''Meno'' (; , ''Ménōn'') is a
Socratic dialogue
Socratic dialogue () is a genre of literary prose developed in Greece at the turn of the fourth century BC. The earliest ones are preserved in the works of Plato and Xenophon and all involve Socrates as the protagonist. These dialogues, and subse ...
written by
Plato
Plato ( ; Greek language, Greek: , ; born BC, died 348/347 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical Greece, Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the writte ...
around 385 BC., but set at an earlier date around 402 BC.
Meno
''Meno'' (; , ''Ménōn'') is a Socratic dialogue written by Plato around 385 BC., but set at an earlier date around 402 BC. Meno begins the dialogue by asking Socrates whether virtue (in , '' aretē'') can be taught, acquired by practice, o ...
begins the dialogue by asking Socrates whether
virtue
A virtue () is a trait of excellence, including traits that may be morality, moral, social, or intellectual. The cultivation and refinement of virtue is held to be the "good of humanity" and thus is Value (ethics), valued as an Telos, end purpos ...
(in , ''
aretē'') can be taught, acquired by practice, or comes by
nature
Nature is an inherent character or constitution, particularly of the Ecosphere (planetary), ecosphere or the universe as a whole. In this general sense nature refers to the Scientific law, laws, elements and phenomenon, phenomena of the physic ...
. In order to determine whether virtue is teachable or not,
Socrates
Socrates (; ; – 399 BC) was a Ancient Greek philosophy, Greek philosopher from Classical Athens, Athens who is credited as the founder of Western philosophy and as among the first moral philosophers of the Ethics, ethical tradition ...
tells Meno that they first need to determine what virtue is.
When the characters speak of virtue, or ''aretē'', they refer to virtue in general, rather than particular virtues, such as justice or temperance. The first part of the work showcases
Socratic dialectical style; Meno, unable to adequately define virtue, is reduced to confusion or
aporia
In philosophy, an aporia () is a conundrum or state of puzzlement. In rhetoric, it is a declaration of doubt, made for rhetorical purpose and often feigned. The notion of an aporia is principally found in ancient Greek philosophy, but it also p ...
. 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 it.
Socrates challenges Meno's argument, often called "Meno's Paradox", "Learner's Paradox", or the "Arabic Paradox", by introducing the theory of knowledge as recollection (''
anamnesis''). As 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 before it came into a body. Socrates demonstrates recollection in action by posing a mathematical puzzle to one of Meno's slaves. Subsequently, Socrates and Meno return to the question of whether virtue is teachable, employing the method of hypothesis. Near the end of the dialogue, Meno poses another famous puzzle, called "the Meno problem" or "the Value Problem for Knowledge", which questions why knowledge is valued more highly than true belief. In response, Socrates provides a famous and somewhat enigmatic distinction between knowledge and true belief.
Characters
Plato's ''Meno'' is a Socratic dialogue in which the two main speakers,
Socrates
Socrates (; ; – 399 BC) was a Ancient Greek philosophy, Greek philosopher from Classical Athens, Athens who is credited as the founder of Western philosophy and as among the first moral philosophers of the Ethics, ethical tradition ...
and
Meno
''Meno'' (; , ''Ménōn'') is a Socratic dialogue written by Plato around 385 BC., but set at an earlier date around 402 BC. Meno begins the dialogue by asking Socrates whether virtue (in , '' aretē'') can be taught, acquired by practice, o ...
(also
transliterated
Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one writing system, script to another that involves swapping Letter (alphabet), letters (thus ''wikt:trans-#Prefix, trans-'' + ''wikt:littera#Latin, liter-'') in predictable ways, such as ...
as "Menon"), discuss human virtue: what it is, and whether or not it can be taught. Meno is visiting Athens from
Thessaly
Thessaly ( ; ; ancient Aeolic Greek#Thessalian, Thessalian: , ) is a traditional geographic regions of Greece, geographic and modern administrative regions of Greece, administrative region of Greece, comprising most of the ancient Thessaly, a ...
with a large entourage of slaves attending him. Young, good-looking and well-born, he is a student of
Gorgias
Gorgias ( ; ; – ) was an ancient Greek sophist, pre-Socratic philosopher, and rhetorician who was a native of Leontinoi in Sicily. Several doxographers report that he was a pupil of Empedocles, although he would only have been a few years ...
, a prominent
sophist
A sophist () was a teacher in ancient Greece in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. Sophists specialized in one or more subject areas, such as philosophy, rhetoric, music, athletics and mathematics. They taught ''arete'', "virtue" or "excellen ...
whose views on virtue clearly 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.
One of Meno's
slave
Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their labour. Slavery typically involves compulsory work, with the slave's location of work and residence dictated by the party that holds them in bondage. Enslavemen ...
s also has a speaking role, as one of the features of the dialogue is Socrates' engagement with the slave to demonstrate his idea of ''
anamnesis'': certain knowledge is innate and "recollected" by the soul through proper inquiry.
