Plato's Meno

This book confronts Plato's many enigmas in his philosophical text Meno.

Dominic Scott (Author)

9780521640336, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 16 February 2006

252 pages
23.5 x 16 x 2 cm, 0.543 kg

'Dominic Scott's new monograph on Plato's Meno is a tour de force. Readers of Plato in general, and this extensively-mined dialogue in particular, will be aware of how high the standards have now been set for writing about Plato as both literary genius and philosophical pioneer, by Taylor, Cornford, Vlastos and others. They will be correspondingly impressed by how successfully Scott's beautifully written work equals and sometimes surpasses these standards, while admirably avoiding both the fanciful and the anachronistic.' Journal of Hellenic Studies

Given its brevity, Plato's Meno covers an astonishingly wide array of topics: politics, education, virtue, definition, philosophical method, mathematics, the nature and acquisition of knowledge and immortality. Its treatment of these, though profound, is tantalisingly short, leaving the reader with many unresolved questions. This book confronts the dialogue's many enigmas and attempts to solve them in a way that is both lucid and sympathetic to Plato's philosophy. Reading the dialogue as a whole, it explains how different arguments are related to one another and how the interplay between characters is connected to the philosophical content of the work. In a new departure, this book's exploration focuses primarily on the content and coherence of the dialogue in its own right and not merely in the context of other dialogues, making it required reading for all students of Plato, be they from the world of classics or philosophy.

Introduction
Part I: 1. The opening: 70a–71d
2. The first definition: 71e–73c
3. A lesson in definition: 73c–77d
4. The third definition: 77b–79e
5. Meno as interlocutor
Part II: 6. The stingray: 79e–80d
7. 'Meno's paradox': 80d–81a
8. The emergence of recollection: 81a–e
9. The argument for recollection: 82b–85d
10. The conclusion: 86b6–c2
Part III: 11. The method of hyposthesis: 86c–87c
12. Virtue is teachable: 87c–89c
13. Virtue is not teachable: 89e–96d
14. Virtue as true belief: 96d–100b
15. Irony in the Meno: the evidence of the Gorgias
16. Meno's progress
Conclusion
Appendices
References
Indexes.

Subject Areas: Western philosophy: Ancient, to c 500 [HPCA], Literary essays [DNF]