Socrates asks Meno to
consider whether good things must be acquired virtuously in order to be really good
. Socrates leads onto the question of whether virtue is one thing or many. No satisfactory definition of virtue emerges in the Meno.
What question does Meno originally pose to Socrates?
Socrates asks Meno to
consider whether good things must be acquired virtuously in order to be really good
. Socrates leads onto the question of whether virtue is one thing or many. No satisfactory definition of virtue emerges in the Meno.
What question does Socrates in the Meno think needs to be answered first?
Meno asks,” Can virtue be taught?” Socrates steers the conversation to a question he thinks must be answered first:
“What is virtue?
” Meno answers confidently at 71e.
What is the initial question Meno asks?
This question has come to be known as “Meno’s paradox.” What is it? Meno asks
Socrates how he will look for it (virtue) if he doesn’t know what it is, and how, if he finds it, will he even know once he has found it since he didn’t know what it was in the first place.
What did Socrates ask Meno as a form of clarifying his Meno question?
“Can you tell me, Socrates,” asks Meno without preamble, “
can virtue be taught?
” He then asks if virtue is “the result of practice”—and therefore “not teachable”—or if it is perhaps an innate quality. ... In this way, he begins the dialogue by urging Meno to let go of his unexamined confidence in his own knowledge.
What does Meno compare Socrates to?
Meno compares Socrates to
a torpedo fish
, which numbs anything it touches.
What is Socrates trying to teach Meno?
Socrates tries leading Meno to
desire real knowledge of what virtue is
rather than just collecting others’ opinions about how it is acquired, and tries to get him to practice active inquiry and discovery of the truth for himself, starting from his own basic and sincere beliefs about virtue.
What kind of knowledge of virtue Socrates is looking for in the Meno?
This suggestion puzzles Meno, and Socrates explains that, while they had been looking for virtue as a kind of
teachable knowledge
, virtuous men’s good deeds could equally well be the result not of knowledge but of “true opinion.”
What point is Socrates trying to make by giving Meno This definition of color?
He first proposes that shape is “the only thing which always resembles color” (75b). Meno observes that this requires us to know what color is. Socrates then proposes a second definition, that shape is “
the limit of a solid” (76a)
.
What kind of question is Meno asking?
The Meno is probably one of Plato’s earliest dialogues, with the conversation dateable to about 402 BCE. The dialogue begins with Meno asking
Socrates whether virtue can be taught
, and this question (along with the more fundamental question of what virtue is) occupies the two men for the entirety of the text.
Is Meno a person?
Meno, a prominent
Thessalian
who is visiting Athens, is a member of this class. Meno’s semi-foreign status aids Socrates (and Plato) in the dialogue, allowing for eyewitness accounts that Socrates himself could not give.
What is the overall topic of Meno?
The central question of the Meno is
whether or not virtue can be taught
. Socrates takes his interlocutors through a range of dialogues (elenchus) in order to demonstrate that virtue is not the kind of thing that can be taught.
How does Socrates define shape and color?
Socrates, after making sure that Meno knows the geometrical terms “limit” and “solid,” defines shape as “that which limits a solid; in a word, a shape is the limit of a solid.” Then, after chastising Meno for ordering him around, Socrates proceeds to define
color “after the manner of Gorgias”
(rather than after his own ...
What did Socrates say about virtue?
Based upon first-hand knowledge of the Greek texts, my thesis is as follows: man’s virtue, according to Socrates, is
wisdom (skill or knowledge-how) to act effectively or correctly in a given situ- ation, grounded in and based upon absolutely certain knowledge (intellec- tual knowledge-that)
.
What did Socrates say about the unexamined life?
“
An unexamined life is not worth living
.” – Socrates.
Why do virtues not a feeling?
In his first characterization of virtue
Aristotle denies that virtues might be feelings themselves by pointing out that a feeling is not the sort of thing that is chosen
; our anger and fear are, as he might have said, “aprohairetic”, whereas the virtues are kinds of choice or at least not aprohairetic, not devoid of ...
