Let me restate the suggestion with which I concluded the last chapter and say a further word about how it can help us understand the unity of the Gorgias. I have suggested that Socrates is interested in Gorgias as a potential ally. The reference at the beginning of the dialogue to Socrates' lingering in the agora can help us begin to understand Socrates' need for such an ally; later passages, especially in the Callicles section, will help us expand and deepen our understanding. But even if Socrates is in need of an ally with outstanding rhetorical abilities, Gorgias would seem to have proven to be a disappointing candidate. For the result of Socrates' conversation with Gorgias is an impressive Socratic victory that serves not only to impress Gorgias but also to bring out Gorgias' lack of wisdom on a crucial issue. To repeat, Gorgias' boasts about rhetoric and his (genuine) view of the prerequisites of the rhetorical art reveal that he takes justice too lightly. Yet, as I observed, Socrates does not abandon the discussion after Gorgias' defeat, even though he no longer continues to speak with him directly. And I suggested that the continuation of the dialogue may be a continuation of Socrates' conversation with Gorgias, henceforth to be conducted indirectly but nonetheless intended to remedy the flaws in Gorgias' understanding and to continue to lay the foundation for an alliance. In other words, Socrates may not have given up hope in Gorgias.

Few philosophers have endured more criticism and abuse in modern times than Plato. As one of the great figures of the classical tradition, Plato was subjected to powerful attacks by the founders of modern philosophy and their followers, who set out to succeed where they thought the naïve and utopian ancients had failed. And the attacks on Plato continue unabated today, as postmodernists look back to his works to find the source of the faith in reason that they want to root out of the West. Yet, for all that, Plato has not lost his power to attract and enchant. Those who first sought to overthrow the intellectual authority of classical philosophy, men such as Machiavelli and Hobbes, would be amazed to learn that their foe continues to attract partisans and even devotees. And more recent critics, such as Derrida and Rorty, are similarly dismayed that their efforts finally to put Plato to rest have not succeeded. Is it not a strange feature of our late modern or postmodern age that there still remains serious interest in Plato?

Yet perhaps the very difference between Plato and his critics, from the early moderns to those of our time, can help us to understand why his works have not lost their appeal. For one of the most powerful things drawing readers back to Plato today is their sense that his works contain a richer and truer account of human life, of the soul and its deepest concerns, than one can find even in the greatest works of modern philosophy.

Especially if it is right to have doubts that Socrates himself is genuinely convinced of the truth of the account of the afterlife that he presents to Callicles, his presentation of that account may be regarded as an example of noble rhetoric. Certainly, one of the virtues of the account is that it portrays the philosophic life in a light that, were the account to be believed, would lessen people's anger toward that life and win it respect. But how believable is Socrates' account? Socrates himself says that he is not very optimistic that Callicles will believe it. And he may not have had high hopes that Callicles would believe even his claim that he believes it himself (consider again 523a1–3, 527a5–9). If Callicles' silence at the end of the dialogue reflects this likely skepticism, he would not be unlike many readers of the Gorgias, who do not hesitate to refer to Socrates' account as a myth, despite his insistence that it should be regarded as a logos. Socrates' account, I would suggest, is not meant to be – at least not in any simple or direct way – the primary model of the kind of noble rhetoric to which Socrates is pointing in the Gorgias. But if the account at the end of the dialogue is not the primary model of noble rhetoric, and yet Socrates is nonetheless calling for a new kind of rhetoric, what would be the character of such rhetoric?

