Abstract: Recently, some scholars have authoritatively stated the idea of Men.97e2-98b5 being a strong criticism of any epistemological perspective based on an additive model of knowledge, in which knowledge is conceived as a form of opinion with the addition of something else. In this article I’ll try to show that Plato's aim is not to criticize such model of knowledge but to pose, in the form of a hypothesis which has to be verified in other texts, the main problem of his epistemology: is the logos, or rather the aitias logismos, able to bind opinions so firmly together that they are transformed into that kind of infallible knowledge that is the episteme? In order to justify this interpretation of Men. 97e2-98b5, I’ll try to provide a new reading of the relationship between this passage of the dialogue and other themes exposed in the previous sections of the text (such as the maieutic experiment to which Socrates subjects Meno's slave, the Recollection doctrine and the method by hypothesis).
Keywords:
Plato; Meno; knowledge; recollection; aitias logismos