meno phaedo

  Plato,  Spring  2016.  Short  Final  

    Part  I:  do  you  remember  what  each  dialogue  or  episode  was  about?  (Five  minutes,  10   points.)    

    Part  II:  Short  answers.    Pick  THREE  passages  out  of  four  and  answer  all  the  questions   for  those  three  passages.  (Spend  about  15  minutes  on  each  passage;  30  points  each.)     [A]  

     

1. Why  does  Meno  pose  his  opening  question  here  to  Socrates  in  particular?   2. What  is  he  saying  is  impossible?   3. In  broad  terms,  how  is  it  perfectly  possible  —  indeed,  common  —  for  us  to  

ask  questions  of  the  form  ‘What  is  X?’   4. What  do  we  call  the  theory  that  all  knowledge  ultimately  derives  from  

perception,  and  experience?  Roughly,  what  does  that  theory  state?            

Link%each%item%to%one%description% % Gorgias% % % % % Asserts%that%we%know%nothing,%and%advocates%self9examination% Euthyphro% % % % Contains%a%robust,%humanistic%defense%of%democracy% Thrasymachus% % % % Applies%Socratic%method%to%the%question%of%piety% Meno% % % % % Contains%the%idea%that%in%democracies%we%have%consented%to%our%laws% Ring%of%Gyges% % % % Suggests%that%metaphysics%can%radically%transform%politics% Phaedo% % % % % Implies%that%humanism%leads%to%amoralism% The%Cave%parable% % % Contains%a%harsh%critique%of%public%debate%and%democratic%methods% Crito% % % % % Contains%the%claim%that%we%cannot%explain%the%cosmos%in%physical%terms% Apology%% % % % Argues%that%we%possess%innate%intuitions%that%make%learning%possible% Protagoras% % % % Implies%that%the%social%contract%is%a%weak,%fragile%basis%for%morality%

880 Meno

MENO: How will you look for it, Socrates, when you do not know at all what it is? How will you aim to search for something you do not know at all? If you should meet with it, how will you know that this is the thing that you did not know?

SOCRATES: I know what you want to say, Meno. Do you realize what ae debater’s argument you are bringing up, that a man cannot search either for what he knows or for what he does not know? He cannot search for what he knows—since he knows it, there is no need to search—nor for what he does not know, for he does not know what to look for.

MENO: Does that argument not seem sound to you, Socrates?81 SOCRATES: Not to me. MENO: Can you tell me why? SOCRATES: I can. I have heard wise men and women talk about divine

matters . . . MENO: What did they say? SOCRATES: What was, I thought, both true and beautiful. MENO: What was it, and who were they? SOCRATES: The speakers were among the priests and priestesses whose

care it is to be able to give an account of their practices. Pindar too saysb it, and many others of the divine among our poets. What they say is this; see whether you think they speak the truth: They say that the human soul is immortal; at times it comes to an end, which they call dying; at times it is reborn, but it is never destroyed, and one must therefore live one’s life as piously as possible:

Persephone will return to the sun above in the ninth year the souls of those from whom she will exact punishment for old miseries, and from these come noble kings,c mighty in strength and greatest in wisdom, and for the rest of time men will call them sacred heroes.4

As the soul is immortal, has been born often, and has seen all things here and in the underworld, there is nothing which it has not learned; so it is in no way surprising that it can recollect the things it knew before, both about virtue and other things. As the whole of nature is akin, and the sould has learned everything, nothing prevents a man, after recalling one thing only—a process men call learning—discovering everything else for himself, if he is brave and does not tire of the search, for searching and learning are, as a whole, recollection. We must, therefore, not believe that debater’s argument, for it would make us idle, and fainthearted men like to hear it, whereas my argument makes them energetic and keen on the search. Ie

4. Frg. 133 (Snell).

  [B]  

     

1. What  does  ‘always’  mean  in  the  first  line?   2. What  ‘opinions’  (perhaps  ‘intuitions’  ‘concepts’)  —  plausibly—  does  the  slave  

seem  to  use  in  forming  his  answers  to  the  geometry  puzzle?   3. What  does  Plato  conclude  from  this,  broadly  speaking,  about  the  human  soul?   4. Arguably,  there  are  at  least  some  parts  of  my  ‘soul’  that  do  indeed  predate  my  

birth  (on  any  view,  not  just  Plato’s).  Explain.         [C]    

   

1. Suppose  someone  is  trying  to  teach  you  the  meaning  of  the  term  ‘equal’.  Why   is  it  implausible  that  you  could  achieve  that  using  only  what  is  given  to  you   from  perception,  through  repeated  experience?  (If  you  prefer,  imagine  that   someone  is  trying  to  teach  you  the  meaning  of  the  term  ‘bear’.  Why  is  it   implausible  that  you  could  achieve  that  using  only  what  is  given  to  you  from   perception?)  

