The seventeenth century has often been seen as the hey-day of innatism, and not without reason. We have already introduced some of the dramatis personae in chapters 3 and 8 – Descartes and Cambridge Platonists among the proponents of innatism, and, as its most famous critic, Locke, whose polemic in the first book of his Essay concerning Human Understanding prompted Leibniz to mount an elaborate defence in his New Essays on Human Understanding. But the theory was not confined to the philosophically illustrious, but was extremely popular with other thinkers as well, many of whom commanded influence both in universities and in the church. Seeing the foundations of morality and Christianity under threat, these thinkers were especially concerned with moral and religious principles and attempted to reverse the damage by appealing to principles allegedly stamped on our minds by the hand of Nature.

All those who contributed to this debate would have realised that it was one with an ancient pedigree. Leibniz admits as much in the preface of his New Essays on Human Understanding:

MAJOR OFFICES: BISHOP, PRESBYTER AND DEACON

It is not my present purpose to attempt a detailed study of the development of the nature and function of Christian ministry from New Testament times to the opening years of the third century as it relates particularly to the three traditional major offices. It will suffice to say that the recognisable Christian offices of bishop, presbyter and deacon make their first tentative appearances at Philippians 1, I where Paul addresses the bishops and deacons of that congregation and in the Pastorals (1 Timothy 3,if.; 5,17f.; Titus 1,5f.) where the question of the responsibilities of and the qualities desirable in bishops, presbyters and deacons are addressed. In these latter writings it appears that bishop and presbyter are largely synonymous terms.

In the Didache – a work of uncertain dating – the author comments on the poor regard – in comparison to travelling prophets and teachers – in which the local bishops and deacons are held by the local congregation. Clement of Rome cites Isaiah 60,17 as scriptural authority for the validity of the episcopate and diaconate, though his letter suggests that the pattern of church government preferred at Rome, and which for him was established by the apostles, is presbyteral. In the West as represented by Rome (and this is confirmed by Ignatius' epistle to that church) the single, all-powerful bishop had yet to establish himself independent of the presbyteral college.

Although Plato's theory of recollection is one of his most well-known doctrines, there are only three works in which it appears – the Meno, the Phaedo and the Phaedrus. The earliest of the trio, the Meno, starts like one of the early Socratic dialogues. Socrates claims not to know what virtue is and asks his interlocutor Meno to give him a definition of it. After three separate attempts, Meno's confidence falters and, when asked for a fourth time to define virtue, objects. If neither of them has any idea of what virtue is, how can they make any progress towards a discovery? Socrates introduces recollection to meet this objection. The soul pre-exists the body, and was consciously in possession of knowledge in its earlier state. Upon entering the body the soul forgets its knowledge, but retains it latently in the form of a memory. What makes discovery possible, therefore, is our ability to recollect and revive these memories within us. Socrates then attempts to find some support for his theory in the famous examination of the slave boy.

At the end of the examination he professes himself to be none too certain about the theory, or at least its details, so it is not surprising to find him making another attempt to establish it in the Phaedo (72eff.). Socrates is trying to prove the immortality of the soul, and, as part of an intricate argument for this, wishes to show that the soul must have existed before the body.

Nothing in the Meno suggests that recollection is used to explain the emergence of our pre-philosophical judgements; furthermore, the conclusion of the dialogue shows the signs of a double-origin theory emerging in Plato's thought. In this chapter we shall argue for the Demaratus interpretation of recollection in the middle period, starting with the Phaedo in [1] before turning to the Phaedrus in [2] and finally looking at some relevant passages from the Republic in [3].

