Meno
Plato's Meno is not a successful definition of virtue but a dramatic inquiry into whether it can be taught at all. Its mechanism is a three-part structure: first, a series of failed definitions expose the difficulty of saying what virtue is; then, the slave-boy demonstration enacts the Theory of Recollection, showing that learning is the recovery of pre-natal knowledge; finally, the dialogue turns to the difference between knowledge and true belief, concluding that virtue comes neither by nature nor by teaching but by divine dispensation. The text's most famous contribution is the paradox of inquiry—how can one search for what one does not know?—which Socrates resolves through recollection.
Key Insights
✦What is the central claim of the Meno, and what does it reject?
The dialogue's spine is the argument that virtue cannot be taught, because it is not knowledge. Socrates distinguishes between knowledge and true belief: both can guide action correctly, but knowledge is tethered by an account of why it is true, while true belief is not . Since virtue is beneficial and reliably good only when accompanied by knowledge, and since no teachers of virtue can be found, virtue must come by divine dispensation rather than instruction. The dialogue rejects the sophistic claim to teach virtue and the assumption that if virtue is good, it must be teachable. It also rejects the paradox of inquiry—that one cannot search for what one does not know—by introducing the Theory of Recollection.
✦What is the paradox of inquiry, and how does the slave-boy demonstration resolve it?
Meno poses the paradox: one cannot inquire into what one knows, because one already knows it, nor into what one does not know, because one does not know what to look for. Socrates responds with the Theory of Recollection: the soul is immortal and has learned all things in a previous existence, so learning is a matter of recalling what is already latent . The slave-boy demonstration enacts this claim. Socrates questions an untutored slave about geometry, and the boy arrives at a correct answer through the questioning alone, without being told. The episode is designed to show that knowledge can be elicited from within, not poured in from without, and that inquiry is possible because the soul possesses latent knowledge.
✦What is the distinction between knowledge and true belief, and why does it matter for the dialogue's conclusion?
The distinction is introduced near the end of the dialogue to explain why virtue cannot be knowledge. True beliefs can be correct and useful—a man with true belief about the road to Larissa will arrive just as well as one with knowledge—but they are unstable and can be lost . Knowledge is true belief 'tethered' by an account of the cause or reason. Socrates argues that if virtue were knowledge, there would be teachers of it, but there are none. Therefore virtue is not knowledge but true belief, and true belief comes by divine dispensation. The distinction matters because it allows Socrates to preserve the goodness of virtue while denying its teachability, and it introduces a epistemological category that would become central to later Platonic thought.
✦How does the Meno relate to the Protagoras on the question of whether virtue can be taught?
The Protagoras stages a dramatic confrontation in which Socrates argues that virtue is knowledge and therefore teachable, while Protagoras defends a democratic pedagogy of virtue. The dialogue ends in aporia, with the positions reversed. The Meno revisits the same question but reaches a different conclusion: virtue is not knowledge and therefore not teachable. The difference reflects a shift in Plato's epistemological framework. In the Protagoras, the Socratic paradox that virtue is knowledge is still in play; in the Meno, the distinction between knowledge and true belief complicates that identification. The later dialogue thus revises the earlier one's conclusion, showing that the question of virtue's teachability depends on a prior analysis of what kind of cognition virtue is.
✦What are the major English translations of the Meno, and how do they differ?
The Meno has been translated into English many times, from Thomas Taylor (1804) through Benjamin Jowett (1892) and H. N. Fowler's Loeb edition (1913) . The most widely used modern translation is by G. M. A. Grube, revised by John Cooper and published by Hackett, which is standard in classrooms . R. W. Sharples' Aris & Phillips edition (1985) includes facing Greek text and commentary, while the Cambridge edition by R. D. McKirahan offers a philosophical introduction and notes. The main translation challenges concern the technical vocabulary—aretē (virtue/excellence), epistēmē (knowledge), and orthē doxa (true belief)—and the dialogue's shifts in register, from the aporetic elenchus of the early definitions to the visionary tone of the recollection myth and the final appeal to divine dispensation.
✦What is a common misreading of the slave-boy demonstration?
A persistent misreading treats the slave-boy episode as a proof of innate ideas—that the boy literally contains the knowledge of geometry from birth. The text does not support this. Socrates presents the episode as a demonstration of recollection, which is a mythic or theological doctrine, not a psychological hypothesis about innate concepts. The boy arrives at the answer through questioning, not by reciting pre-existing information. Moreover, the demonstration shows only that he has true belief at that moment, not knowledge, since he cannot yet give an account of why the answer is correct. Reading it as a straightforward proof of innatism flattens the dialogue's epistemological complexity and ignores the distinction between knowledge and true belief that the episode is designed to illustrate.
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