Meno (2006)
Meno is a 2006 Greek-language early works to 1800 book written by Plato.
A confident young Athenian named Meno opens with a deceptively simple question: can virtue be taught, or does it come by practice or by nature? Socrates turns it back on him, insisting they cannot judge whether virtue is teachable until they can first say what virtue actually is. Every definition Meno offers collapses under questioning until he admits he no longer knows, and raises a famous puzzle: how can anyone search for something they do not already know? Plato's short dialogue works through this paradox with the patient, needling method that made Socrates both admired and dangerous, including a celebrated lesson drawn from an untutored boy.
Quick answers
What is Meno about?
A confident young Athenian named Meno opens with a deceptively simple question: can virtue be taught, or does it come by practice or by nature? Socrates turns it back on him, insisting they cannot judge whether virtue is teachable until they can first say what virtue actually is. Every definition Meno offers collapses under questioning until he admits he no longer knows, and raises a famous puzzle: how can anyone search for something they do not already know? Plato's short dialogue works through this paradox with the patient, needling method that made Socrates both admired and dangerous, including a celebrated lesson drawn from an untutored boy.
When was Meno published?
Meno was published in 2006.
Who made Meno?
Meno was written by Plato.
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A few thoughts on Meno
Readers caught by the questioning should continue with PLATO's Republic, where the search for justice widens into a whole vision of the good life, or the Phaedo for its argument about the soul. For philosophy carried by story rather than by dialogue, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World walks a young reader through the same Western tradition Socrates helped begin.