Sedley 3PlatonistInterpTht

3Three Platonist Interpretations ofthe Theaetetus

DAVID SEDLEY

I

That the Theaetetus is one of the great pioneering texts in thehistory of epistemology is agreed on all sides. But the solidlydoctrinal ways of reading it which were long fashionable havebeen largely eclipsed, especially in the last thirty years, byphilosophically more rewarding approaches which treat it asessentially exploratory and open-ended. Most recently, MylesBurnyeat1 has presented the Theaetetus in terms of a complexdialectical confrontation centred on a choice between these twokinds of reading.

At the risk of putting the clock back, I want here to approachthe dialogue from another angle, which I hope may prove com-plementary rather than obstructive. I want to present the issuesof interpretation in the form of.a confrontation between threereadings-readings which are the constructs not of scholars butof card-carrying Platonists. How, in other words, was theTheaetetus understood in antiquity by people committed inadvance not only to its internal philosophical coherence but alsoto its coherence with a body of philosophical thought taken tobe correct in its entirety? Their reverence for the virtually bib-lical authority of Plato's text undoubtedly gave them someblind spots. But it also rendered them sensitive to aspects of thetext which can easily slip past us today. That, at least, is my pre-text for trying out such an approach.

1 The 'Theaetetus' of Plato, trans. M. J. Levett, rev. and intro. M. F.Burnyeat (Indianapolis, 1990).

80 David Sedley The Theaetetus: Three Interpretations 81

Unitarianism, the thesis that Plato's reuvre in its entiretyforms a self-consciously unified body of doctrine, is today ahighly partisan position among Platonic scholars. Amongancient Platonists it was an almost unquestioned assumption.The expectation of doctrinal conformity may seem peculiarlyunpromising as an approach to the Theaetetus, a dialogue whichin so many ways reads as an open-minded return to aporeticinquiry, unhampered by such middle-period doctrines as thetheory of Forms, recollection, and the tripartite soul. But Ithink this reaction risks being as simplistic as the unitariancreed which it opposes. For example, unless the anti-unitariancan demonstrate the absolute incompatibility of the Theaetetuswith middle-period doctrine, there remains the entirely seriouspossibility that the dialogue is meant to be readable at two ormore levels. On the surface, Plato is clearly reverting to thespirit of Socratic enquiry, perhaps in an attempt to re-evaluateSocrates' own philosophical significance. But at the same timehe remains acutely conscious that Socrates' philosophy is theprincipal origin of his own. Hence, he may be keen, below thesurface, to draw attention to the continuity of his own maturethought with that of Socrates. To take one prominent example,mistaken as it may be to equate Socratic midwifery in theTheaetetus with the dialectical activity, depicted in the Meno, ofmaking people recollect their pre-natal knowledge, 2 it remainspossible that Plato wrote the Theaetetus with a view to present-ing Socrates as the historical precursor of his own dialecticaltheory. If so, a unitarian reading could have much to teach usabout how far we might dare to go in narrowing the gapbetween the two conceptions of dialectic.

II

I shall follow the conventional division of the Theaetetus intothree parts. Part I (142-87) explores the definition of knowledgeas perception, including a powerful critique of Protagoreanrelativism. Part II (187-201), officially an examination of the

2 I am thinking of Myles Burnyeat's arguments against this equation in'Socratic Midwifery, Platonic Inspiration', Bulletin of the Institute of ClassicalStudies, 24 (1977),7-16.

definition of knowledge as true opinion, tackles the puzzlesabout whether false opinion is even possible, deploying the cel-ebrated images of the mind as a Wax Block and as an Aviary.Part III (201-10) discusses the definition of knowledge as trueopinion plus an account.

I have found relatively little detailed comment on parts II andIII in the ancient Platonists. The interpretations which we willbe examining most closely are ones which, in so far as they doexploit part II, use its Wax Block and Aviary images as evidencefor Plato's epistemological psychology. They do not make itclear what formal function within the dialogue as a whole theyassign to part II'S discussion of false opinion. Only when we getto the time of Proclus (fifth century AD) do we find illuminationon the point. He apparently supposes part II to go much moreclosely with part I than modern commentators have suspected.Proclus takes it to be a continuation of part I'S critique ofProtagoras. 3 Part I explores the problematic consequences ofsupposing all opinions to be true, that is, of agreeing withProtagoras; part II explores the problematic consequences ofsupposing some opinions to be false, that is, of disagreeing withProtagoras.4

Proclus similarly seems to hold that part I explores the prob-lems that follow from equating knowledge (incorrectly) with per-ception, part III the problems that follow from equating it(correctly) with something other than perception. Within eachsection too, Plato is seen as raising, and responding to, difficulties

3 Proclus, in Prm. 657. 5-10: 'In the Theaetetus, having turned theProtagorean theory over again and again, and thinking that he has demon-strated his own thesis, in preparing to raise in turn difficulties against his ownbeliefs, he says, "What a terrible thing a chatterbox is!" , The citation is from195b, at the end of the Wax Block passage. Therefore Proclus takes the WaxBlock to be part of Plato's reply to Protagoras. This view can claim some sup-port from Theaetetus (Tht.) 187d6-8.

4 Proclus, in Prm. 654.15-26, where Proclus speaks of a Platonic method bywhich Socrates trains the young, 'such as Theaetetus' (eEaLTYjTov, corr. from

()EO~ TOV on the basis of the Latin translation; cf. J. Dillon and G. Morrow,Proclus' Commentary on Plato's 'Parmenides', trans. (Princeton, 1987), 44),'investigating with both aims-whether what appears to each person is true, oragain whether it is not, and whether knowledge is perception, or again whetherit is not-both investigating in tum the difficulties of the true doctrines, andtapping them and showing that they ring false' (echoing Tht. 179d).

82 David Sedley The Theaetetus: Three Interpretations

which confront his own doctrines. s In some such way, Proclusinterprets the dialogue's strategy as a complex alternationbetween positive and negative movements6-the same method ashe imputes to the Lysis and the Parmenides.

I have found no evidence whether Proclus is echoing an ear-lier tradition about the dialogue's structure, or is himself inno-vating. His own commentary on the Theaetetus, sadly lost, wasamong his favourites, and there is clearly a good chance that thestructural theory is his own. At all events, it has no obviousoverlap with the interpretations I shall now examine. These allfocus primarily on the dialogue's epistemological message, andonly secondarily on its structure. They are also all datable muchearlier than Proclus. They are certainly pre-AD 150, and there isa strong possibility that they were all being defended concur-rently as early as the end of the first century BC.

