Plato’s Meno

Week 5: The Geometry Example

For this class (and ideally, each subsequent session) please have the whole of the Meno read in advance. In particular, though, today we will be concentrating on 79e-86c.

The inset narrative as an object of its own

This is one of the most celebrated and best-known parts of the Meno, and rightly so: it presents a challenging case for the Socratic notion of anamnesis — that is, recollection. Socrates, at least according to Plato’s own recall, held to the theory that we don’t really ever learn anything new: instead we recall bits of knowledge from a pre-existence. He attempts to validate that idea here, in what is almost a set-apart narrative embedded in the larger and more ragged texture of the Meno overall.

The dramatic purposes of this inset narration are almost as interesting as their philosophical ones: what is Socrates saying about the (regrettably nameless) slave and Anytus (who appears partway into this)? Who is the more ignorant? What is your experience of the passage as a unit distinct from the context? Does it have some similarities, say, to poetic ecphrasis (which those who have done Western Literature to Dante will surely know)? It seems to be both a dramatic piece of the whole and a detached object of contemplation on its own.

The pedagogical and philosophical implications of the Geometry Example

Is Socrates really eliciting recollection, or is he guiding Meno’s slave through a process of inference? Can one gain knowledge this way without its being recollection proper?

What does it mean to say that we have knowledge of any propositional sort (of the Pythagorean Theorem, for example)? Again, is the conclusion that this demonstrates a foundation in recollection valid?

This leads Socrates ultimately to the conclusion that there is valid hope in searching for a definition of virtue — which slings us back into the main line of argument, but it leaves some lingering conclusions that overshadow the remainder of the dialogue, and provide serious (if sometimes perplexing) guidance to interpreting the remainder of Platonic epistemology..