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Socrates' discussion with Meno begins as Meno asks whether virtue can be taught. Meno suggests that it may be a result of practice or an inherent trait. Socrates answers by reminding Meno that Meno's own countrymen, the Thessalians, have recently gained a reputation for wisdom, due chiefly to the rising fame of Gorgias (a Sophist teacher). Gorgias, Socrates says, has taught people "to give a bold and grand answer to any question you may be asked, as experts are likely to do."

Athenians, on the other hand, do not claim to be able to answer such questions, says Socrates, noting that he himself is certainly among the ignorant. We should note that Socrates' modesty here is somewhat false, at least in the context of the dialogue that is to follow. For Socrates (and for Plato), it is much better to know that one does not know than "boldly and grandly" to claim knowledge when one is in fact ignorant. Thus, Socrates' modesty simply sets up Meno, the Thessalians, Gorgias, and the Sophists in general for a fall later on in the elenchus.

Socrates adds to his admission of ignorance the statement that he has not yet met anyone who knows what virtue is (though he qualifies this statement with regard to Gorgias, claiming not to remember his meeting with him clearly). This claim astonishes Meno, who moves quickly, at Socrates' behest, to give a definition of virtue. Meno says that there are different virtues for men (managing public affairs, helping friends, harming enemies, and protecting oneself), for women (managing the home, protecting possessions, and being submissive to one's husband), and for children, slaves, the elderly, and so on.

This, of course, is not a definition but a list of different kinds of virtue. Socrates points this error out with a metaphor about Meno's "swarm" of virtues being like a swarm of bees. The bees differ in size and shape, but "do not differ from one and other in being bees." In other words, Socrates is after the definitive characteristics of virtue in general, the "form" (eidos) of virtue. This idea of forms, which suggests that there is an ideal, non-physical model for each kind of thing, will eventually play a major role in Plato's dialogues. Here, the term is used sparingly, and Plato seems to be thinking of forms as somehow inherent in each physical thing rather than as separated in some mental or divine realm.

In addition to the bees metaphor, Socrates also uses qualities like health and strength to show Meno that he is asking after the single form common to all kinds of virtue (strength in a man, for example, is the same thing as it is in a woman, regardless of how much of it is present).

Meno, however, is still somewhat unsure what Socrates is getting at. This persistent confusion should remind us of the originality of Socrates' and Plato's thought at the time (ideas that are now commonplace to us). The idea that the term "virtue" must refer to one thing in all of its individual examples (i.e., the idea of a definition) is quite different from the ancient Greek conception of virtue as various kinds of success in worldly affairs.

Socrates reminds Meno that no virtuous quality is any good without "moderation and justice." Meno agrees, and Socrates points out that this idea gets at something common to all cases of virtue. Meno seems to understand this and makes a second attempt to define virtue: "What else" is it, he asks, but "to be able to rule over people?"

This definition is immediately thrown out, however, as Socrates reminds Meno that ruling over others is not virtuous in slaves or children. In any case, Socrates asks, shouldn't Meno have added "justly and not unjustly" to the phrase "ruling over people?" Meno agrees, noting that "justice is virtue." Socrates takes that statement as an opportunity to make a further point about definitions: does Meno mean that justice is virtue or that it is a virtue?

Meno, however, still fails to grasp this distinction between instances of virtue and the definition of virtue, and Socrates must use another example. Roundness, he notes, is a shape, but is not shape itself. Meno again seems to grasp the difference, and clarifies his statement about justice: it is a virtue, not virtue itself. "There are many other virtues," he says, and he goes on to list some of them ("courage...moderation, wisdom, and munificence, and very many others").

This third attempt by Meno to define virtue contains, of course, the same mistake as his first attempt. Socrates notes that they have again "found many virtues while looking for one." Meno again professes confusion, and Socrates again resorts to the example of "a shape" versus "shape" in general. He also mentions color in the same regard.

Meno, however, simply asks Socrates to answer his own question and define "shape" and "color" himself, so that Meno will have an example to follow in defining virtue. This turning of the tables, in which Socrates' interlocutor asks him the questions, is a relatively rare occurrence in Plato's dialogues. Here, it serves to give Plato the opportunity to contrast Socrates' style of definition with that of the Sophists.

Socrates, after making sure that Meno knows the geometrical terms "limit" and "solid," defines shape as "that which limits a solid; in a word, a shape is the limit of a solid." Then, after chastising Meno for ordering him around, Socrates proceeds to define color "after the manner of Gorgias" (rather than after his own manner, in which he defined shape). He mentions Empedocles' concept of effluvia, those elements that travel into us via our sense organs and allow us to sense the external world. Using this concept, and quoting Pindar along the way, Socrates defines color as "an effluvium from shapes which fits the sight and is perceived." The main contrast highlighted here is between Socrates' simple, direct account and the "theatrical" accounts of Gorgias and the Sophists (which are full of high-flown theories and quotations).