It is now time to introduce the main dramatis personae, all ofthem unfortunately of either vague or disputed identity. Firstcome the Academic sceptics, who dominated the Academyfrom the mid-third century to the early first century BC, andwere still not extinct a further two centuries later, in the time ofPlutarch. Although they grew gradually more doctrinal in theiroutlook, I believe that they never wavered from their rallying-call of akatalepsia, the disavowal of cognitive certainty.7 JohnGlucker8 has maintained that, as a school, they were extinctafter the 80S BC, but I doubt if that is so. At any rate,Aenesidemus' treatise the Pyrrhoneioi Logoi has recently been

5 The difficulties raised against the true doctrines (see n. 4 above) are exem-plified (see n. 3 above) by Socrates' own objections to the Wax Block.

6 Cf. also n. 53 below, for how Proclus explained Plato's decision to end ona negative movement.

7 1 cannot accept the widespread view that Philo of Larissa's heresy of 87 Bewas an actual abandonment of akatalepsia (I have argued the point in 'The Endof the Academy', Phronesis, 26 (1981), 67-75). There is also the evidence ofGalen, de Optima Doctrina I, who claims that the Academic Favorinus,although in some works maintaining akatalepsia, in his Plutarch 'seems toallow that there is something firmly knowable'. My conjectural explanationwould be that the apparent concession appeared in the mouth of Plutarch, as aspeaker in an eponymous dialogue, and that what he said there was no morethan he says at De Stoicorum repugnantiis 1037c, that 'those who suspendjudgement' argue on both sides on the ground that, if anything is katalepton('knowable'), that would be the best way of coming to know it.

8 J. Glucker, Antiochus and the Late Academy (Gottingen, 1978).

quite plausibly down-dated to the 50S or 40S BC;9 and in it hespoke of the 'present-day Academy'10 as still maintaining someversion of akatalepsia. So there is no good reason to doubt thatthey persisted as contemporary rivals to the other two factions.To them I now turn.

Second comes Alcinous, author of the surviving epitome ofPlatonic doctrine known as the Didaskalikos. There is a longand honourable tradition, stemming from Freudenthal11 in1879, of regarding the name Alcinous in the manuscripts as anerror for Albinus, the second-century AD Platonist with whomGalen studied, and whose short Introduction to Plato'sDialogues has come down to us. Through this presumed identi-fication of Alcinous with Albinus, the Didaskalikos came to bethe main source for reconstructing the thought of the so-calledSchool of Gaius-Gaius being Albinus' own teacher. Recentwork, especially by John Whittaker,12 has shown how suspectthe identification is, and I shall adopt the new fashion of callingthe author by his transmitted name Alcinous, not Albinus. Hecan be dated to the first or early second century AD, but we willsee reason to think that the interpretation of the Theaetetuswhich he adopts was already known by the late first century BC,when our next author was probably writing.

This third writer is the anonymous author of the partiallyextant commentary on the Theaetetus, contained in a Berlinpapyrus datable to around 150 AD. The original editors,Diels and Schubart (1905), 13 argued that he too was, at least

9 F. Decleva Caizzi, 'Aenesidemus and the Academy', Classical Quarterly,42 (1992), 176- 89.

10 Photius, Bibliotheca 170aI4-15, oi 8' 0:7T0 TiJ~ J4Ka8'YJf.J-ta~, 4>'YJot [sc.Aenesidemus], f.J-aAtora riJ~ vvv ...

11 J. Freudenthal, Der Platoniker Albinos und der falsche Alkinoos,Hellenistische Studien, iii (Berlin, 1879).

12 Esp. in his 'Platonic Philosophy in the Early Centuries of the Empire',Aufstieg und Niedergang der romischen Welt, 2/36/1 (Berlin, 1987),81-123, andin his edition (with P. Louis), Alcinoos: Enseignement des doctrines de Platon(Paris, 1990).

13 Anonymer Kommentar zu Platons 'Theaetet', Berliner Klassikertexte, ii(Berlin, 1905). G. Bastianini and I have published a new edition in Corpus deipapirifilosoficigreci e latini, iii (Florence, 1995),227-562. Column and line ref-erences are the same as in Diels-Schubart, but a number of readings andrestorations are different. Many of the claims about the author which followare defended there.

David Sedley The Theaetetus: Three Interpretations 85

philosophically, identifiable with the so-called school of Gaius,although, on stylistic grounds, they refrained from identifyinghim with 'Albinus' (i.e. Alcinous) himself. One upshot of thischapter will be that the Diels-Schubart thesis is definitelywrong. The anonymous commentary is strongly opposed to theinterpretation of Plato's epistemology, and of the Theaetetus inparticular, presented in the Didaskalikos. Nor, for various rea-sons, am I persuaded by Harold Tarrant's recent attempt tounmask the anonymous commentator as Eudorus, the late first-century BC Academic. In fact, he cannot, in my view, be plausi-bly identified with any Platonist of whom we know much morethan the bare name. I shall stick resolutely to calling him Anon.But I am persuaded by another thesis of Tarrant, that Anon.'sdate should be brought back from the mid-second century AD,where Diels and Schubart placed it, to the later part of the firstcentury BC. Although not necessarily an Academic himself, he isin many ways a direct heir to the Hellenistic Academy, which, inhis view, was not sceptically motivated at all but argued againstits Stoic enemies in indirect defence of dogmatic Platonism.

These three can stand as representatives of the three inter-pretations alluded to in my title. With certain variants which wewill meet in passing, the number could have been pushed up tofour or five. But the ones on which I shall be concentrating arethe leading rivals, as well as the best documented. They wereprobably all current in the late first century BC, and can beviewed as directly competing to appropriate the Theaetetus fortheir own respective versions of Platonism.

III

Having introduced the principal combatants, my next task is toset them an agenda for debate. It will prove convenient to listsix main problems that, prima facie, confront any unitarian set-ting out to harmonize the Theaetetus with the rest of Plato's(Euvre.

I. In the Republic and Timaeus, knowledge is distinguishedabove all by its objects, the Forms. But the Theaetetus, far fromobserving this requirement, again and again supplies everydayempirical objects in its illustrations of knowledge.

2. In the Republic and Timaeus, there is _a strong contrastbetween knowledge (episteme) and opinion (doxa). In theTheaetetus, on the other hand, Plato states, and does not subse-quently retract, the expectation that knowledge will itself proveto be a species of opinion.

3. The theory that all learning is the recollection (anamnesis)of pre-natal knowledge, set out in the Meno, Phaedo, andPhaedrus, is never invoked in the Theaetetus. Worse, Platodevelops two models for the acquisition and use of knowledge--the Wax Block and the Aviary-in which recollection plays nopart. Worse again, the Aviary includes the assertion that themind is empty in infancy, apparently in flat contradiction of theinnateness doctrine.

4. Socrates, Plato's spokesman in the Theaetetus, explicitlydisavows knowledge. He compares himself to a midwife, intel-lectually barren, though capable of bringing the ideas of othersto birth. The entire tone of this contrasts with Socrates the con-structive thinker, so familiar from the middle-period dialogues.

