The Meno: How to See What Isn't Said
Be like the slave boy. Don’t be like Meno.
The Meno is one of the most complicated yet clear examples of Plato’s way of ‘showing one thing whilst saying something else’. Elsewhere I’ve described this as writing with layered intentions: on the surface there are some philosophical arguments with which you may or may not agree; beneath that there is a show of doing philosophy in a certain way; and beneath that there is a provocation to do it yourself. What’s on the surface isn’t really what the dialogue is about.
On the surface, the Meno is an attempt to answer a question that Socrates says shouldn’t be asked and can’t be answered, and it answers this question by contradicting itself. That ought to be enough to tell you that something funny is going on here.
‘Can virtue be taught?’ asks Meno. But Meno is asking the wrong question. Socrates says he doesn’t know how to answer that question until we get a better understanding of what ‘virtue’ is. How can you know if something can or can’t be taught if you don’t know what it is that you’re trying to teach?
To demonstrate: Can urtive be taught?
Well, can it?!
You can’t answer, because you don’t know what urtive is.
But what if you knew that urtive, whatever it is, is really important? What if it seems to be the most important thing that anyone can understand, that everything valuable in life depends on it, and that possessing it depends only on our understanding of it? Wouldn’t you think that’s something we should look into, as a priority?
Funny Business
That something funny is indeed going on in the Meno is made very clear from the outset of the dialogue: Socrates begins by praising, to the young aristocratic Meno, two ‘wise philosophers’: Gorgias and Aristippus.
But anyone who knows anything about Socrates, Gorgias, and Aristippus, knows that these are not people that Socrates would praise, or call wise, or call philosophers. In other Platonic dialogues, Socrates says that Gorgias (the famous sophist and orator), for all his clever talk, doesn’t know what he’s talking about. And what we know about Aristippus shows that he’s not much of a philosopher.
So if Gorgias doesn’t know anything and Aristippus isn’t wise, why is Socrates praising them (to Meno) and calling them philosophers?
Firstly, within the context of the dialogue, Socrates does this to encourage Meno to engage with him in conversation: Meno admires these two and is admired by them, so Socrates is trying to get Meno on side as a willing participant by aligning himself with that admiration.
Secondly, outside of the dialogue, it is to indicate to us, the reader, that Socrates is being ironic: he is clearly saying things that he doesn’t believe.
The irony continues when Socrates praises Meno’s wealth, good looks, and high inherited status, and his ability (which he learned from Gorgias) to answer questions as if you know what you’re talking about even though you don’t. We (the reader) know that these aren’t Socrates’ real opinions. Socrates thinks all of these things are worthless.
Socrates is being sarcastic. Meno doesn’t realise any of this because he’s quite stupid.
Meno the Stupid
Time and again throughout this dialogue you will find Meno being shown to be stupid. I’ll emphasise that: This is never said but it is shown. Meno always seems to be missing the point. He learns nothing, he understands nothing; he is lazy, entitled, and too sure of himself. What do you do with such a person, if you are trying to improve them?
Do you reason with them? Socrates tries. The dialogue begins with Socrates doing the classic Socrates thing of asking Meno to explain what ‘virtue’ is. But when Meno is pressed to give a rational account he gives up and says: ‘You do it.’ Meno can’t be bothered to try.
Socrates tries again, and eventually Meno puts forward a theory that virtue is the ability to acquire goods like wealth and power.
At this point, I think Socrates’ frustration is clear. My paraphrased translation of Socrates’ response would go something like: ‘Right. In the definition of Meno, the privileged rich boy who inherited all his wealth, virtue is only a matter of being wealthy. Do you also think that it matters how you become wealthy? Whether by just or unjust means?’
Their conversation continues. Socrates demonstrates some points that lead to the conclusion that virtue cannot be defined as the acquisition of goods because it matters how you acquire those goods, whether virtuously or viciously, and Meno replies (my paraphrased translation): ‘So what?’
It’s meant to be frustrating.
