The Necessity of Recollection in Plato's Meno and Derrida's Memoirs of the Blind

© 2013. Epoché, Volume 18, Issue 1 (Fall 2013). ISSN 1085-1968. 187–203DOI: 10.5840/epoche201318123

The Necessity of Recollection in Plato’s Meno and Derrida’s Memoirs of the Blind

JOSEPH ARELFlagstaff, Arizona

Abstract: In Memoirs of the Blind, Derrida not only makes repeated references to

anamnēsis in Plato’s texts, but writes the text in a way that follows from the discussions

found in Plato’s Meno. Focusing on the account of recollection given in Plato’s Meno

reveals a passive structure that is also found in Plato and Derrida’s use of hypothesis.

Following Derrida, these insights are applied to self-representation, which is revealed to

have a similar structure to the structure found in the logic of hypothesis and recollec-

tion. These texts provide an argument for the hypothetical nature of self-representation

and the limited knowledge one can claim to have of the self.

Do you not see, I said, that all beliefs without knowledge are bad, and the best of them blind? You would not deny that those who have any true notion without

intelligence are only like blind men who feel their way along the road? —Socrates (Republic, 506c)

Introduction

When I see a picture of myself, or my reflection in a mirror, I may say, “that’s me” and recognize “myself.” Of course, statements of identity are not limited

to photographs and mirrors. Anytime one says “I,” some notion of self-identity is invoked. We can view this recognition as a remembering, a recollection of who I was and am. An identity is made between the object of my perception and the self perceiving this object. The self that the object of perception is identified with is not only taken to be the perceiver, it is posited as the self that has always been there. Consequently, the self that is identified as “me,” by being identified with a self that was, is posited as belonging to the past.

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In Plato’s Meno, Socrates argues that learning is a process of recollection. In what follows, I will argue that, analogously, self-representation is necessarily a process of recollection. By this I mean that the sense we have of ourselves must be a presupposition that is remembered or taken back in. I will focus on the accounts of recollection given in Plato’s Meno and Jacques Derrida’s Memoirs of the Blind. The goal of this paper is to show how recollection is involved in self-identity and what this means for self-knowledge.

I will begin by reading the account of recollection given in Plato’s Meno. I will argue that what Meno’s slave accomplishes in recollection can only be done by focusing not on theoretical geometry, but on the conditions of his everyday experience. By orienting the slave in this way, he is in a better position to give an account of the soul’s “eternal knowledge.” I then focus on the passive nature of recollection, which reveals the externality internal to recollection and self-representation. The passive and external character of recollection helps one to understand how “eternal” knowledge is received, as beyond one’s self and one’s finite experience. I then move to Plato and Derrida’s discussions of hypothesis. Hypothesis is seen to be the only proper way to investigate something one does not know. Focusing on the logic of the hypothesis reveals a hypothetical structure involved in self-representation. I end with a discussion of belief and knowledge in Plato and Derrida, showing both to argue that when it comes to representation of the self, we are limited to belief, and claiming knowledge would be erroneous.

Recollection in Plato’s MenoIn Plato’s Meno, Socrates and Meno are discussing virtue. They are concerned with what virtue is and whether or not one could learn it. Socrates engages Meno in a dialogue, the result of which is that neither of them can say what virtue is. Nevertheless, says Socrates, he is interested in pursuing the question. This poses a problem for Meno, who asks: “On what lines will you look, Socrates, for a thing of whose nature you know nothing at all?” (Meno 80d).1 This is, of course, a question for any inquiry. If we already knew something, we would have no need to look for it; but if we really had no understanding of something, how could we begin to look for it? It seems we would not know where to begin looking.

Socrates resolves this apparent problem by stating that what we call learn-ing is really a process of recollection. He says we are never searching blindly for something because the knowledge is already there, in some sense, in our eternal soul. In order to show this, Socrates calls on a slave of Meno’s. Socrates proceeds to show that Meno’s slave can recollect how to double the area of a square. We can watch the slave following what Socrates puts forward, able to correctly answer every time. But what leads the slave to the correct answer? As Gulley has noted, recollection “provides the recognition that ‘this assumes that’ or ‘this follows

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from that.’”2 The slave was lead to recognize the correct answer because of his foreknowledge.

Although the slave is shown to have previous knowledge of the truths of ge-ometry, Socrates’s claim about previous knowledge does not extend to all types of knowledge. It is important to be clear as to what exactly the slave is recollecting. However compelling Socrates’s claim that “learning” geometry is really a process of recollection may be, the story would be shocking if we took Socrates to regard all knowledge as recollection. Certainly if Socrates were quizzing the slave on the history of Athens or the ages of the other members of the group, the slave would be unable to answer correctly. But what the slave is able to recollect is what the soul, which “has been born many times,” knows (81c).3

The soul extends beyond my finite life and is the holder of knowledge that is eternal. This eternal knowledge can be distinguished from arbitrary facts. Eternal knowledge would encompass what the soul would discover with infinite experience of the world. This type of knowledge is not tied to a particular time or individual; it is “eternal” and remains consistent throughout and across time. Arbitrary facts are contingent, finite manifestations of particular finite beings. The slave’s foreknowledge of geometrical shapes did not provide a recollection of his own idiosyncratic, finite experience, but rather of how space must be recognized objectively. Since relations in space are examples of eternal knowledge, how the slave is able to experience space, by recognizing what he knows to be true about it, will follow necessarily from the “memory” he has of it.

