Can Virtue Be Taught?

January 19^th 2023

Introduction

There are many questions asked within The Meno. The dialectic method as used by Socrates throughout Plato’s dialogues being one of questioning, this comes as no surprise. Many answers to these many questions are also posed, and many in turn rejected. Meno begins the dialogue by posing the question to Socrates of whether or not virtue is teachable. From there the dialogue takes a broad and interesting journey through ethics and epistemology and even metaphysics in an attempt to find answers to this and related questions. The meta question of whether or not this journey ever reaches its destination is the subject of this essay. More specifically we will discuss: Does The Meno establish that virtue can be taught? Or that it can’t be? Or neither? My position, for which I will make a case in the following pages, is that The Meno does not establish either that virtue can or can’t be taught. It makes many attempts but never manages to definitively establish an answer. Instead, what The Meno does teach us is a method of epistemological inquiry regarding how we should go about searching for answers to this and other important questions. It is a guidebook for the dialectical method and as such still teaches us something very important in spite of not reaching what some may consider to be the “goal” of the dialogue. Before I dive into why it is the case that no definitive answer is reached, we will begin first with a brief summary of The Meno as this will be helpful when breaking down the evidence for my position.

Summary

As previously stated, The Meno begins with the question of whether virtue is teachable being posed to Socrates. To which Socrates responds that he cannot answer that question on account of him not knowing what virtue is. Meno attempts three definitions of virtue in response, all of which are met with Socrates’ dialectical method of inquiry and found to be lacking. Between these definitions Socrates also attempts to illustrate what he is looking for in a definition by giving a couple examples of his own regarding figure and color in different styles, all to no avail. Meno is unable to come up with a satisfactory definition for virtue and gets frustrated with Socrates. This leads him to likening Socrates to a stingray, saying that he intellectually numbs those he encounters. To which Socrates makes the case that knowing the limitations of one’s knowledge is superior to ignorant confidence. Meno then poses the paradox of inquiry, an attempt which would make pointless the entire episode and all inquiry more broadly. Socrates answers this with a myth, changing learning to remembering and thus countering the paradox. He illustrates this by walking a slave boy through a geometry lesson where he does not tell the boy the answer, but instead questions him until he “remembers” the answer himself.

This paradox being apparently resolved, Socrates takes a different approach to finding an answer to whether virtue is teachable. He begins with a tentative acceptance of the teachability of virtue as true and postulates what would then also be true if this were the case. Specifically that, if virtue is knowledge, then it can be taught and there must be teachers of it. They discuss whether there are teachers of virtue, asking another man Anytus to weigh in as well. But alas their attempts appear to fail since even those who are virtuous themselves cannot even manage to pass this knowledge on to their own children let alone others. This raises the question of how people could be virtuous without being taught which leads Socrates to make the distinction between knowledge and true belief. Briefly stated, people can act virtuously when led by true opinion without actually having real knowledge of the underlying truth. But because they don’t really Know it, they are unable to communicate it adequately to pass the knowledge along to others. The Dialogue concludes with Socrates stating “…[T]he conclusion is that virtue comes to the virtuous by the gift of god. But we shall never know the certain truth until, before asking how virtue is given, we enquire into the actual nature of virtue”. (Plato. 2016. p87)

Analysis

The Meno is often regarded as a transitional work between the early and middle periods. It begins with questions of virtue, but by then end “…with its discussion of recollection, knowledge and belief [it] sets the stage for the middle Platonic epistemology”. (Silverman. 2022) This transition to the middle period is significant in that there is a change in subject matter from mostly concerning ethics to broadening to metaphysics and epistemology as well. It is also widely accepted that more of Plato’s own views come into play in the later works, using the literary Socrates as a mouthpiece. (Schofield. 2002) By attempting to educate Meno with his dialectical search for a definition of virtue, I believe Plato, through Socrates, is showing us how one would go about answering such a question as whether virtue can be taught. This requires first utilizing the dialectic and establishing firm definitions as a foundation. Defining terms being of the upmost importance to the dialectical method. But the dialectic is inherently a collaborative endeavor and its success depends on the quality of the interlocutor. Meno is unable to give a proper definition of virtue. Socrates even gives examples of the type of definition that would suffice for this as with figure: “figure is the thing which always follows color” (Plato. 2016. p60). Since this preliminary task is never satisfied for virtue, as all Meno’s attempts are rejected, it is then not possible for Socrates to continue in this manner in answering the main question of teachability. This lack of the establishment of terms is the first main evidence that indicates the conclusions reached in the Meno are ironic and fail to adequately answer the question of “what is virtue?” as well as the broader question of its teachability. This also leads to a breakdown of communication as Meno first insults and then attempts to derail the conversation with a paradox.

