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Meno (; , Ménōn) is a Socratic dialogue written by Plato around 385 BC, but set at an earlier date around 402 BC.Rawson, G., Plato: Meno in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, accessed on 16 December 2024 Meno begins the dialogue by asking Socrates whether virtue (in , Arete) can be taught, acquired by practice, or comes by nature.Plato, Meno, 70a In order to determine whether virtue is teachable or not, Socrates tells Meno that they first need to determine what virtue is. When the characters speak of virtue, or aretē, they refer to virtue in general, rather than particular virtues, such as justice or temperance. The first part of the work showcases Socratic method; Meno, unable to adequately define virtue, is reduced to confusion or aporia.Plato, Meno, 80a–b Socrates suggests that they seek an adequate definition for virtue together. In response, Meno suggests that it is impossible to seek what one does not know, because one will be unable to determine whether one has found it.Plato, Meno, 80d
Socrates challenges Meno's argument, often called "Meno's Paradox", "Learner's Paradox", or the "Arabic Paradox", by introducing the theory of knowledge as recollection ( anamnesis). As presented in the dialogue, the theory proposes that souls are immortal and know all things in a disembodied state; learning in the embodied is actually a process of recollecting that which the soul knew before it came into a body.Plato, Meno, 81a–e Socrates demonstrates recollection in action by posing a mathematical puzzle to one of Meno's slaves.Plato, Meno, 82a–86c Subsequently, Socrates and Meno return to the question of whether virtue is teachable, employing the method of hypothesis. Near the end of the dialogue, Meno poses another famous puzzle, called "the Meno problem" or "the Value Problem for Knowledge", which questions why knowledge is valued more highly than true belief.Plato, Meno, 97b–d In response, Socrates provides a famous and somewhat enigmatic distinction between knowledge and true belief.Plato, Meno, 98a
One of Meno's slaves also has a speaking role, as one of the features of the dialogue is Socrates' engagement with the slave to demonstrate his idea of anamnesis: certain knowledge is innate and "recollected" by the soul through proper inquiry.
Another participant later in the dialogue is Athenian politician Anytus,Plato, Meno, 89e onwards later one of the prosecutors of Socrates,Plato, Apology, footnote 3, accessed on 28 December 2024 with whom Meno is friendly.
Socrates rejects the idea that human virtue depends on a person's sex or age. He leads Meno towards the idea that virtues are common to all people, that Sophrosyne ('temperance', i.e. exercise of self-control) and dikê (aka dikaiosunê; 'justice', i.e. refrain from harming others) are virtues even in children and old men.Plato, Meno, 73b Meno proposes to Socrates that the "capacity to govern men" may be a virtue common to all people. Socrates points out to the slaveholder that "governing well" cannot be a virtue of a slave, because then he would not be a slave.Plato, Meno, 73c–d
One of the errors that Socrates points out is that Meno lists many particular virtues without defining a common feature inherent to virtues which makes them thus. Socrates remarks that Meno makes many out of one, like somebody who breaks a plate.Plato, Meno, 77a
Meno proposes that virtue is the desire for good things and the power to get them. Socrates points out that this raises a second problem—many people do not recognize evil.Plato, Meno, 77d–e The discussion then turns to the question of accounting for the fact that so many people are mistaken about good and evil and take one for the other. Socrates asks Meno to consider whether good things must be acquired virtuously in order to be really good.Plato, Meno, 78b Socrates leads onto the question of whether virtue is one thing or many.
No satisfactory definition of virtue emerges in the Meno. Socrates' comments, however, show that he considers a successful definition to be unitary, rather than a list of varieties of virtue, that it must contain all and only those terms which are genuine instances of virtue, and must not be circular.Day, Jane Mary. 1994. Plato's Meno in Focus. Routledge. p. 19. .
And how will you enquire, Socrates, into that which you do not know? What will you put forth as the subject of enquiry? And if you find what you want, how will you ever know that this is the thing which you did not know?Socrates rephrases the question, which has come to be the canonical statement of Meno's paradox or the paradox of inquiry:Plato. 380 1976. Meno, translated by George Grube. Indianapolis: Hackett. line 80e:
"A man cannot search either for what he knows or for what he does not know; He cannot search for what he knows—since he knows it, there is no need to search—nor for what he does not know, for he does not know what to look for."
