Meno
Menon
Virtue cannot simply be taught by professional teachers the way a craft is taught, since no reliable teachers of virtue exist, which suggests that if virtue can be acquired at all, it comes through recollecting knowledge the soul already possesses or through some form of divine gift.
- can virtue be taught?
- the theory of recollection (anamnesis)
- the slave-boy geometry demonstration
- definition prior to investigation
- virtue as possibly a divine gift
The Meno opens with the visiting nobleman Meno asking Socrates whether virtue can be taught, a question that collapses into the prior, unanswered question of what virtue is. In the dialogue's famous episode, Socrates demonstrates his theory of recollection by leading one of Meno's untutored slave boys, through questioning alone, to work out a geometric proof about doubling a square's area, arguing that the boy's ability to reach true belief through questioning shows the knowledge was latent in his soul all along. The dialogue ends inconclusively, suggesting that since no reliable teachers of virtue exist, good men who possess it without being able to explain it may have it as a divine gift rather than knowledge. The decade assigned, like other Platonic dating, is scholarly inference, not record.
Commentary
Readers' notes on this work. No account needed - be scholarly, or at least civil.
Loading commentary…