Note 100 — Chapter XIII · PLATO

The ἄλλαι ἀρεταὶ καλούμεναι (even including σοφία regarded as practical shrewdness: Rp. 428 B ff.) as ἐγγὺς οὖσαι τῶν τοῦ σώματος become of secondary importance compared with the virtue of φρόνησις, i.e. of dialectic and the contemplation of the Ideas, Rp. 518 DE. This alone is θειότερον, something μεῖζον than those bourgeois virtues, Rp. 504 D—philosophy stands high above δημοτική τε καὶ πολιτικὴ ἀρετή, ἐξ ἔθους τε καὶ μελετῆς γεγονυῖα ἄνευ φιλοσοφίας τε καὶ νοῦ, Phd. 82 BC.—This, too, rightly understood, is the real point of the inquiry in Meno. Explicitly, indeed, the dialogue only concerns itself with that ἀρετή which is commonly so regarded and is based on ἀληθὴς δόξα, coming into existence by instinct (θεία μοῖρα); which, however, to the philosopher is not ἀρετή in the proper sense of the word; that name he would only give to ἐπιστήμη, the only sort of knowledge that can be learnt and acquired as a permanent possession, depending as it does upon the doctrine of Ideas. To ἐπιστήμη he this time only makes distant allusion.