Dialogue Socrates And Meno Journey example essay topic

Plato Meno In Plato's dialogue Socrates discusses ways in which virtue can be acquired with Meno. Three possibilities are confronted, first that virtue is innate within the human soul. The second suggests that virtue can be taught, and the third possibility is that virtue is a gift from the gods. These ways are debated by Socrates and Meno to a very broad conclusion. Socrates poses the question that virtue may be innate within the human soul. Thesis to say that all people would have virtue within them, but it is only those who find it that can truly become virtuous.

To prove the concept of innate understanding to Meno, Socrates, acquires the help of one of Meno's slave boys to demonstrate. Socrates establishes that the boy has never been taught mathematical geometry and starts bombarding him with a series of questions on the physical properties of a square. First he asks the boy to multiply the square by two, and he succeeds. However, the boy fails when asked to divide the same square into two parts half the original size. By asking the boy a series of questions yet, never actually telling him the answers Socrates helps the slave to " recollect" the knowledge that is within him. Meno is of course astonished with this feat that Socrates maintains is simply a matter of recollection.

This example given by Socrates, though obviously persuasive to Meno is somewhat unstable. It can be shown that Socrates manipulated the boy into recollecting the information by offering suggestive material within his questions. For example, if a person did not know the sum of the equation two plus two one could ask: if a person had two apples and someone else gave them two more would the person then not have four apples in total? A question was asked yet the information on how to perform the operation was directly given in the statement. Thus it can be reasoned that Socrates in a sense did teach the boy how to divide the square. Following this demonstration Socrates poses a second idea that virtue may be taught.

He begins by looking for teachers of virtue and comes up with four examples. The first is Themistocles who is agreed to be virtuous by the debaters and obviously a good teacher of his virtue. However the debaters also agree that Themistocles' own sonCleophastus is not a virtuous man "at the same pursuits as his father". (Meno p. 26) The other three examples also included fathers that are unable to pass on the virtue that they have acquired to their sons. It is therefore concluded by Socrates that virtue cannot be taught on the basis that any virtuous man would want to teach his ideals to his son. The example was given that Themistocles was able to teach his son how to ride horses and throw javelin, so his ability to teach was not in question, however, the fact remained tha the was unable to teach his son to be virtuous.

Socrates makes an apparent contradiction here. He looks for teachers of virtue after he has already tried to establish that there is no teaching only recollection. Moreover Socrates is basing this argument on the example of four people who he knows to be virtuous. First, making a generalization based on the evidence of only four people is a stretch because Socrates has not proven that there are no teachers of virtue, he has merely stated some examples of men who failed to teach their sons to be virtuous. Who also has constituted that these four men are in fact virtuous? For something such as virtue that Socrates has so much difficulty defining he surprisingly finds it easy to label someone a virtuous man.

A second observation is that Socrates assumes that the sons of the virtuous men in fact want to learn to be virtuous. There is the possibility that they don't want to learn the path to virtue at all. This is another uncertain element of Socrates debate which seems to give his argument a lack of credibility. After concluding that virtue cannot be taught Socrates states that virtue is neither innate within the human soul or a teachable form of knowledge, but rather, "virtue appears to be present in those of us who may poses it as a gift from the gods". (Meno.

32) With this statement Socrates closes the discussion, but he has still not answered the question of how virtue is acquired. Moreover he has admitted that no more can be discussed on the matter until virtue in itself is defined. Ultimately Socrates does not know how virtue is acquired. For all of these methods of possible acquisition he has developed no solid answer, and thus has no definite preference to any of the possibilities that have been stated. Now the question is would Socrates have maintained that ignorance is bliss based on his views of the possible ways of acquiring virtue? I would conclude that he would not see ignorance as bliss because Socrates believes that the truth is far greater than the unknowing.

Throughout the dialogue Socrates and Meno journey to put aside their ignorance to come to the truth on how virtue is acquired and possibly more importantly what virtue is. Even though the path to truth has proved painful in that the two are more perplexed on the topic at the end of the dialogue then at the beginning Socrates would have seen this as the first step to achieving the truth. This of course is better than not achieving that step at all. Socrates is ultimately concerned in finding the whole truth and would have defiantly preferred knowing some of the truth rather than being ignorant to it. Eventhough Socrates knew that the journey to reach the truth may be painful, ignorance would be far worse than a painful truth. Ultimately he knew that the way must be tried!

- Tent anda Via.