What is Virtue? Meno, Part 1

The Meno is clearly connected with both the Protagoras and the Gorgias. The Protagoras culminates in Socrates’s assertion that it is necessary to ask the comprehensive question—“What is virtue?”—which happens to be the guiding question of the Meno; and we soon discover that young Meno has been the student of none other than Gorgias. The Meno as a whole falls into three parts, the first and longest part consisting of Meno’s three attempts, with Socrates, to discover an adequate definition of “virtue” or to answer the question, “What is virtue?” For although Meno wants to know first how virtue is acquired, Socrates insists that they must know first what it is, a surprisingly difficult question. In his attempts to define “virtue,” which we will track carefully in this lecture, Meno continually vacillates between understanding virtue as the greatest good for ourselves, on the one hand, and as the greatest good for which we should be willing to give up our own greatest good, on the other. T

English
  • Runtime 30 minutes
  • Production Company The Great Courses
  • Created May 20, 2022 by
    shunsuke218
  • Modified May 20, 2022 by
    shunsuke218