Socrates Vs. Plato The Essential Themes Of The Meno

There is not a great deal of context that is crucial to understanding the essential themes of the Meno, largely because the dialogue sits nearly at the beginning of western philosophy. Socrates and Plato are working not so much in the context of previous philosophies as in the context of the lack of them. Further, this is very probably one of Plato s earliest surviving dialogues, set in about 402 BCE (by extension, we might presume that it represents Socrates at a relatively early stage in his own thought). Nonetheless, in order to understand the aims and achievements of the dialogue, it helps to keep in mind some details about this lack of previous philosophies. Since neither virtue nor any other concept has yet been defined in the way†¦show more content†¦Meno readily admits to being an enthusiastic follower of Gorgias and implicitly agrees to Socrates characterization of Sophist arguments as bold, grand, and presumptuous. In this sense, Meno is something of a straw man set up by Plato to highlight the kind of philosophy Socrates wants to denounce. Meno clearly prefers the Sophist-style definition of color offered by Socrates to the plain, direct definition of shape that Socrates himself prefers. If Meno is something of a dummy for aristocratic Sophist sympathizers, Anytus is even more clearly a stand-in for the somber, unconsidered values of the Athenian political elite. An actual historical politician of the time, he s grumpy, largely closed to new ideas, and insistent on inherited, class-based customs as the vehicle for virtue--he suggests that any gentleman on the streets of Athens is a fine example of virtue. Anytus, an Athenian conservative, despises the Sophists. Like other prominent Athenians at the time, he is probably suspicious of the Sophists cleverness with words and their tendency to lead young followers away from success in worldly matters. Socrates encounters this idea that philosophy is a corrupting influence in many of his dialogues, and that perception will eventually lead to his trial and execution for corrupting the youth. Thus, Plato is all the more determined to highlight Socrates profound differences from the Sophists. We should