Chapter1-HowtoSaveaLife-032420.pdf
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Before Ethics
Eric R. Severson
Chapter 1: How to Save a Life
Morality is dangerous.
Such a declaration is ironic, of course. Human beings turn precisely to the realm of morality, to
the discipline of ethics, when we wish to address the danger or injustice we see in the world. The
discipline of ethical reasoning sometimes arises from abstract philosophical contemplation, and
sometimes from urgent and practical questions. However we move into the discipline, the telos (purpose)
of ethics is clear: to know how to take the right action in complicated situations. People rarely feel a
compulsion to read an ethics book, or take a college course, to explore the morality of clubbing baby
seals. The study of ethics seeks to stabilize the world by outlining virtuous ways of living, modes of
behavior, or perhaps moral laws, that might guide us out of trouble. We turn to ethics to get out of danger.
But this discipline has its own strange peril, hiding well between the musty pages of thick textbooks on
“ethical reasoning.”
This book is not a guide to ethics, or ethical theory. Though I will spend a great deal of time in
conversation with various theories from around planet Earth and across human history, ethical theory has
been well documented. Instead, this book is about the danger that moves quietly in the margins of any
prescriptive discussion of human moral behavior. At the same time, by identifying and wrestling with this
threat, I seek a more hopeful and helpful way to approach ethics. To discuss the great risks of doing ethics
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is not to advocate abandoning the academic study or practical performance of ethics. Quite the opposite,
our task is to do this work well.
The television show The Good Place has a running line that appears in several episodes: “This is
why everyone hates moral philosophers.” My wife, married to a moral philosopher, finds this line
particularly amusing. There are, perhaps, many reasons why moral philosophers are maligned the world
over. However, in The Good Place this line is mostly leveled against a character whose key weakness is
the inability to decide between reasonable arguments. Moral theories often disagree about what choice a
person should make in a given situation. Utilitarians and Kantians, for instance, make earnest and
reasonable arguments about both everyday and extreme situations. Should I lie to protect the feelings of a
friend? This is a moral decision, and Kantians and utilitarians completely disagree about how the question
should be contemplated. Should drone pilots incinerate a home containing known terrorist operatives,
even though there are children in the house? Depends on which theorist you ask. Clearly we have a
fundamental problem in the discipline of ethics, and this issue has become increasingly exposed in recent
years. For every decision with moral weight, ethicists deliver a swarm of suggested choices. If some of
the most brilliant, earnest and well-meaning philosophers of all time cannot agree on moral decision-
making, how are everyday people to behave ethically?
The danger is most palpable when people turn to ethics to justify choices they have already
decided to make. I was once asked to provide an “Ethics Consultation” for a university, as they finalized
plans for a major construction project that had significant impacts on local ecology. The university
provost invited me to meet with the committee charged with planning, publicizing, funding, and justifying
the project. At first, I was pleased that the university wanted to think ethically about their plans for
development. After I had spent an hour with the committee, however, I realized that the decision to move
forward had been made before they decided to think about ethics. My work was to help the university
convince a skeptical community that this path forward was morally defensible, and to do so with fancy-
sounding arguments and appeals to ethical theory along the way. This approach, which is perhaps more
common than we realize, turns ethics into a sham. In fact, this approach weaponizes ethics, turning ethical
reasoning into an arbitrary game in which the goal is to justify behavior determined before ethics is even
consulted. Ethical reasoning becomes a “choose your tool” project, in which the tools of reasoning are
bent to meet priorities that precede and often supersede the deliberations. The pressure to be successful,
profitable, or efficient is powerful, which makes it easier to ask for forgiveness than permission when it
comes to ethical justification. This backdoor use of ethics is unethical, even when it presents itself to the
world with all the fancy words and arguments of ethical theory.
From its varied origins all around the world, philosophy has sought to stop people from doing
horrible things. Sometimes people do horrible things when they know better, or are sinister enough in
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their self-interest to intentionally inflict harm for their own profit. It is worth hoping that such people are
a small minority, and worth noting that they are unlikely to pick up a book such as this. This book is for
people who want to be thoughtful about the commitments that are often frontloaded into ethical
reasoning, about the anthropological, sociological, theological, and philosophical conditions for ethics.
People often turn to the study of ethics having been already stung by suffering they’ve experienced
personally, or witnessed others experience, or seen devastate animals or the environment. These are
inspiring reasons to engage in ethical reasoning, but also influence future deliberations in ways that
frequently go undetected. We will never become fully aware of all of the forces that influence our
attempts to think ethically. Still, it seems safe to wager that this investigation is worthwhile. Another way
to put it is this: what would happen if ethics had the first word? What if we were honest about what we
bring into questions of ethical significance? In this book I am referring to that which we bring with us
into conversations about ethics leanings.
In pursuit of thinking about what comes before ethics, two questions will recur throughout this
book: 1) what ideas are already underway when we turn to ask the questions of ethics? And, 2) what ideas
should be underway before we consult the texts written by ethical theorists? I raise these questions not
because I have answers to them, but because it seems imperative that they be investigated. These
questions do not have an obvious end to them, and they require an ongoing commitment to the
philosophical search for visible and invisible presuppositions. Whatever the answers, and however
difficult it may be to seek them, we are better for asking these questions.
