Should auld acquaintance be forgot…?

Erazim Kohák

pp. 249-256

in: Robert S. Cohen, Alfred Tauber (eds), Philosophies of nature: the human dimension, Berlin, Springer, 1998

Abstract

Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind? With all due respect to Robert Burns, I am beginning to think it might be a rather good idea. While cherishing old friends and long ago places, I grow ever more doubtful about remembrance as a philosophical strategy. Do we do well to think of knowledge as anamnesis, the recollection of what we had known long ago, before the world began to spin backwards? Or as a-letheia, uncovering the archaic truths concealed by Lethe's swirling waters? Should we seek to recapture a putative purity in the depth of our psyche or in the darkness of our archaic past? Or is truth rather before us, an achievement rather than a recollection? If so, should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind?