Earthly

Knowledge is but a shadow: Plato’s Theory of Recollection in the Meno

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A Term Paper

Presented to

University of San Agustin

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In Partial Fulfillment of the

Requirements for the Course:

Philosophy 104

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Submitted by:

Jorica Lynn D. Duronio

Jellah Marie N. Rocio

Pamela A. Sila

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Submitted to:

Mr. Joseph Noel C. Macayan

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August 3, 2015

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 Table of Contents

I. Introduction

A. Background of the Philosopher

B. Scope and Limitations

II. Demonstration of Meno

III. Seeking the Ideal
IV. World of Ideas
V. Theory of Recollection
VI. Conclusion

Bibliography

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 I. Introduction

What is knowledge? Does everybody possess knowledge? Is it innate or

acquired? Many philosophers have sought to answer these continuous questions in

varied ways. Beginning from the Ancient period of the history of philosophy extending

up to this contemporary world,“the belief in innate knowledge has a history almost as

long as that of philosophy itself.” 1 It has also appeared and was formulated extensive

treatises in Modern Philosophy as that of Descartes’, Kant’s, Locke’s and many more.

“But the ancestor of all these is Plato's theory of recollection or anamnesis,” 2 to which I

shall be focusing in writing this paper.

Plato introduced his Theory of Recollection in his dialogue Meno, which has

some links on his Theory of Forms in his other dialogue Phaedo. Hence, a background of

the Meno shall be discussed.

1
Dominic Scott, Plato’s Anamnesis Revisited, The Classical Quarterly, New Series, Cambridge
University Press, Vol. 37, No. 2 (1987), p. 346.
2
Ibid.

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 II. Works and Background

Plato is one of the world's best known and most widely read and studied

philosophers. He was the student of Socrates and the teacher of Aristotle, and he wrote

in the middle of the fourth century B.C.E. in ancient Greece. Though influenced

primarily by Socrates, to the extent that Socrates is usually the main character in many

of Plato's writings, he was also influenced by Heraclitus, Parmenides, and

the Pythagoreans.

There are varying degrees of controversy over which of Plato's works are authentic,

and in what order they were written, due to their antiquity and the manner of their

preservation through time. Nonetheless, his earliest works are generally regarded as the

most reliable of the ancient sources on Socrates, and the character Socrates that we

know through these writings is considered to be one of the greatest of the ancient

philosophers.

Plato was always concerned with the fundamental philosophical problem of

working out a theory of the art of living and knowing. Like Socrates, Plato began

convinced of the ultimately harmonious structure of the universe, but he went further

than his mentor in trying to construct a comprehensive philosophical scheme. His goal

was to show the rational relationship between the soul, the state, and the cosmos. This

is the general theme of the great dialogues of his middle years: the Republic, Phaedo,

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Symposium, Phaedrus, Timaeus, and Philebus. In the Republic he shows how the

operation of justice within the individual can best be understood through the analogy of

the operation of justice within the state, which Plato proceeds to set out in his

conception of the ideal state. However, justice cannot be understood fully unless seen in

relation to the Idea of the Good, which is the supreme principle of order and truth.

It is in these dialogues that the famous Platonic Ideas are discussed. Plato argued for

the independent reality of Ideas as the only guarantee of ethical standards and of

objective scientific knowledge. In the Republic and the Phaedo he postulates his theory

of Forms. Ideas or Forms are the immutable archetypes of all temporal phenomena, and

only these Ideas are completely real; the physical world possesses only relative reality.

The Forms assure order and intelligence in a world that is in a state of constant flux.

They provide the pattern from which the world of sense derives its meaning.

The supreme Idea is the Idea of the Good, whose function and place in the world of

Ideas is analogous to that of the sun in the physical world. Plato saw his task as that of

leading men to a vision of the Forms and to some sense of the highest good. The

principal path is suggested in the famous metaphor of the cave in the Republic, in

which man in his uninstructed state is chained in a world of shadows. However, man

can move up toward the sun, or highest good, through the study of what Plato calls

dialectic. The supreme science, dialectic, is a method of inquiry that proceeds by a

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constant questioning of assumptions and by explaining a particular idea in terms of a

more general one until the ultimate ground of explanation is reached.

