Descartes and Socrates on the Possibility and Point of Inquiry

Commentators have often noted ‘la présence latente du Ménon dans le cartésianisme’, but have not offered a sustained account of what this presence consists in. The author argues there exist strong parallels between Meno and the Recherche de la vérité, Descartes’ only extant dialogue, grounded partly in Descartes’ awareness of Plato's text. This parallel offers a useful approach to the Recherche. The first part of the article presents Meno and gives an outline of its reception. The second gives a reading of Descartes’ text. Since the concerns of the Recherche reflect arguments and approaches taken up in other texts like the Méditations, the author closes in the third part by suggesting the parallel allows us to say, more generally, that Descartes’ approach to inquiry, and to his fight with scholasticism, is a Socratic one.