Meno

In this lively dialogue Socrates is challenged by a young aristocrat who insists that virtue can be neatly listed—one for each age, gender, and station. The conversation quickly turns to the problem of definition: what does it mean to be virtuous, and can a single idea capture all its facets? Through careful questioning Socrates shows how easy‑going answers collapse into circularity, prompting both participants to confront the limits of their own understanding.

The discussion then shifts to a deeper puzzle about knowledge itself. Socrates proposes that the soul carries a hidden store of truths from previous lives, a notion he illustrates by guiding the aristocrat’s slave to solve a simple geometric problem without formal instruction. This surprising moment hints at a theory of recollection, setting the stage for an inquiry into whether virtue, like mathematics, might be something the mind can retrieve rather than acquire anew.