Meno by Plato

This Platonic Dialogue was more interesting compared to Ion, which was the last dialogue that I read. This dialogue focused mainly on virtue. What actually is virtue and how does someone acquire it?

The first part of the dialogue consists of Socrates and Meno trying to hone in or find the essence of what virtue is. Meno fails repeatedly to do this because he always brings up specific virtues in specific ways, but never actually says what virtue is. This dialogue is certainly important and I think definitely captures what most people would say about virtue. Everyone has an idea or key virtues in their mind, like being charitable, nice, or hard-working, but no one can actually say what virtue is in itself.

Socrates, being a careful and insightful philosopher, tries to really hone in on what virtue is despite being continually frustrated by Meno’s answers because if someone can’t give a true answer on a topic, or explain the essence of the topic, only examples, then they don’t really know what the thing is. Or in other words, this is what philosophy is all about. Given a set of concretes, what is the overarching principle that brings them all together? What is the big picture?

Socrates gives a few explanations to help Meno understand what he’s trying to do: finding the essence of virtue. For example, Socrates says that white is a color, but is white color? No, white is a color, but not color itself. He also uses the idea of shape. A square or circle is a shape, but circle is not shape. Whatever types of virtues come they up with: benevolence, power, hard-work, etc.. in the end, none of these things accurately capture the essence of virtue.

Meno and Socrates did get pretty close to the essence with virtues like Justice, for example. When Meno was explaining that children are virtuous when they behave, and housewives are virtuous when they watch over the house, and men are virtuous when they command, have money, power and influence. But Socrates points out that all of these different types of people, with their different virtues, actually all have justice in common. A good child, housewife or man all have to be just in order to be virtuous. Socrates compared humans to bees. Sure they all do different things, but all bees are essentially the same which means all virtues are essentially the same.

I did think for a second, though, that perhaps not all humans are the same? If humans were different from one another, then whatever primal virtue Socrates and Meno were looking for wouldn’t be possible. Do humans and animals have a virtue in common or are they too different? Can animals even act virtuous? There’s also the question of the purpose of virtue. Even if all humans were essentially the same, and I think all humans are essentially the same, humans then, are likely to have different purposes or needs of virtue.

Both Socrates and Meno seemed to agree that a virtuous person is someone who desires good things and acquire those good things. Meno says himself that, “virtue is, as the poet says, ‘to find joy in beautiful things and have power.'” Which honestly, isn’t that bad of a definition, depending on what kind of power one has. But if humans are different, then wouldn’t they desire different things? Which means goodness is good for different people. Or, if humans are all essentially the same, then all different types of good things align to an overall good. Interestingly, I don’t know if Socrates or Meno really specified what the ultimate good was. Socrates only pointed out the health and wealth were primal goods, but goods for whom exactly? I would say the person receiving those goods. People in themselves are the ultimate good, I would say. Our individual selves matter to us.

But that leads them to another question that sidetracked from their main question. If someone desires something, how do they know they are desiring good things? Can someone desire bad things? If someone does desire a bad thing, is it actually because they don’t know it’s bad? At some point, wisdom came up, or perhaps in another dialogue. Only people who are wise can desire truly good things. This makes sense. The problem, in my opinion, is that wisdom takes a long time to acquire and I’m not even sure what wisdom means. Ultimately, Socrates and Meno came to a similar conclusion: they don’t know. They don’t know what it means to be virtuous.

The conversation started out as Meno believing he knew what virtue was. In fact, he gave speeches and talks about virtue, and people cheered him for his knowledge. After talking with Socrates, however, he had no idea. What’s funny is that he uses the analogy of being stung by a torpedo fish. He feels numb and doesn’t even know what to think anymore.

“Socrates, before I even met you I used to hear that you are always in a state of perplexity and that you bring others to the same state, and under a spell, so that I am quite perplexed. Indeed, if a joke is in order, you seem, in appearance and in every other way, to be like the broad torpedo fish, for it too makes anyone who comes close and touches it feel numb, and you now seem to have had that kind of effect on me, for both my mind and my tongue are numb, and I have no answer to give you. Yet I have made many speeches about virtue before large audiences on a thousand occasions, very good speeches as I thought, but now I cannot even say what it is. I think you are wise not to sail away from Athens to go and stay elsewhere, for if you were to behave like this as a stranger in another city, you would be driven away fro practicing sorcery.”

Meno in Plato’s Dialogue

I find this to be such a hilarious part, and what’s even more funny is that Socrates doesn’t know what virtue is either.

