ABSTRACT

This chapter compares the outcome of Socrates’ questioning in the Apology to the purpose of his questioning in the Meno. Initially the positions of the Apology and the Meno appear irreconcilable: in the Apology Socrates shows knowledge is a type of ignorance, whereas in the Meno he argues that knowledge is a type of prior knowledge. However, this chapter argues that if we consider the two dialogues together, the teaching appears as follows. Socrates, as illustrated in the Apology, first encounters persons who are ignorant but do not know this. His questioning teaches them that they do not know what they think they know, and in acquiring such knowledge of their ignorance Socrates’ interlocutors can discard the false opinions about truth that they hold. Yet this skepticism toward conventional opinion would then make possible the second stage of Socratic questioning as illustrated in the Meno. In the Meno the purpose of Socratic questioning is to allow the interlocutor to recollect the universal truths or ideas that were in their souls but which they had forgotten and had been obscured by the false opinions which they had previously held. Having swept away our false opinions Socratic questioning can help us bring to mind the universal truths we do hold. We are, in fact, all knowers who do not know we know.