InThe City and Man, Leo Strauss famously asserts that Socrates’theory of ideas“is very hard to
understand; to begin with, it is utterly incredible, not to say that it appears to be fantastic,”and“no one
has succeeded in giving a satisfactory or clear account of this doctrine of ideas.”^1 Taking Strauss’scue,
I seek to provide clarity on the role of the ideas in Socratic dialectic by comparing the purpose of
Socratic questioning in Plato’sApologyto its purpose in Plato’sMeno.IntheApologySocratic ques-
tioning provides knowledge of ignorance. When we turn to the first part of theMeno,Socratic
questioning also provides knowledge of ignorance, but crucially by way of questions about the idea.
Socrates refutes Meno’s attempt to say what virtue is, not by critiquing the content of the definitions
provided but rather their form: they are particular examples of virtue and not the universal characteristic
or essential“nature”that all particular examples share. Socrates’refutation, therefore, proceeds through
questions about the idea of virtue that Meno cannot answer. Moreover, the idea here is not conceived of
as self-subsisting, or as existing separately from itsparticular manifestations, in the visible world.
The first epistemological function of the ideas, therefore, as illustrated in theMenois to facilitate
Socrates’refutation of his interlocutors; it is a technique or method that gives the interlocutor
knowledge of their own ignorance. However, the second epistemological function of the ideas is to
groundSocrates’theoryofrecollectionwhichinturnappearstogroundtheprocessofhumanlearning.
AfterSocratesrefuteshisvariousattemptstodefinevirtue,Menoasks:ifwedon’t knowwhat virtue is,
how can we know when we have found it? Although learning is necessary, it appears impossible.
Socrates responds that the soul knows and can recollect all things, having seen the ideas before birth.
Socrates’response, however, is problematic in two ways. First, it would seem as if the purpose of
Socratic questioning in theApologyand that in the second part of theMenoare irreconcilable. In the
Apology, Socrates first encounters persons who are ignorant but do not know this. His questioning
teaches them that they don’t know what they think they know, and in acquiring such knowledge of
ignorance they learn that“we are non-knowers who think we know.”In the second part of theMeno
the purpose of Socratic questioning is to allow his interlocutor to recollect the universal truths or
ideas that were in their soul but which they had forgotten. Socratic questioning, therefore, appears
as something more than mere technique or method to bring his interlocutors toaporia, but rather as
a pathway to discovery that the search for truth, in oneself, is possible. The second problem with
Socrates’theory of recollection is that it assumes the self-subsistence of the ideas.
Jacob Klein casts doubt on how seriously the theory of recollection in theMenoshould be taken,
claiming that the account of recollection and the soul which experiences it is presented by Socrates
as a myth and not an argument.^2 Yet, in arguing that the ideas are a crucial part of theMeno, I agree
with scholars such as Gregory Vlastos, Steven S. Tigner, and R.E. Allen. Vlastos, Tigner, and Allen
argue that in theMenoPlato is referring to the ideas or Forms as the objects of knowledge that are
recollected when one looks within the self to recall what the soul has seen separated from the body.^3
Focus, therefore, is shifted by these scholars from the theory of recollection to the theory of ideas or
Forms, recollection being a vehicle to arrive at the latter phenomena. Moreover, Vlastos argues that
knowledge of the ideas,“is freed completely from evidential dependence on sense-experience,”
frankie
(Frankie)
#1