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.