Meno by Plato

This is a great short read, about 15 pages in the Great Books series on the subject of virtue. It is a conversation between Socrates and Meno and Meno asks Socrates whether "virtue is acquired by teaching or by practice; or if neither by teaching nor practice, then whether it comes to man by nature, or in what other way?", and the 2 of them work through a few ideas to get to end idea that virtue cannot be taught and it comes from God.

A couple ideas I found to be enlightening in this essay were about men's desire to do evil, learning consists of remembering, virtue cannot be taught and virtue comes from God.

Meno declares that some men choose to do good and others choose to do evil, but Socrates asks questions which lead down the path to realization that men who choose evil do it not because they want evil, but because they falsely believe that the evil will bring them some form of joy. Socrates says "if there is no one who desires to be miserable, there is no one, Meno, who desires evil; for what is misery but the desire and possession of evil?" So if no one desires evil, then why are so many miserable and fallen into evil? No doubt Socrates knows how to get one thinking.

Another interesting idea Socrates brings out is the idea that the soul is immortal and learning is not learning, but recollecting what we already know. To prove this point, Socrates draws a square in the dirt and has an unlearned boy answer questions for him which the boy is able to answer without any previous training and only guided questions from Socrates. From those questions the boy gives correct answers without any outside help. Socrates says " And if there have been always true thoughts in him, both at the time when he was and was not a man, which only need to be awakened into knowledge by putting questions to him, his soul must have always possessed this knowledge for he always either was or was not a man? (Obviously) And if the truth of all things alwasy existed in the soul, then the soul is immortal. " Wow!!

Another interesting idea that Socrates shows to be true is that virtue cannot be taught. There are no teachers of virtue as there are of other forms of knowledge such as carpentry or medicine. And those men who are considered to be the most virtuous would certainly train their children to be virtuous also if they could and yet he showed that their sons were not as virtuous as the fathers. So therefore, it cannot be taught. There is something more to virtue than just knowledge.

Then to show that virtue comes from God, he shows the difference between knowledge and true opinions. A person who know the way to go to a certain place and one who has a true opinion of how to get there but has not been there can both lead a person to that place equally well, so " the only right guides are knowledge and true opinion-- these are the guides of man; for things which happen by chance are not under the guidance of man: but the guides of man are true opinion and knowledge." And to end, Socrates says," the conclusion is that virtue comes to the virtuous by the gift of God." I think it's notable that Socrates says God singular and not in the usual plural form of the Greek gods. I think he is talking about a one true God here. What wisdom!!

Thank you, Socrates!!