You have questions about the nature of virtue, my son. Well, you have come to the right place...and for on INSANELY LOW PRICE I'm going to toss in an examination of the ability of man to LEARN!!!! Hurry and get your copy today, supplies are running low.

      It is not everyday that one can argue with Socrates and hold their own, but in this situation it seems as though a case can be made against the great philosopher, for at the very least, a couple of reasons. It is possible what Socrates calls a subject that can be taught is not as easily taught as he would assume. It is very probable that perhaps there is a little more required for virtue to be taught than simply someone who is virtuous and any old student willing to learn, therefore meaning he may have abandoned the idea of virtue being taught on the wrong basis, and if he has based his beliefs on the wrong basis, his whole line of thinking may be off.

      It could be argued that virtue is both taught and inborn...in that virtue is more "nurtured" than anything else. The question of whether or not a person can be born with a certain disposition that opens the door to virtuousness later in life is never once addressed in Meno, instead Socrates and Meno debate about whether or not, in the blackest and whitest of terms, a person is either born with virtue or no, and if it has to be taught.

      Socrates himself proves both of those faulty theories wrong himself, but fails to see that the hybrid of the two must be true. He says that obviously if there were young born with virtue, then society would find a way to distinguish those children, and then would keep them safely closed away from all that could corrupt them until they were of age. He also disproves the idea that virtue is something that could simply be taught by showing that virtuous men do not always even teach their sons, or are not capable of teaching, virtue. He does not, however, address the theory that possibly some are born with the raw materials needed to live a virtuous life, and that though these children can certainly be corrupted and swayed away from a virtuous lifestyle, they are also very capable of leading a life full of virtue, if given only a suitable amount of guidance. It can be argued that some people are simply born with a personality that does not contain much virtue, as it can be argued that some are born with a much more peaceful and virtuous disposition, but the truth may be somewhere in between, that humans are born with a certain about of "goodness" that if nurtured by a knowledgeable and virtuous teacher, can grow into virtuousness of its own.

      It seems as though Socrates may be going zero-for-two in The Meno when he speaks of how one is never capable of learning, but simple recalls things he already knows. This philosophical dilemma may very well be one that only exists in words, and not really in substance.

      If Socrates means that every human understands every single thing on some subconscious level and what that person calls "learning" is only the recollection of such knowledge, he is wrong. It is not reasonable to say that humans are subconsciously gaining new information, incredible amounts of new information, without the conscious mind even knowing, but it is reasonable to say that there is new information that could be learned being created every moment of everyday. Following that line of thought, there is no way that anyone could already have knowledge of all that is to be known subconsciously, as there is more to know every second.

      I hope that Socrates was just twisting words in a possibly unusual way and what he means is that all knowledge is obtained through an introspection of sorts, in that all knowledge is essentially done at the level of someone "figuring something out for himself" and not simply instilled in someone by their teacher. If this is Socrates's belief, it certainly could have been worded a better way. Possibly he could have said that newly acquired knowledge is always dependent on the tools the mind has which churn out that knowledge only after being fed raw ideas. That is to say that your senses give you information, but no knowledge is gained until to you work the thoughts out in your mind. Still it could be argued that this theory is not correct, but at least it would be a little closer to being sound. An opponent of this line of thought would only have to point out that I had no idea what the capital of New Hampshire was until my third grade teacher told me. There was no way she could have asked me questions to lead me to the answer; there were no internal, mental, tools or methods that allowed me to produce that knowledge. Dry facts such as that must be learned in the very way that Socrates argues does not exist. Again it seems that Socrates is on the right line of thought, but is looking for a solution that is somewhere in the extremes, in the black, or in the white, and few answers to few questions lie within those hues.