Virtue in the Cave: Moral Inquiry in Plato's Meno (review)

Meno is a Platonic dialogue in which Socrates, Meno, one of the slave-boys and Anytus inquire into the nature of virtue (areté-excellence) in relation to knowledge (ἐπιστήμη, epistēmē). Meno, a young aristocrat from Thessaly, asks Socrates how virtue is acquired, a question with presumed answers (a) Teaching (b) Learning (c) Practice (d) Nature(e) Any other way. However, Socrates is not used to such questions with ready-made answers, instead, in his Socratic astuteness, he changes the question from the ‘How’ to the ‘What’ of virtue. Within the Meno-Socratic definition struggle, Plato embraces the elenchus not as a negative tool to paralyze typical Socratic interlocutors, but as a positive tool that works in the framework of the hypothesis to stimulate rational inquiry. In this paper I discuss, (a)Virtue & Knowledge; (b) Paradox, Recollection & Immortal Soul; (c) teachability of virtue, and (d) I conclude by arguing that despite a deadlock in defining 'virtue', Socrates identifies it with a kind of knowledge as opposed to opinion.

PLATO, The electronic Journal of the International Plato Society, 2012

Plato’s dialogue Meno presents a deceptively simple surface. Plato begins by having the character Meno ask Socrates how virtue is acquired. Instead of having Socrates respond directly, Plato has him divert the conversation to the question of what virtue is. But Plato’s Meno isn’t accustomed to the rigors of Socratic inquiry. So after a series of false starts and frustrations, Plato ends his dialogue with his characters unable to define virtue or to supply a persuasive answer as to how it is acquired. The Meno has been called a perfect example of the essential points of Platonism. If the dialogue is characteristic of Plato, however, it has as much to do with what it shows the reader about virtue as with what it tells. Though the aggressively confident Meno certainly ends unable to define virtue and Plato’s Socrates is often said to do so, I shall argue that Plato is in no doubt as to what virtue is or the means by which virtue is acquired. I shall organize my argument around what we find in two key passages—and crucially, what we find missing. In them, Plato provides clues to the meaning of the whole, drawing a crucial connection between the perplexity of the dialogue’s characters and the most promising route toward the acquisition of virtue, a route that is surprisingly neglected over the course of the dialogue. Plato’s art in the Meno is that he illustrates essential lessons about virtue not just despite the apparent perplexity of its characters, but by means of it.

PLATO JOURNAL, 2023

This paper challenges the prevailing interpretations about the role and the function of recollection in Plato’s "Meno" by suggesting that recollection is a cognitive process inaugurated by a myth. This process sets out the methodological and epistemological context within which two transitions are attainable: on the one hand, the methodological transition from the elenchus to the method of hypothesis, and on the other hand, the cognitive upshift from opinion(s) to knowledge. This paper argues, furthermore, that Socrates uses the myth of recollection just when Meno begins to object and tries to give up on their inquiry. Socrates’ myth accordingly imprints on Meno’s soul a true belief that facilitates the process of recollection by emboldening Meno to continue the inquiry.

This dissertation includes a translation of Plato’s Menon and an account of the dialogue as a whole. The Menon is described by many influential commentators to be a transitional dialogue in Plato’s corpus; that is, one combining characteristics of what scholars name as the “early" and “middle" dialogues of Plato. These scholars believe that although the Menon presents many aspects of an “early" or “Socratic" dialogue (such as the investigation of the Socratic question “What is excellence"), it is the first to introduce the Platonic metaphysical elements that characterize the “middle" dialogues. In the dissertation I argue that the aim of Socrates’ search is not for a definition of excellence, as most commentators believe; instead, I argue that Socrates' model answer for the “What is excellence'" question must be understood in light of the doctrine of anamnesis (recollection) and I also argue that this doctrine implicitly assumes the hierarchical metaphysical picture that is presented in Plato’s Republic, and explained in detail by later philosophers like Plotinus and Proclus. Moreover, I show that in the Menon the doctrine of anamnesis follows from Socrates’ understanding of the ancient Wisdom tradition, and is intimately associated with the Eleusinian Mysteries.