5. The dialogue signally fails in its quest to find out whatknowledge is. Can this really be the same Plato who in theRepublic had made knowledge the distinguishing mark parexcellence of the philosopher?

6. Plato's best-known and most admired definition of knowl-edge is the one in the Meno (98a): true belief bound down bycalculation of the cause (aitias logismos). The Theaetetus failseven to mention it.

We can sort out and contrast the three main Platonist interpre-tations of the Theaetetus in terms of their respective responsesto the six questions on this checklist. I leave aside a fourth pos-sible strategy, the familiar modern one of treating certain dia-logues as historical evidence for Socrates, and distinguishingthem from the mature dialogues in which Plato's own thoughtwas expounded. Some such tactic was used by Antiochus ofAscalon in his battle to reclaim Plato from the Academic scep-tics. 14 It would not be entirely surprising to learn that he num-bered the Theaetetus among the purely Socratic dialogues. By

14 Antiochus played down Socrates' disavowal of knowledge as ironic(Cicero, Academica (Acad.), 2. IS), but still contrasted Socrates' negativeelenchus with Plato's constructive dialectic (Acad. I. 17).

doing so, he could have circumvented all six problems effort-lessly. But there is no explicit testimony to go on, and in anycase the solution is a bit too easy to be interesting, especially tothose who recognize the Theaetetus as a mature product ofPlato's pen, written with the Republic rarely far from view.

The three main approaches on which I shall be concentrat-ing all interpret the Theaetetus in conformity with what theirauthors take to be Plato's official position on knowledge. Theirmethod is very simple. First you decide which is the importantPlatonic dialogue on knowledge. Then you adapt your readingof the other dialogues to fit in with it.

Most of our interest is going to be in the choice between theRepublic and the Meno as the most important dialogue. But wecan start, more briefly, with the Academic sceptics, whose dis-tinctive move is to make the Theaetetus itself the. important text.

At Theaetetus I 50c4-7, in describing himself as an intellec-tual midwife, Socrates remarks: 'And the criticism which manyhave already made of me, that I question others but make noassertions myself about anything because I have no wisdom, isa true criticism.' The anonymous commentator reports as fol-lows (54. 38-43): 'On the basis of expressions like this, someconsider Plato an Academic, on the ground that he had no doc-trines.' Here, of course, 'Academic' implies an adherent of thesceptical Academy. We can compare the report in anotheranonymous treatise, from very late antiquity, the Prolegomenato Plato's Philosophy. 'Some people,' its author tells us, 'push-ing Plato among those who suspend judgement and theAcademics, talk as if he himself introduced the denial of cogni-tion (akatalepsia).'15 And he goes on to mention the Theaetetusas a prime item of evidence: 'Their third argument is that hedoes not think that knowledge exists, as is evident from hiseliminating every definition of knowledge, and eliminatingnumber, in the Theaetetus. How will we say that someone likethat esteems cognition?'16 The reference to 'number' is notori-

15 Anon., Proleg. 10.4-6. All references to this work are to the Bude editionby L. G. Westerink, J. Trouillard, and A. P. Segonds, eds. and trans.,Prolegomenes a la philosophie de Platon (Paris, 1990).

16 Ibid. 10. 23-6. See also Theaetetus, ed. Burnyeat, 235. I see no reason tofollow him in considering the two reported Academic interpretations to bealternatives to each other. One addresses problem (4), the other problem (5),but they are fully compatible and surely represent a single interpretation of the


ously obscure, but I suspect that the point is as follows. Parts I,II, and III of the Theaetetus jointly refute all proffered defini-tions of knowledge, and that persistent strategy makes the dia-logue look sceptical in its intentions. But part II'S elaborateattempt to explain false opinion is not itself part of the refuta-tion of any definition of knowledge. Some other way musttherefore be found to fit it into an overall sceptical strategy. Theattempt's eventual failure could, in principle, be interpreted asan elimination of false opinion. But that would not have pleasedan Academic like Arcesilaus, who cited the ever-present dangerof holding a false opinion as a standard premiss in his argu-ments for suspending assent on all matters. 17 The Academy cantherefore be expected to have interpreted the passage, quiteplausibly (cf. I87d3-4), as assuming the existence of false opin-ion, and exploring the problematic consequences of that fact.Most of the problems raised are ironed out in the course of thediscussion, especially by application of the Wax Block image.But one remains unsolved: how any adequate cognitive psy-chology-adequate, that is, to account for false as well as truebeliefs-can accommodate numbers. Therefore, the Academicsmight well conclude, the passage's sceptical outcome consists in'eliminating number'.

And what special significance would that outcome have?Here it is worth remembering that thinking about numbers is,according to Republic 7, the first step on the road to dialecticalknowledge. To anyone connecting these two passages, theTheaetetus could have appeared to subvert even Plato's mostoptimistic manifesto of knowledge.

A similar result can also emerge from the following consid-eration. One later Academic, Favorinus, a pupil of Plutarch,horrified Galen by maintaining that even the sun is unknow-able. 18 This extreme-sounding thesis was not uncommonamong the later Academics, Galen tells us. Its currency coulddialogue. Indeed, a version of the first is attributed to the proponents of thesecond at Anon., Proleg. 10.57 ff.

17 Cf. Cicero, Acad. I. 44-5, 2. 66-7.18 Galen, Opt. Doctr. I; cf. 5. Favorinus was not necessarily himself

engaged in the unitarian project I am outlining here. Anna Maria loppolo hassuggested to me, with some plausibility, that he saw his scepticism as moreSocratic than Platonic-in which case he may well have used the Theaetetus asa source for Socrates.


be easily explained as a legacy of the Theaetetus. There,Socrates' very last attempted definition of knowledge is as truebelief plus an account of how the object differs from all otherthings. And he illustrates it with the example of knowing thesun, as 'the brightest of the bodies that move around the earthin the heavens'. Even this final attempt at a definition-to allappearances, the best Plato could come up with-fails, alongwith the others. To a sceptically inclined reader, it seems, hewas thereby removing the sun itself from the sphere of knowl-edge. Given the sun's crucial symbolic role in the model ofknowledge set up in the Republic, it would not be a difficult stepto read the Theaetetus as, once again, retracting or underminingthe apparently confident manifesto of knowledge presented inthe Republic.

Putting these admittedly meagre clues together, we can seethat the Academics make maximum use of problem (4),Socrates' disavowal of knowledge in the Theaetetus, and prob-lem (5), the dialogue's eventual failure. But they may be foundless than convincing in their implication that the dialoguebrings down with it the entire edifice of knowledge constructedin the middle-period dialogues and in the Timaeus. The obvi-ous objection is that the Theaetetus simply fails to confront themain supports of that edifice-the ones identified in the otherfour problems on my list, including the theory of Forms itself.Here, to judge from the anonymous Prolegomena,19 they had nobetter resource than eto point out in the constructive dialoguesthe numerous locutions expressing hesitation or doubt onPlato's part-words like 'perhaps' and 'probably'.

