Plato: Meno

PlatoPlato's Meno introduces aspects of Socratic ideals and Platonic epistemology in a fictional dialogue that is set amongst important political events and cultural concerns in the last years of Socrates' life. Information technology begins equally an abrupt, prepackaged debater's challenge from Meno virtually whether virtue tin can be taught, and quickly becomes an open and inconclusive search for the essence of this elusive "virtue," or human goodness in full general. This inquiry exhibits typical features of the Socratic method of elenchus, or refutation by cross-examination, and it employs typical criteria for the notoriously difficult goal of Socratic definitions. Only then a distinctive objection to the possibility of learning anything at all by such inquiry prompts the introduction of characteristically Ideal themes of immortality, mathematics, and a "recollection" of cognition not learned by experience in this life. A model geometry lesson with an uneducated slave is supposed to illustrate the importance of beingness aware of our own ignorance, the nature of proper educational activity, the difference between knowledge and truthful belief, and the possibility of learning things without being taught. When the conversation returns to Meno's initial question of whether virtue tin exist taught, Socrates introduces another style of investigation, a method of "hypotheses," by which he argues that virtue must be some kind of knowledge, and so information technology must be something that'southward taught. Simply then Socrates likewise argues to the contrary that since virtue is never really taught, it seems not to be knowledge subsequently all.

This dialogue portrays aspects of Socratic ignorance and Socratic irony while information technology enacts his twofold mission of exposing common big-headed pretensions and pursuing a philosophical cognition of virtue that no i ever seems to have. Information technology is pervaded with typical Socratic and Platonic criticisms of how, in spite of people's constant talk of virtue, they value things similar wealth and power more than wisdom and justice. And it includes a tense confrontation with one of the men who will bring Socrates to trial on charges of corrupting young minds with dangerous teachings almost morality and religion. The dialogue closes with the surprising suggestion that virtue as proficient in our world both depends on true belief rather than knowledge and is received as some kind of divine gift.

Table of Contents

  1. Overview of the Dialogue
    1. Dramatic Setting
    2. Characters
      1. Socrates
      2. Meno
      3. Anytus
    3. Summary of Arguments, in Three Main Stages
  2. Major Themes of the Dialogue
    1. Virtue and Knowledge
    2. Recollection and Innate Ideas
    3. Education and Learning
    4. Theory and Practice
  3. Relations of the Meno to Other Platonic Dialogues
  4. References and Further Reading
    1. The Standard Greek Text
    2. Some English Translations
    3. Some Book-Length Studies
    4. Some Articles and Essays on the Major Themes
      1. Virtue and Knowledge
      2. Recollection and Innate Ideas
      3. Didactics and Learning
      4. Theory and Practise

ane. Overview of the Dialogue

a. Dramatic Setting

The Meno is a philosophical fiction, based on existent people who took part in of import historical events. Plato wrote it probably almost 385 B.C.E., and placed it dramatically in 402 B.C.E. Socrates was then about threescore-vii years former, and had long been famous for his difficult questions almost virtue and knowledge. In just a few years, he would be bedevilled and executed for the criminal offence of corrupting the youth of Athens. This dialogue probably takes place in ane of Athens' gymnasia, where men and boys of leisure gathered not just for exercise, but as well for education and socializing. Socrates oftentimes conducted his distinctive philosophical conversations in places similar that, and ambitious young men like Meno, who studied public speaking and the hot intellectual topics of the times, wanted to hear what Socrates had to say. Some wanted to effort refuting him in public.

The larger setting is the political and social crisis at the end of the long Peloponnesian War. Afterward finally being defeated past Sparta, Athens has narrowly escaped full destruction, and is at present ruled past a Spartan-backed oligarchy. The questions in the Meno about teaching virtue are direct related to longstanding tensions between oligarchic and democratic factions. For generations, Athens had been an intellectual, economic, and military machine leader, specially afterward her crucial function—together with Sparta—in repelling the Persian invasions of Greece in 490 B.C.E. and 480 B.C.Due east. Athens' radically democratic form of regime was distinctive only influential in typically oligarchic Greece, and influential largely considering she presided over the Delian League of nigh 200 city-states, which became an Athenian empire. Later those Persian invasions, many independent cities had asked Athens to supervene upon Sparta in leading a united defense and reprisal confronting the Persian empire. But somewhen most were just supplying mandated funds to Athens, basically for the continuation of Athens' war confronting Sparta's Peloponnesian League. Through many reversals of fortune, Athens both suffered greatly and flourished culturally, using some of that tribute for her ain evolution and beautification. Much of the best Greek art notwithstanding familiar to united states of america today—the sculpture and architecture, the tragedy and comedy—comes from the Athens of that time. Artists and intellectuals flocked to Athens, including the new kind of traveling teachers, called "sophists," who are so disparaged in the last part of the Meno. These teachers were contained entrepreneurs, competing with each other and providing an early form of higher education. Much of their influence came through their expensive courses in public speaking, which in Athens prepared young men of old aristocratic families for success in democratic politics. But various sophists besides taught various other subjects, from mathematics to anthropology to literary criticism.

Soon before this dialogue takes place, some leading Spartans and allies considered killing all the Athenian men and enslaving the women and children. But they decided instead to support a takeover by a savage, narrow oligarchy, led by thirty members of aristocratic Athenian families who were unhappy with the democracy. Their executions, expropriations, and expulsions earned them the hatred of virtually Athenians; after "the Thirty" became known as "the Thirty Tyrants." The extremists among them first purged their more than obvious enemies, and so turned to the moderates who resisted their cruelty and wanted a broader oligarchy or restricted commonwealth that included the thousands in the eye class. Thousands of Athenians were killed or fled the urban center, and many who stayed acquiesced in fright for their lives. But supporters of a return to democracy soon rallied outside the city, defeating the Thirty'south army in May 403 B.C.East. The conversation in the Meno takes place in late January or early on February 402 B.C.Due east. (later Anytus' return from exile in 403 B.C.Due east., before Meno's difference for Persia by early 401 B.C.E., and before long before annual rites of initiation to the religious Mysteries, which are mentioned at Meno 76e). Democratic and oligarchic factions might and so still have been negotiating terms of reconciliation in order to prevent further civil state of war. The resulting agreement included a general amnesty for crimes committed upwardly to that time, excluding just the Thirty and a few other officials. Only the concluding of the extreme oligarchs would shortly massacre the nearby boondocks of Eleusis and take power in that location, so attempt another takeover at Athens in 401 B.C.E., before they are finally put down for good.

