What form should the moral-philosophical question take? This is the question that has guided me the last few times I read the Platonic dialogue Meno. This is the question that has allowed me to read new meanings in the flow of ideas that constitute the conversation between Socrates and Meno, between Socrates and Meno’s slave, and between Socrates and Anytus. This is the question I will try to answer in this paper about Plato’s Meno.

The quest will be within the context of the Platonic dialogue Meno. This is one of Plato’s “middle” dialogues. The Cambridge scholar W.K.C. Guthrie (1975) dates the writing of this dialogue after the early dialogues and the Protagoras. The Pythagorean themes introduced in this dialogue are attributed to the stimulation Plato received from his visit of Italy and Sicily in 387 B.C. There is general agreement among scholars (Guthrie 1975; Taylor 1926) that the Meno was written before the central group of dialogues—Phaedo, Republic, Symposium and Phaedrus. That puts the writing of the Meno within 386 to 382 B.C. (Guthrie 1975, IV: 236). For this paper, I will be using the Guthrie (1997), instead of the older and more widely read Jowett (1952), translation; except where the Jowett translation is clearer or more specific.

The dialogue Meno’s dramatic date is said “to be 403 or early 402, after the restoration of the democracy, when Anytus [an Athenian democrat] was a leader of the party in power (cf. 90b) and there were political reasons why Meno [a Thessalian aristocrat] should have visited Athens and stayed with Anytus. . . . The prosecution of Socrates by Anytus and others is not far off, which adds dramatic force to the words of Anytus at 94e, and of Socrates at the end of the dialogue” (Guthrie 1975, IV: 236).

The quest will follow two main paths. The first path will be that which Meno wants to pursue, and which Socrates also follows but only to be able to guide Meno properly. It will be the path of the question regarding know-how of virtue. This path will be shown to be not fundamental enough to satisfy the requirements of moral philosophy. The second path will be that through which Socrates wants Meno to be. It will be the path of the question regarding know-what of virtue. This path will be shown to be that which defines the character of moral philosophical questioning.

Question 1: How Does One Acquire Virtue?

Meno’s question opens the search for the moral-philosophical question. He asks Socrates:

Can you tell me, Socrates—is virtue something that can be taught? Or does it come by practice? Or is it neither teaching nor practice that gives it to a man but natural aptitude or something else? (70a)

This question can be understood by looking at how three different sources interpret it.

The first source of meaning is Meno. Guthrie (1975) offers that Meno is more interested in bragging about what he knows, rather than in soliciting for the answer. Being a guest in Athens and a student of the great Sophist Gorgias, Meno is opening up the opportunity to show off what he has learned about the subject. When Socrates, later in the dialogue, admits ignorance about virtue and of anyone who knows about it, Meno eagerly retorted: “What! Didn’t you meet Gorgias when he was here? . . . And you still didn’t think he knew?” (71c). When Socrates flatters him by identifying him with Gorgias and letting him speak in behalf of Gorgias, Meno prefaces his answer with “But there is no difficulty about it” (71e). When Socrates even later on stumps him, he complains: “I have spoken about virtue hundreds of times, held forth often on the subject in front of large audiences, and very well too, or so I thought. Now I can’t even say what it is” (80b). The question, for Meno, is only a rhetorical device, the preface to a discourse on virtue, which he admitted to have tried various times already. Socrates sees through him and tells him that Gorgias has “got you into the habit of answering any question you might be asked, with the confidence and dignity appropriate to those who know the answers, just as he himself invites questions of any kind from anyone in the Greek world who wishes to ask, and never fails to answer them” (70c). Socrates also taunts Meno later about it: “You may have known before you came into contact with me, but now you look as if you don’t. Nevertheless I am ready to carry out, together with you, a joint investigation and inquiry into what it is” (80d). Socrates does not issue this invitation right after Meno’s initial question, but only after Meno finally professes his perplexity about virtue. Socrates wants Meno to realize his mistake by himself.

