Part II: Wasserman on Plaro's Meno

Thanks to Grand Valley for the Photo!

Class 1981/ 1983 GVSC

[In progress:]

Preface

Using Bloom’s Republic and Shakespeare’s The Tempest, with brief modern contrasts at the

We want to read the Meno in a way Plato shows that w

We shouldn’t read the Men[o?]

Can’t read it without achieving self knowledge.

We were expecting to be told how we could get virtue.

What kind of gift of the gods?

[I had to laugh at myself because I was hanging onto an opinion; We were hoping to get an answer. To the Reader: Once in Irv’s office, I asked him, “So can virtue be taught?” He said something like: “Yes, and Socrates can teach it- But not to Meno!]

Because it is Arete, human excellence

[arrow] So, to hear you either got it or not; From divine dispensation.

What kind of gift of God?

Frank Connor: Innate characteristics. Born with them, by nature. The man who does not know has within him true opinions that he does not know.

[Notebook, p. 37 Top: Recollection is not teachable

Concludes that knowledge is dispensable. Right opinion or we get virtue through divine dispensation]

Irv emphasizes: Is the writer reading Plato as if he wrote dialogues? Or as teaching notions? “You discover marvelous things that way, but you wouldn’t be understanding Plato that way.

Let’s return to the simile.

Knowledge is not the guide in public affairs.

Kind of knowledge. -Not the kind that can be taught.

Good guidance. Right belief and knowledge. Right belief from divine dispensation.. Opinion and knowledge.

It concludes that right opinion is as valuable as knowledge.

Right opinion = knowledge as a guide to correct action.

Virtue is not the guide in politics. We all want opinion.

Lecture II Meno

Teaching, practice or nature. Divine dispensation? In combination is not said. Are they exclusive?

Pupil of Gorgias, taught just how to answer. Fearless, forthright manner.

Socrates, how does one get virtue? Is the question a challenge?

Socrates avoids answering directly. Doesn’t say many things.

Thessalians. Unjust, licentious city.

[Notebook p. 38 Top: Forms. my notion of them is as universality. Thessaly. Athens.

Bees. Distinction could point tio the whole (Bee from ` bee)

Problem of maintaining the heterogeneity/ homogeneity.

Looking for universals? To obliterate differences. Strength of woman is the same as strength as strength of a man

Meno keeps leaving out justly and unjustly for power. Virtue or a virtue?

Figure is the only thing which always follows color.

* I would rather that you answer Socrates.

Figure is that which always follows color. Terms that are coextensive.

[Margin: Not [Natural?] Species/genus definition.

Color form/quality Quid/Quale Virtue/ How do you get virtue (seek)

Adequately done for the purpose.

But what is color, what is figure [What’s involved when people make that requirement]

You forget about virtue, the argument, everything

Virtue is health: When a thing does its proper work well.

On the nature of dialectic

The way to find knowledge is not through eristic or mathematics.

[Nor through talking in class.

but through being silent. I cannot be there, for I am not]

What Gorgias said Socrates: “You tell me…”

[A circle is drawn with rays] Whole of virtue/ Parts of virtue

Eros and comedy; Not literal.

Point where, as at the end of Euthyphro, dialogue might well break down.

Figure the only thing that always follows color.

(Virtue is the only thing which always follows knowledge)

Color is an effluence of figure commensurate with sight, and palpable to sense)

(Effluence is already colored

Tragic (inflated) answer

Virtue is the desire of things honorable and the power of attaining them. Acquisition.

To J[ust] acquisition Is J[ustice] V[irtue] or a virtue?

Meno gets angry. Torpedo fish.” Meno never offers another definition of virtue

Accuses Socrates of being a wizard. bewitched or enchanted)

Cast into prison as a magician. Anytus himself appears later.

For some reason, Socrates wants to go on.

[Margin: Meno doesn’t believe the dilemma he’s been asking all along]

One writes: Don’t need […]} for Meno. He’s already laid bare

The Dilemma

Something is implied here about the whole and theinterconnection of its parts.

To say either you know it or you don’t implies no interconnection.

Like a field of separate parts.

Socrates leaves the plain of eristic; Goes into religious poetry.

[Do not learn because you cannot know]

Socrates breaks off, looks inward

Priests and Priestesses, then a poet

Philosophy requires us to be a lover of toil. To live very piously.

Now, Meno, if that is so, do something.

Its not clear that Meno has anything so far as his [memory].

All nature is akin, man is at hom,e here, with a purpose.

