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Theaetetus (dialogue)

Theaetetus (dialogue):Plato-raphael
This article is part of the series:
The Dialogues of Plato
Socratic Dialogues : Socrates,

the Virtues,the Sophists

Hippias Minor
First Alcibiades
Euthyphro
Laches – Charmides
Lysis – Hippias Major – Ion
Protagoras – Euthydemus
Gorgias – Menexenus
Meno – Critias
Apology
Crito – Cratylus
The great dialogues : theory of forms,

politics,death, dialectic, love.

Phaedo – The Symposium
The Republic – Phaedrus
The late dialogues :

Criticism of the theory of forms,

cosmology, politics, metaphysics

Theaetetus – Parmenides
The Sophist – Philebus
The Statesman – Timaeus
Laws
Of doubtful authenticity
Second Alcibiades – The Rivals
Theages – Epinomis – Minos
Clitophon

The Theætetus (Θεαιτητος) is one of Plato's great dialogues. Plato denies having written it, pretending that the conversation between Socrates and the title character is really a book written by Euclides. Euclides tells his friend Terpsion that he wrote a book many years ago based on what Socrates told him of a conversation he had with Theaetetus when he was quite a young man. The occasion for the telling is that Euclides has seen Theaetetus being carried off the battlefield with a case of dysentary and a minor war wound. Euclides says that Socrates correctly prophesied that Theaetetus would become a notable man if he lived long enough.

The discussion between Socrates and the young Theaetetus concerns knowledge, and whether or not and exactly how it is related to sense perception. The conversation is an entertaining series of intellectual crimes and misdemeanors that ends with Socrates' announcement that he has to go to court to answer the charges that he has been corrupting the young. The dialog is allegedly read aloud to the two men by a slave boy in the employ of Euclides.


Contents

Midwife to Boys

Socrates ask Theodorus if he knows of any geometry students who show particular promise, and Theodorus assures him that he does. He tells Socrates he does not want to over-praise the boy, lest anyone suspect he is in love with him. He says that Theaetetus is a young Socrates look-alike, rather homely, with a snub-nose boy and protruding eyes. The two older men spot the boy rubbing himself down with oil, and Theodorus reviews the facts about him, that he is intelligent, virile, and an orphan whose inheritance has been squandered by trustees.

Socrates tells Theaetetus that he cannot make out what knowledge is, and is looking for a simple formula for it. Theaetetus says he really has no idea how to answer the question, and Socrates tells him that he is there to help. Socrates says he has modelled his career after his midwife mother. She delivered babies and for his part, Socrates can tell when a young man is in the throes of trying to give birth to a thought. Socrates says his work is especially difficult because he himself is barren, and as it turns out, all the bastard notions he has helped deliver had to be killed (152b,c). Theaetetus ventures that "knowledge is nothing but sense perception".

Philosophical Labor

Socrates thinks that this idea must be identical in meaning, if not in actual words, to Protagoras' famous maxim "Man is the measure of all things." Socrates wrestles to conflate the two ideas, and stirs in for good measure some nonsense about Homer being the captain of a team of flux theorists. Socrates dictates a complete textbook of logical fallacies to the bewildered Theaetetus. When Socrates tells the child that he (Socrates) will be taller in a year's time without gaining an inch because Theaetetus will have grown relative to him, the child complains of dizziness (155c). In an oft quoted line, Socrates says with delight that "wonder (thaumazein) belongs to the philosopher". He admonishes the boy to be patient and bear with his questions, so that his hidden beliefs may be yanked out into the bright light of day.

Examining the Offspring

When Socrates sums up what they have agreed on so far, that knowledge is indeed perception, and that this idea is co-incidental with the doctrine of Homer and Heraclitus and all their tribe, and is the same thing, too, as the doctrine of Protagoras (160d), he asks Theaetetus if this is not his own child. Theaetetus agrees that this was his idea, and agrees to let Socrates check to see if it is too stupid to be allowed to live ("a lifeless phantom not worth rearing"). Socrates then proceeds to torture the maxim of Protagoras into beastly and divine applications. Socrates admits that it is unfortunate that Protagoras is dead and cannot defend his idea against people such as himself. He says that the two of them are "trampling on his orphan". (164e)

Abusing the "Orphan" of Protagoras

Since Protagoras is absent from the debate and is in any case deceased, Socrates puts himself in the sophist's shoes and tries to do him the favor of defending his idea (166a-168c). Socrates continues to find more ways to misinterpret and misrepresent him - "mistreat his orphan". Putting words in the dead sophist's mouth, Socrates declares that Protagoras asserts with his maxim that all things are in motion and whatever seems to be the case, is the case for the perceiver, whether the individual or the state.

At the end of his speech, Socrates admits to Theodorus that if Protagoras were alive to defend his idea, he would have done a far better job than Socrates has just done. Theodorus tells Socrates that he must be kidding, that he has come to the task with boyish vigor. Theodorus does not claim to be a disciple of Protagoras, but never contradicts Socrates repeated assertions that he is a friend of Protagoras. Socrates admits he has used the child's timidity to aid him in his argument against the doctrine of Protagoras (168d).

