Learning and inquiry › Returning to Whether Virtue Can Be Taught

After the geometry lesson, Meno again wants an answer about teaching virtue. Socrates agrees to proceed by hypothesis before securing a definition. The central conditional is that if virtue is knowledge, it is teachable. The inquiry must therefore examine whether virtue is knowledge, rather than quietly assume it (86c–87c).

The argument initially supports the identification. Virtue is treated as good and beneficial. Other possessions, such as wealth, can help or harm depending on their use. Even confidence can lead someone into danger when it lacks good judgment. Socrates reasons that wisdom supplies the guidance that makes such things beneficial, and virtue accordingly appears to be wholly or partly wisdom (87c–89a).

Then he tests the conclusion against apparent teachers and learners. If virtue is teachable, where are its teachers? In the conversation with Anytus, Socrates challenges the suggestion that respectable citizens reliably pass virtue on. The discussion of celebrated statesmen and their sons is part of that challenge (89e–95a). This is a limited argument from the cases the speakers consider. Failure to identify teachers in a conversation would not, by itself, establish that no teaching is possible.

The later distinction between knowledge and true opinion changes the argument. Socrates imagines two guides to Larisa: one knows the route, while the other has a correct opinion about it. So long as that opinion remains correct, it guides equally well. The good result therefore does not establish that its producer knows. The earlier assumption that only knowledge can guide beneficial action has been too restrictive (96d–97c).

Why prefer knowledge? Socrates compares true opinions to the moving statues attributed to Daedalus. They are useful while they remain, but can escape unless bound. An account of the reason why secures true opinions, making them stable knowledge; Socrates connects this binding with recollection (97d–98b). The image concerns the stability and explanatory grounding of a true opinion. It does not mean that a true opinion is partly false, or that its holder is incapable of doing the right thing.

The conclusion about virtue remains conditional on the discussion. Statesmen may act through true opinion without the understanding that would enable them to produce others like themselves. Socrates compares their success with inspired speakers and describes virtue as coming by divine allotment, unless there is someone capable of educating others in it. He ends by insisting that they must determine what virtue is before they can know securely how it is acquired (99b–100c). The dialogue closes with that original task still unfinished.