His natural talents and his privileged but unphilosophical education are not guided by wisdom or even patience, and he prefers “good things” like money over genuine understanding and moral virtue. Penguin Classics, 2006. 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 confidence about any details of the theory in this dialogue (86b-c). Plato: Protagoras and Meno. So why would Socrates use the faulty hypothesis that knowledge and only knowledge is taught, when it contradicts his notion of recollection and his model geometry lesson? context of the lack of them. 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 apply to all cases of virtue (so including those of children and slaves) and only to cases of virtue (so excluding cases of unjust rule). “Inquiry in the Meno.” In The Cambridge Companion to Plato, edited by Richard Kraut, 200-226. Meno's semi-foreign status aids Socrates (and Plato) in the dialogue, allowing for … Such a definition would specify not just any qualities that are common to that kind of thing, but the qualities that make them be the kind of thing they are. The cumulative meaning ranges from knowledge and intelligence to understanding and wisdom. Democratic and oligarchic factions might then still have been negotiating terms of reconciliation in order to prevent further civil war. But Meno does not learn this lesson. Nonetheless, Socrates sets Meno up early on as a naive believer in the as bold, grand, and presumptuous. But the last of the extreme oligarchs would soon massacre the nearby town of Eleusis and take power there, and then attempt another takeover at Athens in 401 B.C.E., before they are finally put down for good. Anytus in the Meno will be one of the three men who prosecute Socrates, which is specifically foreshadowed in the Meno at 94e. 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. Near this point in the dialogue, Socrates also states that after employing such ideas to elicit the relevant true beliefs, more work is still required for converting them to knowledge (85c-d). In this task, his primary foe is Greek 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. Perhaps because, in effect, it is really Meno’s own hypothesis, as his opening questions and his behavior throughout the dialogue persistently imply. In this discussion, Socrates uses a variety of Greek knowledge-terms, combining epistêmê, phronêsis, and nous as if they were interchangeable. 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). University of North Carolina Press, 1965. In just a few years, he would be convicted and executed for the crime of corrupting the youth of Athens. But supporters of a return to democracy soon rallied outside the city, defeating the Thirty’s army in May 403 B.C.E. 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. Fine, Gail. At a number of points, Socrates draws attention to the kind of training and habits Meno has already received (70b, 76d, 82a). Socrates generally advocates humility and justice above all (for example, Apology 20cff, 29dff, Crito 49aff), and he specifically refutes and chastises Charmides and Critias in Plato’s Charmides. Anytus is one of three men who will bring Socrates to trial in 399 B.C.E. In any case, the phrase “always in a state of having learned” is unusual and striking. He seeks definitions of virtues like courage, moderation, justice, and piety, and often he suggests that each virtue, or virtue as a whole, is really some kind of knowledge. For the time… read analysis of Meno. wants in Meno's mouth, and because Meno is not himself an accomplished The general amnesty did not allow prosecuting such allegations. Burnet, John. He asks again whether virtue is something that is taught, and once again he wants to be taught about this just by being told (86c-d; compare 70a, 75b, 76a-b, 76d). 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. we might presume that it represents Socrates at a relatively early stage Sophist (like Gorgias, who is the central figure in a much lengthier So what sort of thing is this aretê that they are trying to understand? But if Meno forgets or deliberately avoids it, Socrates does not. At least he gets Meno to follow him in a self-consciously “hypothetical” approach—a kind of method that he claims to borrow from mathematicians, who use it when they cannot prove more securely what they want to prove. Anytus departs in annoyance at Socrates’ seemingly dismissive treatment of Athens’ political heroes, so Socrates continues the issue with Meno. In this dialogue, Plato imagines Meno encountering Socrates shortly before that disastrous Persian adventure, when he has not yet proved himself to be the “scoundrel” and “tyrant” that Socrates suspects and Xenophon later confirms. Anytus is passionately opposed to those sophists who thrived in Athens’ democracy and claimed to teach virtue along with so many other things. 