Complete Works (50 page)

T
HEAETETUS
: Well, it does seem to me to be so.
[186]

S
OCRATES
: Now in which class do you put being? For that, above all, is something that accompanies everything.

T
HEAETETUS
: I should put it among the things which the soul itself reaches out after by itself.

S
OCRATES
: Also like and unlike, same and different?

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes.

S
OCRATES
: What about beautiful and ugly, good and bad?

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes, these too; in these, above all, I think the soul examines [b] their being in comparison with one another. Here it seems to be making a calculation within itself of past and present in relation to future.

S
OCRATES
: Not so fast, now. Wouldn’t you say that it is through touch that the soul perceives the hardness of what is hard, and similarly the softness of what is soft?

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes.

S
OCRATES
: But as regards their being—the fact that they are—their opposition to one another, and the being, again, of this opposition, the matter is different. Here the soul itself attempts to reach a decision for us by rising to compare them with one another.

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes, undoubtedly.

[c] S
OCRATES
: And thus there are some things which all creatures, men and animals alike, are naturally able to perceive as soon as they are born; I mean, the experiences which reach the soul through the body. But calculations regarding their being and their advantageousness come, when they do, only as the result of a long and arduous development, involving a good deal of trouble and education.

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes, that certainly is so.

S
OCRATES
: Now is it possible for someone who does not even get at being to get at truth?

T
HEAETETUS
: No; it’s impossible.

S
OCRATES
: And if a man fails to get at the truth of a thing, will he ever be a person who knows that thing?

[d] T
HEAETETUS
: I don’t see how, Socrates.

S
OCRATES
: Then knowledge is to be found not in the experiences but in the process of reasoning about them; it is here, seemingly, not in the experiences, that it is possible to grasp being and truth.

T
HEAETETUS
: So it appears.

S
OCRATES
: Then in the face of such differences, would you call both by the same name?

T
HEAETETUS
: One would certainly have no right to.

S
OCRATES
: Now what name do you give to the former—seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling cold or warm?

[e] T
HEAETETUS
: I call that perceiving—what else could I call it?

S
OCRATES
: So the whole lot taken together you call perception?

T
HEAETETUS
: Necessarily.

S
OCRATES
: Which, we say, has no share in the grasping of truth, since it has none in the grasping of being.

T
HEAETETUS
: No, it has none.

S
OCRATES
: So it has no share in knowledge either.

T
HEAETETUS
: No.

S
OCRATES
: Then, Theaetetus, perception and knowledge could never be the same thing.

T
HEAETETUS
: No, apparently not, Socrates; we have now got the clearest possible proof that knowledge is something different from perception.

S
OCRATES
: But our object in beginning this discussion was not to find
[187]
out what knowledge is not, but to find out what it is. However, we have made a little progress. We shall not now look for knowledge in sense-perception at all, but in whatever we call that activity of the soul when it is busy by itself about the things which are.

T
HEAETETUS
: Well, the name, Socrates, I suppose is judgment.

S
OCRATES
: Your opinion, my dear lad, is correct. Now look back to the beginning. Wipe out all that we have said hitherto, and see if you can see [b] any better from where you have now progressed to. Tell me again, what is knowledge?

T
HEAETETUS
: Well, Socrates, one can’t say that it is judgment in general, because there is also false judgment—but true judgment may well be knowledge. So let that be my answer. If the same thing happens again, and we find, as we go on, that it turns out not to be so, we’ll try something else.

S
OCRATES
: And even so, Theaetetus, you have answered me in the way one ought—with a good will, and not reluctantly, as you did at first. If [c] we continue like this, one of two things will happen. Either we shall find what we are going out after; or we shall be less inclined to think we know things which we don’t know at all—and even that would be a reward we could not fairly be dissatisfied with. Now what is this that you say? There are two forms of judgment, true and false; and your definition is that true judgment is knowledge?

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes. That is how it looks to me now.

S
OCRATES
: Now I wonder if it’s worth while, at this stage, to go back to an old point about judgment—

T
HEAETETUS
: What point do you mean?

S
OCRATES
: I have something on my mind which has often bothered me [d] before, and got me into great difficulty, both in my own thought and in discussion with other people—I mean, I can’t say what it is, this experience we have, and how it arises in us.

T
HEAETETUS
: What experience?

S
OCRATES
: Judging what is false. Even now, you know, I’m still considering; I’m in two minds whether to let it go or whether to look into it in a different manner from a short while ago.

T
HEAETETUS
: Why not, Socrates, if this appears for any reason to be the right thing to do? As you and Theodorus were saying just now, and quite rightly, when you were talking about leisure, we are not pressed for time in talk of this kind.

S
OCRATES
: A very proper reminder. Perhaps it would not be a bad moment [e] to go back upon our tracks. It is better to accomplish a little well than a great deal unsatisfactorily.

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes, it certainly is.

S
OCRATES
: Now how are we to proceed? And actually what is it that we are saying? We claim, don’t we, that false judgment repeatedly occurs and one of us judges falsely, the other truly, as if it was in the nature of things for this to happen?

T
HEAETETUS
: That is what we claim.

[188]
S
OCRATES
: Now isn’t it true about all things, together or individually, that we must either know them or not know them? I am ignoring for the moment the intermediate conditions of learning and forgetting, as they don’t affect the argument here.

