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Socrate ‘Dream’ in the Theaetetus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Hans Meyerhoff
Hans Meyerhoff
Affiliation:
University of Californiaat Los Angeles
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Extract

AT the beginning of the third part of the Theaetetus (201d–2O2c), Socrates entertains an interesting theory of knowledge in the form of a ‘dream’. In Cornford's translation, it reads as follows:

I seem to have heard some people say that what might be called the first elements () of which we and all other things consist are such that no account () can be given of them. Each of them just by itself can only be named; we cannot attribute to it anything further or say that it exists or does not exist; for we should at once be attaching to it existence or nonexistence, whereas we ought to add nothing if we are to express just it alone. We ought not even to add ‘just’ or ‘it’ (‘that’) or ‘each’ or ‘alone’ or ‘this’, or any other of a host of such terms.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 8 , Issue 3-4 , November 1958 , pp. 131 - 138
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1958

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References

1 Cited by Cross, R.C., ‘Logos and Forms in Plato‘ (Mind, lxiii. 1954).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Ibid., p. 21 (paragraph 46).

1 In addition to the Theaetetus, the analogy occurs in the Cratylus (422 ff., 425 ff., and throughout within the same metaphysical context of Heracliteanism as in the Theaetetus), in the Phaedrus (244 ff.), the Philebus (17–18 ff.), the Politicus (278 ff.) and, within the context of Plato's own theory of Forms, in the Timaeus (48b ff), and in the Sophist (253 ff.). If the Seventh Letter is not spurious, it contains similar material in the philosophical interlude (342 ff.; cf. also Laws, 895dff.).

2 After Jackson, Henry's early article on ‘Plato's Later Theory of Ideas: The Theaetetus‘ (The Journal of Philology, xiii)Google Scholar, important recent contributions are: Cornford, F.M., Plato's Theory of Knowledge (London, 1935)Google Scholar; Hardie, W.F H., A Study in Plato (Oxford, 1936), especially chap, iiiGoogle Scholar; Yolton, J.W., ‘The Ontological Status of Sense-Data in Plato's Theory of Perception’ (The Review of Metaphysics, iii, 1949)Google Scholar; Robinson, Richard, ‘Forms and Error in Plato's Theaetetus’ (The Philosophical Review, lix, 1950)Google Scholar;Cross, R.C.,op. cit.Google Scholar; and Nakhnikian, George, ‘Plato's Theory of Sensation I, II’ (The Review of Metaphysics, ix, 1955, nos. 1 and 2).Google Scholar

1 i.e. not simple substances like ‘gold’, as Cornford also believed; cf. op. cit., p. 144.

2 In part I Plato speaks only of as having names, but adds explicitly that the class of a is to be treated analogously:

3 For the latest detailed explication of the perceptual process according to Plato see George Nakhnikian, op. cit.; cf. also Lodge, Rupert C., Plato's Theory of Art (London, 1953: chap, xii)Google Scholar where the same problem is considered most carefully.

1 Cf.Cornford, , op. cit., pp. 29, 32, 49, 54.Google Scholar

2 Cf. op. cit., pp. 250 ff.; Jackson is cited by Cornford and by Nakhnikian, both of whom agree with the thesis he first put forth.

3 Cf. De Anima, 418313.

4 Cf. Nakhnikian, , op. cit. ii. 309 ff., adopting Cornford's interpretation of the ‘extreme’ Heracliteanism in the Theaetetus.Google Scholar

1 Op. cit., p. 265Google Scholar. This inference, I believe, also coincides with the results of the linguistic analysis in the Cratylus, which leads to the same negative conclusions concerning the knowability of simple sense data or the ‘primary names’ belonging to them.

2 These connexions are noted by Cornford, , op. cit., pp. 105–6Google Scholar and by SirRoss, David in Plato's Theory of Ideas (Oxford, 1951, p. 103).Google Scholar

1 In Cornford's translation: ‘A description () being precisely a combination of names’.Harold N. Fowler's translation (in the Loeb library edition) reads: ‘For the combination of names is the essence of reasoning’ ().

1 Cf. 205c: ‘But if the syllable is a unity without parts (), syllable and letter likewise are equally incapable of explanation () and unknowable’ ().

2 Op. cit., pp. 151, 154, 162.Google Scholar

3 Cf. Jackson, 's summary of the argument, op. cit., p. 261.Google Scholar

1 See p. 132, n. 1 above.