15 The Meno

Because it is so splendid a mingling of drama and philosophy, the Meno has attracted a great deal of commentary in the last twenty years. Jacob Klein’s commentary, in particular, is throughout a source of splendid insights into the dialogue’s meaning. It details every particular, every exchange, every metaphor. It identifies the equivocations and obscurities in the argument and shows keen awareness that such are intentional. Since Klein has elucidated many of the dramatic points, there is no need here to examine the dialogue with microscopic detail.^[1] Instead, as is the method of this book, I shall try to look at the Meno as a dramatic whole.

First, the dialogue is not at its core about the question of whether virtue can be taught. To be sure, Meno initiates a conversation with Socrates on this subject, but the topic is simply the means by which Plato intends to make other points. Rather, the Meno as a play is about an exciting encounter between Socrates and a young man who has prepared an ambush for him. If we had to give the Meno a subtitle, it would be “How Socrates Slips Out of Outlaw’s Hands.” The dialogue as a whole is a sort of satyr play, resplendent with comic surprises from beginning to end.

As has been observed in the analysis of other Platonic dialogues, the cast of characters is frequently a clue to Plato’s intent. Where the characters are notorious for one reason or another, Plato is telling us that we are not to take the arguments solely on a literal level. This is true for the Meno. As many others have pointed out, Meno is a scandalous fellow, a Thessalian Alcibiades, who goes to Asia in the revolt against Artaxerxes, engages in treachery, and there meets an ignominious death.^[2] The other principal interlocutor with whom Soc­rates speaks is Anytus, one of Socrates’ accusers whose son was well known as a drunkard. Anytus himself is variously reported to have died infamously, perhaps even by a hanging suicide. (In addition to Meno and Anytus, there is an unnamed slave, but he is merely a prop, and apart from the fact that he is uneducated, his personality seems to have no importance.) Inasmuch as Plato’s audience must be quite familiar with the details of these reprobate individuals, their presence colors the reading of the dialogue. Having such scoundrels discuss virtue is just like having Critias praise the glories of Athens in the Timaeus. Eyebrows are raised.

The audience’s first surprise comes immediately with the dialogue’s opening. The dialogue begins, without an introductory setting of scene, as Meno asks Socrates a complicated question about virtue, whether virtue can be taught or comes by practice or is acquired by natural aptitude or by something else (70A). The question, sprung suddenly on Socrates as though Meno were a highwayman leaping on a traveler, shows in its sophisticated formulation that Meno has been lying in wait. As we learn later, he’s spoken on virtue hundreds of times, and in front of large audiences, so he thinks he knows the answers. His questioning Socrates is obviously not for the sake of learning but of seeing how Socrates will answer so that Meno can win glory in refutation. Of course, Meno never tells his motive to Socrates, but the very form of the question, especially in the light of Meno’s experience with the subject, shows us that he has had philosophical training and as a result thinks pretty highly of himself and of his ability to deal with the topic.

Socrates’ response to the question is surprising, and it must disap­point Meno immensely. Socrates mentions Meno’s home, Larissa, in Thessaly. Thessaly, it seems, once famous for wealth and horseman­ ship, is now famous for philosophy as well. And it is Gorgias who has made it so. Athens, continues Socrates, is experiencing a dearth of wisdom, and Socrates himself, far from being able to answer the question of whether virtue can be taught, has no idea even of what virtue is. His total ignorance of the matter keeps him from being able to discuss the side issue of how it is acquired.^[3]

Now the question of whether virtue can be taught was one of the most fashionable topics in Socrates’ day, so Socrates’ claim of complete ignorance of virtue is a wildly provocative statement, and Meno duly expresses his shock. Can it be true, Socrates? Are we to carry home this report about you? Socrates has not finished startling Meno, for he adds also that he has never met anyone who knows about virtue! It is clear that Meno has studied with Gorgias and has studied just this topic. Socrates’ earlier statement indicated that he knew of Gorgias’s visit to Thessaly. His remarks here about no one’s knowing about virtue is surely an insult to Gorgias and any other teachers Meno may have had. However many drachmas Meno spent on his course with Gorgias, it is clear that Gorgias has not prepared him for the quick­ wittedness he will need to argue with Socrates. Obviously Meno has never met anyone who made so total a claim of ignorance (indeed, savants generally went about making Pico-like statements about knowing everything), and he is unprepared to respond. When a moment later Meno does admit to knowing Gorgias’s position on the question, we see how Socrates turns Meno’s traps back on him. If Meno says that he doesn’t know what virtue is, he will be admitting that Gorgias did not know it or at least did not succeed in teaching it; if Gorgias did know but Meno can’t explain it, then Meno failed as a student; if Meno really does know and is asking Socrates anyway, he is exposed as a mere disputant; if he does not know what virtue is and asks Socrates sincerely, he admits that Socrates is a better teacher than Gorgias.