There are two distinct ways of moving into the study of ethics. We can begin with the
contemplation of philosophical ideas and attempt to connect them to practical situations, or we can seek
direction within the complex quagmire of human experience. Immanuel Kant provides a sterling example
of the first mode, seeking a rational foundation for the “metaphysics of morals” that is not asked to be
practical until it has first been derived from “reason alone.”1 The second option is articulated by some
Feminist philosophers who seek ways of thinking about morality that begin, and remain, embedded in the
complexity of social relations. Margaret Urban Walker “pictures morality as a socially embodied medium
of understanding and adjustment in which people account to each other for the identities, relationships,
values that define their responsibilities.”2 Whether or not our leanings - cultural, gendered, personal,
1 Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 27. “[A] fully isolated metaphysics of morals, mixed with no anthropology, with no theology, with no physics or hyperphysics, still less with occult qualities (which one might call ‘hypophysical’), is not only an indispensable substrate of all theoretical cognition of duties which is securely determined, but it is at the same time also a desideratum of the highest importance for the actual fulfillment of its precepts.” 2 Margaret Urban Walker, Moral Understandings: A Feminist Study in Ethics, 2nd Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 67-68.
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religious, etc. – are toxins to be identified and removed from ethical reasoning, or key components of
thinking ethically, they matter. Both modes are beset by difficulties, and it may be the case that they can
be used together rather than in opposition. However one might approach the philosophical discipline of
ethics, much is to be gained by looking closely at the world from which we think about ethical ideas and
moral situations.
At the outset of this journey, to think about what comes before ethics is a fundamental question
about the function of philosophy itself, and this drives us back to philosophical foundations in the ancient
world. We launch this journey from ancient Greece, a fairly common starting point for philosophical
adventures, though this book heads toward global and historical destinations not typically visited in the
study of ethics. We begin with Socrates, partly because he indicated with such clarity the profound need
to think ethically and self-critically. Most of what we know about Socrates, who lived in Athens about
469-399 BCE, we receive from his student Plato.3 In each case, I will be investigating ideas and
commitments that already hang in the air when ethical questions are raised. This first chapter will work
with the Platonic dialogue the Meno.
Socrates and Meno: How to Save a Life
A brash, handsome, and rich gentleman of ancient Greece makes his way to Athens, the center of
Greek cultural and political life. His name is Meno, and he comes from both money and power. He is rich
enough to be followed by an entourage and though in his early twenties, he is already well on his way to
the fame and fortune that he deeply desires. He has also devoted some time and energy to the study of
philosophy, and believes himself to be wise. Plato, who tells the story of Meno’s visit to Athens, doesn’t
explain why he came to town but we get some clues from the dialogue between Meno and Plato’s famous
teacher, Socrates. Meno stays at the home of a rich friend in Athens, a man named Anytus, who will later
become a mortal enemy of Socrates and one of the three accusers who eventually bring Socrates to trial.
In all likelihood, the dialogue recorded between Socrates and Meno never took place; Plato rarely wrote
for the purpose of recording historical events. The purpose of this dialogue, instead, is to teach. Socrates, I
think, tries to use philosophy to save Meno’s life. Plato delivers this tale in the hope of saving yours, and
mine.
When Meno approaches Socrates he does so with bravado and confidence. A young man on a
mission, he looks to prove himself politically and philosophically. In those days, it was not uncommon for
people to come to Athens specifically to speak with Socrates. Meno, however, is there on other business. 3 For the purposes of this chapter, “Socrates” refers to the character in Plato’s dialogue the Meno, as well as other works written by Plato. Socrates appears in other works, especially those of Xenophon, so it is important to clarify “which” Socrates appears in these deliberations.
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He is raising funds, or perhaps gathering mercenary troops, for an impending and lucrative battle in
Persia. While he is in town, though, Meno chooses to spend an afternoon with the leading local
philosopher, Socrates. He comes to Socrates with a very specific question, a pertinent question for young
people planning their life adventures. Meno wants to understand virtue. What marks a person as
genuinely good? Already we encounter a complex problem in translation, as the word virtue is asked to
span centuries and translations and a metamorphosis of meanings. The word virtue rarely occurs in
everyday society today; I doubt it is used in many dating profiles. As I type the modern English word
“virtue” I write in a language that would have been utterly unrecognizable to everyone on Earth during
the years Socrates walked the planet. We must proceed with an awareness of this distance; sometimes it
may matter little, but at other times the evolution of meaning might lead to significant misunderstanding.
