The Meno is a concrete presentation of that side of Socrates’ practice by which he is attached to the city. Socrates, the gift of Apollo to the city, performs his distinctive service to the city primarily through his involvement with ignorance. In its most obvious form this involvement with ignorance amounts to an exposing of men’s ignorance and pre-eminently of their ignorance of their ignorance. Correspondingly, the Meno is a presentation of an exposing of Meno’s ignorance carried out by Socrates in speech and in deed. Inasmuch as precisely this aspect of his practice, his function as gadfly, is what most of all was to provoke his eventual condemnation, it is highly appropriate that in the Meno not only is Socrates accused of stinging those with whom he comes into contact (though, significantly, as a “sting ray’’ rather than a “gadfly”) but also near the end of the dialogue one of those who was later to accuse him publicly (Anytus) appears on the scene and openly warns Socrates of the danger to which he is exposing himself by his practice (94 e). Yet, Socrates’ practice in the city, his involvement with ignorance, is an exposing of the ignorance of others not for the sake of exalting himself but rather for the sake of making concretely manifest how ignorance and especially awareness of that ignorance belong essentially to appropriately human wisdom. Socrates’ practice in the city is a testimony to the intrinsic relation of ignorance to human wisdom. One way—a mythical way—of speaking about this relation is by regarding human wisdom as bound to recollection. This is the way taken in the Meno.
In its most fundamental and unitary form the matter that is at [64] issue in the Meno is the relation between whole and parts; indeed a considerable part of our interpretive effort will be devoted to considering how this unitary matter gathers up into itself the many themes taken up in the course of the dialogue. With regard to this matter the Meno especially brings to light the appropriate comportment of man as one of mediating between part and whole; it exhibits such mediating as that which enables man to be what he properly is. Since that which allows man to be what he properly is constitutes nothing less than human virtue itself (ἀρετή: cf. Rep. 353 b-e), what the dialogue brings to light is virtue. The Meno is in a fundamental yet manifold sense a dialogue on virtue.
In order to accord with our preliminary determination of the way of Platonic dialogue as such (cf. Introduction, Sect. 3), it is imperative that our interpretive attempt be attuned from the outset to the manifold dimensions of the Meno and to the interplay which unfolds in the dialogue as a whole. We need especially to see how the question of whole and parts is fundamental in each of the dimensions of the dialogue—how it is taken up in logos and posed in such fashion as to gather into unity the various themes explicitly discussed, how it is the most fundamental issue in that myth which Socrates relates at the center of the dialogue, and, finally, how it is taken up in the dimension of ergon by being reflected in what is exhibited about the characters of the dialogue.