In return for these definitions, Meno makes a fourth attempt at defining virtue: using a literary quote (in true Sophist style), he says that virtue is "to desire beautiful things and and have the power to acquire them." Like his idea about virtue as the power to rule, however, this definition is quickly broken down by Socrates' questions. Socrates points out that some men desire bad things, and further that they do not know these things to be bad (since no one desires what will harm them). "What else is being miserable," he asks, "but to desire bad things and secure them [for oneself]?"

Meno's most recent definition, then, amounts to virtue as "the power of securing good things." Even this is not enough for Socrates, however, who points out that the acquisition of good things is only good if it is done "justly and piously" (otherwise such acquisition is "wickedness").

But now Socrates and Meno are back to square one, having stumbled into another error with regard to the nature of a definition. If virtue is to acquire good things justly, and if justice is a kind of virtue, Meno has simply repeated his earlier mistake of using kinds of virtue to define virtue itself. This mistake, however, is slightly different from the earlier mistake in which Meno defined the thing simply by listing its instances. Here, Plato is also showing us that a definition cannot contain the term to be defined--one cannot give a definition of virtue as "virtue" or as "that which is a part of virtue."

Meno, at the end of his rope, calls Socrates a torpedo fish (a fish that numbs whatever touches it). "Both my mind and my tongue are numb," he says. Though he has "made many speeches about virtue before large audiences on a thousand occasions...now [he] cannot even say what it is." This state of coming to know that one does not know is typical of Socrates' method in Plato's dialogues, and is known as aporia.

He begins with a strange reference to "priests and priestesses," "wise men and women [who] talk about divine matters." These people, Socrates says, claim that the soul is immortal, and that it is not destroyed with the death of the human body. Thus, since the soul "has been born often and has seen all things...there is nothing which it has not learned." Learning, then, is really a process of recollection in which the soul comes to remember what it already knew before its current human life span. On this model, seeking what one does not know is not a paradox because one is simply trying to remember the truth.

This claim that the soul is immortal and therefore already knows everything is one of Plato's most important ideas, and it is probably introduced for the first time here. It will play a major role in later dialogues, particularly the Phaedo and the Phaedrus. Having put this theory on the table, Socrates proposes to move on with the pursuit of the definition of virtue. Meno, however, wants evidence of Socrates' claim that learning is really a kind of recollection. Calling over one of Meno's slaves, Socrates sets about illustrating this idea. The questioning that follows provides a concise model of the Socratic elenchus, in which continuous questioning leads Socrates' subject into a state of total uncertainty (aporia) about what they thought they knew.

Establishing that the slave speaks Greek, Socrates draws a square in the dirt in front of him and divides it into four equal sections. Asking questions of the slave (and never teaching him anything directly), Socrates establishes that one side of a square four feet in area is two feet long. He then asks the slave to determine the length of the side of a square that is double the area (i.e., eight feet in area). The slave mistakenly says that such a side would be four feet, double the length of the original square (but a four foot side, of course, would yield a sixteen-foot square).

Socrates proceeds, still only through questions, to show the slave his mistake. The slave, realizing that the length he is after must be somewhere between two feet (the length of the original square) and four feet (his wrong answer), now answers that three feet must be the correct length (wrong again--that length would give a nine-foot square). Socrates points out this mistake as well, and makes a point of showing Meno that the slave is now in a state of aporia--he knows that he does not know the correct length. This state, Socrates argues, is better than the slave's original (false) claim to know the answer. Referring to Meno's earlier complaints about being "numbed" by Socrates' questions, Socrates says that "now, as [the slave] does not know, he would be glad to find out, whereas before he thought he could make many fine speeches to large audiences about the square of double size." The slave, like the ungrateful Meno, "has benefited from being numbed."

Reminding Meno that he is only asking the slave his opinion (and not teaching him), Socrates continues his examination. To the original square of four feet in area, Socrates adds three more, thus creating a square four feet on each side (and so four times the area of the original square--it may help to draw this out yourself). Drawing diagonal lines that link the centers of each side of this larger square, he asks the slave if these diagonals cut each of the original-sized squares in half. They do, of course, though it's worth pointing out that Socrates has strayed somewhat here from his policy of not teaching anything but only asking the slave's opinion.

Socrates' geometrical point here is that the diagonal of a square is the length the slave has been seeking--it can be used as the base for a square double the area of the original. The slave is made to realize this only through answering Socrates' questions, not through any direct teaching (though we have noted that at least one of his questions is more of a statement). Socrates presents this process to Meno as strong evidence that learning is a recollection: if the slave wasn't being taught, how did he come to know the relationship between the diagonal of a square and a square double the area? The knowledge must already have been in him, waiting to be "stirred up like a dream" by Socrates' questions.

This is Socrates' (and Plato's) solution to the problem of how we can try to find out the nature of something we do not yet know. Socrates can now advise Meno that "you should always confidently try to seek out and recollect what you do not know at present--that is, what you do not recollect." Even if he has the idea of the soul's immortality and recollection slightly wrong, says Socrates, the demonstration with Meno's slave has shown that "we will be better men...if we believe that one must search for the things one does not know."

