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Knowledge and forms in Plato's Theaetetus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Winifred F. Hicken
Winifred F. Hicken
Affiliation:
Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford
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Extract

In the last pages of the Theaetetus Socrates is made to present four versions of a final attempt to define knowledge, as true opinion accompanied by logos, and to reject them all; yet in earlier dialogues ‘ability to give account’, λόγον ἔχειν or λόγον διδόναι δύναδθαι is closely associated with knowledge, not always, or not necessarily, knowledge of Forms, and in the Republic it is said to be the essential mark of the dialectician. These facts are exceedingly hard to interpret. In recent years the passage has been read as an indirect defence of the earlier theory of Forms, as the statement of a problem answered in the Sophist by a revision of that theory and as a piece of radical self-criticism. No one of these interpretations seems tome without difficulty, and in this article I shall attempt to argue for yet another solution which owes something to all three.

Professor Cornford, pressing the fact that Socrates draws all his illustrations from the world of concrete things, believes that Plato intended by criticism of the different versions to point the way to an old and invulnerable sense of λόγον διδόναι, which implies that the proper objects of knowledge are Forms. This is the statement or understanding of grounds for judgments which in the Meno is said to turn true opinion into knowledge. A rather similar line has been taken by Professor Cherniss. Professor Stenzel thinks that the earlier theory of Forms is vulnerable to Socrates' criticism of what I call ‘the first version’, the ‘dream’, but he believes that all three of the later versions ‘recover their meaning’ when the problem of definition has been solved in the Sophist with the help of the method of diaeresis; and so restated they can be shown to apply to particulars as well as to Forms.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 77 , Issue 1 , November 1957, pp. 48 - 53
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1957

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References

1 Tht. 201C8–end.

2 Ibid. 201C8–206B11; 206D1–E2; 206E5–208B12; 208C1–210A7. Unlike others who have written on this passage, e.g. Cornford and Stenzel, I am proposing to count the ‘dream’ (201C8–206B11) as a version in its own right, the first of the expansions of Theaetetus' formula (Tht. 201C8–D1). Of the three senses mentioned later (Tht. 206C8), the first seems to me to be introduced only to get out of the way an obvious but unhelpful sense of λόγον διδόναι, so that by ‘the three main versions’ I shall mean the ‘dream’ and those stated and discussed in 206E5–208B12 and 208C1–210A7.

3 Grg. 465A2 ff.

4 Men. 97E6 ff., if is a variant for Phd. 76B4 ff.; Smp. 202A5 ff.

5 Rep. VI, 510C6 ff.; VII, 531E4 ff.; 533B8 ff.; 534B3 ff.

6 Plato's Theory of Knowledge (1935), p. 141 f.

7 Tht. 201E1 f.; 207A3 f.; 208D1–3.

8 Men. loc. cit.

9 ‘The Philosophical Economy of the Theory of Forms’, American Journal of Philology, LVII (1936), pp. 445 ff.

10 Plato's Method of Dialectic, translated and edited by Allan, D.J. (1940), pp. 71 ff.Google Scholar

11 ‘Forms and Error in Plato's Theaetetus', Philosophical Review, LIX (1950), pp. 3 ff.

12 Tht. 146E7–148B7.

13 Op. cit. pp. 90–3.

14 Sph. 252E6–259E6.

15 E.g. ibid. 257A4–6; 258A7–9.

16 Op. cit. p. 5.

17 Tht. 201A10–C2.

18 Grg. 465A2–6, where λόγον ἔχει seems to mean ‘is able to justify a set of actions by an appeal to general principles’.

Men. 97E6–98A5, where seems to mean ‘to give general grounds for the truth of a statement’.

Rep. VII, 534B3–D1, where by Plato seems to mean not ‘ability to define’ but ‘ability to justify a definition by argument’.

19 Cf. e.g. Phlb. 58A1 ff.

20 Cf. Phlb. 62A2–5.

21 Cf. e.g. Tht. 175C8–D2.

22 Cf. e.g. Sph. 254A8 ff.

23 Men. 80E1 ff.

24 Ibid. 81A5 ff.

25 Tht. 187D1–200C5.

26 Ibid. 195C6 ff.

27 I.e. sph. 260B10–264B3.

28 Tht. 188C9–189B8.

29 Tht. 201C8–202C5.

30 So Cornford suggests, I think rightly. Op. cit. p. 145.

31 Tht. 203D8–205E7.

32 Op. cit. p. 15.

33 Op. cit. p. 73. ‘Ἀμέριστον and μονοειδές are two of the honourable titles of the Ideas in earlier days.’

34 Mind, XLVIII (1939), p. 319. ‘Now although Plato does not make the application, substantial Forms were supposed to be just such simple nameables.’

35 Sph. 252C2 ff.

36 Tht. 201E2–202A8.

37 Cra. 388B13 f.

38 Parm. 142A3 ff.

39 Robinson, op. cit. p. 15.

41 Tht. 205C4–E4.

42 Tht. 205D1 f.

43 Smp. 211B1 and E4; Phd. 78D5; 80B2; 83E2. Ἀμέριστον, according to Ast, is used only in later dialogues, unless we are justified in giving an earlier date to the Timaeus.

44 Smp. 210E2–211B5.

45 Phd. 78D1–7.

46 Cf. Smp. 211D8 ff.

47 Cf. e.g. Robinson, , Classical Philology, XXXVI (1942), p. 66.Google Scholar

48 Parm. 129E2–3.

49 Ibid. 129A6–B6.

50 Sph. 254B7 ff.

51 Parm. 129D8–E1.

52 Sph. 256A10 ff.

53 Phlb. 14D4–8.

54 Phlb. 59C4.

55 Ibid. 52E6–53B6.

56 Sph. 255A10.

57 Cf. e.g. Rep. 596A5–8.

58 Op. cit. pp. 79 ff.

59 Phd. 104D1 ff.

60 Plt. 278C3–E10.

61 Sph. 253D5 ff.

62 Smp. 209E5–212A7.

63 Ibid. 211B7–D1.

64 E.g. Rep. VII, 532A5–B2.

65 E.g. Cross, R. C., Mind, LXIII (1954), p. 442.Google Scholar

66 Phdr. 247D5 ff.

67 E.g. Rep. VI, 484C6 ff.; VII, 520C1–6.

68 Ibid. VI, 484C6 f.

69 Ibid. VII, 334B3 ff.

70 Ibid. VII, 534B8 f.

71 Rep. VII, 554B8 ff.

72 Ibid. VII, 517C1 ff.

73 Cf. Robinson, , Plato's Earlier Dialectic,2 pp. 53 ff.Google Scholar

74 Phdr. 264C2 ff.

75 Tht. 204A11–B3 and 204E11–13.

76 Parm. 157D7 ff.:

77 Tht. 206A1–B11.

78 Rep. V, 476A4–7; VII, 519C2–6.

79 Cf. e.g. Tht. 186B11 ff.

80 Rep. III, 402A7 ff.

81 Tht. 207C6–208B9.

82 Tht. 208C6–210B2.

83 Cornford, op. cit. p. 162.

84 Tht. 207C6–208B12.

85 Cf. Sph. 250C3–10.

86 Plt. 278C8–279B5.

87 Tht. 209D1–210A9.

88 Sph. 252E1 ff.

89 Tht. 163B1–C3.

90 Cf. Sph. 255E3–6; 256D11–E3.

91 Ibid. 256D11–257A6; 258A7–9.

92 E.g. Sph. 252E9 ff.; Plt. 277E2 ff.; Phlb. 17A8 ff.