It is clear that Meno has studied with Gorgias and has learned Gorgias’s arguments well. At the beginning of the dialogue, then, this theme is evident: set, pat, memorized arguments do not constitute real wisdom. They are no match for the nimbleness of a dialectician like Socrates and they are no preparation for the rigors of public life. Meno, despite his reputation for cleverness, will fail militarily because he was not agile enough to meet the demands of the moment. It is fine to learn set battle plans or set arguments, but they will not win battles or arguments. In the Meno, Plato once again exposes the inadequacy of sophistic education. Over and over throughout the dialogue, he jokes on memory, with the obvious point that rote memory is an insufficient instrument.

Socrates admits that he did meet Gorgias when the famous sophist visited Athens but cannot remember what he said. Would Meno be so kind as to remind him of Gorgias’s position on virtue; after all, Socrates is a forgetful person.

Meno explains that the virtue of a man is different from that of a woman or a child, that each type of person has a special excellence (71E).^[4] When Socrates seeks the underlying unity of all virtue, he gets Meno to agree that all virtuous actions are just and temperate. Then, when Socrates asks what same virtue all these good qualities have in common, Meno gives a most startling answer. It is startling because it so completely arises out of the blue, because it so little follows on the preceding conversation. Indeed, the answer shows no recollection whatsoever of their discussion up to this point. Meno’s answer is that virtue is the capacity to govern men (73C-D). This is what all virtue shares in common! In view of his remarks not two minutes earlier on how men, women, children, and slaves all have virtue, that he can now say the underlying virtue in all of them is the capacity to govern men shows how little Meno has actually reflected on the subject. The answer shows that indeed he might have learned what Gorgias taught, but it shows how little that teaching was worth.

An instant later, Meno fails to distinguish between virtue in general and a virtue in particular (73E), and again Meno struggles with and is thrust into perplexity on the question of underlying unity. When by way of illustration Socrates explains that roundness and straightness are particular shapes but do not tell us what shape in general is, Meno demands that Socrates explain the underlying unity of shape (75A). Socrates agrees to do so on the condition that Meno will do so for virtue afterwards. Socrates now gives an outrageous definition, that shape is what accompanies color, and Meno is duly outraged. He calls the definition naive and objects that the definition is inadequate be­ cause in order to understand it one must understand the meaning of color.^[5] His complaint is that Socrates has substituted one unknown term for another.

Now Meno is quite right that the definition of shape is inadequate, but not for the reason that he gives. And this is part of the jest. Meno has clearly learned a certain set of refutations: he has learned that all definitions depend on knowledge of other words and that he can object to any definition by claiming that it leaves other words mysterious; thus he can claim that any given definition is circular. If we say, for example, that the definition of man is “rational biped” we can, like Meno, complain that the definition is naive because it demands an understanding of the terms “rational” and “biped.” Meno has mastered this technique of refuting definitions. But he has not learned to think. Socrates’ definition of shape is ridiculous for other reasons, for giving an accidental not essential property of shape. The statement would be true as well of matter or of any physical thing: matter is what accompanies color. Socrates’ definition has failed because it has not put “shape” into a genus or named its differentia. But this sort of refutation must not have been in the “refutation kit” Meno purchased from Gorgias.

Socrates’ second definition of “shape” as the limits of a solid satisfies Meno, but Meno then demands a definition of color. Socrates reminds Meno that he is not abiding by their agreement, but, says Socrates, he is overcome by the young man’s good looks and so will define color. He jokingly asks whether he wants the sort of answer Gorgias would give, and of course Meno says he would. So Socrates brings up Empedocles’ theories of effluences and gives a jargon-filled scientific answer that pleases Meno very much: “color is an effluence from shapes commensurate with sight and perceptible by it” (76D). Socrates himself mocks the definition for its high-sounding qualities. Meno is being teased mercilessly for his affection for sophistical teaching.^[6] And the definition is, in a sense, ridiculous: would anyone have a sense of what “color” is from this concatenation of words? It reminds one of Dr. Johnson’s famous definition of network: “anything reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections.”