As Meno and Socrates discuss the nature of virtue and how it might be acquired, the Athenian success story is not over. The republic would continue for most of the next century, and even a semblance of the empire would be revived. Only for now, the recently restored democracy is anxious about continuing class conflict, and fearful of renewed civil war. Some democrats were suspicious of Socrates, and may have believed that he had sided with the extreme oligarchs, because of his prior relationships with some of them. The full general amnesty did non allow prosecuting such allegations. But later the war, Socrates connected his uniquely nondemocratic yet anti-elitist, unconventional yet anti-sophistic interrogations. Many Athenians thought that he was undermining traditional morality and piety, and thereby corrupting the young minds of a vulnerable customs. Those were the formal charges that led to Socrates' execution in 399 B.C.E.

b. Characters

i. Socrates

Well-nigh the historical Socrates, much of what we retrieve we know is drawn from what Plato wrote most him. Socrates published nothing himself, but, probably soon after his death, the Socratic dialogue was built-in as a new genre of literature. He was portrayed with different emphases past dissimilar authors, including Xenophon, Aeschines, Antisthenes, Phaedo, Euclides, and others. Only what interests most people most Socrates today comes from Plato'due south philosophical portraits. Fifty-fifty these Ideal portraits vary somewhat beyond his many dialogues, simply all are like in ane mode or another to what we come across in the Meno. More often than not, Plato's Socrates focuses his inquiries on moral subjects, and he will discuss them with anyone who is interested. He claims non to know the answers to his questions, and he interrogates others who do claim to know those answers. He seeks definitions of virtues similar courage, moderation, justice, and piety, and frequently he suggests that each virtue, or virtue as a whole, is really some kind of knowledge.

As Plato depicts Socrates, it was not piece of cake to understand his position in either the politics or the controversial new teachings of the time. Many of his contemporaries, like Meno and Anytus in this dialogue, probably could not distinguish his kinds of questions from other "arts of words" practiced by other intellectuals or "sophists." Simply Plato ofttimes has Socrates criticizing sophists for claiming to teach more than than they knew, and he emphasizes that, past contrast, Socrates never claimed to exist a teacher, never accepted fees for his conversations, never sought wealth or political power, and always pursued subjects related to seeking the real nature of virtue.

To brand matters more than confusing, a few of the 30 Tyrants or their extremist supporters, like Critias and Charmides, had before been assembly of Socrates. But once again, Socrates' position in the conflict is not obvious. While he criticized democracy mostly for putting power in the easily of an unwise and fickle majority, he never advocated dominion by the wealthy either, and certainly not any of the Xxx'southward cruel deeds. Plato emphasizes that Socrates respected common citizens more than the famous and powerful (Apology 21b-22e), and that he disobeyed direct orders from the Thirty, at take chances to his own life (32cd). Socrates by and large advocates humility and justice above all (for example, Apology 20cff, 29dff, Crito 49aff), and he specifically refutes and chastises Charmides and Critias in Plato'due south Charmides.

ii. Meno

Meno is patently visiting the newly restored Athenian government to request help for his family, one of the ruling aristocracies in Thessaly, in northern Greece, that was currently facing new power struggles there. Meno's family had previously been such help to Athens confronting Sparta that his grandad (besides named Meno) was granted Athenian citizenship. We exercise not know what resulted from Meno's mission to Athens, merely we practise know that he soon left Greece to serve as a commander of mercenary troops for Cyrus of Persia—in what turned out to be Cyrus' attempt to overthrow his brother, King Artaxerxes 2.

Meno was immature for such a position, almost twenty years old, but he was a favorite of the powerful Aristippus, a boyfriend blueblood who had borrowed thousands of troops from Cyrus for those power struggles in Thessaly, and was now returning many of them. The contemporary historian Xenophon (who besides wrote Socratic dialogues) survived Cyrus' failed campaign, and he wrote an account whose description of Meno resonates with Plato's portrait here: ambitious yet lazy for the hard work of doing things properly, and motivated by desire for wealth and power while easily forgetting friendship and justice. But Xenophon paints Meno as a thoroughly selfish and unscrupulous schemer, while Plato sketches him as a potentially dangerous, overly confident young man who has begun to tread the path of arrogance. His natural talents and his privileged but unphilosophical teaching are not guided by wisdom or even patience, and he prefers "practiced things" like money over 18-carat understanding and moral virtue. In this dialogue, Plato imagines Meno encountering Socrates shortly earlier that disastrous Persian adventure, when he has not yet proved himself to be the "scoundrel" and "tyrant" that Socrates suspects and Xenophon afterwards confirms. Co-ordinate to Xenophon, when Cyrus was killed and his other commanders were chop-chop beheaded by the King's men, Meno was separated and tortured at length before existence killed, because of his special treachery (see Xenophon'south Anabasis II, vi).

iii. Anytus

Anytus is a prominent Athenian political leader and Meno's host in Athens. He too was wealthy, not in Meno'south old aristocratic way, but as heir to the successful tannery of a self-fabricated businessman. Anytus is passionately opposed to those sophists who thrived in Athens' democracy and claimed to teach virtue along with and so many other things. He prefers the more traditional assumption that practiced gentlemen learn goodness not from professional person teachers but by clan with the previous generation of good gentlemen. (That was a traditional aristocratic notion, but it has a democratic shape at Meno 92e, Apology 24d ff., and Protagoras 325c ff.) Although Plato was not a fan of nearly sophists either, he portrays Anytus' attitude as conspicuously prejudicial. And though Socrates is no professional person teacher, Anytus considers him just as bad, or worse. Anytus is one of three men who will bring Socrates to trial in 399 B.C.E.