The second source of meaning is the audience to the dialogue. From the perspective of Socrates’s companions, Meno is interested in knowing how to be virtuous. He asks Socrates in the hope of being guided along the path of virtue. He sees Socrates as a teacher in the same manner as the Sophist Gorgias, who promises students that at the end of the instruction they will get to possess what they hope to possess. Indeed, taking the dialogue at its face value –without attributing to the statements the intentions of the main conversants—the main question would seem to be that of the means of acquiring virtue by anyone interested to become virtuous. Their experience of Socrates, however, allows them also to see Meno’s question as an opportunity to see Meno cut down to size for entertainment. They have seen others confront Socrates full of themselves in the beginning and going away angry for having been revealed ignorant. They see Meno exposing himself to the same experience when he asked the question. The question, for them, is just another exercise in futility for the one questioning, and only tolerated as another opportunity to have a good laugh at Meno’s expense. Socrates sees through the audience’s meaning and reveals his awareness by bringing Anytus, one of the audience, into the conversation. He invites Anytus to contribute his knowledge about teachers of virtue. While Anytus is only glad to show off what he thinks he knows, he is angered by Socrates’s critiques. He warns Socrates: “You seem to me, Socrates, to be too ready to run people down. My advice to you, if you will listen to it, is to be careful. I dare say that in all cities it is easier to do a man harm than good, and it is certainly so here, as I expect you know yourself” (94e). Socrates does not heed this warning and even makes fun of Anytus: “Anytus seems angry, Meno, and I am not surprised. He thinks I am slandering our statemen, and moreover he believes himself to be one of them. He doesn’t know what slander really is: if he ever finds out he will forgive me” (95a). Anytus will never find out what slander is, and will make good of his warning. He will be one of those who will accuse Socrates of corrupting the youth, which will lead to Socrates’s death (cf. The Apology of Socrates).

The third source of meaning is Socrates himself. Socrates sees in Meno’s question what the Sophists have been teaching the youth of Meno’s city, Thessaly, about virtue. He sees the question as opening up the chance for the correction of the Sophistic bias, which the Athenian audience seems to share, regarding the moral-philosophical question. His immediate reply to Meno’s question is a rebuke:

If you put your question to any of our people they will all alike laugh and say: “You must think I am singularly fortunate, to know whether virtue can be taught or how it is acquired. The fact is that far from knowing whether it can be taught, I have no idea what virtue itself is. That is my own case. (71a).

In the middle of the dialogue, when Meno repeats his question, Socrates repeats his rebuke:

If I were your master as well as my own, Meno, we should not have inquired whether or not virtue can be taught until we had first asked the main question—what it is; but not only do you make no attempt to govern your own actions—you prize your freedom, I suppose—but you attempt to govern mine. (86d)

Socrates repeats himself for the last time in the conclusion to the dialogue:

But we shall not understand the truth of the matter until, before asking how men get virtue, we try to discover what virtue is in and by itself (100a).

Clearly, in these replies, Socrates redirects Meno’s attention away from the original question of “how?” He tells us, more clearly in the second reply, that Meno’s question is not the main question to be asked. There is a more fundamental question to that which Meno has asked. That Meno has to be told a second time and even in the end signals to us that Meno has not understood that point even after having been through some Socratic treatment.

While Meno’s failure to understand Socrates may be explained as a literary device which Plato introduced for dramatic effect, the same could not be offered as explanation if historical audiences or readers of the dialogue Meno fail to understand Socrates. There are those who follow Meno in stubbornly pursuing the idea that Socrates is interested in the question “how can virtue be acquired?” or “can virtue be taught?” They fail to see that Socrates only gave in to Meno’s question as a concession, to make Meno more agreeable in pursuing the properly Socratic question for moral philosophy. Their failure would be all the more appalling if they have read the other Platonic dialogues. In the other Platonic dialogues, the main question is always a “what is …?” In The Republic, the main question is “what is Justice?” In the Euthypro, the main question is “what is Piety?” In The Symposium, the main question is “what is Love?” Why, then, should the Meno be different?

Through his masterful use of flattery, Socrates was able to convince Meno to pursue with him the more fundamental question for moral philosophy. This is the task of the next section. Hopefully, the historical audience does not have to be flattered to follow us in understanding what Plato deems as the question proper to moral philosophy.

