Every second you spend reading this short dialogue to see how he does it will make you a better teacher, parent, or statesman.

How to Teach Virtue

by: Andrew Kern

Plato Meno has set the pattern for us of how to teach virtue:

Every second you spend reading this short dialogue to see how he does it will make you a better teacher, parent, or statesman.

The Meno by Plato begins with the direct and forthright question, "Can virtue be taught?"

It ends with the conclusion, stated by Socrates, that it is a gift from the gods. Which, if he is right, is a wise thing to say. And if he just spent a whole dialogue guiding Meno to that conclusion, then he has just led him along the path to wisdom.

Not that Meno has arrived (or that Socrates thought he had), but that he has progressed. He has, if he has a willing soul, moved in the direction of becoming wiser.

That being the case, then Socrates has just taught virtue to Meno. Furthermore, he has shown us how to do it. Even better, he even showed Meno how to do it in the dialogue by teaching it to a slave boy.

Let me lay that out in a more orderly sequence to make it clearer.

At the beginning of the dialogue with Meno (from now on, The Meno), Meno says to Socrates:

Can you tell me, Socrates, whether virtue is acquired by teaching or by practice; or if neither teaching nor practice, then whether it comes to man by nature, o rin what other way.

It amuses me to think that this is one of the first recorded multiple choice tests. Socrates, being too wise to pick an answer that isn't first examined and understood, isn't willing to answer until he understands the question. At this point, Meno rolls his eyes at Socrates, smacks him on the side of the head, tells him to get with the program, and sends him to the office.

As a result of Socrates' sheepish submission and Meno's aggressive impatience, western civilization loses one of its most important documents and every ensuing age suffers from a terribly inadequate understanding of virtue, drifting between puritanical fundamentalism and passionate self-indulgence, unable to find its balance and lasting only until about 350 BC, at which point, there being no Academy, the Macedonians sweep down on Athens and conquer Greece and have nothing interesting to say or learn so they are Nothing But Tyrants, not even paying virtue the complement of hypocricy.

Oh wait, sorry, bad dream. Socrates doesn't disappoint after all. At least, he doesn't disappoint the reader who wants to think really hard about just about the most important question one can ask. It was in regard to The Meno and this question that David Hicks wrote some of his most provocative words in his absolutely essential book, Norms and Nobility.

When a teacher of 14-year-olds was teaching The Meno, he sent his students to ask his parents whether virtue can be taught. Says Hicks:

It was revealing to learn later how few parents had ever asked themselves this question or articulated an answer, yet what question could be more pertinent to raising a child?" (emph. mine).

This still jolts me every time I read it.

But I had said I would simplify my point and now I am wandering all over the place. Please pardon me and I will try again.

Meno asks, "Can virtue be taught?"

Socrates answers, "I know literally nothing about virtue... Not only that, my dear boy, but you may say further that I have never known of any one else who did, in my judgment."

For some people, this ends the interestingness of the dialogue, so they close it. "Obviously virtue can be taught! The Bible says..." say some of them, stomping away. "Obviously virtue cannot be taught! The Bible says..." say the others and they stomp away arm in arm.

Other people are morally or intellectually slack and have too much time on their hands, so they are drawn into the dialogue at this point, wondering what could make Socrates so stupid as not to know what virtue is and curious as to how Plato managed to write a whole dialogue about such a moron.

Sorry, digression. Simplicity, Andrew, simplicity. Or at least order.

Meno challenges Socrates by listing virtues, but Socrates says, "How can I know these are virtues if I don't even know what a virtue is? What do they all have in common?" He proceeds to give a lesson to Meno on how to define things based on the idea that the thing being defined actually is something that can be defined.

You might find that ridiculous too, which is fine, because most of what Socrates says is ridiculous. But one could argue that most dictionaries today are based on the idea that definitions aren't of things but of words. Those words change with the weather, so definitions are slippery. The thing itself can't be known. Socrates challenges that.

Here's what Socrates says to Meno, and it's particularly brilliant:

Now, in your turn, you are to fulfill your promise, and tell me waht virtue is in the universal; and do not makea singular into a plural, as the facetious say of those who break a thing, but deliver virtue to me whole and sound, and not broken into a number of pieces: I have given you the pattern.

"I have given you the pattern."

This, I think, might be the most important single key to interpreting The Meno and very possibly all of Plato's dialogues. 

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