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. Book VII of the Republic describes a system of higher 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. About the historical Socrates, much of what we think we know is drawn from what Plato wrote about him. perception will eventually lead to his trial and execution for "corrupting 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 Republic. “Anamnesis in the Meno.” Dialogue IV (1965): 143-167. In the meantime, Socrates’ notion of learning as “recollection” indicates that knowledge requires much more than verbal instruction. Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979. The Meno’s geometry lesson with the slave, where success in learning some geometry is supposed to encourage serious inquiry about virtue, is one indication of Plato’s interest in relations between mathematical and moral education. The Meno takes up the familiar question of whether virtue can be taught, and, if so, why eminent men have not been able to bring up their sons to be virtuous. He claims not to know the answers to his questions, and he interrogates others who do claim to know those answers. More specifically, significant relations of the Meno to other Platonic dialogues include the following. Cambridge University Press, 2006. Nonetheless, in order to understand the aims and Isn’t Socrates trying to teach Meno, by leading him to a correct definition of virtue, as he led Meno’s slave to the correct answer in the geometry lesson? But while Plato’s treatment of Protagoras’ theory of education in the Protagoras is fairly sympathetic, the Meno’s 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. 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. Rawson, Glenn. Cambridge University Press, 1994. (Forgotten-but-capable-of-being-remembered is a state of cognition between complete knowledge and pure ignorance.) Cambridge University Press, 2011. This is where Anytus arrives and enters the discussion: he too objects to the sophists who claim to teach virtue for pay, and asserts that any good gentleman can teach young men to be good in the normal course of life. Socrates And does he think the evil benefits him who gets it, or does he know that it harms him who has it? Vlastos, Gregory. “Socratic Definitions.” In Gerasimos Santas, Socrates: Philosophy in Plato’s Early Dialogues, 97-135. Or is it trained? But then Socrates also argues to the contrary that since virtue is never actually taught, it seems not to be knowledge after all. These teachers were independent entrepreneurs, competing with each other and providing an early form of higher education. He While he criticized democracy generally for putting power in the hands of an unwise and fickle majority, he never advocated rule by the wealthy either, and certainly not any of the Thirty’s cruel deeds. Meno There are some who think … any "gentleman" on the streets of Athens is a fine example of virtue. Some wanted to try refuting him in public. philosophy is a corrupting influence in many of his dialogues, and that But what about his practice? Most of this third of the dialogue is then an extended series of arguments against Meno’s three attempts to define virtue. Plato’s Meno. Socrates tries leading Meno to desire real knowledge of what virtue is rather than just collecting others’ opinions about how it is acquired, and tries to get him to practice active inquiry and discovery of the truth for himself, starting from his own basic and sincere beliefs about virtue. Meno refuses to pursue knowledge of virtue the hard way, and he thinks that what he hears about virtue the easy way is knowledge. Their executions, expropriations, and expulsions earned them the hatred of most Athenians; later “the Thirty” became known as “the Thirty Tyrants.” The extremists among them first purged their more obvious enemies, then turned to the moderates who resisted their cruelty and wanted a broader oligarchy or restricted democracy that included the thousands in the middle class. He couldn’t seek what he knows, because he knows it, and there’s no need for him to seek it. As Socrates says to Anytus: For some time we have been examining … whether virtue is something that’s taught. Together with the hypothesis that knowledge and only knowledge is taught, Socrates would have proved that virtue is something that is taught. After finally being defeated by Sparta, Athens has narrowly escaped total destruction, and is now ruled by a Spartan-backed oligarchy. profound differences from the Sophists. Meno clearly prefers the Sophist-style definition of Platonis Opera, vol. Meno Certainly. 