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......
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Approximate Word Count: 1224
Approximate Pages: 5 (260 words per double-spaced page) |