“So that I should draw an image of you in return. I now that all handsome men rejoice in images of themselves; it is to their advantage, for I think that the images of beautiful people are also beautiful, but I will draw no image of you in turn. Now if the torpedo fish is itself numb and so makes others numb, then I resemble it, but not otherwise, for I myself do not have the answer when I perplex others, but I am more perplexed than anyone when I cause perplexity in others. So now I do not know what virtue is; perhaps you knew before you contacted me, but now you are certainly like one who does not know. Nevertheless, I want to examine and seek together with you what it may be.”

Socrates talking to Meno

Now, in my opinion, and I could be totally wrong and unknowledgeable about virtue, but it seems to me that virtue is desiring truly good things. And not just any good things, but good things for the self. These good things can usually be boiled down to health or wealth even if each self is different and desiring different good things.

I would also say that each person has a hierarchy of values and only wise people are aware of this. It’s easy to desire anything, but much more difficult to distinguish the best desires from good desires, let alone desires that seem good but are actually bad. If one can form this hierarchy of values, I would say that it is wisdom.

However, I wouldn’t say that wisdom is the primal virtue to rule them all. Mostly because people don’t have wisdom, especially when they’re young. There’s a more important and fundamental virtue that is necessary and that is reason. Reason is the primal virtue. Wisdom can only be acquired through experience, but an experience holds no value unless a person can think through their experience, in other words, use their reason. Experience + Reason = Wisdom. Wisdom equals desiring good things and attaining good things. Attaining good things is virtue.

As an example, I would say that I’m not a wise person. In order to attain wisdom, I figured that by reading books, written by wise people (philosophers and classic authors), such a Plato for example, that I could attain wisdom much faster. I think blog post in which I discuss Plato’s dialogue is a good example of me being virtuous.

Again, I’m certain that I could refine and update this answer, but I’m now very curious to read Aristotle’s Nicomachean ethics. I’m sure he has made great strides towards answering this question, much better than I have.

This leads Meno to ask a completely different question: if virtue isn’t known then how does someone go about attaining virtue? This doesn’t necessarily have to apply to virtue itself, it could apply to any idea really. In past discussion, I’ve had this occur many times. How do you know what to look for if you don’t actually know what the thing is that you’re looking for? This is an overly skeptical and self-defeating question. I actually took this idea to an extreme in one of my videos called: I don’t know what to think or believe anymore. Not only did I ask this question, but I built on it with other overly skeptical questions.

The essential argument that I think I made, which wasn’t really an argument and who knows what I said because I rambled a lot, was that if we can’t know everything then how do we know what to look for. We can only know things in very specific ways. As an analogy, the universe is kind of like dark a room, and the only way to know the things in the room is to use a flashlight to shine on certain pieces of the room. However, if one only has a limited time on this planet, then what hope do they have to search for what’s essential or important? Where do you shine your light if you don’t know where to shine your light? How do you decide where to point your flashlight? And how do you know you’ve shined your light on something long enough and large enough to acquire a good answer?

Knowledge is like a set of rings. Once one ring is solved, a new ring opens up. The more one learns, the more they start to understand how incomprehensible the world is because each ring becomes even greater and more difficult to fully contemplate and understand.

And given that I said that reason is the primal virtue, exactly what is it are you supposed to reason about? What are you supposed to contemplate? The most rational and logical people are scientists that make progress in knowledge everyday. But how do they know which knowledge to make progress in? What if the progress they make is ultimately useless or pointless? What if what they thought they knew about the universe suddenly changed when they discovered a new piece of knowledge?

I think I managed to solve these questions in a few ways. First, I decided to start reading philosophy and classical literature since it contains the most important questions and answers that humanity could possibly ever provide. So it’s like wisdom coming to you quickly. It’s almost as if all the wisdom gained in passed generations is passed on to you. It’s like you’ve lived and possess the knowledge of 1000 lifetimes.

The second thing is that, and I said this in the video, perhaps the chaos should be embraced. Floating in the epistemological void is part of being human, and perhaps what makes it all worth it, or not worth it at all depending on your attitude. What makes life interesting is that we don’t know everything about life and the universe, and that if we did know everything it wouldn’t be fun or interesting anymore. True omniscience sounds very boring or even torturous. Knowing everything, past, present, and future, for all of eternity sounds like actual hell. What else is there to do or say if everything is already known, if all questions have been answered?

The third thing is that we shouldn’t be asking for knowledge on a subject we know absolutely nothing about. I think God is a concept that is by definition impossible to know anything about. Since God is a supernatural being, nothing in the natural world that we have access to can give us knowledge on such a concept. So I would agree with Meno on concepts like these that it doesn’t really make much sense to pursue knowledge on something that you truly have no knowledge on. As I said earlier, knowledge is like rings, and only the next outside ring from our current ring is within our grasp. If a concept is ever to be understood, it can only be understood if it’s within the next ring.

