THE PLATONIC DOCTRINE OF RECOLLECTION AND THE INSIGHT MODEL OF TEACHING

This special subject essay was submitted to the University of Oxford Department of Educational Studies by Andrew William Panton, B.A. (in residence at Pembroke College) in June 1968 in part fulfilment of the course requirements leading to the award of the University's Diploma in Education.


The Platonic doctrine of "anamnesis" or Recollection has had a profound influence on the conception of the role of the teacher in educational thought. Originally formulated as a refutation of the empirical theory of knowledge proposed by the Sophists in the fifth century B.C., its implications range into metaphysics and epistemology. It is, however, its implications for education that will be considered in this paper. The function of the teacher in the educational process is dependent on our theories of how we learn. The doctrine of "anamnesis" was the way in which Plato explained the realisation of intellectual concepts in the human mind. However, before we consider it in detail, we ought to familiarise ourselves with the main aspects of Plato's theory of knowledge.

Plato began to develop his own doctrine at the point where his mentor, Socrates, had left him. Socrates had asserted that there was such a thing as moral goodness, that it was an objective standard, and that only by knowing it could men become truly good. He had not, however, attempted to define what sort of a thing goodness was. Plato's first task was to do this, and in doing so he was assisted by the Pythagorean theory of numbers: that there is an eternal reality transcending our senses, expressible only numerical terms. The doctrine at which he arrived by combining Pythagorean notions with Socrates' moral doctrine is known as the "Theory of Forms". For Plato there existed a world of eternal realities. "Forms" ("eide") entirely separate from the world our senses perceive, and knowable only by the pure intellect. They are the only objects of true knowledge, the unchanging realities which our mind perceives when it arrives at a true universal definition.

This theory enumerates two levels of reality. There is the world of visible and sensible things, the object of what Plato called "doxa" (opinion). This world is in some sense a shadow of the other, which contains the forms or patterns which it imitates. the other is the eternal and immutable world of the "forms", and, because for Plato the world perceived by our senses is in a perpetual Heacleitean flow of ever-changing appearances of which no real knowledge ("episteme") is possible, this thinking about the universal Forms is the only kind of thinking which attains truth.

But, if Plato's "Theory of Forms" was a true one, he was immediately faced with the problem of how we are to make philosophical progress. In the "Meno" this dilemma is stated thus:

"And how will you enquire, Socrates, into that which you do not know? What will you put forth as the subject of enquiry? And, if you find what you want, how will you ever know, that this is what you did not know?" (Meno 80, D. 5-8.)

Now, according to Plato, the definition of concepts like "goodness" and "virtue" could not be found by empirical means. If those thing are not in the physical world, they must come from the mind. Here Plato introduces his doctrine of "anamnesis"; knowledge is raised into consciousness by the process of Recollection. By an appeal to the authority of the poets, Plato asserts the immortality of the soul and the pre-existence of knowledge before this present life.

"The soul then as being immortal, and having been born again many times, and having seen all things that there are, whether in this world or in the world below, has knowledge of them all, and it is no wonder that it should be able to call to remembrance all that it ever knew about virtue, and about everything: for as the nature of all things is akin, and the soul has learned all things, there is no danger in her eliciting, or as men say, learning all out of a single recollection, if a man is strenuous and not fainthearted; for all enquiry and all learning is but recollection." (Meno 81, C.5-D.5.)

This is the classic enunciation of Plato's doctrine of "anamnesis". But what does he imply when he speaks of rediscovery through perseverance? What follows suggests that someone else is needed to put one on the right track, and we begin to conceive of the role which Plato assigns to the teacher. To demonstrate that we can have knowledge without formal teaching, Socrates conducts an experiment with one of Meno's slave-boys, from whom he elicits the solution of a somewhat difficult geometrical problem. Socrates' account of what he has done is that the slave-boy, though uninstructed, had within him all the right opinions. But, since they had to be elicited, he could not be said to have known them. Thus, it is possible to hold true opinions about things one does not have knowledge of. If, however, the slave-boy was put repeatedly through such demonstrations, his true opinions would become knowledge. By asking the right questions at the right times, Socrates has activated true beliefs in the slave-boy.

"Without anyone teaching him, he will recover his knowledge for himself if only he is asked questions. And this spontaneous recovery in him is recollection (anamnesis)." (Meno, 85 D.3-7.)

