INTRODUCTION

By 86c, Socrates appears to have removed the obstacles put in his path at 80b–e. Meno approves of recollection, and certainly accepts that he has a duty to inquire. If Socrates were to have his way from now on, they would immediately resume their search for the definition of virtue.

Before we go any further, it is worth pausing to consider what this inquiry would be like in the light of the methodological and epistemological claims made between 81b and 86c. The problem of discovery required us to start with a known specification of the object of inquiry. In the case of a definitional inquiry, however, there is nothing we can know about virtue without knowing the definition itself. Socrates' solution is to say that we have knowledge unconsciously, but at the conscious level we have to start from mere conjecture. There will be no ‘hard rocks of certainty’ from which to work, and assumptions made at the outset or along the way will be subject to revision. But appearances aside, this inquiry is actually being guided by latent knowledge gradually returning to consciousness.

How in more detail will this process work? We can take our cue from a remark made at 81c9–d3:

Reality is structured, as was our prior awareness of it.