Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy

Volume 18, Issue 1, Fall 2013

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

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 recollection. These texts provide an argument for the hypothetical nature of self-representation and the limited knowledge one can claim to have of the self.