Meno Paradox

“Closing the Gap” has been an American educational imperative through the last few presidential administrations. George W. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” and Barack Obama’s “Race to the Top” share a concern for the lagging academic achievement (as measured by standardized testing) of minorities and the economically disadvantaged. What ancient Greece suggests, though, at least that part of its world and epoch represented by Meno is that such concerns are not only unnecessary, but futile. In Meno’s world, there are Know-It-Alls and Know-Nothings. There are no In-Betweens. When Meno challenges Socrates: “Is virtue teachable?” Socrates, volleys back, “What is virtue?” Meno then posits that it is impossible for Socrates to discover what virtue is
If Meno were a Know-It-All on the subject of virtue, according to Meno’s paradox, Socrates’ questions should not have impacted him at all, and yet he seems impacted. The possibility that Meno superficially, not totally, understands the concept of virtue, is not a possibility for which Meno’s paradox allows. Socrates’ questions, then, move Meno from confident knowledge to a recognition of his own limitations, a movement which should not have been possible were Meno’s paradox valid. Additionally, Meno’s continued participation in the dialogue suggests an intellectual surrender of his paradox since his participation implies an investment in adding to his own
Meno has progressed because he has come to some new level of understanding just by admitting he doesn’t know the answers to virtue and being willing to seek out those answers by asking them of someone who does know the answers, Socrates. Socrates doesn’t see this as enough. He considers Meno to be like the slave boy, someone who has opinions that are a compilation of other peoples’ ideas, Gorgias and Socrates, but have yet to be anything of value because these ideas aren’t his own. It is not enough to just want to know the answers if Meno isn’t willing to investigate on his own. Just as the slave boy would become an expert at geometry “if he were repeatedly asked these same questions in various ways” because he will have practiced many different variations of the same concept and will gain true understanding, Meno will only come to claim true understanding by taking the ideas of Gorgias and Socrates and making them his own by practicing his own