Theaetetus I

One might characterize the textbook version of Plato’s theory of recollection to be something like this:  The soul is eternal.  Prior to entering our embodied state we had knowledge of the forms.  We forget these forms at birth.  Learning is the process of recollecting the truth we already know.  This recollecting happens when we see things for ourselves, possibly through the help of a teacher, or as Socrates presents himself, “the midwife,” and reason is what is responsible for our coming to truth.

I would like to point out that in this sketch of recollection, although I’m sure incomplete, Socrates can be, and I think has been, interpreted to mean that dialectical reason is the only thing we need to come to the truth.  I found it interesting, therefore, that in the opening pages of the Theaetetus we find several references to some kind of supernatural involvement in aiding this process of recollection.  Perhaps this is something like Augustinian “illumination.”

In two passages this is explicitly communicated:

“And yet it is clear that this is not due to anything they have learned from me; it is that they discover within themselves a multitude of beautiful things, which they bring forth into the light.  But it is I, with God’s help, who deliver them of this offspring.” (150d, italics added)

“So begin again, Theaetetus, and try to say what knowledge is.  And don’t on any account tell me that you can’t.  For if God is willing, and you play the man, you can.” (151d, italics added)

In a third passage, Socrates speaks of those who think their ideas were all their own and do not give proper credit to God’s willingness and Socrates’s help, leave Socrates sooner than they should and often miscarry. (150e)

Some of these people realize their folly and return to Socrates.  Socrates says,

               “When that happens, in some cases the divine sign that visits me forbids me to associate with them; in others, it permits me, and then they being again to make progress.”  (151a)

All three passages are found within a few paragraphs of each other and right at the start of the dialectic with Theaetetus; before the heavier argumentation begins.  Because of this repetition, it seems to me that we should not ignore the emphasis Plato is putting on divine help in giving birth to our ideas.  The fact that the divine sign prevents Socrates from continuing to work with some pupils could be symbolic of at least two things: (1) that God is the ultimate giver or withholder of knowledge and understanding, or (2) that the power of reason is not unbounded.  Maybe there is important role that God still plays in Plato’s epistemology that is too quickly dismissed by naturalistic interpretations.  I think this should also cause us to question those who want to draw a hard and fast line between philosophy and theology.  I suspect that modern thinkers – post Descartes – tend to project backwards, that knowledge must be something that we, as autonomous thinking things, must arrive at ourselves.  But this textual evidence should give us pause before we attribute such ideas to him.