In just 34 lines ( 77c to 78b) Socrates is able to route Meno’s claim that “all men desire good things” (77c). Examining the exact route he took, and the precise arguments he used, we may be able to shed more light on the conclusion. Socrates’ first step is to clearly delineate the argument he will attack. “Do you mean that [those that desire bad things] believe the things to be good, or that they know they are bad, and nevertheless desire them?” (77c) Socrates asks. He here makes clear that he is arguing that all men desire good things, not that all men always do good things. He cannot plausibly argue that no bad acts are committed, he will instead make a clear division between actively desiring a bad, and unintentionally desiring a bad through ignorance. If this distinction were not made, it would be difficult to explain differing desires and differing decisions in similar situations (say running away from the enemy in a battle or remaining to fight). We therefor disregard the ignorant wrongdoers, and focus on the claim that knowledgeable wrongdoers exist. Socrates now begins to force Meno to commit to logically necessary statements that he will be later forced to contradict. “Do you think, Meno, that anyone, knowing that bad things are bad nevertheless desires them?” (77c). This seems an innocuous extension of the original argument, and Meno accepts it.
The meat of the argument now begins to show itself. After getting Meno to agree that to desire is to want to possess for oneself, Socrates asks “Does he think that bad things benefit him who posses them, or does he know that they harm him?” (77d). Meno answers that there are both types. The use of the word “know” juxtaposed to the word “think” reveals an implicit assumption both men are accepting. This assumption will prove to be an important one, and it may be one that we choose question and explore. Socrates asserts that bad things necessarily harm. What kind of harm are we speaking of? Modern intention-theory (Moya, for example) has come to the consensus that to say “I am going to do (intend to do) X and I know it is bad for me from every point of view” is a contradiction. One must have reasons (even if they stem from ignorance) for doing an action, else one is acting irrationally. To avoid reducing Socrates to rebutting only an irrational contradiction, we might be justified in surmising that Socrates is not speaking of harm in an all-inclusive sense but rather in a narrower, moral sense. In the Akrasia Handout a distinction is made between prudential harm and moral harm. I believe that Socrates is claiming that to do a bad thing will cause moral harm, which is a reasonable premise, but he ignores pragmatic, or at least worldly, benefits. It implies that no tradeoff between the pragmatic and the moral is ever justified (else if the pragmatic gain were large enough it might be “beneficial” to do a bad thing). But it seems clear in the perspective of Socrates’ life that he believed in absolute moral principles and would not compromise them. He proved this by refusing to escape prison even in the face of death because he felt it would be morally wrong. Thus he is at least consistant in maintaining that moral considerations are paramount.
“And do you think that those who believe that bad things benefit them know they are bad?,” asks Socrates. “No…,” responds Meno (77d). Socrates then claims that those who believe that bad things are beneficial are ignorant of their bad nature, and thus desire good but lack knowledge of the good. Thus this group is not germane to Meno’s claim that there are those that desire bad things. The argument now increases in tempo. “Those whom you say desire bad things, believing that bad things harm their possessor, know that they will be harmed by them?” (77e) asks Socrates. Meno has already committed himself to agreeing and does so. We ought to remember though, that we are speaking of moral harm not prudential harm here, otherwise the statement looks to be non-sensible. “Do they not think that those who are harmed are miserable to the extent that they are harmed?” (77e) Socrates asks. This is yet another assertion, but Meno has no troubles with it. Schopenhauer, Neitzche, and Freud might invoke the Death Drive as a counter-argument here. If there is an aspect of ourselves that wants us to die or be injured this part may be happy if we are harmed. Nevertheless, this is accepted as an implicit premise to the argument and Meno, sensing his argument’s oncoming collapse agrees reluctantly. Now all Socrates must do is link misery to unhappiness, and assert that no one wants to be unhappy. If to do bad knowingly does harm to you, and doing harm to yourself makes you unhappy, and no one wants to be unhappy, then if naturally follows that no one would knowingly do bad.
Though Meno concedes he has lost, how valid was Socrates’ argument? We could question it from a few distinct angles. We could challenge the premises of the arguments. These were accepted by both men during the discussion, and if they are true the argument looks to be a strong one. These assertions include the claim that bad things necessarily harm, that no one would want bad things to happen to them or to be miserable or unhappy. The flaw in these assertions may rest in the lack of acknowledgment, or at very least the complete discounting of prudential considerations in favor of moral considerations. This violates our everyday intuitions about the way people act and the reasons people do things. We hear stories of students cheating on “Ethics” final exams, we observe the behaviors of some lawyers, and we note the way we and those around us often act in what is in our best interest pragmatically rather than morally. In life there seems to be some tradeoff between prudential and moral considerations, even if the moral considerations have a less elastic slope.
But though this distinction is a fair objection to Socrates’ argument, does it really ring true? If you look at the context of the argument and the weight that would have been put on moral virtue (at least in an intellectual arena) one can perhaps re-examine the argument and it would remain standing. Perhaps our everyday compromises, as reasonable as they seem, are, as Socrates might claim, weighing down our souls. The “bad” in Socrates’ argument seems to be a bad on our soul not a bad in the world. A moral transgression not a pragmatic one is the relevant effects of a bad action. Perhaps it is our ignorance that makes us weigh the pragmatic so heavily. But if we accept this Socrates’ argument becomes perhaps too esoteric. It strikes down so many of our actions, and carves so deeply into our way of life that it seems to be too difficult to follow in a less than perfect world. If we are to believe that Socrates did follow his own beliefs, we can see the price he paid. In many ways like St. Francis, he lives a poor life, depends on others for sustenance, rarely baths, is ridiculed and hated by the leaders of the city for revealing their ignorance, and is finally jailed and killed. His scorning of the material in life is consistent with his intellectual views. Perhaps we live in ignorance then, but even if the dialog presents a consistent set of beliefs, one could imagine our set of beliefs, including a tradeoff between the moral and the prudential, being consistent as well. Furthermore if pragmatic considerations are completely disregarded, it seems Socrates’ argument would force us to accept the logical conclusion that one is not morally responsible for one’s bad actions. One only does bad through ignorance, and one always does the good if one is aware it is good. Thus all men must be equally moral, some simply have more knowledge that others and are therefor able to do the good more effectively. All bad actions must be involuntary (due to ignorance). This does not seem to be consistent with our view of the world. Socrates will have to provide us with more than an assertion that his view of the world is the correct one if he expects us to be fully convinced of his view, no matter how compelling, especially if his view is counterintuitive(a “para-doxa” or paradox).
Ultimately Socrates won his argument with Meno. Using commonly accepted principles he was able to convince Meno that all men desire good things. Thus no man would knowingly do a bad thing. All our actions would be what we though was right. Yet there is still something troubling about the argument. Buried deep within it there lies a further assumption that draws the pieces together. Our criticisms so far have been answerable, even defeasible. What method can we use to untie this Gordean knot? I believe that this underlying assumption that provides harmony to the rest is the assumption of the intrinsic goodness of human nature. Without this assumption the argument unravels. No longer can it be said that man would not desire a bad thing. Dostevevsky’s Underground Man ought to have shocked us out of this fallacy. Even if you grant Socrates other assertions, it still seems this is the keystone that holds the rest together. Ultimately one could even deny that having a clean soul is a goal one aspires to thereby removing even the force of Socrates’ argument. One could say man enjoys some bad - one could claim that man’s nature is ugly. We could remember Thucydides’ reminder that “human nature [is] always ready to offend.”
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