ΜΕΝΩΝ
Floyer Sydenham, ed. Thomas Taylor (1804)
Plato · Floyer Sydenham, ed. Thomas Taylor (1804)
Scene: The Lycæum
The Meno asks whether virtue can be taught, and stumbles into a deeper puzzle: how can we even seek what we do not know? Plato's answer is the doctrine of recollection — the soul, immortal and reborn, already holds all knowledge within it, and learning is remembering. Socrates demonstrates by drawing a geometric truth from an untutored slave-boy with questions alone.
The dialogue ends by distinguishing knowledge from mere true opinion: both can guide action, but knowledge is 'tied down' by an account of its cause, and so is stable and teachable.
From the Plato Scroll Encyclopedia · open this entry in the reader
Meno: Can you tell me, Socrates, whether virtue is to be taught; or whether it is acquired, not through teaching, but through exercise and habit; or whether it comes neither by exercise, nor yet by teaching, but is by nature with those who are possessed of it; or comes it to them by some other way?
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The Athenian who turned Socratic conversation into a written philosophy and founded the Academy.
Plato was born around 428 BCE into a wealthy and politically prominent Athenian family; through his mother Perictione the family traced kinship to the lawgiver Solon, and his relatives Critias and Charmides were among the oligarchs of the Thirty. A late tradition says his given name was Aristocles and that 'Plato' — from the word for 'broad' — was a nickname. He grew up during the long agony of the Peloponnesian War and came of age amid the violence and disillusion that followed Athens' defeat.
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