Dans un célèbre ouvrage surContemplation et Vie contemplative selon Platon, A.J. Festugière donnait de la dialectique platonicienne une interprétation selon laquelle celle-ci constituait une véritable expérience mystique possédant presque tous les traits de la contemplation chrétienne. La dialectique platonicienne y était présentée, surtout dans son acte final, comme une sorte d'extase, une union d'ordre mystique, un contact de l'âme perdue dans son objet, contact qui suscite en elle un sentiment qui dépasse tout l'ordre normal de la connaissance. Le Bien ou (...) l'Un en tant qu'objet dernier de l'ascension dialectique y était conçu comme quelque chose d'ineffable et d'indéfinissable. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: I argue that Socrates employs both elenchus and the method of hypothesis in the examination of the slave. I show that the elenchus is a necessary step of the inquiry. Being reduced to ignorance, Socrates tacitly uses the method of hypothesis to move the slave from ignorance to correct opinion. I tease this out from the questions Socrates asks. Although the method of hypothesis begins from a question distinct from elenchus, the solution to the problem leads the slave to (...) answer the original question. The examination shows that the two methods can be employed in a sustained inquiry. (shrink)

This article examines the theory of recollection in Plato's Meno and attempts to unravel some long-standing puzzles about it. What are the prenatal objects of the soul's vision? What are the post-natal objects of the soul's recollection? What is innate in the Meno? Why does Socrates (prima facie) suggest that both knowledge and true opinion are innate? The article pays particular attention to the ana- prefix in the verbs aneuriskô, anakineô and analambanô, and suggests that they are used for two (...) distinct stages of recollection: a phenomenological stage of ‘finding again’ or ‘awakening’ our innate content, which Plato calls doxa, and an epistemic stage of ‘getting it back’ as epistêmê. Thinking of the verbs with this ‘back/again’ sense of the ana- prefix (instead of as ‘up’, in the common translation of analambanô as ‘take up’) allows us to understand why Plato would simultaneously imply that our souls had prenatal epistêmê, have post-natal innate true opinion and have the potential to analambanein epistêmê. He is not talking about ‘taking up’ epistêmê that he also calls doxa, but about ‘getting back’ the epistêmê we had prenatally. The article concludes with an examination of what this innate content is, suggesting that it is a type of ‘principle’ and ‘essential’ mental content. (shrink)

The belief in innate knowledge has a history almost as long as that of philosophy itself. In our own century it has been propounded in a linguistic context by Chomsky, who sees himself as the heir to a tradition including such philosophers as Descartes, the Cambridge Platonists and Leibniz. But the ancestor of all these is, of course, Plato's theory of recollection or anamnesis. This stands out as unique among all other innatist theses not simply because it was the first, (...) but also because it is in some respects the strangest: Plato proposed not just a theory of innate knowledge, but of forgotten knowledge, and this, of course, goes hand in hand with his interest in the pre-existence of the soul. But my concern here is with another difference that makes Plato's theory unique, though it is not as clear as the previous one: in fact it has been for the most part over-looked by commentators and scholars. I wish to argue that while other theories of innate knowledge or ideas hold that much of what is innate in us is realized automatically and with ease, be it knowledge of moral principles, the idea of cause and effect or linguistic competence, anamnesis is concerned only with the attainment of hard philosophical knowledge, which most of us never reach. (shrink)

Recollection is central to the epistemology of Plato’sMeno. After all, the character Socrates claims that recollection is the process whereby embodied human souls bind down true opinions (doxai) and acquire knowledge (epistêmê). This paper examines the exchange between Socrates and Meno’s slave to determine (1) what steps on the path to acquiring knowledge are part of the process of recollection and (2) what is required for a subject to count as having recollected something. I argue that the key to answering (...) these questions is to get clear on the kind of process recollection is supposed to be. In particular, I argue that recollection is a process akin to the kind of process Aristotle calls “changes” (kinêseisor incompleteenergeiai). The key feature of such processes is that they aim at an end beyond themselves and are not complete until that end comes about. In the case of recollection, the end is knowledge, but inferior mental states, such as false opinion, puzzlement (aporia), and true opinion can come about because of a process of recollection without making it the case that the subject has recollected anything. I argue that this interpretation provides a textually supported and philosophically coherent understanding of Socrates’ conception of recollection. (shrink)

Plato’s dialogues can be regarded as the most important documents of the extraordinary mimetic power of visual writing, i.e., writing capable of “showing” and “drawing images” by using words only. Thanks to the great lesson of the Attic theater, Plato makes his readers see: when reading the dialogues, they see not only the characters talking but owing to the visual power of mimetic writing, they also see that which the characters are actually talking about. There are numerous rhetorical devices employed (...) by Plato the writer that make this visual rendering of philosophy possible. In this text, I would like to bring an example from the Meno that illustrates the visual power of an implicit comparison. By “implicit comparison”, I mean the special kind of comparison that is not presented explicitly and fully in the text but that the text merely evokes and that, once evoked, contributes to determining the formation of the image. (shrink)

There is a problem about belief and knowledge in Plato's epistemology that has exercised serious students of Plato only to settle into a recent orthodoxy. Guthrie characterizes the problem and its current resolution this way: ‘In the Meno doxa appeared to be a dim apprehension of the same objects of which knowledge is a clear and complete understanding … in the Republic each is directed to different objects, knowledge to the Forms and doxa to the sensible world alone … at (...) least the opinion seems now to prevail that on the relationship between doxa and knowledge Meno and Republic are irreconcilable, and exhibit a complete change of mind on Plato's part.'. (shrink)

