Platos Meno Essay -- essays research papers

Plato MenoIn Platos intercourse Socrates discusses counsellings in which justice tail assembly be acquired withMeno. Three possibilities argon confronted, startle that virtue is innate within the humansoul. The second suggests that virtue can be taught, and the third possibility is that virtueis a gift from the gods. These ways ar debated by Socrates and Meno to a very broadconclusion.Socrates poses the question that virtue whitethorn be innate within the human soul. Thisis to say that all hatful would have virtue within them, but it is only those who find itthat can truly become virtuous. To prove the concept of innate understanding to Meno,Socrates, acquires the jockstrap of single of Menos knuckle down male childs to demonstrate. Socratesestablishes that the boy has never been taught mathematical geometry and startsbombarding him with a series of questions on the physical properties of a square. First heasks the boy to multiply the square by two, and he succeeds. Howev er, the boy fails whenasked to divide the same(p) square into two parts half the original size. By postulation the boy aseries of questions yet, never actually telling him the answers Socrates helps the slave torecollect the knowledge that is within him. Meno is of course astonished with this featthat Socrates maintains is evidently a matter of recollection.This example given by Socrates, though obviously persuasive to Meno issomewhat unstable. It can be shown that Socrates manipulated the boy into recollectingthe information by offering suggestive material within his questions. For example, if aperson did non know the sum of the equation two plus two one could ask if a person hadtwo apples and someone else gave them two more would the person then non have fourapples in chalk up? A question was asked yet the information on how to perform the outgrowth was directly given in the statement. Thus it can be level-headed that Socrates in asense did teach the boy how to divide the square. following(a) this demonstration Socrates poses a second idea that virtue may betaught. He begins by looking for teachers of virtue and comes up with four examples. The first is Themistocles who is agreed to be virtuous by the debaters and obviously a frank teacher of his virtue. However the debaters also agre... ...finite preference to any of the possibilitiesthat have been stated. promptly the question is would Socrates have maintained that ignorance is bliss basedon his views of the attainable ways of acquiring virtue? I would conclude that he wouldnot see ignorance as bliss because Socrates believes that the truth is far greater than theunknowing. end-to-end the dialogue Socrates and Meno journey to put aside theirignorance to come to the truth on how virtue is acquired and possibly more importantlywhat virtue is. eve though the path to truth has proved painful in that the two are moreperplexed on the topic at the end of the dialogue then at the beginning Socrates wou ldhave seen this as the first timber to achieving the truth. This of course is better than notachieving that step at all.Socrates is ultimately have-to doe with in finding the whole truth and would havedefiantly preferable knowing some of the truth rather than being ignorant to it. Eventhough Socrates knew that the journey to reach the truth may be painful, ignorance wouldbe far worse than a painful truth. Ultimately he knew that the way must be tried