Ryan Kuar
Sept. 15. 2023
Essay #1: Does Socrates actually teach anything to the slave boy in Plato's
Meno
?
Plato's dialogue "Meno" presents a controversial philosophical question between Meno
and Socrates about the nature of knowledge. The dialogue begins with defining the complex
concept of virtue, which has been indefinite for centuries. Although Meno offers several
definitions of virtue to Socrates, Socrates is interested in something other than the mere examples
of virtue that Meno presents. Socrates urges that whatever the essence of virtue is, whoever
possesses it must have knowledge of it. Thus, an intriguing conversation is sparked between
Meno and Socrates about what knowledge is. Meno claims we cannot know anything because it is
impossible to ask about things that we do not know, and we cannot arrive at new knowledge
because we would never know when we knew the things we did not know. Socrates disregards
Meno's claims, responding that learning is a process of recollection and we already know
everything, so we are not acquiring knowledge. The theory of recollection argues that if we try
hard enough, we can recollect what our souls knew in our previous lives. Socrates uses one of
Meno's slaves, who is entirely uneducated, to illustrate his argument that knowledge is innate by
making him reason out facts about simple geometry, which requires the application of the
Pythagorean theorem. Socrates argues the slave boy was able to understand the knowledge of this
geometric truth simply because the truths the soul knew before birth still exist and can be
recalled within the present mindset. Although many critics may argue that Socrates did teach the
slave boy, Socrates' assessment that he did not teach the slave boy in a conventional sense is
