| INTRODUCTION
Before contrasting certain elements of the
THEAETETUS AND THE REPUBLIC I will first examine Socrates' maieutic methodology
(his midwife analogy) and then consider the
question of Plato's Forms. The essay will
then turn to the main fact-finding focus
of this paper, which is to provide a contrastive
account of the different approaches to knowledge
in the two dialogues by identifying similarities
and variations of approach.
THE MAIEUTIC METHOD
 Theaetetus seeks to arrive at the truth by
way of logical arguments. Plato, the amanuensis
turned ghostwriter for the executed Socrates,
intends that the context be understood in
the light of Socrates' mission to educate
his fellow citizens. Socrates' discussion
with the brilliant geometrician and mathematician
Theaetetus whom he likes and respects, is
a joint examination of the subject matter
of 'knowledge,' which lacks the cross-examinational
extremes of the elenchtic method by good-naturedly
getting his conversational partner to re-examine
the entailments of his uncritically held
beliefs, to see if they were abortive or
viable in the sense that a healthy foetus
is determined to be viable.
| 'Socrates himself describes it as the art
of delivering the mind of a universal idea
(maieutikê technê.) [1] (De Wulf. 1909. p. 15.) |
I employ the word 'abortive' deliberately, for the essential qualities
or characteristics of Plato's maieutic science
of the dialectic carry an allusion to the
outcomes of human parturition. Plato believed
that the human soul possesses realised knowledge
from previous lives, which could be brought
out and elucidated via dialectic.
He referred to his role as that
of: maieutic psychagogy from the Greek: maieutic: maieûtikos, midwife, and psychagogy: psûchê, soul, and agogê, to transport or lead out of, and referred
to his ability to help or bring out (give
birth to) new ideas, from a person's soul,
or to transmit to a person's psyche an understanding
of a higher level of being. Cornford. (Theaet.
148b - e.)
For Plato a form exists for each matching type of object in
the cosmos. This curious ancient belief meant that there exist
forms for human beings, trees, pork pies, water
hydrants, boats, apples, colours, beauty,
piety, goodness and knowledge. The Form of the Good equals God, and the location where souls
come into existence and Forms exist is in
a 'Platonic heaven' - a spiritual dimension
where the souls of the dead experience a
renewed conjugation with the forms. Particulars
are objects that are involved in a Form,
which provides the requisite existential
condition for a particular to exist, and
compose the potentiality of things. There
is an important criticism of the Forms first
offered by Plato in his dialogue Parmenides.
Cornford. (Parm. 132b-136c.) It is called
the Third Man Argument and states that if we take an assemblage
of things with a mutual feature such as knowledge
and place them under the characteristic knowledge
then knowledge itself can be said to contain
the knowledge characteristic, so it can be
committed to the archetype set as well. The
set must be classified under another form,
a second knowledge - for example: KNOWLEDGE
SET (B.) which also contains the characteristic
of knowledge, so it may be placed in a set
as well as KNOWLEDGE SET (C) etc.
Gregory Vlastos, twentieth century
Socratic scholar commented:
|
'Plato explains systematically what Socrates
never tried to do at all: 'how' Forms are
real - what sort of reality they have.'
[2] (Vlastos. 1991.) p. 66)
|
Vlastos also pointed out that when Aristotle
came across dialogues, which asserted the
existence of abstractions like 'justice,
piety, beauty and the rest, he understands
Socrates to be talking about 'universals'
| 'For that is called 'universal' whose nature
it is to belong to a number of things.' [3] (Ibid. 1991) p. 93.) |
THE THEAETETUS - THE DIALOGUE
The Theaetetus is aporetic - it is a dialogue
that ends in an insoluble contradiction or
paradox of meanings, though the development
of the dialectic is both fascinating and
highly educative epistemologically.
Unlike the parabalistic approach he used
is The Cave, and the diagrammatically analytical
approach of The Divided Line in The Republic,
Socrates initiates a dialectic discussion
proper by asking the salient question:
| 'I cannot make out to my own satisfaction
what knowledge is? Can we answer that question?'
