A Very Short Introduction - Plato

The Theaetetus is one of Plato's most appealing dialogues, but also one of his most puzzling. In it, Socrates says that he is a midwife like his mother: he draws ideas out of people, before testing them to see whether they hold up to reasoned examination. Refusing to put forward his own ideas about what knowledge is (though displaying sophisticated awareness of the work of other philosophers), he shows faults in all of the accounts of knowledge suggested by young Theaetetus. Pursuing the thought that if you know something, you can't be wrong, Theaetetus suggests that knowing might be perceiving; then having a true belief; then, having a true belief and being able to defend or &give an account of' it. All these suggestions fail, and the dialogue leaves us better off only in awareness of our own inability to sustain an account of knowing. Socrates' insistence on arguing only against the positions of others, not for any position of his own, made the dialogue a key one for the Platonic tradition which took Plato's inheritance to be one of seeking truth by questioning those who claim to have it (as Socrates often does in the dialogues) rather than by making his own philosophical claims. Others, noting that in other dialogues we find positive, ambitious claims about the nature of knowledge, thought of the Theaetetus as clearing away only accounts of knowledge that Plato took to be mistaken. Socrates here, the midwife of others' ideas who has no &children' of his own, seems very different from the Socrates of other dialogues such as the Republic, who puts forward positive ideas quite confidently. Readers have to come to their own conclusions about this (some ancient and modern solutions are discussed in Chapter 3). Contents List of illustrations ix 1 Arguing with Plato 1 2 Plato's name, and other matters 12 3 D rama, fiction, and the elusive author 25 4 Love, sex, gender, and philosophy 43 5 Virtue, in me and in my society 53 6 My soul and myself 65 7 The nature of things 77 References 93 Further reading 97 I ndex 99 حق تکثیر: این کتاب در حریم عمومی فضای اینترنت منتشر شده است.