Meno's Paradox and Socrates as a Teacher

Meno has always been considered as one of the least gifted and co-operative characters in Plato's dialogues. Commentators have disdained him generally, but their greatest disdain is reserved for the argument he introduces to the effect that all learning is impossible at Meno 80d5–8. Shorey, who had no patience for the view expressed in the paradox itself, referred to it disparagingly as ‘this eristic and lazy argument’. ¹ Taylor liked neither the argument nor Meno's reasons for bringing it up: ‘Meno’, he wrote, ‘again tries to run off on an irrelevant issue. He brings up the sophistic puzzle …’. ² Klein thought of the negative influence of the paradox on all desire to learn anything new and wrote that Meno himself ‘was conspicuously reluctant to make the effort Socrates requested of him. It seems that his behaviour throughout the conversation was in agreement with the consequence that flows from the argument he has just presented.’ ³ Bernard Phillips, who with many other writers takes the argument itself quite seriously, nevertheless insists that for Meno personally ‘it is merely a dodge’. ⁴ Even Bluck, who is slightly more sympathetic to Meno than other writers are, cannot approve of him in this instance: ‘So far as Meno is concerned, this question may be regarded as a convenient dodge, an eristic trick; but for Plato, it had important philosophical implications.’ ⁵