3

Three Platonist Interpretations of

the Theaetetus
DAVID SEDLEY

I
That the Theaetetus is one of the great pioneering texts in the
history of epistemology is agreed on all sides. But the solidly
doctrinal ways of reading it which were long fashionable have
been largely eclipsed, especially in the last thirty years, by
philosophically more rewarding approaches which treat it as
essentially exploratory and open-ended. Most recently, Myles
Burnyeat 1 has presented the Theaetetus in terms of a complex
dialectical confrontation centred on a choice between these two
kinds of reading.
At the risk of putting the clock back, I want here to approach
the dialogue from another angle, which I hope may prove complementary rather than obstructive. I want to present the issues
of interpretation in the form of.a confrontation between three
readings-readings which are the constructs not of scholars but
of card-carrying Platonists. How, in other words, was the
Theaetetus understood in antiquity by people committed in
advance not only to its internal philosophical coherence but also
to its coherence with a body of philosophical thought taken to
be correct in its entirety? Their reverence for the virtually biblical authority of Plato's text undoubtedly gave them some
blind spots. But it also rendered them sensitive to aspects of the
text which can easily slip past us today. That, at least, is my pretext for trying out such an approach.
1 The 'Theaetetus' of Plato, trans. M. J. Levett, rev. and intro. M. F.
Burnyeat (Indianapolis, 1990).

David Sedley

The Theaetetus: Three Interpretations

Unitarianism, the thesis that Plato's reuvre in its entirety

forms a self-consciously unified body of doctrine, is today a
highly partisan position among Platonic scholars. Among
ancient Platonists it was an almost unquestioned assumption.
The expectation of doctrinal conformity may seem peculiarly
unpromising as an approach to the Theaetetus, a dialogue which
in so many ways reads as an open-minded return to aporetic
inquiry, unhampered by such middle-period doctrines as the
theory of Forms, recollection, and the tripartite soul. But I
think this reaction risks being as simplistic as the unitarian
creed which it opposes. For example, unless the anti-unitarian
can demonstrate the absolute incompatibility of the Theaetetus
with middle-period doctrine, there remains the entirely serious
possibility that the dialogue is meant to be readable at two or
more levels. On the surface, Plato is clearly reverting to the
spirit of Socratic enquiry, perhaps in an attempt to re-evaluate
Socrates' own philosophical significance. But at the same time
he remains acutely conscious that Socrates' philosophy is the
principal origin of his own. Hence, he may be keen, below the
surface, to draw attention to the continuity of his own mature
thought with that of Socrates. To take one prominent example,
mistaken as it may be to equate Socratic midwifery in the
Theaetetus with the dialectical activity, depicted in the Meno, of
making people recollect their pre-natal knowledge, 2 it remains
possible that Plato wrote the Theaetetus with a view to presenting Socrates as the historical precursor of his own dialectical
theory. If so, a unitarian reading could have much to teach us
about how far we might dare to go in narrowing the gap
between the two conceptions of dialectic.

definition of knowledge as true opinion, tackles the puzzles

about whether false opinion is even possible, deploying the celebrated images of the mind as a Wax Block and as an Aviary.
Part III (201-10) discusses the definition of knowledge as true
opinion plus an account.
I have found relatively little detailed comment on parts II and
III in the ancient Platonists. The interpretations which we will
be examining most closely are ones which, in so far as they do
exploit part II, use its Wax Block and Aviary images as evidence
for Plato's epistemological psychology. They do not make it
clear what formal function within the dialogue as a whole they
assign to part II'S discussion of false opinion. Only when we get
to the time of Proclus (fifth century AD) do we find illumination
on the point. He apparently supposes part II to go much more
closely with part I than modern commentators have suspected.
Proclus takes it to be a continuation of part I'S critique of
Protagoras. 3 Part I explores the problematic consequences of
supposing all opinions to be true, that is, of agreeing with
Protagoras; part II explores the problematic consequences of
supposing some opinions to be false, that is, of disagreeing with
Protagoras. 4
Proclus similarly seems to hold that part I explores the problems that follow from equating knowledge (incorrectly) with perception, part III the problems that follow from equating it
(correctly) with something other than perception. Within each
section too, Plato is seen as raising, and responding to, difficulties

80

II
I shall follow the conventional division of the Theaetetus into
three parts. Part I (142-87) explores the definition of knowledge
as perception, including a powerful critique of Protagorean
relativism. Part II (187-201), officially an examination of the
2 I am thinking of Myles Burnyeat's arguments against this equation in
'Socratic Midwifery, Platonic Inspiration', Bulletin of the Institute of Classical
Studies, 24 (1977),7-16.

81

3 Proclus, in Prm. 657. 5-10: 'In the Theaetetus, having turned the
Protagorean theory over again and again, and thinking that he has demonstrated his own thesis, in preparing to raise in turn difficulties against his own
beliefs, he says, "What a terrible thing a chatterbox is!" , The citation is from
195b, at the end of the Wax Block passage. Therefore Proclus takes the Wax
Block to be part of Plato's reply to Protagoras. This view can claim some support from Theaetetus (Tht.) 187d6-8.
4 Proclus, in Prm. 654.15-26, where Proclus speaks of a Platonic method by
which Socrates trains the young, 'such as Theaetetus' (eEaLTYjTov, corr. from
()EO~ TOV on the basis of the Latin translation; cf. J. Dillon and G. Morrow,
Proclus' Commentary on Plato's 'Parmenides', trans. (Princeton, 1987), 44),
'investigating with both aims-whether what appears to each person is true, or
again whether it is not, and whether knowledge is perception, or again whether
it is not-both investigating in tum the difficulties of the true doctrines, and
tapping them and showing that they ring false' (echoing Tht. 179d).

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David Sedley

The Theaetetus: Three Interpretations

which confront his own doctrines. s In some such way, Proclus

interprets the dialogue's strategy as a complex alternation
between positive and negative movements 6-the same method as
he imputes to the Lysis and the Parmenides.
I have found no evidence whether Proclus is echoing an earlier tradition about the dialogue's structure, or is himself innovating. His own commentary on the Theaetetus, sadly lost, was
among his favourites, and there is clearly a good chance that the
structural theory is his own. At all events, it has no obvious
overlap with the interpretations I shall now examine. These all
focus primarily on the dialogue's epistemological message, and
only secondarily on its structure. They are also all datable much
earlier than Proclus. They are certainly pre-AD 150, and there is
a strong possibility that they were all being defended concurrently as early as the end of the first century BC.
It is now time to introduce the main dramatis personae, all of
them unfortunately of either vague or disputed identity. First
come the Academic sceptics, who dominated the Academy
from the mid-third century to the early first century BC, and
were still not extinct a further two centuries later, in the time of
Plutarch. Although they grew gradually more doctrinal in their
outlook, I believe that they never wavered from their rallyingcall of akatalepsia, the disavowal of cognitive certainty.7 John
Glucker8 has maintained that, as a school, they were extinct
after the 80S BC, but I doubt if that is so. At any rate,
Aenesidemus' treatise the Pyrrhoneioi Logoi has recently been