Anytus had himself been prosecuted in 409 B.C.Due east., for failure equally a full general in the war against Sparta, and allegedly he escaped punishment by bribing the jury. Afterwards, he supported the moderate faction among the Thirty Tyrants, and was banished past the extremists. So he was a general for the democratic forces in the fight to overthrow the 30 in 403 B.C.E., and he quickly became a leading politician in the restored democracy. In the Meno, Socrates presses Anytus about why so many of Athens' leading statesmen have failed to teach even their ain sons to be adept, and Anytus could probably encounter that these questions use to himself. Xenophon'southward Apology of Socrates, which is rather different from Plato'south, suggests that Anytus had a personal grudge against Socrates, since Socrates had criticized Anytus' education of his own son, and predicted that he would turn out to be no good. Only Anytus may well have sincerely believed that Socrates corrupted young men like Critias and Charmides past education them to question good traditions. At any charge per unit, Socrates' questions about instruction in the Meno upset Anytus plenty to warn Socrates to desist, or risk getting injure—thus foreshadowing Anytus' office in Socrates' trial. (Compare Meno 94e f. and 99e f. with Amends 23a-24a and 30cd.)

c. Summary of Arguments, in 3 Main Stages

There are iii chief parts to this dialogue, which are 3 principal stages in the argumentation that leads to the tentative determination nigh how virtue is acquired.

The dialogue opens with Meno'due south challenge to Socrates about how "virtue" (aretê) is accomplished. Is it something that is taught, or acquired through training, or possessed by nature? Socrates quickly turns the give-and-take into an investigation of something more basic, namely, what such virtue is. Since Socrates denies knowing the nature of virtue, while Meno confidently claims to know all about information technology, Socrates gets Meno to effort defining it. Most of this third of the dialogue is then an extended series of arguments against Meno's three attempts to define virtue. We run into the famous "Socratic Method," in which Socrates refutes someone'southward claim to knowledge by revealing that one of their claims is contradicted by others that they too believe to be true. For example, Meno'due south initial claim that there are irreducibly different virtues for unlike kinds of people (71e) is incompatible with his implicit belief (elicited by Socrates) that virtues cannot exist dissimilar insofar equally they are virtues. And Meno's definition of virtue as the ability to rule over others (73d) is incompatible with his agreements that a successful definition of virtue must utilize to all cases of virtue (so including those of children and slaves) and only to cases of virtue (so excluding cases of unjust rule). In each case, since Meno accepts these claims that contradict his proposed definitions, he is shown not to know what he thought he knew nearly virtue. As Socrates three times exposes the inadequacies of Meno's attempted definitions, giving examples and guidelines for further practice, Meno's enthusiasm gives way to reluctance and frustration. Eventually, Meno blames Socrates for his trouble, and insults Socrates by comparison him with the ugly, numbing stingray. Then he makes a momentous objection to conducting such an inquiry at all.

The 2d stage of the dialogue begins with that momentous, twofold objection: if someone does not already know what virtue is, how could he even look for it, and how could he even recognize it if he were to happen upon it? Socrates replies by reformulating that objection every bit a paradoxical dilemma, then arguing that the dilemma is based on a simulated dichotomy. The dilemma is that nosotros cannot acquire either what we know or what we practice not know, because there is no need to acquire what we already know, and we cannot recognize what nosotros do not yet know. Socrates tries to expose the fake dichotomy by identifying states of noesis between complete knowledge and pure ignorance. First, he introduces a notion that the human soul has learned in previous lives, and suggests that learning is therefore possible by remembering what has been known but forgotten. (Forgotten-but-capable-of-being-remembered is a country of cognition between complete knowledge and pure ignorance.) Then he tries to illustrate this "theory of recollection" with the instance of a geometry lesson, in which Socrates refutes a slave'southward incorrect answers much equally he had refuted Meno, and and so leads him to recognize that the correct reply is implied by his own prior true beliefs. (Implicit true belief is another state of cognition betwixt complete knowledge and pure ignorance.) After the geometry lesson, Socrates briefly reinterprets the alleged "recollection" in a mode that tin be taken as the discovery of some kind of innate knowledge, or innate ideas or behavior. Meno finds Socrates' explanation somehow compelling, merely puzzling. Socrates says he volition not vouch for the details, but recommends information technology every bit encouraging us to piece of work hard at learning what we do not now know. He asks Meno to join him again in a search for the definition of virtue.

But in the third stage of the dialogue, Meno nonetheless resists, and asks Socrates instead to answer his initial question: is virtue something that is taught, or is information technology acquired in some other way? Socrates criticizes Meno for still wanting to know how virtue is acquired without starting time agreement what it is. But he agrees, reluctantly, to examine whether virtue is something that is taught by way of "hypotheses" about what sorts of things are taught, and about what sorts of things are practiced. Here Socrates leads Meno to two opposed conclusions. Showtime, he argues, on the hypothesis that virtue is necessarily proficient, that information technology must be some kind of knowledge, and therefore must be something that is taught. But then he argues, from the fact that no ane does seem to teach virtue, that virtue is not after all something that is taught, and therefore must non exist noesis. This is where Anytus arrives and enters the discussion: he as well objects to the sophists who merits to teach virtue for pay, and asserts that any proficient admirer can teach young men to be good in the normal grade of life. But so Anytus cannot explain Socrates' long list of counterexamples: famous Athenians who were widely considered virtuous, simply who did not teach their virtue fifty-fifty to their own sons. When Anytus withdraws from the chat in acrimony, Socrates reminds Meno that sometimes people's actions are guided not by noesis simply by mere true conventionalities, which has not been "tied down by working out the reason." He provisionally concludes that when people human activity virtuously, it is not by noesis but by truthful conventionalities, which they receive not by education only by some kind of divine gift. Merely then Socrates warns again that they will non really larn how virtue is acquired until they get-go figure out what virtue itself is.

