Western Philosophy. Группа авторов
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we call learning is really recollection?
2 At the beginning of this excerpt, Meno poses a challenge against the possibility of enquiring into things – a challenge we now call Meno’s paradox. What is it, and can we solve the dilemma?
3 ‘He who does not know may still have true notions of that which he does not know?’ How can we, according to Socrates, have true notions of things without having knowledge?
Suggestions for Further Reading (Including Internet Resources)
1 Plato, Meno. A serviceable translation available in paperback is by W. K. C. Guthrie (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1956).
2 General introductions to Plato’s thought include J. C. Gosling, Plato (London: Routledge, 1973), and A. E. Taylor, Plato: The Man and His Work (5th edn, London: Methuen, 1948).
3 For a stimulating discussion of the interchange between Socrates and Meno, see T. Irwin, Plato’s Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), ch. 9.
4 There is an excellent account of Plato’s views on knowledge in J. Annas, An Introduction to Plato’s Republic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980).
5 The nature of knowledge is discussed in many other works of Plato, especially the Theaetetus. A good starting point is F. M. Cornford, Plato’s Theory of Knowledge (London: Routledge, 1960). See also I. M. Crombie, An Examination of Plato’s Doctrines, vol. II (London: Routledge, 1963); N. P. White, Plato on Knowledge and Reality (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1976); R. Kraut (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Plato (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), esp. chs 6, 9.
6 A comprehensive reference work covering many of the topics included in this part of the volume is J. Dancy and E. Sosa (eds.), A Companion to Epistemology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993, 2nd edn 2010).
7 For an in-depth guide with explanations of the different arguments in Plato’s Meno, see D. Scott, Plato’s Meno (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
8 In terms of online resources, you will find excellent summary entries in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy at https://www.iep.utm.edu/meno-2/ (by G. Rawson), and on Plato’s ethics https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-ethics/ (by D. Frede) in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
9 For a series of short podcasts on Plato’s dialogues including the Meno (Episode 21), see P. Adamson’s website The History of Philosophy without any gaps, in particular https://historyofphilosophy.net/Plato-life.
10 For a general site with links to original texts of Plato’s dialogues go to https://www.plato-dialogues.org/links.htm (maintained by B. Suzanne).
Notes
* Plato, Meno [Menon, c.380 BC], 79e–86c. Trans. B. Jowett, in The Dialogues of Plato (Oxford: Clarendon,1892), vol. II, pp. 39–47; diagrams added for this anthology.
1 1 The comparison is found in a later Platonic dialogue, the Theaetetus.
2 knowledge versus opinion: plato, Republic*
The distinction between knowledge and mere true belief (or opinion) has already emerged in the previous extract. Socrates there talked of ‘true opinions which can be aroused by questioning and turned into knowledge’. But what is the difference between the two? As Socrates points out later in the Meno, it does not seem to lie in degree of usefulness, for the person who has a correct belief about the way to get to Larissa is just as good a guide as one who has knowledge. But knowledge, he goes on to explain, confers a plus: ‘True opinions are fine and useful as long as they stay with us; but they do not stay, and they depart from the mind. So they are not of great value until you fasten them down by working out the reason why. This process, Meno my friend, is recollection, as we agreed earlier. Once they are fastened, they become knowledge and then they are more permanent. Hence knowledge is a finer and better thing than true opinion, since it is secured by a chain’ (Meno, 98a 1–5). What is suggested here is that one who has knowledge is able to back up his opinion by providing a justification, or an explanatory account. Only when opinion is secured by a rational account, only when one can explain why a given belief is correct, is that belief entitled to the accolade ‘knowledge’.
So far the Platonic account of knowledge seems straightforward enough. But elsewhere the distinction between knowledge and belief is explained in a way which seems to carry far more complex implications about the nature of reality. The most famous of these passages is in Plato’s best-known work, the Republic (c.380 BC), where he gives an account of the true philosophers, the lovers of knowledge and wisdom (who alone, Plato maintains, are fitted to rule the state). In the course of the argument, knowledge and opinion are said to be different powers or faculties, from which the (questionable) inference is drawn that they must have different objects. The ordinary everyday objects of opinion can be said to be what they are (beautiful, or large, or heavy or whatever) only in a qualified sense; Plato puts this by saying that such objects are somewhere in between what is and what is not. But true knowledge, being more stable and permanent, must relate to what really is – to objects that count as beautiful or large or heavy in an utterly unqualified and unrestricted way. Thus Plato introduces what have come to be known as the Forms – eternal, unchanging, absolute realities, which are the true objects of knowledge. These absolute realities cannot be grasped via the senses, but are objects of pure understanding: the contrast throughout the following passage is between particular visible manifestations or examples of beauty (or justice or whatever), and the abstract notion of ‘the Beautiful itself’ which belongs to a higher order of reality and which is apprehended by the intellect alone. As Plato puts it, ‘those who are able to see the many beautiful [objects], and who yet neither see absolute beauty … who see the many just [objects] and not absolute justice … may be said to have opinion but not knowledge’. As with all of the Republic, the argument is presented as a dialogue between Socrates and a sparring partner (in this case, Glaucon). Socrates, talking in the first person, speaks first.
I think we must explain whom we mean when we say that philosophers are to rule the State … Some natures ought to study philosophy and to be leaders in the State, and others who are not born to be philosophers are meant to be followers rather than leaders.
Then now for a definition, he said.
Follow me, I said, and I hope that I may in some way or other be able to give you a satisfactory explanation.
Proceed.
I dare say that you remember, and therefore I need not remind you, that a lover, if he is worthy of the name, ought to show his love not to some one part of that which he loves, but to the whole.
I really do not understand, and therefore beg of you to assist my memory.
Another person, I said, might fairly reply as you do; but a man of pleasure like yourself ought to know that all who are in the flower of youth do somehow or other raise a pang or emotion in a lover’s breast, and are thought by him to be worthy of his affectionate regards. Is not this a way which you have with the fair: one has a snub nose, and you praise his charming face; the hook-nose of another has, you say, a royal look; while he who is neither snub nor hooked has the grace of regularity: the dark visage is manly, the fair are children of the gods; and as to the sweet ‘honey pale’, as they are called, what is the very name but the invention of a lover who talks in diminutives, and is not averse to paleness if appearing on the cheek of youth? In a word, there is no excuse which you will not make, and nothing which you will not say, in order not to lose a single flower that blooms in the spring-time of youth.
If