quite plausibly down-dated to the 50S or 40S BC;9 and in it he

spoke of the 'present-day Academy'10 as still maintaining some
version of akatalepsia. So there is no good reason to doubt that
they persisted as contemporary rivals to the other two factions.
To them I now turn.
Second comes Alcinous, author of the surviving epitome of
Platonic doctrine known as the Didaskalikos. There is a long
and honourable tradition, stemming from Freudenthal 11 in
18 79, of regarding the name Alcinous in the manuscripts as an
error for Albinus, the second-century AD Platonist with whom
Galen studied, and whose short Introduction to Plato's
Dialogues has come down to us. Through this presumed identification of Alcinous with Albinus, the Didaskalikos came to be
the main source for reconstructing the thought of the so-called
School of Gaius-Gaius being Albinus' own teacher. Recent
work, especially by John Whittaker,12 has shown how suspect
the identification is, and I shall adopt the new fashion of calling
the author by his transmitted name Alcinous, not Albinus. He
can be dated to the first or early second century AD, but we will
see reason to think that the interpretation of the Theaetetus
which he adopts was already known by the late first century BC,
when our next author was probably writing.
This third writer is the anonymous author of the partially
extant commentary on the Theaetetus, contained in a Berlin
papyrus datable to around 150 AD. The original editors,
Diels and Schubart (1905), 13 argued that he too was, at least

5 The difficulties raised against the true doctrines (see n. 4 above) are exemplified (see n. 3 above) by Socrates' own objections to the Wax Block.
6 Cf. also n. 53 below, for how Proclus explained Plato's decision to end on
a negative movement.
7 1 cannot accept the widespread view that Philo of Larissa's heresy of 87 Be
was an actual abandonment of akatalepsia (I have argued the point in 'The End
of the Academy', Phronesis, 26 (1981), 67-75). There is also the evidence of
Galen, de Optima Doctrina I, who claims that the Academic Favorinus,
although in some works maintaining akatalepsia, in his Plutarch 'seems to
allow that there is something firmly knowable'. My conjectural explanation
would be that the apparent concession appeared in the mouth of Plutarch, as a
speaker in an eponymous dialogue, and that what he said there was no more
than he says at De Stoicorum repugnantiis 1037c, that 'those who suspend
judgement' argue on both sides on the ground that, if anything is katalepton
('knowable'), that would be the best way of coming to know it.
8 J. Glucker, Antiochus and the Late Academy (Gottingen, 1978).

9 F. Decleva Caizzi, 'Aenesidemus and the Academy', Classical Quarterly,

42 (1992), 176- 89.
10 Photius, Bibliotheca 170aI4-15, oi 8' 0:7T0 TiJ~ J4Ka8'YJf.J-ta~, 4>'YJot [sc.
Aenesidemus], f.J-aAtora riJ~ vvv ...
11 J.
Freudenthal, Der Platoniker Albinos und der falsche Alkinoos,
Hellenistische Studien, iii (Berlin, 1879).
12 Esp. in his 'Platonic Philosophy in the Early Centuries of the Empire',
Aufstieg und Niedergang der romischen Welt, 2/36/1 (Berlin, 1987),81-123, and
in his edition (with P. Louis), Alcinoos: Enseignement des doctrines de Platon
(Paris, 1990).
13 Anonymer Kommentar zu Platons 'Theaetet', Berliner Klassikertexte, ii
(Berlin, 1905). G. Bastianini and I have published a new edition in Corpus dei
papirifilosoficigreci e latini, iii (Florence, 1995),227-562. Column and line references are the same as in Diels-Schubart, but a number of readings and
restorations are different. Many of the claims about the author which follow
are defended there.

David Sedley

The Theaetetus: Three Interpretations

philosophically, identifiable with the so-called school of Gaius,

although, on stylistic grounds, they refrained from identifying
him with 'Albinus' (i.e. Alcinous) himself. One upshot of this
chapter will be that the Diels-Schubart thesis is definitely
wrong. The anonymous commentary is strongly opposed to the
interpretation of Plato's epistemology, and of the Theaetetus in
particular, presented in the Didaskalikos. Nor, for various reasons, am I persuaded by Harold Tarrant's recent attempt to
unmask the anonymous commentator as Eudorus, the late firstcentury BC Academic. In fact, he cannot, in my view, be plausibly identified with any Platonist of whom we know much more
than the bare name. I shall stick resolutely to calling him Anon.
But I am persuaded by another thesis of Tarrant, that Anon.'s
date should be brought back from the mid-second century AD,
where Diels and Schubart placed it, to the later part of the first
century BC. Although not necessarily an Academic himself, he is
in many ways a direct heir to the Hellenistic Academy, which, in
his view, was not sceptically motivated at all but argued against
its Stoic enemies in indirect defence of dogmatic Platonism.
These three can stand as representatives of the three interpretations alluded to in my title. With certain variants which we
will meet in passing, the number could have been pushed up to
four or five. But the ones on which I shall be concentrating are
the leading rivals, as well as the best documented. They were
probably all current in the late first century BC, and can be
viewed as directly competing to appropriate the Theaetetus for
their own respective versions of Platonism.

2. In the Republic and Timaeus, there is _a strong contrast

between knowledge (episteme) and opinion (doxa). In the
Theaetetus, on the other hand, Plato states, and does not subsequently retract, the expectation that knowledge will itself prove
to be a species of opinion.
3. The theory that all learning is the recollection (anamnesis)
of pre-natal knowledge, set out in the Meno, Phaedo, and
Phaedrus, is never invoked in the Theaetetus. Worse, Plato
develops two models for the acquisition and use of knowledge-the Wax Block and the Aviary-in which recollection plays no
part. Worse again, the Aviary includes the assertion that the
mind is empty in infancy, apparently in flat contradiction of the
innateness doctrine.
4. Socrates, Plato's spokesman in the Theaetetus, explicitly
disavows knowledge. He compares himself to a midwife, intellectually barren, though capable of bringing the ideas of others
to birth. The entire tone of this contrasts with Socrates the constructive thinker, so familiar from the middle-period dialogues.
5. The dialogue signally fails in its quest to find out what
knowledge is. Can this really be the same Plato who in the
Republic had made knowledge the distinguishing mark par
excellence of the philosopher?
6. Plato's best-known and most admired definition of knowledge is the one in the Meno (98a): true belief bound down by
calculation of the cause (aitias logismos). The Theaetetus fails
even to mention it.

III
Having introduced the principal combatants, my next task is to
set them an agenda for debate. It will prove convenient to list
six main problems that, prima facie, confront any unitarian setting out to harmonize the Theaetetus with the rest of Plato's

(Euvre.
I. In the Republic and Timaeus, knowledge is distinguished
above all by its objects, the Forms. But the Theaetetus, far from
observing this requirement, again and again supplies everyday
empirical objects in its illustrations of knowledge.

