6 Socratic Tactics in the Meno — Can We Learn to Be Good?
6 Socratic Tactics in the Meno — Can We Learn to Be Good?
Download a WORD DOC of Workshop 3 HERE
Part I: General Instructions & Introductions (10 minutes)
For this workshop, you will be organized in a Zoom Breakout Room with a group of approximately four students. If you have any questions or concerns, please send a message via Zoom asking for help. I’ll join you as soon as possible.
Our schedule for today includes small group work, a seminar discussion, and two 10-minute breaks. Please note the start time of your small-group work and the time when we will reconvene.
Please begin today by checking in with one another and looking over the workshop. Appoint a timekeeper (you won’t need a scribe). Please do make notes of your responses to this workshop and watch the time: the last part of your small-group work will be important preparation for our reconvened discussion.
PART II: Some Key Moments in the Dialogue (45 minutes)
A. (15 minutes) Here is a reasonable account of Meno’s motivation at the very start of the dialogue. Meno is a stranger in town, a guest, and he is a great admirer, perhaps even a student, of the sophist, Gorgias. He seeks out the man he has heard is one of the most reputed sophists in Athens in order to see how he measures up to Gorgias. In order to make the comparison, he poses a typical “debater’s question” of the day, expecting Socrates to respond to it with a fancy speech: well crafted, persuasive, and eloquent. He will then be able to compare Socrates with Gorgias, and report the results home to his friends who have perhaps heard rumors of the Athenian, Socrates. The results will either enhance Gorgias’ reputation or Socrates’ reputation.
Read carefully the first few paragraphs of the Meno, (reproduced below), up to the place (71e) where Meno defines virtue.
MENO: Can you tell me, Socrates, can virtue be taught? Or is it not
teachable but the result of practice, or is it neither of these, but men possess it by nature or in some other way?
SOCRATES: Before now, Meno, Thessalians had a high reputation among the Greeks and were admired for their horsemanship and their wealth, but now, it seems to me, they are also admired for their wisdom, not least the fellow citizens of your friend Aristippus of Larissa. The responsibility for this reputation of yours lies with Gorgias, for when he came to your city he found that the leading Aleuadae, your lover Aristippus among them, loved him for his wisdom, and so did the other leading Thessalians.
In particular, he accustomed you to give a bold and grand answer to any question you may be asked, as experts are likely to do. Indeed, he himself was ready to answer any Greek who wished to question him, and every question was answered. But here in Athens, my dear Meno, the opposite is the case, as if there were a dearth of wisdom, and wisdom seems to have departed hence to go to you. If then you want to ask one of us that sort of question, everyone will laugh and say: “Good stranger, you must