Meno
In this dialogue, Socrates and Meno ask whether people can be taught to be good. Socrates questions an enslaved boy about a square to test how people learn.
79 pages 1h 32m reading time
- One of the most widely read of Plato's dialogues, and a common first step into Western philosophy.
- Argues that learning may really be remembering, since the soul already knew things before it was born.
- Draws a clear line between knowing something and just holding a true belief, saying knowledge is a true belief that has been tied down by solid reasons.
- Gave its name to "Meno's paradox" (the puzzle of how you can search for something if you do not already know what it is), which thinkers still debate today.
- Its scene with the enslaved boy is the model for the "Socratic method," the style of teaching through questions that is still used in classrooms and law schools.
An accuser appears
Anytus, who later helped bring Socrates to trial and death, shows up and angrily warns Socrates about speaking ill of Athenians.
Meno was a real man
The real Meno later joined a Persian prince's army, and the soldier-writer Xenophon described him as greedy and treacherous.
A grim real ending
Meno was captured and put to death by the Persians, shortly after the time in which the dialogue is set.
Set before Socrates died
The conversation takes place a few years before Socrates' trial, so early readers knew how his story would end.
Kept alive in Latin
In the Middle Ages, it was one of very few Plato dialogues that Western European readers could read in Latin.
Translated from Greek by Benjamin Jowett