Socratic Definitions

The "What is X?" Question 1. Socrates asked a simple kind of question that revolutionized philosophy: "What is it?" 2. Usually raised about significant moral or aesthetic qualities (e.g., justice, courage, wisdom, temperance, beauty). 3. Such questions are the central concern of the "Socratic" (early) dialogues of Plato. 4. A so-called "Socratic definition" is an answer to a "What is X?" question. 5. Socratic definitions are not of words, but of things. Socrates does not want to know what …showed first 75 words of 2004 total…

…showed last 75 words of 2004 total…of "Meno's Paradox," or "The Paradox of Inquiry." The argument can be shown to be sophistical, but Plato took it very seriously. This is obvious, since his response to it is to grant its central claim: that you can't come to know something that you didn't already know. That is, that inquiry never produces new knowledge, but only recapitulates things already known. This leads to the famous Doctrine of Recollection, to which we now turn.