Complete Works (59 page)

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes, I would.

V
ISITOR
: So apparently you’ll still say that sophistry falls under acquisition, [e] exchange, and selling, either by retailing things that others make or by selling things that he makes himself. It’s the retail sale of any learning that has to do with the sorts of things we mentioned.

T
HEAETETUS
: It has to be, since we need to stay consistent with what we said before.

V
ISITOR
: Now let’s see whether the type we’re chasing is something like the following.

T
HEAETETUS
: What?
[225]

V
ISITOR
: Combat was one part of acquisition.

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes.

V
ISITOR
: And it makes sense to divide it in two.

T
HEAETETUS
: How?

V
ISITOR
: We’ll take one part to be competition and the other part to be fighting.

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes.

V
ISITOR
: And it would be fitting and proper to give a name like
violence
to the part of fighting in which one body fights against another.

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes.

V
ISITOR
: And as for the part that pits words against words, what else would you call it other than controversy? [b]

T
HEAETETUS
: Nothing else.

V
ISITOR
: But we have to have two types of controversy.

T
HEAETETUS
: In what way?

V
ISITOR
: So far as it involves one long public speech directed against another and deals with justice and injustice, it’s forensic.

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes.

V
ISITOR
: But if it goes on in private discussions and is chopped up into questions and answers, don’t we usually call it disputation?

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes.

V
ISITOR
: One part of disputation involves controversy about contracts [c] and isn’t carried on in any systematic or expert way. We should take that to be a type of disputation, since we can express what makes it different. But it hasn’t been given a name before and it doesn’t deserve to get one from us.

T
HEAETETUS
: That’s true. Its subtypes are too small and varied.

V
ISITOR
: But what about disputation that’s done expertly and involves controversy about general issues, including what’s just and what’s unjust? Don’t we normally call that debating?
⁶

T
HEAETETUS
: Of course.

[d] V
ISITOR
: Part of debating, it turns out, wastes money and the other part makes money.

T
HEAETETUS
: Absolutely.

V
ISITOR
: Let’s try and say what each of them ought to be called.

T
HEAETETUS
: We have to.

V
ISITOR
: I think one type of debating is a result of the pleasure a person gets from the activity, and involves neglecting his own livelihood. But its style is unpleasant to most people who hear it, and in my view it’s right to call it chatter.

T
HEAETETUS
: That’s pretty much what people do call it.

[e] V
ISITOR
: You take a turn now. Say what its contrary is, which makes money from debates between individuals.

T
HEAETETUS
: How could anyone go wrong in saying that the amazing sophist we’ve been after has turned up once again for the fourth time.

[226]
V
ISITOR
: It seems his type is precisely the money-making branch of expertise in debating, disputation, controversy, fighting, combat, and acquisition. According to what our account shows us now, that’s the sophist.

T
HEAETETUS
: Absolutely.

V
ISITOR
: So you see how true it is that the beast is complex and can’t be caught with one hand, as they say.

T
HEAETETUS
: It does take both hands.

[b] V
ISITOR
: Yes, and you need all your capacity to follow his tracks in what’s to come. Tell me: don’t we call some things by names that houseservants use?

T
HEAETETUS
: A lot of things. But what are you asking about?

V
ISITOR
: For example things like filtering, straining, winnowing.

T
HEAETETUS
: Of course.

V
ISITOR
: And also we know about carding, spinning, weaving, and a million other things like that which are involved in experts’ crafts. Is that right?

T
HEAETETUS
: What general point are you trying to make with these examples? [c]

V
ISITOR
: All the things I’ve mentioned are kinds of dividing.

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes.

V
ISITOR
: Since there’s a single kind of expertise involved in all of them, then according to what I’ve said we’ll expect it to have a single name.

T
HEAETETUS
: What shall we call it?

V
ISITOR
: Discrimination.

T
HEAETETUS
: All right.

V
ISITOR
: Think about whether we can see two types in it.

T
HEAETETUS
: You’re asking me to do some quick thinking.

V
ISITOR
: In fact in what we’ve called discriminations one kind separates [d] what’s worse from what’s better and the other separates like from like.

T
HEAETETUS
: That’s obvious—now that you’ve said it.

V
ISITOR
: I don’t have an ordinary name for one of them, but I do have a name for the kind of discrimination that leaves what’s better and throws away what’s worse.

T
HEAETETUS
: What? Tell me.

V
ISITOR
: I think everyone says that that kind of discrimination is cleansing.

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes.

V
ISITOR
: Won’t everyone see that cleansing has two types? [e]

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes, maybe, if they had time, but I don’t see now.

V
ISITOR
: Many kinds of cleansing that have to do with the body can appropriately be included under a simple name.

T
HEAETETUS
: Which ones? What name?

V
ISITOR
: There’s the cleansing of the inside part of living bodies, which is done by gymnastics and medicine. And there’s the cleansing of the
[227]
insignificant outside part that’s done by bathing. And also there’s the cleansing of nonliving bodies, which fulling and all kinds of furbishing take care of and which have lots of specialized and ridiculous-seeming names.

T
HEAETETUS
: Very ridiculous.

