Plato's Meno: A Review Of Plato

A Review of Plato’s Meno Plato presents in his dialogue, titled Meno, the distinction between genuine knowledge and true opinion. In the text, he refers to knowledge as the form and definition of something that is changeless, where as true opinion can be altered and is not restricted in the way knowledge is by having standards of a form. Plato includes the characters of Socrates and Meno, a pupil of Gorgias, to discuss the nature of virtue and knowledge. The dialogue is provoked by Meno posing the question: “How will you look for [virtue], Socrates, when you do not know at all what it is? How will you aim to search for something you do not know at all? If you should meet with it, how ill you know that this is the thing that you did not know?” (Meno 80d). Socrates begins his discussion with Meno by comparing himself to a torpedo fish, which has the ability to ‘numb’ other creatures. By using the method of elenchus, in which Socrates uses an opponents claim to contradict and confuse them. In this comparison, Socrates uses ‘to numb’ in terms of ‘to perplex’, and admits that just as the torpedo fish numbs itself upon impact, Socrates is also left perplexed thereafter. Socrates applies to the
Meno replies in agreement with Socrates that indeed the opinions expressed by the boy were entirely his own. Socrates then gives a third definition to affirm his proposition, by stating that the man whom himself believes that he does not know, surely knows, but has not yet had his true opinions stirred up. Meno agrees with the premise that therein the immortal soul of man exists true opinions, relevant both to the awakened and un-awakened knowledge. Socrates restates that one will find knowledge within oneself through recollection. To learn and to discover is a fallacy, for not learning but questioning brings about the recollection of the truth and knowledge known by one’s