85

We can sort out and contrast the three main Platonist interpretations of the Theaetetus in terms of their respective responses
to the six questions on this checklist. I leave aside a fourth possible strategy, the familiar modern one of treating certain dialogues as historical evidence for Socrates, and distinguishing
them from the mature dialogues in which Plato's own thought
was expounded. Some such tactic was used by Antiochus of
Ascalon in his battle to reclaim Plato from the Academic sceptics. 14 It would not be entirely surprising to learn that he numbered the Theaetetus among the purely Socratic dialogues. By
14 Antiochus played down Socrates' disavowal of knowledge as ironic
(Cicero, Academica (Acad.), 2. IS), but still contrasted Socrates' negative
elenchus with Plato's constructive dialectic (A cad. I. 17).

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David Sedley

The Theaetetus: Three Interpretations

doing so, he could have circumvented all six problems effortlessly. But there is no explicit testimony to go on, and in any
case the solution is a bit too easy to be interesting, especially to
those who recognize the Theaetetus as a mature product of
Plato's pen, written with the Republic rarely far from view.
The three main approaches on which I shall be concentrating all interpret the Theaetetus in conformity with what their
authors take to be Plato's official position on knowledge. Their
method is very simple. First you decide which is the important
Platonic dialogue on knowledge. Then you adapt your reading
of the other dialogues to fit in with it.
Most of our interest is going to be in the choice between the
Republic and the Meno as the most important dialogue. But we
can start, more briefly, with the Academic sceptics, whose distinctive move is to make the Theaetetus itself the. important text.
At Theaetetus I 50c4-7, in describing himself as an intellectual midwife, Socrates remarks: 'And the criticism which many
have already made of me, that I question others but make no
assertions myself about anything because I have no wisdom, is
a true criticism.' The anonymous commentator reports as follows (54. 38-43): 'On the basis of expressions like this, some
consider Plato an Academic, on the ground that he had no doctrines.' Here, of course, 'Academic' implies an adherent of the
sceptical Academy. We can compare the report in another
anonymous treatise, from very late antiquity, the Prolegomena
to Plato's Philosophy. 'Some people,' its author tells us, 'pushing Plato among those who suspend judgement and the
Academics, talk as if he himself introduced the denial of cognition (akatalepsia).'15 And he goes on to mention the Theaetetus
as a prime item of evidence: 'Their third argument is that he
does not think that knowledge exists, as is evident from his
eliminating every definition of knowledge, and eliminating
number, in the Theaetetus. How will we say that someone like
that esteems cognition?'16 The reference to 'number' is notori-

ously obscure, but I suspect that the point is as follows. Parts I,

II, and III of the Theaetetus jointly refute all proffered definitions of knowledge, and that persistent strategy makes the dialogue look sceptical in its intentions. But part II'S elaborate
attempt to explain false opinion is not itself part of the refutation of any definition of knowledge. Some other way must
therefore be found to fit it into an overall sceptical strategy. The
attempt's eventual failure could, in principle, be interpreted as
an elimination of false opinion. But that would not have pleased
an Academic like Arcesilaus, who cited the ever-present danger
of holding a false opinion as a standard premiss in his arguments for suspending assent on all matters. 17 The Academy can
therefore be expected to have interpreted the passage, quite
plausibly (cf. I87d3-4), as assuming the existence of false opinion, and exploring the problematic consequences of that fact.
Most of the problems raised are ironed out in the course of the
discussion, especially by application of the Wax Block image.
But one remains unsolved: how any adequate cognitive psychology-adequate, that is, to account for false as well as true
beliefs-can accommodate numbers. Therefore, the Academics
might well conclude, the passage's sceptical outcome consists in
'eliminating number'.
And what special significance would that outcome have?
Here it is worth remembering that thinking about numbers is,
according to Republic 7, the first step on the road to dialectical
knowledge. To anyone connecting these two passages, the
Theaetetus could have appeared to subvert even Plato's most
optimistic manifesto of knowledge.
A similar result can also emerge from the following consideration. One later Academic, Favorinus, a pupil of Plutarch,
horrified Galen by maintaining that even the sun is unknowable. 18 This extreme-sounding thesis was not uncommon
among the later Academics, Galen tells us. Its currency could

Anon., Proleg. 10.4-6. All references to this work are to the Bude edition
by L. G. Westerink, J. Trouillard, and A. P. Segonds, eds. and trans.,
Prolegomenes a la philosophie de Platon (Paris, 1990).
16 Ibid. 10. 23-6. See also Theaetetus, ed. Burnyeat, 235. I see no reason to
follow him in considering the two reported Academic interpretations to be
alternatives to each other. One addresses problem (4), the other problem (5),
but they are fully compatible and surely represent a single interpretation of the
15

dialogue. Indeed, a version of the first is attributed to the proponents of the

second at Anon., Proleg. 10.57 ff.
Cf. Cicero, Acad. I. 44-5, 2. 66-7.
Galen, Opt. Doctr. I; cf. 5. Favorinus was not necessarily himself
engaged in the unitarian project I am outlining here. Anna Maria loppolo has
suggested to me, with some plausibility, that he saw his scepticism as more
Socratic than Platonic-in which case he may well have used the Theaetetus as
a source for Socrates.
17

18

David Sedley

The Theaetetus: Three Interpretations

be easily explained as a legacy of the Theaetetus. There,

Socrates' very last attempted definition of knowledge is as true
belief plus an account of how the object differs from all other
things. And he illustrates it with the example of knowing the
sun, as 'the brightest of the bodies that move around the earth
in the heavens'. Even this final attempt at a definition-to all
appearances, the best Plato could come up with-fails, along
with the others. To a sceptically inclined reader, it seems, he
was thereby removing the sun itself from the sphere of knowledge. Given the sun's crucial symbolic role in the model of
knowledge set up in the Republic, it would not be a difficult step
to read the Theaetetus as, once again, retracting or undermining
the apparently confident manifesto of knowledge presented in
the Republic.
Putting these admittedly meagre clues together, we can see
that the Academics make maximum use of problem (4),
Socrates' disavowal of knowledge in the Theaetetus, and problem (5), the dialogue's eventual failure. But they may be found
less than convincing in their implication that the dialogue
brings down with it the entire edifice of knowledge constructed
in the middle-period dialogues and in the Timaeus. The obvious objection is that the Theaetetus simply fails to confront the
main supports of that edifice-the ones identified in the other
four problems on my list, including the theory of Forms itself.
Here, to judge from the anonymous Prolegomena,19 they had no
better resource than eto point out in the constructive dialogues
the numerous locutions expressing hesitation or doubt on
Plato's part-words like 'perhaps' and 'probably'.
One variant is available which makes better sense of the
Theaetetus' silence about middle-period doctrine. That is to
interpret its scepticism as ad hominem. 20 Proclus 21 reports a

view, which he does not endorse, that the Theaetetus is a confutative or 'peirastic' dialogue, directed against Protagoras. (The
propounders of this view likewise held the Parmenides to be an
ad hominem critique of Zeno.) We have already seen how the
criticism of Protagoras in Theaetetus part I was thought to
extend into part II. It may seem incredible that they should have
thought it could be further extended into part III, but there is in
fact evidence that the Dream Theory, described and refuted in
part III, was regarded as Protagorean. 22
It is worth at least noting that this dialectical interpretation
was available, and that it dealt comfortably with problems (I),
(2), (3), and (6), the latter two being Plato's silence about his
own most characteristic views on knowledge. But it can hardly
have been welcome to the Academics. While compatible with the
picture of a sceptical Plato who set out to combat all dogmatic
positions, it is equally compatible with that of a dogmatic Plato
whose aim was to refute merely those theses which differed
from his own. Consequently, the Academics could have
adopted it only at the expense of abandoning the Theaetetus as
exhibit no. 1 in the case for Plato the sceptic.