Socrates again asks for the underlying unity of virtue. As he asks, he repeats a joke about not making many out of one, breaking a plate, as the jesters say. Meno tries again, drawing from his memory some­ thing he has heard. He quotes a poet: “virtue is to rejoice in the fine and to have the power” to acquire it (77B). After a bit of argument it is agreed that since all rejoice in good things, virtue must consist in the power of acquiring the good things (78B). But the acquisition must be just and sometimes the failure to acquire a good, gold, for example, where it would have to be acquired unjustly, is itself virtuous (78E). Socrates points out that Meno is now defining virtue as just acquisition whereas before he had defined justice as a part, not the whole of virtue. Virtue as a whole has not been explained, says Socrates, if a part of virtue is equal to the whole of virtue (79C).

Meno is now in aporia, perplexity. He says that he is familiar with Socrates’ reputation for driving people into perplexity and that he has been stung by Socrates as by a stingray. He is all the more dumb­founded, he says, because he has lectured on virtue hundreds of times (80B). Here we find out for sure that Meno’s motives were not to learn from but to trap Socrates and to distinguish himself before the crowd that is present. Having heard of Socrates’ reputation, he wanted to test his own skill against him. He is just like the stereotyped youngster one sees in a traditional Western movie, who hears that a famous gun­ slinger is in town and wants to try his luck. A quick kill, the youngster thinks, will give him an instant reputation all over the west. But, alas, like Meno, the stereotypical western bravo does not believe in the reputation of his adversary and is easily outshot.

Meno concludes his remarks on Socrates’ paralyzing power with a suggestion to remain in Athens, since he would be arrested elsewhere as a wizard. In view of our knowledge of Socrates’ future, we acknowl­edge the somber truth in Meno’s words. Outargued by Socrates, Meno feels deeply the pain of the encounter. Though he challenged Socrates to the duel, his perplexity shows how seriously he takes winning and how great the danger is for Socrates in challenging those who think they are wise.

Socrates responds to Meno’ s comparison with the claim that the game of comparison-making is one that handsome youths like to engage in. Socrates will not play the game, he says (80C), for he is a stingray that paralyzes himself no less than others. Still, says Socrates, he is willing to carry on the investigation.

This offer leads Meno to his next snare. He asks Socrates how they can possibly look for what is not known; how could they possibly recognize the knowledge when they had found it? To Meno’s dismay, Socrates is familiar with this argument, which he refers to as “tricky” (80E) and reviews more clearly than Meno had done. Socrates is no inexperienced debater. Meno, thinking it to be a wonderful argument, asks Socrates whether he does not admire it too. He is like Croesus asking Solon who is the happiest of men, expecting the answer to be himself. But like Croesus, he does not receive the expected reply. Socrates simply says, “No” (8lA).^[7]

Socrates does not argue like anyone Meno has ever encountered. Instead of discussing the epistemology of the question, Socrates quotes Pindar at length, a passage on the immortality of the soul. Since the soul is immortal, it knows everything and what we call learning is really recollection (8lA-D).^[8] Meno excitedly asks Socrates to teach him this doctrine of recollection, only to be criticized for his tricky use of language in the request, for he asked to be taught when learning is really recollection. Meno apologizes for his habitual way of speaking (82A).

Here begins a farcical episode in which Socrates pretends to lead one of Meno’s slaves to recollect the geometrical method for doubling a square.^[9] The scene is one of the most memorable in Plato. Apparently Meno is accompanied by a large number ofretainers (82A-B). Socrates is glad to prove the doctrine by talking to any one of them Meno pleases. Meno chooses a slave boy to answer Socrates’ questions. What is extraordinary in the episode is the way that Socrates asks leading questions of the slave boy and elicits some right, some wrong answers. Socrates draws diagrams to make the problem easier to understand; in short, Socrates does a lot more than cause the boy to recollect. We see the boy make the kind of intuitive errors that most geometry students make: he thinks that by doubling each side of the square he will be doubling its area (82E). When, about halfway through (84A), the boy is totally unable to proceed and is in a state of perplexity, Socrates turns to Meno and declares how much better off the boy is, for now he knows that he does not know how to double the square (as if the boy had ever thought about the question and presumed such knowledge!). Of course, this Socratic lesson in humility has nothing to do with recollection, but perhaps Socrates means it as a beneficial by-product. The true object of the lesson in humility is not the slave but Meno; in pointing out the advantages of knowing one’s ignorance, Socrates repeats the language of the stingray that Meno had used earlier (84B). The moral lesson of the numbing process’s advantages is more useful than the teaching about recollection.

