An Analysis On Plato's Meno

This article attempts to analysis Plato’s Meno deeply to understand the context of a Socrates’ proposition ‘virtue is knowledge’.Firstly,by means of asking the question of ‘what is virtue’,Socrates made Meno realizing that his previous cognition of virtue could not stand,because it could not afford to Socrates’ elenchus.The right way of understanding virtue is to confess his ignorance of virtue as Socrates,and to reconsider what is true virtue.Secondly,Socrates proposed his famous proposition of ‘virtue is knowledge’ by a hypothesis,and at the same time assumed that ‘virtue is good’.After some argument,Socrates had established three pairs of relationships: virtue and good,beneficial and good,beneficial and prudence.Through the relationships,Socrates presented us another kind of form of proposition: ‘virtue is prudence,or part of it’,instead of ‘virtue is knowledge’.In fact,Socrates intended to tell us that any cognition about virtue could hardly do without consideration for what is good.Prudence is just a quality in action,which is able to grasp the good and beneficial in action.It is important to notice that Socrates claimed people to be ignorant to virtue all through,at the consequence that it does not mean someone to get the knowledge of virtue when he realized the proposition of ‘virtue is prudence’.It just means that he get a true opinion.So,we must examine our belief of virtue all the time.The unexamined life is not worth living.Finally,it is surprised that Socrates intended to overturn the proposition ‘virtue is knowledge’,and set up another proposition ‘virtue is true opinion’.Because when Socrates made an argument for this,he gave virtue some political meanings.Therefore,the proposition ‘virtue is true opinion’ did not mean that Socrates tried to overthrow the former proposition,but to reveal the nature of political virtue,which regarded as ture opinoin.Even though it is beneficial to us,it never attains the stability of knowledge.Therefore,opinion must be examined by knowledge.