Meno - Wikipedia Jump to content Main menu Main menu move to sidebar hide Navigation Main page Contents Current events Random article About Wikipedia Contact us Contribute Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file Special pages Search Search Appearance Donate Create account Log in Personal tools Donate Create account Log in Contents move to sidebar hide (Top) 1 Characters 2 Dialogue Toggle Dialogue subsection 2.1 Introduction of virtue 2.2 Meno's paradox 2.3 Dialogue with Meno's slave 2.4 Anytus 2.5 True belief and knowledge 3 Meno and Protagoras 4 Texts and translations 5 References Toggle References subsection 5.1 Sources 6 External links Toggle the table of contents Meno 34 languages العربية Azərbaycanca Български Català کوردی Dansk Deutsch Ελληνικά Español Eesti فارسی Suomi Français עברית हिन्दी Magyar Bahasa Indonesia Íslenska Italiano 日本語 ქართული Қазақша 한국어 Latina Nederlands Norsk bokmål Polski Português Română Русский Türkçe Українська 粵語 中文 Edit links Article Talk English Read Edit View history Tools Tools move to sidebar hide Actions Read Edit View history General What links here Related changes Upload file Permanent link Page information Cite this page Get shortened URL Switch to legacy parser Print/export Download as PDF Printable version In other projects Wikimedia Commons Wikisource Wikidata item Appearance move to sidebar hide From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Dialogue by Plato This article is about Plato's dialogue. For the Thessalian general and character from Plato's dialogue, see Meno (general). For other uses, see Meno (disambiguation). This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these messages) This article relies excessively on references to primary sources. Please improve this article by adding secondary or tertiary sources. Find sources: "Meno" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (November 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this message) You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in German. (October 2023) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the German article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must follow the LLM translation guideline, revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 1,989 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing German Wikipedia article at [[:de:Menon]]; see its history for attribution. 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(Learn how and when to remove this message) Part of a series on Platonism Life Theory of forms Intelligible form Hyperuranion Theory of soul Nous Thumos Phren Epistemology Anamnesis Peritrope Dianoia Cardinal virtues Moral rationalism Political philosophy Mimesis Orthotes onomaton Euthyphro dilemma The Republic Allegory of the cave Analogy of the Sun Analogy of the divided line Form of the Good Noble lie Philosopher king Plato's number Ship of State Ring of Gyges Myth of Er Timaeus Atlantis Demiurge World soul Organicism Classical element Platonic solid Tertium quid Khôra Related articles Commentaries The Academy in Athens Middle Platonism Neoplatonism Neoplatonism and Gnosticism Neoplatonism and Christianity Platonism in Islamic philosophy Platonism in the Renaissance Allegorical interpretations of Plato Plato's unwritten doctrines Pseudo-Platonica Related categories Plato Philosophy portal v t e 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.[2] In order to determine whether virtue is teachable or not, Socrates tells Meno that they first need to determine what virtue is.[3] 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.[4] 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.[5] Socrates challenges Meno's argument, often called "Meno's Paradox", "Learner's Paradox", or the "Arabic Paradox",[citation needed] 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.[6] Socrates demonstrates recollection in action by posing a mathematical puzzle to one of Meno's slaves.[7] 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.[8] In response, Socrates provides a famous and somewhat enigmatic distinction between knowledge and true belief.[9] Characters [edit] Plato's Meno is a Socratic dialogue in which the two main speakers, Socrates and Meno (also transliterated as "Menon"), discuss human virtue: what it is, and whether or not it can be taught. Meno is visiting Athens from Thessaly with a large entourage of slaves attending him. Young, good-looking and well-born, he is a student of Gorgias, a prominent sophist whose views on virtue clearly influence 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.[10] One of Meno's slaves also has a speaking role, as one of the features of the dialogue is Socrates's 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,[11] later one of the prosecutors of Socrates,[12] with whom Meno is friendly. Dialogue [edit] Introduction of virtue [edit] 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.[3] 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.[13] 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) and dikê (aka dikaiosunê; 'justice', i.e. refrain from harming others) are virtues even in children and old men.[14] 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.[15] 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.[16] 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.[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. Socrates asks Meno to consider whether good things must be acquired virtuously in order to be really good.[18] Socrates leads onto the question of whether virtue is one thing or many. No satisfactory definition of virtue emerges in the Meno. Socrates's 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.[19] Meno's paradox [edit] Meno asks Socrates:[20][21] 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:[20][22] [A] man cannot enquire either about that which he knows, or about that which he does not know; for if he knows, he has no need to enquire; and if not, he cannot; for he does not know the very subject about which he is to enquire. — translated by Benjamin Jowett, 1871 Dialogue with Meno's slave [edit] Depiction of an Athenian slave from 380 to 370 BC, National Archaeological Museum of Athens Socrates responds to this sophistical paradox with a mythos ('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, 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.[23] Socrates comments that this "numbing" he caused in the slave has done him no harm and has even benefited him.[24] The blue square is twice the area of the yellow square. Socrates then adds three more squares to the original square, to form a larger squa…