Since he could not have acquired his true opinions in his lifetime, the slave-boy must have known them before he was a man. Here, Socrates again asserts the immortality of the soul, the details and significance of which do not concern us here.

In the "Meno" Plato posits the theory of "anamnesis" to escape from the Sophistic dilemma of "either we know something, and then we do not need to look for it, or we do not know it, and then we cannot know what we are looking for". This dilemma seems to assume no alternative between complete knowledge and utter ignorance. "Anamnesis" provided for levels or degrees of knowledge between these extremes. Now, this contrast between latent knowledge and blank ignorance is a fact of personal experience. Socratic methods of questioning or dialectic, preceded by "elenchus" (refutation) and "aporia" (the recognition of a want of understanding by the learner), are aimed at raising such latent knowledge to the level of consciousness. This process was probably observed by Plato within his own mind, and to this extent his theory of "anamnesis" was empirical. But the existence of unconscious knowledge was the only answer to his bald dilemma. New ideas begin to appear in the back of the mind. Suddenly they take shape and burst forth like a sudden illumination - hence in the imagery of light in the Myth of the Cave in Book VII of the "Republic". But this experience could only be accounted for if mathematical and moral concepts are eternal objects of thought, to be known without the help of the sense apparatus. If knowledge of them does come from sense perception ("aesthesis"), then it is recalled from out of a memory always latent in the immortal soul.

Obviously, however, only knowledge of a certain sort had been recovered. Plato's attention was directed to the attainment of moral and mathematical truths, by which he sought to regulate human conduct. The essential feature of these objects was their eternal and immutable nature. This made them real in the highest sense. Facts that we learn by sensible experience, or are taught by various sources of information, he refuses to call true knowledge ("episteme"). For everything in the sensible world is in flux. Thus, knowledge is limited to the intellectual apprehension of moral and mathematical forms. This being so, it is at at once apparent that all knowledge is impersonal, and the contents of it are the same for all. The only difference is in the extent to which latent knowledge is available. Individual differences are thus explained in the Myth of Er at the end of the "Republic".

"And then towards evening they encamped by the River of Unmindfulness, whose waters no pitcher can hold. And all were compelled to drink a certain measure of its water, and those who were not saved by their good sense drank more than the measure." (Republic, 621 A.5-9.)

In the "Meno", Socrates asserts that all knowledge can be recovered. For "the nature of all things is akin", the structure of truth forms a single coherent system in which the parts are linked by logical necessity. Thus the recall of a single link in this chain of reality is enough to lead the mind on to all truth.

This doctrine of "Anamnesis", first alluded to by Plato in the "Meno", is reaffirmed and developed in the "Phaedo" and the "Phaedrus". However, in one of his later dialogues, the "Theaetetus", he appears to gainsay his theory. This is the passage where he compares the process of learning with the capturing of birds, followed by putting them into an aviary. (The purpose of these two similes is to distinguish between the possession of knowledge and having it ready to mind.) In this passage, Socrates says explicitly that the mind, described as an aviary, is empty at birth.

"When we are babies we must suppose this receptacle empty, and take the birds to stand for pieces of knowledge. Whenever a person acquires any piece of knowledge and shuts it up in his enclosure, we must say he has learnt or discovered the thing of which this is the knowledge, and that is what knowing means." (Theaetetus, 197.E)

Is this, in fact, a contradiction of the doctrine of "anamnesis"? On the surface, it would seem to be, but, if we look at the context of the passage, it is quite clearly nothing of the kind. The "Theaetetus" dialogue centres around the empiricist claim, put forward by Protagoras, and re-asserted by Theaetetus, that all knowledge comes from the external world of the senses, either directly or by the process of teaching as commonly conceived. Thus "anamnesis", because the concept assumes that we already know the answer to the question, "What is the nature of knowledge and of its objects - is not admissible in this dialogue. Plato is here working on the empiricist presupposition that the aviary is empty at birth - a "tabula rasa" - and then gradually filled with contents derived from perception and learning. But, of course, for Plato, such knowledge was not knowledge of reality (episteme), and it is probably deliberate that, while describing the recovery of latent knowledge, he employs the verb "analambanein" (to retrieve) rather than the verb "anamimnesco" (to recall from memory), from which his own word for recollection is derived.