88

Anon., Proleg. 10.7-12.

For the merits of ad hominem readings in this context, and for a skilful
general examination of the Academic interpretation of Plato, see J. Annas,
'Plato the Sceptic', in J. C. Klagge and N. D. Smith, eds., Methods of
Interpreting Plato and his Dialogues, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy,
suppl. vol. (Oxford, 1992), 32-72. But I would not go as far as she does in
allowing a solely ad hominem method, one which permits Socrates unargued
beliefs of his own, to count as 'sceptical' in the eyes of the New Academy (cf.
next para.).
21 Proclus, in Prm. 63 1 -2.
19

20

IV
It is time to move on to the second major interpretation of the
dialogue as a whole. This one takes the Republic and Timaeus as
the key texts for Plato's epistemology, and interprets the
Theaetetus accordingly. Its essence is as follows. Platonic
episteme, as explained in the Republic and Timaeus, has Forms
as its objects, while the sensible world is the object of mere
doxa. The Theaetetus fails precisely because it addresses itself to
the epistemology of the sensible world. Consequently, it is to be
understood as an investigation, not of knowledge stricto sensu,
but of what in the Hellenistic age had come to be known as 'the
criterion'-that is, the principles and means of cognition in
general-with special emphasis on sensory cognition. As for
real episteme of the Forms, it is held that that topic is not tackled until the immediately succeeding dialogue, the Sophist.
22 This belief seems to underlie Damascius, de Principiis iii. 169. 5-22, ed.
L. G. Westerink and J. Combes (Paris, 1991); see eds.' note ad loc., p. 241.

David Sedley

The Theaetetus: Three Interpretations

This interpretation, much. of which was later to be taken up

by Cornford,23 is what I call the 'object-related' interpretation,
since it takes Plato to define knowledge in terms of its objects,
the Forms. It is the interpretation which the anonymous commentator most vehemently opposes, and he sketches it at the
beginning and end of the following passage (2. 11-39):

terion' .2S Its notion of the criterion 'through which' we judge is

derived directly from Theaetetus 184-5, where the senses are
relegated . to that role. Again following the lead of the
Theaetetus, this is contrasted with the criterion 'by which'
judgement is exercised, namely the judging mind.
The chapter's account of knowledge reflects, not the
Theaetetus, but the Republic, Timaeus, and Phaedrus.
Knowledge is of Forms. It is achieved through a cognate kind
of reason,26 'epistemonic' reason, which is composed of innate
'natural conceptions', themselves remnants of the soul's prenatal direct acquaintance with the primary intelligibles.
By contrast, opinion has sensibles as its objects. And the
detailed account of this sensory cognition is based squarely on
the Theaetetus. Doxa relies on 'doxastic reason', a set of empirically derived concepts which we obtain quite independently of
whatever intellectual grasp of the Forms we may have. 27 The
operation of doxa, and its fallibility, are explained largely in
terms of the Wax Block model in the Theaetetus (154.40-155.
13):

Some of the Platonists have thought that the dialogue was on the topic
of the criterion, in view of the considerable space it also devotes to the
investigation of this. That is wrong. Rather, the declared aim is to
speak about simple uncompounded knowledge, and it is for this purpose that he necessarily investigates the criterion. By 'criterion' in the
present context I mean the criterion through which we judge, as an
instrument; for it is necessary to have that. whereby we will judge
things; then, whenever this is accurate, the permanent acceptance of
the things which we have judged properly becomes knowledge.
These 24 people, on the other hand, say that, having made it his
declared aim to investigate knowledge, in the Theaetetus he shows
what its objects are not, while in the Sophist he shows what its objects
are.

The two main components of this view are that the Theaetetus
is about the 'criterion', rather than about knowledge, and that
what it does reveal about knowledge is something negativewhat its objects are not. To see how these two components
jointly constitute a single interpretation, we must seek enlightenment from its proponents. While it is not possible to give
them a name, there is, I believe, a fully articulated version of
their position preserved in chapter 4 of Alcinous' Didaskalikos.
Significantly, this chapter is introduced as being 'about the cri23 F. M. Cornford, Plato's Theory of Knowledge (London, 1935,1949; repro
Cambridge, 1957), 12-13, 28, 162-3. Although Cornford does not explicitly
acknowledge his debt to it on this point, he implies that he has read the whole
of the anonymous commentary (p. 28) and elsewhere (p. 15) cites 3.28 ff.,
which comes just lines after Anon. has summarized the interpretation in question. Unfortunately, Cornford takes no apparent heed of Anon.'s damaging
reply to the interpretation (p. 94 below). For a full critique of Comford, see
R. Robinson, 'Forms and Error in Plato's Theaetetus', Philosophical Review, 59
(1950)' 3-30; repro in Robinson, Essays in Greek Philosophy (Oxford, 196 9),
39-73
24 QVr[o{] is almost certainly the correct reading in 2. 33, and not ~[v"ot] as
in Diels-Schubart. This has the crucial consequence that a single coherent
interpretation is under scrutiny throughout the quoted lines.

91

Opinion is the combination of memory and perception. For when we

first encounter some perceptible, and from it we get a perception, and
from that a memory, and later we encounter the same perceptible
again, we connect the pre-existing memory with the later perception,
and say within ourselves 'Socrates', 'Horse', 'Fire', etc. And this is
called opinion-our connecting the pre-existing memory with the
newly produced perception. And when these, on comparison, are in
agreement, true opinion occurs, but when they differ, false opinion.
25 Alcinous, Did. I 54. 8~. Citations from the Didaskalikos are from the
Whittaker-Louis edition (n. 12 above).
26 Although the Theaetetus is not itself used to provide details of this second
kind of criterion 'through which', it is no doubt taken to acknowledge that
there is such a criterion, distinct from the senses, at 185e6-7: TO. /LEV aVT~ S,,'
aVTi]s ~ Jvx~ 7TLaK07TELV, TO. SE S"o. TWV TOV aW/LaTOS SVVa/LEWV.
27 For this and other aspects of the passage, see R. W. Sharples, 'The
Criterion of Truth in Philo Judaeus, Alcinous and Alexander of Aphrodisias',
in P. Huby and G. Neale, eds., The Criterion of Truth (Liverpool, 1989),
231-56. This cognitive dualism, found also in Plutarch fro 215d Sandbach, is
well defended as the correct interpretation of Plato by D. Scott, 'Platonic
Anamnesis Revisited', Classical Quarterly, NS 37 (1987), 346-66. For some
further aspects of the chapter, see L. P. Schrenk, 'Faculties of Judgement in
the Didaskalikos', Mnemosyne, 44 (1991),. 347-63. (It will be clear from my
comments why I do not fully share Schrenk's conclusion that this text 'reflects
the interests of the Hellenistic schools rather than the Platonic tradition'.)