2. Give  a  clear  example  —  using  ‘equal’  or  ‘half’  —  of  the  kind  of  thought  that   Plato  seems  to  be  describing  in  the  first  paragraph  here.  

886 Meno

SOCRATES: So the man who does not know has within himself true opin- ions about the things that he does not know?—So it appears.

SOCRATES: These opinions have now just been stirred up like a dream, but if he were repeatedly asked these same questions in various ways, you know that in the end his knowledge about these things would be asd accurate as anyone’s.—It is likely.

SOCRATES: And he will know it without having been taught but only questioned, and find the knowledge within himself?—Yes.

SOCRATES: And is not finding knowledge within oneself recollec- tion?—Certainly.

SOCRATES: Must he not either have at some time acquired the knowledge he now possesses, or else have always possessed it?—Yes.

SOCRATES: If he always had it, he would always have known. If he acquired it, he cannot have done so in his present life. Or has someonee taught him geometry? For he will perform in the same way about all geometry, and all other knowledge. Has someone taught him everything? You should know, especially as he has been born and brought up in your house.

MENO: But I know that no one has taught him. SOCRATES: Yet he has these opinions, or doesn’t he? MENO: That seems indisputable, Socrates. SOCRATES: If he has not acquired them in his present life, is it not clear86

that he had them and had learned them at some other time?—It seems so. SOCRATES: Then that was the time when he was not a human being?—Yes. SOCRATES: If then, during the time he exists and is not a human being

he will have true opinions which, when stirred by questioning, become knowledge, will not his soul have learned during all time? For it is clear that during all time he exists, either as a man or not.—So it seems.

SOCRATES: Then if the truth about reality is always in our soul, the soulb would be immortal so that you should always confidently try to seek out and recollect what you do not know at present—that is, what you do not recollect?

MENO: Somehow, Socrates, I think that what you say is right. SOCRATES: I think so too, Meno. I do not insist that my argument is right

in all other respects, but I would contend at all costs both in word and deed as far as I could that we will be better men, braver and less idle, if we believe that one must search for the things one does not know, rather than if we believe that it is not possible to find out what we do not knowc and that we must not look for it.

MENO: In this too I think you are right, Socrates. SOCRATES: Since we are of one mind that one should seek to find out

what one does not know, shall we try to find out together what virtue is? MENO: Certainly. But Socrates, I should be most pleased to investigate

and hear your answer to my original question, whether we should try on the assumption that virtue is something teachable, or is a natural gift, ord in whatever way it comes to men.

Phaedo 65

or anything of that kind, but something else beyond all these, the Equal itself. Shall we say that this exists or not?

Indeed we shall, by Zeus, said Simmias, most definitely. b And do we know what this is?—Certainly. Whence have we acquired the knowledge of it? Is it not from the things

we mentioned just now, from seeing sticks or stones or some other things that are equal we come to think of that other which is different from them? Or doesn’t it seem to you to be different? Look at it also this way: do not equal stones and sticks sometimes, while remaining the same, appear to one to be equal and to another to be unequal?—Certainly they do.

But what of the equals themselves? Have they ever appeared unequal c to you, or Equality to be Inequality?

Never, Socrates. These equal things and the Equal itself are therefore not the same? I do not think they are the same at all, Socrates. But it is definitely from the equal things, though they are different from

that Equal, that you have derived and grasped the knowledge of equality? Very true, Socrates. Whether it be like them or unlike them? Certainly. It makes no difference. As long as the sight of one thing makes you

think of another, whether it be similar or dissimilar, this must of necessity be recollection? d

Quite so. Well then, he said, do we experience something like this in the case of

equal sticks and the other equal objects we just mentioned? Do they seem to us to be equal in the same sense as what is Equal itself? Is there some deficiency in their being such as the Equal, or is there not?

