“The paradox in the Meno. MEN.: And how, Socrates, will you inquire into something that you do not even know what it is? What will you put in your mind to inquire into among those things you do not know? But even in the best case, suppose you have identified it, how will you know that it is that which you were ignorant of? (Meno, 80d)

Memory. SOC.: The soul is immortal, it has been born many times and has seen things up here, those in Hades and everything else, there is nothing it has not learned... Since everything in nature is related and the soul has learned everything, nothing prevents one who will remember one of them... from discovering all the others, as long as he is a brave man and does not tire of the inquiry. For research and learning are recollection (Meno, 81c–d).”

Can we humans discover the truth and acquire knowledge of beings? Plato affirms this query of the sophists, as well as that of every other philosophically skeptical thinker. The soul is what will bring the positive answer; experience will check and verify the a priori knowledge, that which the soul inherently carries. In the examination and assessment of the issue, the teacher is also necessary, the one who will indicate the path of empirical evidence of things and thus make individual opinion immutable and stable knowledge. The latter is proposed as the essential element of virtue, the investigable concept of the dialogue Meno.

The fact of its absence from Athenian society is attributed to the random distribution from the gods. However, we, the contemporary readers, are called to take on the struggle of dialectical inquiry to discover a more stable origin of virtue, if we indeed accept that our society still needs it.

Ioannis Petrakis, PhD from the Department of Classical Philology at A.U.Th., professor at the Experimental High School of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, lives and works in Thessaloniki. His scientific pursuits and publications include references to the epic poet Hesiod, the philosophical works of Plato, and the mathematician Euclid. He is a regular member of the Hellenic Philosophical Society.

Other books of his: The Reception of Hesiod's Works and Days by later prose writers (5th century BC - 3rd century AD) and commentators, PhD thesis, Thessaloniki 2003, Afai Kyriakidi. Language, history and Euclidean geometry, (collective work) Thessaloniki 2006, published by the University of Macedonia. Plato - Phaidon, Introduction - Translation - Herm. Comments, (series: The Platonic Dialogues), Athens 2014, published by Hestia. Articles: The language of Euclid and Proclus, Thessaloniki 2006, Conference Proceedings, published by Ziti. The circle of Pythagoreans and the incomplete arguments for the immortality of the soul in Plato's Phaidon, Hellenic Philosophical Review, 91 (2014) 50-62.