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Can anyone teach you to be good if you cannot first say what goodness is?
In Plato’s Meno, a young nobleman from Thessaly asks Socrates whether virtue comes from teaching, practice, or nature. Meno has studied with Gorgias and speaks confidently. Socrates starts with a confession: he does not know what virtue is. Before they can ask how goodness is learned, they must try to define it.
Their conversation turns confidence into puzzlement—and makes that puzzlement worth exploring. What makes a good definition? How can you search for something you do not know? Through questions, a comparison with bees, and a geometry lesson with a slave boy, Socrates draws Meno into a search for what it means to learn.
What you’ll discover
- A question about goodness Explore whether virtue comes through teaching, repeated practice, or the nature we are born with.
- Beyond a swarm of examples Follow Socrates as he asks what different examples of virtue share.
- The value of being puzzled Watch Meno’s certainty falter, opening space for questions he cannot easily answer.
- Learning as recollection Consider the idea of recollection through a geometry lesson with an unschooled slave boy.
- Knowledge and right opinion Ask how right opinion can guide us, and what sets knowledge apart.
Is it for you?
This is for anyone who wants a first taste of Plato, or who likes asking how we learn and what goodness is. It is short and lively. If you want settled answers and a firm conclusion, it may frustrate you.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Start by asking what virtue is
- A good definition names what is shared
- Being puzzled is a step forward
- A slave boy shows learning as recollection
- If virtue is knowledge, it can be taught
- Right opinion may guide us as knowledge does
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From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1 of 6
Start by asking what virtue is
Meno begins without ceremony. He asks Socrates whether virtue can be taught, or whether it comes by practice, or whether people are born with it. Socrates answers that he cannot say, because he does not know what virtue is at all. He adds that he has never met anyone who does. Meno is surprised. He studied under Gorgias, who surely knew.
So Socrates asks Meno to say what virtue is. This is the habit of Socrates in many dialogues. Before you can ask how a thing is acquired, you must know what the thing is. If you do not know what a person is, you cannot say whether that person is tall or short. The same goes for virtue. Whether it can be taught is a question about its nature, and the nature has not been settled.
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What is Plato's Meno about?
It asks whether virtue can be taught. Socrates says that first they must know what virtue is. The talk then moves to definitions, the paradox of inquiry, the theory of recollection, and the difference between knowledge and true opinion.
What is Meno's paradox?
It is the objection that you cannot search for what you do not know. If you know it, you need not search. If you do not, you could not recognize it when found. Socrates answers with recollection.
What is the slave boy scene in Meno?
Socrates questions a servant boy with no training in geometry and leads him to see how to double the area of a square. Socrates says this shows that knowledge is recalled from within the soul.
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