18 October 2005

Coming to Know

How will you look for it, Socrates, when you do not know at all what it is? How will you aim to search 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?
I know what you want to say, Meno. Do you realize what a debater's argument you are bringing up, 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. (Meno 80d-e)
Now, compare:
Do you realize what a debater's argument you are bringing up, that a thing cannot come from either what exists or what does not exist. It cannot come from what exists--since that exists already, there is no need for it to come into being--nor from what does not exist, since there is no reason it should come from that rather than anything else.
The arguments are isomorphic. Plato solves the first with the theory of recollection of forms: no knowledge truly comes to exist, since it always was; it is merely recollected. Does he solve the second, Parmenides' problem, in a similar way? (Can't we say so? Are you sure the Timaeus cannot be understood in that way?)

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