The Meno is a text I added to my Introduction to Philosophy course not long before my retirement, and it was something I hadn’t read in probably twenty years. Coming at it relatively fresh, then, I was struck by: (a) just how many topics it covers (as well as how scattered and meandering it is); (b) how irritating Socrates is; (c) how terrible some of the positions are, not to mention the arguments for them; and (d) how abruptly and unsatisfyingly it ends. And yet, like so many of Plato’s works, it has an ineffable quality, a combination of elements, not the least of which is its literary merits, that not only earns it serious consideration, but repeated visits. I mostly disliked it … and taught it again the next time. As philosophy, Plato’s work strikes me as inferior to that of his greatest student, Aristotle, but when thought of not only as a part of the history of ideas, but of Letters, it looms larger. It is interesting to wonder whether this perception would hold had we the actual written works of Aristotle, cataloged by biographers like Diogenes Laertius, as opposed to the collections of lecture notes that make up the Aristotelian corpus we have today.
The Meno’s ostensible subject is whether virtue can be taught or whether it arises from nature or is acquired in some other way. Yet, this is not what the bulk of the dialogue is about. Rather, Socrates and his interlocutors discuss the nature of virtue, whether anyone really ever desires what’s bad, whether the pursuit of knowledge is even possible, the bizarre – and dumb – “theory of recollection” (which is introduced by way of a seemingly endless — not to mention fallacious — argument, based on a discussion with a slave boy about the properties of a geometric figure), and only then finally get back to the question of whether virtue can be taught, whereupon it is quickly determined that it cannot and thus, must be a “gift from the gods,” about which I can only say, “oy vey.”
Nonetheless, reading and working through all of this is quite satisfying. Socrates’ transparently disingenuous protestations of ignorance, combined with his repeated references to the charms of “pretty young gentlemen,” conveys a wonderful sense of eccentricity in a modern context that makes the challenging parts of the dialogue easier to digest. And the order in which the topics flow is of a sort that does, to a certain extent, successfully mimic the not entirely directionless, but haphazard course that a real conversation takes.
After beginning with the question of whether virtue can be taught or whether it arises from nature or by some other means, the topic almost immediately shifts to what virtue is, as Socrates protests that he does not know. Meno says that there are many different kinds of virtue, depending on the kind of person one is talking about — men, women, children, etc. — but Socrates complains that he has not asked for individual examples of virtue, but rather, what all virtues have in common. After going round and round a bit, Meno offers something along the lines of: the virtuous person is the one who loves and acquires that which is honorable.
Socrates asks whether to love that which is honorable is to love that which is good, and Meno agrees, whereupon Socrates spins off onto his first tangent. Doesn’t everyone love that which is good, and if so, how can the love of what’s good differentiate the virtuous person from the non-virtuous one? Meno sees no reason to think that everyone loves the good – people do bad things all of the time – but Socrates wonders whether there isn’t something strange about suggesting that people choose the bad, because they think it is bad. After all, if something is bad, it’s going to hurt you, undermine your plans, cause you harm in some way or another, etc. Do (rational) people deliberately do such a thing? No, Socrates suggests, it seems much more likely that when people choose bad, they do so, because they mistake the bad for the good. Evil and vice, then, are products of ignorance regarding the good rather than of a will that is oriented towards the bad.
This leaves the virtuous as the person who actually acquires honorable/good things, but Socrates also sees a problem with this. Surely it matters how one acquires what is good – we wouldn’t call someone virtuous who steals things, even if he has “acquired that which is good” as a result. Meno admits that attaining the good is only virtuous if done justly, but Socrates observes that in that case, the account of virtue is circular, as justice is itself a virtue.
At this point, Meno has a bit of a meltdown and wonders whether it is possible to engage in inquiry at all. If we know something, then there is no need to inquire about it, but if we don’t know something, then even if we do inquire, how do we know that what we’ve found is what we were looking for? And here, rather than give the sort of pragmatic answer that would immediately occur to most of us – such thoughts lead to nothing but paralysis; we just muddle through; obviously some of our inquiries result in knowledge, as evinced by the fact that we become more proficient and competent at myriad tasks, as time progresses – Socrates instead goes off on a second tangent that is supposed to demonstrate that “knowledge is recollection.”
It’s a bizarre move to make. For one thing, it’s not clear how it serves as any sort of response to the question. Even if knowledge is something we rediscover rather than discover, Meno’s problem would still seem to apply: Given that I don’t remember what I used to know, how would I know, upon supposedly remembering it again, that the thing I am remembering is the same thing that I’d forgotten? For another, the argument that Socrates provides in order to show that knowledge is recollection does nothing of the kind. That argument involves tedious rounds of Q&A with a slave boy over the properties of a geometric figure, in which Socrates coaxes a number of true geometrical propositions out of him, despite the fact that he has never been taught geometry. Aha! You see! Since he was never taught it, and now he knows it, he must have already known it and forgotten! A less silly, more modern version of this line of thought might be that the experiment shows that some knowledge is innate but needs to be brought out in conversation or by way of prompts.
It’s all nonsense, of course, but the most glaring thing is that the conclusion Socrates draws from his interactions with the slave boy is a wild non sequitur. That a physically and intellectually sound person can, in response to prompts and questions, deduce various things that he did not previously know simply demonstrates that he possesses a (perhaps innate) capacity to reason. It demonstrates nothing about what he allegedly once knew.
Once past the question of whether knowledge is possible, we find ourselves back with the original question. As an opening move, Socrates suggests that we approach the question as a hypothetical: Suppose virtue is something that is teachable – are there people who teach it? If it seems impossible to identify anyone who might be a moral instructor, then it would seem unlikely that virtue is something that can be taught. A bit logically suspect – from the fact that there are no teachers of virtue, it doesn’t follow that virtue can’t be taught – but let’s go with it. If we keep a count of all the non sequiturs in the Meno, we’ll be here longer than anyone wants to.
After disposing of the idea that the Sophists might be moral teachers – a suggestion that causes an outburst on the part of another one of Socrates’ interlocutors, Anytus – it is agreed that if anyone should be a teacher of virtue, it’s those who are virtuous themselves. Socrates then inquires about (then) widely-accepted exemplars of virtue and whether they have virtuous offspring, the answer to which is invariably, “No.” But, if virtue is teachable, Socrates asks, wouldn’t we expect the virtuous to teach it to their offspring? And since they clearly do not – as their offspring are not virtuous – does this not show that virtue is not teachable, by Modus Tollens? (He doesn’t actually say “Modus Tollens.”)
Again, the reasoning is atrocious. It never occurs to Socrates that something could be teachable yet one might nonetheless fail to teach it, no matter how proficient one might be. Or that the assumption that the virtuous will always teach virtue to their offspring might be wrong. Or even that the cases the men are talking about might not be representative. But this is nothing compared to the conclusion he draws: Given that morality isn’t natural in the sense of being innate (nothing but an assumption, it is worth noting) and also isn’t taught, it must be a gift from the Gods. At this, the dialogue ends, and while I was teaching it, I found myself thinking, Jeez, this is much worse than I remember.
Nevertheless, the students really enjoyed it. And as I’ve thought more about it, I realize that the logical clunkers not only contribute to the dialogue’s charm, they also provide some key teachable moments. For the sorts of mistakes that Socrates and his interlocutors make are common mistakes – very easy to make (except for the “knowledge is recollection part”) – and encountering them in a somewhat casual, dialogue-centered format, makes them easier to see, discuss, and ultimately overcome. Beyond great literature and sometimes good philosophy, then, the Platonic dialogues are outstanding teaching-pieces.
