Meno

Meno is a Socratic dialogue written by Plato. Written in the Socratic dialectic style, it attempts to determine the definition of virtue, meaning in this case virtue in general, rather than particular virtues (e.g., justice, temperance, etc.). The goal is a common definition that applies equally to all particular virtues.

1 Characters
2 Virtue
3 Meno goes numb
4 The slave goes numb
5 Anytus shows up
6 An insidious comparison
7 Conclusion
8 Interpretation
9 External links

[edit] Characters

Plato's Meno is a Socratic dialogue in which the two main speakers, Socrates and Meno, discuss human virtue: whether or not it can be taught, whether it is shared by all human beings, and whether it is one quality or many. The most renowned feature of the dialogue is Socrates' use of one of Meno's slaves to demonstrate of one his favorite beliefs, that knowledge is "recollected" from past lives. Another often noted feature of the dialogue is the cameo appearance of Anytus, a member of a prominent Athenian family who will later participate in the prosecution of Socrates.

Meno appears to be visiting Athens in rock-star style, that is, with a large entourage of slaves attending him. Young, good-looking and well-born, Meno is perhaps a sophist from Thessaly, but Plato is not absolutely clear about this. Meno says early on in the dialogue that he has held forth many times on the subject of virtue, and in front of large audiences.

[edit] Virtue

The dialogue begins with Meno asking Socrates to tell him if virtue can be taught. Socrates says that he is clueless about what virtue is, and so is everyone else he knows (71b). Meno responds that virtue is different for different people, that what is virtuous for a man is to conduct himself in the city so that he helps his friends, injures his enemies, and takes care all the while that he personally comes to no harm. 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 do old men -free- or slave, as you like (71e). Socrates says he finds this odd. He suspects that there must be some virtue common to all human beings.

Socrates rejects the idea that human virtue depends on a person's gender or age. He leads Meno towards the idea that virtues are common to all people, that temperance ("sophrosne"- exercising self control) and justice ("dike"- refraining from harming other people) are virtues even in children and old men (73b). Meno proposes to Socrates that the "capacity to govern men" may be a virtue common to all people. Socrates points out to this dimwitted slaveholder that "governing well" cannot be a virtue of a slave, because then he would not be a slave (73c,d).

Socrates and Meno list many particular virtues, but are unable to find the thing which they all have in common and which makes them all virtues. Socrates complains that Meno makes many out of one, like somebody who breaks a plate (77a).

[edit] Meno goes numb

Meno proposes that virtue is the desire for good things and the power to get them. Socrates gets Meno to agree, however, that this raises a secondary problem: many people do not recognize evil when it is right under their nose (77d,e). The discussion then turns to how to account for the fact that so many people are mistaken about good and evil, and take one for the other. Socrates asks Meno to consider whether good things must be acquired virtuously in order to be really good (78b). He confuses Meno with his worries about whether virtue is one thing or many.

Meno ultimately throws up his hands at the problem, saying that he is no longer so sure of what virtue is. He compares Socrates to a "stingray" who numbs people. He says that Socrates has made him numb, stiff, speechless (80a,b). Socrates says somewhat flirtatiously that Meno is a handsome man who invites counter-comparisons. He says that he will accept the comparison only if Meno admits that Socrates himself is numb/stiff and that that has what has made Meno numb/stiff (80c).

Meno asks Socrates how a person can look for something when he has no idea what it is. How can he know when he has arrived at the truth when he does not already know what the truth is? Socrates dodges Meno's sophistical paradox by calling it a trick argument and then drifts into his own theory of knowledge, that it is "recollected" from the past lives of the immortal soul. He says he can demonstrate the truth of this idea if Meno will lend him one of his slaves for a moment. He says any one of them will do.

[edit] The slave goes numb

Meno obliges him by calling over a slave and the two discuss him as if he were a thing. Socrates asks Meno if the boy speaks Greek, and when Meno assures him that he was born and bred in his household, Socrates begins his famous experiment. Socrates tries to show, apparently by drawing geometric figures in the ground, that the slave at first does not know how to find twice the area of a square. He befuddles the slave with a drawing that makes an answer to the question impossible - impossible because it uses only lines parallel and perpendicular to the original square, and an exact doubling cannot be made this way.

Socrates says that before he got ahold of him, the slave (who has been picked at random from Meno's entourage) has spoken "well and fluently" on the subject of a square double the size of a given square (84c). Socrates says that this dumbfounding (numbing/stiffening) he caused in the slave did him no harm (84b).