Socrates answers Meno with a myth in a style that he is sure to appreciate regarding the doctrine of recollection and the immortality of the soul. The conclusion of which being that if one believes in the paradox of inquiry, one would become idle and lazy while on the contrary, to reject it and believe in the myth would make one active and inquisitive. This is a very pragmatic argument, and whether or not the myth is believed by Meno or anyone (later in Laws Plato even seems to stray a bit from his doctrine of recollection, or at least chooses to focus more on pragmatics [Sugrue. 2023]) it can be assumed that it is more practical to reject the paradox and continue the inquiry than to halt and essentially “give up”. Thus, Socrates ends his recounting of the myth, having apparently satisfactorily appeased Meno and his paradox, by bringing them back to the question of “what is virtue?”.

At this point, since other methods have fallen through, Socrates tries a different approach by tentatively accepting the premise that virtue is knowledge and thus teachable and attempting to then look for proof of this assertion. As stated in the summary, this also fails as they can find no examples of successful teachers of virtue. Meno even states how his own teacher Gorgias laughs when other Sophists claim to teach virtue. Socrates utilizes the distinction between knowledge and true belief as a way to explain how one could act virtuously and still be unable to teach it. Even though they were unable to prove the premise by finding evidence of teachers, this merely fails to prove, it does not then mount evidence to completely disprove the teachability of virtue altogether. This brings the dialogue to an end without ever definitively proving one way or the other whether virtue can be taught, or even what it is.

While the Meno is generally not considered wholly aporetic, it is often regarded as a mix of aporetic and conclusive. (Parry & Thorsrud. 2021) I believe this is because it does not succeed in answering the question of teachability and the answers it does give are sometimes ironic, such as with Socrates’ closing line, but I do believe that it does succeed in teaching us methodology.  When asked by Professor Sophie Grace Chappell in a lecture given for students of the Open University’s philosophy program whether the Meno had succeeded in answering the question of whether virtue is teachable, M. M. McCabe replied, ”There’s a sense which formally it hasn’t because Socrates says… we don’t seem to have been able to explain it. We can’t figure out what teachability would be. We can’t answer it.” (McCabe. ND) My analysis of the Meno has led me to this same conclusion.

This does not mean that there is no answer to this question or even that Socrates does not have an answer to this question he could defend. According to Professor Michael Sugrue from Princeton University in his lecture series on Plato, Socrates, and the Dialogues, whenever an “ironic non-conclusion to a dialogue” is reached it’s important to investigate why this is the case. He discusses how when a dialogue comes to an unsatisfactory conclusion this should not always be taken at face value as there could have been something wrong with the interlocutor, the methodology, or something else. This could mean that “In The Meno, at the end when we find that virtue only comes from the gods and it’s not teachable or knowable you probably will want to step back and say: well, it’s not teachable or knowable when you are talking to Meno.” (Sugrue. 2023) I agree with this interpretation. I think the dialogue is a direct reflection of the dialectic between the participants and in this case is partially a reflection of Meno, including his intellectual limitations.

Conclusion

Thus, in summary, while The Meno asks many questions and offers many potential answers, none stands at the end of the dialogue as a conclusive one to the question of whether virtue is teachable. I do not consider this a complete failure by any means, we as the readers are the ones who see and interpret and learn from the mistakes of Meno and from watching the dialectic unfold. As M. M. McCabe stated at the conclusion of her interviews, “The important thing about the conclusion seems to me to be that it points us back to the beginning and makes us think about where we do make some progress. And I’d suggest that the progress that we make is in understanding where we should look when we think about the nature of virtue. And where we should look when we think about the nature of knowledge. And how those two might be connected” (McCabe. ND) Thus while the Meno does not give us an answer, it informs us of the right questions so we can go forward and search for our own answers.  

Bibliography

McCabe, M M. “Concluding Interview with MM McCabe: by the End of the Meno.” Plato: the Meno. Lecture presented at The Open University A853 22J MA Philosophy part 1, January 7, 2023.

Parry, Richard and Thorsrud, Harald, “Ancient Ethical Theory”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2021 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2021/entries/ethics-ancient/&gt;, 2021.

Plato. “The Meno.” Essay. In Plato – Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo, translated by Benjamin Jowett, 55–87. New York, NY: LG Classics, 2016.

Schofield, Malcolm. Plato (427–347 BC), 2002, doi:10.4324/9780415249126-A088-2. Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Taylor and Francis, https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/biographical/plato-427-347-bc/v-2.

Silverman, Allan, “Plato’s Middle Period Metaphysics and Epistemology”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2022 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2022/entries/plato-metaphysics/&gt;, 2022.

Sugrue, Michael. “Plato, Socrates, and the Dialogues.” The Great Courses Lecture Series. Lecture. Accessed January 5, 2023. https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/plato-socrates-and-the-dialogues,.