Socrates returns to the geometry lesson, by the end of which the boy has learned (or recollected) how to double a square. Of course, Socrates has asked lots of questions, and while he never stated anything positively, he put leading propositions in the interrogative form. When Socrates asks Meno whether this doctrine of recollection is true (85C) Meno answers affirmatively, but without a lot of conviction. “It would appear so” and “probably” constitute his replies.

The digression on recollection has enabled Socrates to slip out of Meno’s snares once again. Have we been convinced that the doctrine should be taken seriously? I think not. Not only does the notion of recollection raise a number of questions not mentioned in the text (not least the question of how the soul learned in the first place),^[10] Socrates’ demonstration has been remarkably manipulative. The whole theory is proposed to elude Meno’s trap and for this purpose succeeds very well.

Socrates himself admits that he doesn’t subscribe to the theory (86B); but he believes that it is braver to look for what we don’t know than to avoid the search in the belief that we can’t discover what we don’t know (86B). This is a declaration of intellectual and philosophical courage, and it now appears that the function of the discussion of recollection was to induce Meno to carry on with the discussion. In short, its real purpose was motivational.^[11]

Socrates again asks Meno what virtue is. And now Meno shows himself at his very worst. He still does not want to argue or to “recollect.” He wants to consider the question he originally put, whether virtue can be taught or whether people have it as a gift of nature, and he wants to know Socrates’ views (86C). Socrates, although he knows that it violates the proper method of discourse, agrees to examine this question.^[12] Though highly critical of the proce­dure, and claiming that Meno is not in control of himself, Socrates will let Meno have his way (86D). This, I think, is the next great surprise of the dialogue. Why should Socrates assent to the investigation? Perhaps he realizes that he has not yet entirely defeated Meno. He has, to be sure, defeated him when the question was shifted to the nature of virtue. But to defeat Meno thoroughly, Socrates will have to consider the question in Meno’s own terms.

Socrates proposes that like geometricians they tentatively accept the hypothesis that virtue is teachable and see where the argument leads them. If virtue is teachable, it must be knowledge, for nothing but knowledge can be taught (87B-C). Then, as if to show how easily Meno is led along, Socrates introduces some fallacies: virtue makes us good; the good is advantageous; thus virtue is advantageous (87E). He should perhaps have said, “thus virtue makes us advantageous.” In essence, Socrates is engaging in the same kind of fallacy as Meno at the beginning of the dialogue. When the focus is shifted to what is advantageous, it is easy for Socrates to show that other good things­ wealth, strength, and courage-are advantageous only when guided by wisdom (88B). Thus, it seems, virtue must be wisdom (88C). After this conclusion, Socrates adds that good men cannot be good by nature (89A). This conclusion really seems to arise from nowhere. It assumes that wisdom, which has been confused with knowledge, is something that is taught; if taught, it is not innate. But how many equivocations has Socrates used! First he fuzzed virtue into being advantageous; then he failed to distinguish between knowledge and wisdom. Meno, however, is thoroughly convinced; then Socrates expresses doubts (89C): maybe we were wrong to bind ourselves to the hypothesis, he suggests. “It seemed all right,” replied Meno. This sort of comment shows how superficial Meno’s understanding is. What sounds right to him is right. How similar to grammar students who, when asked for an explanation say, “It sounds right.” And he wants to be one of his generation’s leaders!

Meno is naturally curious to know why Socrates has doubts; Socra­tes surprises again. If something is teachable, there must be teachers of the subject. Of course, the logic is not quite precise, for something might be potentially teachable, even if it is not currently being taught. For example, Drivers’ Education was not offered in the nineteenth century. That fact did not mean that driving was not capable of being taught ever.^[13] But Meno does not see the distinction and agrees that if there are no teachers of virtue, then it cannot be taught (89E). But are there really no teachers of virtue, he asks. In asking the question, Meno seems to be admitting that Gorgias was no teacher of virtue, for if Gorgias had really been such a teacher, Meno could confidently have asserted his acquaintance with such a teacher.