David Sedley

The Theaetetus: Three Interpretations

For if someone who has a memory of Socrates encounters Plato and is

led by some resemblance to think he is encountering Socrates again,
and then, taking the perception that comes from Plato as coming from
Socrates, connects it with the memory he has of Socrates, a false opinion occurs. The thing in which the memory and the perception occur
Plato likens to a wax block.

proper solution. As for (4), Socrates' disavowal of knowledge,

there is no explicit evidence of these interpreters' response. But
since their opponent, the anonymous commentator, is very hostile to those who attribute irony to Socrates,29 it seems at least a
good guess that they had adopted just that tactic, presenting the
image of the barren midwife as a characteristic piece of selfdeflation on Socrates' part. 30
It remains only to ask how they would deal with problem (6):
the dialogue's silence about the Meno's definition of knowledge
as true opinion bound down by aitias logismos. It is certainly a
striking fact that this definition is not so much as hinted at in the
entire Didaskalikos. 31 The decision by these interpreters to
deny it canonical status looks deliberate. If a formal justification
is needed, we might hypothetically supply the following. All
that the Meno tells us is that correct opinions, when bound
down by 'calculation of the cause', become knowledge. To say
this is not necessarily to define knowledge as a species of correct
opinion. A child becomes an adult, but an adult is not a species
of child. Intellectual progress from opinion to knowledge, as
described in the Meno, is possible even if the two states are as
sharply differentiated as the Republic and Timaeus want them to
be. Doesn't the Cave image describe just such a progression?

92

Clearly, part II of the Theaetetus is being treated as Plato's

canonical account of doxa in the sense specified in the Republic,
fallible empirical cognition. In the same chapter, Theaetetus
part I is used as Plato's guide to the epistemological structure of
the sensible world, with a formalized division between primary
perceptibles such as whiteness, secondary perceptibles such as
white objects,28 and compound objects viewed as aggregates
(athroismata; cf. Tht. 157b-c) of primary perceptible properties. It seems a fair guess that the same interpreters attributed
the failure to define knowledge in the dialogue as a whole to
Plato's not yet having introduced the proper objects, the
Forms, which are essential to the separation of knowledge from
doxa. Or, as the anonymous commentator presents what seems
to be the same interpretation, 'having made it his declared aim
to investigate knowledge, in the Theaetetus he shows what its
objects are not, while in the Sophist he shows what its objects
are'. Where the Theaetetus is read as confining itself to the epistemological structure of the sensible world, the Sophist is presumably taken to be, as a whole, an investigation of the world of
Forms. The key passage for these interpreters must be Sophist
253b-e, where 'the greatest knowledge' is made to depend on
the mapping out of genera and species.
This object-related interpretation deals effectively with
problems (I), (2), (3), and (5). Since the Theaetetus turns out
not to confront knowledge stricto sensu, but only a 'knowledge'
insufficiently differentiated from mere opinion, it is only to be
expected that it will not (I) single out the Forms as the objects
of knowledge, (2) contrast knowledge with opinion, or (3)
invoke recollection. And (5) its failure to define knowledge is a
calculated failure, pointing to the Republic's epistemology as the
28 Secondary perceptibles (156. 5) are also called 'accidental' perceptibles
(156.2). The latter term itself derives from Aristotle, de Anima (de An.) 2.6,
3. I, but conceptually the entire tripartite scheme is drawn from Tht.
15 6d- 157 c .

93

v
Now finally, and at rather greater length, let me turn to what I
shall call the subject-related interpretation. My excuse for
greater prolixity is that, since it is the thesis adopted by the
anonymous commentator, it is much better documented than
the other two.
29 See 58. 39 ff. Anon., like some other Platonists (Plutarch, Platonicae
Quaestiones 999cff., Proclus, in Tim. 397. 29ff., in Ale. 155. 17-28, 228.
30-229 2, Olympiodorus, in Ale. 53. 9-16, 173.21-174. 9), interprets Tht.
15 I c7-d3 as a boast on Socrates' part, comparing himself to a god. This is presented by Anon. and Plutarch as counter-evidence to those who call Socrates
an ironist.
30 Cf. Antiochus, as represented at Cicero, Acad. 2. 15 (n. 14 above).
31 Unlike Albinus, who implies approval of it at Intr. 150. 25-7. This is
strong additional evidence for Whittaker's separation of Albinus from
Alcinous; Whittaker with P. Louis, Alcinoos.

David Sedley

The Theaetetus: Three Interpretations

The starting-point of the subject-related interpretation is to

make the Meno the canonical text for Platonic epistemology,
and to interpret the Theaetetus accordingly. Knowledge is
defined as 'correct belief bound down with aitias logismos'.
(Actually Anon. follows a curious variant reading, alT{q.
AOYLa/LOV, 'by the cause of reasoning', but he seems to interpret
it as if it meant 'by calculation of the cause'. 32) I call it subjectrelated because it makes no explicit reference to the proper
objects of knowledge, the Forms. It defines knowledge in terms
of the knowing subject's own state.
We can examine its strengths and weaknesses by taking the
six problems in order.
I. Why are the Forms not singled out as the proper objects of
knowledge? The answer is nearly supplied in Anon.'s response
to the object-related interpretation. As we have seen, he reports
its proponents as maintaining that in the Theaetetus Plato shows
what the objects of knowledge are not, while in the Sophist he
shows what the objects of knowledge are. Anon.'s immediate
reply is as follows (2. 39-52):

Since Anon. allows that the opponents come 'near to the

truth' , his own view is presumably that, although the
Theaetetus concentrates on the nature of knowledge itself, the
Sophist does then add an account of the objects of knowledge,
the Forms. It is on this latter point that the opponents turn out
to be right. 33
2. Why does the Theaetetus fail to contrast opinion with
knowledge, but instead treat knowledge itself as a species of
opinion? I have found no help on this in the surviving portion
of Anon.'s commentary. But we can perhaps permit ourselves
some help from Albinus. In his surviving Introduction to Plato~s
Dialogues (150.25-7), he paraphrases Meno 97d-98a as follows:
'In order that the dogmata [NB not doxai] should remain in the
soul and not run away, they will need to be bound down by calculation of the cause . . .'. This suggests that those Platonists
who wanted to integrate the Meno's definition into Platonic
epistemology did so by interpreting its use of doxa, not in the
pejorative Republic sense, but as equivalent to dogma, 'doctrine' .34 We may conjecture that Anon. did the same.
3. Why is the Theaetetus silent about the theory of recollection? This time Anon. would reject the presupposition behind
the question. Is the dialogue really silent about recollection?
True, the word anamnesis and its cognates are never used in reference to it. But, as Anon. ingeniously observes (56.21-31), 'in
any case, he [Plato] does not always used the word "recollection", except when this is his primary topic of investigation. He
indicated as much in the Meno by saying "Let it make no difference whether we call it teachable or recollectable".' The citation is from Meno 87b-c, and it authorizes Anon.'s willingness
to detect allusions to recollection in a number of passages of
the Theaetetus. 35 In fact, he explicitly interprets Socrates'

