The Project Gutenberg EBook of Theaetetus, by Plato

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Title: Theaetetus

Author: Plato

Posting Date: November 17, 2008 [EBook #1726]
Release Date: April, 1999

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced 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