The stage is now set for the introduction of Anytus.^[14] Anytus’s presence in the dialogue comes as quite a surprise. He has not been mentioned even once before in the dialogue. He is, of course, familiar to Plato’s audience as one of Socrates’ accusers. His presence in the midst of this jolly dialogue about Socrates’ escape from Meno’s traps changes the atmosphere completely. At once we see that there is more to the argument than the pleasant farce of Socrates’ eluding snares. We see that there is a dangerous dimension to Socrates’ activities, and that it is one thing to escape from intellectual traps, quite another to escape from those set by one’s angry fellow citizens. The section with Anytus drips irony, not least because although Anytus sets himself up as the despiser of sophists, he completely fails to see the service Socrates performs as the destroyer of sophistic respectability, as the exposer of the intellectual vacuity of the sophists. Anytus’s distaste for sophists is based on ignorance and prejudice; Socrates’ destruction of their pretensions is based on logical demonstration as well as on argumenta ad hominem et absurdum. Still, despite the fact they should be allies, Anytus will be the enemy of Socrates.

How fortunate, says Socrates, that Anytus has joined them. Socrates praises Anytus’s father Anthemion for having been a man of both property and sense, self-made, and one who brought up his son so well that he has been elected to high public office. Let us ask Anytus whether there are teachers of virtue (90A-B). Now as Gorgias was Meno’s teacher and represents his theoretical model, so Anytus rep­ resents the sort of practical, successful man that Meno seeks to be. Plato’s audience will of course be familiar with the sordid details of Anytus’s life, how after effecting Socrates’ execution he himself was accused of bribing a court, and, according to the report, was either killed by the Athenians or forced to flee.^[15] So despite Socrates’ praise for Anthemion, one knows that he was not successful in teaching his son virtue.

Socrates asks Anytus whether if one wishes his son to learn a trade, he ought not to send the son to those who profess to give lessons for money (90C-D) rather than to those who don’t set themselves up as teachers. In the current circumstances Meno has come to Socrates, who does not profess to teach, just as Socrates has gone to Anytus, who also does not profess to teach. But, of course, Anytus thinks that Socrates has in mind some technical training, flute-playing or doctor­ ing, not instruction in virtue. After Anytus has agreed, Socrates springs his surprise question: to whom shall we send Meno to learn what virtue is (91A-B)? Shall we send him to the sophists?

Anytus expresses horror at the suggestion: people who deal with sophists are ruined and corrupted, he says (91C). But how, asks Socrates, could the sophists make so much money if they made people worse instead of better? As it happens, though Anytus thinks sophists should be banished, he has never had anything to do with a single one of them in his life (92B). Even without experience of them, he knows their kind. Well, asks, Socrates, to whom shall we send Meno? Anytus answers in the same way as Meletus in the Apology: to any decent Athenian gentleman (92E). Where did these gentlemen get their excellence? From their forebears (93A).

Socrates admits that there have been plenty of good men in the past. The question Meno and he have been discussing is, however, whether virtue can be taught, passed on, not whether it exists. He brings up various illustrious Athenian statesmen, men Anytus admires, Themis­tocles, Pericles, Aristides, Thucydides the politician.^[16] These men may have provided their sons fine educations in horsemanship or wrestling, but all failed to educate their sons in virtue (93C-94E). When we recall that Anytus (who no doubt in his dreams associates himself with these Athenian giants) himself had a son who became a drunkard, we see that in terms of fathering skill he deserves to be grouped with the statesmen he so admires. Thus, Socrates concludes, it seems that virtue cannot be taught.

Anytus warns Socrates about disparaging others, about the harm that cities may do to men. Then he disappears from the dialogue.

What a strange appearance! We ask ourselves why Plato did not confine the conversation to Meno. Why did he bother to introduce Anytus? After all, we already had Meno’s wise statement recommend­ing that pesky Socrates stay in Athens. Did we need another reminder of what those who can’t tolerate Socrates’ behavior could do to him? Anytus’s presence in the dialogue serves, I think, a different dramatic purpose, one which will become clear in the light of a subsequent argument.

Socrates asks whether Meno still thinks the sophists teach virtue. Meno says he admires Gorgias because he claims only to make men clever speakers, not virtuous (95C). As for the rest of the sophists, Meno wavers: he isn’t sure whether they teach or not. Socrates quotes Theognis, a poet congenial to Meno. By citing contradictory passages in the poet, Socrates recapitulates the argument concerning the ab­sence of teachers and concludes again that virtue cannot be taught (96C). Meno agrees and wonders whether there are any good men at all.

