Question

How would you characterise the so-called ‘doctrine of recollection’ as it appears in Plato’s Phaedo? Is it a coherent theory of knowledge? Does it prove anything interesting about education, or about the nature of the soul?

Answer 1

Doctrine of Recollection:

In Theory of recollection, the recollection occurs “when a man sees or hears or in some other way perceives one thing and not only knows that thing but also thinks of another thing of which the knowledge is not the same but different . For example, when a lover sees his beloved’s lyre, the image of his beloved comes into his mind as well, even though the lyre and the beloved are two distinct things.

It relates to Socrates’ goal of establishing the immortality of the soul. The argument that he lays out is that we are neither capable of learning anything new, nor were we born with the knowledge of things, but that we knew these things before our birth.

Plato uses the Form of ‘equality’ to try and transmit his views on recollection. He states that in viewing two sticks of equal length, we recognize that they posses ‘equality’. However, he also makes clear that two sticks of unequal length can also cause us to recognize ‘equality’ by its absence. He also conveys that even what appears to be perfectly equal, can, in fact, fall short of ‘equality’, for the simple reason that only the Form of ‘equality’ can be truly, purely equal.

Maim views of Theory of recollection:

1. Our ability to judge objects of experience whether they are more or less perfect that we already have the concepts of perfect objects in our minds.

2. We cannot gain these concepts of perfect objects from any experience, but had to have them before all experiences.

3. Since our experiences began with our birth, we had to have these concepts before birth.

4. A priori knowledge, which is based on our having these concepts, is prenatal.

5. Our soul had to have these concepts before birth, so it had to exist before birth.

6. The soul is capable of existing without the body, and so it is immortal.

Is it a coherent theory of knowledge?

Theory of Recollection suggests solutions to some problems, it does not answer all the questions about Socrates and his love of wisdom. It remains unclear why being forced into contradiction results in the "wisdom and truth" that Socrates talks about and suggests is the knowledge a human being needs for the good life and "happiness."

Learning is essentially an act of recollecting things we knew before we were born but then forgot. True knowledge, argues Socrates, is knowledge of the eternal and unchanging Forms that underlie perceptible reality. For example, we are able to perceive that two sticks are equal in length but unequal in width only because we have an innate understanding of the Form of Equality. That is, we have an innate understanding of what it means for something to be equal even though no two things we encounter in experience are themselves perfectly equal. Since we can grasp this Form of Equality even though we never encounter it in experience, our grasping of it must be a recollection of immortal knowledge we had and forgot prior to birth.

Does it prove anything interesting about education, or about the nature of the soul?

The recollection theory implies that soul must have existed prior to birth, which in turn implies that the soul’s life extends beyond that of the body’s.

Plato believed that the human soul had all the knowledge embedded in it, but because we are trapped in our physical human body that has only 5 sensory tools and initially a blank mind, we recollect/rediscover these things with the help of our sensory skills and our reasoning (mind).

For example would be the concept of beauty. Although what is beautiful might be subjective, it is very objective to a certain degree. Ask people what’s is more beautiful, a nice picnic at the beach with your loved ones or a pile of horse shit.

So we all intrinsically have this knowledge of beauty and although no one has specifically taught us what it is beauty or ugliness. We are still able to call certain things beautiful and ugly.

In short, Soul knows it all, and we recollect these knowledge from our souls by using our reasoning. A mind that is kept idle will not be able to recollect true knowledge.