CHAPTER XXVIII.
THEÆTETUS.
Subjects and personages in the Theætêtus.
In this dialogue, as in the Parmenides immediately preceding, Plato dwells upon the intellectual operations of mind: introducing the ethical and emotional only in a partial and subordinate way. The main question canvassed is, What is Knowledge — Cognition — Science? After a long debate, turning the question over in many distinct points of view, and examining three or four different answers to the question — all these answers are successively rejected, and the problem remains unsolved.
The two persons who converse with Sokrates are, Theodôrus, an elderly man, eminent as a geometrician, astronomer, &c., and teaching those sciences — and Theætêtus, a young man of great merit and still greater promise: acute, intelligent, and inquisitive — high-principled and courageous in the field, yet gentle and conciliatory to all: lastly, resembling Sokrates in physiognomy and in the flatness of his nose. The dialogue is supposed to have taken place during the last weeks of the life of Sokrates, when his legal appearance as defendant is required to answer the indictment of Melêtus, already entered in the official record.[1] The dialogue is here read aloud to Eukleides of Megara and his fellow-citizen Terpsion, by a slave of Eukleides: this last person had recorded it in writing from narrative previously made to him by Sokrates.[2] It is prefaced by a short discourse between Eukleides and Terpsion, intended to attract our sympathy and admiration towards the youthful Theætêtus.
[1] Plato, Theætêt. ad fin. p. 210.
[2] Plato, Theætêt. i. pp. 142 E, 143 A. Plato hardly keeps up the fiction about the time of this dialogue with perfect consistency. When it took place, the indictment of Melêtus had already been recorded: Sokrates breaks off the conversation for the purpose of going to answer it: Eukleides hears the dialogue from the mouth of Sokrates afterwards. “Immediately on getting home to Megara” (says Eukleides) “I wrote down memoranda (of what I had heard): then afterwards I called it back to my mind at leisure, and as often as I visited Athens I questioned Sokrates about such portions as I did not remember, and made corrections on my return here, so that now nearly all the dialogue has been written out.”
Such a process would require longer time than is consistent with the short remainder of the life of Sokrates. Socher indeed tries to explain this by assuming a long interval between the indictment and the trial, but this is noway satisfactory. (Ueber Platon’s Schriften, p. 251.)
Mr. Lewis Campbell, in the Preface to his very useful edition of this dialogue (p. lxxi. Oxford, 1861), considers that the battle in which Theætêtus is represented as having been wounded, is probably meant for that battle in which Iphikrates and his peltasts destroyed the Spartan Mora, B.C. 390: if not that, then the battle at the Isthmus of Corinth against Epaminondas. B.C. 369. Schleiermacher in his Einleitung to the dialogue (p. 185) seems to prefer the supposition of some earlier battle or skirmish under Iphikrates. The point can hardly be determined. Still less can we fix the date at which the dialogue was written, though the mention of the battle of Corinth certifies that it was later than 394 B.C. Ast affirms confidently that it was the first dialogue composed by Plato after the Phædon, which last was composed immediately after the death of Sokrates (Ast, Platon’s Leben, &c., p. 192). I see no ground for this affirmation. Most of the commentators rank it among the dialectical dialogues, which they consider to belong to a later period of Plato’s life than the ethical, but to an earlier period than the constructive, such as Republic, Timæus, &c. Most of them place the Theætêtus in one or other of the years between 393-383 B.C., though they differ much among themselves whether it is to be considered as later or earlier than other dialogues — Kratylus, Euthydemus, Menon, Gorgias, &c. (Stallbaum, Proleg. Theæt. pp. 6-10; Steinhart, Einleit. zum Theæt. pp. 100-213.) Munk and Ueberweg, on the contrary, place the Theætêtus at a date considerably later, subsequent to 368 B.C. Munk assigns it to 358 or 357 B.C. after Plato’s last return from Sicily (Munk, Die natürliche Ordnung der Platon. Schr. pp. 357-597: Ueberweg, Ueber die Aechtheit der Platon. Schr. pp. 228-236).
Question raised by Sokrates — What is knowledge or Cognition? First answer of Theætêtus, enumerating many different cognitions. Corrected by Sokrates.