Undoubtedly, Socrates tells Meno that the soul is immortal and has been born many times, so Socrates could mean that we at one point learned this informa-tion in our previous lives and it remains with us today (Meno 81c). But what, as finite beings, is our epistemological access to this eternal knowledge or how we received it? From the standpoint of our finite experience, what is the relevance of calling this knowledge “eternal”? As eternal, this knowledge is outside of and before any finite experience we could have had of it. Accordingly, we could not be the original experiencers or learners of it. For us, this knowledge must be a priori. As Tarrant puts it, the slave’s soul, like everyone’s, is always in a “having learned” condition.4 Although we may not be certain of how we received this knowledge, what we can be sure of is that our “knowledge” of eternal knowledge is beyond our finite life or experience.

The slave’s previous “knowledge,” however, is not initially “knowledge.” Instead, what guides his recognition of the correct answers is mere opinion or belief, doxa, which can become knowledge if the recollection is done correctly. This process would be “learning.” Doxa will guide the slave’s recognition and determine the way he experiences the shapes of the square insofar as he is able to recognize the truth of the shapes. The slave experiences a certain result following a certain conclusion because of his pre-existing, implicit beliefs about geometry. He experi-

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ences the shapes Socrates draws in determinate ways because of his pre-existing understanding of space. Accordingly, this a priori knowledge will structure his experience of the geometrical shapes.5

As Kant, for example, argued, if I focus on my own experience, I know that for anything to be an object for me, I must experience it as spatial.6 Brown sees a similar argument at play in the Meno, and to show this he emphasizes the sig-nificance of Socrates directing Meno’s slave to the experience of an object, rather than to an abstract proof.7 During his questioning of the slave, Socrates says: “Tell me boy: here we have [hēmin] a square of four feet, have we not?” (84d). As Brown notes, this “hēmin,” focusing on what the object is “for us,” emphasizes that Socrates is concerned with the object of experience and not an ideal square detached from experience. As I know from experience, not only must objects be spatial for me, they must also follow certain spatial laws. The idea that the double of four feet will necessarily be eight is an example of such a law. The slave must recognize this because he already believes it experientially. What the slave recol-lects with the help of Socrates is “eternal knowledge,” in the sense of something that has always been with him and did not come from any given experience he had in his finite life. According to Socrates, when the slave is questioned he will and must recognize space in this way because of his pre-existing beliefs. Certainly if the slave explicitly experiences the square in this way under the questioning of Socrates, he has always implicitly experienced shapes in this way. The difference is that now these beliefs have been “stirred up” (85c). Thus what the slave does is recollect what had been presupposed throughout his life. He was guided by Socrates to see in a different way, to see something about his experience that he had never noticed before. The slave is learning about what had always structured his experience of space, a priori, as something he had always already done.

After the slave is able to double the size of a square correctly, Socrates asks Meno if he thinks the slave “knows” (oiden) what he has answered. Socrates does not say epistēmē to talk about knowledge here, but uses the verb “oida,” which comes from eidein—“to have seen.”8 Thus when Socrates asks if the slave has already seen the truth, they both conclude that he has only presupposed it. He had not seen (oida) the truth, but “he had in him these beliefs [doxai]” (85c). Until Socrates had stirred up these beliefs, the slave was not aware of them. Nevertheless, the slave had lived his life on the basis of them. He experienced spatial shapes within these tacitly understood doxai.

Although the slave only has beliefs even after having been lead to the truth by Socrates, he is still capable of gaining knowledge. Socrates says that if the slave were repeatedly asked these questions, he may be said to have knowledge. Accordingly, we may want to say that if this exercise is repeated with the slave, he will “see” the truth by gaining knowledge as oida. However, Socrates stops talking about knowledge as oida and refers to this new knowledge as epistēmē (85e).9

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The slave has always had beliefs about space, and he will never catch sight of the truth by having knowledge as oida; rather, only if he were repeatedly asked these questions could his mere beliefs become “epistemological” knowledge. According to Socrates, this knowledge differs from belief by its “binding” (98a). This binding, or desmos, is what holds it down (98a). The process of recollection is the binding of true belief into knowledge. This is done by accounting for why something is the way it is, instead of just seeing something to be the case.10 According to Socrates this binding is important because without it there would be no guarantee that we would consistently make the same correct decisions. Mere opinion can “run away and escape,” (98a) but knowledge is secured by its binding and will remain.