One variant is available which makes better sense of theTheaetetus' silence about middle-period doctrine. That is tointerpret its scepticism as ad hominem.20 Proclus21 reports a

19 Anon., Proleg. 10.7-12.20 For the merits of ad hominem readings in this context, and for a skilful

general examination of the Academic interpretation of Plato, see J. Annas,'Plato the Sceptic', in J. C. Klagge and N. D. Smith, eds., Methods ofInterpreting Plato and his Dialogues, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy,suppl. vol. (Oxford, 1992), 32-72. But I would not go as far as she does inallowing a solely ad hominem method, one which permits Socrates unarguedbeliefs of his own, to count as 'sceptical' in the eyes of the New Academy (cf.next para.).

21 Proclus, in Prm. 63 1-2.

view, which he does not endorse, that the Theaetetus is a confu-tative or 'peirastic' dialogue, directed against Protagoras. (Thepropounders of this view likewise held the Parmenides to be anad hominem critique of Zeno.) We have already seen how thecriticism of Protagoras in Theaetetus part I was thought toextend into part II. It may seem incredible that they should havethought it could be further extended into part III, but there is infact evidence that the Dream Theory, described and refuted inpart III, was regarded as Protagorean.22

It is worth at least noting that this dialectical interpretationwas available, and that it dealt comfortably with problems (I),(2), (3), and (6), the latter two being Plato's silence about hisown most characteristic views on knowledge. But it can hardlyhave been welcome to the Academics. While compatible with thepicture of a sceptical Plato who set out to combat all dogmaticpositions, it is equally compatible with that of a dogmatic Platowhose aim was to refute merely those theses which differedfrom his own. Consequently, the Academics could haveadopted it only at the expense of abandoning the Theaetetus asexhibit no. 1 in the case for Plato the sceptic.

IV

It is time to move on to the second major interpretation of thedialogue as a whole. This one takes the Republic and Timaeus asthe key texts for Plato's epistemology, and interprets theTheaetetus accordingly. Its essence is as follows. Platonicepisteme, as explained in the Republic and Timaeus, has Formsas its objects, while the sensible world is the object of meredoxa. The Theaetetus fails precisely because it addresses itself tothe epistemology of the sensible world. Consequently, it is to beunderstood as an investigation, not of knowledge stricto sensu,but of what in the Hellenistic age had come to be known as 'thecriterion'-that is, the principles and means of cognition ingeneral-with special emphasis on sensory cognition. As forreal episteme of the Forms, it is held that that topic is not tack-led until the immediately succeeding dialogue, the Sophist.

22 This belief seems to underlie Damascius, de Principiis iii. 169. 5-22, ed.L. G. Westerink and J. Combes (Paris, 1991); see eds.' note ad loc., p. 241.

9 David SedleyThe Theaetetus: Three Interpretations 91

This interpretation, much. of which was later to be taken upby Cornford,23 is what I call the 'object-related' interpretation,since it takes Plato to define knowledge in terms of its objects,the Forms. It is the interpretation which the anonymous com-mentator most vehemently opposes, and he sketches it at thebeginning and end of the following passage (2. 11-39):Some of the Platonists have thought that the dialogue was on the topicof the criterion, in view of the considerable space it also devotes to theinvestigation of this. That is wrong. Rather, the declared aim is tospeak about simple uncompounded knowledge, and it is for this pur-pose that he necessarily investigates the criterion. By 'criterion' in thepresent context I mean the criterion through which we judge, as aninstrument; for it is necessary to have that. whereby we will judgethings; then, whenever this is accurate, the permanent acceptance ofthe things which we have judged properly becomes knowledge.

These24 people, on the other hand, say that, having made it hisdeclared aim to investigate knowledge, in the Theaetetus he showswhat its objects are not, while in the Sophist he shows what its objectsare.

The two main components of this view are that the Theaetetusis about the 'criterion', rather than about knowledge, and thatwhat it does reveal about knowledge is something negative-what its objects are not. To see how these two componentsjointly constitute a single interpretation, we must seek enlight-enment from its proponents. While it is not possible to givethem a name, there is, I believe, a fully articulated version oftheir position preserved in chapter 4 of Alcinous' Didaskalikos.Significantly, this chapter is introduced as being 'about the cri-

23 F. M. Cornford, Plato's Theory of Knowledge (London, 1935,1949; reproCambridge, 1957), 12-13, 28, 162-3. Although Cornford does not explicitlyacknowledge his debt to it on this point, he implies that he has read the wholeof the anonymous commentary (p. 28) and elsewhere (p. 15) cites 3.28 ff.,which comes just lines after Anon. has summarized the interpretation in ques-tion. Unfortunately, Cornford takes no apparent heed of Anon.'s damagingreply to the interpretation (p. 94 below). For a full critique of Comford, seeR. Robinson, 'Forms and Error in Plato's Theaetetus', Philosophical Review, 59(1950)' 3-30; repro in Robinson, Essays in Greek Philosophy (Oxford, 1969),39-73

24 QVr[o{] is almost certainly the correct reading in 2. 33, and not ~[v"ot] asin Diels-Schubart. This has the crucial consequence that a single coherentinterpretation is under scrutiny throughout the quoted lines.

terion' .2S Its notion of the criterion 'through which' we judge isderived directly from Theaetetus 184-5, where the senses arerelegated . to that role. Again following the lead of theTheaetetus, this is contrasted with the criterion 'by which'judgement is exercised, namely the judging mind.

The chapter's account of knowledge reflects, not theTheaetetus, but the Republic, Timaeus, and Phaedrus.Knowledge is of Forms. It is achieved through a cognate kindof reason,26 'epistemonic' reason, which is composed of innate'natural conceptions', themselves remnants of the soul's pre-natal direct acquaintance with the primary intelligibles.

By contrast, opinion has sensibles as its objects. And thedetailed account of this sensory cognition is based squarely onthe Theaetetus. Doxa relies on 'doxastic reason', a set of empir-ically derived concepts which we obtain quite independently ofwhatever intellectual grasp of the Forms we may have. 27 Theoperation of doxa, and its fallibility, are explained largely interms of the Wax Block model in the Theaetetus (154.40-155.13):Opinion is the combination of memory and perception. For when wefirst encounter some perceptible, and from it we get a perception, andfrom that a memory, and later we encounter the same perceptibleagain, we connect the pre-existing memory with the later perception,and say within ourselves 'Socrates', 'Horse', 'Fire', etc. And this iscalled opinion-our connecting the pre-existing memory with thenewly produced perception. And when these, on comparison, are inagreement, true opinion occurs, but when they differ, false opinion.