The Gorgias reveals much about Callicles. It gives us a view into the soul of a young man who Socrates thinks could never truly join him in his search for the truth, and who is willing to be an outspoken critic of the philosophic life. It would seem fitting that the dialogue should also reveal much about Socrates, that we should see a presentation or defense of Socrates' philosophic life in response to Callicles' attack on it. And Socrates does return, on the heels of his critique of hedonism, to the question that he earlier let fade into the background. He reminds Callicles that the most important question at issue in their conversation is the most important of all human questions – “How ought one to live?” – and he returns to Callicles' exhortation of him to abandon philosophy and to turn to a more political life (500c1–8). Yet, although Socrates returns to the question of whether his life is truly choiceworthy, he seems to raise this question only to let it fade again into the background. It takes quite some time in the remainder of the dialogue before Socrates speaks directly about his own life; and when he does, his statements are quite brief (see 521a2–522e6; cf. 508c4–513c3). Also dampening our expectations that Socrates will be particularly open about his own life in the last part of the dialogue is his return, in the same section that immediately follows his critique of Callicles' hedonism, to the issue of rhetoric.

RECOLLECTION AS METAPHOR?

Socrates rounds off this whole passage (80–6) on a note of caution, followed by a strong exhortation:

The first few words suggest a disclaimer of some sort; but we should be careful about what we take them to imply. In saying that he would not insist on the argument too strongly, he is acknowledging that it needs further support. We have noted at various points how the Phaedo attempts to do this, in regard to both recollection and immortality. But Socrates' words cannot be used as evidence that he only proposed recollection as a metaphor for something else. Of course, many modern readers may feel a deep unease with the whole recollection episode. On the one hand they might admire Plato's insights into the nature of learning and see his theory as a landmark in the theory of knowledge to which later theorists have, to a greater or lesser extent, been returning ever since.

On pages 60–65 above, I claimed that Plato draws an extremely vivid portrait of Meno's character throughout the work, and has Socrates attempt to reform it as the conversation goes on. One of his main stratagems is to use the slave boy and Anytus as object lessons from which Meno is supposed to learn. I now wish to examine the last section of the dialogue, 96d onwards, to see whether Socrates ultimately has any success.

Let us turn back to the point where Anytus leaves Socrates and Meno to continue the discussion as to whether virtue is teachable. After concluding that it is not (95b1–96c10), Socrates introduces the distinction between knowledge and true belief (96d1–98b6); finally they agree that virtue is true belief, not knowledge, and comes not by teaching but by divine dispensation (98b7–100c2). What I wish to show is that throughout this passage Meno's behaviour as an interlocutor undergoes a marked change, especially in comparison to the first ten pages of the dialogue.

He is much milder and more co-operative. There are certainly no abrupt or peremptory demands, nor any obstructions. At no point does Socrates need to comment on his failings, even light-heartedly. The third section (98b7–100c2) is a particularly striking contrast to Meno's behaviour in the first part of the dialogue: in all his answers he agrees straightforwardly with Socrates.

In the previous chapter, I went against the trend of many recent commentators who take the conclusion of the Meno to be largely ironic. In doing so, I concentrated solely on the evidence internal to the text. This, however, is to overlook what many of these commentators would see as crucial evidence: the trenchant critique of Athenian politicians in the Gorgias. If, as these sceptics assume, the Gorgias predates the Meno can we not assume that Plato's earlier views are in the background when he has Socrates revisit the question of what the Athenian politicians did for their city?

I wish to continue to go against this trend and argue for a different way of relating the two dialogues. I shall begin by rehearsing the essentials of the political critique of the Gorgias and then argue that, by comparison with the Meno, it operates at a greater level of sophistication where the analysis of political virtue is concerned. It is more likely that the Meno represents an earlier point in Plato's career as a political commentator. To support this claim, I shall attempt to undermine the reasons usually given for dating the Meno after the Gorgias. The upshot will be that there is no longer any reason at all to read the Meno in the shadow of the Gorgias; and any external evidence for finding the Meno's conclusion ironic fades away altogether.

Meno offers his third definition of virtue at 77b2–5:

Socrates' first move is to substitute the word ‘good’ (agathos) for ‘fine’ (kalos). Although he does this very swiftly, the move is not as straightforward as it is made to sound. The word kalos can mean ‘beautiful’, and is commonly applied to physical objects. But it can also apply to actions or characters in the sense of ‘noble’. (I have used the translation ‘fine’ in an attempt to cover both senses.) In Plato's works, the concept of the agathon is very closely connected with whatever is beneficial or useful – prima facie a different sense from that of kalon. Nevertheless, agathon and kalon draw very close together in other dialogues, and it is interesting that here Meno accepts the substitution without any complaint. This allows Socrates to proceed straight to the business of refutation, which he does by examining each of its two components in turn: that virtue involves (1) the desire for good things and (2) the ability to acquire them.

