Socrates Recollection the Soul and Virtue

Phaedrus: The Soul and the Recollection of Virtue

Plato states that "a man must have intelligence of universals, and be able to proceed from the many particulars of sense to one conception of reason; -- this is the recollection of those things which our soul once saw while following God -- when regardless of that which we now call being she raised her head up towards the true being" (417-418). For Socrates, God is everything. He is All. He is Existence, Truth, Beauty, Wisdom, Virtue, Life, Reality. God is what Socrates calls "the true being" from which all knowledge and intelligence comes. Souls that have not seen God before do not "pass into the human form" -- for God does not place a "soul which has never seen the truth" into the body of a man (417). Thus, when a man recognizes truth on earth, he is simply recollecting in his soul what it has seen before -- namely that all things (the particulars) have one reason (or cause), which is God. The relationship between recollection and true knowledge of virtue is rooted in the fact that true knowledge of virtue is only acquired when the soul is with God. When the soul is in the body, it must remember this knowledge, or recollect it. This paper will sketch the image of the soul as it is depicted by Socrates and how it acquires knowledge of virtue by seeing the light of God, which it then must recollect when it enters into a human form.

"Intelligence of universals" as Socrates calls knowledge is what it means to be able to see the cause behind all the "many particulars" in the world (418). This knowledge is gained, moreover, only because our souls "once saw" them "while following God" -- meaning our souls were once companions of God, who is the cause of all things in life, because He is the creator of all and nothing created Him (God is eternal). Therefore, Socrates sketches an image of the soul that is eternal as well. It is the spiritual side of man that lives on after the human form dies. Man in his human form has knowledge of virtue because his soul has lived with God before it came to live in his human form. If man's soul had not been with God prior, man would be an animal, because his soul would have no intelligence -- it would not understand the principle of universals. The sense that Socrates gives is this: when the soul is with God, God teaches it through His light and infuses in the soul through His nearness with the knowledge of the principles of life that God has given to life.

According to Socrates true virtue exists by being in the light of God. It is nearness to God or having a sense of God. Virtue is the essence of God, as He has decreed that all things should be according to their nature, and so man, whose soul has been a companion of God, has a nature that it is meant to be ordered according to God's principles. So, if a man is acting according to the wisdom that is in his soul, since it has intelligence of the universals, which it received from being with God, then that man will be virtuous ipso facto. Yet, this virtue is scorned by the "vulgar" as Socrates calls them (418) because they see such living (devoting one's time to contemplating the divine order and reflecting on what is pleasing to God) as a sign of madness, when in reality it is a sign of a philosopher who, by "clinging in recollection to those things in which God abides, and in beholding which He is what He is," soars above the minds of those men who do not live in recollection -- or, in other words, who do not take heed of what their souls know (418). They treat their souls as though they had not spent any time with God before they took their human form. They act as though they had no more intelligence than the animals, whose souls have not seen God (which is apparent because animals have no sense of the universals or of truth).