THE PHAEDO

Our focus of attention here will be on the famous recollection passage in the Phaedo 72e3–77a5. Socrates' eventual purpose in this argument is to prove the immortality of the soul; and his precise intention at this stage is to demonstrate that the soul must have existed before birth. Using the form of the equal as an example, Socrates claims that we have knowledge of the form, that we compare sensible equal objects with it, and that in order to make this comparison, we must already have knowledge of the form. He then tries to argue that we must have had knowledge of the form before we started to use our senses, and that the only time for this to have been is before birth; therefore the soul must have existed before birth. Many commentators have interpreted this passage as saying that recollection of the forms accounts for concept formation as well as the ability to compare forms and particulars. For most of my discussion of the Phaedo I shall focus upon two closely related questions: first, what is recollection intended to explain? Second, who actually recollects? This second question arises because Socrates frequently talks in the first person plural and it is important to determine whether he is referring only to his circle of philosopher-friends or to people in general.

THE CHURCH AS AN ‘ARK’

There are twenty-two separate references to ‘area’ in Tertullian's extant writings. Six – two of which appear in the passages from De Baptismo and De Idololatria discussed below – refer to Noah's Ark, nine to the Old Testament Ark of the Covenant, four have the common meaning of ‘coffer’ or ‘chest’ and two, those discussed below, refer to the Ark as a figure for the church.

At 1 Peter 3, 20-21 there is a reference to the saving, through water, of Noah and his seven companions in the Ark; this water corresponds to the saving laver in the sacrament of baptism. Minear comments that the Ark is, for the author of I Peter, a prefigurement of the church, which, like the Ark itself, carries the elect through the waters of eschatological crisis. It is, however, only a ‘marginal’ analogy in the New Testament. That Tertullian was influenced by this passage, particularly in De Baptismo 8, is possible, but is nowhere acknowledged explicitly by him. Among the Fathers before Tertullian, Clement of Rome makes reference to Noah's Ark, but only with respect to the faithfulness and obedience of Noah. His near-contemporary, Hippolytus of Rome, comments unfavourably on Pope Callistus’ alleged assertion that as Noah's Ark received animals both clean and unclean, so should the church also learn to live in this present age with sinners in its midst. Thus, even if the Ark in I Peter 3 is not intended as a prefigurement of the church, its employment as such may pre-date Tertullian.

While it is true that Christ did not leave behind a formally constituted church, it is equally true that in calling together the first group of disciples he laid the foundation for that institution known as his Body. The New Testament has much to say about the nature and role of this church which Christ called into being. Minear's identification of around a hundred images which the writers of the New Testament employ for the church–some of which are somewhat peripheral and tenuous–provides a useful introduction to the New Testament presentation of the church. He also identifies four ‘Master Images’ in the New Testament: the church as (1) the People of God, (2) the New Creation, (3) the Fellowship in Faith, and (4) the Body of Christ.

Within the New Testament a number of images offer a comprehensive, if not always consistent, picture of the church. At 1 Peter 3,2of. the church is depicted as like the ark of Noah in that it carries the elect of God through the waters of eschatological crisis. This is, however, only a marginal image. The church is depicted as a ‘camp’ at Revelation 20,9, but this is, like ‘ark’, at most marginal. The depiction of the church as ‘mother’ is generally believed not to be present in the New Testament. Marcion maintained, however (and Tertullian approved his exegesis), that the ‘heavenly Jerusalem’ described as the ‘mother of us all’ at Galatians 4,26 was to be identified with the church.

It is clear that Tertullian denies certain specific ministerial functions to women. At De Baptismo 1,3 he denies to the Cainite woman, on grounds of her sex, the right even to teach orthodox doctrine, and at 17,5 he repudiates the authority of the apocryphal Ada Pauli et Theclae for the assumption of the right of women to baptise or to teach. At De Virginibus Velandis 9,1 Tertullian states without equivocation,

‘Non permittitur mulieri in ecclesia loqui’ (1 Corinthians 14,34f; 1 Timothy 2,12) sed nee docere, nee tinguere, nee offerre, nee ullius muneris, nedum sacerdotalis officii sortem sibi vindicare.

(‘It is not permitted for a woman to speak in church’, but neither to teach nor baptise nor offer [the elements], nor to claim for herself the allocation of any duty, much less that of priestly office.)

and repudiates a virgin's claim to any ‘praerogativa virilis aut gradus aut officium’ (any masculine prerogative or rank or duty) (ibid.).