Spacing and Passivity in RecollectionIf knowledge only comes about by binding, then in the slave’s recognition of the truths of space he never had “knowledge”; rather, he had in him only beliefs (85c). This “recognition” takes place without and before knowledge. As Derrida writes in Memoirs of the Blind: The Self-Portrait and Other Ruins, “a blind man explores an area by feeling out an area that he must recognize without yet cog-nizing [reconnaître sans la connaître encore]” (MdA 12/4).11 We see the slave is able to recognize, and can eventually gain epistēmē of, the beliefs structuring his experience, but always afterwards in the binding of recollection or anamnēsis. If we concern ourselves with what we have access to from our experience, we know that this mnēsē or memory is not one that we could already have had, but is one that lies ahead of us as something to be recollected. The slave always had doxa, but through the binding of anamnēsis he can gain knowledge.

Further, in order to gain knowledge from his beliefs, the slave must realize that he does not have knowledge in advance. After the slave realizes he does not know what he initially asserted to know about the figure, Socrates and Meno agree that he is in a better position knowing he does not know than asserting to know when he does not (84b). The slave is better off realizing he does not have knowledge because otherwise he would not seek it. Socrates is thus pointing to a necessary precondition for searching for knowledge: we need to feel a lack of knowledge in order to look for it. In making this point, Socrates refers to the hand. He says that if the slave did not feel this lack of knowledge he would never have tried to put his hand on it (epikeiresai, 84c). We will later see the similarity between this and what Derrida will say concerning our recollection of ourselves. At this point we can say that the hand will only search for what it feels it lacks, and, as we have seen, it will be guided by recognition.

We can also note that in Plato’s text, with one exception, recollection only happens in the passive voice (anamimneskēisthai, anamnēsthēnai). In English when I say “I remember,” the grammar suggests I am actively doing something.

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But remembering is not simply something I actively do. If I wish to recall some-thing, I cannot simply produce the memory. Certainly, I can search for a memory, but I cannot make myself remember anything. I can only “set the stage” for the memory to occur. This is clear because very often the memory does not come. Although whenever I struggle to remember something I may try to search for it, I must wait for it to come. I must wait for it to affect me.

Derrida too moves from the active to the passive sense of recollection.12 He says that in the act of representation the draftsman is “prey” to memory (MdA 50/45). The draftsman “recalls it [Il se le rappelle]” or is “recalled by it [rappelé par lui]” (MdA 50/45). It is in this sense that recollection happens in the passive voice. Indeed, in Plato’s Meno, the only instance of the active voice comes in the form of an imperative (71d). Here Socrates, telling Meno his memory is not good, asks Meno to remind him (anamnēson oun me) what Gorgias said concerning virtue. Socrates asks to be affected by Meno’s memory. Thus, in Plato’s text, in recollection we are either affected by an other or we are affected by ourselves. Socrates asks “And is not this recovery of knowledge [epistemēmēn], in himself and by himself, recollection?” (85d). Recollection is thus in oneself, by oneself, and an affecting of oneself. Accordingly, recollection is auto-affection.

Plato also writes about recollection in the Phaedo. Here, Socrates and Sim-mias are discussing recollection. Socrates argues that we can recollect something from seeing something like or unlike. For example we can recall a person just by seeing their coat. Or “on seeing a picture of Simmias he can be reminded of Simmias himself ” (Phaedo, 74a).13 We can be reminded of, or recollect, ourselves upon seeing our own picture, our gegrammenon, the written or sketched expres-sion of ourselves. When we recollect something that is like something else, we are making reference to an equality between the two. If, upon seeing an etching of myself, I were to say, “That looks like me,” the word “that” makes reference to a “me” that is not “present,” but which I nevertheless take up as a recollection in my comparison of the representation to it. Socrates asks whether this equality is ever fulfilled in our experience of objects. He concludes that it is not and that when we see something we think: “This thing that I see aims at being like some other thing that exists, but falls short and is unable to be like that thing, but is inferior to it” (74e). Of course to see the inadequacy of an image we must posit some previous understanding of it. In making a comparison with an object of experience, we must have something with which we can compare it. This previ-ous knowledge Socrates refers to is proeidota, from eido, meaning “to have seen beforehand.” But we must ask when this “beforehand” was. If we compare this sense of “knowledge” to what Plato says in the Meno, we can say that what is “seen” beforehand is “eternal” and is for us never seen. It is rather a priori “knowledge” that structures our experience. There is thus a space pointed to between what we “have seen” and what we now “see” as the object of our experience.