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? But what interests most people about Socrates today comes from Plato’s philosophical portraits. The understanding requires active inquiry and discovery for oneself, based on innate mental resources and a genuine desire to learn. They hate hypocrisy and gossip and can sometimes be a bit arrogant and impatient. affirmations of what Socrates puts forth). A good-looking young man who belongs to a prominent family in Thessaly. The stylized heroes of Homer’s legendary Trojan war and the real soldiers of their own contemporary 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 common good, were also seeking honor from their peers for aretê. Cambridge University Press, 1992. After those Persian invasions, many independent cities had asked Athens to replace Sparta in leading a united defense and reprisal against the Persian empire. Socrates was then about sixty-seven years old, and had long been famous for his difficult questions about virtue and knowledge. Those were the formal charges that led to Socrates’ execution in 399 B.C.E. For example, Meno’s initial claim that there are irreducibly different virtues for different kinds of people (71e) is incompatible with his implicit belief (elicited by Socrates) that virtues cannot be different insofar as they are virtues. 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 it acquired in some other way? working not so much in the context of previous philosophies as in the Then he makes a momentous objection to conducting such an inquiry at all. The dialogue closes with the surprising suggestion that virtue as practiced in our world both depends on true belief rather than knowledge and is received as some kind of divine gift. Sharples, R. W. Plato’s Meno, Edited with Translation and Notes. O Meno, there was a time when the Thessalians were famous among the other Hellenes only for their riches and their riding; but now, if I am not mistaken, they are equally famous for their wisdom, especially at Larisa, which is the native city of your friend Aristippus. It seems that Meno is used to thinking of learning as just hearing and remembering what others say, and he objects to continuing the inquiry into the nature of virtue with Socrates precisely because neither of them already knows what it is (80d). Klein, Jacob. “Socratic Education.” In Philosophers on Education, edited by Amelie Rorty, 13-29. Socrates shows him these guidelines, and tries to get him to practice. Socrates encounters this idea that Nehamas, Alexander. simply learning them from Socrates. And Socrates emphatically alleges that when the slave becomes aware of his own ignorance, he properly desires to overcome it by learning; this too is supposed to be an object lesson for Meno (84a-d). Meno finds Socrates’ explanation somehow compelling, but puzzling. Weiss, Roslyn. teachers, and knows the Thessalian Sophist community to some extent. And the combination of quotations from Theognis near the end of the dialogue suggest that virtue is learned not through verbal teaching alone, but through some kind of character-apprenticeship under the guidance of others who are already accomplished in virtue (95d ff.). But various sophists also taught various other subjects, from mathematics to anthropology to literary criticism. The fundamental question of the dialogue is a highly practical one: whether virtue can be taught. He was notorious for always seeking and always failing to identify the essences of things like justice, piety, courage, and moderation. The second 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? A surprising interpretation of knowledge occurs in the middle third of the Meno, when Socrates suggests that real learning is a special kind of remembering. Next, Socrates offers an independent argument (based on a different hypothesis) that virtue must in fact be some kind of knowledge, because virtue is necessarily good and beneficial, and only knowledge could be necessarily good and beneficial. If Meno is something of a dummy for aristocratic Sophist sympathizers, Meno starts by questioning Socrates. And then he just wants to hear Socrates’ answers, and keeps resisting the hard work of definition that Socrates keeps encouraging. this lack of previous philosophies. Knowing what virtue is not will bring Meno closer to knowing what it is, in a kind of backward way. kind of pompous, elaborately rhetorical, but largely vacuous Sophist Plato wrote it probably about 385 B.C.E., and placed it dramatically in 402 B.C.E. Virtue in the Cave: Moral Inquiry in Plato’s Meno. Socrates does not object to this theory of moral education (instead he objects to other parts of Protagoras’ account), and elements of it are included in the system of education outlined by Socrates in Plato’s Republic. The first third of our dialogue takes the time to show that Meno’s list of examples will not do, because it does not reveal what is common to them all and makes them be virtue while other things are not (72a ff. “Speculative Theory, Practical Theory, and Practice in Plato’s Meno.” Southwest Philosophy Review 17 (January 2001): 103-112. not quite a fair fight, of course, since Plato can put whatever words he It begins as an abrupt, prepackaged debater’s challenge from Meno about whether virtue can be taught, and quickly becomes an open and inconclusive search for the essence of this elusive “virtue,” or human goodness in general. At first, Meno wants to deny that all aretai share some common nature, but he