Customer Reviews

Meno

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Meno, an early Platonic dialogue, centers on virtue and illustrates the classic Socratic Method. Meno begins the dialogue by asking, "Can you tell me, Socrates, can virtue be taught?"

Socrates claims that to answer such a question, a person would have to know what virtue is. An incredulous Meno asks, "Socrates, do you really not know what virtue is?"

Socrates responds, "Not only that, my friend, but as I believe, I have never yet met anyone else who did know."

And so Socrates and Meno engage in a question-and-answer investigation of what virtue is and if it can be taught. They explore how to define words, how people learn, whether virtue is knowledge, and the difference between true opinion and knowledge. The process at one point leads Meno to call Socrates a "broad torpedo fish," capable of numbing the mind with his probing questions.

G.M.A. Grube does a great job translating, and his footnotes aren't intrusive. If you're wondering what the Socratic Method entails, Meno is a good introduction that satisfies that curiosity without being too dense. But if you want to fully learn Plato's opinion of virtue and its properties (and the immortality of the soul), you might want to check out Protagoras (where Plato reaches the opposite conclusion than in this dialogue) and, of course, The Republic.

.
For such a short story, so much is said. Reading Plato answers many questions and exposes the framework of so many later writers of history, a classic that should be read and contemplated. Spending the time reading on Plato's Meno reaps much, far more valuable than vast amounts of mediocre writers. Can you imagine if the masses spent as much time reading Plato as they do their shod journalism!

Actually this idea of virtue has the basics of all philosophical thought, the direction of the whole or the overall purpose always direct the thoughts. Virtue acts as the driving force of the empirical observation and technical craft. Virtue is the purpose, the why, as opposed to the what. And so, it has been determined from the conversation of Socrates and Meno, that virtue is not knowledge, it is not the "what" but rather it is that which moves the direction behind knowledge and therefore cannot be taught. And if it is not knowledge then it can be observed by example, yet Socrates determined that virtue is from a divine source, the inspiration that is behind all knowledge.

Meno is one of Plato's early and, to my mind, least successful, Socratic dialogues. The conversation centers, naturally enough, on virtue and whether or not it is teachable. Meno's definitions of virtue are woefully inadequate, by and large, and deserving of Socrates' typical arrogance. At one point, Meno says that one cannot learn about what one does not know. To counter this argument, Socrates, arguing that the soul is eternal and that learning is in fact recollection, sets about showing him how an ignorant slave "remembers" the answers to geometrical questions Socrates puts to him. Later, when Meno agrees with the notion that virtue is knowledge and can be taught, Socrates counters the point by saying he has yet to find anyone who truly practices virtue and is thus qualified to teach it. In the end, Socrates concludes that virtue cannot be taught and is in fact a gift of the gods. Only the gods have true knowledge and can thus do nothing wrong, in Socrates' opinion.

The whole "knowledge is recollection" argument dominates my reaction to this dialogue, as the demonstration of geometrical knowledge involving a slave never sits well with me. One should not really look for answers in Meno, as the whole dialogue ends with little more than open questions. Many of the same ideas were developed much more completely in The Republic.