Cornford. (Theaet. 146.) |
Theaetetus offers a list of the sciences
and points to the art of the cobbler and
other craftsmen claiming that these are knowledge.
Predictably Socrates protests that individual
examples are insufficient:
'But the question you were asked Theaetetus,
was not what are the objects of knowledge…but
to find out what the thing itself - knowledge
- is? [Ibid. 146e.]
The discussion goes on to evaluate three
separate epistemological accounts of knowledge
furnished by his interlocutor: (a) Knowledge is perception; (b) Knowledge
is true belief, and (c) Knowledge is justified
true belief.
They are all eventually
ruled out, and no successful replacement
is provided. What we do witness in this verbal interplay is the
Platonic intromission of the Form as aspatial and atemporal for every corresponding
type of object in reality and a rigorous
examination of the appropriate domain of
sensation and ideation.
(A) KNOWLEDGE
IS PERCEPTION.
Theaetetus then introduces his first idea
- that 'Knowledge is perception.
'Now as far as I can see at present, knowledge
is perception.' (Ibid. 151e)
Socrates parries this
suggestion by employing another allusion
to midwifery and claims that it refers to
the theories of Protagoras and it should
be compared with them in order to see:
'Whether it is a true birth
or a mere wind-egg?' (Ibid. 151e.)
The pre-Socratic thinker Protagoras
coined the famous dictum:
'Man is the measure of all things,'
[4] Protagoras. Fragment 1 (DK80b1) |
Protagoras contended
that if one man claims: 'it is hot' and the
man is not lying, then the statement is true
for that person. If a second and third truthful
person claims it is mild, or it is cold,
then those statements could also be true
for them. The dictum matches up with the
old adage; 'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.'
Socrates rejects Theaetetus'
suggested definition of 'perception as knowledge'
and concludes that it relegates the contextual
definition to a doctrine which rules out
a concise explanation of the meaning of the
word 'knowledge,' for all criteria of judgment
are relative to the individuals and situations
involved.
(B) KNOWLEDGE
IS TRUE BELIEF.'
Theaetetus then postulates 'Knowledge is
true belief,' but Socrates swiftly discounts
the idea with the observation that orators
and lawyers are skilled in persuading people
to believe anything of which they were not
even eyewitnesses. True belief in those circumstances
therefore is a belief in something, which
might prove consistent with fact or might
not just by mere luck. (Cornford. Theaet.
201a - d.)
THE DREAM
(c) KNOWLEDGE IS TRUE JUDGMENT ACCOMPANIED
BY LOGOS. |
Stimulated by
Theaetetus' next suggestion that knowledge
is true judgment accompanied by Logos (an
account) adding that only that which has
Logos can be known. Socrates develops his
argument by way of 'The Dream' into a convoluted
theory of knowledge. He posits two kinds
of existents and claims that Complexes being
a conceptual whole made up of related simples.
Such Complexes presuppose a Logos that analyses
and maps them into their simple components.
The simples however cannot be known. Thus
a knowledge of a Complex means a 'true belief'
in accord with an account (logos) that cannot
analyse and map to the simplest constituents
of entities which are unknowable which means
that any object, which is the sum of these
parts, cannot be known either. (Ibid. 202e)
Socrates uses the example of letters and
syllables. The first syllables of Socrates'
name comprise of the letters - 'S and O'
- but one cannot give a similar Logos [account]
of the syllable's elements, since they are
mere vocus flatus. Thus no knowledge is possible.
Ibid. 203a - 204a)
We are entitled to ask
why Socrates claims that these simple elements
of perception, the characters of the alphabet
and the names belonging to them used are
without logos, indescribable and unknowable?
Both letters are in my view perfectly knowable
as to their history, development, shape,
pronunciation, phonetic meaning and a wealth
of explanation can be provided about them.
By way of illustration, the eighteenth letter
of the Greek alphabet, the sibilant apical
or laminal alveolar 'S' ( S - sigma) is pronounced
'S' as in sister - but 'Z' as in zoo before
beta, gamma, delta, and mu, etc. Much time
could be spent talking about these letters,
and linguists and schoolteachers certainly
do.