The word used for virtue in ancient Greece, and in this conversation recorded by Plato, is arête
(ἀρετή). Whatever its connotations today, the word meant something along the lines of “excellence of
any kind” or “fulfilling potential”4 when it was used in Plato (and Aristotle’s) dialogues. Aristotle, whose
treatment of this word will occupy us in Chapter 9, develops his entire ethical system on the basis of this
fruitful concept. In the older appearances of arête, such as the work of Homer, the term is typically added
to another concept. Though it is a noun, virtue is usually applied to excellence in some particular
application. The character Penelope, wife of the hero Odysseus in the Homer’s Odyssey, is considered an
exemplar of “feminine virtue.”5 Agamemnon declares to Odysseus:
Fortunate son of Laertes, Odysseus of many wiles! You have surely got for yourself a wife of outstanding virtue, Such is the good sense that is in the blameless Penelope, daughter of Icarius! How well she has kept the memory of Odysseus, her wedded husband! And so the fame of her virtue will never die, And ever-living gods will make a beautiful song for men on earth in honor of the faithful Penelope.6
Penelope’s virtue is the excellence appropriate to her station; she is left behind in Ithaca to fend off suitors
and stabilize the homeland while Odysseus fights and adventures abroad. Her virtue is blamelessness,
steadiness, consistency, and – as Homer understood it – feminine. And yet Homer does not hesitate to use
the same word to apply to the most excellent of javelin throwers, and is especially fond of using it to
4 Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), 238. 5 For an interesting exploration of this theme in Homer, see: Wendy E. Helleman, “Homer’s Penelope: A Tale of Feminine Arête,” Echos du monde classique: Classical views (University of Toronto Press, Volume XXXIX, no. 14, 1995), 227-250. 6 Homer, Odyssey, Anthony Verity, trans. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), Book 24, lines 192-198, p. 317.
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describe the bravery of warriors.7 In these cases the word means something very different, but commonly
refers to the excellent and full expression of some particular trait.
Meno does not enter this conversation as a blank slate. He knows his Homer, in all likelihood,
and has even studied and taught virtue in his hometown. He boasts, at the outset of their discourse, about
lectures he has given on virtue, to the delight of audiences numbering in the thousands. They hung on his
every word, back home, and this should surely count for something. He brings his wisdom to Socrates
and seems to hope that Socrates will confirm that he has indeed been teaching the masses well. Meno
comes to philosophy, to the philosopher, already pretty sure that he knows what needs to be known in
order for a person to live well. He has not, however, considered with care the puzzle that Socrates is
about to put to him. What does virtue look like all by itself? Penelope and Odysseus are exemplifications
of a particular type of virtue; but this just means they are being celebrated as the pinnacle of something
their culture already idealized. Homeric virtue simply means being excellent at something; we ought to
pause before assuming that this goodness or morality spans the centuries between Penelope and females
today.
For his part, Meno comes to Socrates with his understanding of virtue thoroughly and robustly
developed. Like the university that called me in for an “Ethical Consultation,” Meno came to Socrates to
further consolidate his desire with some configuration of virtue. Ethics is being done after the big
decisions have been made. For Meno, it seems, virtue is the stamp of approval on the top of already
venerated, but often unquestioned, modes of living. In the manner of a modern social media influencer,
Meno is carried into this conversation by the force of mass approval. His momentum is significant; he is
physically attractive, rich and growing in power. For the ancient Greeks, virtue in one arena, such as good
looks or wealth, gave the impression that a person would be virtuous in other arenas as well. We may
very well share this assumption today: in the modern world, people are often shocked to discover that
talented and beautiful actors or athletes lack virtue in other areas of their lives. The wind at Meno’s back
is a powerful, cultural celebration of particular ways of being human. No wonder Anytus declares that
virtue could be learned from any Athenian gentleman. For Anytus, arête is merely the amplification of
Athenian values. Meno is merely telling Socrates what nearly everyone thinks about virtue; he is
surprised that Socrates even needs to ask such questions.
Still, the disheveled, irreverent Socrates had never been impressed by the opinions of crowds, so
he proceeds to put Meno through his paces. At first, Meno declares that living virtuously, at least for a
man, means helping one’s friends, harming one’s enemies, and properly administering society. Women,
children, and servants have different forms of virtue, according to their roles in society. A woman, for
7 Finkelberg, Margalit. "Timē and Aretē in Homer." The Classical Quarterly 48, no. 1 (1998): 14-28.
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instance, when she becomes skilled at organizing the pantry and obeying her husband; she must manage
“the household well, conserving what is inside, and being obedient to her man.”8 A child shows virtue by
respect and learning. A servant shows virtue by obedience and subservience. To be virtuous is to correctly
perform one’s role in society. Meno is preparing for war, gathering resources and militia for the purpose
of wealth and glory. By framing virtue in support of this mission, he is quite literally weaponizing ethics.
There is a palpable resonance between his initial position on virtue and the dynamics of an effective
military. Soldiers are virtuous when they play their roles well. At each level of the military, soldiers both
administer and obey according to their rank and position. Of course, nothing about the mechanics of
functioning well in a household or military really establishes what is virtuous, what it means to live well.
These are pragmatic performances in the interest of Meno’s prior commitment to victory in war. Meno’s
position is that virtue is equivalent to leadership and obedience, but to what end? Socrates is unimpressed.
So, Socrates presses him for a way of thinking about virtue beneath these diverse (and troubling)
behavioral expectations. Meno stumbles for a while; the questions that Socrates asks are at the same time
irritating and disarming. Meno then attempts another definition for virtue, one that he hopes will
sufficiently describe how virtue functions for all people. He claims that virtue is “desiring fine things and
being able to acquire them.”9 This may turn out to be a slightly more honest version of his first definition.