2. Major Themes of the Dialogue

a. Virtue and Knowledge

In this whole inconclusive conversation, the about of import Socratic proposal is that "virtue" (aretê in Greek) must be some kind of knowledge. But a crucial fact nigh the dialogue is that this fundamental subject matter, while patently very of import, remains elusive from beginning to end. When Meno asks how aretê is acquired, Socrates denies knowing what aretê really is. Meno thinks he knows what aretê is, but he is soon surprised to detect that he cannot define it. As they piece of work at the definition, declared examples of aretê range from political ability to good gustation and from justice to getting lots of coin. At beginning, Meno wants to deny that all aretai share some common nature, but he apace becomes ambivalent about that. Eventually, Socrates seems to persuade him that the essence of aretê must be some kind of cognition, but then this provisional determination gives way under the observation that what they are looking for is plain never really taught. In closing, Socrates reminds Meno that their confusion almost whether aretê is taught is a result of their defoliation almost the nature of aretê itself.

And then what sort of thing is this aretê that they are trying to understand? Much of ancient Greek literature shows that aretê was a primal ideal and basic motivator throughout the civilisation. The stylized heroes of Homer'due south legendary Trojan war and the real soldiers of their own gimmicky campaigns, the athletes at the Olympic games and the orators in political debates—all of these, whether they fought for survival or retribution or the mutual good, were likewise seeking laurels from their peers for aretê. Both the importance and the vagueness of the term is expressed in Socrates' question to Anytus:

Meno has been telling me for some time, Anytus, that he desires the kind of wisdom and aretê by which people manage their households and cities well, and take care of their parents, and know how to receive and send off fellow-citizes and foreign guests as a good man should. To whom should we send him for this aretê? (91a)

The standard English language translations of aretê are "excellence" and "virtue." "Excellence" reminds united states of america that the ancient concept applies to all of the above and even to some admirable qualities in nonhuman things, like the speed of a skilful equus caballus, the sharpness of a good knife, and the fertility of good farmland. Simply "virtue" too is sometimes still used that way, when we speak of the virtues of the plan or the brand that nosotros prefer. And "excellence" is rather weak and abstract for the focus of these Socratic dialogues, which is something people spent a lot of fourth dimension thinking and worrying virtually. Intellectuals debated how it is caused; politicians knew they had to speak persuasively near information technology; and Socrates himself considered information technology the almost important thing in life. In our dialogue, Meno keeps thinking of aretê in terms of ruling others and acquiring honor or wealth, while Socrates keeps reminding him that aretê must also include things like justice and moderation (73a, d, 78d), industriousness (81d, 86b). and self-control: "rule yourself," he says, "and so that you lot may be free" (86d). In this connection, it is often said that Greek ethical thinking evolved from a focus on competitive virtues like courage and strength to a greater appreciation of cooperative virtues like justice and fairness. Only this could be at most a shift of emphasis, since even Homer's epics of war and adventure celebrate pity and humility, justice and self-control. And so it may assist to think of our dialogue equally asking how nosotros tin acquire "virtue" in the very general sense of human goodness or human greatness. Like Meno, most of united states remember we already know what "being a proficient person" or "being a great person" is like, but we would exist stumped if we had to define it. The whole range of examples used in this dialogue would be relevant. And Socrates' basic suggestion, that "beingness good and cracking" requires some important kind of knowledge, would seem both attractive and puzzling.

A further reason for the inconclusiveness of the Meno is the inherent difficulty of providing the kind of definition that Socrates seeks. He was notorious for ever seeking and e'er failing to identify the essences of things like justice, piety, courage, and moderation. A successful definition in Socrates' sense does not merely state how a given word is used, or identify examples, or stipulate a special meaning for a given context. A Socratic definition is supposed to reveal the essence of a unitary concept or a type of real thing. Such a definition would specify non only whatsoever qualities that are mutual to that kind of matter, just the qualities that make them be the kind of matter they are. Other characters in Plato's dialogues normally accept difficulty understanding what Socrates is request for; in fact, the historical Socrates may have been the first person to be rigorous virtually such definitions. The task is more hard than it first seems, fifty-fifty for things like shape and colour (come across 75b-76e); it is even harder to accomplish for something like virtue. The first third of our dialogue takes the fourth dimension to show that Meno's list of examples will non do, because it does not reveal what is common to them all and makes them be virtue while other things are not (72a ff.); and that this kind of caption must utilise to all relevant cases (73d) and only to relevant cases (78d-e); and that something cannot be and so explained in terms of itself or related terms that are all the same matters of dispute (79a-east). At the beginning of the dialogue, Meno did not know even how to begin looking for the i essence of all virtue that would enable united states of america to understand things like how information technology is achieved. Socrates shows him these guidelines, and tries to get him to practice. Merely while Socrates clearly knows more than Meno nearly how to investigate the essence of virtue, he has not been able to detect exactly what information technology is.

Socrates is drawn to the idea that the essence of all virtue is some kind of knowledge. In the last tertiary of the dialogue, when Meno will non try again to ascertain virtue, Socrates introduces and explores his own suspicion in terms of the post-obit "hypothesis": if virtue is taught and so it is knowledge, and if it is knowledge then it is taught, but not otherwise. This line is pursued with the further "firm hypothesis" that virtue must always be a good thing. Socrates argues that but noesis is necessarily good, and the goodness or badness of everything else depends on whether it is directed by knowledge. The conclusion of this hypothetical investigation would be that virtue is taught because it is some kind of knowledge—and the argument to that effect requires the rejection of Meno's abiding preference for "good things" like wealth and power (78c-d, 87e-89a). But what kind of knowledge? Or what kind of wisdom? In this discussion, Socrates uses a variety of Greek noesis-terms, combining epistêmê, phronêsis, and nous as if they were interchangeable. The cumulative significant ranges from knowledge and intelligence to agreement and wisdom. Clearly, what Socrates is looking for would be not simply theoretical cognition only some kind of practical wisdom, a knowledge that can properly directly our behavior and our utilise of material things. Merely this dialogue gets no further than arguing that virtue is some sort of wisdom, "in whole or in part" (89a). So Socrates introduces a reason for reconsidering even that: information technology seems that such wisdom is never taught.

