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:

[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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