94

They have come near the truth, but they have not hit on it. For he is
enquiring not into the subject-matter with which knowledge is concerned, but into what its essence is. The latter is different from the former, just as in the case of skills there is a difference between enquiring
into the essence of each and enquiring into the subject-matter with
which they deal.

Here Anon. is acutely exploiting Socrates' rebuttal of

Theaetetus' first attempted definition of knowledge. At I46c
Socrates observes that, in defining knowledge as shoemaking,
geometry, etc., Theaetetus has in effect said what its objects
are; but, he protests, the question was what knowledge itself is,
not what it is of. In recalling the passage, Anon. makes his message clear: the Theaetetus cannot be aimed at showing /what the
objects of knowledge are not, because it explicitly dismisses the
topic of the objects of knowledge as being extraneous to its purpose. By the same token, Anon. is not going to be bothered
about problem (I), the dialogue's failure to specify Forms as
objects of knowledge.
32 For discussion of the problem, see H. Tarrant, 'By Calculation of
Reason?', in Huby and Neale, eds., The Criterion of Truth, 57-82.

95

33 The opponents might cite in their support Republic (R.) 477C and
Timaeus (Ti.) 29b-c, where Plato distinguishes epis{eme from doxa largely in
terms of their respective objects. If so, Anon. can reply that at R. 477c ff. and
Ti. 51 b-52a Plato argues for the conclusion that Forms exist, starting from the
premiss that knowledge and opinion are intrinsically different cognitive states.
34 The same device is used by Alcinous, Did. 182. 35-7, regarding the
Republic's definition of courage at 429b-c and 433C: Soyp.aTo~ vvop.ov
aWTT]p{a SLVOV T Kat p.~ SLVOV, TOVTEaTL SLaawaTLK~ Svvap.L~ Soyp.aTO~
vvop.ov. Here Soyp.a represents the Soga of R.
35 This includes 16. 1-41, a complex analysis of Tht. 145d7-e6 as an

David Sedley

The Theaetetus: Three Interpretations

professed art of midwifery as the dialectical skill of making people recollect, which he in turn equates with helping them to
unfold and articulate their innate conceptions. 36
In making this unitarian move, Anon. faces the following
objection. 37 Socrates as midwife says that he finds many of the
young to be sterile, incapable of giving birth to an intellectual
brainchild. Yet the Symposium, introducing the idea of pregnancy of soul, asserts that every human being is pregnant.
Anon. anticipates this objection. Addressing the lemma at
151 b2-3, where Socrates speaks of 'some people, who don't
~ 'e
I
seem to me some h ow to b e pregnant (OL(\"
av JLOL JL'YJ\ oo~waL
1TW~
EYKVJLOVE~ ElvaL)', he comments as follows (57. 15-42):

(EXELV . . . 1TpoXELpa, 57. 32-3). Now in the Aviary image this

is the expression used for not merely 'possessing' a knowledgebird in your aviary but actually grabbing it for use. From this,
we can begin to reconstruct how Anon. in the lost later part of
his commentary must have integrated the Aviary image into his
Platonist epistemology. Having a bird 'to hand' is equivalent to
recollecting an item of knowledge. 40 (Anon. was almost bound
to make this equation, because at 198d5-8 having a bird to hand
is associated with 'recovering knowledge', dVaAaJL{3avovTa T~V
E1TLaT~JL'YJv, the very same expression as is used for recollection
in the M eno. 41) It is a fair guess that he completed the picture
with something like the following set of equivalences: 42

Now in the Symposium he says that all human beings are pregnant
both in soul and in body. And it is likely that this pregnancy of soul is
recollection. 38 How then can he say here that it seems even to him that
some people are not pregnant? Well, we must understand here 'in this
life'. For even if it was once possible for them, they are not capable of
having these things to hand (XELV ... TTpoXELpa) in every incarnation.
Hence it was no accident that he added the word 'somehow' before
'pregnant', but so that it should be understood that in a way they are
not pregnant, i.e. as regards having it to hand. But, universally speaking, they must be pregnant.

In other words, all souls are pregnant sub specie aeternitatisand that is the claim made in the Symposium-but their present
state of incarnation can render them temporarily barren. As
Anon. says elsewhere (47. 19-23), what made Theaetetus himself seemingly pregnant was the fact that he was 'full', in the
sense of being naturally well endowed (EV~V~~) with 'common
conceptions', and 'did not have them deeply hidden'. 39
In effecting this reconciliation, Anon. equates the pregnant
soul's recollecting with its 'having' the knowledge 'to hand'
argument about recollection. I discuss this fully in 'A Platonist Reading of
Theaetetus 145-147', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, suppl. vol. 67
(1993), 125-49
See 46.34-48.35,52.44-54. 13,55. 14-33,56. 11-37.
Cf. M. Burnyeat's use of this objection in 'Socratic Midwifery, Platonic
Inspiration' .
38 Reading at 57.20-2 Ka? ~[l]K6S'[a'TL]!, T[ov]ro T[o Jv]X[iJ Kv]~a~r[L] aV~fL!'?7[aLv]
Elva[L.]
.
.
. 39 47. 19-24, reading OV]K ~l[XEV aV]Tas ~4>9 [Spa TTLKEK]~'\VfLfLE[V]~S at
22-4
36
37

Midwifery

(a) 'somehow not

pregnant'
(b) pregnant
(c) giving birth

97

Aviary

Incarnate soul

empty cage

inability to recollect

'possessing'
birds
'having' birds
'to hand'

ability to
recollect
recollection.