Question 2: What is Virtue?

Plato poses the moral-philosophical question not in terms of how, but in terms of what. He argues that the question to be asked should be “What is virtue?” (71a, 86d, 100a). He develops and justifies this position as he proceeds with the dialogue between Meno and Socrates.

Socrates begins exploring the meaning of the question “what is virtue?” by letting Meno answer in behalf of his teacher Gorgias. When Meno heard Socrates deny any knowledge about virtue, he volunteered that Gorgias knows what virtue is. Socrates prodded Meno to share what Gorgias said about the nature of virtue.

I’m a forgetful sort of person, and I can’t say just now what I thought at the time. Probably he did know, and I expect you know what he used to say about it. So remind me what it was, or tell me yourself if you will. No doubt you agree with him. … let’s leave him out of it, since after all he isn’t here. What do you yourself say virtue is? (71d)

Socrates’s strategy of grouping Gorgias and Meno flatters Meno into offering to be Gorgias’s mouthpiece in this dialogue; thus, hoping to elevate the level of discussion to that between masters. Possibly also, Socrates brings in Gorgias—to be represented by Meno—to criticize Gorgias’s ethical position. Socrates flatters Meno further by admitting that he may have been mistaken in judging hastily that no one knows virtue.

Meno’s initial answer was an enumeration of many different virtues—a man’s, a woman’s, a child’s, an old man’s, a freeman’s, or a slave’s virtue. He summarizes his answer by claiming that:

For every act and every time of life, with reference to each separate function, there is a virtue for each one of us, and similarly, I should say, a vice. (72a)

Meno, here, is offering a relativist notion of virtue. Virtue’s meaning is relative to the possessor of the virtue.

Socrates points to Meno that the simple enumeration of different virtues does not answer the question. In fact, it misses the point of the question entirely!

The Question as Search for the Universal Definition

He rephrases the question for Meno: “What is that character in respect of which they don’t differ at all, but are all the same?” (72c). He also explains:

“Even if they are many and various, yet at least they all have some common character which makes them virtues. That is what ought to be kept in view by anyone who answers the question: “What is virtue?” (72c)

By means of analogy, Socrates leads Meno into a deeper understanding of the meaning of the question “what?” Among their insights are:

“even if they are many and various, yet at least they all have some common character which makes them virtues” (72c)

This means that all virtues are virtues because they share a common character. In other words, when Socrates was asking “what is virtue?” he was really seeking for that one definition of virtue that includes all virtues. Despite their being different types of virtues, the fact that they share a common name means that they all participate in a character that is universal enough as to be present in all of them:

“everyone is good in the same way, since they become good by possessing the same qualities” (73c).

This means that the enumeration of different virtues as embodied in different persons is possible only insofar as they have common virtues. Their differences are only different participations in the common virtues.

He clarifies this interest further when he distinguishes between “virtue” and “a virtue.” The latter is simply a part of the former, which is the whole. When asking “what is virtue?” Socrates wants to find “a single virtue covering them all” (73e). When Meno continued to have difficulty in giving him a satisfactory answer, Socrates pointed out that he is interested in “what is the same in all of them” (75a).

Later on, Socrates advises Meno to tell him “the general nature of virtue. Stop making many out of one, as the humorists say when somebody breaks a plate. Just leave virtue whole and sound …” (77a).

Another phrase reveals a second character of the universal for Socrates. This can be found in his evaluation of one of Meno’s suggestions on what virtue is. He tells Meno:

Let us see whether what you say is true from another point of view … (78c, Jowett translation)

In this lead sentence, Socrates tells us that the universal is not only that which subsumes everything that claims to be part of it. The universal also must remain universal from every perspective, not just from the claimant’s perspective.

A third phrase reveals yet another character of the universal. Socrates warns Meno that

to be sound it has got to seem all right not only “just now” but at this moment and in the future (89c).

Here Socrates makes the point that universality is not only a spatial character, but also a temporal one. It must persist through time if it is to be universal, not just caught up in the claimant’s historical position.

