In fact, our dialogue as a whole shows that Meno will not acquire the wisdom that is virtue until after he already practices some measure of virtue: at least the kind of humility, courage, and industriousness that are necessary for genuine learning.We cannot be precise or certain about much in Plato’s writing career. Retrived from https://gradesfixer.com/free-essay-examples/analyzing-the-theory-of-recollection-as-depicted-in-meno-and-phaedo-and-using-socrates-character/GradesFixer.
It seems that Meno is used to thinking of learning as just hearing and remembering what others say, and he objects to continuing the inquiry into the nature of virtue with Socrates precisely because neither of them already knows what it is (80d). If you fit this description, you can use our free essay samples to generate ideas, get inspired and figure out a title or outline for your paper. In the Phaedo, Socrates argues for the recollection theory of learning by presenting the case of seeing an object that belongs to a loved one. 113) Modern translations But he agrees, reluctantly, to examine whether virtue is something that is taught by way of “hypotheses” about what sorts of things are taught, and about what sorts of things are good. Meno is always questioning Socrates and his questions then leads to further discussion that proof recollection. The The failed attempt to define virtue as a whole in the The notion of learning as recollection is revisited most conspicuously in Plato’s Next, I will consider why Socrates thinks that the recollection theory of learning supports the claim that the soul of a person is immortal. Analyzing The Theory Of Recollection As Depicted In Meno And Phaedo And Using Socrates Character.
Meno’s family had previously been such help to Athens against Sparta that his grandfather (also named Meno) was granted Athenian citizenship. But what interests most people about Socrates today comes from Plato’s philosophical portraits. This dialogue portrays aspects of Socratic ignorance and Socratic irony while it enacts his twofold mission of exposing common arrogant pretensions and pursuing a philosophical knowledge of virtue that no one ever seems to have.
The boy has never been formally educated about geometry, but through Socrates questioning, the boy is able to figure out a problem about the lengths of the sides of a square. Many Athenians thought that he was undermining traditional morality and piety, and thereby corrupting the young minds of a vulnerable community. Meno 's theme is also dealt with in the dialogue Protagoras, where Plato ultimately has Socrates arrive at the opposite conclusion: virtue can be taught. After the geometry lesson, Socrates briefly reinterprets the alleged “recollection” in a way that can be taken as the discovery of some kind of innate knowledge, or innate ideas or beliefs. Calling over one of Meno's slaves, Socrates sets about illustrating this idea. Socrates published nothing himself, but, probably soon after his death, the Socratic dialogue was born as a new genre of literature. According to Socrates, the fact that people are born with knowledge from birth means that the soul must have existed before they were born. This proves that we must have had the knowledge of forms before we were born; to Socrates, this indicates that the soul existed before we were born and carried the knowledge with it. To export a reference to this article please select a referencing style below:Sorry, copying is not allowed on our website. So it is important to notice that Socrates partly restates the “theory of recollection” after the geometry lesson. He was portrayed with different emphases by different authors, including Xenophon, Aeschines, Antisthenes, Phaedo, Euclides, and others.