Complete Works (53 page)

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes.

S
OCRATES
: And we call it ‘teaching’ when a man hands them over to others, and ‘learning’ when he gets them handed over to him; and when he ‘has’ them through possessing them in this aviary of ours, we call that ‘knowing’.

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes, certainly.

S
OCRATES
: Now you must give your attention to what is coming next. It must surely be true that a man who has completely mastered arithmetic knows all numbers? Because there are pieces of knowledge covering all numbers in his soul.

T
HEAETETUS
: Of course.

S
OCRATES
: And a man so trained may proceed to do some counting, [c] either counting to himself the numbers themselves, or counting something else, one of the external things which have number?

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes, surely.

S
OCRATES
: And counting we shall take to be simply a matter of considering how large a number actually is?

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes.

S
OCRATES
: Then it looks as if this man were considering something which he knows as if he did not know it (for we have granted that he knows all numbers). I’ve no doubt you’ve had such puzzles put to you.

T
HEAETETUS
: I have, yes.

S
OCRATES
: Then using our image of possessing and hunting for the pigeons, [d] we shall say that there are two phases of hunting; one before you have possession in order to get possession, and another when you already possess in order to catch and have in your hands what you previously acquired. And in this way even with things you learned and got the knowledge of long ago and have known ever since, it is possible to learn them—these same things—all over again. You can take up again and ‘have’ that knowledge of each of them which you acquired long ago but had not ready to hand in your thought, can’t you?

T
HEAETETUS
: True.

[e] S
OCRATES
: Now this is what I meant by my question a moment ago. What terms ought we to use about them when we speak of what the arithmetician does when he proceeds to count, or the scholar when he proceeds to read something? Here, it seems, a man who knows something is setting out to learn again from himself things which he already knows.

T
HEAETETUS
: But that would be a very odd thing, Socrates.

S
OCRATES
: But are we to say that it is things which he does not know
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that such a man is going to read and count—remembering that we have granted him knowledge of all letters and all numbers?

T
HEAETETUS
: That wouldn’t be reasonable, either.

S
OCRATES
: Then would you like us to take this line? Suppose we say we do not mind at all about the names; let people drag around the terms ‘knowing’ and ‘learning’ to their heart’s content. We have determined that to ‘possess’ knowledge is one thing and to ‘have’ it is another; accordingly we maintain that it is impossible for anyone not to possess that which he has possession of, and thus, it never happens that he does not know something he knows. But he may yet make a false judgment about it. This [b] is because it is possible for him to ‘have’, not the knowledge of this thing, but another piece of knowledge instead. When he is hunting for one piece of knowledge, it may happen, as they fly about, that he makes a mistake and gets hold of one instead of another. It was this that happened when he thought eleven was twelve. He got hold of the knowledge of eleven that was in him, instead of the knowledge of twelve, as you might catch a ring-dove instead of a pigeon.

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes; that is reasonable, now.

S
OCRATES
: But when he gets hold of the one he is trying to get hold of, then he is free from error; when he does that, he is judging what is. In [c] this way, both true and false judgment exist; and the things that worried us before no longer stand in our way. I daresay you’ll agree with me? Or, if not, what line will you take?

T
HEAETETUS
: I agree.

S
OCRATES
: Yes; we have now got rid of this ‘not knowing what one knows’. For we now find that at no point does it happen that we do not possess what we possess, whether we are in error about anything or not. But it looks to me as if something else more alarming is by way of coming upon us.

T
HEAETETUS
: What’s that?

S
OCRATES
: I mean, what is involved if false judgment is going to become a matter of an interchange of pieces of knowledge.

T
HEAETETUS
: What do you mean?

S
OCRATES
: To begin with, it follows that a man who has knowledge of [d] something is ignorant of this very thing not through want of knowledge but actually in virtue of his knowledge. Secondly, he judges that this is something else and that the other thing is it. Now surely this is utterly unreasonable; it means that the soul, when knowledge becomes present to it, knows nothing and is wholly ignorant. According to this argument, there is no reason why an accession of ignorance should not make one know something, or of blindness make one see something, if knowledge is ever going to make a man ignorant.

T
HEAETETUS
: Well, perhaps, Socrates, it wasn’t a happy thought to make [e] the birds only pieces of knowledge. Perhaps we ought to have supposed that there are pieces of ignorance also flying about in the soul along with them, and what happens is that the hunter sometimes catches a piece of knowledge and sometimes a piece of ignorance concerning the same thing; and the ignorance makes him judge falsely, while the knowledge makes him judge truly.

S
OCRATES
: I can hardly refrain from expressing my admiration of you, Theaetetus; but do think again about that. Let us suppose it is as you say: then, you maintain, the man who catches a piece of ignorance will judge
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falsely. Is that it?

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes.

S
OCRATES
: But presumably he will not think he is judging falsely?

T
HEAETETUS
: No, of course he won’t.

S
OCRATES
: He will think he is judging what is true; and his attitude towards the things about which he is in error will be as if he knew them.

T
HEAETETUS
: Of course.

S
OCRATES
: He will think he has hunted down and ‘has’ a piece of knowledge and not a piece of ignorance.

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes, that’s clear.

