Graduate Seminar I
Theory and Philosophy

Fall 2001

School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Department of Art Education and Art Therapy

Instructor: Craig A. Cunningham, Ph.D.

NOTES for The Meno by Plato, 9/17/01

SAIC Seminar I: Theory and Philosophy

Craig A. Cunningham, Ph.D.

Note:  Not all links in this document have been recently checks.

The Meno is available online,  click here.

Key questions in "The Meno"

Context of "The Meno"

• See map for geographical context. (Note relative locations of Crete, Asia Minor (now Turkey), Italy.  Note importance of the sea.)  Greece is divided by mountains into isolated regions, each of which developed its own sovereign government.  Athens is in Attica, part of Peloponnesia. Athens is easternmost sea port on Greek Mainland (sea port was called Piraeus): hence a place where culture, ideas, and material goods were exchanged.
• Comparison of ancient Athens to contemporary America (Historical context).
• After Persian war, Athens used ships to form merchant fleet and so prospered.
• With increased international commerce and wealth, belief in traditions (contained in Homeric epics and Greek mythology) broke down.  Increased interest in math and science, more "critical" art forms:  rise of drama….rise of philosophy.
• Political form: "pure" democracy (actually of 400,000 residents, 250,000 were slaves, only men over 30 were considered full citizens, and most people did not have time or inclination to attend Ecclesia, or Assembly; highest court, or Dikasteria, was over 1000 men--to make bribery expensive--chosen by alphabetical order).
• Importance of RHETORIC (persuasiveness) as well as LOGIC and GRAMMAR (the Trivium) Sophists stepped into the educational void and began offering courses in these three subjects (later, after Plato, there would be public education); but their teaching varied, and often assumed a critical stance toward traditional beliefs.

Plato

Platonic ideas

The Sophists

• Sophists: professional teachers of rhetoric (and other subjects) [Note: Socrates sometimes considered a sophist; Plato claims he was not, because (1) he did not charge for his teaching and (2) he stressed "true knowledge" rather than rhetoric].
• Sophists: professional teachers of rhetoric (and other subjects) [Note: Socrates sometimes considered a sophist; Plato claims he was not, because (1) he did not charge for his teaching and (2) he stressed "true knowledge" rather than rhetoric].
• A note on "sophistry"
• sophism: (from Greek sophisma: clever device, trick, argument. A. A plausible but fallacious argument, esp. on intended to display ingenuity in reasoning. 2. Specious or oversubtle reasoning, sophistry, casuistry.
• sophist: In ancient Greece, a scholar, a teacher; spec. a paid teacher of philosophy and rhetoric, esp. one associated with specious reasoning and moral scepticism; gen. (now rare) a wise or learned person. Now, a person using clever but fallacious arguments, a specious reasoner, a casuist.
• sophistry: 1. Specious or oversuble reasoning, the use of intentionally deceptive arguments; casuisty; the use or practice of specious reasoning as an art or dialectic exercise. 2. Cunning, trickery, craft. 3. The type of learning characteristic of the ancient sophists; the profession of a sophist.
• specious: 1. Pleasing to the eye; beautiful, handsome...2. Deceptively attractive in appearance or character; merely apparent. 3. Superficially geniune or correct but in reality wrong or fasle; (of an argument, reasoning, etc.) misleadingly sound or convincing.
• The difference between Socrates and the sophists: "Socrates did not regard education and philosophy as training how to do things, but as a process of acquiring a knowledge of the nature of things" (Sinclair, A History of Greek Political Thought, Routledge 1951, p. 94).
• For Socrates, the "things" of interest were moral qualities (virtues, justice, love)
• If these "things" exist, then what are their features? Do individuals decide (relativism), or are the features universal (absolutism)?
• Sophists tended to think these things are relative, "man made," and thus that different "positions" on what they are are equally worthy of debate.
• Socrates believed these things were universal, that their features are the same everywhere, a priori (before thought).
• He also believed that if people attained knowledge of the universals, they would inevitably act according to virtue: "no one does evil willingly"; everyone seeks what they understand to be "the good," and knowledge of the true good ensures truly good behavior. (Do we believe this?)

Some other topics for discussion

• Describe the key differences between Meno's and Socrates' notions of the nature of virtue.
• In Meno, Socrates opines that virtue is equivalent to knowledge.  What argument can be made that knowledge is virtue?
1a.  What is knowledge?
1b. What is "the good"?
1c.  How does knowledge help someone to achieve "the good"?
• What is the elenchus and why is it important?

 
• In both Meno and The Republic, Plato has Socrates teaching through a process of dialog, or dialectic.  What are the advantages/disadvantages of this mode of teaching?

 
• In The Republic, Socrates and his interlocutors conclude that each person has "natural endowments" which prepare them to do one particular job to the exclusion of other jobs.  What are the implications of this doctrine for education?  What would be an alternative doctrine and how would education differ under this alternative?