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The Hypothetical Logic of Self-RepresentationIn the Meno, after Socrates and Meno agree that what we call “learning” is recollec-tion, they continue their discussion of how one can acquire virtue. Now that this has been established, Socrates asks to proceed by way of hypothesis. Since Socrates does not know what virtue is (ti esti) he cannot say what sort of thing it is (poion ti) if they continue their dialogue in the same way.14 Socrates and Meno conclude that they have no knowledge (ismen from oida) (86e) of virtue, and that they have not caught sight of virtue. Since neither of them knows or “has seen” what virtue is, and having taken into account the trouble of searching for something one does not know, hypothesis is seen as the most appropriate method of investigation. Hy-pothesis is found to be the best method for inquiring into that which we cannot see.

Derrida begins Memoirs of the Blind with two hypotheses concerning the self-portrait and makes a point to remind us that the text remains within the logic of the hypothesis (MdA 50/45). The first hypothesis is: “the drawing is blind, if not the draftsman or draftswoman” (MdA 10/2). We can picture a draftsman drawing a self-portrait. The draftsman cannot both look at and draw himself. He must move back and forth from the image to his representation, because when engaged in representing himself, he will only have access to a memory. The draftsman cannot be in the presence of the object when representing it; he must first lose sight of it. This means a condition for the possibility of presenting the image is blindness to it.

The second hypothesis proposes “a drawing of the blind is a drawing of the blind” (MdA 10/2). Portraits thematizing blindness are also a projection of the draftsman himself. Since the artist, having lost sight of himself at the moment of representation, is “blind,” a representation of the (blind) artist is a representation of blindness. We can see the interrelation between the two hypotheses. The first shows the blindness necessary to represent; the second shows the blindness of the representation, which, one could say, is the result of the first.

If we take seriously Derrida’s repeated reference to anamnēsis, can see that by beginning with the logic of hypothesis, Derrida is beginning with Socrates and Meno’s conclusion that learning is recollection.15 The hypothesis, Derrida explains, is a presupposition (MdA 10/2). However, the presupposition is not something that has already taken place, but is “always out ahead of me, as if sent out on reconnais-sance: two antennae or two scouts to orient my wanderings, to guide me as I feel my way” (MdA 9/2). We can immediately see the similarity with what has been said so far concerning inquiry into something we do not know, Meno’s paradox as it is called. The methodological presupposition lies ahead, in the future, in the form of anticipation. This “reconnaissance” (reconnaissance) is recognition (reconnaître). For Socrates and Meno as well, this was the best explanation for the slave’s ability to recollect. Meno’s slave was able to recognize the correct answers to Socrates’s questions because of the pre-existing doxai he had within him.

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Derrida uses the logic of hypothesis because he sees that it is the logic of experience. We generally do not see this. As Derrida writes, “One generally dissoci-ates conjecture from perception” (MdA 64/60). In analyzing the self-portraits of Fantin-Latour, Derrida wonders how we know to call the painting a “self-portrait.” Derrida considers a self-portrait of Fantin-Latour seen facing the spectator (MdA 63/59). He notes that we take it to be a portrait of the artist drawing himself. But why do we suppose this? The painting could be of Fantin-Latour drawing some-thing else. Nevertheless we imagine him facing a mirror and drawing himself. There is something outside of this self-portrait that makes it a self-portrait: us. The painting can be a self-portrait only for the spectator who assumes the place of what would be the painter’s mirror (MdA 65/62). This is what Derrida calls the “hypothesis of sight,” that “there is no object, as such, without a supposed spectator” (MdA 66/63). Thus if I want to draw my own self-portrait, I have to assume the space occupied by the other. I must displace myself. This structural requirement displaces any simple representation of oneself to oneself. In other words, it complicates an immediate or pure auto-affection.

Discussing Van Leyde’s Christ Healing a Blind Man, Derrida notes that the blind man points out his own blindness, showing or affecting himself—“A silent auto-affection” (MdA 16/12). “He shows himself,” says Derrida, “but to the other” (MdA 16/12). For the blind man this “auto-affection” is not simply an affecting of oneself; its reason for being is the presence of an other. Derrida also notes that in Raymond La Fage’s Christ Healing a Blind Man, “the blind man touches Christ’s arm with his right hand, as if to accompany its movement” (MdA 16/9). By accompanying the other’s movement, the blind man shows the other’s role in his auto-affection. In Derrida’s argument for an “impure” auto-affection, we see that we only affect ourselves, and we can only see ourselves, by following the movement or taking the place of a hypothetical other.