A considerable deficiency, he said. Whenever someone, on seeing something, realizes that that which he

now sees wants to be like some other reality but falls short and cannot be e like that other since it is inferior, do we agree that the one who thinks this must have prior knowledge of that to which he says it is like, but deficiently so?

Necessarily. Well, do we also experience this about the equal objects and the Equal

itself, or do we not? Very definitely. We must then possess knowledge of the Equal before that time when

we first saw the equal objects and realized that all these objects strive to 75 be like the Equal but are deficient in this.

That is so. Then surely we also agree that this conception of ours derives from

seeing or touching or some other sense perception, and cannot come into our mind in any other way, for all these senses, I say, are the same.

3. A  similar  thought  process  could  apply  to  the  concepts  ‘fair’  or  ‘right’.  Briefly,   how  does  that  connect  with  what  we  are  told  elsewhere  by  Plato  about  the   difference  between  philosophers  and  non-­‐philosophers?        

  [D]    

   

1. ‘Good’  as  a  general  concept  probably  plays  the  same  role  here  as  ‘equal’.  But   elsewhere  Plato  seems  to  do  more  with  ‘The  Good’.  With  reference  to  either   elsewhere  in  the  Phaedo,  or  the  Republic,  explain  the  other  role  that  ‘The   Good’  seems  to  play  in  his  understanding  of  the  world.  

2. Now  briefly  explain  one  possible  path  of  connection  between  these  two   different  roles,  as  follows:  Plato  asserts  that  some  things  grasped  by  the  soul   appear  to  be  eternal.  Why?    He  perhaps  connects  their  eternity  with  the  other,   grander  role  played  by  some  Forms  elsewhere.  Why?  

3. A  different  aspect  of  these  connections:  Plato  clearly  also  assumes  that  innate   implies  eternally  true.  But  that  may  in  at  least  some  cases  be  a  mistake.  Why?  

   

Phaedo 67

I have no means of choosing at the moment, Socrates. Well, can you make this choice? What is your opinion about it? A man

who has knowledge would be able to give an account of what he knows, or would he not?

He must certainly be able to do so, Socrates, he said. And do you think everybody can give an account of the things we were

mentioning just now? I wish they could, said Simmias, but I’m afraid it is much more likely that

by this time tomorrow there will be no one left who can do so adequately. So you do not think that everybody has knowledge of those things? c No indeed. So they recollect what they once learned? They must. When did our souls acquire the knowledge of them? Certainly not since

we were born as men. Indeed no. Before that then? Yes. So then, Simmias, our souls also existed apart from the body before they

took on human form, and they had intelligence. Unless we acquire the knowledge at the moment of birth, Socrates, for

that time is still left to us. Quite so, my friend, but at what other time do we lose it? We just now d

agreed that we are not born with that knowledge. Do we then lose it at the very time we acquire it, or can you mention any other time?

I cannot, Socrates. I did not realize that I was talking nonsense. So this is our position, Simmias? he said. If those realities we are always

talking about exist, the Beautiful and the Good and all that kind of reality, and we refer all the things we perceive to that reality, discovering that it existed before and is ours, and we compare these things with it, then, just e as they exist, so our soul must exist before we are born. If these realities do not exist, then this argument is altogether futile. Is this the position, that there is an equal necessity for those realities to exist, and for our souls to exist before we were born? If the former do not exist, neither do the latter?

I do not think, Socrates, said Simmias, that there is any possible doubt that it is equally necessary for both to exist, and it is opportune that our argument comes to the conclusion that our soul exists before we are born, 77 and equally so that reality of which you are now speaking. Nothing is so evident to me personally as that all such things must certainly exist, the Beautiful, the Good, and all those you mentioned just now. I also think that sufficient proof of this has been given.

Then what about Cebes? said Socrates, for we must persuade Cebes also. He is sufficiently convinced I think, said Simmias, though he is the most

difficult of men to persuade by argument, but I believe him to be fully convinced that our soul existed before we were born. I do not think myself, b however, that it has been proved that the soul continues to exist after