It has been further argued that the doctrine of "anamnesis" has not been omitted because the the discussion is about matters of fact. For mathematical facts are included among the captured birds. Even so, the doctrine of "anamnesis" is in no way compromised by the simile, for, if Socrates means the the process of capturing birds to stand for consciously coming to know something, then we should expect the aviary to be empty at birth. The idea of "anamnesis" does not require us to possess any actual as opposed to potential knowledge before we are reminded of it. Such an interpretation is interesting but does not seem necessary to the argument. Theaetetus has stated that "knowledge is nothing but perception". (Theaetetus, 151.E), and from this point of view mathematics is similar to all other types of knowledge.

The doctrine of "anamnesis", then, is one of the corner-stones of Platonism, and we have no reason to think that Plato ever went back on it. He did, it is true, have some reservations, which he states in the "Meno" concerning the poetic account of the immortality of the soul, but not on the question of immortality itself. The soul's immortality, though not directly relevant to this paper, is an essential part of the theory of "anamnesis". If such, then, was Plato's account of the source of our knowledge, how does he view the role of the teacher in the educational process? To answer this, we must return once more to the "Theaetetus".

In this dialogue Socrates refers to his activities as those of an intellectual "midwife", and he assets that he seeks to deliver thoughts from the mind which are as yet imperfectly formulated:

"My art of midwifery is in general like theirs, the only difference being that my patients are men not women, and my concern is not with the body but with the soul that is in travail of birth. And the highest point of my art is the power to prove by every test whether the offspring of a young man's thought is a false phantom or instinct with life and truth."

(Theaetetus, 150.B-C.)

Thus the intellectual methods employed by Socrates in the Socratic dialogues are, for Plato, the blueprint of the methods to be adopted by the teacher. Although "anamnesis" is not mentioned by name in the "Theaetetus", that Plato linked it with his conception of the teacher as a "midwife" is made clear by the following extract:

"Those who frequent my company at first appear, some of them, quite unintelligent, but as we go further with our discussions, all who are favoured by heaven make progress at a rate that seems surprising to others as well as to themselves, although it is clear they have never learnt anything from me; the many admirable things they bring to birth have been discovered by themselves from within. But the delivery is heaven's work and mine".

(Theaetetus, 150.D)

In the "Republic", his great work on education, Plato criticises the the practices of the teachers of the day, that is, the Sophists, and then describes the role that the teacher should perform. Though his image of the "midwife" is a later product, it is clear that even when he wrote the "Republic" he was thinking along the same lines.

"We must reject the conception of education professed by those who say that they can put into the mind knowledge that was not there before - rather as if they could put sight into blind eyes .... But our argument indicates that this is a capacity which is innate in each man's mind, and that the faculty by which he learns is like an eye which cannot be turned from darkness to light unless the whole body is turned; in the same way the mind as a whole must be turned away from the world of change until its eye can bear to look straight at reality, and at the brightest of all realities, which is what we call the Good .... Then this business of turning the mind round might be made a subject of professional skill, which would effect the conversion as easily and effectively as possible. It would not be concerned to implant sight, but to ensure that someone who had it already was turned in the right direction and looking in the right way." (Republic 518, B-D.)

The tremendous imagery of light, peculiar to the "Republic", has by its suggestive power coloured the language of metaphysics ever since. But, before we consider the application of Plato's views on the role of the teacher, let us first examine them in a Christian setting. The great name that we associate with Christian Platonism is St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430 A.D.). Perhaps the most influential of all Christian writers outside the Bible, we know from his "Confessions" that he started on the road to his beliefs by reading certain "books of the Platonists" (Confessions 7.20.1). Here he refers to the works of Plotinus, the great Platonic interpreter of the third century A.D. From his philosophical writings it is clear that Augustine accepted many of Plato's theories, notably his conception of the two levels of reality. For the first ten years after his conversion to Christianity, Augustine was to make a conscious effort to attempt a synthesis between the system of the Greek master and the doctrines of the Church. Though he eventually despaired of achieving this, the influence of Platonism in his works continued. Perhaps the most important belief which he shared with Plato and Plotinus was the importance of moral rectitude. The points of difference between Plato and Augustine, though of fundamental importance in a religious sense, have less significance in the context of philosophy. These points were basically two: Augustine replaced the Good as the highest principle of the universe by God; and refused to accept the immortality of the soul. These differences, though of great significance in some respects, did not however cause his theory of education to differ very much from that of Plato.

