Virtue in the Cave Moral Inquiry in Plato's Meno

by Weiss, Roslyn

• ISBN13: 9780739132180
• ISBN10: 0739132180
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-09-24
• Publisher: Lexington Books

Summary

This book takes and defends the position that the Meno is a self-conscious analysis and assessment of the worth, on one hand, and limitations, on the other, not of inquiry simpliciter but of moral inquiry for the value of open-ended and unending investigation into moral things. In this view, the Meno is an apology for the Socratic enterprise, justifying it on such "Platonic" grounds as immortality of the soul and recollection theory, but on its own terms: moral inquiry is vindicated in the Meno by its progress toward opinion. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Roslyn Weiss is Clara H. Stewardson Professor and Chair at Lehigh University

Table of Contents

Introduction: In the Cave	p. 3
The Struggle over Definition	p. 17
Meno	p. 17
What Is Virtue? Round 1	p. 21
What Is a Good Definition?	p. 27
What Is Virtue? Round 2	p. 32
Impasse, Paradox, and the Myth of Learning by Recollection	p. 49
Impasse	p. 49
Meno's Paradox	p. 52
Socrates' Paradox	p. 57
The Myth of Learning by Recollection	p. 63
The Slave-Boy: Learning by Demonstration	p. 77
Geometry and Virtue	p. 79
The Diagram	p. 84
The Demonstration	p. 94
The Summaries	p. 107
The Disavowal	p. 122
The Road to Larisa: Knowledge, True Opinion, and Eudoxia	p. 127
Hypothetical Method	p. 127
Is Virtue Knowledge?	p. 134
Father and Son	p. 141
Are There Teachers of Virtue?	p. 144
True Opinion and Aitias Logismos	p. 152
Eudoxia and Divine Dispensation	p. 161
Conclusion: The Examined Life	p. 171
The Unattainability of Knowledge by Ordinary Human Beings	p. 180
The Value of True Opinion	p. 180
The Possibility of Achieving Virtue without Wisdom	p. 181
Recollection in the Phaedo	p. 185
The Abandonment of Moral Inquiry in the Republic	p. 203
Bibliography	p. 211
Index	p. 219
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