Platos Meno Essay -- essays research papers

Plato MenoIn Platos dialogue Socrates discusses ways in which virtue can be acquired withMeno. collar possibilities are confronted, first that virtue is innate at heart the humansoul. The second suggests that virtue can be taught, and the third possibility is that virtueis a benefaction from the gods. These ways are debated by Socrates and Meno to a very broadconclusion.Socrates poses the question that virtue may be innate within the human soul. Thisis to say that entirely people would gull virtue within them, but it is only those who find itthat can truly become virtuous. To prove the concept of innate understanding to Meno,Socrates, acquires the suffice of one of Menos slave boys to demonstrate. Socratesestablishes that the boy has never been taught mathematical geometry and startsbombarding him with a series of questions on the physical properties of a square. First heasks the boy to cypher the square by two, and he succeeds. However, the boy fails whenasked to divide the same square into two parts half the original size. By asking the boy aseries of questions yet, never actually telling him the answers Socrates helps the slave torecollect the knowledge that is within him. Meno is of course astonished with this featthat Socrates maintains is simply a matter of recollection.This utilization given by Socrates, though obviously persuasive to Meno issomewhat unstable. It can be shown that Socrates manipulated the boy into recollectingthe information by offering suggestive material within his questions. For example, if aperson did not know the sum of the equation two plus two one could ask if a person hadtwo apples and person else gave them two more would the person then not have fourapples in total? A question was asked yet the information on how to accomplish theoperation was directly given in the statement. Thus it can be reasoned that Socrates in asense did teach the boy how to divide the square. following(a) this demonstration Socrates poses a sec ond idea that virtue may betaught. He begins by looking for teachers of virtue and comes up with four examples. The first is Themistocles who is hold to be virtuous by the debaters and obviously agood teacher of his virtue. However the debaters also agre... ...finite preference to any of the possibilitiesthat have been stated.Now the question is would Socrates have maintained that ignorance is ecstasy basedon his views of the possible ways of acquiring virtue? I would conclude that he wouldnot see ignorance as bliss because Socrates believes that the truth is far greater than theunknowing. Throughout the dialogue Socrates and Meno journey to put aside theirignorance to come to the truth on how virtue is acquired and possibly more significantlywhat virtue is. plain though the path to truth has proved painful in that the two are moreperplexed on the topic at the end of the dialogue then at the beginning Socrates wouldhave seen this as the first step to achieving the truth. This of course is better than notachieving that step at all.Socrates is ultimately concerned in finding the whole truth and would havedefiantly preferred knowing some of the truth rather than being ignorant to it. Eventhough Socrates knew that the journey to reach the truth may be painful, ignorance wouldbe far worse than a painful truth. Ultimately he knew that the way moldiness be tried