In the writings of Tertullian the ‘ordo sacerdotalis’ (De Exhortatione Castitatis 7,2) or ‘ordo ecclesiasticus’ (De Idololatria 7,3) – that order of the church which exercised the exclusive right to administer the Eucharist – is reserved to males. At Adv. Marcionem v,8,11 Tertullian reaffirms the apostolic ban on women teaching in the church, but acknowledges, partly on the basis of apostolic injunction, the right of women to prophesy (1 Corinthians 11,5f.). This right he reaffirms in his account of the ‘sister’ who prophesies on the corporeality of the soul at De Anima 9,4 and also accepts as part of established Montanist history and practice. Tertullian also recognises two orders which are exclusively female, those of the widow and the virgin.

Some of the ministries about which Tertullian speaks cannot be categorised as ‘offices’ in any formal sense. These include the martyr-confessors and the prophets. There is no formal process or rite of appointment or admission to either group, though ecclesiastical recognition in either case is by no means unconditional or unqualified.

The martyr-confessor

Although the position of ‘martyr’ was never an ecclesiastical office in a formal sense, many in the early church, particularly towards the end of the second century, believed the martyrconfessor to be endowed with special authority. At Acts 7,55f. the proto-martyr Stephen received a glimpse of the glory of God on the occasion of his martyrdom, though this does not suggest any special endowment. At Revelation 2,10 those at Smyrna who stand firm in the face of persecution are promised that if they are ‘faithful unto death … I will give you the crown of life’. While this suggests that their faithfulness will bring them special blessing, it does not carry the implication that they will thereby be granted in the meantime a special authority in the church. Yet in time, especially when penitential discipline became a major issue for the church, the notion that the confessor-martyr was endowed with an extraordinary authority to grant absolution came to the fore. This was certainly so among sections of the church at Carthage. It seems that even Tertullian, in his earliest writings at least, was prepared to entertain the idea. Tertullian remains consistent in his advocacy of martyrdom into his later period. Indeed, his commitment to the idea of the high ‘calling’ of martyrdom is even more emphatic.

METAPHYSICAL INNATISM

The best known philosophers to argue for the innateness of metaphysical ideas in the seventeenth century were Descartes, Leibniz and, among the Cambridge Platonists, More and Cudworth. All of them were familiar with Plato's theory of recollection and acknowledge as much explicitly. Sometimes their references are made in a spirit of congratulation, but More, Cudworth and Leibniz are also at pains to register what they see as the essential difference between Plato and themselves, the acceptance or rejection of the literal theory of recollection. What is at issue in this chapter, however, is the further difference about which they are silent, namely that, unlike Plato, they expected a theory of innateness to explain mundane concept formation.

When we discussed Descartes's dispositionalist variety of innatism in chapter 3, we referred to his Notes directed at a certain Programme. This was in fact a series of replies to some criticisms of his Meditations made by an erstwhile follower, Regius, and it had been in the third Meditation that Descartes had espoused the innateness of ideas, thus provoking his opponent's empiricist reply. The Notes act as a useful commentary on the third Meditation.

Here he is in Meditation III announcing a threefold division of our ideas:

But among these ideas, some appear to me to be innate, some adventitious, and others to be formed [or invented] by myself; for, as I have the power of understanding what is called a thing, or a truth, or a thought, it appears to me that I hold this power from no other source than my own nature.