b. Recollection and Innate Ideas

A surprising interpretation of knowledge occurs in the eye third of the Meno, when Socrates suggests that real learning is a special kind of remembering. Meno's frustration in trying to ascertain virtue had led him to object:

Only in what way will y'all expect for it, Socrates, this thing that you don't know at all what information technology is? What sort of thing, amidst the things you don't know, volition you propose to expect for? Or even if you should see correct upward against it, how volition you know that this is the thing you didn't know? (80d)

Is Meno here honestly identifying a practical difficulty with this particular kind of inquiry, where the participants now seem not to know even what they are looking for? Or is he just throwing upwards an abstract, defensive obstacle, so that he does not have to go on trying? Socrates interprets Meno's objection in the obstructionist way, and reformulates information technology as a paradoxical theoretical dilemma:

Do you see what a contentious debater's statement you're bringing upwards—that it seems impossible for a person to seek either what he knows or what he doesn't know? He couldn't seek what he knows, considering he knows it, and there's no demand for him to seek information technology. Nor could he seek what he doesn't know, because he doesn't know what to await for. (80e)

This reformulation of Meno's objection has come to exist known as "Meno's Paradox." Information technology is Plato's starting time occasion for introducing his notorious "theory of recollection," which is an early example of what would afterward be called a theory of innate ideas.

The notion that learning is recollection is supposed to testify that learning is possible in spite of Meno's objection: we tin can learn by research, because we can begin in a state of neither complete knowledge nor pure ignorance. To understand what Plato intends with his sketchy theory, we should compare the initial statement of the idea (81a-e), the alleged illustration of it (82a-85b), and the restatement of information technology after the analogy (85b-86b). Co-ordinate to the initial statement, all souls have already learned everything in many former lives, and learning in this life is therefore a affair of remembering what was once known but is at present forgotten. Simply this is apparently an attention-grabber, dubiously citing unnamed priests and poets, who are simply the kind of people Socrates later criticizes for having intermittent true beliefs rather than stable knowledge about their subjects (99c-d). Meno is in fact intrigued, and when he asks for a demonstration, Socrates illustrates by cleverly leading an uneducated slave to the correct answer to a geometrical problem—and doing so by "only asking questions" and eliciting the correct answer from the slave himself. Here, Socrates clearly asks "leading questions," and eventually fifty-fifty shows the slave the answer in the form of a question (84e). But more than of import is the fact that he legitimately helps the slave to work out the reasoning, and thereby see the style in which the unexpected respond was implied past other truthful behavior that he already had. So the geometry lesson successfully demonstrates some of the beauty of Socratic instruction, and the power of deductive reasoning in learning. That is plenty to abnegate Meno's Paradox, which inferred the impossibility of learning from a false dichotomy between consummate knowledge and pure ignorance.

Simply the geometry lesson with the slave clearly does not demonstrate the reminding of something that was learned in a previous life. So it is important to notice that Socrates partly restates the "theory of recollection" afterward the geometry lesson. This time he concludes not that the slave has remembered some geometrical cognition from what his mind had learned from experiences in previous lives, simply instead that the slave has discovered the relevant true beliefs in his mind, which is somehow "always in a state of having learned" (86a). In the context, that "always" does seem to include many lifetimes, though it could in principle refer just to still long the mind has existed, maybe since some betoken of evolution in the womb. In whatsoever case, the phrase "e'er in a land of having learned" is unusual and hitting. If a mind could always exist in a state of having learned something, and then there would be no point at which information technology learned that thing. This paradoxical phrasing turns the initial statement of the theory of recollection, which stretched a common-sense notion of learning from feel over a number of successive lifetimes, into the beginnings of a theory of innate ideas, because the geometrical beliefs or concepts somehow belong to the heed at all times. Near this betoken in the dialogue, Socrates also states that subsequently employing such ideas to elicit the relevant truthful beliefs, more piece of work is still required for converting them to noesis (85c-d). Later in the conversation, Socrates even seems to identify "recollection" with this latter part of the process (98a).

Some philosophers and experimental psychologists today hold that basic mathematical concepts, and the beliefs implicit in them (along with many others), are innate—non as an eternal possession of an immortal soul, but as a universal and specialized man capacity adamant in function by biological development. Then in a sense, Socrates' decision that something of "the truth almost reality" is "e'er in our minds" (86b) is even roughly uniform with mod scientific discipline. The Meno does not finish up specifying only what kind of innate resources enable genuine learning nigh geometry or virtue: Socrates infers from the geometry lesson both that the slave had innate noesis (85d), and that he had innate beliefs that can be converted to knowledge (85c, 86a), just the dialogue ends with an agreement that "men have neither of these past nature, neither noesis nor true conventionalities" (98c-d). In fact, while Plato seems quite serious about the idea that genuine learning requires discovering knowledge for ourselves on the basis of our innate resources, he has Socrates disclaim conviction near whatsoever details of the theory in this dialogue (86b-c).

c. Didactics and Learning

According to Socrates, the practical purpose of the theory of recollection is to make Meno eager to acquire without a teacher (81e-82a, 86b-c). It seems that Meno is used to thinking of learning as simply hearing and remembering what others say, and he objects to continuing the enquiry into the nature of virtue with Socrates precisely because neither of them already knows what it is (80d). The geometry lesson shows that we can learn things we practice not nonetheless know (at least what nosotros practice not nevertheless consciously and explicitly know) if they are entailed by other things that we know or correctly believe. And Socrates emphatically alleges that when the slave becomes aware of his own ignorance, he properly desires to overcome information technology by learning; this also is supposed to exist an object lesson for Meno (84a-d). Merely Meno does not larn this lesson. Instead of desiring to inquire into the real nature of virtue, he asks instead to hear Socrates' answer to his initial question nigh how virtue is acquired. He asks over again whether virtue is something that is taught, and once more he wants to be taught about this merely past existence told (86c-d; compare 70a, 75b, 76a-b, 76d).

