Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Theaetetus
    Theaetetus
    Theaetetus
    Ebook134 pages2 hours

    Theaetetus

    By Plato

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to audiobook
    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Theaetetus was written in the year -400 by Plato. This book is one of the most popular novels of Plato, and has been translated into several other languages around the world.

    This book is published by Booklassic which brings young readers closer to classic literature globally.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBooklassic
    Release dateJul 7, 2015
    ISBN9789635270958
    Author

    Plato

    Plato, one of the most renowned ancient Greek philosophers, was born in 427 B.C. to an aristocratic and wealthy family, which played a prominent part in Athenian politics. Plato in conjunction his teacher, Socrates, and his pupil, Aristotle helped to lay the foundations of Western philosophy and culture. While primarily influenced by Socrates, Plato’s work was also affected by the philosophies of Heraclitus, Parmenides, and the Pythagoreans. Under the guidance of Socrates, Plato devoted himself to the pursuit of wisdom and upon Socrates’ death, joined a group of the Socratic disciples gathered at Megara. Later he travelled in Egypt, Magna Graecia, and Sicily. He returned to Athens and founded a school, known as the Academy, which seems to have been his home base for the remainder of his life. While thirty-five dialogues and thirteen letters have traditionally been ascribed to Plato, modern scholarship doubts the authenticity of some of them. His early dialogues are also known as the Socratic dialogues and include Apology, Crito, Euthyphro, and Protagoras. He followed these with his transitional dialogues: Gorgias, Meno , and Euthydemus . The Symposium and the Republic are considered the centerpieces of Plato's middle period and are considered some of his most revered work, and other middle dialogues include Phaedo, Phaedrus, and Theaetetus. Plato’s Laws is the best known dialogues of his late period. Plato died in 347 B.C.

    Read more from Plato

    Related to Theaetetus

    Related ebooks

    Philosophy For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Great Morality Scam

      Jul 30, 2018

      The Great Morality Scam
      5 min read

    • Article

      Spaces Without And Within

      Sep 6, 2021

      Spaces Without And Within
      5 min read

    • Article

      Collins Ferry Landing

      Jul 1, 2020

      for my father Only rivers bottom out like this.Only rivers bottom out with this kind of conviction.Not humans, or, at least, not humans asindisputably human as you were,trapped in consciousness’s surplus, exilic,animalized absurdity, writhing in its

      5 min read

    • Article

      Athens Greece

      Jun 5, 2019

      Tell us a little about yourself. My name is Michael and I’m eleven years old. Where do you live? I live in Nea Smyrni, a neighbourhood close to the centre of Athens. We live in a flat that we rent. One of my two grandmas lives in the same block of

      2 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Dec 1, 2022

      You have to first Sit in the temple gloom In the mahogany chair & despair. The only glimmer In the temple (being the inlaid bits of The Mother-Of-Pearl shells On the tall, more than humanly tall Chair back, for these These too Are the reputed “Tears

      3 min read

    • Article

      Salvete O Scoopsteri!

      Aug 4, 2021

      Salvete O Scoopsteri!
      1 min read

    • Article

      Wonder And Doubt

      Aug 10, 2020

      Wonder And Doubt
      6 min read

    • Article

      André De Shields, Theatre God

      Nov 25, 2019

      André De Shields, Theatre God
      11 min read

    • Article

      Taro

      Apr 5, 2022

      Taro
      12 min read

    • Article

      Oh, To Be Free

      Aug 2, 2021

      Oh, To Be Free
      8 min read

    • Article

      Found in Situ

      May 25, 2021

      Found in Situ
      17 min read

    • Article

      The Lost Art of Not Knowing Something

      Feb 10, 2022

      I'd posit that there is a bit of Larry David in Socrates. They both puncture hypocrisy, force us to question our own moral platitudes, and deign that we must defend our presuppositions, even if doing so seems rude. The post The Lost Art of Not Knowin

      13 min read

    • Article

      Unravelling Things

      Jul 9, 2023

      That Ernest Rutherford is a past member of the Manchester Literaryand Philosophical Society I learn from studying the plaquein the hallway of their new headquarters. I’m just in timefor a public lecture on John Dalton’s atomic theory of 1803as it rel

      1 min read

    • Article

      Proof Of Life

      Oct 12, 2023

      Proof Of Life
      2 min read

    • Article

      Perception

      Nov 7, 2020

      Even the simple act which we describe as ‘seeing someone we know’ is, to some extent, an intellectual process. We pack the physical outline of the creature we see with all the ideas we already formed about him, and in the complete picture of him whic

