PRIMORDIAL BELIEF AND ANAMNESIS
In this discussion of the theory of the human soul that I attribute to Socrates, I shall use the term, “primordial belief,” to refer to those true beliefs that each person holds at least implicitly if not avowedly. Briefly put, primordial belief is belief about what sort of living is worthy of a human being.[1] Initially, such belief is merely true belief and does not qualify as knowledge as long as it remains noetically unreflected, even though it is true and influences, more or less, all of one’s decisions and behavior. Such belief is potentially knowledge, for it is possible for it to become justified true belief through careful recollective thought.
Primordial belief as such is not theoretic (i.e., noetically reflected), and when Socrates discusses knowledge, it is usually theoretic knowledge to which he refers. Socrates uses ‘knowledge’, that is, to refer to true belief that is “tied down,” i.e., justified by its careful anamnesis from the primordial level. (Knowledge = justified true belief.) Elenchus, operating on psyché to evince anamnesis, is a practice that helps to bring what we believe in a forgetful and darkened way into noetic light. If elenchus is done carefully and anamnesis occurs, then that which has been recollected counts as on the way to knowledge (though never fully and finally knowledge, which is possible only for a god outside of time and change) because the respondent is able to recognize the theoretical connections between what he recollects and what he has known before. He is then able to justify his belief by explicit appeal to these theoretical connections.
In the Meno, Socrates argues that “knowing is remembering.” But what sort of remembering is this? The original term for this sort of remembering is ‘anamnesis’. Anamnesis is the kind of recollection that brings together fragments of what were thought to be isolated or independent or what were just barely noticed, and results in a new understanding of what was previously noticed or known disjointedly. Anamnesis unifies and makes sense out of what was disparate and incoherent before. The re-collective connotation of ‘anamnesis’ (i.e., the connotation of “re-gathering” or “re-organizing”) should be taken seriously. Anamnesis recollects primordial belief together with the elements of your current situation so that you are more able to recognize that situation for what it is.[2] After anamnesis is achieved, the connections that are recognized seem so obvious and natural that you may wonder how you didn’t see them before. You may even have the sense that you should have seen them before. But it then becomes easier to recognize other situations of the same kind.
The Platonic doctrine of knowing as recollection (anamnesis) implies that an essential part of the meaning of any general idea consists in its applicability to specific circumstances. That is, an essential part of a general idea is its function to re-collect, re-member, i.e., re-organize one’s cognitive experience. In Plato’s view, a general idea gives one a perceptual or recognitional capacity, and part of the point of mastering general ideas is to cultivate such practical capacities. To master a general idea is to acquire a form of knowledge, and to have such knowledge is to be able to re-cognize a general idea in a particular situation. On the Platonic view of knowledge as anamnesis, every general idea has a theoretical side, but it must also have a practical, applicative side since its purpose is to serve as a recognitional lens for experience. (It is made clear in the Republic that there is a further, and equally essential, third element to any general idea: a general idea is essentially constituted by reference to the eidos of the good. Thus, Plato’s conception of general ideas is analogous to the notion of a techné. See glossary.)
In Plato’s view, all experience is organized, or re-collected, by general ideas. Socrates’ claim that such ideas are already in the soul (i.e., are a priori) and need only a questioning experience to bring them out, means, as I read Plato, that the most effective way to focus an idea as a cognitive lens is by questioning its internal logic within circumstances that call for its practical application.
One implication of this line of thought is that on the most fundamental level, all people are in accord on the issue of what sort of life is worthy for a human being, and disagreements are the result of error or confusion resulting from a lack of noetic clarity about what the communicants really believe. Moral error is then just a failure to gather and apply in a timely, practical way, what one already believes in one’s heart. Conversely, moral virtue is the practical skill that consistently enables such application.
The Socratic striving for definition is intended to facilitate the practice of virtue. One of the rules of elenchus is that the participants must state what they really believe. Since most of us don’t clearly know what we really believe when we need to know it, the practice of elenchus requires us to reach for greater self-knowledge.
[1] A little more specifically, these are beliefs about essences–e.g., the essence of Goodness, Justice, Courage, Beauty, Piety, Right, Love, Death, etc.–that make possible practical, action-guiding recognition of instances of events and situations that partake of these essences. Someone who has some true belief about what justice is (as we all do) has the ability to recognize actions that are just and unjust. If his true belief becomes knowledge (through careful anamnesis), then this ability becomes the basis of an art that he can refine and exercise with greater certainty. An art of this sort helps to stabilize one’s judgment beyond the confusing influences of irrelevant desires and interests.
[2] Socrates attempts to get Euthyphro to recognize what he is doing in terms of a deeper understanding of piety. Elenchus is not a teaching method, but a rigorously honest kind of conversation. Any recollective recognition that may occur to Euthyphro must be his own experience; Socrates cannot tell him anything of importance. Euthyphro ends the dialogue in cowardice by claiming to be busy and running away. Meno’s paradox is really in force with Euthyphro; having no sense of what he doesn’t know, Euthyphro is closed to Socrates’ attempts to engage in a mutual search for recollective knowledge. Anything of real value that Euthyphro may learn, by and by, will come to him accidentally or by the beneficence of a god. His situation is universal in this respect: to the unprepared, the most profound language is merely sound, the most compelling situation, merely show. The wisdom of Socrates consists not in a mere passive acknowledgement of the fact of one’s ignorance, but in an urgent, practical sense of the need to recognize more profound aspects of one’s situation.