S
OCRATES
: So, after going a long way round, we are back at our original difficulty. Our friend the expert in refutation will laugh. ‘My very good [b] people,’ he will say, ‘do you mean that a man who knows both knowledge and ignorance is thinking that one of them which he knows is the other which he knows? Or is it that he knows neither, and judges the one he doesn’t know to be the other which he doesn’t know? Or is it that he knows one and not the other, and judges that the one he knows is the one he doesn’t know? Or does he think that the one he doesn’t know is the one he does? Or are you going to start all over again and tell me that there’s another set of pieces of knowledge concerning pieces of knowledge and ignorance, which a man may possess shut up in some other ridiculous aviaries or waxen devices, which he knows so long as he possesses them [c] though he may not have them ready to hand in his soul—and in this way end up forced to come running round to the same place over and over again and never get any further?’ What are we going to say to that, Theaetetus?

T
HEAETETUS
: Oh, dear me, Socrates, I don’t know what one ought to say.

S
OCRATES
: Then don’t you think, my boy, that the argument is perhaps dealing out a little proper chastisement, and showing us that we were [d] wrong to leave the question about knowledge and proceed to inquire into false judgment first? While as a matter of fact it’s impossible to know this until we have an adequate grasp of what knowledge is.

T
HEAETETUS
: Well, at the moment, Socrates, I feel bound to believe you.

S
OCRATES
: Then, to go back to the beginning, what are we going to say knowledge is?—We are not, I suppose, going to give up yet?

T
HEAETETUS
: Certainly not, unless you give up yourself.

S
OCRATES
: Tell me, then, how could we define it with the least risk of contradicting ourselves?

[e] T
HEAETETUS
: In the way we were attempting before, Socrates; I can’t think of any other.

S
OCRATES
: In what way do you mean?

T
HEAETETUS
: By saying that knowledge is true judgment. Judging truly is at least something free of mistakes, I take it, and everything that results from it is admirable and good.

S
OCRATES
: Well, Theaetetus, as the man who was leading the way across
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the river said, ‘It will show you.’
³⁷
If we go on and track this down, perhaps we may stumble on what we are looking for; if we stay where we are, nothing will come clear.

T
HEAETETUS
: You’re right; let’s go on and consider it.

S
OCRATES
: Well, this won’t take long to consider, anyway; there is a whole art indicating to you that knowledge is not what you say.

T
HEAETETUS
: How’s that? What art do you mean?

S
OCRATES
: The art of the greatest representatives of wisdom—the men called orators and lawyers. These men, I take it, use their art to produce conviction not by teaching people, but by making them judge whatever they themselves choose. Or do you think there are any teachers so clever [b] that within the short time allowed by the clock they can teach adequately to people who were not eye-witnesses the truth of what happened to people who have been robbed or assaulted?

T
HEAETETUS
: No, I don’t think they possibly could; but they might be able to
persuade
them.

S
OCRATES
: And by ‘persuading them’, you mean ‘causing them to judge’, don’t you?

T
HEAETETUS
: Of course.

S
OCRATES
: Then suppose a jury has been justly persuaded of some matter which only an eye-witness could know, and which cannot otherwise be known; suppose they come to their decision upon hearsay, forming a [c] true judgment: then they have decided the case without knowledge, but, granted they did their job well, being correctly persuaded?

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes, certainly.

S
OCRATES
: But, my dear lad, they couldn’t have done that if true judgment is the same thing as knowledge; in that case the best juryman in the world couldn’t form a correct judgment without knowledge. So it seems they must be different things.

T
HEAETETUS
: Oh, yes, Socrates, that’s just what I once heard a man say; I had forgotten, but now it’s coming back to me. He said that it is true [d] judgment with an account
³⁸
that is knowledge; true judgment without an account falls outside of knowledge. And he said that the things of which there is no account are not knowable (yes, he actually called them that),
³⁹
while those which have an account are knowable.

S
OCRATES
: Very good indeed. Now tell me, how did he distinguish these knowables and unknowables? I want to see if you and I have heard the same version.

T
HEAETETUS
: I don’t know if I can find that out; but I think I could follow if someone explained it.

S
OCRATES
: Listen then to a dream in return for a dream. In my dream, too, I thought I was listening to people saying that the primary elements, [e] as it were, of which we and everything else are composed, have no account. Each of them, in itself, can only be named; it is not possible to say anything else of it, either that it is or that it is not. That would mean that we were
[202]
adding being or not-being to it; whereas we must not attach anything, if we are to speak of that thing itself alone. Indeed we ought not to apply to it even such words as ‘itself’ or ‘that’, ‘each’, ‘alone’, or ‘this’, or any other of the many words of this kind; for these go the round and are applied to all things alike, being other than the things to which they are added, whereas if it were possible to express the element itself and it had its own proprietary account, it would have to be expressed without any other thing. As it is, however, it is impossible that any of the primaries [b] should be expressed in an account; it can only be named, for a name is all that it has. But with the things composed of these, it is another matter. Here, just in the same way as the elements themselves are woven together, so their names may be woven together and become an account of something—an account being essentially a complex of names. Thus the elements are unaccountable and unknowable, but they are perceivable, whereas the complexes are both knowable and expressible and can be the objects of true judgment.

[c] Now when a man gets a true judgment about something without an account, his soul is in a state of truth as regards that thing, but he does not know it; for someone who cannot give and take an account of a thing is ignorant about it. But when he has also got an account of it, he is capable of all this and is made perfect in knowledge. Was the dream you heard the same as this or a different one?

T
HEAETETUS
: No, it was the same in every respect.

S
OCRATES
: Do you like this then, and do you suggest that knowledge is true judgment with an account?

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes, certainly.