Page 8 - GALIET THE BEAUTIFUL INNATE: Meno & Theatetus Plato IV

Galiet & Galiet
In Plato’s Meno,1 Socrates discusses with Meno whether virtue can be taught. After a complex discussion, Meno confesses his ignorance and asks Socrates what will be his method of inquiry; and what principles will guide him to investigate what he does not know. Even if he were to come to know virtue, Meno asks, how would he know it if he had never known it? Meno2 argues that an individual cannot enquire either about things he knows or about things he does not know for (a) if he knows, enquire is unnecessary, and (b) if he does not know, enquiry is impossible;3 (c) therefore, enquiry is either unnecessary or impossible. Socrates objects to Meno’s sophistic4 argument about the impossibility of inquiry. Instead, Socrates claims that inquiry is possible. Learning, Socrates posits, is a process of recollection or anamnesis,5 neither procured by teaching nor experience. Just by being asked the right questions, Socrates argues, anyone can spontaneously recover knowledge of what was previously known.
1 Plato. Complete Works. Ed. John M. Cooper. Meno. Trans. G.M. Grube. Indianapolis, USA: Hackett Publishing, 1997
2 It is important to contextualize Meno. He is a disciple of Leontini, the itinerant master of wisdom, who spread nihilism. His nihilism and scepticism is clearly seen in his fabled affirmation at the beginning of one of his books: 1) nothing exists, 2) and if something would exist, man would not know it; 3) and if something would exist and could be known, it could not be communicated. Waterfield, Robin. The First Philosophers. The Pre-Socratics and the Sophists. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
3 He cannot for he does not know the very subject, which he is to enquire. 4Sophistsarethepragmatistsoftoday. Theyopposedabsoluterulesofconductandabsolutetruths. They favoured ethical and epistemological relativism often making the weaker argument appear stronger. They were the dissidents, the post-moderns of those days. It happens that orthodox Socrates, with his focus on recollection, is no less pragmatic that the pragmatists. 5SocratesattributesthemythofanamnesistoPindar. Socratesconcludeshisevocationofthepoets: “they say that the human soul is immortal; at times it comes to an end, which they call dying, at times it is reborn, but it is never destroyed, and one must therefore live one’s life as piously as possible.” Plato. Meno. 81b
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