T
HEAETETUS
: Of course, Socrates, in that case there is no alternative. With each thing we either know it or we do not.

S
OCRATES
: Then when a man judges, the objects of his judgment are necessarily either things which he knows or things which he doesn’t know?

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes, that must be so.

S
OCRATES
: Yet if he knows a thing, it is impossible that he should not [b] know it; or if he does not know it, he cannot know it.

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes, of course.

S
OCRATES
: Now take the man who judges what is false. Is he thinking that things which he knows are not these things but some other things which he knows—so that knowing both he is ignorant of both?

T
HEAETETUS
: But that would be impossible, Socrates.

S
OCRATES
: Then is he imagining that things which he doesn’t know are other things which he doesn’t know? Is it possible that a man who knows neither Theaetetus nor Socrates should take it into his head that Socrates is Theaetetus or Theaetetus Socrates?

[c] T
HEAETETUS
: I don’t see how that could happen.

S
OCRATES
: But a man certainly doesn’t think that things he knows are things he does not know, or again that things he doesn’t know are things he knows.

T
HEAETETUS
: No, that would be a very odd thing.

S
OCRATES
: Then in what way is false judgment still possible? There is evidently no possibility of judgment outside the cases we have mentioned, since everything is either a thing we know or a thing we don’t know; and within these limits there appears to be no place for false judgment to be possible.

T
HEAETETUS
: That’s perfectly true.

S
OCRATES
: Then perhaps we had better take up a different line of inquiry; [d] perhaps we should proceed not by way of knowing and not-knowing, but by way of being and not-being?

T
HEAETETUS
: How do you mean?

S
OCRATES
: Perhaps the simple fact is this: it is when a man judges about anything things which are not, that he is inevitably judging falsely, no matter what may be the nature of his thought in other respects.

T
HEAETETUS
: That again is very plausible, Socrates.

S
OCRATES
: Now how will that be? What are we going to say, Theaetetus, if somebody sets about examining us, and we are asked, ‘Is what these words express possible for anyone? Can a man judge what is not, either [e] about one of the things which are, or just by itself?’ I suppose we shall reply, ‘Yes, when he is thinking, but thinking what is not true.’ Or how shall we answer?

T
HEAETETUS
: That’s our answer.

S
OCRATES
: Now does this kind of thing happen elsewhere?

T
HEAETETUS
: What kind of thing?

S
OCRATES
: Well, for instance, that a man sees something, yet sees nothing.

T
HEAETETUS
: How could he?

S
OCRATES
: On the contrary, in fact, if he is seeing any one thing, he must be seeing a thing which is. Or do you think that a ‘one’ can be found among the things which are not?

T
HEAETETUS
: I certainly don’t.

S
OCRATES
: Then a man who is seeing any one thing is seeing something which is?

T
HEAETETUS
: Apparently.

S
OCRATES
: It also follows that a man who is hearing anything is hearing
[189]
some one thing and something which is.

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes.

S
OCRATES
: And a man who is touching anything is touching some one thing, and a thing which is, if it is one?

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes, that also follows.

S
OCRATES
: And a man who is judging is judging some one thing, is he not?

T
HEAETETUS
: Necessarily.

S
OCRATES
: And a man who is judging some one thing is judging something which is?

T
HEAETETUS
: I grant that.

S
OCRATES
: Then that means that a man who is judging something which is not is judging nothing?

T
HEAETETUS
: So it appears.

S
OCRATES
: But a man who is judging nothing is not judging at all.

T
HEAETETUS
: That seems clear.

S
OCRATES
: And so it is not possible to judge what is not, either about [b] the things which are or just by itself.

T
HEAETETUS
: Apparently not.

S
OCRATES
: False judgment, then, is something different from judging things which are not?

T
HEAETETUS
: It looks as if it were.

S
OCRATES
: Then neither on this approach nor on the one we followed just now does false judgment exist in us.

T
HEAETETUS
: No, indeed.

S
OCRATES
: Then is it in this way that the thing we call by that name arises?

T
HEAETETUS
: How?

S
OCRATES
: We say that there is false judgment, a kind of ‘other-judging’, [c] when a man, in place of one of the things that are, has substituted in his thought another of the things that are and asserts that it is.
³²
In this way, he is always judging something which is, but judges one thing in place of another; and having missed the thing which was the object of his consideration, he might fairly be called one who judges falsely.

T
HEAETETUS
: Now you seem to me to have got it quite right. When a man judges ‘ugly’ instead of ‘beautiful’, or ‘beautiful’ instead of ‘ugly’, then he is truly judging what is false.

S
OCRATES
: Evidently, Theaetetus, you have not much opinion of me; you don’t find me at all alarming.

T
HEAETETUS
: What in particular makes you say that?

[d] S
OCRATES
: Well, I suppose you don’t think me capable of taking up your ‘truly false’, and asking you whether it is possible that a thing should be slowly swift, or heavily light, or whether anything else can possibly occur in a way not in accordance with its own nature but in accordance with that of its opposite and contrary to itself. But let that pass; I don’t want your boldness to go unrewarded. You like the suggestion, you say, that false judgment is ‘other-judging’?

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes, I do.