In Meno

Dialogue by Plato

This article is about Plato's dialogue. For the Thessalian general and character from Plato'southward dialogue, see Meno (general). For other uses, see Meno (disambiguation).

Meno (; Greek: Μένων , Ménōn) is a Socratic dialogue by Plato. Meno begins the dialogue by asking Socrates whether virtue is taught, caused by practice, or comes by nature.^[one] In order to determine whether virtue is teachable or not, Socrates tells Meno that they showtime need to determine what virtue is. When the characters speak of virtue, or rather arete, they refer to virtue in general, rather than particular virtues, such as justice or temperance. The showtime part of the work showcases Socratic dialectical fashion; Meno, unable to adequately define virtue, is reduced to confusion or aporia.^[2] Socrates suggests that they seek an adequate definition for virtue together. In response, Meno suggests that it is impossible to seek what one does not know, because one will be unable to determine whether one has found information technology.^[3]

Socrates challenges Meno'south argument, often called "Meno's Paradox" or the "Learner'south Paradox," by introducing the theory of knowledge equally recollection (anamnesis). Equally presented in the dialogue, the theory proposes that souls are immortal and know all things in a disembodied state; learning in the embodied is actually a process of recollecting that which the soul knew earlier it came into a torso.^[iv] Socrates demonstrates recollection in action by posing a mathematical puzzle to ane of Meno'south slaves.^[v] Subsequently, Socrates and Meno return to the question of whether virtue is teachable, employing the method of hypothesis. Near the terminate of the dialogue, Meno poses another famous puzzle, chosen "The Meno Problem" or "The Value Problem for Knowledge," which questions why noesis is valued more highly than true belief.^[6] In response, Socrates provides a famous and somewhat enigmatic distinction between knowledge and true conventionalities.^[7]

Characters [edit]

Plato'due south Meno is a Socratic dialogue in which the two main speakers, Socrates and Meno (as well transliterated as "Menon"), discuss man virtue: what it is, and whether or non it tin exist taught. Meno is visiting Athens from Thessaly with a big entourage of slaves attending him. Young, skilful-looking and well-built-in, he is a pupil of Gorgias, a prominent sophist whose views on virtue conspicuously influence that of Meno's. Early in the dialogue, Meno claims that he has held forth many times on the subject of virtue, and in front of large audiences.

Ane of Meno's slaves besides has a speaking role, every bit one of the features of the dialogue is Socrates' use of the slave to demonstrate his idea of anamnesis: certain knowledge is innate and "recollected" past the soul through proper enquiry.

Some other participant in the dialogue is Athenian politician Anytus, a prosecutor of Socrates with whom Meno is friendly.

Dialogue [edit]

Introduction of virtue [edit]

The dialogue begins with Meno asking Socrates to tell him if virtue can be taught. Socrates says that he does not know what virtue is, and neither does anyone else he knows.^[8] Meno responds that, according to Gorgias, virtue is different for dissimilar people, that what is virtuous for a man is to carry himself in the city so that he helps his friends, injures his enemies, and takes intendance all the while that he personally comes to no impairment. Virtue is different for a woman, he says. Her domain is the management of the household, and she is supposed to obey her husband. He says that children (male and female) have their own proper virtue, and so exercise old men—costless or slaves.^[9] Socrates objects: there must exist some virtue mutual to all human beings.

Socrates rejects the thought that human virtue depends on a person'due south sex activity or age. He leads Meno towards the thought that virtues are common to all people, that sophrosunê ('temperance', i.e. exercise of cocky-command) and dikê (aka dikaiosunê; 'justice', i.due east. refrain from harming others) are virtues even in children and old men.^[10] Meno proposes to Socrates that the "chapters to govern men" may be a virtue common to all people. Socrates points out to the slaveholder that "governing well" cannot be a virtue of a slave, because then he would not be a slave.^[11]

One of the errors that Socrates points out is that Meno lists many particular virtues without defining a common feature inherent to virtues which makes them thus. Socrates remarks that Meno makes many out of i, like somebody who breaks a plate.^[12]

Meno proposes that virtue is the desire for good things and the power to become them. Socrates points out that this raises a second trouble—many people practise not recognize evil.^[thirteen] The word and so turns to the question of accounting for the fact that so many people are mistaken about good and evil and have ane for the other. Socrates asks Meno to consider whether adept things must exist caused virtuously in order to be really practiced.^[fourteen] Socrates leads onto the question of whether virtue is one thing or many.

No satisfactory definition of virtue emerges in the Meno. Socrates' comments, however, show that he considers a successful definition to be unitary, rather than a list of varieties of virtue, that it must contain all and only those terms which are genuine instances of virtue, and must not be circular.^[15]

Meno's paradox [edit]

Meno asks Socrates:^{[16] [17]}

And how volition you lot ask, Socrates, into that which y'all do non know? What will you put forth every bit the subject of research? And if you find what you want, how will y'all always know that this is the thing which y'all did not know?

