Socrates responds sympathetically by claiming,
I know what you want to say Meno [:::] that a man cannot search either for what he knows or
for what he does not know? He cannot search for what he knows–since he knows it, there is no
need to search–nor for what he does not know, for he does not know what to look for (80e).In the above exchange between Meno and Socrates, a number of conditions toward truth are
revealed. The first condition is that of the ignorant or the non-knowers. Non-knowers are complex,
however, as they can actually take two forms. The first form of the non-knower, that form which
Meno takes at the beginning of the dialog and is made more thematic in Socrates’account of his
interrogation of the politicians, poets, and artisans in Plato’sApology, are the ignorant who lack
knowledge of their ignorance (Apology, 21d, 22c, and 22d–e). If they remain unaware of their need
to learn, they will never begin the search for truth. The goal of Socratic questioning, as described in
theApologyand displayed in theMeno, is to give the questioned this crucial knowledge of
ignorance, a knowledge more likely to arouse hostility toward Socrates rather than love (see
Apology, 21d, 24b. Also seeMeno, 80b).
The second form of the non-knower, that to which Meno is brought after three failed attempts to
provide the idea of virtue, are those who know they are ignorant and hence need to learn the truth,
but fear that learning is impossible. For instance, if we do not know what virtue is before we begin,
how will we know or have confidence that we have found it in the end. The irony brought out by this
condition is that it seems you have to have knowledge of something before you can learn it. This
leads us to the third condition toward truth: the wise, or those who know. Knowers will not search
for truth because they already know it and learning, for them, is unnecessary.
The search for truth requires knowledge of ignorance. But even with knowledge of ignorance
how can we begin the search if we do not know what we are looking for? As Meno says,“How
will you aim for something you do not know at all? If you should meet with it, how will you know
that this is the thing that you did not know?”Human learning which seeks to grasp the truth
appears to be an impossible activity. To resolve this problem and keep the idea of the search for
truth alive, Socrates draws on or develops the theory of recollection.^11 Recounting what he says
he heard from (perhaps Pythagorean) priests and priestesses as well as poets such as Pindar,
Socrates speculates that:
The human soul is immortal; at times it comes to an end, which they call dying; at times it is
reborn, but it is never destroyed, and one must therefore live one’s life as piously as possible
[:::] 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; so it is in no way surprising that it can
recollect things it knew before, both about virtue, and other things. As the whole of nature is
akin, andthesoulhas learned everything, nothing preventsa man,after recalling one thing only–
a process men call learning, discovering everything else for himself, if he is brave and does not
tire of the search, for searching and learning are, as a whole, recollection (Meno,81b–e).By recollection Socrates appears to mean that the learner, when questioned in the right way,
remembers truths, such as the idea of virtue, they knew before but had forgotten. The questioner,
such as Socrates, does not therefore impart or give knowledge, but rather reminds the learner of the
knowledge in their souls that they had forgotten was there. Socratic questioning, it seems, is thus not
merely a technique or method to induceaporia, but is transformative or is a pathway, as it were, to
the discovery of truth within oneself. Moreover, learners, it appears, do have knowledge of the truth
they are looking for before they“learn”it, as it were.
In drawing on the theory of recollection to resolve the problem of learning, Socrates also suggests
the immortality of the soul. In the above passage, Socrates speculates that upon death the soul
Skepticism and Recollection in Socrates 53