Virtue in the cave

by Roslyn Weiss

"The central question of Plato's Meno is "What is virtue?" However, its epistemological and metaphysical concerns - as evidenced by "Meno's paradox" (which asks how inquiry is possible if knowledge is not present at the outset) and by "recollection" (which constitutes Socrates' answer to it) - suggest to scholars that the Meno marks the transition from Plato's early "Socratic" period to his middle, more "Platonic" one. Moreover, the Meno's quasi-mystical notions of immortality of the soul and metempsychosis, as well as its heightened attention to mathematics and its development of an ostensibly new "method of hypothesis," lend further support to this widespread view." "In this original interpretation of the Meno, Roslyn Weiss takes and defends the position that what it offers is a self-conscious analysis and assessment of the worth, and of the limitations, not of inquiry itself, but of moral inquiry."--BOOK JACKET.