As
Meyerhoff points out in his: 'Socrates' Dream in the Theaetetus,'
|
'This relevance, however, is not shown in
the statement or in the subsequent criticism
of the dream. On the contrary, both exposition
and criticism seem to take these characteristics
fur granted; or, more precisely, the statement
of the 'dream' justifies this basic assumption
in language so condensed and oblique that
the reasons for it are not easily apparent.
[5] (Meyerhoff 1958. P.132.) |
Thus the definition of
knowledge as "true judgment plus Logos" cannot be sustained either. Theaetetus has
nothing else to say, and the dialogue ends
inconclusively. Theaetetus acknowledges that
thanks to Socrates he has already given utterance
to more than he had in him. To which Socrates
good-naturedly concludes:
|
'All of which our midwife's skill pronounces
to be mere wind eggs and not worth the rearing?'
(Ibid. 210b)
|
THE REPUBLIC
The 'traditional' analysis of knowledge In
the Theaetetus was deeply influenced, by
Plato's proposal that knowledge is true belief
with an account or logos. We now turn to
the Republic, where he conducts an epistemological
evaluation of his varying levels of knowledge-acquisition
- Imagining, Belief, Thinking, and Perfect
Intelligence in the service of the attainability
of the Good with the personal and public
ethical values it entails. He expresses this
theory with three approaches and provides
us with an account through interconnected
metaphors that exploit a similarity between
experiences as experienced in the different
sense modalities of The Cave and the more
cerebral, rationalistic methodology of the
Divided Line and his belief in The Forms.
In the Republic Socrates links his discussion
of knowledge with personal justice in relation
to citizenship and how a just person should
conduct himself and how knowledge can regulate
how the good can prevail in the city states
of Greece. For Nietzsche Socrates saw through
the noble Athenians…the same kind of degeneration
was quietly developing everywhere: old Athens
was coming to an end.
|
'Everywhere the instincts were in anarchy,
everywhere one was within sight of excess:
monstrum in animo was the common danger.'
[6] (Nietzsche 1895. l-9) |
THE DIVIDED LINE
In a famous paragraph Socrates outlines the
graphical format of his epistemological device:
|
'Represent them then, as it were, by a line
divided into two unequal sections and cut
each section again in the same ratio-the
section that is, of the visible and that
of the intelligible order-and as an expression
of the ratio of their comparative clearness
and obscurity you will have, as one of the
sections of the visible world, images. By
images I mean, first, shadows, and then reflections
in water and on surfaces of dense, smooth,
and bright texture, and everything of that
kind, if you apprehend.'
Cornford. [Rep. 509d] |
The levels of knowledge
delineated so imaginatively and dramatically
in the Cave are thus approached less emotionally
and more schematically and diagrammatically
in The Divided Line, where imagining, as
in the Cave, is at the most inferior level
of this developmental scaling ladder of the
states of his four stages in the acquisition
of knowledge in pursuit of the Good: appearance,
belief, thinking, and perfect intelligence.
Not unexpectedly, as
in the Cave, the Sun is also employed by
Socrates in the Divided Line as a metaphor
for The Good:
| '
The sun, I presume you will say, not only
furnishes to visibles the power of visibility,
but it also provides for their generation
and growth and nurture though it is not itself
generation. Of course not. In like manner,
then, you are to say that the objects of
knowledge not only receive from the presence
of the good; their being known, but their
very existence and essence is derived to
them from it, the good itself is not essence
but still transcends essence in dignity and
surpassing power.'
Cornford. (Rep. 509b) |
The Forms are designated
the highest levels of 'reality' Plato
summarises the schemata of the epistemological
division for his interlocutor Glaucon thus:
|
'And now, answering to these four sections,
assume these four affections occurring in
the soul-intellection or reason for the highest,
understanding for second, belief for the
third, and for the last, picture thinking
or conjecture-and arrange them in a proportion,
considering that they participate in clearness
and precision in the same degree as their
objects partake of truth and reality.
'(Ibid. 511.d.] |
'I understand, he said. I concur
and arrange them as you bid.'
