Meno Virtue and Knowledge in Essay

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Virtue, instead, becomes something more affiliated with knowledge and experience than instruction, helping to reveal the reason for its elusiveness where applying definition is concerned. To Socrates, virtue pertains to the knowledge accumulated in one's pursuits. Therefore, "the soul, then, as being immortal, and having been born again many times, rand having seen all things that exist, whether in this world or in the world below, has knowledge of them all; and it is no wonder that she should be able to call to remembrance all that she ever knew about virtue, and about everything."

However, he warns that this capacity for recollection is not in an of itself sufficient to apply as a definition of knowledge. This induces in our discussion a practical point of consideration with clear relevance to our own proclivities in education. The applicable nature of virtue, which only becomes thus when acted out in one's affairs as opposed to simply examined as in the exchange between Menos and Socrates, means that mere "education" on the subject is more than likely to fall well short of instilling true virtue.

To Socrates, the key distinction between virtue based on recollection and virtue based on knowledge is the absence of any real challenge to the sense in the former and the core dilemmas or decisions often demanded in the latter.

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The recollection of virtuous concept does not in and of itself implicate the ability for application or the insight to truly understand those key unifying forces rendering behavior and orientation as definable as virtuous. To this point, Socrates makes the important resolution that "for as all nature is akin, and the soul has learned all things; there is no difficulty in her eliciting or as men say learning, out of a single recollection -all the rest, if a man is strenuous and does not faint; for all enquiry and all learning is but recollection"

This is a purposeful undermining of mere education or instruction, forces of clear importance and value to Socrates. This is done primarily to the end of demonstrating the unique correlation between virtue and knowledge, as opposed to learning and recollection. For Socrates, that which makes virtue so elusive to the definition also makes it a powerful manifestation of knowledge, denoting that such can not be achieved by easy dictation. The discussion here is most revealing in its ultimate consistency with Socrates initial claim. Indeed, a satisfactory definition of virtue is never achieved. And yet, in the consideration here of its complexity, Meno demonstrates virtue to be something which can only be achieved through the complex endeavoring of life and not through the filter of scholasticism.

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