What is virtue? Can it be learned or is it innate? Is it possible to know things a priori (before experience)? In this important and influential Socratic dialogue, Plato addresses a wealth of philosophy’s fundamental questions, including the difference between actually knowing something and merely maintaining a correct belief about it.
The dialogue begins when Meno, a young aristocrat from Thessaly, confidently declares that he can define virtue—only to be reduced in short order to utter confusion, a fate common to those engaging in debate with Socrates. Meno’s contention that a concept cannot be defined without knowledge of its nature leads to one of the most celebrated passages in the history of philosophy: Socrates asserts the doctrine of reincarnation, and by posing a mathematical puzzle to Meno’s slave, demonstrates the existence of innate knowledge. This brief but profound dialogue, which forms the basis for subsequent examinations of a priori knowledge, appears here in the translation by the distinguished scholar Benjamin Jowett.
About the author
Plato ranks among the most familiar ancient philosophers, along with his teacher, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle. In addition to writing philosophical dialogues — used to teach logic, ethics, rhetoric, religion, and mathematics as well as philosophy — he founded Athens’ Academy, the Western world’s first institution of higher learning.
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