Meno: Virtue and Inquiry
By Plato

Course Taught by Leon Kass--Social Thought 413
A Few Class Notes by Adam Kissel
Also see Reading Notes

My provisional definition: virtue is the desire that all things fulfill their potential for good, together with attempts to bring about that fulfillment; for humans, that includes knowledge of that very potential and hence the desire for that knowledge, especially self-knowledge. Practically it also means ridding oneself of what is bad, toward these ends. The movement of the soul toward the good, inexorably, presses the soul into service to move also toward the true (i.e. inquiry with the goal of knowledge).

Webster's has it as "moral goodness," which I identify with these desires and attempts.

Three things are necessary if the college is to do its job with any given student. They are a certain minimum intellectual equipment, habits of work, and at least a latent interest in getting an education. The college cannot give these things to the student; he must have them when he comes.
                        Robert Hutchins, No Friendly Voice, 23

3/30 - Kass office hours W 2-4 Harper 284. Paper due at end of class: 15-20 pp. for graduate students.

We'll be studying virtue (human excellence, arete) in relation to
   goodness & liberal education
   desire/inquiry
   learning/teaching
   knowledge/ignorance

Is everything learnable also teachable?

As is common in Plato's dialogues, the logical and the psychological questions tend to be worked out together. This kind of philosophy seems almost to require drama.

Does inquiry make us better or worse? Does Socrates corrupt Meno? This would seem to be of particular interest to Plato and his generation of readers. (See Xenophon on Meno's character.)

What is the agent behind our learning? The "left" says that there is no such thing as knowledge; inquiry is completely relativistic and so it doesn't make sense to search for truth, which does not universally exist. The "right" says that tradition and revelation show us the full necessary truth, so that inquiry is unnecessary. This course takes a middle position.

4/1 - [for next time, prepare: What is a question? What is a Platonic dialogue? How does the drama relate to the argument?]

VIRTUE: at this early stage in the dialogue, V seems to be, at least, something people want, something that the good people have.

Meno, to begin: some choices for the origin of V: teaching, or telling through words (requires a teacher and a learner); practice (you do it yourself); nature (it's already in you, natural, God-given); or a combination or something else.

Socrates' answer, 70b-71b: tone = humor, irony, perhaps also sarcasm; humility; questioning; conversational; narrative-based. There is an analogy between virtue and Meno, suggesting that knowing M will help one understand V. Thessaly as the wild west of Greece, the place of rhetors like Gorgias. S implies that M has gotten bad teaching from his teachers of rhetoric, and that M ought not merely repeat back what he has heard; M should actually seek to know what he's talking about.

71c: Meno makes S's humility a question of reputation, as though S has confessed a vice. 71d, it is clear that M has internalized Gorgias' words to some degree, but it is unclear how deeply he thinks he understands. [continue to trace knowledge, opinion, remembering)

4/6/98 [for next time: prepare Meno's second answer; shape/color stuff--which is the best account, and are these suitable analogies for knowing arete?]

Three parts of Meno: with Meno, discussion of virtue; with the slave, inquiry-knowing; with Anytus, the city and philosophy (this structure is similar Platonic dialogues in general)

Meno--name means "to stay, remain." Sanskrit root MN is used for words of remembering and recollecting (e.g. "mnemonic").

Memory: good memory is essential for discussion and for doing good things, but the knowledge must be secure; i.e., knowing precedes memory. Memory is not universally to be promoted as a more-is-better good, because memory also needs to be selective. In fact memory is inherently selective, and saves us from having to remember all kinds of uninteresting details. But again, to actively decide what to remember, one must already have a sense of what is good to remember, and some sense of values about what the good is. Also, reliance merely on memory can breed complacency and get us out of the habit of thinking and using critical analysis. Looked at in terms of the possibility of false memories and false opinions, the goal is to remember only the truth.

Question: some questions are asked rhetorically, out of politeness, or about something obvious without a real sense of questioning. But "real" questions are those in which: you hope there is an answer; you genuinely want [question/quest/entreaty] to know the answer which you don't now know; you probably think that the answerer has some quality that permits some kind of answer or help towards the answer; it requires a real questioner; you also can join up with other questioners who share your concern.

Meno's first definition of virtue (71e): he names the specific virtues that go with the categories, naming outward activities; he neglects to talk about motive.

Socrates' response: what is the necessary unifying element behind all these that define virtue itself? (Virtue seems to have to do with fulfilling your potential (cf. justice in the Republic).) His example presumes an analogy bees/virtues.

ousia = substance, property, essence, beingness [cf. bee-ness, not a pun in Gk.]

eidos (pl. eide) = form, sight, looks (cf. L. species) -- root id -- has to do with seeing: e.g. idea, video

I'll continue writing up these notes when I have time.