Another participant later in the dialogue is Athenian politician
Anytus
Anytus (; ; probably before 451 – after 388 BCE), son of Anthemion of the deme Euonymon, was a politician in Classical Athens. Anytus served as a general in the Peloponnesian War of 431 to 404 BCE, and later became a leading supporter of the ...
, later one of the
prosecutors of Socrates, with whom Meno is friendly.
Dialogue
Introduction of virtue
The dialogue begins with Meno asking Socrates to tell him whether virtue can be taught. Socrates says that he does not know what virtue is, and neither does anyone else he knows.
[Plato, ''Meno'', 71b] Meno responds that, according to Gorgias, his Sophist mentor, virtue means 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
slaves
Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their labour. Slavery typically involves compulsory work, with the slave's location of work and residence dictated by the party that holds them in bondage. Enslavemen ...
. Socrates objects: there must be some virtue common to all human beings.
Socrates rejects the idea that human virtue depends on a person's sex or age. He leads Meno towards the idea that virtues are common to all people, that ''
sophrosunê'' ('temperance', i.e. exercise of
self-control
Self-control is an aspect of inhibitory control, one of the core executive functions. Executive functions are cognitive processes that are necessary for regulating one's behavior in order to achieve specific goals.
Defined more independen ...
) and ''
dikê'' (aka ''dikaiosunê''; 'justice', i.e. refrain from harming others) are virtues even in children and old men. Meno proposes to Socrates that the "capacity 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.
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 one, like somebody who breaks a plate.
Meno proposes that virtue is the desire for good things and the power to get them. Socrates points out that this raises a second problem—many people do not recognize evil. The discussion then turns to the question of accounting 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. 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.
[Day, Jane Mary. 1994. ''Plato's Meno in Focus''. ]Routledge
Routledge ( ) is a British multinational corporation, multinational publisher. It was founded in 1836 by George Routledge, and specialises in providing academic books, academic journals, journals and online resources in the fields of the humanit ...
. p. 19. .
Meno's paradox
Meno asks Socrates:
[Plato, ]
Meno
' (translated by B. Jowett 1871).And how will you enquire, Socrates, into that which you do not know? What will you put forth as the subject of enquiry? And if you find what you want, how will you ever know that this is the thing which you did not know?
Socrates rephrases the question, which has come to be the canonical statement of Meno's paradox or the paradox of inquiry:
Dialogue with Meno's slave

Socrates responds to this
sophistical paradox with a ''
mythos
Myth is a genre of folklore consisting primarily of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society. For scholars, this is very different from the vernacular usage of the term "myth" that refers to a belief that is not true. Instead, the ...
'' ('narrative' or 'fiction') according to which souls are immortal and have learned everything prior to
transmigrating into the human body. Since the soul has had contact with real things prior to birth, we have only to 'recollect' them when alive. Such recollection requires
Socratic questioning
Socratic questioning (or Socratic maieutics) is an educational method named after Socrates that focuses on discovering answers by asking questions of students. According to Plato, Socrates believed that "the disciplined practice of thoughtful q ...
, 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 argument 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 order to double the area of a square with 2-foot sides. The slave guesses first that the original side must be doubled in length (4 feet), and when this proves too much, that it must be 3 feet. This is still too much, and the slave is at a loss.
Socrates claims that before he got hold of him the slave (who has been picked at random from Meno's entourage) might have thought he could speak "well and fluently" on the subject of a square double the size of a given square. Socrates comments that this "numbing" he caused in the slave has done him no harm and has even benefited him.
Socrates then adds three more squares to the original square, to form a larger square four times the size. He draws four diagonal lines which bisect each of the smaller squares. Through questioning, Socrates leads the slave to the discovery that the square formed by these diagonals has an area of eight square feet, double that of the original. He says that the slave has "spontaneously recovered" knowledge which he knew from before he was born, 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:
Anytus
Meno now beseeches Socrates to return to the original question, how virtue is acquired, and in particular, whether or not it is acquired by teaching or through life experience. Socrates proceeds on the hypothesis that virtue is knowledge, and it is quickly agreed that, if this is true, virtue is teachable. They turn to the question of whether virtue is indeed knowledge. Socrates is hesitant, because, if virtue were knowledge, there should be teachers and learners of it, but there are none.
Coincidentally
Anytus
Anytus (; ; probably before 451 – after 388 BCE), son of Anthemion of the deme Euonymon, was a politician in Classical Athens. Anytus served as a general in the Peloponnesian War of 431 to 404 BCE, and later became a leading supporter of the ...
appears, whom Socrates praises as the son of
Anthemion, who earned his fortune with intelligence and hard work. He says that Anthemion had his son well-educated and so Anytus is well-suited to join the investigation. Socrates suggests that the sophists are teachers of virtue. Anytus is horrified, saying that he neither knows any, nor cares to know any. Socrates then questions why it is that men do not always produce sons of the same virtue as themselves. He alludes to other notable male figures, such as
Themistocles,
Aristides
Aristides ( ; , ; 530–468 BC) was an ancient Athenian statesman. Nicknamed "the Just" (δίκαιος, ''díkaios''), he flourished at the beginning of Athens' Classical period and is remembered for his generalship in the Persian War. ...
