In Plato’s dialogue Meno one of ideas that is discussed by Socrates is the idea of the immortality of the soul. Socrates outlines his belief that the soul is immortal and therefore possesses all knowledge available; so there is no such thing as learning but instead recollecting information. Even though the idea of the immortality of the soul was believed by one of the greatest philosophical minds that has ever lived, Socrates, there are some flaws with this concept. One flaw is that Socrates’ justification for his belief in the idea is lacking concrete evidence but instead relies heavily on faith. Another flaw is that, in terms of the recollection of knowledge, Socrates does not use viable methods in order to prove that his theory exists.
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Socrates states, “…there is no teaching but recollection,” (pg 71) Essentially Socrates is concluding that people cannot learn knowledge, but rather they endure a process of recalling information they are already in possession of due to the immortal nature of their souls. After Socrates expresses this point, Meno prompts Socrates to use real life evidence as he is still unsure of the validity of his opinion. Socrates uses one of Meno’s uneducated slaves for a demonstration. He prompts the slave to solve a geometrical problem, despite never being officially educated before. Socrates is trying to get the slave to understand the geometrical theorem that a square whose area is twice that of a given square is the square on the diagonal of the given square. The slave originally falsely answers the problem, but after trial and error prompted by Socrates’ questions, he comes to a sound conclusion. Socrates claims he never officially “teaches” the slave, but instead prompts him with questions that lead him to the correct answer to the problem. But, even if Socrates is merely asking questions, he is still leading the subject down the correct path to acquire specific knowledge. Socrates make the assumption that questioning is not teaching but in actuality, leading questions are in a sense teaching the slave how to critically think in the way that Socrates needs him to in order to make it seem like the slave is recollecting. In one instance in the dialogue, Socrates even directly gets the slave to notice a diagonal on the problem by bringing it up to him. Socrates directly defies his policy of no teaching so the slave could conclude the problem with a more concrete result. Socrates claims that there is no such thing as teaching, but then how come in order to get the slave to “recollect” knowledge he has to indirectly teach him how to comprehend
Socrates states, “…there is no teaching but recollection,” (pg 71) Essentially Socrates is concluding that people cannot learn knowledge, but rather they endure a process of recalling information they are already in possession of due to the immortal nature of their souls. After Socrates expresses this point, Meno prompts Socrates to use real life evidence as he is still unsure of the validity of his opinion. Socrates uses one of Meno’s uneducated slaves for a demonstration. He prompts the slave to solve a geometrical problem, despite never being officially educated before. Socrates is trying to get the slave to understand the geometrical theorem that a square whose area is twice that of a given square is the square on the diagonal of the given square. The slave originally falsely answers the problem, but after trial and error prompted by Socrates’ questions, he comes to a sound conclusion. Socrates claims he never officially “teaches” the slave, but instead prompts him with questions that lead him to the correct answer to the problem. But, even if Socrates is merely asking questions, he is still leading the subject down the correct path to acquire specific knowledge. Socrates make the assumption that questioning is not teaching but in actuality, leading questions are in a sense teaching the slave how to critically think in the way that Socrates needs him to in order to make it seem like the slave is recollecting. In one instance in the dialogue, Socrates even directly gets the slave to notice a diagonal on the problem by bringing it up to him. Socrates directly defies his policy of no teaching so the slave could conclude the problem with a more concrete result. Socrates claims that there is no such thing as teaching, but then how come in order to get the slave to “recollect” knowledge he has to indirectly teach him how to comprehend