Meno
Meno (/ˈmiːnoʊ/; Ancient Greek: Μένων, Ménōn) is a Socratic dialogue written by Plato around 385 BC., but set at an earlier date around 402 BC.
[1] Meno begins the dialogue by asking Socrates whether virtue (in Ancient Greek: ἀρετή, aretē) can be taught, acquired by practice, or comes by nature.
The first part of the work showcases Socratic dialectical style; Meno, unable to adequately define virtue, is reduced to confusion or aporia.
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.
[7] Subsequently, Socrates and Meno return to the question of whether virtue is teachable, employing the method of hypothesis.
Young, good-looking and well-born, he is a student of Gorgias, a prominent sophist 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.
[14] Meno proposes to Socrates that the "capacity to govern men" may be a virtue common to all people.
[17] 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.
Coincidentally Anytus appears, whom Socrates praises as the son of Anthemion, who earned his fortune with intelligence and hard work.
He alludes to other notable male figures, such as Themistocles, Aristides, Pericles and Thucydides, and casts doubt on whether these men produced sons as capable of virtue as themselves.
Socrates suggests that Anytus does not realize what slander is, and continues his dialogue with Meno as to the definition of virtue.
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 logismos ('calculation of reason' or 'reasoned explanation'), immediately adding that this is anamnesis, or recollection.
[28] Whether Plato intends that the tethering of true beliefs with reasoned explanations must always involve anamnesis is explored in later interpretations of the text.
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.
In most modern readings these closing remarks are "evidently ironic",[32] but Socrates' invocation of the gods may be sincere, albeit "highly tentative".
Meno's theme is also dealt with in the dialogue Protagoras, where Plato ultimately has Socrates arrive at the opposite conclusion: virtue can be taught.