This theory is outlined in the "De Magistro", one of the Saint's minor works. His thesis is that God is the ultimate cause and reason for the acquisition of truth by man, when he learns. Augustine begins his discussion by posing a dilemma, in many ways similar to that stated by Meno in Plato's dialogue of that name, although it is more specifically concerned with the agency of the teacher. The teacher is supposed to convey knowledge with words, but these words unless they represent realities known to the mind are meaningless. Hence the dilemma: if the pupil does not know the realities to which the teacher refers, the words used will be mere noises, while, if he already knows these realities, the teacher teaches him nothing he does not know. Thus, words cannot make us know physical realities unless we have previous experience of them through sense-perception. (Like Plato, Augustine would have considered that perception of the physical world was not knowledge in the true sense.) And words cannot make us see intelligible realities within the mind. To answer this problem, Plato had posited his theory of a transcendent world of "Forms", apprehended by the soul before birth, and capable of recovery during life. Augustine, while accepting the "Forms", held the source of their knowledge to be not a store of innate ideas acquired in a previous existence, but the power and wisdom of God.

This theory, although it uses Platonic imagery, is specifically Christian; as physical light is necessary to perceive corporeal realities, so the divine wisdom must illumine the human mind. The Scriptures were, of course, the main inspiration for his doctrine, particularly John's "true light that enlightens very man that cometh into the world" (John 1, v.9). This is Augustine's doctrine of the "Interior Teacher", to whom the title of the treatise refers, and which makes the immortality of the soul unnecessary. For Augustine this Interior Teacher is Christ: "One is your teacher Christ" (Matthew 23, v.10). Christ is a light, and the illumination he provides an explanation of the cause and the guarantee of the truth of our judgements.

"We ought .... to believe that the nature of the intellectual mind is so constituted that it sees these things, which by the disposition of the Creator are connected with intelligible realities in the rational order, just as the eye of the body sees the objects within its range in this physical light, a light to which it was created susceptible and properly suited."

(De Trinitate 12.15.24.)

Augustine's refutation of the immortal nature of the soul invalidates the doctrine of "anamnesis" as Plato used it. Yet, such was the suggestive power of this idea as an empirical account of the working of the mind, that in the "De Magistro" Augustine speaks of teaching as "reminding" and of learning as "recalling". In Book X of the "Confessions", he describes the complex workings of the mind. He likens the memory to a "belly" of the mind" (Confessions 10.14.21), in which are conserved the images of sense-perception later recalled. In Book X we also find that he applies the prompting technique of Socrates to the study of sensible objects.

"Why else, when they were spoken of, did I acknowledge them and say 'So it is; it is true', if they were not already in my memory, though yet so far off, and crowded so far back as it were into secret caves, that had they not been drawn out by the agency of some other person, I might never have been able to think of them." (Confessions 10.10.17.)

Furthermore, the objects of the intelligible world, which by contemplation and internal reflection we can come to know are also stored in the "memory". The soul is unaware of this, but these spiritual realities come to light through God's illumination from the memory, where they were latent. In fact, for Augustine the processes of learning, thinking and recalling were identical, as all came from the "Interior Teacher". He does not, of course, use "recollection" in the same sense as Plato. His "memory" is in some respects equivalent to the unconscious or sub-conscious mind. But Augustine is in complete agreement with Plato that knowledge of the intelligible world, the world of true reality, does not originate through the senses.

"Regarding, however, all those things which we understand, it is not a speaker who utters sounds exteriorly whom we consult, but it is truth that presides within, over the mind itself, though it may have been words that prompted us to make such consultation. And He, who is consulted, is said to "dwell in the inner man". He it is, Who teaches - Christ - that is "the unchangeable power of God and everlasting Wisdom." (De Magistro 11.38.)

As regards the role of the teacher, Augustine endorses the ideas put forward in the "Theaetetus" that the teacher is an intellectual or spiritual "midwife", whose task is to assist others to express their mental conceptions, then to to examine and criticise them, in order to see whether they reflect reality. The teacher's words prompt the pupil to search for truth, not already known to him. When he discovers realities, illuminated for him by internal vision, he acquires new knowledge for himself, though indirectly as a result of the coaxing of the teacher.

