Spring 2010 - Interpretation

Book Review: Plato’s Meno 3 1 5
called) as compared both with the seeing that takes place in the geometrical
demonstration and with what one sees or rather hears in listening to poetry
or to testimony, in a court of law, for example. Socrates’ citations from the
poet Theognis are profitably examined. One is encouraged to consider how it
is that the city plays the sophist and the role of imitation in the transmission
of political virtue. The decisive difference between theôria and praxis with
respect to the utility of true opinion is not overlooked.
The index of oaths (Appendix A) prompts one to make
explicit for oneself just what an oath is, what it wants to be, and what it presupposes;
this is hardly unrelated to the question of knowledge and opinion.
That the oath belongs inescapably to the city has been plain or plain enough
since Hesiod.
The appendix of geometrical figures (Appendix B) provides a
clear and readily graspable pictorial record of a demonstration. It is teachable.