This fourth dimension Socrates patently relents, but he warns that the rest of their discussion will be compromised by a flawed approach. At least he gets Meno to follow him in a self-consciously "hypothetical" arroyo—a kind of method that he claims to infringe from mathematicians, who use it when they cannot prove more deeply what they want to testify. He illustrates with a geometrical hypothesis that is notoriously obscure, but the corresponding hypothesis nigh virtue seems to be this: if virtue is something that is taught, then information technology is a kind of knowledge, and if it is a kind of knowledge, so it is something that is taught (87b-c). Next, Socrates offers an independent argument (based on a different hypothesis) that virtue must in fact be some kind of noesis, because virtue is necessarily good and beneficial, and merely knowledge could be necessarily adept and beneficial. Together with the hypothesis that knowledge and simply knowledge is taught, Socrates would have proved that virtue is something that is taught.

Simply in that location is something wrong with the hypothesis that all and only cognition is taught. Surely much of what is taught is just opinion, and surely some knowledge is learned on 1'south ain, without a teacher. In fact, one main point of the theory of recollection and the geometry lesson was that real learning requires agile inquiry and discovery from one's own resources, which include some form of innate knowledge. Even if Socrates did "teach" the geometry lesson in a Socratic fashion, past leading the slave to the answer with the right questions, even so he showed that while he could in some sense just show the slave the reply, he could not successfully give him knowledge or agreement. That requires working out the explanation for oneself (82d, 83d, 84b-c, 85c-d; compare 98a). This whole lesson was conducted in order to encourage Meno to try learning what virtue is, when he does not accept a teacher to tell him what it is (81e-82a, 86c).

So why would Socrates use the faulty hypothesis that knowledge and only noesis is taught, when it contradicts his notion of recollection and his model geometry lesson? Perhaps considering, in upshot, information technology is really Meno's own hypothesis, equally his opening questions and his behavior throughout the dialogue persistently imply. Meno's opening prepare of questions substitutes "learned" for "taught" as if they were the same thing (Is virtue taught? Or is information technology trained? Or is it neither learned nor trained…). And then he just wants to hear Socrates' answers, and keeps resisting the hard work of definition that Socrates keeps encouraging. When Meno resists withal again after the theory of recollection and the geometry lesson (86c), Socrates cleverly investigates this hypothesis, implicit in Meno's behavior, to redirect Meno's attention from his question about how virtue is acquired (Is it taught?) back to the unanswered question of what virtue is (Is it knowledge?). So Socrates could be quite serious in his lengthy argument that virtue must be some kind of knowledge (87c-89a), while reluctantly making use of the unsupported hypothesis that knowledge must exist taught because, in effect, Meno insists upon information technology. Meno refuses to pursue noesis of virtue the hard way, and he thinks that what he hears nearly virtue the easy way is knowledge.

After persuading Meno to take seriously his own favorite notion—that virtue is achieved through some kind of noesis, rather than through wealth and political power—Socrates endeavors to convince Meno that learning simply by hearing from others does not provide real knowledge or existent virtue. Meno's host Anytus now arrives at just the right moment, since Anytus is passionately opposed to the sophists who claim to teach wisdom and virtue with their traveling lectures and verbal displays. Anytus believes that virtue can be learned instead by spending time with whatsoever skilful admirer of Athens, just Socrates shows that this view is superficial, too. He gathers well-known examples of allegedly virtuous men who did not teach their virtue even to their own children, which indicates that virtue is not something that is taught. Anytus departs in annoyance at Socrates' seemingly dismissive treatment of Athens' political heroes, so Socrates continues the consequence with Meno. He reminds Meno that even professional teachers and good men themselves disagree about whether virtue can exist taught. The closing pages argue that if their earlier hypothesis was true, and "people are taught nada simply knowledge," then since virtue is not taught, virtue would not be knowledge. Socrates suggests that perhaps it could be correct belief instead. Right belief tin direct our beliefs well, too, though not about as reliably equally knowledge.

In this final portion of the dialogue, Socrates twice again asks Meno whether "if in that location are no teachers, there are no learners." And Meno keeps affirming it, though no longer with full confidence: "I call back … Then information technology seems … if nosotros have examined this correctly" (96c-d). Meno's challenge to Socrates in the opening lines of the dialogue had used the terms "learned" and "taught" interchangeably. In the meantime, Socrates' notion of learning as "recollection" indicates that noesis requires much more than exact instruction. Every bit Socrates says to Anytus:

For some fourth dimension nosotros have been examining … whether virtue is something that'southward taught. To that finish we are asking whether skilful men past or present know how to bestow on another this virtue which makes them good, or whether it but isn't something a man can give or receive from another. (93a-b)

Meno's assumption that cognition must be taught, and taught by mere verbal instruction, prevents a fuller investigation in this dialogue of Socrates' hope that virtue is a kind of knowledge.

d. Theory and Practice

And what virtually Socrates: does he teach virtue in the Meno? He offers a theory that "in that location is no instruction but recollection" (82a). Only what nigh his practice? Isn't Socrates trying to teach Meno, by leading him to a correct definition of virtue, as he led Meno'southward slave to the correct answer in the geometry lesson?

Rather, Socrates' practice in the geometry lesson actually goes pretty well with his theory that at that place is no pedagogy, because his leading questions there require that the slave think through the deduction of the respond from what he already knew. And Socrates finishes by emphasizing that existent knowledge of the answer requires working out the explanation for oneself. So even if a "instructor" can evidence the respond, he cannot give the understanding. The understanding requires active research and discovery for oneself, based on innate mental resource and a genuine desire to learn. Whatever else might testify true or false about the notion that learning is a kind of recollection, these practical implications are what Socrates insists upon.

On behalf of the balance of the theory, I wouldn't much insist. Just we'll be meliorate men, braver and less lazy, if we believe that we must search for the things we don't know, rather than if we believe that information technology's not possible to find out what nosotros don't know, and that we must non search for information technology—this I would fight for very much, and so long equally I'thousand able, both in theory and in practice. (86b-c)

The practical side of learning as recollection applies no less in Socrates' interactions with Meno. Socrates tries leading Meno to desire existent knowledge of what virtue is rather than just collecting others' opinions almost how information technology is acquired, and tries to go him to practice active research and discovery of the truth for himself, starting from his ain basic and sincere beliefs nigh virtue. Meno's moral educational activity would call for all of that even if Socrates could tell him what the essence of virtue is, which he claims he cannot do.

