Kant points out that thought happens in time. Time is the transcendental condition of thought. The movement of time passing lies at the base of all of our experiencing. When we realize this, Descartes' argument falls apart. We cannot take its two I's to each be self-identical through time -- they can no longer be simple instantaneous phenomena, but have to arise and pass away in time. And without two clear identities, their equation, the 'therefore', can't be sustained either.
But, Deleuze asks, haven't we heard this story before? Didn't Plato already link thinking to a movement in time when he told us that knowing the Forms was just remembering something we once knew but somehow forgot? After all, the movement of birth and re-birth, a continual metempsychosis that we only overcome through memory, is so important to Plato that he actually concludes The Republic with a myth describing the process.
Nevertheless, is it really Kant's prestigious contribution to have introduced time into thought as such? Platonic reminiscence would seem already to have implied this. Innateness is a myth, no less so than reminiscence, but it is a myth of instantaneity, which is why it suited Descartes. When Plato expressly opposes reminiscence and innateness, he means that the latter represents only the abstract image of knowledge, whereas the real movement of learning implies a distinction within the soul between a 'before' and an 'after'; in other words, it implies the introduction of a first time, in which we forget what we knew, since there is a second time in which we recover what we have forgotten.
[Aside: I really like the notion that innateness too is a myth. Anytime we are told that something is "innate" or "instinctual" or a "drive", we should be careful. Innateness explains nothing and itself needs to be explained. It is the first refuge of scoundrels. It's the concept people grab when they want to stop talking about how something actually came into being, and especially to stop discussing over what time scale it might change and inevitably go out of existence. In other words, it's a concept meant to limit the possibilities of something to an essential set of properties. Innateness mythologizes. It packs whatever you were trying to figure out into a mysterious black box marked 'essence' that doesn't allow for any development or change but just instantaneously appears out of nowhere.]
Plato's idea of knowledge involves the movement of learning, the transition from not-knowing to knowing, from before to after. Knowledge involves some change in our minds. I like this basic idea that to know you have to learn. If you think this idea doesn't really apply to something you know 'innately' or 'intuitively', something like your self-identity and existence as a thinker, you should try asking a 2 month old how they feel about the self-evidence of Descartes proposition, or even to recognize themselves in a mirror. But I was puzzled by the way Delueze then claims this requires a first time that we forgot so that we can move back to remembering it. Can't knowledge just arise as a brand new creation? As we learn, we move from not-knowing to knowing? Why would we think of that movement as 'remembering'?
Here, it helps to know the context for Plato's discussion of reminiscence versus innateness. Deleuze is making reference to Plato's Phaedo. The question there doesn't involve just any sort of knowledge, but specifically the knowledge of the Forms or essences like Equality, Beauty, Justice, Goodness, etc ... Naturally, since these Ideas are abstract, we cannot learn about them in the same way that we learn about sensory objects. We can't get to the notion of absolute equality simply by looking at lots of equal things. That concept goes beyond what can be given by the senses, just like Hume's causality, or any other notion that we'd like to see as a priori. If these Ideas are real, but can't be learned from experience, we might simply say that they are innate. We're born knowing them. But, then, most of us don't think anything about these Forms. If they are innate, why is it so rare for us to talk about them? Since nobody learns these things from experience we can't say that those people just haven't gotten there yet. Instead, it must be that most folks have simply forgotten the Forms, and those of us who do think about them must be remembering something that we too had forgotten. So the change that happens in our mind as we learn any concept that goes beyond what the senses can give us is a movement of recollection.
"Now then," said he, "do the equal pieces of wood and the equal things of which we were speaking just now affect us in this way: Do they seem to us to be equal as abstract equality is equal, or do they somehow fall short of being like abstract equality?"
"They fall very far short of it," said he.
"Do we agree, then, that when anyone on seeing a thing thinks, 'This thing that I see aims at being like some other thing that exists, but falls short and is unable to be like that thing, but is inferior to it', he who thinks thus must of necessity have previous knowledge of the thing which he says the other resembles but falls short of?"
"We must."
"Well then, is this just what happened to us with regard to the equal things and equality in the abstract?"
"It certainly is."
"Then we must have had knowledge of equality before the time when we first saw equal things and thought, 'All these things are aiming to be like equality but fall short.'"
"That is true."
"And we agree, also, that we have not gained knowledge of it, and that it is impossible to gain this knowledge, except by sight or touch or some other of the senses? I consider that all the senses are alike."
"Yes, Socrates, they are all alike, for the purposes of our argument."
"Then it is through the senses that we must learn that all sensible objects strive after absolute equality and fall short of it. Is that our view?"
"Yes."
"Then before we began to see or hear or use the other senses we must somewhere have gained a knowledge of abstract or absolute equality, if we were to compare with it the equals which we perceive by the senses, and see that all such things yearn to be like abstract equality but fall short of it."
"That follows necessarily from what we have said before, Socrates."
"And we saw and heard and had the other senses as soon as we were born?"
"Certainly."
"But, we say, we must have acquired a knowledge of equality before we had these senses?"
"Yes.
"Then it appears that we must have acquired it before we were born."
"It does."