See the Point
Socrates is trying to get Meno to understand something important about virtue. He tries his method of ‘conversation with questioning’, but that doesn’t work because Meno is lazy. Then he tries rational argument, but that doesn’t work because Meno doesn’t understand the argument. And then, instead of being honest and accepting that he doesn’t understand, Meno gets defensive and responds with a classic sophists’ argument: the so-called Meno’s paradox.
‘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?’
Meno in Plato’s Meno
Socrates describes this as a ‘trick’ or ‘contentious’ or (literally) ‘eager-for-strife’ argument. This is a favourite tactic of the sophists: to lure you in by offering you two options, both of which have ready refutations. You’ll find yourself caught you in a bind, if you take the bait.
You can’t try to discover either what you know or what you don’t know. Because if you know something, you don’t need to discover it. And if you don’t know something, how will you know what it is you’re supposed to discover?
On the face of it, this paradox is a problem for our attempts to better understand virtue: if we know what virtue is, we don’t need to learn anything more about it; but if we don’t know what virtue is, how will we know when we’ve found the right understanding of it?
The conclusion of this sophists’ argument is: Don’t bother trying to understand virtue because there’s no point. There’s nothing to learn, nothing to understand, and so you’d be better off learning how to get ahead in the world.
That’s quite a convenient thing to believe, if you don’t understand virtue and are too lazy to try, and especially if you’re already ahead in the world.
It’s also the absolute opposite of Socrates’ belief. He will say that there is nothing more important than our pursuit of wisdom, of understanding what goodness is and trying to be better people. Socrates says ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’, because without the understanding that results from philosophical reflection we will end up with nothing worth having.
‘In short, everything that the human spirit undertakes or suffers will lead to happiness when it is guided by wisdom, but the opposite, when guided by folly.’
Socrates in Plato’s Meno
Learning is Recollection
What comes next is what the Meno is most known for. It is what a superficial reading sees as being the ‘point’ of the dialogue.
Socrates takes on Meno’s paradox. He argues that, since the soul is immortal, it has existed for an immeasurable time before we were born and, consequently, has already learned everything there is to know. Our apparent lack of knowledge is only a product of our immortal souls being put into these mortal bodies: we forget things in the process. What we describe as ‘learning’ is in fact only ‘recollection’. And so Meno’s paradox is resolved because we already know what virtue is, we’ve just forgotten. But we’ll remember again, with the right prompt.
Socrates then proceeds to ‘demonstrate’ this by getting a slave boy – who is totally uneducated – to show his knowledge of geometry. The slave boy doesn’t think he knows anything about geometry, but, prompted by Socrates’ questions, reveals that he actually knows quite a bit, as Socrates talks him through calculating the length and areas of various squares. When the slave boy hits his limit and can’t answer a question he simply says: ‘I don’t know.’
What is this demonstration trying to achieve? Do you think Socrates gives a damn about squares? Of course not. So why choose this basic and trivial thing?
Precisely because it’s basic and trivial. It’s meant to be a childish introductory thing. It’s as if Plato is saying: ‘Look, even an uneducated slave boy can follow Socrates’ method and reveal that he knew more than he realised! All he had to do was answer Socrates’ questions directly and honestly and the philosophical understanding followed. If an uneducated low-status poor slave child can do this, why can’t the well-born and well-educated Meno?!’
The ‘knowledge of geometry’ in the slave boy is just an analogy for Meno’s knowledge of virtue. The ‘demonstration’ is meant to show you something about Socrates’ method. If only Meno would answer Socrates’ questions directly and simply, like the slave boy, he would immediately reveal what he already knows to be true: that virtue isn’t something that serves our purposes, by acquiring wealth and the like, but is instead the thing that holds our purposes to account.
The Aim of the Dialogue
Remember Socrates’ ever-present aim: to teach you about virtue and encourage you to be more virtuous. How does the Meno achieve this aim? By showing you how the process can go wrong if you allow yourself to be lazy, entitled, or stupid. You might as well subtitle it: ‘Be like the slave boy. Don’t be like Meno.’
Why does Socrates appeal to this myth about the immortality of the soul? He tells you:
‘Most of the points I have made in support of my argument are not things that I can confidently assert; but one point that I am determined to defend, both in word and deed, so far as I am able, is that believing that we have a duty to investigate what we do not know will make us better and braver and less helpless than believing that there is not even a possibility of discovering what we do not know, nor any duty of investigating it.’