[Notebook, p. 40] Top: One thing that Socrates is sure of: Learning makes us better. Virtue is a kind of knowledge (recollection)

Wm. James: Reality is congenial to the power within us.

Interconnection. The myth did effect Meno.

Shows can recollect without asking the what is question.

Unlike Meno, the boy doesn’t get angry. There is no emotional deal with virtue*This procedure, unlike Euclid, begins not from self-evident truths.

How would you distinguish between an opinion that was your own and an opinion that was not your own

Knower/ `Knower

rather than two ignorant people in dialectic.

[Arrow] All the teacher can do is provide the occasion.

You have to bow to the necessity of thought

Arrow] Efgveryone gives answers for another reason.

Obviousaly not time bound

arrow] He has recollected a false opinion, and now thinks that he knows.

Socrates almost puts the answer in his mouth. And ywet is not a teacher, does not possess that which he gives

arrow] Socrates shows Meno with the slave boy

How could anyone give someone that You always acknowledge  that’s so,

as real, getting closer to something you don’t know

Overcomes something in the dichotomy of either knowing or not knowing.

True opinion: Dreamlike quality

Lazy/ Holy Logos

The duty of inquiry of that which we dio not know

He knows that learning makwes one better; Knowledge is virtue

The whole ascent from opinion.

That virtue and knowledge makes us better.

Is Meno really seeing, or just saying yes?

Meno leaves out practice.

[Notebook, p. 41] Freedom and self control are incompatable, so thinks Meno

No one can ever be educated free or virtuous doing what he feels like

After someone so patiently has taken so much time with him

Right after the story, Meno asks how does one get virtue

If there is something to that story

*Virtue comes by nature, practice, teaching, and many other methods. Depends on natures.

Recollection

awareness needs to be stimulated.

Principle of contradiction, for instance

Man is singularly special, his position is given.

Man is in harmony with the whole.

science- evil demon or blind necessity

Ground of ground, not eternal.

Recollection indicates the natural kinship between the human mind and the whole

*If one doesn’t believe some thing like that, there is  not even any point in trying to know.

All the Platonic myths are about the soul

Man has within himself knowledge of the wqhole

Effort. Philosopher- lover of toil

Proper nature is necessary

Though Meno acknowledges, he doesn’t ever ask that question again.

Opinion. We are all in touch with the whole.

Our nature, we want to know. pursuit of wisdom, pursuit of the whole.

Effort is crucial because the learning makes us better.

Soul is immortal,; learning is possible.

He can’t be exhorted, he must be made to understand. Freedom, Meno thinks that freedom in incompatible with self control, no body can learn by doing his thing.

[Notebook, p. 42]

Why not be grateful that he gives us this myth. “We want to get this answer about the whole without doing what Socrates wants us to do it.

*That’s an illusion

*You can’t learn that way

-virtue is at least inseparable from knowledge.

How can Meno be induced to take up the task?, shallow, doesn’t lov

Meno cannot become better by learning. What is Socrates to do with this fellow?

Inequality in the decisive respect, human excellence

capacity to govern, Meno, can’t control this if he beauty.

Equality must say no to every decisive feature of that myth

The only way you can have it is this way; That’s why Plato wrote dialogues.

Must yeild to the tyrant, tell him something that will enable him to rule better.[Arrow] “There’s your answer to thew whole.”

Hypothesis

Start with the final result [Margin: Analytic procedure]

The excample itself isn’t even technically accurate, and Socrates knows it

A Hoax? Hoot?] on those who get so distracted.

The problem is meant to supply a pattern for the question of human excellence.

Margin: a triangle in a circle]

Teachable…inscribable in the soul, if

it is like something else in the soul.

True courage always involves knowledge.

A dog can stand his post and die, but a dog has no courage.

Courage for sense, else it’s rashness

Its all in whether you use it wisely, or knowingly.

[Notebook, p. 43] Top: arrow through a circle: Practical wisdom; Prudence

In man, all other things depend upon the soul.

Virtue is the exercise of [well?] judgement in whole or in part

All depends on practical wisdom

Then if this is so, good men cannot be good by nature.

[margin: suspect] Eliminates by nature

what’s left is learning

Therefore virtue is knowledge. A great victory? Then surprisingly he takes it away.

Virtue can be taught, but not to Meno.

Because more “political,” Anytus [appears?]; They talk o0f great men.

What does Meno have to have if he’s not going to do this other thing

If virtue is knowledge, it is teachable and taught.

If.

