typically take the form of dialogues, and nearly all of them feature his teacher Socrates (469–399 BCE).

PLATO (429–347 BCE)

Plato is one of the most important figures in Western philosophy. He founded the Academy in Athens, which

was a major center of learning in classical Greece, where he taught Aristotle (384–322 BCE). Plato’s works

typically take the form of dialogues, and nearly all of them feature his teacher Socrates (469–399 BCE).

MENO

SOCRATES: So can you name any other thing where the people who claim to teach it, so far from being

acknowledged as capable of teaching anyone else, aren’t even recognized as knowing anything about it

themselves—they’re actually thought to be especially bad at the very thing they claim to teach!—

meanwhile, the people who are acknowledged as decent men themselves can’t make up their minds about

whether or not it can be taught? And if they’re so confused about it, do you think they could possibly be

teaching it properly?

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MENO: Absolutely not.

S: So if sophists can’t teach it, and people who are decent men themselves can’t teach it, clearly nobody else

could be teaching it?

2

M: No. I don’t think so.

S: And if nobody’s teaching it, then nobody’s learning it, either?

M: at’s right.

S: And we already agreed that if there’s something that nobody teaches, and nobody learns, then it’s something

that can’t be taught?

M: Yes, we did.

S: And there’s no trace, anywhere, of anyone teaching people how to be good?

M: Right.

S: And if there’s no one teaching it, there’s no one learning it?

M: Apparently not.

S: So it looks like being good is something that can’t be taught?

M: It looks that way—if we’ve thought it through correctly; which makes me wonder, Socrates, if maybe there

aren’t even any good men at all! Or, how on earth do people become good, if and when they do?

S: Chances are, Meno, you and I are a couple of rather ordinary men. I’m afraid our teachers—Gorgias in your

case, and in my case, Prodicus —haven’t educated us well enough. So we’ve de�nitely got to take a good

look at ourselves and �nd out who’s going to make us better, somehow or other. And I’m saying that with

3

this search of ours in mind: what idiots we’ve been! How silly of us not to realize that it isn’t always

knowledge that’s guiding people when they do things well and succeed in their affairs. at’s probably why

the answer keeps getting away from us—I mean, the discovery of how exactly good men become good.

M: How do you mean, Socrates?

S: Here’s what I mean. We were right to agree that men who are good also always do good—weren’t we? at’s

got to be right?

M: Yes.

S: And we were also right to agree that good men will do us good if they guide us in our affairs and “show us

the way”?

M: Yes.

S: But the claim that you can only show people the way if you have wisdom—it looks like we were wrong to

agree on that.

M: What makes you say that?

S: Well, I’ll tell you. Look—suppose someone knew the way to Larissa (or wherever) and was on his way there,

and showing other people how to get there; obviously he’d be good at showing them the right way?

4

M: Of course.

S: And what about someone who had an opinion on how to get there—a correct opinion—but who’d never

actually been there, and didn’t know how to get there; wouldn’t he be able to show them the way as well?

M: Of course.

S: And presumably as long as he has his correct opinion (about the same thing the other man has knowledge

of ), he’ll be every bit as good at showing people the way? With his true belief, but without knowledge, he’ll

be just as good a guide as the man with the knowledge?

M: Yes, he’ll be just as good.

S: In other words, true opinion is just as good a guide to right action as knowledge. ere’s the key fact that we

kept leaving out, just now, when we were looking into the nature of being good. We said that wisdom was

the only thing that can show us how to do things the right way. But that’s not so. ere’s also true opinion.

M: Yes, it certainly looks like it.

S: So in other words, a correct opinion does just as much good as knowledge?

M: Except in one respect, Socrates. If you have knowledge, then you’ll always be dead on target; but if you only

have a correct opinion, sometimes you’ll hit, and sometimes you’ll miss.

S: What makes you say that? If you’ve always got the correct opinion, won’t you always be “on target” as long as

you’ve got your correct opinion?

M: Yes, good point . . . it seems that must be right; which leaves me wondering, Socrates: If that’s the case, why

on earth is knowledge so much more valuable than correct opinion, and why are they treated as two

different things?

S: Well, you know why it is you’re wondering about it? Shall I tell you?

M: Go ahead.

S: It’s because you haven’t pondered Daedalus’s statues. Maybe you haven’t even got any up there in essaly.5 6

M: What have they got to do with it?

S: Well, they’re the same: if they aren’t shackled, they escape—they scamper away. But if they’re shackled, they

stay put.

M: What are you getting at?

S: If you own an original Daedalus, unshackled, it’s not worth all that much—like a slave who keeps running

away—because it doesn’t stay put. But if you’ve got one that’s shackled, it’s very valuable. Because they’re

really lovely pieces of work. What am I getting at? My point is, it’s the same with true opinions. True

opinions, as long as they stay put, are a �ne thing and do us a whole lot of good. Only, they tend not to stay

put for very long. ey’re always scampering away from a person’s soul. So they’re not very valuable until

you shackle them by �guring out what makes them true. (And that, my dear Meno, is a matter of

remembering, as we agreed earlier.) And then, once they’re shackled, they turn into knowledge, and

become stable and �xed. So that’s why knowledge is a more valuable thing than correct opinion, and that’s

how knowledge differs from a correct opinion: by a shackle.

