Socratic dialogue as a way of thinking

Parmenides ' commitment with the intellect

Following the Pythagoreans , Plato maintains that the human soul pre-existed before its union with the body . It pre-existed in the world of forms before it came into this world to be imprisoned in the body (for the body is like a prison to the soul . While in the world of ideas , the soul was acquired with the idea of forms of things . But when in this world , it perceives the `shadows ' of the forms , it is reminded of what it used to know it remembers or regains its knowledge

. Hence the process of learning in this world is a process of reminiscence , a process of remembrance

In the Meno (Plato 's dialogue , Socrates was reported to be dialoguing with Meno on the universal definition of virtue . To buttress his point on knowledge being a process of anamnesis , Socrates aided the `Meno boy to solve a sophisticated problem in geometry with the help of figures imprinted on the ground and after several questions and answers by Socrates . Socrates the , affirmed that the boy has seen those figures when in the world of forms and was able to recollect what it has previously seen through the process of dialogue

One key tip I will be making in this essay is the familiar remark that here in the Meno we start to see something new about Socrates , a logic that taking care of the soul by the quest of philosophy may necessitate us to follow certain ways of judgment (rather than others ) in to attain the knowledge crucial to our moral well being . This change , which is only recommended in this dialogue , may mark (as many have suggested an interesting difference between the methods of the historical Socrates (the person who lived and died in Athens ) and the...