Meno

Meno Dialogue

Theme: Can virtue be taught?

* Socrates reminds Meno that no virtuous quality is any good without “moderation and justice”.

* Meno’s second definition is: “to be able to rule over people”.

* Should Meno have added justly or unjustly?

* Socrates defines shape and color as examples of how he wants Meno to define virtue.

* “To desire beautiful things and have the power to acquire them”.

* “The power of securing good things”.

* Using kinds of virtues to define virtue itself.

* Plato is showing us that a definition cannot contain the term to be defined.

* Meno calls Socrates a torpedo fish (a fish that numbs whatever touches it).

* “How will you look for virtue?” “When you do not know at all what it is?

* “Priests and Priestesses”

* The soul is immortal and therefore already knows everything is one of Plato’s most important ideas.

* Learning is a kind of recollection.

* Calls over one of Meno’s slave to show his theory.

* Socrates presents this process to Meno as strong evidence that learning is a recollection.

* Can virtue be taught, learned through practice, or inherent in some people’s nature?

* Means of a hypothesis: seeking what one does not yet know; by proposing a possible answer to a problem.

* Socrates hypothesis: if virtue is a kind of knowledge, then it can be taught.

* 2) if there is anything good that is not knowledge, then it is possible that virtue is not a kind of knowledge.

* Beneficial things are only so when accompanied by wisdom—“without understanding, they are harmful”.

* Virtue is only virtue when it has its context in wisdom.

* If something as important as virtue can be taught where are the teachers?

* Anytus: A prominent Athenian citizen and respected politician.

* Well-respected men whose sons have turned out less than perfect.

* It will now appear that virtue cannot be taught at all, and therefore that it is not knowledge....