Athenian more admirable than Anytus modertate- earnwed his own money.

Anytus’ son was a drunkard. didn’t earn his own money

Could they impart their excellence to their children?

If we waqnted him to be a physican, we’d send him to those who

1. profess the art

2. 2)charge a fee

But virtue is somehow different- we don’t find one to teach the younger how to be admirable; truly humanh

Socrates, Apology, denied he is was

Anytus is angry-, “By Heracles, Socrates, forebear!

Eliminates the Sophists by Anytus (city)teacher

[When Meno said, about the universal definition of virtue, “I can’t help thinking that there is something different in thisw case of what is virtue

There seems t5o be something different about these arts and virtue

The good of other things and the human good.

Anytus knows this without experience

a diviner, mentus. like the poets.

There’s something about Anytus’ position that has to do withy the well being of the city.

[Notebook, p. 44]

The conditions that make any community possible are involved in Anytus’ remarks. Doesn’t want to cast doubt on the good men of the city, but wonders if they can also teach their art. Can the good men of the city also transmit or communicate their virtue.

[Margin: What does the Duke tell us about this.] How does one make the city better?

Virtue is knowledge, teachable; not born with it as natural talent.

If virtue is knowledge, nature is excluded (?)

Ostensible: as if virtue is this or that or that, or that.

[those] sons failed because they didn’t have the capacity? Or because they didn’t have the right teacher.

Not a teacher likwe teacher of the arts (technae)

But recollection: A different kind of teacher

arrow} something depends on the  nature of the learner in the Dialogue.

Then the dialogue abstracts from that

I could not become a basketball player. Capacity.

*Some have a… more capacity to rule?

Some will make the effort to get at the knowledge all have in equal amount.

Socrates is trying to get Meno to make that effort.

Turning point: Meno is not going to make that effort.

Good wombs have born bad sons. 

Something to it in both “nature” and “nurture.” Jerry: ” Why are we sirtting here learning this, if virtue cannot be taught?

What’s going to happen to the city?

Virtue-knowledge-recollection:    light

Vice- opinion- memory:     cave

 City depends on memory; stories; and that can bwe taught in the non recollection sense.

It seems Socrates is ignoring the nature of Anytus.

Can persuade Meno, can’t do anything with Anytus.

[Notebook, p. 45: Top: Shows Meno Anytus can’t teach him. Gorgias can’t teach him. Is Meno now to look…Either the gods or Socrates].

Anytus and Meno are friends. Meno is the student of a sophist; the child of Gorgias. End: you talk tio Anytus, make him better

Anytus

Transmission of virtue. Anytus knows not the meaning of deformation; and has too high an opinion of himself.

Socrates doesn’t question that they are admirabl;e, but the Question that virtue can be taught

[arrow] But rather teaches skill in speaking.

Theogonis the poet

[arrow] “…for from good you will learn what is good”

and mingle with the bad; lose the sense you have.

[arrow] If understanding could be created and put into a man.

[arrow] Never would a bad son have sprung from a good sire, for he would have heard the voice of instruction.

*Herb: Maybe virtue can be taught if someone wants to learn it.

Good wombs have born bad sons.

Miranda- wonderful. Her incomparable beauty is insearable from her education

Good cirtizens don’t agree

Socrates took Meno to Pythagoras- virtue ios knowledge- then to back to Gorgias; Don’t know

That we recognize goodness when we see it.

Opinion- Divination

[Notebook, p. 46]

It is not only through knowledge (practical wisdom) what makes good things good is the presence of practical wisdom.

All good was useful, (beneficial, good)

Good men are useful if they give us right guide in conduct

Orthodoxy, right opinion.

Omittance: That a man can’t nbe a good guide unless he had knowledge.

But right opinion is also a good guide in action

.

Road to Larissa. Just as good of a guide if he has right opinion than if he knows.

Meno defends knowledge. If someone…

The difficulty of someone with knowledge imparting right opinions, the greatest supports are necessary.

Some opinions are right, some wrong; All depends on the existence of knowledge; There can be no opiniopn without knowledge

Statues of Daedalus. Opinions fastened.

Virtue- knowledge- recollection

Vice opinion- memory.

Meno, who cannot seek knowledge, which is virtue, must have fastened right opinions.

The fastening of right opinions is recollection

Socrates, for the second time in the dialogue, Socrates professes to know; That knowledge differs from right opinion.

Effort—————————and that there is a difference.

Why make the effort? Because knowledge differs from opinion.

Modern praise of public opinion and denial that knowledge’s existence.