,
Pericles
Pericles (; ; –429 BC) was a Greek statesman and general during the Golden Age of Athens. He was prominent and influential in Ancient Athenian politics, particularly between the Greco-Persian Wars and the Peloponnesian War, and was acclaimed ...
and
Thucydides
Thucydides ( ; ; BC) was an Classical Athens, Athenian historian and general. His ''History of the Peloponnesian War'' recounts Peloponnesian War, the fifth-century BC war between Sparta and Athens until the year 411 BC. Thucydides has been d ...
, and casts doubt on whether these men produced sons as capable of virtue as themselves. Anytus becomes offended and accuses Socrates of
slander
Defamation is a communication that injures a third party's reputation and causes a legally redressable injury. The precise legal definition of defamation varies from country to country. It is not necessarily restricted to making wikt:asserti ...
, warning him to be careful expressing such opinions. (The historical Anytus was one of Socrates' accusers in his
trial
In law, a trial is a coming together of parties to a dispute, to present information (in the form of evidence) in a tribunal, a formal setting with the authority to adjudicate claims or disputes. One form of tribunal is a court. The tribunal, w ...
.) 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
After the discussion with Anytus, Socrates returns to quizzing Meno for his own thoughts on whether the sophists are teachers of virtue and whether virtue can be taught. Meno is again at a loss, and Socrates suggests that they have made a mistake in agreeing that knowledge is required for virtue. He points out the similarities and differences between "true belief" and "knowledge". True beliefs are as useful to us as knowledge, but they often fail to "stay in their place" and must be "tethered" by what he calls ''
aitias'' ('calculation of reason' or 'reasoned explanation'), immediately adding that this is ''
anamnesis'', or recollection.
Whether Plato intends that the tethering of true beliefs with reasoned explanations must always involve ''anamnesis'' is explored in later interpretations of the text. Socrates' distinction between "true belief" and "knowledge" forms the basis of the philosophical
definition of knowledge
Definitions of knowledge aim to identify the essential features of knowledge. Closely related terms are conception of knowledge, theory of knowledge, and analysis of knowledge. Some general features of knowledge are widely accepted among philosoph ...
as "
justified true belief".
Myles Burnyeat and others, however, have argued that the phrase ''aitias logismos'' refers to a practical working out of a solution, rather than a justification.
Socrates concludes that, in the virtuous people of the present 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 most modern readings these closing remarks are "evidently ironic", but Socrates' invocation of the gods may be sincere, albeit "highly tentative".
This passage in the Meno is often seen as the first statement of the problem of the value of knowledge or "the Meno problem": ''how is knowledge more valuable than mere true belief?''
[ Pritchard, Duncan, John Turri, and J. Adam Carter. 0072018.]
The Value of Knowledge
(revised). ''The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (''SEP'') is a freely available online philosophy resource published and maintained by Stanford University, encompassing both an online encyclopedia of philosophy and peer-reviewed original publication ...
''. The nature of knowledge and belief is also discussed in the ''
Thaetetus''.
Meno and Protagoras
''Meno'' 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.
Texts and translations
*
*
Jowett, Benjamin. 1871.
Meno" – via ''Internet Classics Archive''.
Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg (PG) is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks."
It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the oldest digital li ...
:
1643.
*Lamb, W. R. M., trans.
924
__NOTOC__
Year 924 (Roman numerals, CMXXIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Julian calendar.
Events January—March
* January 5 – The monastery of San Martín de Albelda is founded in the Kingdom of Navarre in what is now ...
1967.
Meno" ''Plato in Twelve Volumes'' 3. Cambridge, MA,
Harvard University Press
Harvard University Press (HUP) is an academic publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University. It is a member of the Association of University Presses. Its director since 2017 is George Andreou.
The pres ...
. . – via ''
Perseus Project
The Perseus Digital Library, formerly known as the Perseus Project, is a free-access digital library founded by Gregory Crane in 1987 and hosted by the Department of Classical Studies of Tufts University. One of the pioneers of digital libraries, ...
''.
*Woods, Cathal, trans. 2011.
Meno" .
References
Sources
*
* Klein, Jacob. 1965. ''A Commentary on Plato's Meno''. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press
The University of North Carolina Press (or UNC Press), founded in 1922, is a not-for-profit university press associated with the University of North Carolina. It was the first university press founded in the southern United States. It is a mem ...
.
External links
*
Approaching Plato: A Guide to the Early and Middle DialoguesA beginner's guide to the ''Meno''
Meno 82b-85dA Visual Representation of the Geometry in Socrates' Interrogation of the Slave
*
Plato's Meno article in the ''
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The ''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (''IEP'') is a scholarly online encyclopedia with around 900 articles about philosophy, philosophers, and related topics. The IEP publishes only peer review, peer-reviewed and blind-refereed original p ...
''
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