Meno

Summary

The Meno opens without any scene-setting. Meno, a rich young Thessalian from Pharsalus who has studied with the orator Gorgias, asks Socrates whether virtue comes by teaching, by practice, by nature, or in some other way. Socrates replies that he cannot say how virtue is acquired, because he does not know what virtue is, and has never met anyone who did. Meno offers three answers in turn. First he lists the virtues of a man, a woman, a child, an old man and a slave; Socrates objects that he asked for one virtue and was handed a swarm, and illustrates with bees and with definitions of shape and colour what a single account would look like. Next Meno says virtue is the power of governing men, then that it is desiring fine things and being able to get them. Each answer, Socrates shows, either leaves out justice or assumes the very thing being defined. Stung, Meno compares Socrates to the flat torpedo fish that numbs whoever touches it, and then raises a famous puzzle: how can anyone search for what he does not know, since he would not recognise it if he found it? Socrates answers with a teaching he attributes to priests, priestesses and poets such as Pindar: the soul is immortal, has seen all things, and learning is really recollection. To show this he questions one of Meno's slave boys about doubling the area of a square. The boy first guesses wrongly that the side should be doubled, then falls into perplexity, and at last, through questions alone, sees that the square drawn on the diagonal is the answer. Socrates claims he taught nothing and the boy drew true opinions out of himself. Returning to the original question, Socrates proposes a hypothesis, as geometers do: if virtue is a kind of knowledge, it can be taught. He argues that virtue is a form of wisdom, but then notes that there seem to be no teachers of it. Anytus, Meno's host and later one of Socrates' accusers, joins the talk, scorns the Sophists, and claims any Athenian gentleman can teach virtue; yet Themistocles, Aristides, Pericles and Thucydides failed to make their sons good. Anytus leaves with a warning to be careful. Socrates then distinguishes knowledge from true opinion, which guides action just as well but runs away like the statues of Daedalus unless tied down by reasoning. Good statesmen, he concludes, acted from true opinion like inspired prophets, so virtue seems to come by divine gift; but the certain answer awaits an account of what virtue itself is. The library text is Benjamin Jowett's translation (first published 1871 in The Dialogues of Plato), printed with his long introduction.

Top Lessons

• Define before you decide

  Meno wants to know how virtue is gained before he knows what it is, and Socrates refuses to let him skip the first question. His bees, shapes and colours show the difference between giving examples and giving an account of what all the examples share.

• Perplexity can be a gift

  The slave boy is better off once he knows he does not know, because only then does he want to search. Meno's complaint about the torpedo fish describes the same numbing, and Socrates treats it as the doorway to learning rather than a defeat.

• The duty to inquire

  Against Meno's paradox, Socrates says he is not sure of every detail of the recollection story, but he will fight for one conclusion: we become better and braver by believing we ought to seek what we do not know. The dialogue ties intellectual effort to courage.

• Knowledge and right opinion

  A person with true opinion can guide a traveller to Larisa as well as one who knows the road. But true opinions wander off unless they are tied down by working out the reason, as the statues of Daedalus had to be tied to keep them from running away.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

The dialogue has no medical content beyond the image of the numbing torpedo fish, an electric ray later used by Roman physicians such as Scribonius Largus against headache; the Meno itself makes no medical use of it.