25 Alcinous, Did. I 54. 8~. Citations from the Didaskalikos are from theWhittaker-Louis edition (n. 12 above).

26 Although the Theaetetus is not itself used to provide details of this secondkind of criterion 'through which', it is no doubt taken to acknowledge thatthere is such a criterion, distinct from the senses, at 185e6-7: TO. /LEV aVT~ S,,'aVTi]s ~ Jvx~ 7TLaK07TELV, TO. SE S"o. TWV TOV aW/LaTOS SVVa/LEWV.

27 For this and other aspects of the passage, see R. W. Sharples, 'TheCriterion of Truth in Philo Judaeus, Alcinous and Alexander of Aphrodisias',in P. Huby and G. Neale, eds., The Criterion of Truth (Liverpool, 1989),231-56. This cognitive dualism, found also in Plutarch fro 215d Sandbach, iswell defended as the correct interpretation of Plato by D. Scott, 'PlatonicAnamnesis Revisited', Classical Quarterly, NS 37 (1987), 346-66. For somefurther aspects of the chapter, see L. P. Schrenk, 'Faculties of Judgement inthe Didaskalikos', Mnemosyne, 44 (1991),. 347-63. (It will be clear from mycomments why I do not fully share Schrenk's conclusion that this text 'reflectsthe interests of the Hellenistic schools rather than the Platonic tradition'.)


For if someone who has a memory of Socrates encounters Plato and isled by some resemblance to think he is encountering Socrates again,and then, taking the perception that comes from Plato as coming fromSocrates, connects it with the memory he has of Socrates, a false opin-ion occurs. The thing in which the memory and the perception occurPlato likens to a wax block.

Clearly, part II of the Theaetetus is being treated as Plato'scanonical account of doxa in the sense specified in the Republic,fallible empirical cognition. In the same chapter, Theaetetuspart I is used as Plato's guide to the epistemological structure ofthe sensible world, with a formalized division between primaryperceptibles such as whiteness, secondary perceptibles such aswhite objects,28 and compound objects viewed as aggregates(athroismata; cf. Tht. 157b-c) of primary perceptible proper-ties. It seems a fair guess that the same interpreters attributedthe failure to define knowledge in the dialogue as a whole toPlato's not yet having introduced the proper objects, theForms, which are essential to the separation of knowledge fromdoxa. Or, as the anonymous commentator presents what seemsto be the same interpretation, 'having made it his declared aimto investigate knowledge, in the Theaetetus he shows what itsobjects are not, while in the Sophist he shows what its objectsare'. Where the Theaetetus is read as confining itself to the epis-temological structure of the sensible world, the Sophist is pre-sumably taken to be, as a whole, an investigation of the world ofForms. The key passage for these interpreters must be Sophist253b-e, where 'the greatest knowledge' is made to depend onthe mapping out of genera and species.

This object-related interpretation deals effectively withproblems (I), (2), (3), and (5). Since the Theaetetus turns outnot to confront knowledge stricto sensu, but only a 'knowledge'insufficiently differentiated from mere opinion, it is only to beexpected that it will not (I) single out the Forms as the objectsof knowledge, (2) contrast knowledge with opinion, or (3)invoke recollection. And (5) its failure to define knowledge is acalculated failure, pointing to the Republic's epistemology as the

28 Secondary perceptibles (156. 5) are also called 'accidental' perceptibles(156.2). The latter term itself derives from Aristotle, de Anima (de An.) 2.6,3. I, but conceptually the entire tripartite scheme is drawn from Tht.156d- 157c.

proper solution. As for (4), Socrates' disavowal of knowledge,there is no explicit evidence of these interpreters' response. Butsince their opponent, the anonymous commentator, is very hos-tile to those who attribute irony to Socrates,29 it seems at least agood guess that they had adopted just that tactic, presenting theimage of the barren midwife as a characteristic piece of self-deflation on Socrates' part.30

It remains only to ask how they would deal with problem (6):the dialogue's silence about the Meno's definition of knowledgeas true opinion bound down by aitias logismos. It is certainly astriking fact that this definition is not so much as hinted at in theentire Didaskalikos. 31 The decision by these interpreters todeny it canonical status looks deliberate. If a formal justificationis needed, we might hypothetically supply the following. Allthat the Meno tells us is that correct opinions, when bounddown by 'calculation of the cause', become knowledge. To saythis is not necessarily to define knowledge as a species of correctopinion. A child becomes an adult, but an adult is not a speciesof child. Intellectual progress from opinion to knowledge, asdescribed in the Meno, is possible even if the two states are assharply differentiated as the Republic and Timaeus want them tobe. Doesn't the Cave image describe just such a progression?

v

Now finally, and at rather greater length, let me turn to what Ishall call the subject-related interpretation. My excuse forgreater prolixity is that, since it is the thesis adopted by theanonymous commentator, it is much better documented thanthe other two.

29 See 58. 39 ff. Anon., like some other Platonists (Plutarch, PlatonicaeQuaestiones 999cff., Proclus, in Tim. 397. 29ff., in Ale. 155. 17-28, 228.30-229 2, Olympiodorus, in Ale. 53. 9-16, 173.21-174. 9), interprets Tht.15 I c7-d3 as a boast on Socrates' part, comparing himself to a god. This is pre-sented by Anon. and Plutarch as counter-evidence to those who call Socratesan ironist.

30 Cf. Antiochus, as represented at Cicero, Acad. 2. 15 (n. 14 above).31 Unlike Albinus, who implies approval of it at Intr. 150. 25-7. This is

strong additional evidence for Whittaker's separation of Albinus fromAlcinous; Whittaker with P. Louis, Alcinoos.


The starting-point of the subject-related interpretation is tomake the Meno the canonical text for Platonic epistemology,and to interpret the Theaetetus accordingly. Knowledge isdefined as 'correct belief bound down with aitias logismos'.(Actually Anon. follows a curious variant reading, alT{q.AOYLa/LOV, 'by the cause of reasoning', but he seems to interpretit as if it meant 'by calculation of the cause'.32) I call it subject-related because it makes no explicit reference to the properobjects of knowledge, the Forms. It defines knowledge in termsof the knowing subject's own state.

We can examine its strengths and weaknesses by taking thesix problems in order.

I. Why are the Forms not singled out as the proper objects ofknowledge? The answer is nearly supplied in Anon.'s responseto the object-related interpretation. As we have seen, he reportsits proponents as maintaining that in the Theaetetus Plato showswhat the objects of knowledge are not, while in the Sophist heshows what the objects of knowledge are. Anon.'s immediatereply is as follows (2. 39-52):They have come near the truth, but they have not hit on it. For he isenquiring not into the subject-matter with which knowledge is con-cerned, but into what its essence is. The latter is different from the for-mer, just as in the case of skills there is a difference between enquiringinto the essence of each and enquiring into the subject-matter withwhich they deal.

