But if he always possessed this knowledge he would always have known; or if he has acquired the knowledge he could not have acquired it in this life, unless he has been taught geometry; for he may be made to do the same with all geometry and every other branch of knowledge? Now, has anyone ever taught him all this? You must know about him, if, as you say, he was born and bred in your house.
MENO: And I am certain that no one ever did teach him.
SOCRATES: And yet he has the knowledge?
MENO: The fact, Socrates, is undeniable.
SOCRATES: But if he did not acquire the knowledge in this life, then he must have had and learned it at some other time?
MENO: Clearly he must.
SOCRATES: Which must have been the time when he was not a man?
MENO: Yes.
SOCRATES: And if there have been always true thoughts in him, both at the time when he was and was not a man, which only need to be awakened into knowledge by putting questions to him, his soul must have always possessed this knowledge, for he always either was or was not a man?
MENO: Obviously.
SOCRATES: And if the truth of all things always existed in the soul, then the soul is immortal. Wherefore be of good cheer, and try to recollect what you do not know, or rather what you do not remember.
MENO: I feel, somehow, that I like what you are saying.
SOCRATES: And I, Meno, like what I am saying. Some things I have said of which I am not altogether confident. But that we shall be better and braver and less helpless if we think that we ought to enquire, than we should have been if we indulged in the idle fancy that there was no knowing and no use in seeking to know what we do not know; – that is a theme upon which I am ready to fight, in word and deed, to the utmost of my power.
Specimen Questions
1 Why does Plato maintain, in the Meno, that what we call learning is really recollection?
2 At the beginning of this excerpt, Meno poses a challenge against the possibility of enquiring into things – a challenge we now call Meno’s paradox. What is it, and can we solve the dilemma?
3 ‘He who does not know may still have true notions of that which he does not know?’ How can we, according to Socrates, have true notions of things without having knowledge?
Suggestions for Further Reading (Including Internet Resources)
1 Plato, Meno. A serviceable translation available in paperback is by W. K. C. Guthrie (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1956).
2 General introductions to Plato’s thought include J. C. Gosling, Plato (London: Routledge, 1973), and A. E. Taylor, Plato: The Man and His Work (5th edn, London: Methuen, 1948).
3 For a stimulating discussion of the interchange between Socrates and Meno, see T. Irwin, Plato’s Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), ch. 9.
4 There is an excellent account of Plato’s views on knowledge in J. Annas, An Introduction to Plato’s Republic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980).
5 The nature of knowledge is discussed in many other works of Plato, especially the Theaetetus. A good starting point is F. M. Cornford, Plato’s Theory of Knowledge (London: Routledge, 1960). See also I. M. Crombie, An Examination of Plato’s Doctrines, vol. II (London: Routledge, 1963); N. P. White, Plato on Knowledge and Reality (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1976); R. Kraut (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Plato (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), esp. chs 6, 9.
6 A comprehensive reference work covering many of the topics included in this part of the volume is J. Dancy and E. Sosa (eds.), A Companion to Epistemology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993, 2nd edn 2010).
7 For an in-depth guide with explanations of the different arguments in Plato’s Meno, see D. Scott, Plato’s Meno (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
8 In terms of online resources, you will find excellent summary entries in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy at https://www.iep.utm.edu/meno-2/ (by G. Rawson), and on Plato’s ethics https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-ethics/ (by D. Frede) in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
9 For a series of short podcasts on Plato’s dialogues including the Meno (Episode 21), see P. Adamson’s website The History of Philosophy without any gaps, in particular https://historyofphilosophy.net/Plato-life.
10 For a general site with links to original texts of Plato’s dialogues go to https://www.plato-dialogues.org/links.htm (maintained by B. Suzanne).
Notes
* Plato, Meno [Menon, c.380 BC], 79e–86c. Trans. B. Jowett, in The Dialogues of Plato (Oxford: Clarendon,1892), vol. II, pp. 39–47; diagrams added for this anthology.
1 1 The comparison is found in a later Platonic dialogue, the Theaetetus.
2 knowledge versus opinion: plato, Republic*
The distinction between knowledge and mere true belief (or opinion) has already emerged in the previous extract. Socrates there talked of ‘true opinions which can be aroused by questioning and turned into knowledge’. But what is the difference between the two? As Socrates points out later in the Meno, it does not seem to lie in degree of usefulness, for the person who has a correct belief about the way to get to Larissa is just as good a guide as one who has knowledge. But knowledge, he goes on to explain, confers a plus: ‘True opinions are fine and useful as long as they stay with us; but they do not stay, and they depart from the mind. So they are not of great value until you fasten them down by working out the reason why. This process, Meno my friend, is recollection, as we agreed earlier. Once they are fastened, they become knowledge and then they are more permanent. Hence knowledge is a finer and better thing than true opinion, since it is secured by a chain’ (Meno, 98a 1–5). What is suggested here is that one who has knowledge is able to back up his opinion by providing a justification, or an explanatory account. Only when opinion is secured by a rational account, only when one can explain why a given belief is correct, is that belief entitled to the accolade ‘knowledge’.
So far the Platonic account of knowledge seems straightforward enough. But elsewhere the distinction between knowledge and belief is explained in a way which seems to carry far more complex implications about the nature of reality. The most famous of these passages is in Plato’s best-known work, the Republic (c.380 BC), where he gives an account of the true philosophers, the lovers of knowledge and wisdom (who alone, Plato maintains, are fitted to rule the state). In the course of the argument, knowledge and opinion are said to be different powers or faculties, from which the (questionable) inference is drawn that they must have different objects. The ordinary everyday objects of opinion can be said to be what they are (beautiful, or large, or heavy or whatever) only in a qualified sense; Plato puts this by saying that such objects are somewhere in between what is and what is
