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This article is about Plato's dialogue. For the Thessalian general and character from Plato's dialogue, see Meno (general). For other uses, see Meno (disambiguation).



Plato's Meno is a Socratic dialogue in which the two main speakers, Socrates and Meno (also transliterated as Menon), discuss human virtue: whether or not it can be taught, and what it is. Additional participants in the dialogue include one of Meno's slaves and the Athenian politician Anytus, a prosecutor of Socrates with whom Meno is friendly.

Meno is visiting Athens from Thessaly with a large entourage of slaves attending him. Young, good-looking and well-born, Meno is a student of Gorgias, a prominent sophist whose views on virtue clearly influence Meno's. He claims early in the dialogue that he has held forth many times on the subject of virtue, and in front of large audiences.



Introduction of virtue[edit]


Socrates rejects the idea that human virtue depends on a person's sex or age. He leads Meno towards the idea that virtues are common to all people, that temperance (sophrosunê- exercising self-control) and justice (dikê, dikaiosunê- refraining from harming other people) are virtues even in children and old men.[3] Meno proposes to Socrates that the "capacity to govern men" may be a virtue common to all people. Socrates points out to the slaveholder that "governing well" cannot be a virtue of a slave, because then he would not be a slave.[4]




Meno's paradox[edit]

Socrates brings Meno to aporia (puzzlement) on the question of what virtue is. Meno responds by accusing Socrates of being like a torpedo ray, which stuns its victims with electricity. Socrates responds that the reason for this comparison is that Meno, a "handsome" man, is inviting counter-comparisons because of his own vanity, and Socrates tells Meno that he only resembles a torpedo fish if it numbs itself in making others numb,[9] and Socrates is himself ignorant of what virtue is.

Meno then proffers a paradox: "And how will you inquire into a thing when you are wholly ignorant of what it is? Even if you happen to bump right into it, how will you know it is the thing you didn't know?"[10] Socrates rephrases the question, which has come to be the canonical statement of the paradox: "[A] man cannot search either for what he knows or for what he does not know[.] He cannot search for what he knows--since he knows it, there is no need to search--nor for what he does not know, for he does not know what to look for."[11]

Dialogue with Meno's slave[edit]

The blue square is twice the area of the original yellow square


Socrates begins one of the most influential dialogues of Western philosophy regarding the argument for inborn knowledge. By drawing geometric figures in the ground Socrates demonstrates that the slave is initially unaware of the length of side that must be used in order to double the area of a square with two-foot sides. The slave guesses first that the original side must be doubled in length (four feet), and when this proves too much, that it must be three feet. This is still too much, and the slave is at a loss.



After witnessing the example with the slave boy, Meno tells Socrates that he thinks that Socrates is correct in his theory of recollection, to which Socrates replies, “I think I am. I shouldn’t like to take my oath on the whole story, but 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...”[15] It has been argued variously that this implies Socrates is skeptical regarding knowledge or that he is a pragmatist.[citation needed] It also prepares us for the subsequent discussion of knowledge by hypothesis.

This demonstration shows the slave capable of learning a geometrical truth, because "he already has the knowledge in his soul." In this way, Socrates shows Meno that learning is possible through recollection, and that the learner's paradox is false. Meno's paradox claims that learning is impossible, but the examination of the slave shows that it is possible.




True belief and knowledge[edit]



Socrates concludes that, in the virtuous people of the present and the past, at least, virtue has been the result of divine inspiration, akin to the inspiration of the poets, whereas a knowledge of it will require answering the basic question, 'What is virtue?'. In most modern readings these closing remarks are "evidently ironic",[20] but Socrates' invocation of the gods may be sincere, albeit "highly tentative".[21]

Meno and Protagoras[edit]

Meno's theme is also dealt with in the dialogue Protagoras, where Plato ultimately has Socrates arrive at the opposite conclusion, that virtue can be taught. And, whereas in Protagoras knowledge is uncompromisingly this-worldly, in Meno the theory of recollection points to a link between knowledge and eternal truths.[8]


  1. ^ Plato, Meno, 71b
  2. ^ Plato, Meno, 71e
  3. ^ Plato, Meno, 73b
  4. ^ Plato, Meno, 73c–d
  5. ^ Plato, Meno, 77a
  6. ^ Plato, Meno, 77d–e
  7. ^ Plato, Meno, 78b
  8. ^ a b Jane Mary Day. Plato's Meno in Focus. Routledge, 1994, p. 19. ISBN 0-415-00297-4.
  9. ^ Plato, Meno, 80c
  10. ^ Plato, Meno, 80d1-4
  11. ^ Plato, Meno, 80e, Grube translation
  12. ^ Plato, Meno, 84c
  13. ^ Plato, Meno, 84b
  14. ^ Plato, Meno, 85d
  15. ^ Plato, Meno, 86b
  16. ^ Gregory Vlastos, Studies in Greek Philosophy: Socrates, Plato, and their tradition, Volume 2, Princeton University Press, 1996, p 155. ISBN 0-691-01938-X.
  17. ^ Gail Fine, "Inquiry in the Meno", in Richard Kraut, The Cambridge Companion to Plato, Cambridge University Press, 1992, p 221. ISBN 0-521-43610-9
  18. ^ Charles Kahn, "Plato on Recollection", in Hugh H. Benson, A Companion to Plato, Volume 37, Wiley-Blackwell, 2006, p 122. ISBN 1-4051-1521-1.
  19. ^ Gail Fine, "Knowledge and True Belief in the Meno", in David Sedley, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy: Volume XXVII: Winter 2004, Oxford University Press, 2004, pp 61–62. ISBN 0-19-927712-5
  20. ^ Robin Waterfield in Plato, Oxford World Classics: Meno and Other Dialogues, Oxford University Press, 2005, pxliv. ISBN 0-19-280425-1
  21. ^ Dominic Scott, Plato's Meno, Cambridge University Press, 2006, p 193. ISBN 0-521-64033-4


  • Klein, Jacob. A Commentary on Plato's Meno. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965.
  • Day, Jane M. Plato's Meno in Focus. London, New York: Routledge, 1994.

External links[edit]