Despite many aids from Socrates, Meno fails to understand the question’s demand for a universal definition. He cannot rise beyond the simple enumeration of virtues that Sophistic training has mired him into. He tries to give up by appealing to some unintelligible excuse, but Socrates won’t just let him off easily.

The Question as a Search for Intelligibility

After repeated failure to satisfy Socrates, Meno raises his hand in surrender, but puts the blame on Socrates for the failure. He tells Socrates:

Socrates, even before I met you they told me that in plain truth you are a perplexed man yourself and reduce others to perplexity. At this moment I feel you are exercising magic and witchcraft upon me and positively laying me under your spell until I am just a mass of helplessness. If I may be flippant, I think that not only in outward appearance but in other respects as well you are exactly like the flat stingray that one meets in the sea. Whenever anyone comes into contact with it, it numbs him, and that is the sort of thing that you seem to be doing to me now. My mind and my lips are literally numb, and I have nothing to reply to you. Yet I have spoken about virtue hundreds of times, held forth often on the subject in front of large audiences, and very well too, or so I thought. Now I can’t even say what it is. In my opinion you are well advised not to leave Athens and live abroad. If you behaved like this as a foreigner in another country, you would most likely be arrested as a wizard (80a-b).

Meno’s response seems to be typical of that of a student who comes to class not knowing that he doesn’t know, and being angry at being exposed as ignorant, contrary to his perception. Instead of being grateful for the knowledge, and striving to really know, he gets angry and threatens the teacher for not being fair. This response confirms Guthrie’s interpretation that Meno’s initial excitement to take on and go along with Socrates in addressing the question “what is virtue?” was really prompted by the desire to show off what he thinks he knows about virtue. Now that he was shown to be lacking in knowledge, he claims to have been bewitched by Socrates. He refused to admit his ignorance, unlike Socrates. He excuses his failure to answer satisfactorily by appealing to the unexplainable—bewitchment, enchantment, witchcraft, wizardry.

He attempted further to justify his refusal to enquire by offering Socrates a dilemma from which he thinks there is no way out:

But how will you look for something when you don’t in the least know what it is? How on earth are you going to set up something you don’t know as the object of your search? To put it another way, even if you come right up against it, how will you know that what you have found is the thing you didn’t know? (80d)

Because Meno’s relativist position was proven unsatisfactory, and he failed to reach the universalist position, he opted for the skepticist or absurdist position. Skepticism is a philosophical position which argues that the knower can never really be certain of anything learned. Absurdism is another philosophical position which argues that no matter how much the knower seeks his attempt will be futile because the universe refuses to be known. He argues that the ethical question Socrates posed cannot be answered at all. Socrates, however, sees through the dilemma Meno proposed:

I know what you mean. Do you realize that what you are bringing up is the trick argument that a man cannot try to discover either what he knows or what he does not know? He would not seek what he knows, for since he knows it there is no need of the inquiry, nor what he does not know, for in that case he does not even know what he is to look for (80e).

Socrates, here, rejects the skeptical or absurdist position into which Meno has reduced the ethical problem. This alerts us into Socrates’s commitment to a rationalist (or intellectualist or cognitivist) approach. Though his starting point was one of doubt, he is not interested in remaining in doubt. He defends himself saying:

It isn’t that, knowing the answers myself, I perplex other people. The truth is rather that I infect them also with the perplexity that I feel myself. So with virtue now. I don’t know what it is. You may have known before you came into contact with me, but now you look as if you don’t. Nevertheless I am ready to carry out, together with you, a joint investigation and inquiry into what it is (80d).

He is committed to finding the truth, the answer to the question about the nature of virtue, despite the repeated failure in coming up with a satisfactory answer. He reaffirms this commitment later in a moving passage that may serve as his creed:

one thing I am ready to fight for as long as I can, in word and act: that is, that we shall be better, braver, and more active men if we believe it right to look for what we don’t know than if we believe there is no point in looking because what we don’t know we can never discover (86b-c).