Socrates rephrases the question, which has come up to be the canonical statement of the paradox:^{[xvi] [18]}

[A] man cannot inquire either about that which he knows, or near that which he does not know; for if he knows, he has no need to enquire; and if not, he cannot; for he does not know the very subject about which he is to enquire.

Dialogue with Meno's slave [edit]

Socrates responds to this sophistical paradox with a mythos ('narrative' or 'fiction') according to which souls are immortal and have learned everything prior to transmigrating into the human being body. Since the soul has had contact with real things prior to nascency, nosotros have only to 'recollect' them when alive. Such recollection requires Socratic questioning, which according to Socrates is not teaching. Socrates demonstrates his method of questioning and recollection by interrogating a slave who is ignorant of geometry.

Socrates begins one of the most influential dialogues of Western philosophy regarding the statement for inborn knowledge. By drawing geometric figures in the ground Socrates demonstrates that the slave is initially unaware of the length that a side must be in lodge to double the area of a foursquare with 2-foot sides. The slave guesses starting time that the original side must be doubled in length (four feet), and when this proves besides much, that it must exist 3 feet. This is all the same as well much, and the slave is at a loss.

Socrates claims that before he got concur of him the slave (who has been picked at random from Meno's entourage) might accept idea he could speak "well and fluently" on the field of study of a square double the size of a given square.^[19] Socrates comments that this "numbing" he caused in the slave has done him no harm and has even benefited him.^[xx]

The blue square is twice the area of the yellowish square

Socrates then adds 3 more squares to the original square, to form a larger foursquare four times the size. He draws four diagonal lines which bifurcate each of the smaller squares. Through questioning, Socrates leads the slave to the discovery that the square formed by these diagonals has an surface area of eight square feet, double that of the original. He says that the slave has "spontaneously recovered" knowledge he knew from a by life^[21] without having been taught. Socrates is satisfied that new beliefs were "newly aroused" in the slave.

After witnessing the example with the slave boy, Meno tells Socrates that he thinks that Socrates is correct in his theory of recollection, to which Socrates agrees:^{[16] [22]}

Some things I have said of which I am not altogether confident. But that we shall be ameliorate and braver and less helpless if we remember that we ought to inquire, than we should have been if nosotros indulged in the idle fancy that there was no knowing and no use in seeking to know what nosotros do non know; that is a theme upon which I am set to fight, in word and deed, to the utmost of my ability.

Anytus [edit]

Meno at present beseeches Socrates to render to the original question, how virtue is caused, and in detail, whether or not it is acquired by education or through life experience. Socrates proceeds on the hypothesis that virtue is knowledge, and information technology is speedily agreed that, if this is true, virtue is teachable. They plough to the question of whether virtue is indeed knowledge. Socrates is hesitant, considering, if virtue were knowledge, at that place should be teachers and learners of it, but there are none.

Coincidentally Anytus appears, whom Socrates praises as the son of Anthemion, who earned his fortune with intelligence and hard piece of work. He says that Anthemion had his son well-educated then Anytus is well-suited to join the investigation. Socrates suggests that the sophists are teachers of virtue. Anytus is horrified, maxim that he neither knows any, nor cares to know any. Socrates and then questions why it is that men practise not always produce sons of the same virtue as themselves. He alludes to other notable male figures, such as Themistocles, Aristides, Pericles and Thucydides, and casts uncertainty on whether these men produced sons as capable of virtue equally themselves. Anytus becomes offended and accuses Socrates of slander, alarm him to be careful expressing such opinions. (The historical Anytus was one of Socrates' accusers in his trial.) Socrates suggests that Anytus does not realize what slander is, and continues his dialogue with Meno as to the definition of virtue.

True belief and knowledge [edit]

Later the word with Anytus, Socrates returns to quizzing Meno for his ain thoughts on whether the sophists are teachers of virtue and whether virtue can exist taught. Meno is over again at a loss, and Socrates suggests that they have made a fault in agreeing that knowledge is required for virtue. He points out the similarities and differences between "truthful conventionalities" and "knowledge". True beliefs are equally useful to us equally knowledge, simply they often fail to "stay in their place" and must exist "tethered" by what he calls aitias logismos ('adding of reason' or 'reasoned caption'), immediately adding that this is anamnesis, or recollection.^[23]

Whether or not Plato intends that the tethering of true behavior with reasoned explanations must always involve anamnesis is explored in afterwards interpretations of the text.^{[24] [25]} Socrates' distinction betwixt "true belief" and "noesis" forms the basis of the philosophical definition of knowledge as "justified true conventionalities". Myles Burnyeat and others, even so, have argued that the phrase aitias logismos refers to a applied working out of a solution, rather than a justification.^[26]

Socrates concludes that, in the virtuous people of the nowadays and the past, at least, virtue has been the result of divine inspiration, akin to the inspiration of the poets, whereas a knowledge of it will require answering the basic question, what is virtue?. In near modern readings these closing remarks are "manifestly ironic,"^[27] just Socrates' invocation of the gods may be sincere, albeit "highly tentative."^[28]

This passage in the Meno is often seen equally the first statement of the problem of the value of knowledge: how is knowledge more valuable than mere true belief? ^[29] The nature of knowledge and belief is besides discussed in the Thaetetus.