It is in this way that I look into the mirror. I look, not to see myself “as I am,” as if this could have some independent meaning isolated from the outside, but to see how I would look to a spectator. We see that in order to take Fantin-Latour’s portrait as a self-portrait, we have to hypothesize, always with conjecture, and take the place of a hypothetical mirror. This is also how experience of oneself must occur. If I want to understand myself, to see who I am, I must take myself as an object. But an object requires a spectator. Thus I must take the place of a hypothetical other that would see me in order to see myself. Hypothesis is literally a “placing under,” or, in the case of Derrida, a placing ahead, out in front as an anticipation. Thus Derrida is pointing to a hupo-thesis that precedes any hupo-keimenon (“underlying subject”).16

I can only achieve self-reflection if I presuppose, and take the place of, an other that could be directed at me. In Derrida’s hypothesis of sight, self-reflection both requires a presupposition and erases this presupposition, making it invis-

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ible to us. This is because self-reflection presupposes the self to be reflected. Our presupposition remains out of sight. Derrida also argues that the hypothetical spectator is essential to seeing the self-portrait as a self-portrait. It thus follows that what we call the “spectator,” the one simply looking at the painting from the “outside,” is an essential part of the self-portrait.

We have already seen two blind spots in the necessary hypotheses with which Derrida begins Memoirs of the Blind. We saw that there must be blindness both of the self-portraitist to himself and of the portrait to the artist it represents. Derrida names these two blind spots the transcendental and the sacrificial. The transcendental blindness was anticipated in the first hypothesis. This is the act of drawing itself, “the invisible condition of the possibility of drawing” (MdA 46/41). This condition remains “out of sight” and could never be drawn or represented because it provides the structure for representation.

Yet, we may ask what relevance the blind condition of painting has to us. If this self-representation is blind, why should we engage in it? Fichte has shown the necessity of self-identity for experience. To experience any object as identical, says Fichte, we need to posit, to set up in advance, a self-identical “I.”17 In order to say that an object is the same as itself, we need to presuppose a self that is the same in both instances. If the one judging were different in each experience of an object, one could not compare two things. One could not judge two things to be the same or different, because to make a judgement one has to have both things together in one judging self. This is simply a transcendental condition for all experience.18 Our experience relies on the identity of things in the world. It follows that the “I” presupposed in experience is essential to experience. Derrida does not take his discussion of blindness in painting to display any exceptional experience. As Derrida says, his view of the self-portrait relates to anyone who says “mine” (MdA 119/117).19 He argues that the self-portrait is a transcendental necessity; neverthe-less, we know that it will always be blind. As Derrida writes, “The transcendental retrait or withdrawal at once calls for and forbids the self-portrait” (MdA 61/57).

The transcendental blindness calls for the self-portrait because it needs it, as Fichte has shown, in order for there to be a self or experience.20 We need to hypothesize a self. We put this hypothetical self ahead of us, as Derrida says, on reconnaissance. As he is writing about blindness, Derrida maintains the image of a blind man “seeing with his hands.” These hands are outstretched because of a need, because of something they lack. As Socrates said earlier of Meno’s slave, he would never have tried to put his hand on (epikeiresai) knowledge unless he felt that he lacked knowledge. Accordingly, if the blind man did not feel a lack of knowledge of what lies ahead, he would never put out his hand. If he never puts out his hand, he will never find knowledge. Further, this outstretched hand is hy-pothesizing the coming presence of an object. He must believe there is something to be found. This belief guides his hand, his seeing, by recognition.

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The sacrificial blindness, on the other hand, is “that which comes to or meets the eyes” (MdA 46/ 41). Derrida’s “sacrificial” is the self that is represented, the necessary presupposition of experience. This image is a sacrifice because, as we saw with the scene of self-portraiture, we must sacrifice the presence of the intended object in order to represent it. The sacrifice made is a loss necessary for there to be a self. Knowing this, we can see that the image we are left with is consequently an image of the sacrificial loss.

If I wish to express myself, I must externalize myself. I must speak in language; I must express myself in some universal medium. This necessary externalization of myself is a distance or spacing between the “that” and the “me” whenever I say “that’s me.” In order to recognize myself, I must leave myself. As we have seen with a mirror, in order to represent myself I must leave “my” position and take the place of a hypothetical other. It is only then that I can say, “Yes, that’s who I am.” This external medium, the hypothetical other, will both make possible self-representation and also distance the “that” from the “me.” As Derrida writes, it will “both animate and veil it” (MdA 109/106). This is the logic of Derrida’s sacrificial economy. As Derrida says, “there is always recompense for ruin . . . a hypothec of the eyes and a premium upon blindness” (MdA 111/109). Thus our hypotheses and the slave’s doxai are an investment in the future, a future that must come in order for there to be experience. What comes as the payoff of our investment, this “hypothec,” is recollected as a memory that is posited as always having been there.

As Fichte showed, behind our experience of anything is a tacit belief in, or an enactment of, the self. Like Meno’s slave, we must be working with some belief, some doxa about the way things are. It is belief that structures our experience of objects. As Derrida will continue to show in the sacrificial blindness, the self that is identical to itself, the “that” in “that’s me,” will always come about from blindness, but a blindness that is guided by belief. Socrates says in the Republic, “all beliefs without knowledge [aneu epistēmēs doxas] are bad, and the best of them blind” (506c).21 If we read this with what Socrates says in the Meno, we see that the slave’s beliefs are not only what will be recollected as memory, but they are also blind.