In this passage, Socrates establishes his metaphysical position: “ I can know; the world is knowable.” He rejects the opposite position of skepticism (in relation to the self’s capacity to know) or absurdism (in relation to the world’s intelligibility). Socrates establishes here that Meno’s failure to answer the question “what is virtue?” is not because the question cannot be answered, but because Meno does not know how to answer the question yet.

Reliance on Meno’s stock knowledge (the result of his learning, of his own thinking, and of his own experiences) or his capacity for making opinions has led the enquiry into an impasse. But how does one go about answering the Socratic question?

The Question as an Opportunity for the Rigorous Use of Reason

To break through the impasse to which they were led by the limits of Meno’s previous state of knowledge, Socrates brings in the theory of recollection. The assumption of this theory is that there exists in human beings “true opinions which can be aroused by questioning and turned into knowledge” (86a). With courage, one can “try to discover—that is, to recollect—what one doesn’t happen to know, or (more correctly) remember, at the moment” (86b). He demonstrated the plausibility of this theory with Meno’s untutored slave. By means of questioning, Socrates led the boy away from a grasp of geometry based on mere opinion to a knowledge of diagonals, which is formally expressed by the Pythagorean theorem. Socrates was able to convince Meno that the boy was able to discover the principle of the diagonal by himself, giving concrete proof that the knowledge of the principle has always already been with the boy just waiting to be remembered. By analogy, Meno could also discover the knowledge of virtue by himself if he allows himself to be assisted through questioning by an intellectual midwife.

The question “what is virtue?” is not just for the sake of bringing out opinions from those being asked. Socrates rejects a superficial interpretation of the question “what?” Meno can be easily satisfied with what he has heard, and accepts it without question. His previous answers were merely repetitions of what he heard from his teacher Gorgias. His answers can be characterized as having “a dream-like quality,” which make them lacking in accuracy (85d). He cannot justify the ideas he has forwarded. Socrates exposed this when he was able to lead Meno towards the realization that he really did not understand what he was talking about.

If Socrates was merely interested in casual conversation, or in argumentation for its own sake, he could simply have gloated with the fact that he was able to bring Meno down, that he was able to lead Gorgias’s student to the point of confusion. But Socrates intended more when he asked “what is virtue?” He intended that Meno, who has within him “true opinions” about virtue, be led to the “knowledge” of virtue. So, Socrates leads Meno along the path of the question once more:

Just grant me one small relaxation of your sway, and allow me, in considering whether or not it can be taught, to make use of a hypothesis—the sort of thing, I mean, that geometers often use in their inquiries. … Let us do the same about virtue. Since we don’t know what it is or what it resembles, let us use a hypothesis in investigating whether it is teachable or not (86e, 87b).

This time, Socrates does not start with Meno and what he knows, which is not enough to move them forward. Instead, Socrates starts with a hypothesis and proceeds by way of testing this hypothesis. What Socrates is doing here is introducing a way of generating new knowledge not by means of what is already known, but by means of what is not yet known. Instead of concluding from given premises, Socrates experiments from “what-if” premises. This allowance for imagination lets Socrates escape the barrenness of thought that accompanies both pure empiricism and pure rationalism—e.g., Leibniz and Scholasticism. What he is suggesting is the idea that for as long as one is caught up merely with the facts, with purely empirical reality, then one cannot surpass them. The expansion of one’s epistemological horizon can only come about by stepping out of the range one is in. The expansion of knowledge can only come about when one allows oneself to imagine the not-yet known.

For the hypothesis, Socrates begins with Meno’s question and works back to the assumption of the question. Meno is asking “can virtue be taught?” Socrates replies:

“What attribute of the soul must virtue be, if it is to be teachable or otherwise?” Well, in the first place, if it is anything else but knowledge, is there a possibility of anyone teaching it—or, in the language we used just now, reminding someone of it? We needn’t worry about which name we are to give to the process, but simply ask: will it be teachable? Isn’t it plain to everyone that a man is not taught anything except knowledge? (87b-c).

Let us simplify this line of thinking by reducing it into syllogistic form. This statement is a conditional type of hypothetical proposition.