quickly becomes ambivalent about that. But Anytus may well have sincerely believed that Socrates corrupted young men like Critias and Charmides by teaching them to question good traditions. back to the unanswered question of what virtue is (Is it knowledge?). But after the war, Socrates continued his uniquely nondemocratic yet anti-elitist, unconventional yet anti-sophistic interrogations. But this is apparently an attention-grabber, dubiously citing unnamed priests and poets, who are just the kind of people Socrates later criticizes for having intermittent true beliefs rather than stable knowledge about their subjects (99c-d). Anytus is even more clearly a stand-in for the somber, unconsidered Socrates has taught Meno what virtue is not. This reformulation of Meno’s objection has come to be known as “Meno’s Paradox.” It is Plato’s first occasion for introducing his notorious “theory of recollection,” which is an early example of what would later be called a theory of innate ideas. It is commonly thought that in the Meno we see Plato transitioning from (a) a presumably earlier group of especially “Socratic” dialogues, which defend Socrates’ ways of refuting unwarranted claims to knowledge 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. Socrates suggests that perhaps it could be correct belief instead. According to Xenophon, when Cyrus was killed and his other commanders were quickly beheaded by the King’s men, Meno was separated and tortured at length before being killed, because of his special treachery (see Xenophon’s Anabasis II, 6). Socrates replies by reformulating that objection as a paradoxical dilemma, then arguing that the dilemma is based on a false dichotomy. The conversation in the Meno takes place in late January or early February 402 B.C.E. excellent microcosm of this process. Socrates himself prefers. Socrates to get his interviewee to admit to Socrates' points in response the sorry state of affairs in Athens. MENO a young Thessalian aristocrat from Pharsalus, who is apparently staying in Athens with Anytus. Later, he supported the moderate faction among the Thirty Tyrants, and was banished by the extremists. Meno experiences it and and so do all of Socrates interlocutors. Shortly before this dialogue takes place, some leading Spartans and allies considered killing all the Athenian men and enslaving the women and children. In the Phaedrus, recollection of such Forms is not argued for but 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 power of love in philosophical learning. He reminds Meno that even professional teachers and good men themselves disagree about whether virtue can be taught. Anytus, an Athenian conservative, despises the Sophists. When Meno resists yet 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?) Many Athenians thought that he was undermining traditional morality and piety, and thereby corrupting the young minds of a vulnerable community. After persuading Meno to take seriously his own favorite notion—that virtue is achieved through some kind of knowledge, rather than through wealth and political power—Socrates endeavors to convince Meno that learning just by hearing from others does not provide real knowledge or real virtue. “Plato’s Earlier Theory of Knowledge.” In Essays on the Philosophy of Socrates, edited by Hugh Benson, 86-106. 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. The questions in the Meno about teaching virtue are directly related to longstanding tensions between oligarchic and democratic factions. Socrates responds by calling over an enslaved boy and, after establishing that he has had no mathematical training, gives him a geometry problem. A model geometry lesson with an uneducated slave is supposed to illustrate the importance of being aware of our own ignorance, the nature of proper education, the difference between knowledge and true belief, and the possibility of learning things without being taught. Or is he just throwing up an abstract, defensive obstacle, so that he does not have to keep trying? and implicitly agrees to Socrates' characterization of Sophist arguments away from success in worldly matters. Concerned with method, the dialogue develops Meno’s problem: How is it possible to search either… 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 he really knows. O Meno, there was a time when the Thessalians were famous among the other Hellenes only for their riches and their riding; but now, if I am not mistaken, they are equally famous for their wisdom, especially at Larisa, which is the native city of your friend Aristippus. At the time of his dialogue with Socrates, Meno is soon to begin his career as an important politician. Devereaux, Daniel T. “Nature and Teaching in Plato’s Meno.” Phronesis 32 (1978): 118-126. The argument can be shown to be sophistical, but Plato took it very seriously. Meno is one of Plato’s shortest but most influential dialogues. things at all is a good idea. 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