Socrates not at all certain that he has not misrepresented Protagoras in making each man the measure of his own wisdom. He presses Theodorus on the question of whether any follower of Protagoras (himself included) would contend that nobody thinks anyone else is wrong (170c). Theodorus proves to be helpless against Socrates confusions. He agrees that Protagoras concedes that those who disagree with him are correct (171a). In making Protagoras a complete epistemological relativist, where every person's individual perceptions are his reality and his truth, both Socrates and Theodorus paint Protagoras as maintaining an absurd position. Socrates says that if Protagoras could pop his head up through the ground as far as his neck, he would expose Socrates as a speaker of nonsense and sink out of sight and take to his heels (171d)

The Absent-Minded Philosopher

Socrates then proceeds to explain why philosophers seem clumsy and stupid to the common lot of humanity. Socrates explains that philosophers are open to mockery because they are not concerned about what interests most people: they could not care less about the scandals in their neighbors house, the tracing of one's ancestry to Heracles, and so on. It is here that Socrates draws the classic portrait of the absent-minded intellectual who cannot make his bed, cook a meal, or drape his cloak like a gentleman (175e). Socrates adds a big bifurcation to this speech, saying that there are only two kinds of lives to be lived: a divinely happy one, lived by righteous philosophers or a godless, miserable one, such as most people live (176-177). Socrates admits this was a digression that threatens to drown his original project, which was to define knowledge. Theodorus, the old geometer, tells Socrates that he finds this sort of thing easier to follow than his earlier arguments.

The Men of Flux

Socrates says that the men of flux, like Homer and Heraclitus, are really hard to talk to because you can't pin them down. When you ask them a question, he says, they pluck from their quiver a little aphorism to let fly at you, and as you try to figure that one out, they wing another one at you. They leave nothing settled either in discourse, or in their own minds. Socrates adds that the opposite school of thought, that teaches of the "immovable whole" is just as hard to talk to (181a,b). Socrates says he met the father of the idea, Parmenides, when he was quite young but does not want to get into another digression over it.

The Mind as a Bird Cage

Perhaps the most delightful talk in the dialog comes near the end, when Socrates compares the human mind to a bird cage. He says it is one thing to possess knowledge and another to have it about one, on hand, as it were (199a). Socrates says that as a man goes hunting about in his brain for knowledge of something, he might grab hold of the wrong thing. He says that mistaking eleven for twelve is like going in for a pigeon and coming up with a dove (199b). Theaetetus joins in the game, and says that to complete the picture, you need to envision pieces of ignorance flying around in there with the birds. Socrates concludes the dialog by announcing that all the two have produced is mere "wind-eggs" and that he must be getting on now to the courthouse.

Subtextual Interpretation

Theatetus is an orphan, an unfortunate, but gifted child whose property has been squandered by trustees of his father's considerable estate. Socrates calls himself a midwife to boys, a man who helps youngsters give birth to their own ideas. But it is socrates who initiates the conversation about knowledge, and creates not a straw man, but a straw monster out of the famous maxim of Protagoras, "Man is the measure of all things." It seems likely that all Protagoras meant by this was that human beings are restricted by human sense perceptions in creating their opinions, their reality, and cannot take the beast's point of view, or a god's point of view. Socrates takes the orphan child of the dead sophist and mangles it, just as he abuses the boy with his bad logic and mock philosophy.

Socrates' analogy of children with ideas recurs in the dialogs, and here it is given an elaborate and comical spin. Socrates abuses the orphaned idea of Protagoras, and according to his own pleasantries, is dimly aware of the fact that he has similarly confused the mind of the child with his own bafflements. Socrates also makes Homer into a philosopher, and clumps him into a pile of what he calls "flux theorists." The dialog is about intellectual crimes: especially, the annoying vice of putting your own clumsy words into other people's mouths, misrepresenting their ideas so that you can refute them.



The dialogue is split into roughly three sections: 1) Knowledge is perception; 2) Knowledge is true belief, and 3) Knowledge is justified true belief. It is preceded by a brief exchange between Euclides and Terpsion. The first section is the longest, as Plato engages in a lengthy and complex critique of the views of Protagoras and Heraclitus, viewing the definition of knowledge as perception as being a kind of relativism, and related to the views held by those two thinkers. The second section is mostly concerned with how false belief is possible, which is another issue that is never satisfactorily explained within this text. The definition of knowledge as true belief is finally swiftly dismissed by noting that people may form a true belief by mere luck. The third section is the most studied part of the text, as it presents a popular and enduring definition of knowledge. This definition is finally dismissed via a complex argument about the elemental components of objects. Simply put, this argument holds that to justify a true belief about an object (and thus possess knowledge about it), the object must be broken down into its parts and those analysed. Eventually this process leads to the simplest components of objects. As these components are the simplest parts possible, they cannot be broken down any further, and therefore no true belief about them can be justified. Therefore, they are unknowable as per the third definition. This means that the components of any object cannot be known, which means that any object, which is the sum of these parts, cannot be known. By this definition therefore, no knowledge is possible.

Many objections to the arguments against the third definition have been raised. Two of the most popular approaches are to dispute what is required to justify a belief, and to dispute that a complex object is merely the sum of its elements.


In this dialogue, Socrates refers to Epicharmus of Kos as "the prince of Comedy" and Homer as "the prince of Tragedy", and both as "great masters of either kind of poetry".1 This is significant because it is one of the very few extant references in greater antiquity (Fourth century BC) to Epicharmus and his work. Another reference is in Plato's Gorgias dialogue.

Footnotes

"Summon the great masters of either kind of poetry- Epicharmus, the prince of Comedy, and Homer of Tragedy", Theaetetus, by Plato, section §152e. [1] (translation by Benjamin Jowett [2]). There is some variability in translation of the passage. Words like "king", "chief", "leader", "master" are used in the place of "prince" in different translations. The basic Greek word in Plato is "akroi" from "akros" meaning topmost or high up. In this context it means "of a degree highest of its kind" or "consummate" (cf. Liddell & Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon). [3]

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