Socrates springs a new and peculiar surprise. Perhaps, he suggests, knowledge is not necessary for right leadership: right opinion may be sufficient (97A). This seems a strange position for Socrates to take, and Meno argues against it, stating that knowledge will always be successful, right opinion only sometimes (97C). But, observes Socra­tes, right opinion is just as good as knowledge so long as it is right. If one has a true belief about the road to Larissa, he will get to Larissa as well as if he had knowledge about it.^[17] Why, then, asks Meno, is knowledge more highly prized?

Socrates’ answer is deliberately intended to mystify Meno: because, he tells Meno, you have not observed the statues of Daedalus. True opinions are very nice, but they run away like the statues of Daedalus unless they have been tied down by working out their reasons by the process of recollection. Only then do they become knowledge. Thus, it turns out that Socrates has not after all been praising right opinion, except for its practical value so long as it was right. But, Socrates says, his argument has been an analogy, not one based on knowledge. Even though he can’t prove that knowledge and right opinion are different, he knows it (98B). He may not know much, but this he knows. For practical purposes, says Socrates, right opinion and knowledge are both useful, and if both opinion and knowledge are acquired, then men are not good by nature.

The argument has brought Socrates and Meno to the point where they agree that good men actually do exist and that they get their goodness by the acquisition of either right opinion or knowledge, neither of which is taught (since there are no teachers). All earthly explanations for the origin of virtue seem to have been eliminated by the argument. The interlocutors are in a state of perplexity.

Here Socrates springs his final surprise on the spinning head of Meno: politicians must be like prophets and tellers of oracles. They do what they do by divine inspiration, without any real knowledge. Socrates claims as supporting evidence the dubious etymological proof that women and Spartans call men “divine” when they praise a man. As silly etymologies are a frequent source of jest in Plato, we have a signal that we are not to take the point too literally.^[18]

The dialogue concludes with Socrates’ statement that should there actually be a statesman who could teach virtue, he would be among the living what Tiresias was among the dead, a solid reality among shadows. The analogy is particularly appropriate, as the prophet and teller of oracles Tiresias becomes the teacher-statesman. Meno ap­ proves and Socrates sends him off to persuade Anytus that whoever has virtue has it by divine gift. If he can persuade Anytus, the Athenians will have cause to be grateful.

What a comic conclusion to the argument! We have seen the conclu­sion before, however, and realize that masterful though Plato is, he is not above repeating the same joke in more than one dialogue. In the Cratylus, when a word’s etymology became impossible to explain, Socrates had recourse to the claim that the word must be a gift from the gods. Here too we see Plato employing the trick of the dramatists: when all else fails, introduce a deus ex machina! ls this not exactly what Plato has done in the Meno? All arguments seemed to lead to aporia. The solution is to attribute the mysterious source of virtue to the gods.^[19] Who could protest such a solution without risking the charge of impiety?

Meno has observed that although the title “divine” is honorific, Anytus would not care for it (99E). Why? Probably because it would deny him all credit for his excellence. If the credit belongs to the gods, then Anytus does not deserve glory. Socrates tells Meno not to worry about Anytus; he’ll talk to him another time. His statement is of course ironic in view of his coming trial. He will talk to Anytus in court, but neither Anytus nor the majority of the jury will listen.

Now it is clear how Anytus fits into the drama. Before he entered the play, Socrates had demolished Meno’s sophist teacher Gorgias and had shown the emptiness in the sophists’ claims to be teachers of virtue. Then Anytus exploded with a rabid denunciation of the sophists. His views are not dissimilar to those of Socrates but are held without any sort of reasoning to support them. Anytus represents, on the subject of sophists, the raw power of right opinion. We know that he will use this same power, divorced from rightness, to prosecute Socrates. Since he has no intellectual basis by which he can judge correctly, he embodies the hollow core of mere right opinion.

As the Meno ends, we see the failure of sophistic education, which can teach set-piece arguments but is devoid of solid understanding. We have observed how easily Socrates can make mincemeat of one so educated.^[20] We have laughed at the ease with which a philosophical mind can avoid the traps and snares of the poorly educated. At the same time, we are reminded of the danger that such men as Anytus, armed with the vehemence of their prejudices, can do to the state.

What better advertisement could there be for the Academy, where men could acquire knowledge and arguments to become statesmen by design and not by chance or grace?