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Anamnesis: Platonic Doctrine or Sophistic Absurdity?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2010

William S. Cobb Jr.
William S. Cobb Jr.
Affiliation:
College of William and Mary
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Extract

There are two basic ways in which the phenomenon of learning is explicated in the Platonic dialogues: First, by means of an analogy with vision, and second, by arguing that the acquisition of knowledge is really anamnesis (recollection). The analogy with vision is the more common of the two and occurs throughout the dialogues. The passage in the Republic comparing the sun and the good (508c-509b) is the best known instance of this approach to the clarification of learning. The basic point of this explication is that the mind, like the eye, in order to discover truth must be turned in the right direction and be trained to apprehend and distinguish the characters of the objects it beholds. In this context, the acquisition of knowledge is clearly a discovery of that which was not previously known, just as the man who escapes from the cave sees what he had not previously seen (Republic, 514a-516c), and at the end of the ascent of the heavenly ladder one “begins to see” what he has not seen before (Symposium, 211b 8).

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 12 , Issue 4 , December 1973 , pp. 604 - 628
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1973

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References

1 Compare Symposium; Republic 519b, 540a; Sophist 254a; Timaeus 47a-c; Letters 7.343d10–344a2. Textual references throughout are to the Loeb Classical Library editions.

2 The doctrine of anamnesis is clearly present in the Meno, Phaedo, and Phaedrus. The term νμνησις occurs in some other dialogues as well; e.g. Philebus 34b2,9,c2; Laws 5.732b7,8, but in these cases it is not being suggested that this constitutes the essential nature of the process of acquiring knowledge. The question of supposed implicit references to the doctrine in other dialogues will be discussed below.

3 Compare as examples of asserting the doctrine of anamnesis to be a positive Platonic doctrine, Gornford, F. M., Plato's Theory of Knowledge (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd., 1935), pp. 27–28Google Scholar; Crombie, I. M., An Examination of Plato's Doctrines, II (New York: The Humanities Press, 1963), p. 135Google Scholar: the doctrine of anamnesis is “indeed an essential part of Plato's philosophical outlook;” Allen, R. E., “Anamnesis in Plato's Meno and Phaedo,” Review of Metaphysics, XIII (1959), p. 165Google Scholar: “The theory of Anamnesis represents a serious, and subtle, solution to genuine philosophical perplexities;” Gulley, Norman, “Plato's Theory of Recollection,” Classical Quarterly, NS IV (1954), pp. 194–213CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Vlastos, Gregory, “Anamnesis in the Meno” Dialogue, IV (June, 1965—March, 1966), pp. 143–167CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hansing, Ovidia, “The Doctrine of Recollection in Plato's Dialogues,” Monist, XXXVIII (1928), pp. 231–262CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 It will become obvious in what follows that I view the Platonic dialogues, particularly the aporetic ones such as the Meno, as philosophical puzzles. They are complex and convoluted; full of irony and sophistry, as well as positive philosophical insights and sound logical inferences. As a result their meaning can be discovered only by poring over every detail, including all dramatic elements, and comparing each bit with the total context.

5 The apparent pun on Meno's name in Socrates' remark: “I do not really remember, Meno” (μνμων, ὦ Μνων 7109), could be seen as a further hint that the up-coming doctrine is the sort of thing a Meno rather than a Socrates would take at face value.

6 That recollection presupposes prior learning is also recognized in the discussion of anamnesis in the Philebus 33C-34C, and in Laws 5.732b, although here the subject is ordinary recollection, not the doctrine which ties this to previous existences.

7 The suggestion that the story at least limits real learning to the life in non-earthly realms ( Αιδ∘ν) is refuted by noting that the story refers explicitly to the fact that the soul has lived previous earthly lives and this experience is included as part of the basis for saying that it has learned everything there is to know.

8 F. A. Wilford has also noted that the basic Platonic metaphor for the activity of the soul, even in the context of the doctrine of anamnesis, is that of seeing; “The Status of Reason in Plato's Psychology,” Phronesis IV (1959), pp. 54–58Google Scholar.

