Recollection
“anamnesis”
idea · 2 works · 2 mentions · 2 anchored passages
recollection · learning is recollection · to learn is to recollect
in the texts
Tusculan Disputations
The Platonic doctrine that learning is really the recollection of knowledge the soul possessed before entering the body.
So to learn is nothing else than to recollect.
This Plato will have to be a recollection of a former life.
but when it has collected and recovered itself, then it recognizes them by recollection.
Phaedo
The doctrine that learning is actually the recovery of knowledge the soul possessed before birth, used as an argument for the soul's pre-existence and immortality.
You are incredulous, are you not, how that which is called learning can be recollection?
And besides, Cebes rejoined, if it is true, Socrates, as you are fond of saying, that our learning is nothing else than recollection, then this would be an additional argument that we must necessarily have learned in some previous time what we now remember.