Summary

In this dialogue which follows Protagoras,  Socrates and a young Athenian man, Meno discuss virtue and it’s meaning and teachability.  That is the first question which is asked: Is virtue something that is taught or something that is inborn? As usual, Socrates suggests that before forming any propositions in regard to the question, the term should be defined; the term in this case is “virtue.”  When Meno is asked to define it, he claims that it is different to the individual, i.e., a virtuous woman looks after her home, a virtuous man looks after his state and protects everyone, and so on. Socrates then complains that his definition is merely giving examples, and not an actual definition of the term itself. It is like defining “shape”  as “squares, triangles, circles, etc.” He then suggests a different approach, and that is creating a hypothesis; expressing certain conditions which the term must abide by to be considered what it is.  This is what stumps Meno, and although before encountering Socrates, he believed himself to have a sound idea of what virtue is, he now is in the dark about it. He describes Socrates as a “numbfish” or rather an electric eel, who paralyses all who come in contact with him, since his questioning always leaves people helplessly numb.

As discussed in previous discourses, virtue is supposedly knowledge, which can be taught. But after Meno was stumped by a paradox about knowledge, new conclusions were reached. The paradox was this: one either knows all there is to know about something, so no further inquiries are necessary, or he is ignorant on the topic, and doesn’t know where to base his inquiries. To this Socrates proposes a new explanation. He tells the myth of souls being immortal; because of this, the soul has already acquired infinite knowledge before taking form of a man. Having this, we do not necessarily learn new information, but rather we recall what we already knew, and in order to do this we must be asked the right questions, which will ignite this innate memory and the knowledge will be remembered. Socrates demonstrates this on one of Meno’s young slaves, who has had no education, but he can speak Greek. He draws some geometrical figures in the ground and asks the slave to find the size of the side of a square given its area. With a bit of questioning and prompting, the slave is able to answer the questions correctly. Socrates then shows Meno that while the slave was figuring out the answers to his questions, he exhibited behavior more like that of recollection rather than learning, for he hadn’t learned any of it previously. Socrates defines what the slave has  as “true opinion.” Now that he has presented his hypothesis, Meno wishes to return to the original question. Is good and virtue taught, or is it found inside oneself?

Socrates points out a problem; if good is teachable, who teaches it? Surely the sophists and great men do not, for if they were able to teach good, their sons would be good as well, which they have shown very clearly not to be.  However, the good are not good by nature, for as discussed in previous dialogues, being virtuous  requires one to resist many natural desires. This is when Anytus appears. Socrates presents him with the dilemma, and he immediately expresses his distaste for sophists, saying that they are dishonest frauds, and can easily corrupt any of their students. When Socrates exposes the fact that the good men aren’t always able to teach good, seeing as their sons are not, Anytus becomes angry, since he himself is the son of a great man. At this point the conclusion seems to be that virtue is not teachable, since good men fail to teach their sons to do likewise. Knowledge is definitely teachable, but good is not, so there must be more to good than pure knowledge. There must be good judgement, and right guidance, which is all achievable with “true opinions.” True opinions are said by Socrates to be better than ignorance, but less than knowledge, as the distinction lies in whether or not the opinion is grounded. He showed this in the slave when he beckoned him to solve some geometrical problems.  Once a right opinion is proved with reason, it is then “tied down” so to say, thus becoming knowledge. It is easily comparable to geometry; you may have a correct opinion about something, but it is not grounded until it is hypothesized and proved by good reasoning. Socrates says that right opinion must be a divine gift from the gods, therefore it is not simply knowledge which constitutes good, and virtue is not teachable. The definition of “virtue” still hasn’t been investigated, and a definite conclusion cannot be reached without a sound definition.

Analysis

When Meno is first asked to give his definition of virtue, he defines it as a concept which differs from person to person; a good wife cares for the home, a good man protects the household, and a good pupil heeds the teacher, and so on. When Socrates shows dissatisfaction with this definition, since it is only defining virtue by examples of it, Meno defines it as acquiring what is good for a person in a just way. Socrates immediately identifies the circular reasoning in his statement, since justice is a virtue, and one cannot use a virtue to define virtue. Without a clear definition of virtue, it is no easy task to determine whether it is teachable or not. So in order to refute that question, Socrates resorts to his original idea that virtue is knowledge, and that it is only achieved with knowledge; if one knows what is best for him, he will do so. Ideally, this would be true, but it is displayed very often by regular human behaviour that one does not always do what he knows is best for him. One’s desires are typically much stronger than his moral sense, since the latter is something which is constructed by education and good teaching, and the former is natural. His natural desires will most likely overpower his will to be  good. That being said, knowledge of virtue definitely is the first step to obtaining it, so Socrates is not too far off.

How this knowledge is acquired is another question to discuss. After going through several attempts at defining virtue, Meno, who positive that he could define it, is stumped. Already paralysed by Socrates’s rhetoric, he runs into a paradox. How can knowledge be acquired if there are two circumstances in which knowledge has a place: either one has no more to learn, or he is so ignorant that he has no basis for questioning. Now obviously there is as grey area, so it is not much of a paradox at this point; one can know a little about a certain thing, so he has a basis for questioning, but not necessarily know so much about it that no more questioning is needed. But rather than presenting that grey area, Socrates solves this paradox with reasoning and a hypothesis. Using the myth of immortal souls, he suggests that before inhabiting a body, the soul knew all the knowledge that there ever was, but when it came into a physical body it forgot all of this knowledge that it once possessed. Now, the knowledge isn’t gone, it is simply forgotten, and questioning is what can remind the soul of what it knew. Basically, learning is not having new information imparted upon a person, but rather the soul remembering or recollecting the old, and most importantly, questioning which merits the essence of the knowledge is what prompts it. Socrates proceeds to demonstrate this on a young slave, explaining to Meno how the he seems to be remembering when prompted with good questioning (this demonstration regarded a geometrical figure). Even if Socrates’s theory seems ridiculous, it illustrates how problems in every form should be dealt with logically. Just as done in geometry, one formulates a hypothesis, then uses reason to prove it. Socrates formulated a theory to solve Meno’s paradox, and used the myth of immortal souls, and some deductive inference  to prove it.

Now the question of whether virtue can be taught or not is revisited, and with a new idea of knowledge in mind, there are new conclusions to be reached.When the slave boy was answering Socrates’s questions about the square, he wasn’t necessarily proving anything that he was saying, even though it was correct. So these things which are “remembered” by the soul with questions to prompt them are not so much knowledge, which is proved with reason, as they are “true opinions.”  True opinions are just as truthful as knowledge is, but they are not as reliable, since they are not proven (Socrates describes them as statues which walk away unless tied to the ground). Socrates proposes that these true opinions are possibly divine gifts granted by the gods, which means they are not taught. This brings him and Meno to a new conclusion, that virtue is not taught, and they have finished their discussion with opposite stances of what they entered with. Besides, if virtue was taught, the virtuous men would have virtuous sons, and there would be actual teachers. Earlier in this discussion, Anytus came in and took offense to this claim, for he is the son of a great man himself. He admitted that sophists are no good, though, and agreed with Socrates for the most part. Socrates presents a very convincing hypothesis, and the great thing about logic is the correspondence that the metaphysical has to the physical. He shows that relation when comparing true opinions to unproven truths, and knowledge as proven.

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