Here Anon. is acutely exploiting Socrates' rebuttal ofTheaetetus' first attempted definition of knowledge. At I46cSocrates observes that, in defining knowledge as shoemaking,geometry, etc., Theaetetus has in effect said what its objectsare; but, he protests, the question was what knowledge itself is,not what it is of. In recalling the passage, Anon. makes his mes-sage clear: the Theaetetus cannot be aimed at showing /what theobjects of knowledge are not, because it explicitly dismisses thetopic of the objects of knowledge as being extraneous to its pur-pose. By the same token, Anon. is not going to be botheredabout problem (I), the dialogue's failure to specify Forms asobjects of knowledge.

32 For discussion of the problem, see H. Tarrant, 'By Calculation ofReason?', in Huby and Neale, eds., The Criterion of Truth, 57-82.

Since Anon. allows that the opponents come 'near to thetruth' , his own view is presumably that, although theTheaetetus concentrates on the nature of knowledge itself, theSophist does then add an account of the objects of knowledge,the Forms. It is on this latter point that the opponents turn outto be right. 33

2. Why does the Theaetetus fail to contrast opinion withknowledge, but instead treat knowledge itself as a species ofopinion? I have found no help on this in the surviving portionof Anon.'s commentary. But we can perhaps permit ourselvessome help from Albinus. In his surviving Introduction to Plato~sDialogues (150.25-7), he paraphrases Meno 97d-98a as follows:'In order that the dogmata [NB not doxai] should remain in thesoul and not run away, they will need to be bound down by cal-culation of the cause . . .'. This suggests that those Platonistswho wanted to integrate the Meno's definition into Platonicepistemology did so by interpreting its use of doxa, not in thepejorative Republic sense, but as equivalent to dogma, 'doc-trine' .34 We may conjecture that Anon. did the same.

3. Why is the Theaetetus silent about the theory of recollec-tion? This time Anon. would reject the presupposition behindthe question. Is the dialogue really silent about recollection?True, the word anamnesis and its cognates are never used in ref-erence to it. But, as Anon. ingeniously observes (56.21-31), 'inany case, he [Plato] does not always used the word "recollec-tion", except when this is his primary topic of investigation. Heindicated as much in the Meno by saying "Let it make no dif-ference whether we call it teachable or recollectable".' The cita-tion is from Meno 87b-c, and it authorizes Anon.'s willingnessto detect allusions to recollection in a number of passages ofthe Theaetetus. 35 In fact, he explicitly interprets Socrates'

33 The opponents might cite in their support Republic (R.) 477C andTimaeus (Ti.) 29b-c, where Plato distinguishes epis{eme from doxa largely interms of their respective objects. If so, Anon. can reply that at R. 477c ff. andTi. 51 b-52a Plato argues for the conclusion that Forms exist, starting from thepremiss that knowledge and opinion are intrinsically different cognitive states.

34 The same device is used by Alcinous, Did. 182. 35-7, regarding theRepublic's definition of courage at 429b-c and 433C: Soyp.aTo~ vvop.ovaWTT]p{a SLVOV T Kat p.~ SLVOV, TOVTEaTL SLaawaTLK~ Svvap.L~ Soyp.aTO~vvop.ov. Here Soyp.a represents the Soga of R.

35 This includes 16. 1-41, a complex analysis of Tht. 145d7-e6 as an

David Sedley The Theaetetus: Three Interpretations 97

professed art of midwifery as the dialectical skill of making peo-ple recollect, which he in turn equates with helping them tounfold and articulate their innate conceptions.36

In making this unitarian move, Anon. faces the followingobjection. 37 Socrates as midwife says that he finds many of theyoung to be sterile, incapable of giving birth to an intellectualbrainchild. Yet the Symposium, introducing the idea of preg-nancy of soul, asserts that every human being is pregnant.Anon. anticipates this objection. Addressing the lemma at151 b2-3, where Socrates speaks of 'some people, who don't

h b ( (\" \ ~ 'e Iseem to me some ow to e pregnant OL av JLOL JL'YJ oo~waL 1TW~EYKVJLOVE~ ElvaL)', he comments as follows (57. 15-42):Now in the Symposium he says that all human beings are pregnantboth in soul and in body. And it is likely that this pregnancy of soul isrecollection. 38 How then can he say here that it seems even to him thatsome people are not pregnant? Well, we must understand here 'in thislife'. For even if it was once possible for them, they are not capable ofhaving these things to hand (XELV ... TTpoXELpa) in every incarnation.Hence it was no accident that he added the word 'somehow' before'pregnant', but so that it should be understood that in a way they arenot pregnant, i.e. as regards having it to hand. But, universally speak-ing, they must be pregnant.

In other words, all souls are pregnant sub specie aeternitatis-and that is the claim made in the Symposium-but their presentstate of incarnation can render them temporarily barren. AsAnon. says elsewhere (47. 19-23), what made Theaetetus him-self seemingly pregnant was the fact that he was 'full', in thesense of being naturally well endowed (EV~V~~) with 'commonconceptions', and 'did not have them deeply hidden'. 39

In effecting this reconciliation, Anon. equates the pregnantsoul's recollecting with its 'having' the knowledge 'to hand'

argument about recollection. I discuss this fully in 'A Platonist Reading ofTheaetetus 145-147', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, suppl. vol. 67(1993), 125-49

36 See 46.34-48.35,52.44-54. 13,55. 14-33,56. 11-37.37 Cf. M. Burnyeat's use of this objection in 'Socratic Midwifery, Platonic

Inspiration' .38 Reading at 57.20-2 Ka? ~[l]K6S'[a'TL]!, T[ov]ro T[o Jv]X[iJ Kv]~a~r[L] aV~fL!'?7[aLv]

Elva[L.] . .. 39 47. 19-24, reading OV]K ~l[XEV aV]Tas ~4>9 [Spa TTLKEK]~'\VfLfLE[V]~S at22-4

(EXELV ... 1TpoXELpa, 57. 32-3). Now in the Aviary image thisis the expression used for not merely 'possessing' a knowledge-bird in your aviary but actually grabbing it for use. From this,we can begin to reconstruct how Anon. in the lost later part ofhis commentary must have integrated the Aviary image into hisPlatonist epistemology. Having a bird 'to hand' is equivalent torecollecting an item of knowledge.40 (Anon. was almost boundto make this equation, because at 198d5-8 having a bird to handis associated with 'recovering knowledge', dVaAaJL{3avovTa T~V

E1TLaT~JL'YJv, the very same expression as is used for recollectionin the M eno.41) It is a fair guess that he completed the picturewith something like the following set of equivalences:42

Midwifery Aviary Incarnate soul(a) 'somehow not empty cage inability to recollect

pregnant'(b) pregnant 'possessing' ability to

birds recollect(c) giving birth 'having' birds recollection.

