著者

酒井 健太朗

出版者

環太平洋大学

雑誌

環太平洋大学研究紀要 = BULLETIN OF INTERNATIONAL PACIFIC UNIVERSITY (ISSN:1882479X)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.17, pp.11-19, 2020-11-30

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This paper aims to clarify Plato’s thoughts on education in Meno. In this dialogue, Meno asks Socrates whether virtue is teachable. Socrates answers that he does not know whether virtue is teachable and goes on to ask, in turn, how to define virtue. Meno presents three definitions of virtue, each of which are refuted by Socrates. Meno grows weary of their conversation and presents Meno’s paradox – that if one knows what one is seeking, inquiry is unnecessary, but if one does not know what one is looking for, inquiry is impossible. Therefore, Meno argues that inquiry is either unnecessary or impossible. He does this to cease his discussion of virtue with Socrates. However, Socrates perceives Meno’s intention and responds by presenting the “theory of recollection” – that learning essentially consists of remembering things we knew before we were born but then forgot – to argue that inquiry should persist. Most scholars take the theory of recollection to be Plato’s response to Meno’s paradox. Recently, however, Dominic Scott objected this interpretation by introducing the distinction between “Meno’s challenge” (80d5-8) and the dialogue’s “eristic dilemma” (80e1-5). In other words, Scott claims that Plato’s theory of recollection is not intended as a response to Meno’s paradox. By pointing out several problems with Scott’s interpretation, I claim that discovery depends on the possibility of inquiry and therefore that the theory of recollection is both intended to solve and indeed solves Meno’s paradox.