 
• Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" (p 84+) is based upon a certain metaphysical/epistemological system. What is that system?  What are the other implications of such a system? What are alternative metaphysical/epistemological doctrines?
• What are the parallels between ancient Athens and today's America?

Some specific topics in The Meno

• Meno's view of virtue
• Socrates' method (the elenchus)
• Socrates' view of virtue
• Scene with slave boy and geometry
• Scene with Anytus (who are the teachers of virtue?)
• Notion of recollection of knowledge
• Difference between true knowledge and opinion (and "right opinion")

Specific key passages

• what is "the elenchus" and why is it important? (Page 13: "I do not know how to answer you..." Also with slave boy, page 17. Admission of ignorance necessary before search for truth can be undertaken.  Many people are filled with opinions, not all of which are "tethered" or are knowledge.)
• Recall Meno asks whether virtue can be taught and Socrates says we first need to inquire into what IS virtue (that is, the nature of something needs to be understood before an accidental or secondary qualities can be pinned down.)
• page 6: looking for the essence of virtue: "They all have a common form which makes them virtues."  What is that form? (Here there is the notion that all "substances" have an essential quality; definitions are pre-existent; inquiry is the process of DISCOVERING the pre-existent essence of a form.)
• Page 8:  "Do you not understand that I am looking for that which is identical in all particulars."  Notion that courage, compassion, sense of justice, etc. are all "virtues" because they share common essence; which is what?
• Page 11: "do you really imaging that a man knows evils to be evils and desires them notwithstanding?"..."Is it not obvious that those who are ignorant of their nature do not desire them (evils) but desire what they suppose to be goods although they are really evils; and therefore if in their ignorance they suppose the evils to be goods they really desire goods?" "...if there is no one who desires to be miserable, there is no one who desires evil..." (Notion that no one desires evils willingly; if they desire evil, it is because they think it good. All, then, DESIRE good.  So what distinguishes those who pursue evil from those who pursue good?)
• Page 13: "I fear that I must begin again and repeat the same question: what is virtue."  Here Socrates expresses frustration with Meno's inability to DEFINE "virtue" without referring to particular virtues.  Again, notion that the definition or essence of the thing EXISTS and must be found.)
• Here digression into notion of FORMS as pre-existent.
• Plato's notion that "true reality" exists in a transcendent realm of Ideas, Forms, or Universals.  These Ideas can also be thought of as "First Principles"--axioms from which all appearances stem.  (Thus, a "true education" is an examination of "First Principles" through a process known as the "dialectic.")
• Page 14: Socrates rejects idea that simply because we do not know something we should not inquire (eristic argument); this argument supposes that there are only two states: complete ignorance and full knowledge; but in fact there is an intermediary state in which BELIEF or OPTINION (doxa) can serve as a first step in inquiry
• Doctrine of "recollection" of knowledge and passage with slave boy
• Page 20: "Some things I have said of which I am not altogether confident." (The "recollection" view of learning is not central to Socrates's view; Plato on the other hand probably believes in this and the immortality of the soul.)
• Page 20: Meno wants to return to question of whether virtue can be taught; Socrates again says that reverts the order, but agrees to go forward with the "hypothesis" that virtue is knowledge (that is, within (page 21) the "class knowledge"
• Page 21:  Both agree that "virtue is that which makes us good"
• Page 21-22: "courage wanting good sense, which is only a sort of confidence...when a man has no sense he is harmed by such confidence" et seq. (Each of the qualities discussed BECOMES good when it includes "sense" or understanding, wisdom, knowledge)
• Page 22: "If then virtue is a quality of the soul, and is admitted to be profitable, it must be wisdom or good sense, since none of the things of the soul are either profitable or hurtful in themselves, but they are all made profitable or hurtful by the additioni of wisdom or of folly; and therefore if virtue is profitable, virtue must be some sort of wisdom."
• Page 22: "The good are not by nature good," that is, they BECOME good by acquitring " by instruction"
• Page 23: problem that is virtue is knowledge, who are the instructors? (here comes Anytus: sample Athenian citizen who later prosecuted Socrates)
• Page 24: Meno "desires to attain that kind of wisdom and virtue by which men order the state or the household, and honour their parents, and know how to receive citizens and stangers and to send them on their way as a good host should" (here we have a social def. of virtue)
• Page 25: Anytus: "Any Athenian gentlemen taken at random will do far more good to him than the sophists, if Meno will mind him"
• Page 27: Meno: much disagreement about what virtue is and whether it can be taught.
• Page 28: notion that there are NONE who "know" the good, but
• Page 29: "true opinion" is as valuable as knowledge
• Page 29: notion that knowledge is "bound" whereas true opinion "walks off"
• Page 31: Since knowledge is so rare, the "virtuous" are those with right opinion, those who are "inspired" or given a divine "instinct" for the right

For more information, see:

• Plato and his dialogues
• The Theory of Education in the Republic of Plato
• The Window, the newest Philosophy site on the Web
• Timeline of philosophers
• The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• On the elenchus

last updated: 9/17/01