Socrates is not impressed by the desire for “fine things” - does anyone, after all, desire horrible things? Or
isn’t it true that even when one desires something harmful (say, cigarettes) one does so thinking that it
will bring about some good (say, satisfying one’s craving)? This leaves virtue defined as simply “being
able to acquire fine things.” When Socrates points out the rather obvious weaknesses of this definition,
Meno feels stunned. The confident, brash, and dashing young man is, perhaps for the first time in his life,
at a loss for words. He accuses Socrates of being like a Torpedo Fish, an electric ray that defeats attackers
with electric shock. He has been rendered torpid, stunned by the questions of Socrates. The name of this
fish is nárke,10 the root of the contemporary term “narcotic.” In Modern Greek usage, the word nárke
(νάρκες) means landmine, a weapon designed to stop war vehicles in their tracks. The words of Socrates
stun Meno because they quickly strip away the thin façade of morality that Meno has glazed over his self-
interested warmongering. Meno uses the Torpedo Fish metaphor to complain that Socrates has rendered
him motionless, numb, and immobile.
Plato has Meno respond with these lines:
8 Plato, Plato’s Meno, George Anastaplo and Laurence Berns, trans. (Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing, 2004), 3. 9 Hamilton, Edith, and Huntington Cairns, eds. The Collected Dialogues of Plato (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 360, line 77b. 10 Geoffrey Steadman, Plato’s Meno: Greek Text with Facing Vocabulary and Commentary (Geoffrey Steadman, 2017), 79e.
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Socrates, I certainly used to hear, even before meeting you, that you never do anything else than exist in a state of perplexity yourself and put others in a state of perplexity. And now you seem to me to be bewitching me and drugging me and simply subduing me with incantations, so that I come to be full of perplexity. And you seem to me, if it is even appropriate to make something of a joke, to be altogether, both in looks and in other respects, like the flat torpedo-fish of the sea. For, indeed, it always makes anyone who approaches and touches it grow numb, and you seem to me now to have done that very sort of thing to me, making me numb. For truly, both in soul and in mouth, I am numb and have nothing with which I can answer you. And yet thousands of times I have made a great many speeches about virtue, and before many people, and done very well, in my own opinion anyway; yet now I’m altogether unable to say what it is.11
Part of Meno’s frustration is the recent memory of throngs of people celebrating his lectures on virtue.
With that much positive social reinforcement, that many “likes” on his public profile, how could he be
wrong?12
Meno is a busy man, and he makes it clear that he only has time for quick answers before getting
busy with his business and military commitments. Throughout the dialogue, it becomes clear that learning
to think will take time and patience, and Meno has neither. Thinking takes time, certainly more than one
brief conversation. But Meno had apparently informed Socrates before this conversation that his visit to
Athens was on a tight timeline, and he would need to leave soon. Too busy for philosophy, he turns his
attention toward the pressing business of his life.
There are innumerable texts that professors can use to introduce philosophy to students. I often
start with the Meno precisely for this reason. Meno was too busy for philosophy, too distracted by the
more pressing duties of life to waste his time figuring out how to think and therefore live carefully,
clearly, virtuously. “If only you could stay and be initiated,” bemoans Socrates, to which Meno replies: “I
would stay, Socrates, if you could tell me many such things.”13 Initiated! Meno began this conversation
with pompous assurance that he was already an expert in philosophy; now it is clear that he has never
even started. Socrates was given one short afternoon to prove to Meno that philosophy is worthwhile. The
adventure of philosophy, which Meno declines, might have disappointed him anyway, for it leads not to
certainties but to a humble and open-minded approach to questions of virtue. And this means the clever
line from The Good Place is not just an indictment on bad moral philosophers but also good ones.
Thinking ethically must help us make decisions, even if it does so without collapsing the need for
ongoing questions and uncertainty.
Meno, however, demands answers from Socrates, and firm ones at that. He wishes for Socrates
to tell him something, indeed “many such things.” Meno has little interest in being guided into thinking.
11 Plato, Plato’s Meno, Anastaplo and Berns, trans., 15. 12 I am thankful to my colleague Jonah Ford for suggesting the connection between Meno’s social popularity and contemporary social media. 13 Plato, Meno, G.M.A. Grube, trans. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1976), 9.
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Put in this position, Socrates moves quickly to his method, asking pressing and probing questions that
deconstruct Meno’s simplistic view of the world. The stunned and confused Meno does not stay to be
initiated. He shrugs off the nárke’s sting, and goes back to his business.
Two years later? Meno is dead.
This dialogue is a marvelous work, a philosophical “gem” in the words of John Stuart Mill.14
Meno contains fascinating explorations of a range of themes that are expanded in later works of Plato,
including the famous Doctrine of Recollection and the crucial question regarding whether virtue can be
taught. And though the overall subject of the dialogue concerns virtue, this relatively short text wanders
across diverse topics and themes. In his recent commentary on the book, Dominic Scott points out that
Plato “could rarely broach one topic without stumbling upon a multitude of others. But this feature of the
dialogue also raises acute challenges for the interpreter. For one thing, what is the work about?”15 Without
excluding other answers to this question, I think this dialogue was at least partly issued as a warning. Dire
consequences await those who fail to pause for reflection before charging into action. The education that
Meno turns down would not have led him to the certainty he sought anyway, but the wager of philosophy
is that he would nevertheless have been better for the adventure. That is, in fact, the wager of this book.