DESIRE AND THE GOOD (77b–78b)

The underlying assumption of this section is that, if something is to act as a mark of the virtuous, it cannot be common to all people, because not everyone is virtuous.

We have now reached a turning point in the dialogue. Meno's definitions have all been refuted and, in response to the demand to inquire into the nature of virtue, he is about to issue a notorious challenge to the possibility of inquiry and discovery (80d). En route to this point, Plato has revealed a number of details about his character, details that will turn out to be fundamental in two ways: first, and more immediately, they will help us understand exactly why Meno issues his challenge at 80d. Second, and more generally, throughout the dialogue Socrates not only discusses education as one of his central themes, but also shows it happening in practice by confronting some of Meno's failings and trying to change them. To appreciate this point, we first need to be aware of what exactly these failings are.

INTELLECTUAL LAZINESS

Right from the beginning, we have seen how Meno appears as someone imbued with the ethos of memorising answers to be recycled at a later date. I mentioned how this was anticipated in the very opening lines and in Socrates' immediate response – his snide comments about the Thessalians and the ‘wisdom’ they have just acquired from Gorgias. The implied criticism comes still closer to the surface at 71c8–d2 when Socrates asks Meno to recall what Gorgias said about virtue, hastily correcting this into a request for Meno to state his own view (which will of course coincide with Gorgias').

IS MENO 77B–78B COMPATIBLE WITH REPUBLIC IV?

Irwin's view

On pages 46–53 I interpreted Socrates' conclusion in the argument of 77b–78b as being that all our self-interested desires are for good things and that no one ever desires anything they know to be bad for them. But in Plato's Ethics, Terence Irwin claims that the argument is susceptible of a very different interpretation, one that would make it compatible with the position of Republiciv. He interprets the negative thesis – that no one knowingly desires bad things – as meaning that no one desires something on the grounds that it is bad, or qua bad. Then he interprets the positive thesis – that everyone desires good things – to mean only that some of our desires are for good things qua good, not that they all are. This leaves open the possibility of our having non-rational desires, focused on objects other than the good, e.g. pleasure or honour. The function of the argument is merely to insist that we never desire something qua bad, which is compatible with the moral psychology of the Republic.

Irwin's reading of the negative thesis seems to me implausible for the following reason. Meno would have to be intent on defending the view that some people desire certain things qua bad. It is difficult to see why he would do this. If the explanation is that he wants to insist that there are people with self-destructive urges, why at 78a5 does he cave in immediately to the claim that no one desires to be wretched (or that everyone desires not to be wretched)? This would be the very thesis he is out to defend if Irwin's view were correct.

INTRODUCTION

By 86c, Socrates appears to have removed the obstacles put in his path at 80b–e. Meno approves of recollection, and certainly accepts that he has a duty to inquire. If Socrates were to have his way from now on, they would immediately resume their search for the definition of virtue.

Before we go any further, it is worth pausing to consider what this inquiry would be like in the light of the methodological and epistemological claims made between 81b and 86c. The problem of discovery required us to start with a known specification of the object of inquiry. In the case of a definitional inquiry, however, there is nothing we can know about virtue without knowing the definition itself. Socrates' solution is to say that we have knowledge unconsciously, but at the conscious level we have to start from mere conjecture. There will be no ‘hard rocks of certainty’ from which to work, and assumptions made at the outset or along the way will be subject to revision. But appearances aside, this inquiry is actually being guided by latent knowledge gradually returning to consciousness.

How in more detail will this process work? We can take our cue from a remark made at 81c9–d3:

Reality is structured, as was our prior awareness of it.