Journal of the History of Philosophy, 2017

In this paper, I explore three autobiographical narratives that Plato’s Socrates tells: his report of his conversations with Diotima (Symposium 201d–212b), his account of his testing of the Delphic oracle (Apology 21a–23a), and his description of his turn fromnaturalistic philosophy to his own method of inquiry (Phaedo 96a–100b).1 This Platonic Socrates shows his auditors how to philosophize for the future through a narrative recollection of his own past. In these stories, Plato presents us with an image of a Socrates who prepares others to do philosophy without him. In doing so, Plato’s Socrates exhibits philosophical care for his students. In the first part of the paper, I briefly discuss Socrates’ overall narrative style as Plato depicts it in the five dialogues that Socrates narrates. I then analyze each of these autobiographical accounts with an eye toward uncovering what they reveal about Plato’s presentation of Socrates’ philosophical practice.2 Finally, I offer a brief description of what it might mean to practice philosophy as care for self and care for others in a Socratic fashion.

Philosophical Investigations, 2006

As we shall see in Plato's Protagoras, Socrates argued with Protagoras on

Is Socrates a Model for the Rest of Us?, 2005

A revised version of a chapter in Craig de Paulo, Patrick Messina, and Marc Stier, eds. Ambiguity in the Western Mind, (Peter Lang, Inc. International Academic Publishers, 2005). The philosopher who, on the standard interpretation, seeks above all others to escape ambiguity is Plato. The world of forms is, after all, portrayed as a attractive realm precisely because everything is just what it is and nothing else. Yet, at the same time, Plato presents his philosophy is a literary form that, if only we could recognize it as such, is highly ambiguous in nature. In recent years, the importance of the dramatic character of the Platonic dialogue has been widely recognized. Scholars have paid greater attention to who says what to whom and under what circumstances. The irony of having an ironist—Socrates—as one’s main spokesman has been duly noted. This essay on Plato’s Symposium follows a very few contemporary philosophers in taking this new way of interpreting Plato one step further. He takes seriously the challenge that is put to Socrates in the Symposium, a challenge that touches not just or mainly his philosophy but his way of life. Along with other new interpreters of Plato, the essay suggests that Plato’s ideas may be found in not just in Socrates’ words but in the speeches of other characters in the Platonic dialogues. Stier, however, goes further in suggesting that, however noble it is, Socrates’ life may not be the Platonic model for the rest of us human beings. The picture presented of Socrates in the Symposium suggests that he is too different from even the best of other human beings to serve as a model for us. Socrates is a profoundly strange creature, whose qualities suggest that he has partly escaped from the usual circumstances of human life, circumstances that are best presented in Aristophanes account of how we were mutilated by the gods. As a result, Socrates escapes from human eros as well. Yet because he lives among us, and seeks to understand us in order to understand himself, Socrates must pretend to share a common nature with us. The ambiguity of Socrates position—and the danger that accompanies that ambiguity—is revealed when Alcibiades burst into the drinking party and tells tales about his mentor / tormentor. As the drama ends, the ambiguity of Socrates position is shown to parallel the ambiguous nature of the dialogue itself, in which tragedy and comedy are intertwined.

A teacher's ἔρως for a beautiful student and anger at a student's recalcitrance are common phenomena in the classroom. The former is acknowledged by Socrates at Men. 76c1‒2. The latter is described at Euthy. 295d3‒5: how Connus, Socrates' cithera teacher, gets angry when Socrates does not yield to him. Instances of Socrates' anger at Meno abound. Meno's third definition of the man of ἀρετή is a light-hearted reference to the erotic dynamic between them: “Ἀρετή seems to me to be, as the poet says, ‘taking pleasure in the beautiful things, and being able to do so’” (χαίρειν τε καλοῖσι καὶ δύνασθαι [Men. 77b2‒5]). Both interlocuters are enjoying that condition. Socrates' repressed ἔρως delights in Meno's beauty. Socrates’ δύναμις that procures him that pleasure is his ability to enunciate καλοὶ λόγοι [beautiful speeches] that delight Meno in turn. Despite Socrates' initial denial at Men. 71b4‒7 that he knows any of the qualia of ἀρετή, later at Men. 87b2‒89a6, he collaboratively reexamines the parts of ἀρετή in the soul, their interrelationships, and their several αἰτίαι. He proposes that the φρόνησις-governed ἀρετή of the very small number of the best statesmen possesses a share of divinity (θεία μοῖρα), bestowed intentionally on such men by some god, unlike other parts of ἀρετή such as bravery or a quick wit, whose steady state distribution among human beings suggests that their αἴτιαι are simply automatic, mindless regularities of Nature. If Meno were to acquire the φρόνησις-governed ἀρετή of the best men, and exercise plenipotentiary rule over others, he would do well to consider himself a vehicle of divine intention.