For Plato then, the 'real world' is not what
we see but what we understand or feel in
an 'intelligible world' because it is made
up of eternal Forms. The thinker believed
there are three ways to discover Forms: recollection,
dialectic and desire. Recollection is when
our souls remember the Forms from prior existence.
Dialectic is when people discuss and explore
the Forms together. And third is the desire
for knowledge.
THE CAVE
In Plato's compelling vignette of the Cave
[ibid. 514] we are presented with a vision
of manacled captives invested in a dark grotto
into which no sunlight ever penetrates, facing
a wall and pinioned by their necks in such
a manner that they can only look forward
at the wall upon which shadows of the shapes
of objects or men are paraded on an elevated
causeway in front of an unseen fire behind
them which projects the shadows upon its
surface. For the shackled men the indistinct
shapes perceived by the visual senses are
appearances that form their version of "true
reality.'
|
|
| The seated prisoners [left] observe the shapes
projected by the firelight upon the cave
wall |
The allegory of the imprisonment
in the murky depths of the Cave indicates
that humanity lives in epistemological and
sensorial ignorance. Later in the apologue
a man is released and the results of his
ascent to the shining brightness of the sun
compared with his former ignorant fettered
existence in the dark below. For Socrates
deliverance from the unknowingness of the
appearance of merely sensible objects and
the ultimate achieval of the individual and
public benefits for society necessitates
an acknowledgement of the Forms of Knowledge,
Justice and the Good provide. Knowledge can
only be attained via an ascent to the brightness
of the Good, (of which the sun is a metaphor.)
When eventually a man is unshackled
and is enabled to turn his head and see the
real objects which for so long have
been paraded behind him, he is at first be
unable to comprehend them as being
the embodiments of the indistinct shadows
and shapes on the wall. Finally he
is freed from below ground and staggers to
the surface rubbing his eyes against the
bright light of the sun which has:
| 'The power of elevating the highest principle
in the soul to the contemplation of that
which is best in existence,' [ibid. 517b.] |
Hence will the released prisoner from ignorance
gain eventual sight of the upper world of
knowledgeable reality.
|
And first he will see the shadows best, next
the reflections of men and other objects
in the water, and then the objects themselves;
then he will gaze upon the light of the moon
and the stars and the spangled heaven [516b]
and then he will see the sky and the stars
by night better than the sun or the light
of the sun by day?'
|
Thus does Socrates in this cleverly created allegory
reveal the point of the allegory, for we
are being asked to assume that the ascent
and the contemplation is the soul's ascent
to the intelligible region
Hence the allegory depicts
the need for mankind to aspire to and reach
the form of knowledge, without which they
will be forever unable to make the correct
ethical and political and ethical decisions.
All other forms of knowledge will be useless
- without the key to life - 'highest form
of knowledge' - the form of the Good.
CONCLUSION
The unsuccessful Socratic midwifery of the
Theaetetus failed to deliver a healthy gnosiology
for a young Theaetetus, pregnant, but sadly
barren of such a theory of knowledge.
It is however fruitful to compare
Socrates' brilliant dialectical approach
in The Theaetetus, including his painstaking unpicking of
every proposition put forward by his interlocutor,
with the more successful and less wordy allegorical
approach of The Cave and the equally successful analysis of knowledge
into its elemental parts or basic principles
in The Divided Line.
The most obvious difference
is that the quest for the meaning of knowledge
in The Republic works, as far as his particular message goes,
while The Theaetetus, in spite of being an intriguing historical
document - does not - for it ends in aporia.
|
Thomas
Aquinas said of Plato in his great Summa Theologiae:
'Plato held that the forms of corporeal matter
are derived from, and formed by, forms immaterially
subsisting, by a kind of participation. Thus
he held that there exists an immaterial man,
and an immaterial horse, and so forth.'
He further reminds us:
'Thus Aristotle rejects the opinion of Plato,
who held that ideas existed of themselves,
and not in the intellect’
And adds that: 'This opinion appears to be unreasonable
in affirming separate ideas of natural things
as subsisting of themselves.' [7] (Thom. Aquinas. I, q. 84, a. 1. c.)
|
Socrates' theory of knowledge
is so 'Form-Dependant' and is utterly predicated upon Plato's theory
of forms. There much opposition to these
curious ideas of the existence of forms,
and the concept is very much out of favour
with most modern philosophers.