The Republic, the first Utopia in literature, asserts that the philosopher is the only

one capable of ruling the just state, since through his study of dialectic he understands

the harmony of all parts of the universe in their relation to the Idea of the Good. Each

social class happily performs the function for which it is suited; the philosopher rules,

the warrior fights, and the worker enjoys the fruits of his labor. In

the Symposium, perhaps the most poetic of the dialogues, the path to the highest good

is described as the ascent by true lovers to eternal beauty, and in the Phaedo the path is

viewed as the pilgrimage of the philosopher through death to the world of eternal truth.

III. Demonstration of the Meno

Plato’s dialogues are usually divided into three groups; early dialogues, middle

dialogues and late dialogues. The Meno belongs on the middle dialogues. So, it means

that Socrates, in this dialogue, is no longer the historical one but only a mere character

used by Plato.3 Consequently, the theory discussed here is already Plato’s own genius

idea.

3
Thomas A. Blackson, Ancient Greek Philosophy: From the Presocratics to the Hellenistic Philosophers,
(UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), p. 40.

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 Plato’s choice of characters has also some hidden meanings behind. For example,

in choosing Meno as Socrates’ interlocutor, he is depicted by Xenophon in the Anabasis4

as greedy, self-seeking, and treacherous. Therefore, a conclusion is given that these may

be the reasons why Plato chose him as a character concerned with whether virtue can be

taught and what it is.5

He also introduced certain priests and priestesses who strongly believe in the

immortality of the soul. Hence, he is giving us the clue that the Pythagorean doctrine of

the pre-existence of the soul is of the greatest importance to him, for it provides the

foundation of his theory of knowledge.6

Let us now go through the dialogue itself. It started when Meno asked Socrates

whether virtue can be taught, result of practice, or infused and hence inborn. But before

answering that, Socrates first asked Meno to give him the definition of virtue by asking,

what it is. However, Meno got troubled with this question, and so, he asked:

How will you look for it, Socrates, when you do not know at all what is it? How will you aim to

search for something you do not know at all? If you should meet with it, how will you know that this is

the thing that you did not know?7

4
Anabasis is the most famous work, in seven books, of the Greek professional soldier and writer
Xenophon. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anabasis_(Xenophon)#cite_note-2)
5
Gwynneth Matthews, ed. Mary Warnock,Plato’s Epistemology: And Related Logical Problems(Great
Britain: Robert MacLehose& Co. Ltd. Glasgow, 1972), p. 41.
6
Arthur Hilary Armstrong, An Introduction to Ancient Philosophy,(United States of America:
Rowman& Littlefield Publisher, Inc., 1989) p. 40.
7
See Meno, 80d

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 In a way, Meno has a point that one cannot know what he does not know because,

if he happens to find it, how could he assure that it is already what he is searching for?

And so, Plato found a way to fix the problem – his Theory of Recollection.8From then, the

beginning of the discussion commenced.

IV. Seeking the Ideal

In the Republic, Plato describes Socrates posing questions about the virtues, or moral

concepts, in order to establish clear and precise definitions of them. Socrates had

famously said that “virtue is knowledge”, and that to act justly, for example, you must

first ask what justice is. Plato decides that before referring to any moral concept in our

thinking or reasoning, we must first explore both what we mean by that concept and

what makes it precisely the kind of thing that it is. He raises the question of how we

would recognize the correct, or perfect, form of anything—a form that is true for all

societies and for all time. By doing so, Plato is implying that he thinks some kind of

ideal form of things in the world we inhabit—whether those things are moral concepts

or physical objects—must actually exist, of which we are in some way aware. Plato talks

about objects in the world around us, such as beds. When we see a bed, he states, we

know that it is a bed and we can recognize all beds, even though they may differ in

numerous ways. Dogs in their many species are even more varied, yet all dogs share the

8
HerminioDagohoy, OP, Ancient Philosophy class lecture notes, University of Santo Tomas,
Manila, Philippines, September, 17, 2013.

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characteristic of “dogginess”, which is something we can recognize, and that allows us

to say we know what a dog is. Plato argues that it is not just that a shared “dogginess”

or “bedness” exists, but that we all have in our minds an idea of an ideal bed or dog,

which we use to recognize any particular instance 9. Taking a mathematical example to

further his argument, Plato shows that true knowledge is reached by reasoning, rather

than through our senses. He states that we can work out in logical steps that the square

of the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the

other two sides, or that the sum of the three interior angles of any triangle is always 180

degrees. We know the truth of these statements, even though the perfect triangle does

not exist anywhere in the natural world. Yet we are able to perceive the perfect triangle

—or the perfect straight line or circle—in our minds, using our reason. Plato, therefore,

asks whether such perfect forms can exist anywhere.