As Socrates says (197e), our aviary is empty in infancy. So

line (a) describes everybody's mental state at birth. Sadly, it is
the state in which many of us remain throughout our lives. Line
(b) describes the intellectual ability which emerges in the wellendowed when they reach the age of rationality. Line (c) presents the successful outcome of intellectual midwifery. On this
40 Proclus, in Cra. 27 suggests that, when Socrates at Cratylus (Cra.)
384b-c disavows knowledge of correctness of names, it may be that he knows
it Ka(}' 19LV but not KaTa TTpOXELpLGLV. If, as I suppose, this means that he could
work it out for himself but has not yet done so, KaTa TTpOXELpLGLV will imply an
interpretation of the Aviary image similar to Anon.'s. The same interpretation
of 'having to hand' is also implicit at Plotinus, Enneads I. I. 9. 15 and 3. 8. 6.
21-3, although at 4. 9. 5. 12ff. he seems to use it (according to the more
straightforward reading of the Theaetetus) for the active use of knowledge one
has already acquired since birth, as does Philoponus regularly, e.g. in de An.
128.7-8 , 303. 17-19, de Aeternitate mundi 70. 29-71.4.
41 Meno 85 d ; cf. Anon.'s use of it for recollection at 16. 1-41 (see n. 35
above).
42 At 197e Socrates says that captured knowledge-birds have been 'learnt'
and are 'known'. If my reconstruction is right, Anon. may have had to interpret this as saying that we only capture knowledge-birds which we have
already, i.e. pre-natally, learnt.

David Sedley

The Theaetetus: Three Interpretations

view, when Socrates says that our aviary is empty in infancy,

the emptiness is not to be understood as a denial !hat we all have
innate knowledge. Rather, what is not yet established in early
infancy, but emerges only with the maturation process, is
whether that innate knowledge is accessible--whether it will
amount to the 'possession' of caged knowledge-birds available
for grabbing, that is, to our having concepts ready to articulate.
That, at least, is the best I can do for Anon. in the absence of
his commentary on the Aviary passage. But it might be unfair
to assume that he could not do better.
4. Why should Socrates, Plato's spokesman, disavow knowledge and present himself as a mere midwife of others' ideas,
himself intellectually barren? This was, as we saw, fundamental to the New Academy's representation of Plato as an
Academic sceptic. Anon.'s retort to this (54.43-55. 13) is, first,
that the New Academics were not really sceptical, but virtually
all endorsed dogmatic Platonism; and, second, that you only
have to read Plato to see that he was himself a committed doctrinal philosopher. But that still leaves him the task of reconciling the Theaetetus with this eminently credible portrayal of
Plato. How is it done? Largely by a campaign to detect every
possible qualification in Socrates' disclaimers of wisdom.
At I 50c8-d I Socrates describes himself as ov 7Tavv TL aoePos.
This is interpreted in all of the dozen or so modern translations
I have consulted as 'not at all wise'. Anon.'s comment on it (55.
42-5) is 'he does notaccuse himself of not being wise, but not
completely wise'. And he is absolutely right. The Platonic parallels for the expression ov 7Tavv TL confirm that it does indeed
mean 'not completely', rather than, as standardly taken here,
'not at all' .43 Anon.'s knowledge of Platonic Greek is not brilliant, but it may still be a good deal better than ours.
If Socrates' disavowal amounts to no more than his not being
completely wise, what are the kinds of wisdom that he lacks?
Here again Anon. is ready with a whole series of answers.
At 150c Socrates admits 'I make no assertions myself about
anything, through having no wisdom.' Recognizing this as a
prime item of evidence for the sceptical reading, Anon.

responds by offering three possible qualifications of Socrates'

admission. He starts with an interpretative paraphrase (54.
23-30 ): 'When I question certain people, I make no assertions,
but I listen to what they themselves say. This is through having
no wisdom so far as relates to this kind of teaching.' In other
words, the disavowal of wisdom may be no more than Socrates'
admission that he has no talent for feeding information to his
pupils. He then adds two alternative interpretations (54. 31-8):
'Or, if "having no wisdom" is to be understood in an absolute
sense, it will be that he is not wise in the wisdom which he
attributes to god, or the one which other people attribute to the
sophists.' The disavowal of divine wisdom 44 could no doubt
formally echo such passages as Apology 23a, where Socrates
claims to have only human wisdom. But I would expect Anon.
to have more especially in mind his own Platonist ethical telos of
'becoming like god so far as is possible' (itself a legacy of the
Theaetetus),45 with its emphasis on the gap that must always
remain between man and God. As for the suggestion that
Socrates is disavowing the wisdom which others attribute to the
sophists, this finds a little support later on. At 15 I b Socrates
says that when he finds his would-be pupils to be barren he
hands many over to Prodicus 'and many to other wise and wonderful men (aoePo'is T Kat (Jea7TeaLoLS avSpaaLv)'. When he
comes to this passage, Anon. (58. 7-12) treats it as confirming
his third suggestion, that there is a reputed kind of sophistic
wisdom, and that this is precisely what Socrates is disavowing.
He might well not want to distinguish it sharply from the first
of his three suggestions, that the wisdom disavowed is (socalled) 'wisdom' for teaching by imparting information.
What then does Socrates' self-professed barrenness consist
in? Anon.'s answer is forthright. It is a methodological barrenness. Socrates, he insists, had lots of doctrines, but suppressed
them for dialectical or didactic purposes, since only thus could

98

43 Of the dozen instances in Plato, all permit the translation 'not completely', and three passages put it beyond doubt that this is the sense: Cratylus
386a5-c8, Lysis 204d4, and Euthydemus 286e9.

99

44 Cf. Anon., Proleg. 10.60-5: 'When he says "I know nothing", he is comparing his own knowledge with that of the gods, the latter being in a different
class from the former. Ours is mere knowledge, while god's is practically
applied. And god's knowledge knows by simple attention, whereas we know
through causes and premisses.'
4S The locus classicus was Tht. 176b. Anon. alludes to the doctrine at 7.
14-20, with reference forward to his commentary ad loco

David Sedley

The Theaetetus: Three Interpretations

he induce his pupils to unfold their innate conceptions. In his

introductory comment on midwifery (47. 31-48. II) he writes:

extracted from Theaetetus the assertion- that .the soul gains

access to 'common' properties through its own internal
resources, congratulates him with the words, 'That is what I
thought myself. But I wanted you to think it too.' Midwifery
does not require having no brainchildren of one's own, just not
revealing them.
Moreover, for Anon., the maieutic method is not unique to
Socrates, as the text of the Theaetetus might have been thought
to indicate. When Socrates tells Theaetetus '(The) god compels
me to act as midwife, and has forbidden me to give birth'
(150C), Anon.'s comment is (55. 26-30): '(The) god is responsible for this, by setting it up that souls do not learn but recollect.'
On this reading, Socrates is describing, not his personal, godgiven mission, but the nature of all education, consequent upon
the god-given nature of the soul. Implicitly, maieutic method is
the only proper educational method. (This will prove important almost immediately, when we learn that Plato's method of
teaching us is also maieutic.)
,
Our final task is to consider together problems (5) and (6),
the dialogue's failure to define knowledge, along with its failure
to consider the Meno definition of knowledge. Anon. writes as
follows in his introductory remarks (2. 52-3. 25):

100

He called himself a midwife after his mother, because that is what his
teaching was like. For there were other ways in which he made assertions and had doctrines, but in his teaching he made his pupils themselves speak about things, and unfolded and articulated their natural
conceptions. And this is a consequence of the doctrine that what are
called acts of learning are acts of recollection, and that every human
soul has viewed the things which are [TEOEaaOaL
OVTa] , and needs,
not the input of lessons, but recollection. This doctrine will be discussed in our commentary on the work On the soul. 46

Tn

Again, when Socrates at 150c says that he is barren of wisdom,

literally 'incapable of generating wisdom' (ayovo~ aOc/>Las) ,
Anon. comments (53. 38-54. 13):
Not absolutely. At any rate, he will say later that he is wise but not
completely wise. Rather he means 'I am barren47 for generating the
wisdom in someone else.' For he does not himself teach, but articulates the conceptions of the young, just as midwives also bring to birth
the offspring of others. And just as midwives used once to give birth,
but are no longer giving birth when they, act as midwives, so too
Socrates conceived and gave birth on his own account, but while acting as midwife on the opinions of the young he was barren in relation
to them.

