Platos Meno

Plato Meno

In Plato’s dialogue Socrates discusses ways in which virtue can be acquired with

Meno. Three possibilities are confronted, first that virtue is innate within the human

soul. The second suggests that virtue can be taught, and the third possibility is that virtue

is a gift from the gods. These ways are debated by Socrates and Meno to a very broad

conclusion.

Socrates poses the question that virtue may be innate within the human soul. This

is to say that all people would have virtue within them, but it is only those who find it

that can truly become virtuous. To prove the concept of innate understanding to Meno,

Socrates, acquires the help of one of Meno’s slave boys to demonstrate. Socrates

establishes that the boy has never been taught mathematical geometry and starts

bombarding him with a series of questions on the physical properties of a square. First he

asks the boy to multiply the square by two, and he succeeds. However, the boy fails when

asked to divide the same square into two parts half the original size. By asking the boy a

series of questions yet, never actually telling him the answers Socrates helps the slave to

“recollect” the knowledge that is within him. Meno is of course astonished with this feat

that Socrates maintains is simply a matter of recollection.

This example given by Socrates, though obviously persuasive to Meno is

somewhat unstable. It can be shown that Socrates manipulated the boy into recollecting

the information by offering suggestive material within his questions. For example, if a

person did not know the sum of the equation two plus two one could ask: if a person had

two apples and someone else gave them two more would the person then not have four

apples in total? A question was asked yet the information on how to perform the

operation was directly given in the statement. Thus it can be reasoned that Socrates in a

sense did teach the boy how to divide the square.

Following this demonstration Socrates poses a second idea that virtue may be

taught. He begins by looking for teachers of virtue and comes up with four examples.

The first is Themistocles who is agreed to be virtuous by the debaters and obviously a

good teacher of his virtue. However the debaters also agre...

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...finite preference to any of the possibilities

that have been stated.

Now the question is would Socrates have maintained that ignorance is bliss based

on his views of the possible ways of acquiring virtue? I would conclude that he would

not see ignorance as bliss because Socrates believes that the truth is far greater than the

unknowing. Throughout the dialogue Socrates and Meno journey to put aside their

ignorance to come to the truth on how virtue is acquired and possibly more importantly

what virtue is. Even though the path to truth has proved painful in that the two are more

perplexed on the topic at the end of the dialogue then at the beginning Socrates would

have seen this as the first step to achieving the truth. This of course is better than not

achieving that step at all.

Socrates is ultimately concerned in finding the whole truth and would have

defiantly preferred knowing some of the truth rather than being ignorant to it. Even

though Socrates knew that the journey to reach the truth may be painful, ignorance would

be far worse than a painful truth. Ultimately he knew that the way must be tried!