Plato's Meno

In Plato’s Meno, Socrates and Meno converse in an attempt to define virtue. The conversation is, I think, a larger attempt to understand whether what we call characteristics or personality traits are taught, are cultivated over time, or are natural parts of human beings.


I haven’t read the work of these Greek philosophers in a long time, and this piece, besides being provocative, was somewhat amusing. I’m not sure if this is a by-product of translation, or if I understood the tone incorrectly, but while reading certain parts of the text, I thought I was reading a really sophisticated version of Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s On First?” But wordplay, though interesting, is not the main focus of the piece.

Socrates wants define virtue, because he reasons that you cannot know if a trait is taught, cultivated or inherent unless you know exactly what that trait is. The two men discover that there are many virtues, but virtue in itself is a harder thing to define. First, they suggest that it is the ability to rule over someone or something justly, then that is the ability to want good things and attain them. They also posit that virtue could be knowledge. At the end of Meno, the two men conclude that virtue is bestowed upon men by the divine, and cannot be taught, nor is it natural. This conclusion raises important issues about education’s purpose and practice.

If virtue can’t be taught, not even by virtuous people among us, then the purpose of education cannot be to produce virtuous people or a virtuous society, right? Of course, there are many who say that the purpose of education is to socialize people, to prepare them for their socioeconomic station, to make them workers able to preserve this nation’s economic competitiveness. There are those who say that education is the process by which we make citizens. And for all of those things, one could argue, it is not necessary to be virtuous. You could be knowledgeable, capable of “acquiring good things” and ruling over others all without being virtuous (or intentional), according to the dialogues.

So what, then, is the purpose of education? In an American context, or in the context of nations that dominate most of the capital in the world, education’s purpose is to maintain control of the world economy, to the extent to which that’s possible. However, there are alternatives to this ideology all over the world. In many places, especially those not in the global north or west, a large part of education’s purpose is to encourage a self-determining society, one not at the whim of economic superpowers that view culture as merely one of the commodities that’s fresh for the taking in places like South America, parts of Asia and Africa. I think that sort of education is virtuous. And perhaps virtue cannot be completely taught, but virtuous ways of living can be: way that show respect for others, respect for the earth and its resources, etc.

One quote that really resonated with me in Meno was from 81e on page 11 in Philosophy of Education. It reads,

“Seeing then that the soul is immortal, and has been born many times, and has beheld all things in this world and the world beyond, there is nothing it has not learnt: so it is not surprising that it can be reminded of virtue and other things which it knew before.”

I think that education could be the process by which we remind each other of what is virtuous. It could be the way in which we share knowledge to ensure that more and more people can live with dignity. But is that possible in school communities given the context we’re in?