'to hand'

As Socrates says (197e), our aviary is empty in infancy. Soline (a) describes everybody's mental state at birth. Sadly, it isthe state in which many of us remain throughout our lives. Line(b) describes the intellectual ability which emerges in the well-endowed when they reach the age of rationality. Line (c) pre-sents the successful outcome of intellectual midwifery. On this

40 Proclus, in Cra. 27 suggests that, when Socrates at Cratylus (Cra.)384b-c disavows knowledge of correctness of names, it may be that he knowsit Ka(}' 19LV but not KaTa TTpOXELpLGLV. If, as I suppose, this means that he couldwork it out for himself but has not yet done so, KaTa TTpOXELpLGLV will imply aninterpretation of the Aviary image similar to Anon.'s. The same interpretationof 'having to hand' is also implicit at Plotinus, Enneads I. I. 9. 15 and 3. 8. 6.21-3, although at 4. 9. 5. 12ff. he seems to use it (according to the morestraightforward reading of the Theaetetus) for the active use of knowledge onehas already acquired since birth, as does Philoponus regularly, e.g. in de An.128.7-8 , 303. 17-19, de Aeternitate mundi 70. 29-71.4.

41 Meno 85d; cf. Anon.'s use of it for recollection at 16. 1-41 (see n. 35above).

42 At 197e Socrates says that captured knowledge-birds have been 'learnt'and are 'known'. If my reconstruction is right, Anon. may have had to inter-pret this as saying that we only capture knowledge-birds which we havealready, i.e. pre-natally, learnt.

98 David Sedley The Theaetetus: Three Interpretations 99view, when Socrates says that our aviary is empty in infancy,the emptiness is not to be understood as a denial !hat we all haveinnate knowledge. Rather, what is not yet established in earlyinfancy, but emerges only with the maturation process, iswhether that innate knowledge is accessible--whether it willamount to the 'possession' of caged knowledge-birds availablefor grabbing, that is, to our having concepts ready to articulate.

That, at least, is the best I can do for Anon. in the absence ofhis commentary on the Aviary passage. But it might be unfairto assume that he could not do better.

4. Why should Socrates, Plato's spokesman, disavow knowl-edge and present himself as a mere midwife of others' ideas,himself intellectually barren? This was, as we saw, fundamen-tal to the New Academy's representation of Plato as anAcademic sceptic. Anon.'s retort to this (54.43-55. 13) is, first,that the New Academics were not really sceptical, but virtuallyall endorsed dogmatic Platonism; and, second, that you onlyhave to read Plato to see that he was himself a committed doc-trinal philosopher. But that still leaves him the task of reconcil-ing the Theaetetus with this eminently credible portrayal ofPlato. How is it done? Largely by a campaign to detect everypossible qualification in Socrates' disclaimers of wisdom.

At I 50c8-d I Socratesdescribes himself as ov 7Tavv TL aoePos.This is interpreted in all of the dozen or so modern translationsI have consulted as 'not at all wise'. Anon.'s comment on it (55.42-5) is 'he does notaccuse himself of not being wise, but notcompletely wise'. And he is absolutely right. The Platonic par-allels for the expression ov 7Tavv TL confirm that it does indeedmean 'not completely', rather than, as standardly taken here,'not at all' .43 Anon.'s knowledge of Platonic Greek is not bril-liant, but it may still be a good deal better than ours.

If Socrates' disavowal amounts to no more than his not beingcompletely wise, what are the kinds of wisdom that he lacks?Here again Anon. is ready with a whole series of answers.

At 150c Socrates admits 'I make no assertions myself aboutanything, through having no wisdom.' Recognizing this as aprime item of evidence for the sceptical reading, Anon.

43 Of the dozen instances in Plato, all permit the translation 'not com-pletely', and three passages put it beyond doubt that this is the sense: Cratylus386a5-c8, Lysis 204d4, and Euthydemus 286e9.

responds by offering three possible qualifications of Socrates'admission. He starts with an interpretative paraphrase (54.23-30): 'When I question certain people, I make no assertions,but I listen to what they themselves say. This is through havingno wisdom so far as relates to this kind of teaching.' In otherwords, the disavowal of wisdom may be no more than Socrates'admission that he has no talent for feeding information to hispupils. He then adds two alternative interpretations (54. 31-8):'Or, if "having no wisdom" is to be understood in an absolutesense, it will be that he is not wise in the wisdom which heattributes to god, or the one which other people attribute to thesophists.' The disavowal of divine wisdom44 could no doubtformally echo such passages as Apology 23a, where Socratesclaims to have only human wisdom. But I would expect Anon.to have more especially in mind his own Platonist ethical telos of'becoming like god so far as is possible' (itself a legacy of theTheaetetus),45 with its emphasis on the gap that must alwaysremain between man and God. As for the suggestion thatSocrates is disavowing the wisdom which others attribute to thesophists, this finds a little support later on. At 15 I b Socratessays that when he finds his would-be pupils to be barren hehands many over to Prodicus 'and many to other wise and won-derful men (aoePo'is T Kat (Jea7TeaLoLS avSpaaLv)'. When hecomes to this passage, Anon. (58. 7-12) treats it as confirminghis third suggestion, that there is a reputed kind of sophisticwisdom, and that this is precisely what Socrates is disavowing.He might well not want to distinguish it sharply from the firstof his three suggestions, that the wisdom disavowed is (so-called) 'wisdom' for teaching by imparting information.

What then does Socrates' self-professed barrenness consistin? Anon.'s answer is forthright. It is a methodological barren-ness. Socrates, he insists, had lots of doctrines, but suppressedthem for dialectical or didactic purposes, since only thus could

44 Cf. Anon., Proleg. 10.60-5: 'When he says "I know nothing", he is com-paring his own knowledge with that of the gods, the latter being in a differentclass from the former. Ours is mere knowledge, while god's is practicallyapplied. And god's knowledge knows by simple attention, whereas we knowthrough causes and premisses.'

4S The locus classicus was Tht. 176b. Anon. alludes to the doctrine at 7.14-20, with reference forward to his commentary ad loco


he induce his pupils to unfold their innate conceptions. In hisintroductory comment on midwifery (47. 31-48. II) he writes:He called himself a midwife after his mother, because that is what histeaching was like. For there were other ways in which he made asser-tions and had doctrines, but in his teaching he made his pupils them-selves speak about things, and unfolded and articulated their naturalconceptions. And this is a consequence of the doctrine that what arecalled acts of learning are acts of recollection, and that every humansoul has viewed the things which are [TEOEaaOaL Tn OVTa] , and needs,not the input of lessons, but recollection. This doctrine will be dis-cussed in our commentary on the work On the soul.46

Again, when Socrates at 150c says that he is barren of wisdom,literally 'incapable of generating wisdom' (ayovo~ aOc/>Las) ,Anon. comments (53. 38-54. 13):Not absolutely. At any rate, he will say later that he is wise but notcompletely wise. Rather he means 'I am barren47 for generating thewisdom in someone else.' For he does not himself teach, but articu-lates the conceptions of the young, just as midwives also bring to birththe offspring of others. And just as midwives used once to give birth,but are no longer giving birth when they, act as midwives, so tooSocrates conceived and gave birth on his own account, but while act-ing as midwife on the opinions of the young he was barren in relationto them.