V. World of Ideas

The real world is the world of Ideas, which contains the Ideal Forms of everything. We

recognize things in the world, such as dogs, because we recognize they are imperfect

9
The Philosophy Book (First American Edition 2011 Published in the United States by DK Publishing, 375 Hudson
Street, New York, New York 10014) p.52-53

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copies of the concepts in our minds. We are born with the concepts of these Ideal Forms

in our minds. The illusory world in which we live—the world of the senses—contains

imperfect copies of the Ideal Forms. Everything in this world is a “shadow” of its Ideal

Form in the world of Ideas. the power to perceive with our senses, there is a

corresponding “Form” (or “Idea”)—an eternal and perfect reality of that thing—in the

world of Ideas. Because what we perceive via our senses is based on an experience of

imperfect or incomplete “shadows” of reality, we can have no real knowledge of those

things. At best, we may have opinions, but genuine knowledge can only come from

study of the Ideas, and that can only ever be achieved through reason, rather than

through our deceptive senses. This separation of two distinct worlds, one of

appearance, the other of what Plato considers to be reality, also solves the problem of

finding constants in an apparently changing world. The material world may be subject

to change, but Plato’s world of Ideas is eternal and immutable. Plato applies his theory

not just to concrete things, such as beds and dogs, but also to abstract concepts. In

Plato’s world of Ideas, there is an Idea of justice, which is true justice, and all the

instances of justice in the material world around us are models, or lesser variants, of it.

The same is true of the concept of goodness, which Plato considers to be the ultimate

Idea—and the goal of all philosophical enquiry.

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 VI. Theory of Recollection

“All the things we discover and learn are nothing but recollection.”10 This is the main

point of the theory, but how come that Plato have come up with this idea? It seems to be

absurd. Nevertheless, Plato explained and proved this theory clearly.

He said that we have unique innate knowledge. As implicitly said a while ago,

Plato adapted the Pythagorean doctrine of transmigration of the soul. It states that the

soul of man is immortal and before it was united to the body, it has seen all things here

and in the underworld; it learned all things, it fully acquired knowledge. 11Therefore,

Plato concluded (as a response to Meno’s problem whether one can search what he does

not know) that one can be successful in searching for definitions because a human being

can recollect or remember what he knew before being born in a body.

However, a problem may be formed: is there something wrong with the body? Plato

responded the query in this account: the body impedes knowledge, because it confuses

the soul with the false beliefs it acquired during incarnation, 12 or in other words, we

cannot grasp true knowledge through our bodily senses 13 because all the things that our

senses perceived keep on changing and are not common to all. So,for these reasons,

they are unreliable and undependable. In his dialogue Euthyphro, for example, when

10
See Meno, 81d. Italics added for emphasis.
11
Meno, 81a-c
12
Thomas A. Blackson, Ancient Greek Philosophy: From the Presocratics to the Hellenistic Philosophers,
p. 104.
13
Ibid, p. 112

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Socrates asked Euthyphro (Socrates’ interlocutor in the said dialogue) the definition of

piety, he could not give Socrates the universal definition of piety because his attempts

were all based on his accustomed tradition. Thomas Blackson has also remarked

regarding this that “it is a mistake because knowledge of what virtues are is not

acquired in experience.”14

Therefore, in order to recollect the true knowledge we forgot, we have to

eliminate the false beliefs produced by tradition that we have acquired during the

incarnation of our souls.15 One way of eliminating them is through the Maieutic

Experiment. It is a series of questions and arguments where one is being asked in order

to bring out the wisdom within him. He will not be taught anything by the interrogator

but will only be asked again and again so that he could eliminate the false beliefs until

he recovers the forgotten knowledge. To prove this, Plato illustrated in the Meno how

Meno’s slave-boy was able to solve a geometric problem only by the questioning of

Socrates without him taught anything.16

At the moment these opinions have been stirred up in him, like a dream, but if

someone asks him these same things many times and in many ways, you can be sure

that in the end he will have as accurate knowledge about these things as anyone.

It seems so.

14
Ibid, p. 104
15
Ibid.
16
For the full conversation, see Meno, 82a-86c.

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 Then he will know it without having been taught, only questioned, and having

recovered the knowledge within himself?

