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Ancient
Philosophy
Plato - Meno
Primary Source:
- Plato, Meno from Baird and Kaufmann, Ancient Philosophy,
pp. 171-181 (Start at 86c, where Socrates begin "Then, since we
are agreed..." and read until the end).
Secondary Source:
- Irwin, “Socrates and Plato”, “The Theory of Socratic
Argument”, “Inquiry and Recollection”, and “Knowledge
and Belief” from Classical Thought, pp. 85-89.
Background:
From Malcolm Schofield’s Routlegde Online Encyclopedia
article on Plato:
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[In part III of the Meno] direct engagement with the original
problem of what virtue is in fact abandoned at this juncture, and the
discussion turns to the issue of its teachability, and to the method
of hypothesis. Here the idea is that instead of investigating the truth
of proposition p directly ‘you hit upon another proposition
h (‘the hypothesis’), such that p is true
if and only if h is true, and then investigate the truth of
h, undertaking to determine what would follow (quite apart
from p) if h were true and, alternatively, if it were
false’. [In the Meno, p = “virtue
is teachable” and h = “virtue is knowledge”.]
After illustrating this procedure with an exceedingly obscure geometrical
example, Socrates makes a lucid application of it to the ethical problem
before them, and offers the Socratic thesis that virtue is knowledge
as the hypothesis from which the teachability of virtue can be derived.
The subsequent examination of this hypothesis comes to conclusions commentators
have found frustratingly ambiguous. But the survival and development
of the hypothetical method in Phaedo and Republic
are enough to show Plato’s conviction of its philosophical potential.
The slave boy episode is originally introduced by Socrates as a proof
of something much more than the possibility of successful inquiry. The
suggestion is that the best explanation of that possibility is provided
by the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, a Pythagorean belief
which makes the first of its many appearances in Plato’s dialogues
in Meno. More specifically, the idea as Socrates presents it
is that the soul pre-exists the body, in a condition involving conscious
possession of knowledge. On entry into the body it forgets what it knows,
although it retains it as latent memory. Discovery of the sort of a
priori knowledge characteristic of mathematics and (as Plato supposes)
ethics is a matter of recollecting latent memory. This is just what
happens to the slave boy: Socrates does not impart knowledge to him;
he works it out for himself by recovering it from within. Once again,
although the Socrates of Meno does not in the end subscribe
to belief in learning as recollection of innate knowledge, it is embraced
without equivocation in Phaedo. But what exactly is recollected?
Phaedo will say: knowledge of Forms. Meno by contrast
offers no clues.
Dialogue Outline and Questions:
- Part III – The Teachability of Virtue (86c-100c)
- Socrates’ Method of Hypothesis (86c-87c)
- Ignoring the complex example of geometry, what is Socrates
method of hypothesis in general?
- How does he apply it to the case of virtue? (Hint: it involves
knowledge or just look at p and h in the "Background”
section above…)
- The Argument that Virtue is Teachable (87c-89c)
- How does Socrates argue that virtue requires wisdom?
- Why does this imply that virtue is teachable?
- The Argument that Virtue is not Teachable (89c-96d)
- Not satisfied, Socrates starts a new line of thought, arguing
in the opposite direction.
- What kind of people must there be for something (including,
but not limited to, virtue) to be teachable? What happens if
there are no such people?
- At this moment Anytus appears. Remember him from somewhere?
- What does Socrates ask Anytus? How doe Anytus respond?
- After Anytus leaves, Socrates pursues a similar line of thought.
What does Socrates ask Meno?
- Knowledge and True Opinion (96d-100a)
- Now the question becomes, how on earth good people appear.
- What example does Socrates give to illustrate that true opinion
is as good as knowledge for acting rightly?
- Why does Socrates claim that knowledge is still better, overall,
than true opinion, however?
- Where does virtue come from then?
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