Reminiscence
The reminiscence of the heart (of Latin reminisci , “to remember”) is a theory which one owes with Plato. This one has for principal function to raise the objection according to which the heart would not be immortal.
Presentation
It gives to the man a capacity of access to understandable realities which does not owe anything with the significant experiment. It is mainly in the Ménon that it exposes this theory as well as possible, thanks to which one can uncover a Sophisme in the idea according to which one cannot seek what one does not know simply “because one does not even know what one must seek”, i.e.: the man could not seek what he is unaware of, since he is unaware of then what he must seek, nor what he knows, since under no circumstances would it seek what he knows already. Consequently, it is necessary that, some share, we already knew what we seek; it is not then any more a question of only knowing, but especially to remember.
Thus, the reminiscence is there to restore two contradictions: how can the human being, whose spirit has only the directions of the body to provide understandable matter, have an intimate, perfect and objective knowledge of reality, since it is subjected to know only by the means of its perceptions, and that these perceptions are to in no case the same things only their respective objects? And how the desire of knowledge can have for object a thing of which it does not have the least idea, since lack what it seeks it cannot know what it is?
This theory affirms that the heart, before being born, knew all, but that at the time of its incarnation she forgot all. The work of knowledge is then that of recognition. The object of a knowledge is certainly caused by the directions, but its real appearance within the heart comes from its reminiscence; of its memory. The directions are not whereas tools which help the heart to be confined of its lapses of memory. This method, that Socrate calls the method Maïeutique (art of the childbirth), makes it possible to make “be confined” with any man a knowledge which he believed to be unaware of, simply by asking him questions (it will be noticed that he moves away only seldom from this method during the dialogs).
To prove it, Socrate, in the Ménon , will question a slave on a mathematical problem whereas this one is unaware of this science very. In the long term, this one will find almost itself, thanks to the acicular questions of Socrate, “how to find the double of a square of four feet, traced about the ground”.
The Platonic theory of the reminiscence will answer many questions: in particular with that of the idea of Innate, of Justice, the True , the Beautiful… and will induce the concept “of right opinion” which makes it possible some to have a correct design of the things without to have science of it.
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