Socrates begins one of the most influential dialogues of Western philosophy regarding the argument for Innatism. By drawing geometric figures in the ground Socrates demonstrates that the slave is initially unaware of the length that a side must be in order to double the area of a square with 2-foot sides. The slave guesses first that the original side must be doubled in length (4 feet), and when this proves too much, that it must be 3 feet. This is still too much, and the slave is at a loss.
Socrates claims that before he got hold of him the slave (who has been picked at random from Meno's entourage) might have thought he could speak "well and fluently" on the subject of a square double the size of a given square.Plato, Meno, 84c Socrates comments that this "numbing" he caused in the slave has done him no harm and has even benefited him.Plato, Meno, 84b
Socrates then adds three more squares to the original square, to form a larger square four times the size. He draws four diagonal lines which bisect each of the smaller squares. Through questioning, Socrates leads the slave to the discovery that the square formed by these diagonals has an area of eight square feet, double that of the original. He says that the slave has "spontaneously recovered" knowledge which he knew from before he was born,Plato, Meno, 86a without having been taught. Socrates is satisfied that new beliefs were "newly aroused" in the slave.
After witnessing the example with the slave boy, Meno tells Socrates that he thinks that Socrates is correct in his theory of recollection, to which Socrates agrees:Plato, Meno, 86b
Coincidentally Anytus appears, whom Socrates praises as the son of Anthemion, who earned his fortune with intelligence and hard work. He says that Anthemion had his son well-educated and so Anytus is well-suited to join the investigation. Socrates suggests that the sophists are teachers of virtue. Anytus is horrified, saying that he neither knows any, nor cares to know any. Socrates then questions why it is that men do not always produce sons of the same virtue as themselves. He alludes to other notable male figures, such as Themistocles, Aristides, Pericles and Thucydides, and casts doubt on whether these men produced sons as capable of virtue as themselves. Anytus becomes offended and accuses Socrates of slander, warning him to be careful expressing such opinions. (The historical Anytus was one of Socrates' accusers in his trial.) Socrates suggests that Anytus does not realize what slander is, and continues his dialogue with Meno as to the definition of virtue.
Whether Plato intends that the tethering of true beliefs with reasoned explanations must always involve anamnesis is explored in later interpretations of the text.Gail Fine. 1992. "Inquiry in the 'Meno'." In The Cambridge Companion to Plato, edited by R. Kraut. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. . p. 221.Kahn, Charles. 2006. "Plato on Recollection" in A Companion to Plato 37, edited by H. H. Benson. Wiley-Blackwell. . p. 122. Socrates' distinction between "true belief" and "knowledge" forms the basis of the philosophical definition of knowledge as "justified true belief". Myles Burnyeat and others, however, have argued that the phrase aitias logismos refers to a practical working out of a solution, rather than a justification.Gail Fine. 2004. "Knowledge and True Belief in the Meno", Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 27(winter): 61–62, edited by David Sedley. .
Socrates concludes that, in the virtuous people of the present and the past, at least, virtue has been the result of divine inspiration, akin to the inspiration of the poets, whereas a knowledge of it will require answering the basic question, what is virtue?. In most modern readings these closing remarks are "evidently ironic",Robin Waterfield. 2005. Meno and Other Dialogues, ( Oxford World Classics). Oxford University Press. . pxliv. but Socrates' invocation of the gods may be sincere, albeit "highly tentative".Scott, Dominic. 2006. Plato's 'Meno' . Cambridge University Press. p 193. .
This passage in the Meno is often seen as the first statement of the problem of the value of knowledge or "the Meno problem": how is knowledge more valuable than mere true belief?Duncan Pritchard, John Turri, and J. Adam Carter. 2007 2018. " The Value of Knowledge" (revised). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The nature of knowledge and belief is also discussed in the Theaetetus.
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