Plato's Meno

Given its brevity, Plato's Meno covers an astonishingly wide array of topics: politics, education, virtue, definition, philosophical method, mathematics, the nature and acquisition of knowledge and immortality. Its treatment of these, though profound, is tantalisingly short, leaving the reader with many unresolved questions. This book confronts the dialogue's many enigmas and attempts to solve them in a way that is both lucid and sympathetic to Plato's philosophy. Reading the dialogue as a whole, it explains how different arguments are related to one another and how the interplay between characters is connected to the philosophical content of the work. In a new departure, this book's exploration focuses primarily on the content and coherence of the dialogue in its own right and not merely in the context of other dialogues, making it required reading for all students of Plato, be they from the world of classics or philosophy.

ISBN 0521640334   Pages 252 ISBN13 9780521640336 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher Cambridge University Press   Weight (grammes) 540 Imprint Cambridge University Press   Published in Cambridge Format Hardback   Series title Cambridge Studies in the Dialogues of Plato Publication date 16 Feb 2006   Height (mm) 228 Library of Congress 2006280826   Width (mm) 152 DEWEY 170   Spine width (mm) 17 DEWEY edition DC22   Academic level Professional / Scholarly

1		The opening : 70a-71d		11
2		The first definition : 71e-73c		23
3		A lesson in definition : 73c-77d		31
4		The third definition : 77b-79e		46
5		Meno as an interlocutor		60
6		The stingray : 79e-80d		69
7		'Meno's paradox' : 80d-81a		75
8		The emergence of recollection : 81a-e		92
9		The argument for recollection : 82b-85d		98
10		The conclusion : 86b6-c2		121
11		The method of hypothesis : 86c-87c		129
12		Virtue is teachable : 87c-89c		145
13		Virtue is not teachable : 89e-96d		161
14		Virtue as true belief : 96d-100b		176
15		Irony in the Meno : the evidence of the Gorgias		194
16		Meno's progress		209

'Dominic Scott's new monograph on Plato's Meno is a tour de force. Readers of Plato in general, and this extensively-mined dialogue in particular, will be aware of how high the standards have now been set for writing about Plato as both literary genius and philosophical pioneer, by Taylor, Cornford, Vlastos and others. They will be correspondingly impressed by how successfully Scott's beautifully written work equals and sometimes surpasses these standards, while admirably avoiding both the fanciful and the anachronistic.' Journal of Hellenic Studies

 Be the first to write a customer review