Anamnesis
Plato's doctrine that the soul possesses innate knowledge from before birth, and that learning is really recollection.
The Meaning of Anamnesis
Anamnesis is Plato's theory that all learning is recollection. In the Meno, Socrates demonstrates this by leading an uneducated slave boy through a geometric proof using only questions — the boy arrives at the correct answer without being taught, suggesting the knowledge was already within him. Plato's explanation: the soul is immortal and has witnessed the Forms — perfect, eternal truths — before being born into a body. Birth causes forgetting (lethe), and education is the process of recovering what the soul already knows. This doctrine connects to the myth of Er at the end of the Republic, where souls choose their next lives and drink from the River Lethe before being reborn, forgetting everything. The rare philosopher is one who remembers. The opposite of anamnesis is amnesia — and these two Greek concepts, remembering and forgetting, frame the entire Platonic project of philosophy as recovery of lost knowledge.
Fun Fact
In Plato's Meno, an uneducated slave solves a geometry problem — proof, Plato claims, that learning is remembering.
Words We Inherited
English words and phrases that trace back to this myth. See our full guide to English words from Greek mythology.
Explore Further
Mnēmosynē
💭 conceptmythology, philosophy
Memory personified — Titaness, mother of the nine Muses, and the principle through which knowledge and identity persist across time and death.
Lēthē
💭 conceptmythology, philosophy
Forgetfulness or oblivion — the river or force of forgetting in the underworld, and the philosophical problem of how the soul loses or retains its knowledge.
Nous
💭 conceptPhilosophy and Mind
The Greek concept of pure intellect or mind, the highest faculty of the soul and the organizing principle of the cosmos.
Aletheia
💭 conceptTruth as unconcealment
The Greek concept of truth, meaning literally unconcealment — truth is what is revealed when hiding and forgetting are stripped away.
Psyche
💭 conceptThe breath-soul that animates and survives death
The Greek concept of the soul — originally meaning breath, it evolved to encompass mind, self, and the immortal essence.
Aporia
💭 conceptThe productive state of philosophical puzzlement
The state of intellectual impasse that Socrates deliberately induced — the recognition that you do not know what you thought you knew.
Metempsychosis
💭 conceptTransmigration of souls
Metempsychosis was the belief that souls transmigrate after death into new bodies — human or animal — central to Orphic and Pythagorean thought.
Neoplatonism
💭 conceptPhilosophy
A late antique philosophical system teaching that all reality emanates from a transcendent, ineffable One
Orphic Mysteries
💭 conceptreligion, afterlife
An initiatory religious tradition attributed to the mythical poet Orpheus, teaching reincarnation, ritual purity, and liberation of the soul through sacred texts and ascetic practices.
Pygmalion Effect
💭 conceptPsychology and education
A psychological phenomenon in which higher expectations lead to improved performance, named after the mythological sculptor whose statue came to life because he believed in her so completely
Pythagoreanism
💭 conceptPhilosophy
A philosophical and religious movement founded by Pythagoras centred on mathematics, harmony, and the soul
Hermeticism
💭 conceptPhilosophy
A syncretic philosophical and spiritual tradition attributed to the legendary sage Hermes Trismegistus