Yes.

And is recovering knowledge within oneself recollection?

Certainly.

Must he have acquired this knowledge or else have possessed it always?

Of course. (Meno, 85c-d)

The slave-boy was able to solve the problem all by himself because men learn

and understand within themselves as “true insights come from within” 17 and not

through the handing over of information. For example, “you do not understand

mathematics by memorizing the multiplication table, and you do not understand virtue

by memorizing adages and moral rubrics”18 but rather, through the use of your own

reason.

The Theory of Recollection has some links to Plato’s another theory - the Theory of

Forms which is introduced in the Phaedo–as it supplements the Theory of Recollection.

This is what Plato actually means with the true knowledge – the Forms; it is what our

souls learned and it is what we recover during learning. He held that this is the true

knowledge because it is universal, changeless, perfect, and it is the cause of everything

17
JosteinGaarder, trans. Paullete Moller, Sophie’s World: A Novel History of Philosophy, (Great
Britain: Clays Ltd., St. Ives plc., 1994), p. 51.
18
R.E Allen, Anamnesis in Plato’s “Meno” and “Phaedo,” The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 13, No. 1
(1959), p. 168.

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sensible in this world. Meaning to say, beings in this world are just copies or imitations

of the Forms. For this reason, Plato concluded that we cannot attain knowledge through

experience but at least, all the things we perceive through our senses remind us of the

Forms which help us to recollect knowledge.

To sum it up, learning is only an anamnesis of what our souls learned before it

united with our body. And as the body acquired false beliefs from tradition and senses,

it impedes knowledge and we have to eliminate these in order to attain true knowledge.

And Plato’s one way of eliminating the false beliefs is through Maieutic Experiment.

Hence, we all possess innate knowledge only that we forgot when our souls were

incarnated to our bodies.

VII. Conclusion

As a conclusion, let me share to you a theological insinuation about the innate

knowledge of Plato and about the innate talents that we possess. The Theory of

Recollection states that we have innate knowledge because our souls are immortal and

before it entered the body it has learned everything, it had gone through the world of

Forms where everything is perfect. And since it has learned everything, we are ought to

recover those learning in order to arrive at knowledge by eliminating the false beliefs

acquired by the body.

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 Let me share also my own logical understanding on how Plato clearly presents

his idea. The real world is the world of Ideas, which contains the Ideal Forms of

everything. We recognize things in the world, such as dogs, because we recognize they

are imperfect copies of the concepts in our minds. We are born with the concepts of

these Ideal Forms in our minds. The illusory world in which we live—the world of the

senses—contains imperfect copies of the Ideal Forms. Everything in this world is a

“shadow” of its Ideal Form in the world of Ideas.

Putting this theory in a Christian context as a being, where there are hints of

Platonism, we believe that our souls are immortal which came from the perfect God

who created everything. We may conclude that since our souls came from God who is

perfect, our souls share with His perfectness. A concrete example of this is the talents

and uniqueness we possess, that before our souls were united to the body, they have

received certain talents from God. But when they were incarnated to the body, those

talents become latent, dormant and hidden. So, we are ought to actualize our innate

potentials given by God through constant practice. We just need to discover it and

enhance it.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

 ALLEN, R. E. (1959). Anamnesis in Plato’s “Meno” and “Phaedo.” The Review of

Metaphysics, Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 165-174.

 ARMSTRONG, Arthur Hilary. (1989). An Introduction to Ancient Philosophy. United

States of America: Rowman& Littlefield Publisher, Inc.

 BLACKSON, Thomas A. (2011). Ancient Greek Philosophy: From the Presocratics to

the Hellenistic Philosophers. UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

 GAARDER, Jostein, trans. Moller, Paullete. (1994). Sophie’s World: A Novel History

of Philosophy. Great Britain: Clays Ltd., St. Ives plc.

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  MATTHEWS, Gwynneth, ed. Warnock, Mary. (1972). Plato’s Epistemology: And

Related Logical Problems. Great Britain: Robert MacLehose& Co. Ltd. Glasgow.

 SCOTT, Dominic. (1987). Plato’s Anamnesis Revisited. The Classical Quarterly,

New Series, Cambridge University Press, Vol. 37, No. 2, pp. 346-366.

INTERNET SOURCE(S)

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anabasis_(Xenophon)#cite_note-2 (accessed: September 24,

2013).

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