Abstract

There is an apparent conflict in Plato's epistemology. For Plato, knowledge, philosophy, and even learning have Forms as their objects. Full grasp of Forms is direct, akin to seeing, and we attain it through Recollection, interpreted as an act of intuitive insight. Forms are atomic, and our knowledge of them is correspondingly simple. But philosophical inquiry, or dialectic, is a process in which we reflect on the things we say. The necessary and sufficient condition for completing dialectic, and for knowledge, is the ability to provide a rational account: a complex expression that says, somehow, what a Form is. This suggests that knowledge is discursive, complex, and even holistic. In recent scholarship, interpreters have favored one side or another of this divide, without satisfactorily accounting for both. I provide a new interpretation according to which Plato's views form a unified theory of knowledge and learning. ;I show that the role of a rational account as a condition on knowledge is a result of the role of language in learning. I provide new interpretations of Platonic dialectic, and Plato's account of learning, the theory of Recollection. These interpretations show that human learning must take place through the development of our facility with language. Learning begins when we begin to think and speak ordinarily, and continues gradually through philosophical inquiry. Dialectic proceeds by reflection on and revision of the things we say, until we develop a coherent, explanatory theory. Anyone completing dialectic will necessarily develop the ability to provide a rational account. ;In dialectic, we study the way a Form appears in the sensible world. In the Philebus and Sophist Plato introduces a new relation, association, according to which Forms are characterized by their appearances together in complex sensible particulars. Our definitions and theories represent the associative relations between one Form and others. But associative relations are not constitutive of the Forms that enter into them. Thus, our definitions and theories do not represent the ontological structure of a Form. Instead, associative relations are the relations we must study in dialectic. Our definitions and theories represent the structure of learning