Meno and Protagoras [edit]

Meno 'south theme is also dealt with in the dialogue Protagoras, where Plato ultimately has Socrates arrive at the opposite conclusion: virtue can be taught. Likewise, while in Protagoras knowledge is uncompromisingly this-worldly, in Meno the theory of recollection points to a link between knowledge and eternal truths.^[15]

Texts and translations [edit]

• Jowett, Benjamin. 1871. "Meno." – via Internet Classics Annal. Project Gutenberg: 1643.
• Lamb, W. R. Thou., trans. [1924] 1967. "Meno." Plato in Twelve Volumes 3. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-99183-four, 0-674-99184-two. – via Perseus Project.
• Wood, Cathal, trans. 2011. "Meno." SSRN 1910945.

References [edit]

1. ^ Plato, Meno, 70a
2. ^ Plato, Meno, 80a-b
3. ^ Plato, Meno, 80d
4. ^ Plato, Meno, 81a-e
5. ^ Plato, Meno, 82a-86c
6. ^ Plato, Meno, 97b-d
7. ^ Plato, Meno, 98a
8. ^ Plato, Meno, 71b
9. ^ Plato, Meno, 71e
10. ^ Plato, Meno, 73b
11. ^ Plato, Meno, 73c–d
12. ^ Plato, Meno, 77a
13. ^ Plato, Meno, 77d–east
14. ^ Plato, Meno, 78b
15. ^ ^{a b} 24-hour interval, Jane Mary. 1994. Plato's Meno in Focus. Routledge. p. 19. ISBN 0-415-00297-iv.
16. ^ ^{a b c} Plato, Meno (translated by B. Jowett 1871).
17. ^ Plato. [380 BC] 1976. Meno, translated by Thou. Yard. A. Grube. Indianapolis: Hackett. line 80d, p. 9.
18. ^ Plato. [380 BC] 1976. Meno, translated by Yard. M. A. Grube. Indianapolis: Hackett. line 80e:

    "[A] human cannot search either for what he knows or for what he does non know; He cannot search for what he knows--since he knows it, there is no need to search--nor for what he does not know, for he does not know what to look for."

19. ^ Plato, Meno, 84c
20. ^ Plato, Meno, 84b
21. ^ Plato, Meno, 85d
22. ^ Plato, Meno, 86b
23. ^ Vlastos, Gregory. 1996. Studies in Greek Philosophy: Socrates, Plato, and Their Tradition 2. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-01938-X. p. 155.
24. ^ Fine, Gail. 1992. "Inquiry in the 'Meno'." In The Cambridge Companion to Plato, edited past R. Kraut. Cambridge: Cambridge University Printing. ISBN 0-521-43610-nine. p. 221.
25. ^ Kahn, Charles. 2006. "Plato on Recollection." In A Companion to Plato 37, edited past H. H. Benson. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 1-4051-1521-1. p. 122.
26. ^ Fine, Gail. 2004. "Knowledge and True Belief in the Meno." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 27(winter): 61–62, edited by D. Sedley. ISBN 0-19-927712-5.
27. ^ Waterfield, Robin. 2005. Meno and Other Dialogues, (Oxford Earth Classics). Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-280425-1. pxliv.
28. '^ Scott, Dominic. 2006. Plato'southward 'Meno. Cambridge Academy Press. p 193. ISBN 0-521-64033-four.
29. ^ Pritchard, Duncan, John Turri, and J. Adam Carter. [2007] 2018. "The Value of Cognition" (revised). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Sources [edit]

• Day, Jane 1000. 1994. Plato's 'Meno' in Focus. London: Routledge.
• Klein, Jacob. 1965. A Commentary on Plato's 'Meno'. Chapel Loma: University of North Carolina Printing.
• Lamb, W. R. G., trans. 1924. Plato: Laches, Protagoras, Meno, Euthydemus, (Loeb Classical Library 165: Plato 2). Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0674991835. Lay summary.

External links [edit]

• Approaching Plato: A Guide to the Early and Middle Dialogues
• Guides to the Socratic Dialogues: Plato's Meno. A beginner's guide to the Meno
• Plato's Meno: Contretemps in the Classroom
• Meno 82b-85d A Visual Representation of the Geometry in Socrates' Interrogation of the Slave
• Meno public domain audiobook at LibriVox
• Plato'southward Meno, article in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meno

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