Meno By Plato

3 Pages 709 Words

Meno by Plato
“Learning As Recollection”


In Meno by Plato, Socrates and Meno are involved in somewhat of a heated argument about virtue. During this discussion, insults and rhetorical games are exchanged between the two men. During this debate, the idea of “learning as recollection” is introduced by Socrates.
Socrates calls this idea of “learning as recollection” a meaningless argument. He states that “nothing can be taught.” Learning and education are not accomplished in the way that we think it is, according to Socrates. It is simply done by recollection. If one learns an idea or concept, how did they know they learned anything if they never knew it was there? The answer is that people know things through experience and memory.
Socrates says that the human soul is immortal and can be reborn again and again. The soul has been born many times in many shapes (human, animal, etc.). This is not personal immortality but transmigrational immortality. The human soul, much like the actions of a human, is very rash and doesn’t think through its decisions. So when it is reborn or reincarnated, it tends to ‘hop’ into the first thing or person it sees or encounters (which is usually worse than what it previously was).
The soul has learned everything there is to know. So when we “learn” we are just “recollecting” what our souls have learned or the soul’s knowledge from a former life. Therefore, it is not true that nothing is learned even though nothing is taught. All human beings passively have knowledge about everything but it is with guidance that they can come to actively know. Through questioning, knowledge is recovered from within. A good example of this is the part of Meno when Socrates questions a slave boy about a geometry problem. The boy seemed to know nothing about Socrates’ problem. However, through a series of questions, the boy actually knew the answer without knowing h...