Meno

Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult

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Background

Philosophical Context: The Sophists

The reigning philosophers of Socrates’s time, the Sophists, trained young men in many subjects, but mainly they taught rhetoric and debate, so that the men would be able to hold their own in political contests.

Socrates was widely considered to be one of the Sophists—the “soph” in Sophist means “wisdom,” while “philosophy” means “love of wisdom”—and in ancient times all forms of wisdom and knowledge were the purview of philosophers. (Until the late 19th century, scientists were called “natural philosophers.”) Socrates’s student Plato and his student Aristotle began a tradition of separating philosophy from rhetoric and debate. Plato went so far as to use the term “sophist” in a mocking and demeaning manner; ever since, “sophistry” has meant fancy talk meant to dazzle and deceive.

In dialoging with Meno, Socrates copies Meno’s teacher Gorgias, a Sophist, by answering one question specifically in Gorgias’s rhetorical style. This greatly pleases Meno, who completely misses the irony of Socrates’s demonstration, which flatters the young man while slyly criticizing the Sophists.

Unlike the Sophists, who weaponize ideas to help politicians win arguments, Socrates’s ultimate purpose is to discover the truth. His dialogs mark the beginning of Western philosophy’s transition from a tool of statecraft to a means of acquiring knowledge and wisdom.

Socio-Historical Context: Aftermath of Athens's War with Sparta

The dialog described in Meno takes place two years after Athens has lost a major war against Sparta. Still reeling from this disaster, which does permanent damage to the city-state’s prestige and power, the Athenian people and their leaders struggle to recover and revamp their system of governance to better reflect their new situation. A brief oligarchic dictatorship of the Thirty Tyrants is overthrown, but the resurgent democracy still struggles to find direction.

Into this stormy situation strides Socrates, a prominent political figure in his own right, who has served both in battle and in judicial capacities. Socrates criticizes the Athenian leaders severely and makes fun of them; he gains many enemies but sticks to his beliefs on grounds of intellectual honesty. His biographer, Plato, calls him a “gadfly,” and indeed he bites and stings the Athenian leaders, hoping to goad them into better action.

Meno, a young and powerful leader from Thessaly, a region to the north of Athens, seeks Socrates’s advice on how to be virtuous—in effect, how to be successful as a leader—but Socrates understands at once that Meno is an opportunist and not the sort of leader he’d like to encourage. Meno’s friend Anytus briefly enters the conversation, and Socrates provokes him with a comment on the failure of Athens’s leaders to sire worthy sons. Anytus takes this badly; later, he’ll prosecute Socrates for impiety and corruption. Anytus will win that battle, but, in the long run, Socrates will win the war of ideas.

Rhetorical Context: Socratic Irony

Socrates is famous for his ironic comments about his own lack of wisdom; this unassuming approach is known today as Socratic Irony. Using this technique, he lulls students into a false sense of security, so that they will more easily state their beliefs, which Socrates can then analyze using his Socratic Method, usually to refute those beliefs and improve them with his more carefully reasoned theories.

An example from Meno captures this process. Socrates finds that Meno is rather arrogant and impertinent as a student, so the philosopher responds with a sly retort. He would like to continue their discussion on the nature of virtue; Meno, however, is impatient to know how virtue is acquired. Socrates believes this question should be answered only after they have arrived at a definition of virtue. “But as you think only of controlling me who am your slave, and never of controlling yourself,—such being your notion of freedom, I must yield to you, for you are irresistible” (38). With this statement, Socrates employs two forms of irony: He pretends to be at his student’s beck and call, when in fact he is managing deftly a difficult conversation; and he pretends that Meno’s personality, rather than his presumptive arrogance, is irresistibly persuasive.

Socrates then presents a lengthy description of how a geometer might answer a question about whether a given triangle can fit into a given circle; the geometer must first form a hypothesis about the two figures, then learn a few fundamental facts about the size of each, and thereby confirm or refute his hypothesis. This answer indirectly rebukes Meno for his impatience, as he’s asking how a subject might be taught when they don’t yet know enough about the subject.

Socrates then suggests a solution for this dilemma, one that follows the geometer’s technique and sets forth a hypothesis—in this case the tentative theory that virtue is the acquisition of knowledge—so that they can move forward. Apparently, he’s relying humbly on the wisdom of mathematicians rather than his own brilliance. In fact, Socrates has neatly backed Meno into a corner where he must accede to Socrates’s terms before they can continue. In this way, Socrates moves the conversation back to his original purpose, the quest to understand virtue itself, and he has done so while appearing to accede to Meno’s demands.