Meno is a Socratic dialogue written by Plato. Written in the Socratic dialectic style, it attempts to determine the definition of virtue, or arete, meaning in this case virtue in general, rather than particular virtues, such as justice or temperance. The goal is a common definition that applies equally to all particular virtues. Socrates moves the discussion past the philosophical confusion, or aporia, created by Meno's paradox (aka the learner's paradox) with the introduction of new Platonic ideas: the theory of knowledge as recollection, anamnesis, and in the final lines a movement towards Platonic idealism.. (Introduction by Wikipedia)
has attained an imaginary clearness and
definiteness which is not to be found in his own writings. The popular
account of them is partly derived from one or two passages in his
Dialogues interpreted without regard to their poetical environment. It
is due also to the misunderstanding of him by the Aristotelian school;
and the erroneous notion has been further narrowed and has become fixed
by the realism of the schoolmen. This popular view of the Platonic ideas
may be summed up in some such formula as the following: 'Truth consists
not in particulars, but in universals, which have a place in the mind of
God, or in some far-off heaven. These were revealed to men in a former
state of existence, and are recovered by reminiscence (anamnesis) or
association from sensible things. The sensible things are not
realities, but shadows only, in relation to the truth.' These unmeaning
propositions are hardly suspected to be a caricature of a great theory
of knowledge, which Plato in various ways and under many figures of
speech is seeking to unfold. Poetry has been converted into dogma; and
it is not remarked that the Platonic ideas are to be found only in about
a third of Plato's writings and are not confined to him. The forms which
they assume are numerous, and if taken literally, inconsistent with one
another. At one time we are in the clouds of mythology, at another among
the abstractions of mathematics or metaphysics; we pass imperceptibly
from one to the other. Reason and fancy are mingled in the same
passage. The ideas are sometimes described as many, coextensive with
the universals of sense and also with the first principles of ethics; or
again they are absorbed into the single idea of good, and subordinated
to it. They are not more certain than facts, but they are equally
certain (Phaedo). They are both personal and impersonal. They are
abstract terms: they are also the causes of things; and they are even
transformed into the demons or spirits
