Anamnesis — Recollection of Eternal Knowledge

Anamnesis is the Platonic doctrine that all learning (mathesis) is recollection of knowledge the psyche possessed before incarnation. In the Meno (81c-86b), Socrates demonstrates this by leading an uneducated slave boy through geometric proof using only questions — eliciting knowledge the boy could not have acquired in his present life. The Phaedrus (249b-c) extends the doctrine cosmologically: the soul, in its pre-incarnate flight with the gods, glimpsed the hyperouranian realm of the Forms, and earthly experience of beauty or justice triggers remembrance of those eternal originals. Anamnesis presupposes the immortality and transmigration of the soul, doctrines Plato shares with the Orphic-Pythagorean tradition.