Can Virtue Be Taught? Answering the Question Posed in Plato's Meno
As an underlying principle to the promotion of society, virtue is something to be contemplated and its acquirement to be understood. In one of Plato’s Socratic dialogues concerning this question of how virtue is acquired, Meno poses the following question to Socrates, preceding their contemplative dialogue: “Can you tell me, Socrates, whether virtue is acquired by teaching or by practice; or if neither by teaching nor practice, then whether it comes to man by nature, or in what other way?” The answer to this question is that it is acquired by a combination and cultivation of teaching, practice, and nature. Virtue does not become a part of a man’s nature until he practices that virtue, however, man does not come into practicing that virtue unless by teaching and in many instances by his nature.
The word “virtue” comes from the Latin “virtus” for maleness, or alternatively, worth. Virtue is a quality or trait possessed by a man that exemplifies his maleness. It is the ability of a man to comport himself in an honorable and moral manner. As defined by Aristotle, moral virtue is a disposition to behave in the right manner and as a mean between extremes of deficiency and excess, which are vices. The word disposition seems to imply that virtue is something that comes about by nature. Similarly, ability is commonly understood as something that is a given trait of a man. However, ability grows by teaching and practice. The disposition for virtue exists in all man by nature, but it only becomes a disposition of virtue by cultivation of practice and followed example, also known as teaching.
When virtue is taught, it is done almost entirely through example. It would be quite feudal for someone to attempt to instruct courage or temperance, for example. The result of teaching is learning, and virtue cannot be learned unless it is practiced. To practice it one must know what it is. To know what it is comes about by learning through examples set by teachers of virtue. Teachers of virtue are not necessarily scholars on virtue itself, but rather men who portray virtue in their own lives and actions, and as admirable individuals make this virtue that they live attractive. Thus is it taught.
Virtue is chiefly brought about by practice. Even as one may have the best examples as leaders in their lives and live in a situation in which their nature is best cultivated for virtue, it would still be necessary for that person to put these beneficial factors into play through practice of that virtue. One does not become fortitudinous unless he practices fortitude in his life. Someone cannot live temperately unless he practices temperance. The practice of virtue is essential to living it, and by its nature is required in being virtuous.
Lastly, virtue to some extent requires human nature. All men are born with a conscience, predisposed to some idea of right and wrong. It is up to man to find the medium of comportment that is known as virtue. It may be taught and guided to become that moral virtue that it is, but man’s nature provides the template that is built up by these two other factors.
The answer to Meno’s question renders such an answer, that virtue is acquired by practice as a result of teaching and nature. Virtue pushes forward society, and therefore the understanding of its transmission is essential. Those who practice become teachers, and those teachers are the men who change the world.
