What I learned reading “Ménon”.

“ Ménon” was written by Plato. Below, what I learned from reading this book.

1. How do we acquire virtue?
2. It is not possible to define virtue by making a list of available virtues: a list of examples doesn’t equal concept.
3. For example, if there is one virtue for men and another for women, are they different?
4. Health is the same in all, because each individual health shares common characteristics.
5. Justice is a virtue, not simply “virtue”: courage and temperance, for example, are also virtues.
6. We can not say what a figure is by saying that it is “square” or “circle,” nor can define color by saying that it is “white” or “blue”.
7. Socrates tries to define shape as “the stuff that has color in it”, but no one has yet explained what color is, which makes such definition imprecise.
8. Do you know what is “end”, “limit”, “solid” and “surface”?
9. We all seek what we think is good ; if we seek something harmful, that’s only because we ignore the fact that the goal is actually harmful .
10. Virtue, then, seems to be not in the will to have good things, but in the ability to achieve them.
11. But virtue isn’t ability to achieve either: it is possible to achieve good things unjustly .
12. If justice is a virtue, definiting virtue as “the ability to achieve goals in a justly manner” is imprecise.
13. How can we look for something without knowing what we are looking for?
14. Aporia is necessary : it makes a person realize his own ignorance.
15. Everyone seems to have latent knowledge that can be invoked through questioning.
16. If virtue is science, it can be taught.
17. Anything that is scientifically conducted leads to good.
18. If virtue is teachable, how come there are no “teachers of virtue” or people wanting to learn virtue?
19. The person who teaches something often doesn’t practice the thing they teach.
20. Sophists do not teach virtue.
21. If the virtuous man could teach virtue, he would open a school of virtue!
22. If there were virtue teachers, they would come to a consensus about whether virtue is or is not teachable.
23. Even those who claim that virtue can be taught are confused when speaking of virtue itself.
24. Virtue is not science.
25. True opinion produces no inferior result to science.
26. It is through mathematics that correct opinions become science and therefore stable.
27. If the person can become virtuous by learning, then virtue is not innate.
28. The definition of virtue is inconclusive.