This is a cardinal point of interpretation. A diachronic distinc-tion, between the midwife's earlier childbearing phase and herpresent phase as barren midwife of other women's offspring, istaken to symbolize a synchronic distinction between two differ-ent philosophical modes in which Socrates operates. His bar-renness is assumed merely as a didactic device.48 Qua teacherhe is barren, qua philosopher he is not. Such an interpretationhas many attractions. If we had the later part of Anon.'s com-mentary, we would undoubtedly find him claiming triumphantconfirmation at I8se7-8. There Socrates, having eventually

46 On the soul is undoubtedly the Phaedo (cf. Diogenes Laertius 3.58). Notetoo the allusion to Phaedrus 24ge in the expression TEOEaaOaL Tn OVTa.

47 The papyrus originally read ayovo~, which was later emended to theclearly inferior EVyOVO~.

48 See also 55. 24-33, 56. 2-10. Anon. could (although he does not) invokethe support of Tht. 149blo-C2 as confirming that Socrates, in order to be a suc-cessful midwife, must have some experience of giving birth.

extracted from Theaetetus the assertion- that .the soul gainsaccess to 'common' properties through its own internalresources, congratulates him with the words, 'That is what Ithought myself. But I wanted you to think it too.' Midwiferydoes not require having no brainchildren of one's own, just notrevealing them.

Moreover, for Anon., the maieutic method is not unique toSocrates, as the text of the Theaetetus might have been thoughtto indicate. When Socrates tells Theaetetus '(The) god compelsme to act as midwife, and has forbidden me to give birth'(150C), Anon.'s comment is (55. 26-30): '(The) god is responsi-ble for this, by setting it up that souls do not learn but recollect.'On this reading, Socrates is describing, not his personal, god-given mission, but the nature of all education, consequent uponthe god-given nature of the soul. Implicitly, maieutic method isthe only proper educational method. (This will prove impor-tant almost immediately, when we learn that Plato's method ofteaching us is also maieutic.) ,

Our final task is to consider together problems (5) and (6),the dialogue's failure to define knowledge, along with its failureto consider the Meno definition of knowledge. Anon. writes asfollows in his introductory remarks (2. 52-3. 25):Since knowledge is, of course, correct opinion bound down by thecause of reasoning (aiTLq. AOYLajLov)-for it is when we know not onlythaJ they are, but also why they are, that we know things-and sincethose who overrated the senses because they had something strikingabout them assigned accuracy to them as well, he will start by testingthis belief; then he will move on to correct opinion, and after that tocorrect opinion plus an account. And there he will halt his enquiry.For if he were to add causal binding (TOV DEajLOv TTJ~ aiTLa~), the accountof this kind of knowledge would become complete.

Anon. clearly holds that Plato has the Meno's definition in mindas the correct one,49 and that he deliberately suppresses it at the

49 Cf. 2. 29-32, translated above, Sect. IV: ~ TWV '.


end, where it would have been the natural next step. Why doeshe think that? The answer is most clearly given by the anony-mous Prolegomena, a work which at least in this respect sharesthe views of the anonymous commentator. Replying to theAcademic sceptics' reading of the Theaetetus (p. 86 above), itsauthor says:

To these people, we will reply that Plato does not think that the soul islike a tabula rasa, but holds that it needs only uncovering in order tobecome sober and to see the facts, since it has the knowledge inside itbut does not see clearly because of its contact with the body. Hence itonly needs repurging (anakatharsis). And that is why 'he refuted thebadly stated theses about knowledge, thus allowing the soul to bepurged clean and to conceive the truth.50

Here the Platonist conception of 'purgative' dialectic plays acrucial part. Originating from the Sophist (230), it describes themethod of the so-called 'peirastic' dialogues, whose object is toclear away false beliefs. But purgation is a richer notion than themere removal of falsehoods. Following the lead of the Phaedo,ancient Platonism sees purgation (katharsis) as the restorationof the soul to its natural state of wisdom. The soul already hasthe knowledge in it. Purge the obstacles which incarnationimposes, and the knowledge will surface of its own accord.

Excessive confidence in the power of the senses is paramountamong the obstacles which the body imposes on understanding(Phaedo 6sa-b), and that was therefore Plato's first target forrefutation in the Theaetetus. The anonymous commentatorclearly takes such a view (3. 7-1 S), even introducing a specialterm for the purpose: the Protagorean thesis, which equatedknowledge with perception, had to be 'pre-repurged'(1TpoavaKa(}aLpELV, 2. IQ-I I) before the dialogue could makefurther progress. Anon. sees the dialogue as proceeding,through purgation of false beliefs, ever closer to the true defin-ition of knowledge. It stops just short of it, and at the end leavesus, the readers, to come up with the truth. 51

Whether or not we agree with these Platonists about the rel-evance of recollection to the Theaetetus, we must surely admire

50 Anon., Proleg. 10.26-33.51 Perhaps the most prominent modern counterpart of this reading is that of

Gail Fine, 'Knowledge and Logos in the Theaetetus', Philosophical Review, 88(1979),366-97.

their analysis of the dialogue's strategy. More than any moderncommentator known to me, they pay serious attention to thefact that the dialogue is itself an example of the philosophicalmethod outlined in it. 52 Their inspired diagnosis is that whilethe dramatic content of Theaetetus takes the form of failed mid-wifery, performed by Socrates on Theaetetus, the dialogue'saddress to us, the readers, is also one of intellectual midwifery,this time on Plato's part. 53 For Plato to end up by telling us thecorrect definition would be a clear dereliction of duty. Instead,and in absolute conformity with maieutic method, he deliversus to the point where we should ourselves be ready to givebirth. 54

52 An analogous case could be made out for Phaedo and Republic. But thatis another story. .

53 Proclus, in Ale. 28.4-9 adopts the same view of the dialogue's strategy,but locates it in Socrates' address to Theaetetus, not in Plato's address to us.This is less plausible, in view of Tht. 210b. There were also those who deniedthat the Theaetetus is a maieutic dialogue: e.g. D.L. 3. 5.

54 My thanks to audiences at Cornell, Chicago, Pittsburgh, London,Edinburgh, and Cambridge, and, for comments and advice, to James Allen,Myles Burnyeat, Fernanda Decleva Caizzi, Pierluigi Donini, Gail Fine, LucasSiorvanes, and the editors of this volume.

Form and Argumentin Late Plato

Edited byCHRISTOPHER GILL

andMARY MARGARET McCABE

CLARENDON PRESS OXFORD

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