Socrates’ Doctrine of Recollection is invalid because of the flawed procedure that was employed to prove it, its inability to apply to all types of knowledge, and the weakness of the premises that it is based on.
In Plato’s Meno, Socrates suggested that knowledge comes from recollection, or, in Greek, anamnesis. He believes that the knowledge is already implanted in the human mind, and by recollection, men can retrieve back knowledge. There are two stages to this: first, a “stirring up” of true, innate opinions, then, a conversion of the knowledge (Gulley). Furthermore, Socrates believes that we acquired knowledge before this life. “As the soul is immortal, has been born often, and has seen all things here and in the underworld, there is nothing which it has not learned” (Plato 81c). Socrates holds the idea of reincarnation—as the soul reincarnates through many lives, it learns everything. Overall, the Doctrine of Recollection is based on two premises. The first is the immortality of the soul, along with its incarnations, and the second is the kinship of all nature (Ionescu).
To demonstrate Socrates’ theory, a slave boy was brought in. Knowing that this slave boy never had any training in geometry, Socrates asks him a geometric problem. In answering every questions Socrates asked, the slave boy eventually reached the correct answer. Above all, Socrates emphasized that he never taught the slave boy anything during the entire process. He only asked questions that led the slave boy to his own “recollection” of the topic discussed. Because the boy gave the correct answer at the end, Socrates was convinced of his theory of recollection.
I do not believe in the Doctrine of Recollection for several reasons. First, the method that Soc...
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...ience than a theory to prove our source of knowledge.
Works Cited
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Socrates is unable to prove his argument that the soul is immortal through the theories of Opposites, Recollection, and Forms because he is unable to explain his reasoning to give a legitimate answer. Although he had given enough evidence to try and prove his point, the evidence given was not convincing enough. His idea often fell through when he tried to relate back to the theories because the possibility that the soul lives on forever leads to so many questions that all don’t necessarily have a reasonable answer or an answer at all, therefore Socrates idea that the soul is immortal is false.
The 'doctrine of recollection' states that all true knowledge exists implicitly within us, and can be brought to consciousness - made explicit - by recollection. Using the Platonic concepts of 'Forms', 'particulars', 'knowledge' and 'true opinion', this essay explains what can or cannot be recollected, why all knowledge is based on recollection, and why the doctrine does not prove the soul to be immortal.
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The Recollection Theory is an argument Socrates brought up many times before. This theory is evidence that souls have existed before this current life. Cebes describes this theory in Phaedo as Socrates has described it many times before, “we recollect now we must have learned at some time before; which is impossible unless our souls existed some-where before they entered the human shape. So in that way too it seems likely that the soul is immortal” (Plato 137). When we learn something “new”
Plato. (1992). Plato Republic. (G. Grube, & C. Reeve, Eds.) Indiana: Hackett Publishing Company Inc.
It has seen many things including all the forms and the knowledge of them all. We cannot search for what we do not know but we can search for what we have forgotten. Socrates’s theory of recollection has two problems. The first one is that the theory repeats itself without giving a conclusion. We do not know what virtue is, however, we can recollect it because our souls have knowledge about it.
Marra, James L., Zelnick, Stephen C., and Mattson, Mark T. IH 51 Source Book: Plato, The Republic, pp. 77-106. Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, Dubuque, Iowa, 1998.
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Socrates uses the word “recollection” extensively in the Phaedo dialogue, by this he is asserting that learning is simply recollecting knowledge. Socrates explains to Cebes, one of the philosophers present in the cell that day, that according to the theory, “we must at
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1) Marra, James L., Zelnick, Stephen C., and Mattson, Mark T. IH 51 Source Book: Plato, The Republic, pp. 77-106