Agile Socratic inquiry requires apprehensive hard work on the part of all learners: practice in the sense of the personal effort and training that properly develops natural ability. Socrates' efforts to guide Meno throughout the dialogue point that achieving the wisdom that is virtue would require both the right kind of natural abilities and the right kind of preparation or practise—so that teaching can help if information technology is non mere verbal instruction but discussions that help a learner to discover the knowledge for himself. That could be the whole dialogue'southward answer to Meno'southward opening challenge, which specifies three options:

Tell me if you can, Socrates: Is virtue something that's taught? Or is information technology not taught, but trained? Or is it neither trained nor learned, but people get it by nature, or in some other mode? (70a)

Some accept argued that Plato mentions training in the opening lines only considering it was i of the traditional options debated in his twenty-four hour period. It seems to be tacitly dropped from the rest of the dialogue, and when Meno later revisits his opening claiming, he omits the option about training (86c-d). Only if Meno forgets or deliberately avoids it, Socrates does not. When Meno starts to recognize his difficulties, Socrates encourages him to practice with definitions about shape (75a) and gives him a serial of paradigms or examples to practice with (73e-77a); later, he criticizes Meno for refusing to do so (79a). At a number of points, Socrates draws attention to the kind of training and habits Meno has already received (70b, 76d, 82a). The geometry lesson, which is supposed to exhibit successful persistent inquiry in the face up of previous failures, concludes with advice about the need to piece of work through problems "many times in many ways" (85c) and with a repeated warning about intellectual laziness (86b). While the theory that learning is recollection suggests that an essential ground for wisdom and virtue is innate, Socrates also reminds Meno that any such footing in nature would still require development through experience (89b). When Anytus enters the give-and-take, his father is praised as a man who, dissimilar Anytus himself, did non receive his prosperity equally a gift from his begetter, but earned information technology "by his ain skill and hard piece of work" (90a). And the combination of quotations from Theognis near the stop of the dialogue suggest that virtue is learned non through verbal instruction solitary, but through some kind of graphic symbol-apprenticeship under the guidance of others who are already achieved in virtue (95d ff.)

Socrates' persistence in encouraging Meno to practice active inquiry points in the same direction as the sketchy theory of recollection: while the kind of wisdom that could exist real virtue would require understanding the nature of virtue itself, it would not be achieved by being told the definition. And it would not be a theoretical agreement divorced from the practise of virtue. In fact, our dialogue as a whole shows that Meno volition not acquire the wisdom that is virtue until after he already practices some measure of virtue: at least the kind of humility, backbone, and industriousness that are necessary for genuine learning.

3. Relations of the Meno to Other Ideal Dialogues

We cannot be precise or sure about much in Plato'south writing career. The Meno seems to be philosophically transitional between rough groupings of dialogues that are oftentimes associated in allegedly chronological terms, though these groupings have been qualified and questioned in various ways. It is commonly idea that in the Meno we see Plato transitioning from (a) a presumably before group of especially "Socratic" dialogues, which defend Socrates' means of refuting unwarranted claims to noesis and promoting intellectual humility, and so are largely inconclusive concerning virtue and knowledge, to (b) a presumably "middle" group of more constructively theoretical dialogues, which involve Plato's famous metaphysics and epistemology of transcendent "Forms," such Justice itself, Equality itself, and Beauty or Goodness itself. (Nonetheless, that 2nd grouping of dialogues remains rather tentative and exploratory in its theories, and there is likewise (c) a presumably "late" group of dialogues that seems critical of the middle-catamenia metaphysics, adopting somewhat different logical and linguistic methods in treating similar philosophical issues.) So the Meno begins with a typically unsuccessful Socratic search for a definition, providing some lessons about good definitions and exposing someone's arrogance in thinking that he knows much more than than he really knows. All of that resembles what we see in early dialogues similar the Euthyphro, Laches, Charmides, and Lysis. Simply the manner and substance of the Meno changes somewhat with the formulation of Meno's Paradox near the possibility of learning annihilation with such inquiries, which prompts Socrates to introduce the notions that the human soul is immortal, that genuine learning requires some form of innate knowledge, and that progress tin can be made with a kind of hypothetical method that is related to mathematical sciences. This cluster of Platonic concerns is variously developed in the Phaedo, Symposium, Democracy, and Phaedrus, merely in those dialogues, these concerns are combined with arguments concerning imperceptible, immaterial Forms, which are never mentioned in the Meno. Accordingly, many scholars believe that the Meno was written betwixt those groups of dialogues, and probably about 385 B.C.Eastward. That would be near seventeen years later the dramatic date of the dialogue, about fourteen years afterward the trial and execution of Socrates, and about the time that Plato founded his own school at the gymnasium called the Academy.

More than specifically, significant relations of the Meno to other Platonic dialogues include the following.

The Meno is related past its dramatic setting to the famous series of dialogues that center on the historical indictment, trial, imprisonment, and decease of Socrates (Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo). Anytus in the Meno will exist ane of the 3 men who prosecute Socrates, which is specifically foreshadowed in the Meno at 94e.

The failed attempt to define virtue as a whole in the Meno is much like the failed attempts in other dialogues to define particular virtues: piety in the Euthyphro, courage in the Laches, moderation in the Charmides, and justice in the first book of the Commonwealth. (And 2 other dialogues attempt and fail to define terms that are related to virtue: friendship in the Lysis and beautiful/proficient/fine (to kalon) in the Hippias Major.) Those dialogues emphasize some of the same criteria for successful definitions as the Meno, including that it must apply to all and only relevant cases, and that information technology must identify the nature or essence of what is existence defined. The Meno adds some other criterion: that something may non be defined in terms of itself, or in related terms that are still subject field to dispute.