If virtue is teachable, virtue is knowledge.

This hypothetical proposition assumes the categorical proposition:

Only knowledge is teachable.

This proposition meets both Meno and Socrates’s questions, although the contemporary reader may find the definition of virtue strange.

While we may find the logic of the proposition valid, we may find this hypothesis is difficult to understand because we have associated virtue with character and knowledge with mental activity. But if we also look back to the early stages of the dialogue, we find Socrates using “wisdom” [sophia or sophrosyne] for “virtue” [arête]. When Meno asked “can virtue be taught?,” Socrates replied “O Meno, there was a time when the Thessalians were famous among the other Hellenes only for their riches and their riding; but now, if I am not mistaken, they are equally famous for their wisdom” (70b, Jowett translation) . . . “But here at Athens . . . [t]here is a dearth of wisdom” (71a, Jowett translation). He was not corrected by Meno on this matter. Guthrie (1975) offers some explanation for us about this hypothesis:

Arete [virtue], we know, commonly meant being good at something, so that Socrates’s insistence that it consisted in knowledge would not seem so paradoxical to a Greek as it does to us (IV: 260f.).

In other words, to be good at something [virtue] fundamentally requires that one knows it or knows how to do it. The absence of knowledge about it, handicaps one so basically that mediocrity not excellence is the best one can do about it. So, Socrates begins with such a definition as hypothesis. But he does not end there.

The hypothesis is the beginning of knowledge. But it does not qualify as knowledge yet. As it is, the hypothesis is no different from the opinions that Meno has offered earlier. To use the metaphor of Socrates, hypotheses and opinions in themselves are like the statues of Daedalus untethered. Insofar as they do not stay in place, no matter how beautiful they may be, they are not valuable to the owner. They only become valuable when the owner can make them stay with him and call them his own (97d-98a). Thus, Socrates argues that something more should be done with the hypothesis offered.

Socrates tests the “virtue is knowledge” hypothesis by pursuing another line of reasoning from that of the “if virtue is teachable” clause: “The next point then, I suppose, is to find out whether virtue is knowledge or something different” (87d). He pursues the line of reasoning that the “if virtue is good” clause leads to (87d). He was able to get Meno’s agreement that virtue “makes us good” and thus is “advantageous” (87e). Next, he also secured from Meno that those that are advantageous can sometimes do harm, and are controlled by right use (88a). Finally, he got Meno to agree that any quality which is not knowledge may either be advantageous when used with wisdom or harmful when used thoughtlessly (88b-e). He concludes from this that virtue is wisdom or knowledge.

From such a demonstration, Socrates was able to show to Meno that the question regarding the nature of virtue is an invitation for the logical use of reason. “What is virtue?” is a question that challenges us to move beyond hearsays and beliefs, and into truths established through logical validation. But that is not all about the question.

By the time that Meno accepts the conclusion, Socrates starts punching holes into the idea again.

Men. I don’t see how we can escape the conclusion. Indeed it is obvious on our assumption that, if virtue is knowledge, it is teachable.

Soc. I suppose so. But I wonder if we were right to bind ourselves to that.

Men. Well, it seemed all right just now.

Soc. Yes, but to be sound it has got to seem all right not only “just now” but at this moment and in the future.

Men. Of course. But what has occurred to you to make you turn against it and suspect that virtue may not be knowledge?

Soc. I’ll tell you. I don’t withdraw from the position that if it is knowledge, it must be teachable; but as for its being knowledge, see whether you think my doubts on this point are well founded. (89c-d)

Why did Socrates introduce doubt into the conclusion once more? Is it simply for the checking of the validity of the conclusion, in the same way that solutions are checked in mathematics through reversal of methods? Is it simply a reversal of the logic employed to ensure that no logical step is missed?

The Question Requires Empirical Testing

Socrates explains the source of his reservations to Meno.

