Platos Meno

The questions of what exactly knowledge, virtue and the soul are, are among the most important problems of philosophy The soul may be defined as the ultimate internal principle by which we think, feel, and exist. If there is life after death, the soul must be capable of an existence separate from the body. The mysteries of birth and death, the lapse of conscious life during sleep, even the most common operations of imagination and memory, which abstract a man from his bodily presence even while awake; all such facts suggest the existence of something other. The quest to put a solid definition on what exactly knowledge and virtue was the basis of Socrates' life. Socrates discusses these things all the time but they seemed to be better explained in two specific dialogues The Meno and The Republic.

In the Meno, Plato justifies the possibility for one's mind to uncover knowledge. Plato presents a valid theory on how our minds can obtain knowledge. Socrates asks “What is virtue?” , when questioning Meno on the single definition of virtue, Socrates was never satisfied. He never accepted Meno’s answers because Meno gave “virtuous” definitions, not the definition of “virtue.” For example, Meno claimed, “A man's virtue, consists of being able to manage public affairs and in so doing to benefit his friends and harm his enemies and to be careful no harm comes to himself." Meno does not know what virtue really is, so he cannot apply which characteristics associate with virtue and which do not. So when Socrates asks, “Does anyone know what a part of virtue is, without knowing the whole?”, Meno agrees this is not possible. This presents a logical argument against Meno’s definition of virtue. Socrates believes the conversation to search for what virtue really is should continue although they achieved no success in their first effort to form a definition. Meno questions Socrates, “And how will you inquire, into that of which you are totally ignorant? What sort of thing, among those things which you know not, will you put forth as the object of your seeking? And even if you should chance upon it, how will you ever know that it is the thing which you not know?”. Socrates explores the subject that one not only obtains knowledge through perception but can also obtain knowledge through reason and hard work. Socrates then tells Meno of the theory of recollection.