One of Socrates' arguments late in the Meno, that virtue probably cannot exist taught because men who are widely considered virtuous have non taught information technology even to their ain sons, is also used near the first of Plato's Protagoras. Just there it is countered by a long caption from the sophist Protagoras of how virtue is in fact taught to everyone by everyone, not with definitions or by mere exact instruction, but in a life-long training of human nature through false, storytelling, and rewards and punishments of many kinds. Socrates does not object to this theory of moral education (instead he objects to other parts of Protagoras' business relationship), and elements of it are included in the organisation of education outlined by Socrates in Plato's Republic. Merely while Plato's treatment of Protagoras' theory of education in the Protagoras is adequately sympathetic, the Meno'due south general disparagement of sophistic teaching is explored at length in Socrates' debates with individual sophists in Plato's Euthydemus, Gorgias, Hippias Minor, and Hippias Major.

The Meno's geometry lesson with the slave, where success in learning some geometry is supposed to encourage serious inquiry virtually virtue, is ane indication of Plato's interest in relations between mathematical and moral education. In the Gorgias (named after a sophist or orator who is mentioned early in the Meno equally one of Meno's teachers), Socrates debates an ambitious young orator-politician who is drawn to a crass hedonism, and claims that his soul lacks good club because he neglects geometry, and so does not appreciate the ratios or proportions exhibited in the adept order of nature. Volume 7 of the Republic describes a organisation of college education designed for ideal rulers, which uses a graduated series of mathematical studies to prepare such rulers for philosophical dialectic and for eventually understanding the Form of Goodness itself. In this connection, Socrates' introduction of a "hypothetical" method of research, adopted from mathematics, is adult somewhat in the Phaedo and in Republic Book Six.

The notion of learning as recollection is revisited most conspicuously in Plato's Phaedo (72e-76e) and Phaedrus (246a ff.), both of which associate it closely with theories of human immortality and eternal, transcendent Forms. The passage about recollection in the Phaedo even begins past alluding to the one in the Meno, but so it discusses recollection not of specific beliefs or propositions (similar the theorem well-nigh doubling the square in the Meno), merely of basic full general concepts like Equality and Dazzler, which Socrates argues cannot be learned from our experiences in this life. In the Phaedrus, recollection of such Forms is not argued for just asserted, in a rather suggestive and playful manner, as part of a myth-based story about the human soul's journeys with gods, which is meant to convey the ability of love in philosophical learning. Plato too explores other models of innate knowledge elsewhere, such equally an innate mental pregnancy in the Symposium (206c-212b; compare Phaedrus 251a ff.) and an innate intellectual vision in the Republic (507a-509c, 518b ff.).

4. References and Further Reading

a. The Standard Greek Text

  • Burnet, John. Platonis Opera, vol. Iii. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1903.

b. Some English Translations

  • Plato: Meno. Translated by G. M. A. Grube. Second Edition. Hackett Publishing, 1980.
  • Plato: Meno and Phaedo. Translated by Alex Long and David Sedley. Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy. Cambridge Academy Press, 2011.
  • Plato: Protagoras and Meno. Translated by Adam Beresford and introduced past Lesley Chocolate-brown. Penguin Classics, 2006.

c. Some Book-Length Studies

  • Bluck, R. S. Plato'southward Meno, Edited with Introduction and Commentary. Cambridge University Press, 1961.
  • Klein, Jacob. A Commentary on Plato'southward Meno. University of N Carolina Press, 1965.
  • Scott, Dominic. Plato'south Meno. Cambridge Academy Press, 2006.
  • Sharples, R. W. Plato's Meno, Edited with Translation and Notes. Chicago: Bolchazy-Carducci, 1984.
  • Weiss, Roslyn. Virtue in the Cavern: Moral Inquiry in Plato's Meno. Oxford University Press, 2001.

d. Some Articles and Essays on the Major Themes

i. Virtue and Noesis

  • Fine, Gail. "Inquiry in the Meno." In The Cambridge Companion to Plato, edited past Richard Kraut, 200-226. Cambridge University Printing, 1992.
  • Brickhouse, Thomas C., and Nicholas D. Smith. "Socrates and the Unity of the Virtues." The Journal of Ethics 1 (1996): 311-324.
  • Santas, Gerasimos. "Socratic Definitions." In Gerasimos Santas, Socrates: Philosophy in Plato'south Early Dialogues, 97-135. Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979.
  • Vlastos, Gregory. "The Socratic Elenchus: Method Is All." In Socratic Studies, edited by Gregory Vlastos, 1-37. Cambridge Academy Press, 1994.
  • Woodruff, Paul. "Plato'south Earlier Theory of Knowledge." In Essays on the Philosophy of Socrates, edited past Hugh Benson, 86-106. Oxford University Press, 1992.

ii. Recollection and Innate Ideas

  • Moravcsik, Julius. "Learning as Recollection." In Plato I: Metaphysics and Epistemology, edited by Gregory Vlastos, 53-69. Anchor Books, 1971.
  • Rawson, Glenn. "Platonic Recollection and Mental Pregnancy." Journal of the History of Philosophy 44 (2006): 137-155.
  • Vlastos, Gregory. "Anamnesis in the Meno." Dialogue 4 (1965): 143-167.

iii. Instruction and Learning

  • Devereaux, Daniel T. "Nature and Pedagogy in Plato's Meno." Phronesis 32 (1978): 118-126.
  • Scolnicov, Samuel. "Iii Aspects of Plato's Philosophy of Learning and Instruction." Paideia Special Plato Effect (1976): 50-62.
  • Woodruff, Paul. "Socratic Pedagogy." In Philosophers on Education, edited by Amelie Rorty, 13-29. Routledge, 1998.

4. Theory and Practice

  • Nehamas, Alexander. "Meno's Paradox and Socrates every bit a Teacher." In Essays on the Philosophy of Socrates, edited by Hugh Benson. Oxford Academy Press, 1992.
  • Rawson, Glenn. "Speculative Theory, Practical Theory, and Exercise in Plato's Meno." Southwest Philosophy Review 17 (January 2001): 103-112.

Writer Information

Glenn Rawson
Email: grawson@ric.edu
Rhode Island College
U. S. A.