Socrates and John Locke

Tasnia Chowdhury

Philo 101

Discussion Teacher : Eric Bay

Short Paper #1

1. What is Socrates trying to prove in his dialogue with the young servant? Are you convinced?

In the passage Meno, pages 9-12, after Socrates successfully proved to Meno that he, infact, did not know the true meaning of what virtue is, he soon attempted to show Meno that most knowledge is innate. Socrates believed as a rationalist that some knowledge is innate, meaning that we were born with it. Rationalists do admit that some knowledge is learned from experience, but most is innate, either coming from past lives, or God himself. This is exactly what he is trying to prove through questioning one of Meno’s servant boys. He wanted to show Meno that basic knowledge of mathematics is something we all have understanding of and is it a part of our knowledge just as virtue is, as Socrates so claims. Through a series of geometrical questions in regards to a square with an area of 4 feet and the length of one side being 2 feet, he was able to get the servant boy to admit to his ignorance and put him in a state of aporia, a certain doubt of the knowledge he thought he once knew. But this does not prove Socrates’ claim that mathematical knowledge is innate. Through further questioning on Socrates’ part, the slave soon reached the answer he thought he knew at the beginning, and thus “recollecting” this knowledge that he knew in the past.

As I stated earlier, Socrates is trying to prove that such understanding is knowledge that we were born with, and through questioning Socrates was able to bring the servant boy to the state of awareness of said innate knowledge. But to me, Socrates had just ended up leading him to the answer through such “questions”. At first, Socrates started off with questions that more appeared to be statements dressed up as questions, but I would say that is to establish a common ground amongst the slave boy and what Socrates was trying to get at with these questions....