Believing Self-RepresentationThe necessity of belief is central for Derrida. He begins Memoirs of the Blind by asking (himself) “Do you believe?” In the Meno as well, we see that belief is seen as a necessary precondition for knowledge and experience. The slave was guided by his beliefs. He proceeded to “learn” geometry blindly from them. Yet, he must be led by a presupposition that something will come of his belief in order to begin. Socrates also sees that this belief in something to come, a trust in the payoff of the “hypothec,” is necessary. Socrates cites a “belief in the duty of inquiring after what we do not know” as what makes possible his search (86b). He says he will inquire,

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but only after putting his “trust in its truth” (81e). The slave only has belief and is blind to what will come of Socrates’s questions. Yet, he can be certain of his answers because they follow from his pre-existing doxai. He is, as Derrida writes, “at once groping and sure” (MdA 109/106). The blind man’s hand reaches in a similar way. He must put out his hand gropingly, in anticipation; but he is also guided by the belief in something to come and thus sure his hand will encounter something.

As we saw in the Meno, belief leads to recognition. Socrates and Meno agree that the slave is not learning because learning is really recollection. The slave is guided by his pre-existing doxai to the recollection. These doxai, of course, are not yet knowledge, but if they are bound, they will become knowledge. Derrida too shows a central role for recognition, as well as a distinction between recognition and knowledge. We have already seen that for Derrida the necessary hypothesis is sent out on reconnaissance, sent out to recognize. What guides us, writes Derrida, “is the respectful observance of a commandment, the acknowledgement before knowledge [la reconnaissance avant la connaissance]” (MdA35/29). Derrida re-peatedly invokes the metaphor of the blind man reaching his arms out, “seeing” with his hands. Looking at the Della Scoltura Si, Della Pittura No, a drawing of a blind man touching a bust of a woman, Derrida notes that the blind man “rec-ognizes with his right hand” (MdA 47/43). We see this as well in a discussion of Isaac Blessing Jacob by Francesco Primaticcio. Isaac intended to bless his eldest son, Esau, but was deceived by Jacob. Rebekah instructed him to deceive his father, although Jacob was uncertain this would work since his brother was hairy and he was not. In order to deceive them, Rebekah puts animal skin on Jacob, so that he would be recognized as his brother Esau.22 In Isaac’s blessing, it is the hand that guides him with recognition. Isaac gives his son his blessing although there was a conflict between his speech and hands. The voice of Esau is not recognized, but “he believes he recognizes by touch” (MdA 100/98). Here we also see the belief behind recognition, or, just as much, coming after it. In the end, the blind Isaac follows the recognition his hands provide.

The “I” that Fichte showed to be presupposed, will, when seen, be taken up as a recollection, as a memory of its blind author. Whenever I say “mine,” “I,” or “that’s me,” I am recollecting an “I” necessary for experience. This is an anticipation that, as Derrida writes, “responds in advance” (MdA 100/97). We must respond to the need for a self-portrait in advance. If this did not happen, we would not be. Further, when the recognition of the “I” occurs, it comes in the form of a memory. The “I” is both enacted in advance, so that an experience may be mine, and also remembered as the “I” that was always there.

Yet in the arrival of the presentation of the self and in Derrida’s sacrificial, “originary, pathbreaking moment,” we see more in recollection than just a recov-ery of what was always there. Within anamnesis, there is “amnesia, the orphan of memory” (MdA 56/51).23 Socrates points to this as well in the Republic. In Book

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VI, Glaucon is asking Socrates to share his belief of what “the good is.” Socrates responds by saying that if he were to assert something as true without knowing it, it would be as though they were being led by the blind. Socrates tells Glaucon that beliefs are, at best, blind (506c). Thus, we must also pay attention to the distance between what is presupposed in the recollection and the original moment in what is “learned.”24 If we take into account the “external” reflection Derrida found internal to self-reflection, the “hypothesis of sight,” we can locate the amnesia in anamnēsis. We saw the distance that must be taken in any representation of oneself. It is in this sense that the sacrificial element, the distance between the “that” and the “me” when identifying one’s self by claiming “that’s me” will always be “pathbreaking” and “new.” We also see the blindness of memory when we note the passive sense of recollection in Plato’s text. Plato’s text speaks to the passiv-ity of recollection. We see that we are acted upon by memory. This passivity in Plato’s text leaves open the possibility for the layer Derrida “adds” to Plato’s story. If we take learning to be a reception of knowledge whereby one is affected from without, this new form of recollection, the passive and “pathbreaking” recollec-tion, is structurally similar to learning. In other words, since our presupposing of ourselves is set out in front of us as something to be recollected, the memory we recollect has a newness that challenges the distinction between learning and recollection. The “memory” of the self we presuppose is not yet past, yet it will have been something we remember as past, as who we “always were.” What we have until now called “recollection,” a re-presentation of myself, is just as much learning. It cannot simply be recollection because, as we saw in the Phaedo, the memory that comes is never as expected. It never measures up to our intention. This is the aporetic structure of self-representation Derrida brings out: we cannot decide whether the “I” that arrives is something learned and new, or has been there all along, because it is a memory that lies ahead, to be recollected.