My own view? As an eliminative
determinist I am totally out of sympathy
with all of Plato's and Socrates‘ transcendentalist
ideas, abstract verbiage and reified nomenclature.
If asked to provide ‘evidence’ for exactly why I have no disproof to back
up this rejection, then the answer is – I cannot provide any.
If such a philosopher claims
that there exists a realm which contains mysterious ‘forms,’ which float around as templates for worldly
objects, or reificational definitional models
of human activity, or existential modalities,
such as ‘beauty’ or ‘piety’ or ‘knowledge,’ or we have regurgitative ‘know how’ that we bring with us from ‘previous lives,’ then I cannot produce evidence to the
contrary – and nobody can.
As a nominalisnt and eliminativist
for me ‘ Knowledge’ does not exist – only ‘knowing humans’
can be found in the world - If anyone can
prove otherwise – let them try.
From a modern ontological,
mereological and scientific point of view
Plato's notions of ‘complexes’ and ‘simples’ are without foundation, though approached
as social documents, or as a History of Philosophy, ‘The Theaetetus’ and ‘The Republic’ are very interesting and worth reading.
Kant accuses Plato of creating these "perceptions"
out of thin air, mere subjective feeling.
Plato's effort involves, claims Kant, a "mystical illumination," which brands him as having fallen into Schwarmerei (the enthusiasm of visionary charlatans) that
is "the death of all philosophy." Thus for Kant, Plato is the charlatan par
excellence--nothing more.
[8] Livergood. 2006]
|
As a historiography The Cave continues to work for me as a brilliant literary
allegory of Plato as ‘historical man’ exalted in his desire to improve the understanding
of his fellows and establish fitting ethical
touchstones of what is good and what is bad,
by testing them against assiduously crafted,
personally bench-tested epistemological criteria
with which to improve their own extraordinarily
fecund and innovative society.
In these dark days of
international ignorance of 'the other' and as the heirs of the phenomenological
inheritance, which Socrates, Plato and the
like have handed down to us, we too continue
our torturously slow moral progress from
the darkness of the Cave towards the sunlight
of knowledge.
We are tardy in our scaling
of the upward inclines of knowledge. Unchained,
we struggle slowly towards the surface brightness
and a new world of understanding and justice
under the bright sun - but instead discover
a world of charred cities illuminated by
the incandescent light of burning tower blocks.
Is our climb in vain - have we left it too
late?
REFERENCES
Note: All textual references to The Theaetetus,
The Republic and The Parmenides used in this
essay are Stephanus page numbers and refer
to:
Plato. 'Plato - The Collected Dialogues.' translator. F.M. Cornford. Hamilton. E.-Cairns.H.
ed. 2005. Bollington Series. LXXI. Princeton
University Press.
[1] De Wulf. Maurice. 'History of Medieval Philosophy.' p. 15. Longmans, Green, and Co.
39 Paternoster Row, London 1909.
[2] Vlastos. Gregory. 'Socrates. Ironist and Moral Philosopher.' 1991) p. 93. Cambridge University Press.
Cambridge.
[3] Ibid 1991) p. 93.
[4] Protagoras. 'Perseus Encyclopedia.' http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?
doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0004%3Aid%3Dprotagoras-of-abdera.
Accessed: 7 November 2006.
[5] Meyerhoff, H.: 'Socrates' dream in the Theaetetus,' in: Classical Quarterly 8 (1958), p.132.
[6] Nietzsche. F. 'The Problem of Socrates.' l.9. from: 'Die Götzen-Dämmerung' [1895]
Twilight of the Idols http://www.handprint.com/SC/NIE/GotDamer.html
accessed 30.10.20
[7] Aquinas. Thomas.
http://www2.nd.edu/Departments//Maritain/etext/homp015.htm
[accessed 31 October. 2006.]
[8] Livergood. Norman D. Plato's Contemporary Relevance. 2006.
http://www.hermes-press.com/plato_index.htm Accessed 28.11.2006
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