Meno

Introduction

The young nobleman Meno opens with a direct question: can virtue be taught? Socrates replies that he does not even know what virtue is. In the discussion that follows, Meno raises his famous paradox: how can anyone search for what he does not know at all? Socrates answers with the theory of recollection, and demonstrates it by questioning a slave boy who has never studied geometry until the boy finds for himself how to double the area of a square. On knowledge, true opinion and virtue, the Meno is a key text for Plato's theory of knowledge.