Examining the Role of “Perplexity”

The role of “perplexity” is an important concept to grasp because it serves as the basis for why people continually seek to gain knowledge.  The confusion brought upon by being taught a certain subject but not being able to fully understand it creates the perplexity complex and forces people to try and learn just what it is they are perplexed about and as a result, gain knowledge by obtaining missing information.  For example, in the text, Socrates attempts to break down this perplexity when he says “I still want the two of us to try to find out what [being good] is” (80d).  The perplexity is represented by the state of what it means to be good and it plays the role of encouraging Socrates and Meno to figure it out.  Therefore, perplexity influences the increase of knowledge by creating a window of unknown that has yet to be discovered and learned.