This is a cardinal point of interpretation. A diachronic distinction, between the midwife's earlier childbearing phase and her
present phase as barren midwife of other women's offspring, is
taken to symbolize a synchronic distinction between two different philosophical modes in which Socrates operates. His barrenness is assumed merely as a didactic device. 48 Qua teacher
he is barren, qua philosopher he is not. Such an interpretation
has many attractions. If we had the later part of Anon.'s commentary, we would undoubtedly find him claiming triumphant
confirmation at I8se7-8. There Socrates, having eventually

Since knowledge is, of course, correct opinion bound down by the

cause of reasoning (aiTLq. AOYLajLov)-for it is when we know not only
thaJ they are, but also why they are, that we know things-and since
those who overrated the senses because they had something striking
about them assigned accuracy to them as well, he will start by testing
this belief; then he will move on to correct opinion, and after that to
correct opinion plus an account. And there he will halt his enquiry.
For if he were to add causal binding (TOV DEajLOv TTJ~ aiTLa~), the account
of this kind of knowledge would become complete.

Anon. clearly holds that Plato has the Meno's definition in mind
as the correct one,49 and that he deliberately suppresses it at the
Cf. 2. 29-32, translated above, Sect. IV: ~ TWV '.<~~~~ KpdJVTWV jLO'!H+O~
Y!!:'[E]r[a]L E7TLGT~IfTJ, which echoes Meno 98a5-6, E7TELDnv DE
DE(JWGLV, 7TPWTOV jLEV E7TLaTTJjLaL YLyvovTaL, 7TELTa JLOVLJLOL. Anon.'s view is
apparently shared by Cornford (Plato's Theory of Knowledge, 141-2, 158; cf. n.
23 above), but he does little (cf. Robinson, 'Forms and Error in Plato's
Theaetetus', 14-15 =Essays in Greek Philosophy, 53) to explain how he harmonizes it with the thesis to which he gives all the emphasis, the one I call the
object-related interpretation (see above, Sect. IV).
49

On the soul is undoubtedly the Phaedo (cf. Diogenes Laertius 3.58). Note
too the allusion to Phaedrus 24ge in the expression TEOEaaOaL
OVTa.
47 The papyrus originally read ayovo~, which was later emended to the
clearly inferior EVyOVO~.
48 See also 55. 24-33, 56. 2-10. Anon. could (although he does not) invoke
the support of Tht. 149blo-C2 as confirming that Socrates, in order to be a successful midwife, must have some experience of giving birth.
46

Tn

101

7TapaD9X~

David Sedley

The Theaetetus: Three Interpretations

end, where it would have been the natural next step. Why does
he think that? The answer is most clearly given by the anonymous Prolegomena, a work which at least in this respect shares
the views of the anonymous commentator. Replying to the
Academic sceptics' reading of the Theaetetus (p. 86 above), its
author says:

their analysis of the dialogue's strategy. More than any modern

commentator known to me, they pay serious attention to the
fact that the dialogue is itself an example of the philosophical
method outlined in it. 52 Their inspired diagnosis is that while
the dramatic content of Theaetetus takes the form of failed midwifery, performed by Socrates on Theaetetus, the dialogue's
address to us, the readers, is also one of intellectual midwifery,
this time on Plato's part. 53 For Plato to end up by telling us the
correct definition would be a clear dereliction of duty. Instead,
and in absolute conformity with maieutic method, he delivers
us to the point where we should ourselves be ready to give
birth. 54

102

To these people, we will reply that Plato does not think that the soul is
like a tabula rasa, but holds that it needs only uncovering in order to
become sober and to see the facts, since it has the knowledge inside it
but does not see clearly because of its contact with the body. Hence it
only needs repurging (anakatharsis). And that is why 'he refuted the
badly stated theses about knowledge, thus allowing the soul to be
purged clean and to conceive the truth. 50

Here the Platonist conception of 'purgative' dialectic plays a

crucial part. Originating from the Sophist (230), it describes the
method of the so-called 'peirastic' dialogues, whose object is to
clear away false beliefs. But purgation is a richer notion than the
mere removal of falsehoods. Following the lead of the Phaedo,
ancient Platonism sees purgation (katharsis) as the restoration
of the soul to its natural state of wisdom. The soul already has
the knowledge in it. Purge the obstacles which incarnation
imposes, and the knowledge will surface of its own accord.
Excessive confidence in the power of the senses is paramount
among the obstacles which the body imposes on understanding
(Phaedo 6sa-b), and that was therefore Plato's first target for
refutation in the Theaetetus. The anonymous commentator
clearly takes such a view (3. 7- 1 S), even introducing a special
term for the purpose: the Protagorean thesis, which equated
knowledge with perception, had to be 'pre-repurged'
(1TpoavaKa(}aLpELV, 2. IQ-I I) before the dialogue could make
further progress. Anon. sees the dialogue as proceeding,
through purgation of false beliefs, ever closer to the true definition of knowledge. It stops just short of it, and at the end leaves
us, the readers, to come up with the truth. 51
Whether or not we agree with these Platonists about the relevance of recollection to the Theaetetus, we must surely admire
Anon., Proleg. 10.26-33.
Perhaps the most prominent modern counterpart of this reading is that of
Gail Fine, 'Knowledge and Logos in the Theaetetus', Philosophical Review, 88
(1979),3 66-97.
50

51

13

52 An analogous case could be made out for Phaedo and Republic. But that
is another story.
.
53 Proclus, in Ale. 28.4-9 adopts the same view of the dialogue's strategy,
but locates it in Socrates' address to Theaetetus, not in Plato's address to us.
This is less plausible, in view of Tht. 210b. There were also those who denied
that the Theaetetus is a maieutic dialogue: e.g. D.L. 3. 5.
54 My thanks to audiences at Cornell, Chicago, Pittsburgh, London,
Edinburgh, and Cambridge, and, for comments and advice, to James Allen,
Myles Burnyeat, Fernanda Decleva Caizzi, Pierluigi Donini, Gail Fine, Lucas
Siorvanes, and the editors of this volume.

Form and Argument

in Late Plato
Edited by

CHRISTOPHER GILL
and

MARY MARGARET McCABE

CLARENDON PRESS OXFORD