I think Meno is wrong by believing that we know absolutely nothing about virtue though. Surely we know something about it and that it is definitely worthy of figuring out and discovering. It’s a possible knowledge within our contemplative distance. Maybe virtue is infinite. Virtue is not attained, it is something that is always improved upon. But just because something requires constant improvement does not mean we should give up all together, especially because virtue is all about desiring and attaining good things for ourselves. Why would anyone not want to desire and attain the best things that are within their knowledge? The only people like this are people who lack wisdom.

So how does Socrates respond to Meno’s question? He responds with a rather mystical concept that I don’t buy at all. It makes no sense, but given the time period, it’s not a bad answer.

As the soul is immortal, has been born often, and has seen all things here and in the underworld, there is nothing which it has not learned; so it is in no way surprising that it can recollect the things it knew before, both about virtue and other things. As the whole of human nature is akin, and the soul has learned everything, nothing prevents a man, after recalling one thing only–a process men call learning–discovering everything for himself, if he is brave and does not tire of the search, for searching and learning are, as a whole, recollection. We must, therefore not believe that debater’s argument, for it would make us idle, and fainthearted men like to hear it, whereas my argument makes them energetic and keen on the search. I trust that this is true, and I want to inquire along with you into the nature of virtue.

Socrates on recollection

Now, I do agree with Socrates that men do become “idle” and “fainthearted” when they give up on learning and discovering for themselves. For the YouTube I posted above is a good example of me falling into faintheartedness. Knowledge should always be pursued and certainly takes courage to pursue it. As in my video, people can deconstruct things so much that they start feel like the pursuit of knowledge is pointless.

Now for the next section of the dialogue Socrates calls in a slave boy to explain his recollection idea. I found this part of the dialogue not that interesting; it’s just Socrates drawing a bunch of different lines in a square to show the slave boy that he can “recollect” or rediscover knowledge. If you take out the whole idea of Plato’s concept of souls rediscovering knowledge they already know, the recollection idea seems more like using one’s reason to get clear on things that are well within their grasp and understanding. If someone thinks they know something, in other words a concept that they thought they knew but end up not knowing; so a concept that is well within one’s reach, not a concept that we couldn’t ever know like God, then it becomes pretty obvious was Socrates is saying that one should just think about it and then they’ll know.

The final part of the dialogue discusses the question of whether or not virtue can be taught. In a funny way, I think Socrates talking to the slave boy was a good example of teaching virtue. He didn’t directly tell the boy how to be virtuous, but by showing the boy how to think, that is essentially teaching virtue. So in my opinion, virtue can be passed on to another person to a degree.

Often virtues are more like good values that the person practices without the person really understanding why they practice those virtues in the first place. In this case, virtue is more of a cultural custom or expectation rather than it being virtue. It’s something you do just because. This means virtues can be lost or easily replaced if the rules or expectations change.

As I said earlier, I think reason is the primal virtue and reason can be taught in a similar way that Socrates did with the slave boy. However, it’s not something that’s taught and just known. Reason is something that someone has to choose to integrate and willingly practice on a continual basis. Virtue, as an analogy, is like being constantly judged. Every minute of every day is on display for the individual to prove himself. For the time that the individual uses their reason to the best of their ability, they are being virtuous, for other times, they are not. In the end, the quality of a man’s life can ultimately be boiled down to his use of reason.

Socrates and Meno don’t say anything really close to this, but they do have more to add. They did mention sophists, which are teachers of virtue that charge a fee for their teachings. In this part of the dialogue, we meet another character called Anytus for a brief period. Anytus did not have anything good to say about sophists, and I actually agree with him. In the last couple of my YouTube videos I have spoken ill of other people on YouTube who charge a fee for their philosophy or self-help. I think anyone who charges money for their philosophy is honestly not selling anything real. I expand more on this idea in this video.

Anyway, whether or not virtue can be taught, Socrates talks about how even if people speak about the right things, and teach the right things, it can at least still do good because they are the right opinions. The downside to right opinions is that they are fleeting. Socrates explains that in order to turn a right opinion to actual knowledge is to “tie them down like a statue.” In other words, people who tie down their opinions recollect. And my interpretation of Socrates’s idea of recollection is simply using one’s reason to get clear on concepts that are well within their grasp.

I think the conclusion here is that maybe the reason why virtue can’t be taught and why these virtuous figures they mentioned can’t pass down their virtue is because they only have right opinions. Right opinions are great and right opinions can spread, but it’s not until people take a right opinion and “tie them down” does it become true knowledge. And with true knowledge or wisdom we can then acquire virtue.