After it becomes clear that Meno is only auditing a philosophy course and not willing to take it
seriously, the dialogue ends without much ceremony or satisfaction. But the name “Meno,” to the first
audience of Plato’s dialogue, would have been synonymous with what happened next. Plato makes very
intentional use of characters, in this dialogue, whose names and stories would have been known to his
first readers. With the exception of a nameless servant boy, with whom Socrates has a conversation about
geometrical knowledge, every character in this dialogue is known to history. According to Plato scholar
Jane Day, these characters “are not merely vivid stage characters,” for though we “cannot compare the
portraits with the originals as Plato’s contemporaries could…all the evidence suggests that they were
strikingly telling as likenesses, as well as in their own right.”16 The name Meno would have, for early
readers of this dialogue, called to mind the events that immediately follow the dialogue. And for Meno,
these events are disastrous and humiliating.
14 Mill also claims that in the Meno “more that is characteristic of Plato is brought together in a smaller space than in any other dialogue.” John Stuart Mill, Dissertations and Discussions, Vol. III, (New York: Cosimo Classics, 2013), 350. 15 Dominic Scott, Plato’s Meno, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 3. 16 Jane M. Day, ed., Plato’s Meno in Focus (Routledge: New York, 1994), 14.
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Meno’s trip to Athens had been motivated by money; he was there to raise money for his family
and their interests up north in Thessaly, which were under some threat. The young Meno, perhaps twenty
years old when he speaks with Socrates, had been sent – along with his entourage – to cash in favors,
raise funds to pay mercenaries, and fund a military campaign. Meno, headstrong and ambitious, moves
from Athens into a series of military engagements. Xenophon, a soldier and philosopher who was also a
student of Socrates, recorded a detailed history of Meno’s behavior. His moves, in the military, were
ambitious but self-interested; he became a mercenary leader of paid Greek troops. Meno and his hired
army were employed by a man named Cyrus, who hoped to overthrow his brother, Artaxerxes, King of
Persia. Cyrus was killed, inadvertently, and the Persian army captured Meno’s mercenary force. Most of
them were executed immediately. Meno’s crimes and treachery were so egregious that they separated him
out and tortured him for an entire year before finally killing him.
Xenophon takes care to make sure this person is remembered for being a scoundrel, a person
whose failure to think led him to infamy and shame. We cannot count on Xenophon, necessarily, to
articulate a literal history of events. However, he pauses his history of this war to spend significant energy
pointing out just how awful Meno turned out to be, his actions aimed “insatiably” after money and
property.17 Jacob Klein summarizes Xenophon’s account of Meno:
Meno appears as a totally unscrupulous man, eager above all to accumulate wealth and subordinating everything else to that end, consciously putting aside all accepted norms and rules of conduct, perfidious and treacherous, and perfectly confident in his own cunning and ability to manage things to his own profit.18
Meno cozied up to the powerful only so that he could “commit wrong with impunity.”19 He used “false
swearing, lying and cheating” to get his way; he thought honest people were fools.20 When Meno showed
friendship and affection these were always false, forever pretenses to get his way, to build his fortune.
Xenophon goes on for pages. Meno is a traitor, without any virtue, who would stab anyone in the back for
an extra gold coin.21 He cowered, tricked, and betrayed. Honest and upright people were his favorite
victims. Virtue, for Meno, means doing whatever it takes to get what you want.
17 Xenophon. Anabasis, Henry Graham Dakyns, trans. (New York: Biblioness, 2017), Book II, section VI, p. 53. Xenophon writes: “As to Menon the Thessalian, the mainspring of his action was obvious; what he sought after insatiably was wealth.” 18 Jacob Klein, A Commentary on Plato’s Meno (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 36. 19 Xenophon. Anabasis, Book II, section VI, 53. 20 Ibid. 21 Xenophon, The Anabasis of Cyrus, trans. Wayne Ambler (Ithica, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008), 94-95.
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A number of historians have attempted to balance out Xenophon’s harsh portrait of Meno with
the version of the man presented in Plato’s dialogue.22 After all, Meno seems mostly harmless in Plato’s
account and has been called “the arch-Villain” of Xenophon’s Anabasis.23 The conversation with
Socrates, narrated by Plato, ostensibly occurs immediately before Meno takes leadership of the mercenary
forces described by Xenophon. Yet the Meno of Plato’s dialogue does not show, in any obvious way, the
sinister and vile personality that so repulsed Xenophon. This contrast has perplexed interpreters, some of
which have supposed that Plato was trying to provide a positive version of a man whose reputation was
besmirched by Xenophon.24 But this interpretation misses a crucial aspect of this dialogue. There can be
no certain answer about such investigations, but it is possible that interpreters have failed to give Plato
credit for providing an “origin story” for a man who would become an infamous villain. The audience for
Plato’s dialogue would have almost certainly known the stories of Meno’s treachery and his tormented
demise. They might not have known what could have led a man to such behaviors. It is not accidental or
ironic that Plato selects a legendary villain for a dialogue about virtue, about living well. The ancient
reader already knew, even as the discussion began, that Meno’s life undermined any supposed wisdom he
might deliver about living well.