9 See Sprague, Rosamond Kent, Plato's Use of Fallacy, (New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc., 1962), pp. 3–8Google Scholar.

10 Confusion on this point is one of the main difficulties in the Vlastos and Gulley discussions.

11 Compare the picture of Socrates as a mid-wife in the Theaetetus.

12 For other examples of Socrates objecting to blind assent and asking for the other's own opinions see Protagoras 331c, Gorgias 495a, Republic 346a.

13 The point of Socrates' insistence that he is not teaching (διδσκων) the boy is, of course, that the process is a dialectical search (διαλεκτις), not the dispersal of wisdom by an omniscient instructor. Compare also 75C-e, 82e4–5, 82c11-d3. The contrast with Meno is again too obvious to be overlooked. One of the reasons Meno does not really know is because he thinks of learning as being taught by someone else in the sense of being told what to believe rather than discovering for himself, through dialectic, what is true. The fact that in this discussion, as in the aporetic dialogues generally, the surface “answers” given are not true is a subtle expression of Socrates' refusal to give in to Meno's false notion of how one acquires knowledge.

14 In so far as he has learned, that is. Technically, in Socrates' view, the boy does not yet “know” (85c10-d1) and hence has not yet fully learned. What is required for this is further dialectic.

15 This alternative is also rejected in the Phaedo on the same grounds, namely, present ignorance; see Phaedo 76a10-c3.

16 R. S. Bluck attempts to justify this assimilation by means of various speculations about the Platonic theory of creation. However, he himself admits that the effort is highly dubious. See Plato's Meno (Cambridge: The University Press, 1961), pp. 316–317Google Scholar. It seems more plausible to assume that Plato recognizes the fallacies in the argument as it stands and intends for the reader to work out what is and is not acceptable in it.

17 The motif of the sublimely confident young sophist who agrees to contradictions of his own theses without realizing it is also used by Plato to good effect in the Cratylus.

18 Compare Bluck, p. 316.

19 Vlastos, p. 153, n. 14.

20 Klein, Jacob, A Commentary on Plato's Meno (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1965), p. 108Google Scholar.

21 Cf. Sullivan, J. P., “The Hedonism in Plato's Protagoras,” Phronesis, VI (1961), pp. 10–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Bluck, pp. 47–61; Hansing, p. 252; Ritchie, D. G., Plato, (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1902), pp. 78–81Google Scholar.

23 Stenzel also argues that the doctrine of anamnesis is not being presented as a positive philosophical view in the Phaedrus; Stenzel, Julius, Plato's Method of Dialectic, translated by Allan, D. J., (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1940), pp. 135–156Google Scholar. Stenzel does not agree with my interpretation of this doctrine's role in the Meno and the Phaedo, however.

24 So Bluck, pp. 53–55.

25 Phillips, Bernard, “The Significance of Meno's Paradox,” The Classical Weekly, XLII (1948–1949), pp. 87–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar, is an excellent example of this phenomenon.

26 Klein, p. 150. Vlastos, pp. 164–165, simply passes over it with the suggestion that the theory of Ideas is the answer to the question of how the doctrine of recollection illumines the process of acquiring knowledge. Certainly, the doctrine of Ideas is a crucial element in Plato's epistemology, but referring to it does not eliminate the infinite regress involved in suggesting that learning is remembering what one had already learned.

27 Gulley, pp. 194–213.

28 Taylor, A. E., Plato: The Man and His Work, (London: Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1960), p. 137Google Scholar; cf. p. 138, n. 2.

29 Shorey's, Paul translation, from the Loeb Classical Library edition of the Republic, volume II (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963), pp. 133 and 135Google Scholar.

30 Gulley, p. 200.

31 Bluck, p. 51.

32 Cornford, pp. 27–28.

33 Cornford's, F. M. translation, from Plato's Cosmology, (London: Routledge and Regan Paul, Ltd., 1937), p. 143Google Scholar.

34 Cornford, Plato's Cosmology, p. 144. See also Gulley, p. 202.