The dialogue begins with Meno abruptly asking Socrates whether virtue can be taught, whether it comes by practice or nature, or if it arrives in some other way. Socrates confesses that he does not know what virtue is, having never met anyone who truly knows. Meno offers a succession of definitions, listing the virtues of a man, a woman, an old person, and a child, which Socrates critiques as an enumeration rather than a unified concept. He compares virtue to bees, which share a common nature despite their variety. When Meno attempts to define virtue as the power of command, Socrates points out that command must be exercised justly to be virtuous.
After a digression on the geometrical definition of figure as the limit of form, Meno proposes that virtue is the desire for honorable things and the power to attain them. Socrates argues that everyone desires the good, meaning no one desires evil knowingly; therefore, virtue must be the power of getting good with justice. Because justice is merely a part of virtue, Meno's definition circularly uses the word it attempts to define. Meno complains that Socrates acts like a torpedo fish, numbing the minds of those he converses with and reducing them to helpless confusion.
To answer Meno's skeptical puzzle about how one can ever inquire into what one does not know, Socrates introduces the doctrine of reminiscence. He argues that the immortal soul has seen all things in previous existences and merely recollects knowledge rather than acquiring it anew. To demonstrate this, Socrates interrogates an uneducated slave boy, drawing out correct geometrical principles simply by asking a sequence of questions, thereby proving that true notions are latent within the human mind.
Returning to the initial question, Socrates and Meno examine the teachableness of virtue under an hypothesis: if virtue is knowledge, it should be teachable. However, because no professional teachers of virtue can be found, they conclude it cannot be taught. The respectable citizen Anytus joins the conversation and reacts with fury when Socrates suggests that the Sophists are teachers of virtue, eventually issuing a veiled warning about the dangers of philosophy in Athens.
Socrates observes that right opinion can guide human action just as effectively as true knowledge, although right opinions are unstable unless anchored by an understanding of the cause through recollection. Because there are no teachers of virtue, statesmen must guide their cities not through reasoned knowledge, but through divine inspiration and correct opinion. Plato ultimately leaves the central question unresolved, demonstrating that true virtue requires a deep comprehension of causes that transcends mere custom.
