Theaetetus | Page 3

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This etext was prepared by Sue Asscher

THEAETETUS
by Plato

Translated by Benjamin Jowett

INTRODUCTION AND ANALYSIS.
Some dialogues of Plato are of so various a character that their relation
to the other dialogues cannot be determined with any degree of
certainty. The Theaetetus, like the Parmenides, has points of similarity
both with his earlier and his later writings. The perfection of style, the
humour, the dramatic interest, the complexity of structure, the fertility
of illustration, the shifting of the points of view, are characteristic of his
best period of authorship. The vain search, the negative conclusion, the
figure of the midwives, the constant profession of ignorance on the part
of Socrates, also bear the stamp of the early dialogues, in which the
original Socrates is not yet Platonized. Had we no other indications, we
should be disposed to range the Theaetetus with the Apology and the
Phaedrus, and perhaps even with the Protagoras and the Laches.
But when we pass from the style to an examination of the subject, we
trace a connection with the later rather than with the earlier dialogues.
In the first place there is the connexion, indicated by Plato himself at
the end of the dialogue, with the Sophist, to which in many respects the
Theaetetus is so little akin. (1) The same persons reappear, including
the younger Socrates, whose name is just mentioned in the Theaetetus;
(2) the theory of rest, which Socrates has declined to consider, is
resumed by the Eleatic Stranger; (3) there is a similar allusion in both
dialogues to the meeting of Parmenides and Socrates (Theaet., Soph.);
and (4) the inquiry into not- being in the Sophist supplements the
question of false opinion which is raised in the Theaetetus. (Compare

also Theaet. and Soph. for parallel turns of thought.) Secondly, the later
date of the dialogue is confirmed by the absence of the doctrine of
recollection and of any doctrine of ideas except that which derives them
from generalization and from reflection of the mind upon itself. The
general character of the Theaetetus is dialectical, and there are traces of
the same Megarian influences which appear in the Parmenides, and
which later writers, in their matter of fact way, have explained by the
residence of Plato at Megara. Socrates disclaims the character of a
professional eristic, and also, with a sort of ironical admiration,
expresses his inability to attain the Megarian precision in the use of
terms. Yet he too employs a similar sophistical skill in overturning
every conceivable theory of knowledge.
The direct indications of a date amount to no more than this: the
conversation is said to have taken place when Theaetetus was a youth,
and shortly before the death of Socrates. At the time of his own death
he is supposed to be a full-grown man. Allowing nine or ten years for
the interval between youth and manhood, the dialogue could not have
been written earlier than 390, when Plato was about thirty-nine years of
age. No more definite date is indicated by the engagement in