We cannot overlook a contrast that modern readers might easily miss between the principle
interlocutors of this dialogue. It was not just Meno, but also Socrates, who was long dead when Plato
wrote about this discussion. They had died in short succession, probably within a year of each other—
Meno about 400 B.C.E and Socrates just a year later.25 The Meno was written around 385 B.C.E., about
fifteen years after their deaths.26 Plato’s characters, here, are two ghosts whose deaths defined and
underscored their legacies. They haunt Athens in two very different ways. After all, they both died as a
consequence of that which they deemed to be virtuous. Plato writes elsewhere about the details and
significance of the death of Socrates. He does not have to tell us about the death of Meno. His audience
would have known the contrast from the outset. Klein emphasizes that the character and fate of Meno
would have been well known to the audience who first read Plato’s dialogue. He writes: “Meno was
22 In 1890, for instance, Henry Graham Dakyns published a translation of the works of Xenophon in which he writes: “For a less repulsive conception of Meno’s character, however unhistorical, see Plato’s Meno.” Xenophon, Anabasis, H.G. Dakyns, trans. (Urbana, Ill.: Project Gutenberg, 2008). 23 Xenophon, The Anabasis of Cyrus, trans. Wayne Ambler, 261, n. 80. 24 Klein points to a long tradition of seeing Meno as part of a jealous dispute between Plato and Xenophon, going all the way back to the second century B.C.E. Babylonian scholar Herodicus. Klein, A Commentary on Plato’s Meno, 37. 25 Debra Nails, The People of Plato: A Prosopography of Plato and Other Socratics (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002), 204-205. 26 Plato, Meno and Phaedo, David Sedley and Alex Long, eds., (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), ix- x.
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certainly a well known public figure at the beginning of the fourth century.”27 Xenophon and Plato agree
that he was exceedingly attractive, had many important lovers, was wealthy and followed by an entourage
of slaves and attendants, and that he was well-spoken.28
Meno is like a conversation between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton in Lin Manuel
Miranda’s hit musical Hamilton.29 Miranda’s reading of these characters, and the bits and pieces of
history that he weaves into the narrative he creates, are meant to be instructive, not historical. One cannot
help but see the seeds of doom in Burr’s insecurity, self-interest, hesitancy, and jealousy. Everyone
knows, even as they have a civil conversation over beer, how the story ends for both characters. Similarly,
in the Meno, two men meet to speak about virtue, one whose legacy ended in infamy and the other in
everlasting fame. In fact, the whole of Burr’s future, and the personality that will eventually lead him to
ruin, are portended in the lines Miranda gives Burr early in the musical. The implications of this reading
of the Meno are profound: how one thinks about virtue will determine how one lives and how one dies.
The content of the dialogue aims at the important activity of thinking, and doing so carefully and humbly.
Like his host, Anytus, Meno proves that he does not trust philosophy, perhaps because it threatens to
redirect his life. Philosophy threatens to become an obstacle to Meno, and so hurries back to the house of
Anytus, where he can find resources for the mission that brought him to Athens. Socrates, we presume,
becomes a fading and unpleasant memory. Anytus, for his part, will before long have his revenge on
Socrates for his role in disturbing the youth of Athens.
Meno’s strategy for life and war leads him to disastrous ends; he gets a year of torture and
everlasting infamy as his reward. The mode of “virtue” espoused and then embodied by Meno is the
egoistic one. Meno’s first definition of virtue, that one lives well by helping friends and harming enemies,
is war strategy. The ultimate good of such an approach has no principled opinion about honesty, no place
for kindness, no room for compassion or care. The “good,” here, is implicitly defined as victory in a
contest for resources. His second version of virtue, “the desire for fine things and being able to acquire
them,” is just a more honest version of the first. For this proto-villain, to be virtuous is to win the war for
“fine things,” and know how to pull whatever maneuvers are necessary for that victory. Interesting
villains do not begin as utter monsters. The Batman villain “Joker” provides a recent and celebrated
origin-story. Before he was a Joker, Batman’s nemesis was a man named Arthur Fleck; the blockbuster
Joker movie reminds us that the best monsters start as relatable but flawed people. Plato takes up the
notorious Meno, I think, to remind us that bad things start with simple philosophical mistakes. All Meno
27 Jacob Klein, A Commentary on Plato’s Meno, 36-37. 28 Debra Nails, The People of Plato: A Prosopography of Plato and Other Socratics, 204. 29 Lin-Manuel Miranda, “Hamilton: An American Musical,” in Hamilton: The Revolution (New York: Grand Central Publishing), 2016.
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has to do is stick around, to “be initiated,” to learn that there is more to virtue than can be found in waging
war-for-hire. What he might have learned is an open question, and perhaps a question that calls to be
repeatedly re-opened.
By having Socrates tell Meno that it is a shame that he has to leave “before the mysteries,”30 Plato
allows us to date this (probably fictional) conversation very precisely. The discussion would have taken
place just before the holidays, known as “The Mysteries,” in February of 402 B.C.E. Xenophon dates his
death a couple of years later, probably in the year 400. For readers of Plato’s Meno, written in 385 B.C.E.,
the consequences of not staying in Athens would have been obvious. Socrates was inviting Meno to stay
in Athens instead of plunging headstrong into a mission that led him directly to death. Socrates did not
bribe Meno, did not offer him anything but the chance to save his own life. Meno says he would stay if
Socrates could promise to teach him a better way to be virtuous. And here, in this moment, when Meno
says “I would stay,” his life hangs in the balance.
