Active Forgetting and Healthy Remembering in Nietzsche

Abstract This paper advances a novel account of how active forgetting underpins Nietzsche’s conception of health. Recent work has focused on what active forgetting is but does not explain how this process facilitates what Nietzsche calls “spiritual health.” I show that active forgetting – unlike Freudian repression or sublimation – preserves spiritual health when it is challenged by experiential content such as trauma, and that it allows for the incorporation of such experiences. I offer a reconstruction of active forgetting which makes reference to the use of therapeutic narratives, which, although neither necessary nor sufficient for active forgetting, can aid and optimize this process in the face of traumatic experiences. My account provides a complex and clear distinction between forgetting and narrativization, in keeping with Nietzsche’s comments on the utility of adversity and the importance of resilience in relation to spiritual health.