If anything—not virtue only—is a possible subject of instruction, must there not be teachers and students of it? . . . And what of the converse, that if there are neither teachers nor students of a subject, we may safely infer that it cannot be taught? (89d-e)

In this quotation, Socrates is revealed as one who does not simply rely on the logical validity of a conclusion to guarantee its truth. Empirical evidence must be offered for stronger confirmation of the claim. Many among us may find this interpretation of Plato surprising. We have grown firm in our conviction, after having read many commentators, that Plato and Socrates are “idealists” or “rationalists.” This passage from Socrates, however, clearly reveals his position on empirical evidences and their role in establishing truths. Socrates, here, does not found the truth on the empirical, as empiricists do; but neither does he discount the part they play in confirming the truth. Socrates does not assume, with empiricists, that ultimate realities are empirical; however, he also does not assume, with rationalists, that they do not appear empirically. As Socrates also establishes in the dialogue Symposium about the Beautiful, and in the “Allegory of the Cave” and the “Divided Line” about Truth and Reality, without these empirical realities, our minds would have nothing to climb on to reach the transcendent forms. Let us pay closer attention to the way he argues for his hypothesis:

If virtue is knowledge,

Then it can be taught.

In this argument, he offers a logical way of testing his hypothesis. In other words, he does not just state his claim as truth, but as something one can verify or falsify. And, then, he offers a further test, an empirical one:

If virtue can be taught,

Then it must have teachers and disciples.

The empirical presence of teachers and disciples could mean that virtue can be taught, then virtue is without doubt knowledge. The empirical absence of teachers and disciples could mean that virtue is not teachable and, therefore, possibly not knowledge.

As part of the empirical test, Socrates offers the claim of the Sophists that they are teachers of virtue. The Athenian politician Anytus takes over from Meno as Socrates’s partner in dialogue. He was one of those who resented the Sophists rise to fame even among the young Athenians. Anytus rejected Socrates’s lead that the Sophists are the teachers of virtue. He was typical of the old Athenians who were angry with the Sophists for their newfound fame, eclipsing the Athenians, who were losing their hold on the young. Anytus accuses Sophists as thieves and corruptors of the youth, not teachers of virtue. He offered that any Athenian gentleman/father can teach virtues better than any Sophist (91b-92e).

Socrates pointed out for Anytus those Athenian fathers who taught their children other things but not virtue. Anytus wasn’t able to offer any evidence of fathers who were able to teach their children virtue. He resorted to anger to avoid having to admit his error. Anytus thinks that Socrates is defaming these Athenian gentlemen and warns Socrates of the danger of his words (93a-95a). This warning comes true when, toward the end of Socrates’s life, Anytus among others accused Socrates of corrupting the youth —lumping him with the Sophists—before the Athenian jury. Ibana (1993) comments on the role that Anytus plays in this Socratic dialogue:

Anytus symbolizes the short-tempered, those who easily allow themselves to be carried away by their emotions, those who make their emotions the basis of their moral judgments and actions. Even when invited, they cannot enter the realm of mature, rational discourse (“Lectures in Discourse Ethics,” Ateneo de Manila University).

Socrates’s turning away from Anytus clearly reveals his cognitivist position. He returned his attention to Meno, who despite his repeated failures to attain to the universal, cognitivist moral position, was nevertheless more open to dialogue than Anytus. It may come as a surprise for us that Plato presents the non-Athenian [Meno] to be more open to philosophical discourse than the Athenian himself [Anytus]. Plato has not forgiven the Athenians for their verdict of death to Socrates.

Socrates pursues the question regarding the empirical evidence for teachers of virtue with Meno, who admits having second thoughts whether Sophists are teachers of virtue or not. Even Gorgias was never heard claiming to be a teacher of virtue, only of eloquence (95c). Politicians and poets are not in agreement themselves on whether virtue can be taught, for they say one thing once and another thing next. This failure to find a teacher led Socrates and Meno to doubt the teachability of virtue. Furthermore, it led him to suspect that knowledge is not necessary as a guide to good action: “in insisting that knowledge was a sine qua non for right leadership, we look like being mistaken” (97a). This conclusion again shocks us out of our usual interpretation of Plato’s moral theory. We have been brought up believing that for Plato, “virtue is knowledge.” Even Guthrie (1975) offers that “if virtue cannot be taught in the sense of being handed over like a parcel, that is for Plato no indication that it is not knowledge” (IV: 261). Virtue is still knowledge, but it can only be taught in the manner in which the slave boy was taught about the diagonal earlier, by means of assisting in the recollection of what is always already known but is only forgotten.

