Plato’s Meno

Week 6: Can virtue be taught? — continued

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 86c-92c.

The focus shifts: is virtue by nature teachable? (86c-86e)

This returns to the discussion with a slight difference, being informed by the Geometry Example. Does that help us to ascertain what we’re looking for? There is considerable difference of opinion on whether that has helped or hurt anything.

The assumption that virtue is knowledge. (86e-89a)

This apparently simple question requires a fair amount of elaboration. Why? Is there a disjunction between knowing what is right and a propensity to do what is right?

Virtue is not a natural endowment (89a-89e)

Socrates makes an interesting observation about the fact that unlike some other characteristics that seem to be inherited or passed along in families (for example, height, appearance, hair color), an inclination to virtuous behavior does not seem to follow such patterns.

This conclusion inevitably leads to the doubt about whether virtue is really teachable, since many other forms of knowledge or skills held by artisans tend to be passed on from father to son. Can we see an exception here?The entrance of Anytus. (89e-90e)

Why does Plato bring Anytus onstage at this point? Is he brought on to articulate a position? If so, is that position one we expect Socrates to hold, or not? If not, is he here to provide an object lesson in the lack of virtue himself?

Discussion of the Sophists (90e-92c)

Anytus has strong opinions about the Sophists, but he doesn’t approve of them, and he tends to lump Socrates together with them . Does his appearance and argument do much to bolster his claims, or are they oblique sniping from Plato against the Sophists?

Consider the specific Sophists that come up in this discussion. They are themselves both interesting for what they themselves left behind (Gorgias left a small body of work including the “Encomium to Helen”, which seems like a whimsical dismissal of any claim to genuine moral virtue) and for their places in several of Plato’s dialogues. They are quite different from one another. While Gorgias releases Helen (yes, that Helen — the one who ran off with Paris to start the Trojan War) from all accountability, because she had been subject to that greatest known force in the world, persuasion, Protagoras takes a much more sober and reasoned approach to the subject, though even he disagrees substantially with Socrates.