We must be brave

I’ll be honest, when I was reading Plato’s Meno for my Philosophy tutorial recently, I had no idea what to do about the sections where Plato insists on the necessity of bravery. His sections on recollection and the eternality of the soul I could understand and the demonstration of mathematics I could follow but what role did courage have to do with learning? Surely we don’t need courage to learn, do we? It was a couple of comments in my Tutorial that helped me understand the role courage played in learning.

To see why courage is needed, we first need to realize how tense this dialogue is. When I first read this dialogue , I thought the opening question was “Can virtue be taught?” However, on closer reading, the actual question is “Can Socrates say whether virtue is taught?” Meno begins the dialogue with an accusative question, questioning not virtue but the competence of Socrates. We know this to be true because, once Socrates says that he does not know what virtue is, Meno asks whether this is what should be reported back about him. Meno’s task is not knowledge seeking, but rather reputation testing.

Perhaps this is to be expected, Meno is someone with an impressive reputation himself. He is a student of Gorgias, the smooth-talking sophist, he is handsome and young, wealthy enough to have an entourage of slaves following him around. Meno, as Socrates notes, is well used to having things his way. From his first paragraph, Socrates notes the high reputation that both Thessaly and Meno share. That is why Meno reacts so tersely when Socrates continually shows his definitions of virtue to be lacking. Surely the problem can’t be with Meno, it must be with Socrates who stuns people like a torpedo fish. And if Socrates is someone who can beguile you into stupidity, perhaps he is a sorcerer who needs to be dealt with.

We know, though, that the problem is not with Socrates. We know this because, when the two interlocutors call a slave boy over, who has no history with geometry, Socrates is able to walk him fairly far through a set of geometric proofs. However, the boy is eventually stooped too but reacts with no anger. When Socrates asks Meno if the boy has been harmed, Meno must relent that he has not. There is no harm to the well being of someone to come to the end of their understanding. What then does Meno need to heavily to defend? It is his reputation.

Unlike Meno, the slave boy can continue through the lesson by Socrates, unencumbered by the possible dent to his reputation because he has none. The boy doesn’t have any name to defend and so he can look foolish for the sake of the argument. He can say when he does not know something because the task of learning is worth more than the price of looking stupid.

Unlike almost everything else Socrates says, there is no equivocation about the importance of learning. He is willing to defend this idea at all costs, that we will be better if we search for the things we do not know. As he will say later at his trial, the unexamined life is not worth living. We must search for the things we do not know. The only way to do so, is to admit that we do not know them.

In today’s world, where we are expected to have an opinion on all topics at a moments notice, it takes significant courage to say “I don’t know.” When we place all our future flourishing in the hands of elite, legacy programs and jobs, the risk to our advancement is great when we give the wrong answer to a question. Yet we will never learn, never advance, never gain further understanding if we do not risk our reputations. We must see learning as a good higher than status.

If one wishes to seek knowledge and wisdom, they must do so at all costs.

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