Socrates responds “I shall certainly not be lacking in eagerness to tell you such things, both for
your sake and my own, but I may not be able to tell you many.”31 The dialogue that follows is apparently
not enough to persuade him to stay, to study, to deepen his understanding of virtue. The “mysteries,”
which Meno was too busy to attend, refer not just to the Athenian initiation rites into the proper worship
of Greek deities. In his commentary on this dialogue, Jacob Klein points out that Socrates was inviting
Meno to be initiated into the “mysteries” of philosophy, alongside the reference to the Athenian religious
ceremonies known as “The Mysteries.”32 The allure of fame, fortune and glory are too intense, and we are
left by Plato to wonder what the consequences might be for our failure to “stick around” and be initiated.
Socrates, it seems, is trying to save his life. Apparently, at least in this instance, Socrates is unsuccessful.
Perhaps others, who chose to stay for initiation, fared better. Plato himself is known to have eschewed a
life in politics and leadership in exchange for the very initiation that Meno here refuses.33
Socrates does not offer Meno a magic formula, nor a definition of virtue that can be used to make
every decision. When philosophers look for a “theory of ethics” in Plato’s work they similarly find
nothing that compares to formulaic theories that eventually develop in modern European philosophy.
Socrates cares about ethics, about living virtuously, but his more central concern is for contemplative and
authentic living. This is why the so-called “Socratic Method” begins with hard questions, with the
deconstruction of presumed ideas, with the “stun” of the electric ray. Meno’s tools are taken out of his
hands, he is rendered torpid. His childish reaction is not only to accuse Socrates of doing him some wrong
30 Plato, Meno, G.M.A. Grube, trans., 9. 31 Plato, Meno, Grube, trans., 9. 32 Jacob Klein, A Commentary on Plato’s Meno, 69. 33 A. E. Taylor, Plato: The Man and His Work (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2001), 3-4.
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in stunning him, but also to resort to insults and threats. He says that such trickery would elsewhere get
Socrates “arrested as a sorcerer.”34 Meno even jabs at the appearance of Socrates, like a floundering bully.
Speaking of the torpedo fish, Meno says to Socrates: “And you seem to me… to be altogether, both in
looks and in other respects, like the flat torpedo-fish of the sea.”35 Meno has fallen to name calling, the
last resort of a stunned bully. This tactic has returned to popularity in contemporary political discourse.
When he begins to lose this argument, Meno’s true colors shine through. Meno has already set his course,
and deliberations about virtue have become obstacles. He had hoped that his visit with Socrates would
affirm and fortify his sense of mission, as he headed out to help his friends, hurt his enemies, and gain
fine things. Perhaps he thought the approval of Socrates could be bought and sold like everything else?
What he encountered was a chance, indeed one last chance, to stop and think before rushing to his death
on a fool’s mission.
Like Meno, we all bring to the contemplation of “ethics” a range of overt and covert assumptions.
We might call these “biases,” but that word has nearly stopped functioning meaningfully in contemporary
conversations about virtue. In addition, the word “bias” already gives the impression that they are
negative factors in our ethical deliberations. It is better, perhaps, to think of these influences as leanings.
Meno is leaning in a particular direction as he enters this dialogue about virtue, and his leanings turn out
to be deadly. Plato does not write the Meno for the sake of entertainment, nor to record historical events.
The lessons Meno failed to learn are the lessons Plato hopes his readers will engage. This text is an
invitation to stay, to be initiated into the mysteries, to investigate the undetected leanings we bring into
ethical deliberation. Meno was convinced that surviving battles and attaining piles of gold was the
operation and purpose of ethics. Yet not all of the ideas and assumptions that we take into the question of
ethics turn out to be problematic. We all enter into the study of morality with “gut” feelings about many
of the questions we face. Some of those gut reactions turn out to be deeply problematic; others may end
up being reliable and helpful in ethics. Is it immoral for humans to eat cows? Pigs? Dogs? A strong sense
of revulsion accompanied the idea of eating these three animals for some human beings, a revulsion that
they bring to the table when considering ethical questions about consuming animals. Some of these
“leanings” happen at the level of intuition, or are embedded in the very way we come to know the world. I
will, in later chapters, explore the importance of epistemology (theories about knowing and knowledge)
and the dangers of injustice hiding in our very modes of knowing the world (epistemic injustice). Ethical
reasoning can only help guide human behavior when we enter such deliberations with eyes wide open to
the forces already at work even as we frame such questions.
34 Plato, Plato’s Meno, Anastaplo and Berns, trans., 15. 35 Ibid.
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Life moves quickly; decisions often have to be made without sufficient time for deliberation. The
pressure to move, to make, to achieve, to decide, is often powerful and driven by exigent needs and
desperate times. Ethical decisions are mostly made without the luxury of long, deliberative processes.
These decisions are made on the move, on the run, in the midst of life. For the study of ethics to be
meaningful, it must impact human beings at this level, at the speed of life. Meno shook off the narke in
order to live unencumbered by philosophy, sounding like an exasperated student saying “I don’t have
time for this!” In truth, few people have the time or luxury to retreat from the urgency of everyday
existence to sit in long contemplation before making decisions. If we all sit at the foot of Socrates and
abandon our tasks, very little will ever get done. Whatever it means to do philosophy, or think ethically,
must be a deepening of life rather than a vacation from it.