Socrates in Plato’s Meno
This is very similar to the bit in the Phaedo, where Socrates is dying and trying to die well, so he rehearses the arguments about the immortality of the soul. He doesn’t know if his soul is immortal, but he knows that he dies better if he believes that it is. In all cases the goal is the same: be a better person. And he will say and do whatever he can to convince you of the importance of that, as he has become convinced.
Can Virtue be Taught?
The dialogue continues into its third act. Meno says that he agrees with Socrates and sees his point: learning is recollection and so we can hope to improve our understanding of virtue, and that means we have a duty to investigate these matters. On the basis of this new agreement, Socrates asks Meno, again, to join him in his investigation by answering the question: ‘What is virtue?’
Meno says he is ‘quite ready’ to join Socrates in his investigation of virtue, but first he’d like an answer to his original question about whether virtue can be taught.
In asking this, Meno shows that he has seen and understood nothing. He’s completely missed the point! His agreement is mere words. Socrates gets frustrated, again. Meno isn’t even trying.
Socrates says there’s nothing else for it but to go along with Meno’s question and try to answer it as best he can. But we know, as the informed reader, that we’re going along with something stupid here and so what follows will be an exercise in stupidity.
So can virtue be taught? We need to answer this question even though we don’t know what it is that we’re asking about. Socrates suggests a kind of trial by error:
It seems like pretty much any kind of knowledge can be taught. And so we might say: All knowledge can be taught and anything that can be taught is a kind of knowledge.
And so if virtue is a kind of knowledge, then it must be able to be taught; if virtue can’t be taught, then it can’t be a kind of knowledge.
Meno’s original question ‘can virtue be taught?’ has been transformed into a dilemma: Either virtue is a kind of knowledge or it isn’t.
Is virtue a kind of knowledge? How can we answer this question? (Remember that we still don’t know what virtue is… So it’s a stupid question, like asking: is urtive a kind of knowledge?)
What if we compared it to other types of knowledge, like medicine or shoemaking or playing the flute? Is virtue like these things?
Doctors are taught by doctors; shoemakers are taught by shoemakers; musicians are taught by musicians. Knowledge is passed on from someone who knows to someone who doesn’t know: that’s how teaching works. It’s normal for people to charge a fee for this service.
Who has knowledge of virtue? Who knows what virtue is? Not Socrates, if you go by what he says. Who says they know what virtue is, and can teach you about it, for a fee?
It’s the sophists like Gorgias, who are so admired by Meno (but despised by Socrates). Do these sophists successfully teach virtue? Not if their students are anything to go by. Meno is one of their students and he can’t answer a simple question on the matter. Other Platonic dialogues show other students of sophists (like Polus in the Gorgias) to be equally incapable.
Medical students show some knowledge of medicine and eventually become doctors; apprentice shoemakers show some knowledge of shoemaking and eventually become shoemakers; student musicians show some knowledge of music and eventually become musicians. But the students of the sophists show no knowledge of virtue and do not go on to be virtuous people.
Clearly virtue can’t be taught because the teachers of virtue, the sophists, fail to teach it. The evidence seems clear for all to see. And so Socrates and Meno conclude that virtue cannot be a kind of knowledge.
What is Virtue?
What is it, then, that virtuous people have but unvirtuous people lack? It isn’t knowledge and it isn’t something that can be taught, but if not that then what is it?
Socrates says that the virtuous don’t need knowledge because ‘true opinion’ can guide us just as well as knowledge.
To demonstrate: Say I have to catch a train at 10:10. I need to leave the house at 9:45 to catch the train.
In one scenario, I have a watch that is working properly. I look at my watch and see that it’s 9:45, and on the basis of this knowledge I leave the house and catch my train.
In another scenario, I don’t have a watch, but I believe that I have a magical ability which will tell me when I need to go and do something. (This is a false belief.) At 9:45, I get a strange feeling that I ought to do something, and on the basis of this feeling I leave the house and catch my train.
