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Plato's Meno, 86-89

1970; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 8; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/hph.2008.1700

1538-4586

Lynn E. Rose,

Philosophical Ethics and Theory

Plato's Meno,86-89 LYNN E. ROSE MIDWAy IN Tm~ Meno, after Socrates has justified enquiry, he wants to enquire into the nature of virtue; but Meno wants to bypass this problem and first find out how virtue is acquired. Socrates consents, and explains the method he proposes .to use. This paper examines that method and discusses some of the interpretations that have been offered of Socrates' argument. Since Socrates is trying to settle a question about something he does not yet know, be wants to proceed by hypothesis, 1 just as a geometer, when asked whether some area (with which he is unfamiliar) can be inscribed as a triangle in a given circle, answers that on the hypothesis that the area has a certain characteristic it can be so inscribed, and on the hypothesis that it does not have the characteristic it cannot be so inscribed. The geometer never really answers the question, because he has no idea which hypothesis is correct; such a question cannot be resolved until one knows which one/s correct--that is. until one knows whether the area has the crucial characteristic or not3 This is similar to what Socrates is doing, except that the geometer does not try to decide which of the hypotheses to accept, whereas Socrates is willing to admit a number of hypotheses about Virtue and hope that they will enable him to determine that virtue is taught or else that it is not taught. On the hypothesis that virtue is knowledge, it will be taught; on the hypothesis that it is not knowledge, it will not be taught. Socrates at first chooses the hypothesis that virtue is knowledge; he defends this hypothesis on the basis of others, and then goes on to conclude that virtue is taught. But neither he nor the geometer can be sure of the conclusion, since in each case the hypotheses are about something whose nature is not yet known. The tentative nature of Socrates' argument does not indicate any lack of confidence in the hypothetical method. It is just that one is on safer ground in using it to investigate the nature of something than in using it to investigate some question about a thing whose nature is as yet unknown, for in the latter case we can never I ~ b~o0~tor Meno, 86e3 and 86e4. The phrase ~ blroO~r162 is being used here in the same sense as at Republic, 510b5, where the procedure also is to deduce consequences from a hypothesis. (This procedure is to be carefully distinguished from what is meant at Republic, 510b7, where we are to proceed upward ~ ~Tro0~aso~r in the sense of deducing a challenged hypothesis from higher principles. See my "Plato's Unhypothetical Principle," Journal of the History of Philosophy, IV [1966], 189-198, esp. 191.) 9 Plato's point in using this geometrical example is clear enough, but the example itself is quite obscure. Many different interpretations of-it have been offered; most of these are discussed by R. S. Bluck, Plato's Meno (Cambridge, 1961), pp. 441-461. [1] 2 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY be certain of the truth of the hypotheses.~ That is, even if we grant a number of hypotheses about virtue, we can never be certain, so long as virtue remains unknown , that all of them are true. All this suggests that hypotheses need not always be tentative or provisional or merely probable, but that they may in some cases be known with certainty. Most of the hypotheses actually discussed in Plato's dialogues are, perhaps, merely tentative, but this does not mean that he thought that all hypotheses were tentative; it is better to say. as I have argued elsewhere,4 that the mark of a hypothesis is not that it is tentative (although it may be tentative), but that it is subject to account if it is denied by someone. The clear implication in the Meno is that the hypothetical method does not have to be tentative and that the argument between Socrates and Meno might have lost its highly tentative character if Socrates' preferred procedure had been followed: "We will know the truth about it when...