Meno Tonight we'll be talking about the Meno in introduction to philosophy. Rather than get into the deeper elements of the dialog, I'd like to point out a few things that someone reading this text for the first time might find useful. Since we'll be reading Plato in Ethics as well, the following notes will be useful to members of both classes.

1. Plato's works entered the public domain before copyright was formalized, so its easy to find. The Internet Classics Archive | Meno by Plato will be especially useful for anyone who's writing a journal and would like to directly quote or link to parts of the dialog.

2. As I mentioned in class on Monday. This dialog occurs before the overthrow and restoration of Athenian democracy in 404 b.c.e., but was written well afterward, so Plato's intended audience would be expected to be familiar to those events. The eight-month reign of the thirty dictators was an episodie in the Peloponnesian War. The events of this war are summarized on the the wikipedia (an excellent source). Although the Athenians won the war, the dictators came to power as a direct result of the Athenian defeat in Cyprus. We're told that Meno was killed in this expedition. Some of Socrates former students were involved in this oligarchy, and resented over this period was an important motivator for the prosecutors at Socrates eventual trial. (Especially for Anytus, who appears in the Meno as well).

3. Despite everything that I just said, the Meno is not usually presented as Plato's commentary on the political events that present a background to his character's discussion. Plato's dialogs are traditional broken up into three types, usually called Early, Middle and Late Period. Even though the order of composition is disputed, there's a lot to be said for a three part division between the dialogs. The early period dialogs are aporetic, that is, the characters illustrate the Socractic method of inquiry, but don't necessarily come to any conclusions about the questions they've chosen to pursue. The middle period dialogs demonstrate the method, but also present answers to the various questions. The late dialogs tend to be treatises and Plato doesn't seem to play the same sorts of games that he does in the early dialogs. Wether or not we can present a completed set of theories that belonged to a mature Plato is a topic for people far smarter than I.  ¶ #

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