In either case I catch my train. In the first case I was guided by knowledge, in the second case by luck. In being guided by my feeling that I ought to do something, I formed an opinion that I ought to leave the house, and as it happened this opinion was true. But I had no good reason to believe it was true. That’s the difference between knowledge and opinion: knowledge is belief with a good reason, opinion is a belief without a good reason. But that absence of good reason doesn’t mean that all opinions are false: often they happen to be true. I caught my train either way.
Socrates says that virtue can be like this: a feeling that you ought to do such and such. There’s no knowledge involved here and it’s all a matter of opinion, but that doesn’t mean that these opinions aren’t sometimes true. When someone has a collection of true opinions, we call them virtuous.
Why is it that some people have true opinions about virtue and others false? It’s not a matter of knowledge or learning, because we’ve agreed (within the dialogue) that virtue isn’t a kind of knowledge and can’t be taught. What is it that makes some people virtuous and others not?
Luck. Pure dumb luck. Socrates says it’s a gift from the gods.
‘Ought we not to reckon those men divine who with no conscious thought are repeatedly and outstandingly successful in what they do or say?’
‘Statesmen too, when by their speeches they get great things done yet know nothing of what they are saying, are to be considered as acting no less under divine influence, inspired and possessed by the divinity.’
Socrates in Plato’s Meno
The Conclusion
It’s an obviously stupid conclusion, totally at odds with everything that Socrates says elsewhere. It’s at odds with what Socrates has suggested in their own conversation: he’s said we have a duty to investigate virtue, that it’s something that can be known, that we should be able to offer a rational account for our beliefs, that we should try to be better people, etc., etc. How can you do any of this if virtue is a matter of lucky opinion and a gift from the gods?!
Socrates is being ironic again. It’s a sarcastic conclusion. If that’s not obvious from the conclusion itself then it’s made obvious by the reasons offered for it.
Firstly: that the sophists fail to teach anything doesn’t mean a tiny thing, because we all know that they’re useless. Socrates, especially, has argued, extensively, that they don’t teach anything of any value and that they definitely don’t teach virtue!
The same is true of the other ‘good statesmen’ Socrates talks about, because it’s not as if Socrates holds these people in high regard, since they’re not really philosophers. Famously, elsewhere, Socrates will argue that only philosophers have ‘knowledge’ because they understand the reasons for their beliefs, but everyone else only has ‘opinions’ because they don’t investigate and so understand the reasons for their beliefs. This is why he suggests that nations won’t be free from their troubles until their kings are philosophers and their philosophers are kings. Plato’s Republic would be a very different work indeed if the only answers to the questions of virtuous political governance were ‘good luck’ and ‘divine inspiration’.
Secondly, there is an obvious way out of the dilemma. Meno is too stupid to see it, but I think Plato imagines that we will see it, not least because he’s already shown us an example of it earlier in the dialogue!
If virtue is a kind of knowledge, but also something that can’t be taught, then it follows that it is a kind of knowledge that you have to discover for yourself. Like the slave boy ‘discovering’ the facts about geometry simply by responding to Socrates’ probing questions.
And here is Socrates, in this dialogue with Meno, asking Meno probing questions, trying to get Meno to discover, for himself, something important about virtue. Only Meno isn’t willing to answer Socrates’ questions straightly and directly like the slave boy, and because of this he learns nothing. So Socrates gives up and leaves him to make a fool of himself. If someone is too proud to learn, the first lesson you need to teach them is humility.
In the end, Socrates encourages Meno to go and convince someone of what he now believes to be true: that virtue doesn’t have anything to do with knowledge or learning and that whoever has virtue has so only by a gift of the gods.
It’s a cruel joke, because Meno will go and show himself to be stupid once again.
Postscript
It should go without saying that this piece offers an interpretation of Plato and the Meno, and there’s no way to say that it’s categorically the right interpretation, scholarly or otherwise. But I’d hope that, by now, you get what’s going on here. On the surface there are some philosophical arguments with which you may or may not agree; beneath that there is a show of doing philosophy in a certain way; and beneath that there is a provocation to do it yourself. What’s on the surface isn’t really what the piece is about.
Originally posted here.