The professors of Knowledge are thus divided by the strongest lines from the professors of Opinion. And opinion itself — The Fallible — is, in this dialogue, presented as an inexplicable puzzle. You talk about true and false opinions: but how can false opinions be possible? and if they are not possible, what is the meaning of true, as applied to opinions? Not only, therefore, opinion can never be screwed up to the dignity of knowledge — but the world of opinion itself defies philosophical scrutiny. It is a chaos in which there is neither true nor false; in perpetual oscillation (to use the phrase of the Republic) between Ens and Non-Ens.[147]
[147] Plato, Republic, v. pp. 478-479.
The Theætêtus is more in harmony (in reference to δόξα and ἐπιστήμη) with the Republic, than with the Sophistês and Politikus. In the Politikus (p. 309 C) ἀληθὴς δόξα μετὰ βεβαιώσεως is placed very nearly on a par with knowledge: in the Menon also, the difference between the two, though clearly declared, is softened in degree, pp. 97-98.
The Alexandrine physician Herophilus attempted to draw, between πρόῤῥησις and πρόγνωσις, the same distinction as that which Plato draws between δόξα and ἐπιστήμη — The Fallible as contrasted with the Infallible. Galen shows that the distinction is untenable (Prim. Commentat. in Hippokratis Prorrhetica, Tom. xvi. p. 487. ed. Kühn).
Bonitz, in his Platonische Studien (pp. 41-78), has given an instructive analysis and discussion of the Theætêtus. I find more to concur with in his views, than in those of Schleiermacher or Steinhart. He disputes altogether the assumption of other Platonic critics, that a purely negative result is unworthy of Plato; and that the negative apparatus is an artifice to recommend, and a veil to conceal, some great affirmative truth, which acute expositors can detect and enunciate plainly (Schleiermacher, Einleit. zum Theætêt. p. 124 seq.) Bonitz recognises the result of the Theætêtus as purely negative, and vindicates the worth of it as such. Moreover, instead of denouncing the opinions which Plato combats, as if they were perverse heresies of dishonest pretenders, he adverts to the great difficulty of those problems which both Plato and Plato’s opponents undertook to elucidate: and he remarks that, in those early days, the first attempts to explain psychological phenomena were even more liable to error than the first attempts to explain physical phenomena (pp. 75-77). Such recognition, of the real difficulty of a problem, is rare among the Platonic critics.
CHAPTER XXIX.
SOPHISTES — POLITIKUS.
Persons and circumstances of the two dialogues.
These two dialogues are both of them announced by Plato as forming sequel to the Theætêtus. The beginning of the Sophistês fits on to the end of the Theætêtus: and the Politikus is even presented as a second part or continuation of the Sophistês.[1] In all the three, the same interlocutors are partially maintained. Thus Sokrates, Theodôrus, and Theætêtus are present in all three: and Theætêtus makes the responses, not only in the dialogue which bears his name, but also in the Sophistês. Both in the Sophistês and Politikus, however, Sokrates himself descends from the part of principal speaker to that of listener: it is he, indeed, who by his question elicits the exposition, but he makes no comment either during the progress of it or at the close. In both the dialogues, the leading and expository function is confided to a new personage introduced by Theodôrus:— a stranger not named, but announced as coming from Elea — the friend and companion of Parmenides and Zeno. Perhaps (remarks Sokrates) your friend may, without your knowledge, be a God under human shape; as Homer tells us that the Gods often go about, in the company of virtuous men, to inspect the good and bad behaviour of mankind. Perhaps your friend may be a sort of cross-examining God, coming to test and expose our feebleness in argument. No (replies Theodôrus) that is not his character. He is less given to dispute than his companions. He is far from being a God, but he is a divine man: for I call all true philosophers divine.[2]