Key Arguments

• He notes that in their ‘previous discussion none of us remarked that right and good action is possible to man under other guidance than that of knowledge (episteme);—and indeed if this be denied, there is no seeing how there can be any good men at all.’
• He elicits Meno’s agreement that ‘good men are necessarily useful or profitable’ and that they are useful only ‘if they are true guides to us of action’.
• He then retracts part of an earlier assumption: ‘when we said that a man cannot be a good guide unless he have knowledge (phrhonesis), this we were wrong.’
• Using the Larisa example, he shows that both a man who ‘knew the way to Larisa’ and one who ‘had a right opinion about the way, but had never been and did not know’ could be ‘a right and good guide’.
• He secures Meno’s assent that ‘while he has true opinion about that which the other knows, he will be just as good a guide if he thinks the truth, as he who knows the truth’.
• He draws the key generalization: ‘Then true opinion is as good a guide to correct action as knowledge; and that was the point which we omitted in our speculation about the nature of virtue, when we said that knowledge only is the guide of right action; whereas there is also right opinion.’

Source Quotes

Certainly we shall have to look to ourselves, and try to find some one who will help in some way or other to improve us. This I say, because I observe that in the previous discussion none of us remarked that right and good action is possible to man under other guidance than that of knowledge (episteme);—and indeed if this be denied, there is no seeing how there can be any good men at all. MENO: How do you mean, Socrates?

MENO: Yes. SOCRATES: But when we said that a man cannot be a good guide unless he have knowledge (phrhonesis), this we were wrong. MENO: What do you mean by the word 'right'?

SOCRATES: I will explain. If a man knew the way to Larisa, or anywhere else, and went to the place and led others thither, would he not be a right and good guide? MENO: Certainly.

MENO: Certainly. SOCRATES: And a person who had a right opinion about the way, but had never been and did not know, might be a good guide also, might he not? MENO: Certainly.

MENO: Exactly. SOCRATES: Then true opinion is as good a guide to correct action as knowledge; and that was the point which we omitted in our speculation about the nature of virtue, when we said that knowledge only is the guide of right action; whereas there is also right opinion. MENO: True.

Key Concepts

• none of us remarked that right and good action is possible to man under other guidance than that of knowledge (episteme);—and indeed if this be denied, there is no seeing how there can be any good men at all.
• But when we said that a man cannot be a good guide unless he have knowledge (phrhonesis), this we were wrong.
• If a man knew the way to Larisa, or anywhere else, and went to the place and led others thither, would he not be a right and good guide?
• And a person who had a right opinion about the way, but had never been and did not know, might be a good guide also, might he not?
• Then true opinion is as good a guide to correct action as knowledge; and that was the point which we omitted in our speculation about the nature of virtue, when we said that knowledge only is the guide of right action; whereas there is also right opinion.

Context

After Meno presses the question of how good men come to exist if virtue is not taught, Socrates revisits an earlier inference that identified virtue with knowledge by introducing right opinion as an equally effective guide to action, thereby explaining how goodness in practice is possible without knowledge.