The One-Over-Many Problem

In Plato's dialogue Meno, Socrates says to Meno: “[T]ell me what virtue is in the universal; and do not make a singular into a plural, as the facetious say of those who break a thing, but deliver virtue to me whole and sound, and not broken into a number of pieces.” Socrates wants to know what virtue is, and his plea for it to be presented whole and sound was to make clear that he did not want descriptions of behaviors that make certain kinds of people virtuous (e.g., the virtue of a man is to order the state), and that he was not looking for a list of virtues (e.g., wisdom, humility, piety, temperance, and so on). Socrates wanted to know the common nature of all virtues. He wanted to know about virtuehood, about whatever it is that makes wisdom, humility, and other virtues be virtues. In Meno, Socrates briefly makes similar queries about color and shape. He wanted to know what makes “red” and “green” colors and what makes “round” and “oblong” shapes. In other dialogues, Socrates makes similar requests about the nature of some individual virtues. For example, in Euthyphro, he considers piety. What is it that makes pious things pious? In Charmides, the focus is temperance. What is it that makes temperate things temperate? Questions of this sort are at the heart of The One-Over-Many Problem.