What is important for us in this paper, however, is the attitude Socrates displays regarding his hypothesis and the empirical evidence he gathered. First, the hypothesis one starts with need not be the truth that one ends up with. The one who is responsive to the demands of truth is always ready to give up his cherished ideas when they are proven untenable. Second, against those who stereotype Plato and Socrates as pure Idealists who do not admit the world of the senses as real, we have Plato making Socrates admit to Meno and their audience that the evidence of the senses must have greater weight compared to logical reasoning in the acceptance or rejection of a hypothesis.

Looking back at the path we have been led to by the dialogue, we see Socrates suggesting every time he has the chance that the question should be “what is virtue?” He meant by this question the search for the essential definition that is universal and cognitive. He guided us along the way of the answer that this question requires, that which is posited out of what we can logically derive from our stock knowledge, but tested both logically and empirically. In the end, however, he was not able to give Meno a conclusive answer for the question, which did not satisfy Meno at all.

Meno pointed out that the Socratic conclusion about the absence of teachers of virtue does not seem to jive with the common experience of the existence of good men. How should that experience be explained, if at all? In other words, Meno was pondering again how, if virtue is neither innate nor taught, men happen to be virtuous.

Socrates offers that as guide to good action, one seem to need only, at least, true or right opinion, an educated guess on what is right or good. Such “true opinion is as good a guide as knowledge for the purpose of acting rightly” (97b). And having a right opinion may even be only because of divine dispensation (99c-100a). Guthrie (1975) tells us that this last hypothesis offered by Socrates for Meno was an adjustment for Meno’s sake. Socrates sensed that Meno, while able to rise above mere hearsays and beliefs, can never really rise above right opinions and grasp true knowledge. Being a statesman, Meno has to face urgent practical concerns, unlike the philosopher whose preoccupation is the search for the truth, Though still preoccupied by the “how” question until the end, Meno is already better off than Anytus, for he attempted—though he failed—to grapple with the “what” question. Socrates is already satisfied with that.

Socrates leaves a different final word for the philosopher. As he takes his leave, he makes a speech which, though addressed to Meno, is for everyone who tries to grapple with the moral-philosophical question:

On our present reasoning then, whoever has virtue gets it by divine dispensation. But we shall not understand the truth of the matter until, before asking how men get virtue, we try to discover what virtue is in and by itself (100a).

Plato, through Socrates, reaffirms to the very end that the moral-philosophical question is “What is virtue?” not “How does one become virtuous?” Aristotle confirms our interpretation when he criticizes Plato in Nicomachean Ethics, Bk. I, 6 “Plato’s View of the Good.” Against Plato, he argues that “the meaning of the ‘good’” is a subject that should be dismissed from moral philosophy, “because a detailed discussion of it belongs more properly to a different branch of philosophy, [namely, first philosophy]. The same applies to the Form [of the Good]… But the good which we are now seeking must be attainable” (1096b26-35). Ω

References:

Aristotle. (1962). Nicomachean ethics. Translated with Introduction and Notes by Martin Ostwald. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc.

Plato (1997). Meno. Translated by W.K.C. Guthrie. Reprinted in From Plato to Nietzsche, 2nd edition. Edited by Forrest E. Baird and Walter Kaufmann. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc.

Plato (1952). Meno. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. Reprinted in Plato: Great books vol. 7. Edited by Robert Maynard Hutchins. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica.

Guthrie, W.K.C. (1975). A history of Greek philosophy. Vol. 4: Plato, the man and his dialogues: Earlier period. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

McCall, Raymond J. (1952). Basic logic: The fundamental principles of formal deductive reasoning. 2nd edition. New York: Barnes and Noble Books.

Taylor, A[lfred]. E[dward]. (1927). Plato: The man and his work. London: Methuen.