[139] Plato, Theæt. p. 177 B.
[140] Plato, Theæt. p. 175 E.
Purpose of dialogue to qualify for a life of philosophical Search.
In these words of Sokrates we read a contrast between practice and theory — one of the most eloquent passages in the dialogues — wherein Plato throws overboard the ordinary concerns and purposes both of public and private life, admitting that true philosophers are unfit for them. The passage, while it teaches us caution in receiving his criticisms on the defects of actual statesmen and men of action, informs us at the same time that he regarded philosophy as the only true business of life — the single pursuit worthy to occupy a freeman.[141] This throws light on the purpose of many of his dialogues. He intends to qualify the mind for a life of philosophical research, and with this view to bestow preliminary systematic training on the ratiocinative power. To announce at once his own positive conclusions with their reasons, (as I remarked before) is not his main purpose. A pupil who, having got all these by heart, supposed himself to have completed his course of philosophy, so that nothing farther remained to be done, would fall very short of the Platonic exigency. The life of the philosopher — as Plato here conceives it — is a perpetual search after truth, by dialectic debate and mutual cross-examination between two minds, aiding each other to disembroil that confusion and inconsistency which grows up naturally in the ordinary mind. For such a life a man becomes rather disqualified than prepared, by swallowing an early dose of authoritative dogmas and proofs dictated by his teacher. The two essential requisites for it are, that he should acquire a self-acting ratiocinative power, and an earnest, untiring, interest in the dialectic process. Both these aids Plato’s negative dialogues are well calculated to afford: and when we thus look at his purpose, we shall see clearly that it did not require the presentation of any positive result.
[141] Plato, Sophistês, p. 253 C: ἡ τῶν ἐλευθέρων ἐπιστήμη.
Difficulties of the Theætêtus are not solved in any other Dialogue.
The course of this dialogue — the Theætêtus — has been already described as an assemblage of successive perplexities without any solution. But what deserves farther notice is — That the perplexities, as they are not solved in this dialogue, so they are not solved in any other dialogue. The view taken by Schleiermacher and other critics — that Plato lays out the difficulties in one anterior dialogue, in order to furnish the solution in another posterior — is not borne out by the facts. In the Theætêtus, many objections are propounded against the doctrine, That Opinion is sometimes true, sometimes false. Sokrates shows that false opinion is an impossibility: either therefore all opinions are true, or no opinion is either true or false. If we turn to the Sophistês, we shall find this same question discussed by the Eleatic Stranger who conducts the debate. He there treats the doctrine — That false opinion is an impossibility and that no opinion could be false — as one which had long embarrassed himself, and which formed the favourite subterfuge of the impostors whom he calls Sophists. He then states that this doctrine of the Sophists was founded on the Parmenidean dictum — That Non-Ens was an impossible supposition. Refuting the dictum of Parmenides (by a course of reasoning which I shall examine elsewhere), he arrives at the conclusion — That Non-Ens exists in a certain fashion, as well as Ens: That false opinions are possible: That there may be false opinions as well as true. But what deserves most notice here, in illustration of Plato’s manner, is — that though the Sophistês[142] is announced as a continuation of the Theætêtus (carried on by the same speakers, with the addition of the Eleate), yet the objections taken by Sokrates in the Theætêtus against the possibility of false opinion, are not even noticed in the Sophistês — much less removed. Other objections to it are propounded and dealt with: but not those objections which had arrested the march of Sokrates in the Theætêtus.[143] Sokrates and Theætêtus hear the Eleatic Stranger discussing this same matter in the Sophistês, yet neither of them allude to those objections against his conclusion which had appeared to both of them irresistible in the preceding dialogue known as Theætêtus. Nor are the objections refuted in any other of the Platonic dialogues.
[142] See the end of the Theætêtus and the opening of the Sophistês. Note, moreover, that the Politikus makes reference not only to the Sophistês, but also to the Theætêtus (pp. 258 A, 266 D, 284 B, 286 B).
[143] In the Sophistês, the Eleate establishes (to his own satisfaction) that τὸ μὴ ὂν is not ἐναντίον τοῦ ὄντος, but ἕτερον τοῦ ὄντος (p. 257 B), that it is one γένος among the various γένη (p. 260 B), and that it (τὸ μὴ ὂν κοινωνεῖ) enters into communion or combination with δόξα, λόγος, φαντασία, &c. It is therefore possible that there may be ψευδὴς δόξα or ψευδὴς λόγος, when you affirm, respecting any given subject, ἕτερα τῶν ὄντων or τὰ μὴ ὄντα ὡς ὄντα (p. 263 B-C). Plato considers that the case is thus made out against the Sophist, as the impostor and dealer in falsehoods; false opinion being proved to be possible and explicable.
But if we turn to the Theætêtus (p. 189 seq.), we shall see that this very explication of ψευδὴς δόξα is there enunciated and impugned by Sokrates in a long argument. He calls it there ἀλλοδοξία, ἑτεροδοξία, τὸ ἑτεροδοξεῖν (pp. 189 A, 190 E, 193 D). No man (he says) can mistake one thing for another; if this were so, he must be supposed both to know and not to know the same thing, which is impossible (pp. 196 A, 200 A). Therefore ψευδὴς δόξα is impossible.