Socrates proposes the following hypothesis: if virtue is a kind of knowledge, then it can be taught (and if it is not, it cannot). The next point to consider, then, is whether or not virtue is a kind of knowledge. To this end, Socrates makes a second hypothesis: if there is anything good that is not knowledge, then it is possible that virtue is not a kind of knowledge (and conversely, "if there is nothing good that knowledge does not encompass," then virtue is a kind of knowledge).

Working with these hypotheses, Socrates gives another version of his earlier point concerning the possibility of good things being used badly. Now he says that beneficial things are only so when accompanied by wisdom--"without understanding, they are harmful." This means, in effect, that virtue is only virtue when it has its context in wisdom. As Socrates puts it, "all that the soul undertakes and endures, if directed by wisdom, ends in happiness."

Thus, Socrates and Meno have already reached an important and surprising conclusion about virtue. Since virtue is "something beneficial in the soul," and since what is beneficial is only so in the context of wisdom, it would seem that "virtue...as a whole or in part, is wisdom." Socrates quickly points out that this idea has the important consequence that virtue is not inborn ("the good are not so by nature").

Meno, remembering the two hypotheses proposed by Socrates, happily concludes that, since virtue is knowledge, people must learn it by being taught. Socrates, however, is less sure. The problem is not with the hypotheses, but rather with the assertion that virtue is knowledge (a stronger proposition than the one that virtue is wisdom "as a whole or in part"). Socrates says that his suspicion lies in the following dilemma: if something as important as virtue can be taught, where are the teachers? Socrates claims (as he did at the beginning of the dialogue) that he has never yet found any such teachers. If this is truly the case, it would indicate that virtue in fact cannot be taught.

At this point, Anytus enters the conversation. A prominent Athenian citizen and respected politician, he serves as a perfect foil for Socrates' questions about public virtue and whether it can be taught. Socrates questions Anytus about the standard model for teaching--there are experts in each craft (medicine, shoemaking, etc.), and they are paid to teach these crafts to others. Socrates then suggests (facetiously, we must assume) that the equivalent expert teachers for virtue are the Sophists, who "profess to be teachers of virtue and have shown themselves to be available to any Greek who wishes to learn, and for this fix a fee and exact it."

Anytus is shocked by the suggestion--he hates the Sophists, who "clearly cause the ruin and corruption of their followers." (This opinion of the Sophists was widely held at the time, though they were well-respected enough as teachers of rhetoric to keep them employed and even to give them some degree of fame. Socrates' own eventual execution was due in part to a perceived similarity to the Sophists, though he argued against them his whole life.) Socrates pretends to be amazed at Anytus' disapproval, in order to point out that Sophists like Protagoras have gained fame and been well-respected (and well-paid) for over forty years. This kind of error in judgment, he says, could never happen with teachers of common crafts, so how could it be so with regard to professed teachers of virtue?

In any case, says Socrates, the question is who can teach us virtue, not who can't--"let them be the Sophists if you like." Anytus suggests that one need only to talk to any "gentleman" on the streets of Athens to see true virtue, but Socrates redirects his answer to his and Meno's original question about whether virtue can be taught: "have [these gentlemen] been good teachers of their own virtue?"

Socrates gives this question some more weight for the prominent Anytus by citing examples of virtuous, well-respected men whose sons have turned out less than perfect: Themistocles and his son Cleophantus, Pericles and his sons Paralus and Xanthippus, Aristides and his son Lysimachus, and Thucydides and his sons Melesias and Stephanus. In each case, Socrates argues, the fathers taught their sons to the utmost of their abilities (since they were virtuous men), and certainly "would have found the man who could make [their sons] good men." If virtue could be taught at all, it would have been in these cases. Yet this apparently did not happen.

Anytus finally gets angry at hearing all of these honorable personages slandered and warns Socrates to be careful. But Socrates blithely continues, asking Meno if he has run across any fellow Thessalians who claimed to teach virtue. Meno replies that his people disagree about whether virtue can be taught at all (perhaps the reason he asked Socrates in the first place). Socrates than asks Meno again about the Sophists--are there any, even Gorgias, who claimed to teach virtue? Meno replies that he particularly respects Gorgias for his refusal to claim to teach anything other than how to be a "clever speaker."

Even the poet Theognis, Socrates now recalls, could not decide whether virtue is teachable or not; Socrates recites two brief passages from him that contradict each other on this issue. "Would you say," asks Socrates, summing up the dilemma, "that people who are so confused about a subject can be effective teachers of it?" The answer is clearly no.

Thus, despite concluding earlier that virtue is at least partly a kind of wisdom (though not necessarily "knowledge" per se), it would now appear that virtue cannot be taught at all, and therefore that it is not knowledge. This is a disturbing picture of things, since it means that "it is not only under the guidance of knowledge that men succeed in their affairs."