Socrates then draws a second square figure on the diagonal so that the slave can see that by adding vertical and horizontal lines touching the corners of the square, the double of its area is created. He gets the slave to agree that this is twice the size of the original square and says that he has "spontaneously recovered" knowledge he knew from a past life (85d). Socrates is satisfied that "true opinions" were "newly aroused" in the slave. Socrates says that while true opinions are as useful as knowledge, they are not quite as good. He then takes up the distinction between true opinions and knowledge.

[edit] Anytus shows up

When Anytus appears on the scene, Socrates lavishes backhanded praise on him as the son of a man, Anthemion, who earned his fortune by his own brains and hard work. He says that Anthemion had his son well-educated, and Anytus, the beneficiary of a well-meaning father, must both be virtuous and know what it is. Anytus bashes sophists, and saying that he neither knows any, nor cares to know any. Socrates raises the age old question of why it is that men do not always produce sons of the same virtue as themselves. He mentions some prominent men, such as Pericles and Thucydides, and casts doubt on whether these man produced sons as capable of virtue as themselves. Anytus warns Socrates somewhat ominously, that this kind of innuendo against powerful men will get him into trouble someday. Anytus exits the conversation without further ado, and then Socrates returns to the question of how we know what good is, and how knowledge of good is different from true opinions about it.

[edit] An insidious comparison

Socrates asks Meno if he has any statues of Daedalus in his house at home, and says that the trouble with them is that they don't stay put. He says that any "untethered possession" is pretty worthless. He then says that knowledge is like a tied-up slave, and that a true opinion, like an untied slave, is less valuable because it can run off. Knowledge stays in your brain, he says, because it is "chained" in there by a reason (97e, 98a).(This would seem, of course, to undermine his previous claim that knowledge is mere recollection.)

[edit] Conclusion

In this dialogue, Socrates performs two parallel "stupifications." First, he renders the eloquent Meno speechless about virtue, and then he renders his slave speechless about doubling the area of a square. Meno says that before he encountered Socrates, he was quite confident about virtue and lectured to others about it, and Socrates tells Meno that his slave used to have the same confidence about geometry. Socrates seems to have momentarily forgotten that the subject of his experiment was a slave, because he invents a career for him as a geometer. Socrates' dumbfounding of his subjects is entertaining, but not legitimate.

Socrates seems to think that moral and mathematical knowledge follow the same epistemological model. In the Euthyphro, Socrates complains to the title charcater that people (like the gods) disagree and quarrel about moral matters, but can agree about matters of math and science.

Socrates says he has no idea about virtue, but suspects it is one thing and not several. Yet in objecting to Meno's claim that justice varies with gender and age, he himself introduces the possibility that a unitary definition is not possible. He suggests that any complete definition must include both sophrosune and dike. He, too, then, "breaks the plate".

Socrates later steers the discussion to epistemology, and his pet theory that knowledge is neither learned nor taught, but recollected from past lives, and extracted from a person's soul ("psyche") by the dialectical method of questioning. He claims that his experiment with the slave has established his theory. He caps off the discussion with a claim that the reason wise men cannot communicate their virtue to their sons is because they do not owe their eminence (and virtue) to knowledge, but to divine dispensation (99b,c). Apparently having forgotten that he earlier said he knew nothing of virtue, he now says confidently that it comes from the gods. Socrates' experiment with the slave is peculiar and the appearance of Anytus is odd. What should the reader make of the "extras"?

[edit] Interpretation

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The themes of the dialog are connected to each of the two secondary speakers. The first theme is slavery. Socrates uses Meno's slave like a monkey to perform a circus trick, and extracts a far-fetched conclusion from his "demonstration." He thinks he has proved that knowledge is recollection, but what he has really shown is that the boy is not a "thing". The slave, who is never dignified with a name, speaks Greek and is nimble with geometry. He thus participates in two things in which the Greeks took great pride, and which are symbols of Greek intelligence. Meno proves that his eyes are shut to himself when he suggests the the virtue of a man is "governing well." This is an absurd claim coming from a man surrounded by slaves. Socrates has his eyes shut to slavery as well. He tells Meno that he prizes his freedom, and doesn't want Meno to be his master(86d).

The second subtextual theme is the moral responsibility that a man was assumed to have with respect to his sons. In his namesake dialog, Crito argues a man who has brought children into the world has a moral obligation to see to their nurture and education (Crito 45c,d). Socrates says contemptuously that this is the "doctrine of the many" (i.e. the moral norm). He accepts his unjust penalty, and and says that he has a higher obligation to justice than to his family. In the Phaedo, Socrates spends his last day on earth, not with his sons, but with his disciples. Here in the Meno, Socrates acts puzzled over why men cannot seem to communicate their own virtue to their own sons. If excellent human being are produced by god, and not by attentive parenting and good education, then Socrates has perhaps won the day. On the other hand, Socrates and Meno may be two men who bat at moral flies while vultures from Hades dive-bomb their heads.