V
ISITOR
: Of course, Theaetetus. But our method of dealing with words doesn’t care one way or the other whether cleansing by sponging or by taking medicine does a lot of good or only a little. The method aims at acquiring intelligence, so it tries to understand how all kinds of expertise [b] belong to the same kind or not. And so for that it values them all equally without thinking that some of them are more ridiculous than others, as far as their similarity is concerned. And it doesn’t consider a person more impressive because he exemplifies hunting by military expertise rather than by picking lice. Instead it usually considers him more vapid. Moreover you just asked about what name we call all the capacities that are assigned [c] to living or nonliving bodies. As far as that’s concerned, it doesn’t matter to our method which name would seem to be the most appropriate, just so long as it keeps the cleansing of the soul separate from the cleansing of everything else. For the time being, the method has only tried to distinguish the cleansing that concerns thinking from the other kinds—if, that is, we understand what its aim is.

T
HEAETETUS
: I do understand, and I agree that there are two types of cleansing, one dealing with the soul and a separate one dealing with the body.

V
ISITOR
: Fine. Next listen and try to cut the one we’ve mentioned in two.

[d] T
HEAETETUS
: I’ll try to follow your lead and cut it however you say.

V
ISITOR
: Do we say that wickedness in the soul is something different from virtue?

T
HEAETETUS
: Of course.

V
ISITOR
: And to cleanse something was to leave what’s good and throw out whatever’s inferior.

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes.

V
ISITOR
: So insofar as we can find some way to remove what’s bad in the soul, it will be suitable to call it cleansing.

T
HEAETETUS
: Of course.

V
ISITOR
: We have to say that there are two kinds of badness that affect the soul.

T
HEAETETUS
: What are they?

[228]
V
ISITOR
: One is like bodily sickness, and the other is like ugliness.

T
HEAETETUS
: I don’t understand.

V
ISITOR
: Presumably you regard sickness and discord as the same thing, don’t you?

T
HEAETETUS
: I don’t know what I should say to that.

V
ISITOR
: Do you think that discord is just dissension among things that are naturally of the same kind, and arises out of some kind of corruption?

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes.

V
ISITOR
: And ugliness is precisely a consistently unattractive sort of disproportion?

[b] T
HEAETETUS
: Yes.

V
ISITOR
: Well then, don’t we see that there’s dissension in the souls of people in poor condition, between beliefs and desires, anger and pleasures, reason and pains, and all of those things with each other?

T
HEAETETUS
: Absolutely.

V
ISITOR
: But all of them do have to be akin to each other.

T
HEAETETUS
: Of course.

V
ISITOR
: So we’d be right if we said that wickedness is discord and sickness of the soul.

T
HEAETETUS
: Absolutely right.

V
ISITOR
: Well then, suppose something that’s in motion aims at a target [c] and tries to hit it, but on every try passes by it and misses. Are we going to say that it does this because it’s properly proportioned or because it’s out of proportion?

T
HEAETETUS
: Out of proportion, obviously.

V
ISITOR
: But we know that no soul is willingly ignorant of anything.

T
HEAETETUS
: Definitely.

V
ISITOR
: But ignorance occurs precisely when a soul tries for the truth, [d] but swerves aside from understanding and so is beside itself.

T
HEAETETUS
: Of course.

V
ISITOR
: So we have to take it that an ignorant soul is ugly and out of proportion.

T
HEAETETUS
: It seems so.

V
ISITOR
: Then there are, it appears, these two kinds of badness in the soul. Most people call one of them wickedness, but it’s obviously a disease of the soul.

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes.

V
ISITOR
: They call the other one ignorance, but if it occurs only in a person’s soul they aren’t willing to agree that it’s a form of badness.

T
HEAETETUS
: One thing absolutely must be granted—the point I was in [e] doubt about when you made it just now—that there are two kinds of deficiency in the soul. We need to say that cowardice, licentiousness, and injustice are a disease in us, and that to be extremely ignorant of all sorts of things is a kind of ugliness.

V
ISITOR
: In the case of the body, weren’t there two kinds of expertise dealing with those two conditions?

T
HEAETETUS
: What were they?

V
ISITOR
: Gymnastics for ugliness and medicine for sickness.
[229]

T
HEAETETUS
: Apparently.

V
ISITOR
: And isn’t correction the most appropriate of all kinds of expertise for treating insolence, injustice, and cowardice?
⁷

T
HEAETETUS
: So it seems, to judge by what people think.

V
ISITOR
: Well then, for all kinds of ignorance wouldn’t teaching be the right treatment to mention?

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes.

V
ISITOR
: Now should we say that there’s only one kind of expertise in [b] teaching or more than one, with two of them being the most important ones? Think about it.

T
HEAETETUS
: I am.

V
ISITOR
: I think we’ll find it quickest this way.

T
HEAETETUS
: How?

V
ISITOR
: By seeing whether ignorance has a cut down the middle of it. If it has two parts, that will force teaching to have two parts too, one for each of the parts of ignorance.

T
HEAETETUS
: Well, do you see what we’re looking for?

[c] V
ISITOR
: I think I see a large, difficult type of ignorance marked off from the others and overshadowing all of them.

T
HEAETETUS
: What’s it like?

V
ISITOR
: Not knowing, but thinking that you know. That’s what probably causes all the mistakes we make when we think.