"Now if we had acquired that knowledge before we were born, and were born with it, we knew before we were born and at the moment of birth not only the equal and the greater and the less, but all such abstractions? For our present argument is no more concerned with the equal than with absolute beauty and the absolute good and the just and the holy, and, in short, with all those things which we stamp with the seal of absolute in our dialectic process of questions and answers; so that we must necessarily have acquired knowledge of all these before our birth."
"That is true."
"And if after acquiring it we have not, in each case, forgotten it, we must always be born knowing these things, and must know them throughout our life; for to know is to have acquired knowledge and to have retained it without losing it, and the loss of knowledge is just what we mean when we speak of forgetting, is it not, Simmias?"
"Certainly, Socrates," said he.
"But, I suppose, if we acquired knowledge before we were born and lost it at birth, but afterwards by the use of our senses regained the knowledge which we had previously possessed, would not the process which we call learning really be recovering knowledge which is our own? And should we be right in calling this recollection?"
"Assuredly."
[76a-d referenced in Deleuze's footnote starts here]
"For we found that it is possible, on perceiving a thing by the sight or the hearing or any other sense, to call to mind from that perception another thing which had been forgotten, which was associated with the thing perceived, whether like it or unlike it; so that, as I said, one of two things is true, either we are all born knowing these things and know them all our lives, or afterwards, those who are said to learn merely remember, and learning would then be recollection."
"That is certainly true, Socrates."
"Which then do you choose, Simmias? Were we born with the knowledge, or do we recollect afterwards things of which we had acquired knowledge before our birth?"
"I cannot choose at this moment, Socrates."
"How about this question? You can choose and you have some opinion about it: When a man knows, can he give an account of what he knows or not?"
"Certainly he can, Socrates."
"And do you think that everybody can give an account of the matters about which we have just been talking?"
"I wish they might," said Simmias; "but on the contrary I fear that tomorrow, at this time, there will be no longer any man living who is able to do so properly." [Platonic LOL]
"Then, Simmias, you do not think all men know these things?"
"By no means."
"Then they recollect the things they once learned?"
"Necessarily."
"When did our souls acquire the knowledge of them? Surely not after we were born as human beings."
"Certainly not."
"Then previously."
"Yes."
"Then, Simmias, the souls existed previously, before they were in human form, apart from bodies, and they had intelligence."
"Unless, Socrates, we acquire these ideas at the moment of birth; for that time still remains."
"Very well, my friend. But at what other time do we lose them? For we are surely not born with them, as we just now agreed. Do we lose them at the moment when we receive them, or have you some other time to suggest?"
"None whatever, Socrates. I did not notice that I was talking nonsense."
"Then, Simmias," said he, "is this the state of the case? If, as we are always saying, the beautiful exists, and the good, and every essence of that kind, and if we refer all our sensations to these, which we find existed previously and are now ours, and compare our sensations with these, is it not a necessary inference that just as these abstractions exist, so our souls existed before we were born; and if these abstractions do not exist, our argument is of no force? Is this the case, and is it equally certain that provided these things exist our souls also existed before we were born, and that if these do not exist, neither did our souls?"
"Socrates, it seems to me that there is absolutely the same certainty, and our argument comes to the excellent conclusion that our soul existed before we were born, and that the essence of which you speak likewise exists. For there is nothing so clear to me as this, that all such things, the beautiful, the good, and all the others of which you were speaking just now, have a most real existence. And I think the proof is sufficient."
If you read this really carefully, you'll find an odd waffling about whether the senses or the knowledge of equality comes first. To see two concrete sense objects as equal we have to already have knowledge of the abstract idea of equality. But knowledge the abstract idea of equality can only be gained through the senses, precisely by examining the way that all sensory equalities fall short of this ideal. There seems to be some circular reasoning here.
"Then we must have had knowledge of equality before the time when we first saw equal things and thought, 'All these things are aiming to be like equality but fall short.'"
"That is true."
"And we agree, also, that we have not gained knowledge of it, and that it is impossible to gain this knowledge, except by sight or touch or some other of the senses? I consider that all the senses are alike."
"Yes, Socrates, they are all alike, for the purposes of our argument."
"Then it is through the senses that we must learn that all sensible objects strive after absolute equality and fall short of it. Is that our view?"
"Yes."
"Then before we began to see or hear or use the other senses we must somewhere have gained a knowledge of abstract or absolute equality, if we were to compare with it the equals which we perceive by the senses, and see that all such things yearn to be like abstract equality but fall short of it."
Plato's myth of reminiscence as metempsychosis neatly solves this dilemma. We did learn about the idea of Equality through our senses. In our past life. But then we've forgotten it in this life. However, we still already have this idea we've forgotten. In this life, we don't have to (and can't) learn about it through the senses. We just have to remember it, by waking up from the dream of our life, and realizing that we have one dream like this after another. In short, Plato's reasoning is circular because his whole conception of knowledge is circular, a fact we discovered back in the Difference chapter.
The more I think about it, the more I realize that a 'forgotten memory' is a very odd object, ontologically speaking. It is real but it doesn't exist exactly. This is the paradox of the pure past. It's also directly related to the Freudian idea of repression that we met all the way back in the introduction. Our forgotten memories are precisely our subconscious, that strange other that is inside us.
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