22 - I Know, Because the Caged Bird Sings: Plato's Theaetetus

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Peter examines Plato’s "Theaetetus", discussing the relativist doctrine of Protagoras, the flux doctrine of Heraclitus, and the two famous images of the wax tablet and aviary.

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Themes:

Further Reading

D. Bostock, Plato’s Theaetetus (Oxford: 1988).

M.F. Burnyeat, The Theaetetus of Plato (Indianapolis: 1990).

M.F. Burnyeat, “Protagoras and self-refutation in Plato’s Theaetetus,” in S. Everson (ed.), Companions to Ancient Thought I: Epistemology (Cambridge: 1989), 39-59.

G. Fine, “False Belief in the Theaetetus,” Phronesis 24 (1979), 70-80.

G. Fine, “Protagorean Relativisms,” Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 19 (1996), 211-243.

J. McDowell, Plato: Theaetetus (Oxford: 1973).

R. Woolf, "A Shaggy Soul Story: How Not to Read the Wax Tablet Model in Plato’s Theaetetus," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 69 (2004), 573-604.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-theaetetus/

Comments

Philip McBride on 6 February 2020

Knowledge vs belief

I'm really enjoying this podcast, thank you for creating it. This episode hit on something I have given some thought to prior to discovering this podcast  I think that knowledge is something you can choose to seek.  Belief in a thing, is something you either have or you do not. You can't choose to believe in something. The two are related but not the same thing. So I guess the next question might be, if I have knowledge, do I believe it?  I think so. If I don't, it's just a suspect fact in my mind. 

 

 

In reply to by Philip McBride

Peter Adamson on 6 February 2020

Belief

Well, I would follow you part way there. I think it is plausible that you cannot just choose to believe something, simply by deciding to do so, because beliefs respond to evidence and reasons. But you can certainly inquire, like, if I want to form a belief about whether my brother is in the next room, I can go look. So you can decide to put yourself in a position to acquire good reasons to believe something and if the reasons are good enough, you can also acquire knowledge. So it's not like we just passively and helplessly believe whatever we believe: rather we are responsible for making sure to form beliefs about things that matter, and on the basis of good evidence. (So for instance, conspiracy theorists are not just victims of bad luck: they have been following bad policies about how to form their beliefs.)

Andrew on 3 March 2025

Amazing dialogue

Reading this for the first time, and wow there is so much more going on than what you managed to cover in the episode it is quite a bewildering amount of stuff going on.


Got two questions:

1.How much should I care about the literary aspects of the dialogue during my first read, as against just reading the arguments? There are many things I have picked up that seem interesting when relating the contents of the arguments to the overall contexts - what I mean for example is how there quite clearly seems a meta question at play about how Protagoras is being presented and understood - Socrates having to constantly impersonate him and saying "if only he was actually here to correct us" and stuff like that, even though they have access to the book, which plays into Socrates' critique of writing in other dialogues but also the fact that this dialogue is framed as a book in the story! Or questions about how well Socrates is really playing the role of a midwife when he clearly is driving the whole thing (so it reads to me anyway, he clearly isn't barren of ideas), how the initial argument about identifying wisdom and knowledge relates to the passing separation that Protagoras makes between the two, the tension between the opening frame about Theaetetus and the praising of his civic virtue and the ideal philosopher in the digression etc. I could go on. I do feel I am getting swamped in these ideas though to the detriment of the main argumentative throughline. How did you handle this on your first read Peter?

2. Much shorter question. I am a bit confused about the chronology here. I believe the discussion between Socrates and Theaetetus was had before the day of Socrates' trial, where he shortly drank the poison after. That is like 1-2 days left before he died? On the other hand, the opening frame mentions Euclides saying he talked with Socrates about the discussion, took notes and wrote out the book which is to be read, and whenever he went to Athens had it checked with Socrates to double check about this or that point and when he got home he would correct it. The way this reads to me in my translation makes it seem like an occasional thing - whenever he found himself in Athens he would ask, then correct the version at home, and this happened more than once. Unless I am missing something, this doesn't seem to really fit with the fact that Socrates' death is basically imminent.

In reply to by Andrew

Peter Adamson on 4 March 2025

Theaetetus

I agree, this is actually probably my favorite Platonic dialogue (against extremely strong competition) as I said in the episode I think. On your two questions:

  1. With Plato, we always need to be playing five dimensional chess, and in part for the reason you mention: there is definitely an interplay between the "literary" and "philosophical" aspects of the text. Plato calls attention to this with things like the features of the dramatic framing, by having characters sometimes have meta-dialogues (e.g. in the Gorgias or Crito where Socrates conducts dialogues with himself), and so on. In this case the fact that Euclides makes a big deal about the accuracy of his record of the discussion - one that Plato has of course invented! - is surely already supposed to get us thinking about knowledge and reliability.
  2. Speaking of which, you're right: it's weird that he says (142c) that "it was not long before his death" that Socrates had this conversation, and immediately goes on (143a) to say that he, Euclides, would check the accuracy of the written version with Socrates. Maybe "not long before his death" could mean, not like a week or two, but a year or two? Anyway it's strange. It's interesting to consider why Plato sets so many of the dialogues in the run-up to Socrates' death, not just the ones whose dramatic context really requires it (Apology, Crito, Phaedo) but for instance the Euthyphro where he meets Euthyphro on the way to hear the charges laid against him. Maybe part of the point is to emphasize the high stakes for Socrates in doing philosophy, and thus for all of us?

In reply to by Peter Adamson

Andrew on 4 March 2025

Theaetetus

1. I think, along with slowing down, I will just try not to get too bogged down in the 5D chess and just make sure I have all the 2D chess down first, if only just to get through the first read!
2. Definitely not a few weeks or years - check the end of the book, Socrates says he is (quoting from my translation exactly) "go[ing] to the King's Porch to meet the indictment that Meletus has brought against me". Unless I am missing something, that would be referring to the trial! Really very soon to death. Plus, this would also make the Sophist and the Statesman weird chronologically, since as fittingly enough by a connection of a semicolon that same line mentions the promise to have a discussion tomorrow! Or at least I believe that is the discussion being promised right at the end of the dialogue.

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