The dialogue with Meno does not end with much satisfaction. Meno leaves, urgently needing to
be somewhere else before the holidays. As Plato scholar Roslyn Weiss puts it: “Socrates fought hard to
get Meno to reopen with him the investigation into the question of what virtue is. But he lost.”36 There is
an important possibility available to interpreters of this dialogue: perhaps Meno did become unstuck.37
The second half of the dialogue, after all, appears to include serious effort on the part of Meno to engage
the line of inquiry opened up by Socrates. In addition, characters in Plato’s dialogues often do not match
up with their historical corollaries. Ruby Blondell writes of the characters in Plato’s works: “despite their
lack of personality in Plato’s texts, most of these people did have historical identities more or less well
known to his audience. These may be – and often are – pursued by the eager interpreter even when Plato
gives us little more than a name to go on.”38 My wager is that Meno’s name is more loaded than some of
the more neutral characters in Plato’s dialogues. This hunch is reinforced by the presence of Anytus, who
plays such an important role in the trial of Socrates as depicted in Plato’s Apology. Blondell points out
that with characters, like Meno, who have well-known historical baggage: “it remains important to
remember that Plato’s characterizations do not exist in a historical vacuum. As with tragedy, his original
audience not only knew in advance what would happen to the principal characters, but also knew much
more than we do about his mise en scène” (the setting surrounding the action).39
36 Roslyn Weiss, Virtue in the Cave: Moral Inquiry in Plato’s Meno (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 127. 37 I am grateful for my colleague Yancy Dominick for raising this possibility, and for pointing to considerations about the possible divide between the historical Meno and the character we meet in Plato’s text. 38 Ruby Blondell, The Play of Character in Plato's Dialogues (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 322. Blondell’s is particularly leery of attempts to connect historical persons to characters “generic in personality,” such as the attempts to figure out which historical Critias is the title character of Critias. 39 Blondell, 35.
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By allowing Xenophon’s testimony to inform my interpretation of Meno, I have provided a rather
unkind portrait of the title character. Lots of people passed through Athens, after all, but not everyone
paused to talk to Socrates. Between meetings with people in Athens who actually had power and
influence, this young man chose to spend time talking about virtue. That was optional, an elective course
of action that he could have skipped. Furthermore, Meno may have been a jerk about it, but he was open
and vulnerable and willing to allow his ideas to be deconstructed. He is already, in those moments,
entering into philosophical discourse when he could have done otherwise. I like that about Meno. But I
think Plato chooses this person to illustrate the cost of almost doing philosophy, the cost of moving to the
brink of thinking deeply about ethics and then retreating to some default position. Meno refuses to stay
unless Socrates can provide a clear and definitive lesson on virtue, a hard-and-fast alternative to his
deconstructed philosophy of self-interested virtue. The fact that Socrates cannot provide an easy answer
to this question about virtue is too much for Meno. In reality, Socrates thinks of philosophy as a lifelong
pursuit of understanding the mysteries of living well. This double meaning of the word “mysteries” in
Meno appears to be intentional. Meno’s flight out of town “before the mysteries” is Plato’s way of
reminding us that Meno was not up for the great mystery of philosophical inquiry.40 His first readers
would have known well what this flight cost him.
To write a book is to have the audacity to think that the words that one arranges are worth the
time readers might spend reading them. For that reason, it is important to clarify the wager that is
underway in this text. My claim is that contemplating what comes “before ethics” is worth the time, even
if it does not lead to easy answers. Socrates and Meno agree on few things in the dialogue, but they do
come to agree that the torpedo stun, of questioning, uncomfortable as it may be, can be a good thing even
when it does not lead to easy answers. After an experiment in geometry with a young servant of Meno’s,
they notice that the boy is inflicted with a similar shock to the one experienced by Meno. Socrates asks:
“Then is he not better off now, about the think which he did not know?” and Meno agrees that he has
been improved by the shock. Socrates goes on: “Then by making him unprovided and perplexed and
numbing him, just like the torpedo-fish, have we in any way harmed him?”41 Even if the stun is not
instrumental in producing resolution to difficult questions, Meno and Socrates concur that it inclines the
servant to be open to future answers, remedies to his ignorance.
And, even if we cannot discover the “correct” way to lean into ethical theory, or properly prepare
for moral questions, I believe it is worth tarrying, pausing, thinking, and wrestling with the complexity of
virtuous living. Meno’s case is dramatic; I have argued here that Plato chooses this unfortunate character
40 Jacob Klein, A Commentary on Plato’s Meno, 69. 41 Plato, Plato’s Meno, Anastaplo and Berns, trans., 22.
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for this very purpose, for the sharp relief his destiny creates against the backdrop of his refusal to engage
in the hard work of philosophy. The death of Meno is violent and dramatic, a made-for-Hollywood
ending, but the implication left by Plato and Xenophon is that we will all face consequences for failing to
think seriously about virtue. The fact that answers to questions about virtue are elusive does not mean that
we are not better for the effort. These are, as Socrates intimates, “mysteries” after all, and we should
expect that many of our philosophical questions will leave us with ongoing questions. Yet the practice of
thinking, the hard work of questioning, leads to a more intentional and contemplative way of being
human. This labor turns toward the Torpedo Fish instead of away, toward the paralysis that saves.42 My
wager is that people who wrestle with these questions live better, love better, and even die better.
42 It is worth noting that for Socrates, even if the paralysis leads only to humble awareness of one’s ignorance, the experience is worthwhile.