There has to be knowledge if there is to be true opinion.

Nature -Conv[ention]

Knowledge -opinion.

Recent German philosophy

Two kinds of virtues- civic- true opinion.

Philosophic- virtue is knowledge.

No great books can be read today in the curriculum because they are “elitist” and “sexist.”

Meno is left with public opinion and divine allotment

Ancients always

Meno defended knowledge, asked the difference.

That there is a difference between right opinion and knowledge.

Statues are images of famous people.

He knows that he has made the ascent from opinion to knowledge.

Two certainties: Effort makes us better. Holy logos. *Recollection.

Knowledge and opinion, lazy logos, teaching.

Nature: opinions don’t come to you spontaneously.

We are born with knowledge: Myth of recollection.

The possibility is never made thematic.

Meno’s original alternatives: By nature, practice, teaching.

Other: The slave boy’s education. Recollection, that we are born with all knowledge, by nature we can attain it, a teacher can show it, and a divine gift it is, to recollect.

Horsemanship. Teacher who could do those things himself- expect that in teacher of virtue. Statesman are good men.

If they are, you can teach the technae

He should be able to teach the political art.

[Notebook, p. 48 Top: If they had knowledge, then they could teach]

Then is…then do the statesmen posses virtue? It would seem not

But must virtue be taught by good men?

God can teach virtue because good.

If they can’t teach it, they don’t know.

Therefore not by knowledge. not by nature If not nature, noty taught, then maybe there arn’tt any good men.

A divine gift.

Good opinion.

diviners in religion. Soothsayers, diviners, poets like me.

Why there is a myth in the dialogue at all.

Good statesman.

Slave boy was the only one Socrates taught.

Meno only has opinions.

Anytus, he couldn’t do anything with us.

Herb: Can the one’s with T. O

?

How can one recognize a good statesman?

One who has to, from F.O? By knowledge does he know

Salutary for those who can’t have knowledge to

To think R.O. is as good as Kn, something they can have.

Speak many great things, but don’t know what they say

Socrates said Has never found one who knows, who would be a reality among flitting shadows

Anytus seems like a ghost, almost.

Meno’s not even there.

[Notebook, p. 49]

Gorg[ias] soph[ist] never taught virtue

Men[o] Pup[il]

Men. Part. Protag[oras] V[irtue] is teachable. Meno has heard tyhat Socrates also believes that virtue can be taught

Socrates doesn’t confirm Protagoras

Cannot be taught, one must dedicate onself for the sake

[Drawing of a circle divided into three. Recoll.[ection] Kn. of the whole in us.

Nature is necess[ary]

No guarantee any one will do it

*Virtue is at least inseparable from knowledge. Socrates knows the quest helps.

How can Meno be induced, he can’t be exhorted, must be convinced

No sense of the beautiful.

What is one to do with such a fellow?

We [conclude?] without asking what is- slave boy

But Meno cannot learn.

Virtue can be taught Soc can teach it, but not to Meno, to one who

[Notebook, p. 50]

has the right nature.

Can we live a pious life without learning?

Right opinion as good as knowledge?

Not equal, but Socrates leads Meno back to lazy logos

Which is virtue comes not by nature or by teaching.

No reason to make effort any more

Divine dispensation.

What can thye average person do.

Imitate or obey the virtuous man

Listen to a Socrates, second best.

Has to be made visible by and large for many people.

Good laws

What is right must be embodied in laws

Esteem for the legislator, the founder.

Diluted wisdom

depend on what peoples these laws are for.

A regime is what it is by the opinion or way that it lives.

Accords as much as possible with wisdom

To be made the convention of the city.

City lives by memory of origins, of heroes

Therefore philosophy is so dangerous.

[Notebook, p. 51]

Why does discovery of philosophy make the relations of philosophy and the city problematic? How does the Apology as a dialogue show that problem, not just ostensibly, but hidden (Socrate’s service to the god)

Character of Platonic dialogues

Because of tension between philosophy and city.

Plato: purpose in mind. Does he succeed.

Problem between philosophy and the city in the Meno.

Virtue Knowledge piety is in all dialogues

Trial for impiety.

Virtue- knowledge- recollection- philosophy- dialogues

[a line divides these in proportions]

Vice- opinion- memory- city

Virtue can be taught, and Socrates can teach it, but not to Meno

[Margin: How does this square with

God teaches virtue? Socrates mediates

*teach, in this sense, is to mediate.

[End of the notes from the 1982 class on Plato]