18 Facts About Meno

Meno begins the dialogue by asking Socrates whether virtue is taught, acquired by practice, or comes by nature.

Plato's Meno is a Socratic dialogue in which the two main speakers, Socrates and Meno, discuss human virtue: what it is, and whether or not it can be taught.

Meno is visiting Athens from Thessaly with a large entourage of slaves attending him.

One of Meno's slaves has a speaking role, as one of the features of the dialogue is Socrates' use of the slave to demonstrate his idea of anamnesis: certain knowledge is innate and "recollected" by the soul through proper inquiry.

Dialogue begins with Meno asking Socrates to tell him if virtue can be taught.

Related searches

Meno responds that, according to Gorgias, virtue is different for different people, that what is virtuous for a man is to conduct himself in the city so that he helps his friends, injures his enemies, and takes care all the while that he personally comes to no harm.

Meno's domain is the management of the household, and she is supposed to obey her husband.

Meno says that children have their own proper virtue, and so do old men—free or slaves.

Meno leads Meno towards the idea that virtues are common to all people, that sophrosune and dike are virtues even in children and old men.

Socrates remarks that Meno makes many out of one, like somebody who breaks a plate.

Meno proposes that virtue is the desire for good things and the power to get them.

Socrates asks Meno to consider whether good things must be acquired virtuously in order to be really good.

Meno says that the slave has "spontaneously recovered" knowledge he knew from a past life without having been taught.

Meno now beseeches Socrates to return to the original question, how virtue is acquired, and in particular, whether or not it is acquired by teaching or through life experience.

Meno says that Anthemion had his son well-educated and so Anytus is well-suited to join the investigation.

Meno alludes to other notable male figures, such as Themistocles, Aristides, Pericles and Thucydides, and casts doubt on whether these men produced sons as capable of virtue as themselves.

Meno is again at a loss, and Socrates suggests that they have made a mistake in agreeing that knowledge is required for virtue.

Meno theme is dealt with in the dialogue Protagoras, where Plato ultimately has Socrates arrive at the opposite conclusion: virtue can be taught.