Deleuze’s New Meno: On Learning, Time, and Thought

Abstract

Abstract In Difference and Repetition (1968), Gilles Deleuze calls for a new Meno. The Meno is one of the Platonic dialogues in which Socrates asserts that learning is recollection. While Deleuze’s central philosophical writing has not been interpreted as a text on learning, his treatment of Plato’s Meno cannot be reduced to the dominant theme pervading much of his thought: that of overturning Platonism. Indeed, the call for a new Meno signals the overturning of Platonism, but it requires the development of a theory of learning that renders it possible to begin with. If learning is not one of the central themes of Difference and Repetition, on what basis can Deleuze claim to have conjured up a new Meno? Deleuze’s argument is that learning or apprenticeship is oriented toward the future, rather than the past. In other words, a new Meno arises along with Deleuze’s philosophy of time, which is the most powerful theme pervading Difference and Repetition. But the argument that learning is oriented toward the future does not originate with Difference and Repetition. It is developed by Deleuze in his earlier work Proust and Signs (1964).