Aristotle'sSophistical Refutations(=Soph. el.) seeks to uncover the workings of apparent deductive reasoning, and is thereby largely devoted to the caricature of dialectic that the ancients callederistic(ἐριστική), the art of quarrelling. Unlike antilogy (ἀντιλογία), which refers to a type of argumentation where two arguments are pitted against each other in a contradictory manner, eristic takes on in Aristotle an exclusively pejorative meaning, as is made clear, for example, by this passage fromSoph. el.: ‘For just as unfairness in a contest is a (...) definite type of fault, and is a kind of foul fighting, so the art of contentious reasoning is foul fighting in disputation.’. (shrink)

I argue that Meno’s Paradox targets the type of knowledge that Socrates has been looking for earlier in the dialogue: knowledge grounded in explanatory definitions. Socrates places strict requirements on definitions and thinks we need these definitions to acquire knowledge. Meno’s challenge uses Socrates’ constraints to argue that we can neither propose definitions nor recognize them. To understand Socrates’ response to the challenge, we need to view Meno’s challenge and Socrates’ response as part of a larger disagreement about the value (...) of inquiry. (shrink)

Plato in the Meno is standardly interpreted as committed to condition innatism: human beings are born with latent innate states of knowledge. Against this view, Gail Fine has argued for prenatalism: human souls possess knowledge in a disembodied state but lose it upon being embodied. We argue against both views and in favor of content innatism: human beings are born with innate cognitive contents that can be, but do not exist innately in the soul as, the contents of states of (...) knowledge. Content innatism has strong textual support and constitutes a philosophically interesting theory. (shrink)

Socrates’ official answer to Meno’s question about the value of knowledge, near the end of Plato’s Meno, is that knowledge is stable. I argue that both the answer and the question have been widely misunderstood. The question has been taken to be why knowing at a time is better than true belief at that time, and Socrates’ answer has been taken to point to the greater persistence of knowledge over time. I argue instead that, given the broader context of the (...) question and answer in the Meno, together with what Plato has to say about stability elsewhere, Meno’s question is better understood as a more difficult question – and Socrates’ answer as a good solution to it. This also involves arguing that Socrates’ analogy to the statues of Daedalus is not intended as the simple illustration of Socrates’ official answer for which commentators have taken it. (shrink)

At Meno 87b-c, and again in the Protagoras, Socrates commits himself to the biconditional that all knowledge, and only knowledge, is teachable.

Replying to Theaetetus’ suggestion that knowledge is true opinion at Tht. 200e, Socrates remarks that ‘a whole profession’ testifies against this definition. The orator practises the art of persuasion, not to teach people, but make them believe whatever he wants. If a robbery has taken place, for example, he cannot in a short time teach adequately the truth about what happened to people who were not on the scene.

Creativity is an imperative need of the twenty-first century, and it seems to be a skill that will monopolize interest for many years. It is, in substance, a newly established scientific field and despite attempts to encroach on the science of psychology, its origin and functions have not been probed yet. Still, it continues to be researched, with ever-increasing vigor, almost in every area of science and action, with the main scope of potential exploitation being education. The philosophical foundation of (...) creativity has not reached the depths that one would expect, and most scientists-thinkers (and... (shrink)

Dans l’œuvre de Platon, l’image du rêve semble d’abord servir à désigner l’état d’ignorance du commun des mortels qui « rêvent » leur vie. Cet usage métaphorique ne saurait correspondre parfaitement à la pensée platoni- cienne du phénomène onirique, particulièrement lorsqu’on l’envisage d’un point de vue éthique (qu’advient-il de la vertu de l’homme dans son sommeil ?), plutôt qu’épistémologique ou ontologique. Dans la République, le sommeil apparaît essentiellement comme l’endormissement d’une partie de l’âme – la rationnelle – au profit d’une (...) autre – la désirante. Platon laisse pourtant entendre que, sous certaines conditions, les visions qui s’y manifestent ne sont pas nécessairement mensongères et pourraient même, pour certaines, avoir une origine divine. Le rêve doit donc être compris non seulement comme un moment de séparation de l’âme et du corps, mais aussi de différenciation des facultés ou parties de l’âme elles-mêmes qui acquièrent là leur autonomie propre et déploient, sans se limiter l’une l’autre, leur plein pouvoir. In Plato’s works the image of a dream at first seems to serve the purpose of indicating the state of ignorance of ordinary humans who « dream » their way through life. This metaphorical usage does not reflect perfectly Plato’s thought on the phenomenon of dreams, especially when it is considered from an ethical point of view (what happens to human virtue during sleep?) rather than an epistemological or ontological one. In the Republic sleep appears to be essen- tially where a part of the soul goes asleep – namely the rational part – to the advantage of the desiring part. However, Plato implies that under certain condi- tions the visions that occur in sleep are not necessarily false and could even, in some cases, have a divine origin. Dreams must therefore be understood not merely as a moment of separation of soul and body, but also of differentiation of the faculties or parts of the soul themselves, which acquire their own autonomy in dreams and deploy their full power without limiting one another (transl. J. Dudley). (shrink)