The logical validity of the doctrines described above is not relevant to the primary purpose of this paper, but the weaknesses of some of the ideas expressed is clearly apparent. For instance, if, as Augustine says, words are mere noises, how can they even serve to prompt? For, if they are not understood, they can never lead to a search for realities. To return to our primary purpose, however, it is appropriate to delineate briefly the philosophical model of the the teacher that has arisen from the doctrines discussed, and then to see how far such a model is relevant to to the actual situation of the educator.

The model of teaching which has emerged from the writings of Plato and Augustine has been referred to as the "insight model". Its main characteristic is that it denies the possibility of conveying pieces of information from one mind to another. The task of the teacher is to prompt and stimulate his pupils to realise for themselves the knowledge that is in their own minds. For, according to this model, knowledge is a matter of insight or internal vision.

Now, it seems clear that while this "insight model" contains much of value, it cannot relate satisfactorily to all the varying aspects of the teaching process. For instance, let us take us take the transmission of factual knowledge. Plato, considering this to be not a matter of real knowledge, very largely ignores the issue. Augustine, however, confronted by his paradox about the meanings of words, would seem to have extended the "insight" theory into this branch of teaching as well. But what he has done is to confuse knowledge with information, or words with sentences. we can understand sentences before becoming acquainted withe realities they signify. Thus, the teacher can, and does, inform his pupils of facts by using language. The "insight model" cannot cover all aspects of teaching. Any subject taught which demands the receipt of certain information cannot rely on internal vision alone.

To what subjects, then, is the insight theory appropriate? Socratic questioning, as demonstrated in the Platonic dialogues, is clearly suited to those forms of knowledge where progress is largely a matter of logic. In the school curriculum, geometry is the best example of such a subject. Here, the distinction made by Plato in the "Meno" between knowing and believing is quite clear. This "prompting" technique can of course be applied to other branches of knowledge, not associated with the Platonic curriculum. For instance, a history teacher might profitably elucidate from his pupils the interpretation of a particular set of historical events, the facts of which are familiar to them. The "teaching question" can be used to great advantage in many situations where the teacher wishes to tie together the elements of his pupils' experience into a particular cognitive pattern, and here it is clearly connected to the "Gestalt" theory of learning. The "teaching question" can, of course, be employed also in contexts not connected with insight - for instance the recapitulation of knowledge recently attained - but, where this questioning is Socratic in the true sense, it provides perhaps the greatest practical justification of the insight theory model.

It must, however, be recognised that the idea of insight as a general condition of knowing is inadequate. It is only applicable to situations where the truths we are dealing with are directly accessible to individual inspection. We cannot say that coming to know a proposition in the sciences or in history is an experience necessitating a vision of reality; it could be so in some cases, but in the vast majority of cases it will not be. The model does not make provision for the many aspects of principled deliberation which are usually central to the process of knowing. Such deliberation includes arguments, the weighing up of contrasting factors, and decision-making. Furthermore, the "insight model" of teaching is specifically concerned with the cognitive aspects of learning, to the exclusion of all else. Problems of character and the procedure to be adopted in the pursuit of knowledge play little part in it. Thus, it ignores both the principles of intellectual discipline and the function of character training in education.

While the shortcomings of the "insight model" of teaching are plain to see, the theories on which it is based are not therefore valueless. The realisation that words alone convey knowledge is fundamental to a sound teaching technique. For knowledge can never be simply the storing of new information given by the teacher. Both Plato and Augustine stress that knowing demands more than the receipt and acceptance of information. "Knowing" in the true sense requires the opportunity to assimilate information and to work it out for oneself, thus gaining assurance of its truth. The "insight model" stands as a warning to the teacher that teaching will always be more than the verbal transmission of information from teacher to pupils.

APPENDIX

In the writing of this paper reference has been made to the following books:

A) Sources.

Plato: "The Republic".

"The Meno".

"The Theaetetus".

Augustine: "The Teacher".

"Confessions".

"The Trinity".

B) Secondary works.

F.M.Cornford: "Plato's Theory of Knowledge".

"Principium Sapientiae".

I.M.Crombie: "An Examination of Plato's Doctrines".

"The Midwife's Apprentice".

H.W.B.Joseph: "Knowledge and the Good in Plato's Republic".

I.Scheffler: "Some Philosophical Models of Teaching" in the "The Concept of Education", edited by R.S. Peters.

June 1968.