition as Mechanisms for Overcoming Mental Fixation in Creative Problem Solving, the authors discuss the fact that we can only create new ideas if we’re willing to forget old ones. To quote the study itself, “...new ideas and solutions can be impeded by existing ideas and solutions. This phenomenon, known as mental fixation, has been observed in many problem-solving contexts…the ability to forget, inhibit retrieval, or stop a response can help people overcome mental fixation and thus lead to the experience of creative insight.” We’ve seen the idea of mental fixation in media in numerous ways: a songwriter in a TV show who can only write songs that already exist, an artist who only sings in one style because they can’t think of anything else, and someone making the same joke over and over again are just a few examples. It goes beyond this, though — you have to know what to forget if you truly want to maximize your limited brain space. Because forgetting your passwords? Not ideal. But forgetting the embarrassing thing you did in fourth grade? Ideal! According to a study done by Professor Dillon Murphy at the University of California, Riverside, “...the forgetting of less important information…facilitate[s] memory for items that do need to be remembered…aims to selectively prioritize, encode, and recall information that is deemed important….[this] may be a critical memory adaptation as we age.”(6) As this proves, not only does selectively choosing what to forget allow us to better remember and recall information, but it also helps us do so even as we age.
The previous paragraph described the importance of forgetting in everyday life — but not only does it help with that, it improves your character. As Zhuangzi stated almost two thousand years ago, we can only truly get a glimpse of ourselves if we forget everything else. And to this day, he remains correct. According to Cambridge University, forgetfulness is key to moral growth, as it allows us to let go of our past selves and become newer, better people. To quote the university, “...the practice of identity shaping depends on our ability to grow and change over time, and a barrier to that…is a failure to recognize that we may no longer be the same people we were before.”(7) And though it may seem contradictory, constantly remembering memories from the past can cause us to forget them. The National Institute of Health proves that we forget things when they inhibit the retrieval of other memories, meaning that if everytime I take a test I can’t stop thinking about my middle-school ex-boyfriend, until my body realizes that that test is more important than him, all of the effort I put into studying will be forgotten so I can think about him even more than I already do. Your body has to forget something, simply due to space, but when we’re able to control what we prioritize and forget only what’s necessary, we allow ourselves to become better people both morally and academically.
But speaking of academics, let’s tie it all back to that idea of wisdom. At the beginning of this article, we saw how philosophers like Sophocles tied wisdom to memory. However, throughout the last couple of paragraphs, we’ve debunked that myth, which has brought us to the beliefs of Lao Tzu. Famous for posts of his quotes on Instagram with aesthetic images in the background, he once said, "To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, remove things every day."(8) This quote best illustrates the true essence of what it means to be wise — if we remember only what allows us to grow, we can best utilize forgetfulness as what it should be seen as: an active, cognitive, and moral tool. Because at the end of the day, wisdom isn’t what we choose to remember; it’s what we choose to let go.
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11.24.2025
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