M: You know, I bet that’s pretty much right, Socrates.

S: Of course, I’m speaking as someone who doesn’t have knowledge myself. I’m just guessing. But I certainly

don’t think it’s only a guess that correct opinion and knowledge are two very different things. If there’s

anything at all I’d claim to know—and I wouldn’t claim to know a lot—I’d certainly count that as one of the

things I know for sure.

M: And you’re quite right to, Socrates.

S: So tell me: Am I also right in saying that if true opinion is guiding you, it’s just as good as knowledge at

achieving the goal of any sort of action?

M: Yes, I think that’s right as well.

S: So correct opinion is just as good a thing as knowledge and does us just as much good in our actions; and a

man with correct opinions will do as much good as a man with knowledge?

M: Right.

S: And we agreed that that was a characteristic of a good man—doing good?

M: Yes.

S: So it isn’t just knowledge that makes men good, and able to do their cities good, if and when they do; it’s also

correct opinion. In which case, given that neither one of those things—knowledge or true opinion—arises

in people just by nature . . . or am I wrong about that? Do you think either of them comes to us naturally?

M: No.

S: So if neither of them comes naturally, it can’t be people’s nature that makes them good men?

M: No, it can’t be.

S: And since our nature doesn’t make us good . . . the next thing we asked was whether being good is

something teachable?

M: Yes.

S: Right, and didn’t we decide that being good is teachable if it’s a kind of wisdom?

M: Yes.

S: And conversely, that it would have to be a kind of wisdom, if it’s teachable?

M: Exactly.

S: And that if there are people teaching it, then it’s teachable; but if there aren’t any people teaching it, then it

isn’t teachable?

M: at’s right.

S: And we’ve decided that there aren’t any people teaching it?

M: We did.

S: So that means we’ve decided that it isn’t teachable, and that it isn’t a kind of wisdom?

M: Exactly.

S: But we’re certainly agreeing that it’s a good thing?

M: Yes.

S: And that what’s good—what does us good—is the element that guides us and shows us the right way?

M: Absolutely.

S: And that there are only two things that can show us the right way: true opinion and knowledge. At least,

that’s what a person has to have, to show the way. I don’t count things that come out right just by some

stroke of luck. at’s not a case of anything happening through human guidance. In any area where people

show the way, those are the only possible guides: true opinion and knowledge.

M: I think that’s right.

S: And since being good is something that can’t be taught, it’s no longer an option that it’s knowledge?

M: Apparently not.

S: So of the only two things that are good, and that enable us to do good, that rules out knowledge: it seems it

isn’t knowledge that guides people in the civic and ethical sphere.

M: I agree.

S: So in other words it wasn’t through having knowledge, or by being experts, that men like that were able to

guide their cities—men like emistocles and the ones Anytus was talking about. Of course! at’s why

they couldn’t turn other people into the sort of men they were themselves—because it wasn’t knowledge

that made them the way they were.

7 8

M: at seems very plausible, Socrates.

S: So if it wasn’t knowledge that made them the way they were, the only remaining possibility is that it was a

sort of knack for having the right opinions. at’s what statesmen must use to set their cities on the right

path; and that means they’re just like fortune-tellers and soothsayers, in terms of how close they are to

having knowledge. Soothsayers are the same: when they’re “inspired” they say plenty of things that are true;

but they don’t really know what they’re saying.

M: Yes, that’s probably right.

S: And isn’t it right to call people “inspired” when they achieve lots of great things by what they say and do,

without any understanding?

M: Absolutely.

S: So it makes sense to call those people inspired: the fortune-tellers and soothsayers; and poets and

playwrights, too; and we’d be especially right to call statesmen inspired, and to say they’re in a kind of

trance, possessed by some divine spirit, when they achieve so many great successes by saying the things

they say, even though they don’t really know what they’re talking about.

M: Absolutely.

S: And remember that women, Meno, call good men “inspired”; and in Sparta, too, the highest praise for a

good man is when they say, “at man’s inzpired.”

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10

M: And apparently they’re right, Socrates. Mind you, Anytus here will probably get annoyed with you for

saying so.

S: I don’t care about that. We’ll talk with him again some other time, Meno. As for us, here and now—if we’ve

done a good job of our search for the truth, and if what we’ve said at each stage of our talk was right, then it

turns out that being good is not something that comes to us naturally, or something that can be taught;

instead, it seems it arises by gi of god, and without understanding, in the people who have it . . . unless,

that is, there were a man, among good statesmen, who could also turn someone else into the sort of man he

is himself. If there were such a man, they’d probably speak of him as being up here among the living just

what Homer says Tiresias was among the dead. He says,

He alone has sense in the world below;11

the rest are flitting shadows.

A man like that would be the same thing here: something real, among mere shadows of what
it is to be good.

M: I think that’s quite right, and very nicely put, Socrates.

S: So by our line of reasoning, Meno, it appears that being good is a quality that comes to people, when it does,

by gi of god. Of course, we really won’t know for sure until we set aside the question of exactly how it

comes to people and �rst try to �nd out what being good is, in itself.

But now it’s time for me to go. And as for you, try to convince your host Anytus here about
the things you’ve been convinced about yourself—try to calm him down. If you can do that, you
may well be doing Athens a favour.12