Memoirs of the Blind is not written in the style of typical philosophical argumentation. Yet, we do get a concise conclusion in the last line of the book. When asked again the question that began the book, “Do you believe?,” Derrida responds: “I don’t know, one has to believe” (MdA 130/129). Two things are here of note for us. First, Derrida does not say “I have to believe.” Rather, he uses the generic “one,” il faut. By making the subject generic, he is stating that belief is a necessary condition for the experience of one’s self, for all of “us.” As we saw earlier, this relates to anyone who says “mine” (MdA 119/117). Of course, the il faut, “it is necessary,” is much like “une faute,” “a fault,” or a “necessary lack.”25 Our necessary belief, says Derrida, will be a fault, an error. Also, in the final line Derrida distinguishes between knowledge and belief. He writes that belief is a necessary condition for our experience of ourselves, but that he does not know. But why does he not know? What would be erroneous about knowledge?

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In the Meno we saw a distinction between knowledge and belief. It was belief, doxa, that guided the slave’s recognition and recollection. The slave’s doxa could become knowledge if it were bound (desmos) (98a). As we have seen in Plato and Derrida, the self is never fully bound but always comes as a “learned recollection.” In Book VII of Plato’s Republic, we read Socrates’s “Allegory of the Cave.” We are to imagine people “with their necks and legs fettered [desmois],” unable to turn “be-cause their bonds [desmou] prevent them from turning their heads around” (514b). These people are referred to as “desmotas atopous,” “strange prisoners” (515a). We might then ask, what would claiming “knowledge” of ourselves do to us? It seems this bonding of the “I,” of what I call “me” or “myself,” could make one a prisoner.

In Memoirs of the Blind Derrida too speaks of prisons. He speaks of blindness as a prison, the “eyes walled up” (MdA 45/40). This blindness closes oneself off in isolation. One is abandoned into an “interior prison . . . behind the walls of the eye” (MdA 45/40). Yet Derrida does not see this as the final step of blindness. He moves away from this prison, writing, “But the abyss of isolation can also remain liquid, like the substance of the eye” (MdA 46/40). He contrasts the “hard walls” of a prison with the fluidity of tears. Similarly, we can contrast the rigidly bound knowledge of the self with the fluidity of “mere doxa.”

Looking at the Allegory of the cave, Derrida sees a blindness that is neither of the sensible nor of the intelligible. He points to a further imprisoned condition: “the one who closes his eyes to this blindness—right here” (MdA 59/55). The escape from this further prison would be found in the tears of the eyes. Our condition, our “specular isolation” writes Derrida, “thus calls for the insularity of the image, or even to reflect the ‘abandonment’ of the blind man and the mourning solitude, the image of the island” (MdA 46/40-41). Thus, reflecting on our blindness, mourning the necessary loss or ruin of self-identity, will prevent this further prison from being walled. Now that we see what is involved in recollection we can follow Derrida in his reading of the Platonic cave. He writes, “For if we left the Platonic cave a while back, it was not in order finally to see the eidos of the thing itself after a conversion, anabasis, or anamnesis” (MdA 59/55). We saw earlier that Meno’s slave had never seen (oida) the truth, but was guided by his beliefs. Plato’s prisoner, on the other hand, can make the mistake of believing it has seen the truth and be bound by this knowledge.

Knowledge is opposed to belief as truth is to error. Thus if we do not want to imprison the self in an erroneous claim to knowledge, the truer image of the self would be Antoine Coypel’s The Error (MdA 20/14). Here we see an image of a man blindfolded, guided by outstretched hands. This is not a person basking in the light of his self-knowledge, but rather of someone, “both groping and sure,” guided by the necessary doxa that there must be a self-portrait, and that it must be a ruin.

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Notes

1. Plato, Meno, 165.

2. Norman Gulley, “Plato’s Theory of Recollection,” 195.

3. Brian Calvert, in “Meno’s Paradox Reconsidered,” argues that Meno’s paradox involves more than what I call “eternal knowledge,” and so Socrates fails to adequately respond to the paradox. I follow Bluck, who argues that learning is here referring to a priori knowledge and not contingent particulars. See R. S. Bluck, Plato’s Meno. Calvert cites Socrates’s example of a man knowing his way to Larisa at 97a to show a case unaccounted for. I follow Bedu-Addo, who stresses the importance of the distinction between gignoskein and eidenai. See J. T. Bedu-Addo, “Sense-Experience and Recol-lection in Plato’s Meno,” 231.