Both Epicurus and the Stoics thought we have natural concepts – prolepses or common notions – whose reliability and clarity acts as the touchstone of all inquiries. In the next chapter we shall ask whether either Epicurus or the Stoics thought that these concepts were, in any sense of the word, innate, or whether they were natural only in the sense of being derived from experience rather than teaching or tradition. In this chapter we shall focus on their attitude to common sense. Plato would have agreed that all of us possess such foundational knowledge; the problem is that it is buried deep in the soul, hidden beneath a layer of wax. Most people are thus quite unaware of the knowledge they possess. The Hellenistics, on the other hand, seem to hold that our criteria are manifest to everyone: how else could they appeal to universal consent as they seem to? So far, then, we seem to have an optimistic theory about nature giving us reliable concepts that are put to work throughout our lives. The problem is that both these philosophers can also be extremely critical of common sense. In other words, they start by showing an Aristotelian respect for our ordinary cognitive resources, and then offer an almost Platonic view about human propensity to error. The point of this chapter is to determine where these philosophers really stood on this issue.

EPICURUS

There are two reasons for thinking that Epicurus was a philosopher who felt obliged to tailor his theories to common sense. The first, as we have seen on pp. 162–3, comes from Cicero, N.D.

In a Delphic parenthesis at An. Po. II 19 100a16-b1, Aristotle says that perception is of the universal:

The same point seems to be made ax An. Po. I 31, 87b28–30:

My interest in these lines should be obvious. In my account of Physics I 1 and An. Po. II 8 in chapter 5, I have argued that, for Aristotle, perception involves some hazy grasp of the universal and to perceive something involves seeing it as a belonging to a certain kind. Now the idea that perception grasps the essence dimly has been proposed as an interpretation of the above lines, and so perhaps I ought to be leaping at them in support of my overall argument; in fact, things are not quite so straightforward.

If the point of these lines is that even the earliest perception instils in us a dim understanding of the universal, the negative part of the parenthesis becomes very difficult to understand. If ‘perception is of the universal’ means that perception is aware of the universal, then presumably ‘perception is not of the particular’ means that in perception we are not aware of particulars. But that is very strange.

This study has been shaped in part by the contrast between two very different interpretations of Platonic recollection. I have tried to show how opting for one of these interpretations also raises new questions about the course of the learning debate as it ran through Aristotle and the Hellenistic philosophers. We took stock of our conclusions about that debate after section III, and so shall not repeat the task here. In the last section, we showed how some of these conclusions affect the way we view the lineage of the theory of innate ideas in the seventeenth-century. In chapter 9 we traced out the affinity between Stoicism and the seventeenth century theory of innate ideas, and in the following chapter found a remarkable alliance between Plato and Locke. The explanation for this lies partly in the fact that the theory Locke was attacking was very different from recollection. What was also important was that Plato and Locke shared a similar attitude to the status that ethical common notions should have in philosophical inquiry. This last point brings out the way in which the debate about moral learning in the seventeenth century, like its ancient equivalent, was not simply one about the origin of ideas or principles, but also about the status of ethical common sense. In this conclusion, I wish to show how this second issue, that so divided Plato from both Aristotle and the Stoics, has developed more recently.

The debate about the status of common sense and the role it should play in ethical reasoning is now often referred to as the debate about moral intuitionism.

In this chapter, I shall turn to the question of what level of learning Aristotle was trying to explain, and shall argue that, like Plato, he had little interest in developing an account of ordinary learning. Let me start, however, with two qualifications to this view. First, as in the previous chapter, the focus of this discussion is on cognitive learning. As Plato had done in the Republic, Aristotle does show an interest in the early stages of character formation, the education of the non-rational part of the soul. This was made clear in the previous chapter. What I am claiming, however, is that he shows little interest in articulating the earliest stages of cognitive development.

Second, I am only saying that Aristotle does not develop any detailed account of ordinary cognitive learning. I am not saying that he was completely silent on the issue or that we cannot get some clues as to how he would have tackled it. The point is that he did not make it an important problem in his epistemology. There are indeed hints scattered around some works like the De Anima about how our first concepts of universals are derived from particulars. Our earliest sense perceptions leave behind images, which can become memories. For the next stage we could take a leaf out of the De Memoria. At 450a1–15 Aristotle describes a process of contemplating the image of a triangle, but in such a way that one does not see it as having any particular size, and attending to only general characteristics. A similar process of abstraction could apply to images of e.g. man.