Torpediniformes¶
Teddy Warner| 2022 | 3-5 minutes
Naïveté serves as the nemesis to bravery. Plato’s text, The Meno, recounts a conversation between Socrates and Meno, initially exploring the teachability of virtue, before branching into definition of the attribute itself.
Though The Meno concludes with an unsatisfactory crutch on the gods to ‘explain’ virtue and its origin, the recollection of ‘inherent’ knowledge produced by logical conversation throughout the text demonstrates the learning process. The bravery required to recollect your inherent knowledge lies in one’s ability to realize their naïveté on a topic and in their commitment to endure the numbness of the learning process.
Socrates asserts a paralleled superiority to both “correct opinion” and “knowledge” concluding his conversation with Meno, providing a logical contrast to potential incorrect opinion or perceived knowledge 1. It is this perceived knowledge & incorrect opinion that shrouds one in naïveté and hinders their willingness and/or ability to learn.
Meno branches his conversation from the teachability of virtue to his attempt to explain virtue to Socrates, a topic he has made “many speeches” about before “large audiences on a thousand occasions” 2. He applies societal ideals to his perception of virtue in his explanation, offering that men should be “able to manage public affairs” whilst “benefit[ing] friends” and “harm[ing] his enemies”, while women must preserve the “home” and its “possessions” whilst remaining “submissive to her husband”, and continues the trend for idealistic virtues held by the contemporary society 3.
Despite Meno’s seeming grasp on the concept of virtue, Socrates’ logical line of questioning cleaves away at his shroud of false, perceived knowledge until Meno is left “quite perplexed” 4. It is this perplexity, or the ‘numbness’ as Socrates refers to, that is the result of the departure from the comfort of perceived knowledge and naïveté, yet also the brave first step to learning.
In the case of learning, bravery not only is held by those willing (or thrust) into their ‘first step’, but required from those who choose to endure their numbness.
Socrates’ careful description of this numb state in his metaphor of the torpedo fish successfully emphasizes the lack of “harm” despite the potential discomfort this state of “perplex[ity]” yields 5. In the face of the torpedo fish, of the un-answered, unknown knowledge, bravery is to face the state of “perplexity” and strive for the knowledge one “d[oes] not know” 6.
Facing perplexed numbness is a natural transition from perceived knowledge to knowledge, and thus you do one no disposition by following the trail of logic and “making [them] perplexed and numb as the torpedo fish does”, while simultaneously exposing oneself as the potential subject of perplexed numbness 5.
Logic must be the torpedo fish, and the numbness induced by it the result of departure from naïveté and potential false knowledge due to questioning and reason. To step beyond one’s naïve shroud in an attempt to recollect ‘inherent’ knowledge is the bravery of learning.
Not only does The Meno depict the process of learning in its text, but the act of undertaking a complex classic in the contemporary day embodies the brave aspirations for the recollection of knowledge as well.