4. Harold Tarrant, Recollecting Plato’s Meno, 43.

5. In Plato’s Theory of Ideas, David Ross takes the slave’s discovery to be a “purely empiri-cal one” (18). In “Anamnesis in the Meno,” Gregory Vlastos calls this the empirical reading to which he opposes another, should we say “rational” reading, inserting mathematics instead of geometry so we could eliminate the senses. I would argue that calling this an empirical reading would be just as necessary as calling Kant an empiricist. This seems to repeat the debate between “rationalists” and “empiricists” which Kant inherited and can be said to have answered in the introduction to his Critique of Pure Reason when he says, “But although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it all arises out of experience” (B1). Although I agree that the slave’s discovery is not a purely empirical one, Vlastos opposes Ross’s claim too simply and ends up claiming that the text shows a “denial that sense-experience can, or need, provide the slightest evidence,” later claiming that what he now sees as deductive knowledge is “freed completely from evidential dependence on sense-experience.” Vlastos, “Anamnesis in the Meno,” 100. Instead I would follow J. T. Bedu-Addo, who shows that sense-experience is important to recollection. See “Bedu-Addo, Sense-Experience and Recollection in Plato’s Meno,” 228–48.

6. As Kant says in the Critique of Pure Reason, in order to have an experience of an object, “the representation of space must be presupposed.” Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernuft, B 38.

7. Malcolm Brown, “Plato Disapproves of the Slave-boy’s Answer,” 66.

8. Liddell and Scott, An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

9. This is the first reference to epistēmē in the dialogue. At this point the discussion of knowledge switches from oida to epistēmē.

10. John Gould argues that the aitias logismos accomplishes elevating the object of our cognition from particulars to “Forms.” Whether or not self-representation is a form and how we might grasp it is not of concern here. For discussion, see The Develop-ment of Plato’s Ethics or Gulley’s “Plato’s Theory of Recollection.”

11. Derrida, Mémoires d’aveugle. In-text citations are given as (MdA French/English).

12. My main concern here is with Derrida’s obvious correction of the active sense of rappeler with the passive. Of course we should not take Derrida to simply prefer the

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passive sense. The auto-affection involved here is more than a mixture of activity and passivity, more than a pairing of opposites. This auto-affection of memory is better captured by the middle voice. See, for example, Llewelyn, Derrida on the Threshold of Sense, 90–4.

13. Plato, Phaedo, 30.

14. For a discussion of this change in the dialogue, see Brown, “Plato Disapproves”; Bedu-Addo, “Recollection and the Argument ‘from a Hypothesis’ in Plato’s Meno”; González, Dialectic and Dialogue, 174. Brown argues that this change in the dialogue indicates Socrates is now questioning improperly since earlier (71b) Socrates seems to indicate that if we do not know what a thing is we cannot inquire into its nature. Bedu-Addo rightly sees this shift as less drastic since Meno is only asked to relax his authority slightly (86d). Instead, we should attend to Socrates’s use of gignoskein, which helps Socrates and Meno “orient their wanderings” as Derrida will write (MdA 9/2).

15. On this beginning, see Michael Naas’s Taking on the Tradition, where he writes that Derrida always begins “within” the tradition, in order to then “introduce an almost imperceptible displacement within our traditional terms and concepts” (Naas, Taking on the Tradition, 21).

16. The Greek hupokeimenon, “that which lies underneath,” is the underlying substratum of a thing (Liddell and Scott, An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon).

17. Fichte, Fichte’s Werke, 94. Heath and Lachs, The Science of Knowledge, 97.

18. For further discussion see Russon, “The Self as Resolution,” , 91–4.

19. This also follows the “ordinary interpretation” as laid out by Lee Franklin. See “Recol-lection and Philosophical Reflection in Plato’s Phaedo,” 289–314. See also Michael Morgan, “Sense-Perception and Recollection in the Phaedo.”

20. We see this in Of Grammatology as well when Derrida writes, “Auto-affection is a universal structure of experience” (Derrida, De la grammatologie, 236). Spivak, Of Grammatology, 165. See also Rodolphe Gasché, The Tain of the Mirror, 231–4.

21. Plato, Plato’s Republic. Translated by G. M. A. Grube and C. D. C. Reeve in Plato: Complete Works.

22. See Genesis, chapter 27.

23. We can already see Derrida beginning his discussion of anamnesis in “Plato’s Phar-macy,” where he distinguishes between mnēmē and hypomnēsis. Both the amnesia of the mnēsē, and the mnēsē of amnesia are present in this text. As Derrida writes referring to this distinction, “On both sides of the line, it is a question of repetition” (Derrida, La Dissémination, 126; Johnson, Dissemination, 111).

24. Here I depart from a number of scholars who would argue that Plato simply shows that nothing can be learned. For example, see A. Koyré, Discovering Plato, 10.

25. See Leonard Lawlor’s The Implications of Immanence, 5–6, 32.

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