The Meno begins abruptly, with an important question: “Can you tell me, Socrates, whether virtue is teachable? Or is it not teachable, but acquired by practice? Or is it not acquired either by practice or by teaching, but present in people by nature, or in some other way?” The inquirer is Meno, a wise man from Thessaly, to the north of Athens—the wild west, as it were, of ancient Greece. Meno is an acquaintance and apparently a student of the sophist Gorgias, from Leontini on the island of Sicily, who had been teaching in Thessaly for many years. He will appear later in Greek history as a general in the expedition of Cyrus the Great, when the latter set out to overthrow the government of the Persian Empire (see Socrates 22.3, 22.7).*
Meno’s question picks up where the dialogue Protagoras leaves off, promising to answer some so-far open questions about whether virtue is teachable, as Protagoras had affirmed, or not teachable, as Socrates maintained. Socrates claims in that dialogue to hold the apparently paradoxical position that virtue is knowledge, but not teachable—although, as he admits, knowledge is usually thought of as being precisely what is teachable.
Socrates begins with a characteristic disavowal of knowledge: “Not only don’t I know whether virtue is teachable or not, I don’t have any idea what virtue itself is.”[1] This is a step back from the Protagoras, where Socrates argued that courage was knowledge. But it is where Socrates begins most of his examinations of virtue or of particular virtues. Socrates goes on to say that he has not even met anyone who did know was virtue was. Meno asks if he met Gorgias when the sophist was in Athens. Yes, Socrates says, but he can’t quite remember what Gorgias said—an apparent allusion to the conversation with Gorgias in the dialogue named after him. In any case, let’s leave him out of this discussion, says Socrates, since he is not here. As usual, Socrates wants to know what his interlocutor thinks, not what some famous sophist or philosopher says.
This exchange also suggests that the Meno is a sequel to the Gorgias. Yes, Socrates had a (literary) discussion with Gorgias, but we are going to go beyond what happened in that dialogue and perhaps get a better understanding of virtue.
So what is virtue? “Well, that’s not difficult to say, Socrates,” answers Meno. “First, if you want the virtue of a man, that’s easy, because this is it: to be able to manage the affairs of your city, and in so doing, to do good to your friends and bad to your enemies, and to protect yourself from harm. If you want the virtue of a woman, that’s not hard to explain: she should take care of her home, protecting what’s in it, and obeying her husband. And there’s another virtue of a child, whether female or male, another of an elderly person, and, if you will, one for a free man, one for a slave.”[2]
How fortunate, says Socrates, that when I asked for an account of virtue, you gave me a whole swarm of them. Speaking of which, if I should ask for a definition of a bee, you would tell me all the species of bees there are: honey bees, bumble bees, and so on. But I would like to know not how many kinds there are, but what all bees have in common. I need a definition, not a field guide.
“What else but to be able to rule over men?—if you want a single account.”[3]
Meno’s second attempt at least fills the bill insofar as it provides a unified description of virtue rather than a set of examples. But Socrates is not satisfied. He reminds Meno that he does not think this account applies to all cases of virtue, including the virtue of a woman, a child, or a slave. And he also asks if they need to add a further condition: does not the virtuous person need to rule justly? For a tyrannical ruler would not, it seems, be a virtuous person.
After some further training from Socrates on what it is to offer a definition rather than an example, Meno presents a third definition: “To desire good things and be able to get them.”[4]
Now Socrates asks Meno if there is anyone who does not desire good things. There are, both of them admit, bad things that people desire, but only under the mistaken assumption that they are good. To use a modern example, some people desire addictive drugs, which make them feel good, but which bring devastating consequences. Surely everyone wants good and beneficial things, not bad and harmful things. This is a point that Socrates here and elsewhere takes as axiomatic, that everyone desires the good, even if everyone does not recognize what things are good.[5]
So far, then, the first half of Meno’s definition does not distinguish virtuous people from vicious people, given that everyone, whether virtuous or not, desires the good.[6] But what about the second half of the definition: being able get good things? Here Socrates reminds Meno of a point he raised in regard to the second definition: to be virtuous one must acquire good things in a virtuous way. I could acquire good things, or what I regard as good things, such as money, by robbing a bank. But my acquisition of allegedly good things would not be a virtuous act. But to add the condition ‘in a virtuous way’ would now make the definition circular and uninformative. Meno hasn’t really defined virtue at all.
In the end, Meno has failed to define virtue. Meno compares his experience with Socrates to being shocked by a stingray. “Although I have given a lot of speeches about virtue to large crowds, and spoken elegantly, if I may say so myself, now I can’t even say what virtue is.” He compares Socrates to a sorcerer who has bewitched him. Socrates, however, complains that he is no less confused than Meno, like stingray that shocks itself.[7]
We might remember how the Protagoras ended: Socrates “proved” that courage was knowledge, but he found that his claim that virtue is not teachable was paradoxical—as was Protagoras’ claim that courage was not knowledge but was teachable. It is at such a point that the victims of Socrates’ shock tactics are sometimes willing to search with open minds for a new understanding of the virtue in question.
[1] Plato Meno 71a.
[2] Plato Meno 71e.
[3] Plato Meno 73c-d.
[4] Plato Meno 77b.
[5] Plato Gorgias 468b.
[6] Plato Meno 78b.
[7] Plato Meno 80a-b.