      3 min read

    • Article

      How To Win Friends

      Jun 30, 2021

      ‘Call it vanity if you will but, from a very early age, my great object was to make every man and every woman love me.’ 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1674-1773) Chesterfield’s ambition strikes a chord today (particularly as we re-enter society after the

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Chair of Opportunity

      Jan 10, 2023

      Taylor put his clothes back on and waited in a well outfitted room. It was far posher than any doctor’s office he’d ever been in and he wasn’t sure why he’d been given a physical, much less one more thorough than any he’d ever had before. When they’d

      10 min read

    • Article

      The Myth Of Sisyphus

      Aug 10, 2020

      The Myth Of Sisyphus
      10 min read

    • Article

      Woman About Town

      Oct 27, 2022

      ALL OF A SUDDEN, AUTUMN ARRIVES, reuniting me with my cold-weather wardrobe. Dear, cosy, arsenic-green cardigan! Beloved Aran jacket! Tweed blazer, which I bought five years ago reasoning that everyone needs a tweed blazer and then found I had absolu

      3 min read

    • Article

      On Grief

      Jul 29, 2019

      On Grief
      5 min read

    • Article

      An Interview With Sini Simonen

      May 17, 2022

      What was your starting point for this project? It was one of those pandemic projects, where you suddenly have a lot of time and you are just wondering about the world. I got into reading TS Eliot, and we’d played the Adès a lot, which I knew was a re

      1 min read

    • Article

      In Praise of Darkness

      Aug 15, 2018

      HEATHER LANIER is the author of the nonfiction book Teaching in the Terrordome as well as two poetry chapbooks. Her essays have appeared in Salon, the Sun, Fourth Genre, Brevity, and elsewhere, and her TED talk on the incomplete stories we tell ourse

      8 min read

    • Article

      Sir Kenneth Branagh

      Jan 17, 2022

      Sir Kenneth Branagh
      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Theaetetus

    4/5

    73 ratings5 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 2/5
      Extremely complex and difficult to follow, but still worth the read.
    • 4/5
      (Original Review, 2002-06-25)I've always wondered whether a thesis can only be supported by reason. Is that self-evident or can we find a reason for it?Plato actually faces and tries to answer similar challenge in “Theaetetus” when he is discussing the nature of knowledge with Protagoras who is a relativist. Plato offers an argument trying to show that Protagoras claim that knowledge is perception must be wrong and he achieves this by making an argument. So we might reply to your question along similar lines: the sceptic about reason is claiming to have knowledge when he says that people never act for reasons but only because they are moved by rhetoric but knowledge to be knowledge and not mere true belief must involve logos or justification and so the sceptic's view is incoherent. He is arguing that knowledge does and does not involve responding to reasons but that is an incoherent view.This is roughly how Plato tries to deal with the epistemic relativist and his argument is useful in dealing with modern day relativists like Richard Rorty or the social constructivists like Bruno Latour.Let’s look at it from Plato's point of view. He will say that knowledge is a normative notion in the sense that it involves justification; knowledge is characterized by Plato as justified, true belief. But that says that reason enters into knowledge via justification and is a necessary condition of knowledge in a sense that if you only possess belief that is true (take a guess and think that I’m are writing on a HP laptop and that happens to be the case; do I know that I’m writing this on a HP laptop ? No, you don’t, even though my belief is true) you don’t have knowledge.So the claim is pretty strong: it is not just that reason can support knowledge on this Platonic view but rather that it logically has to; reason and knowledge are conceptually tied together Plato wants to argue. This is not just an empirical claim but a conceptual one.What the sceptic and the post modernists like Rorty are challenging is what might be called the classical picture of knowledge which can be traced to Plato:(i) The world which we seek to understand and know about is what it is largely independently of us and our beliefs about it;(ii) Facts of the Form -- information E justifies belief B -- are society-independent facts ,and(iii) Under the appropriate circumstances, our exposure to the evidence alone is capable of explaining why we believe what we believe.This is Plato's view and is also embraced by Anglo American philosophy and science. The sophists like Protagoras (and in ethical sphere it's Callicles and Thrasymachus) and post modernists like Heidegger, Rorty, Foucault, Latour and so on and of course people in social sciences and humanities influenced by pomo reject this picture by rejecting either one or all components of the classical picture.Forms are universals and not directly perceived when I see turds and flies although I can intuit these forms. They constitute metaphysical background of ordinary things and are ontologically necessary to explain first of all why ordinary things like turds are in fact turds and secondly how we can come to know ordinary things. So, forms for Plato are ontologically fundamental and prior to what is given in experience and so on this view it is not something we create. Forms are independent of our perceiving them and can be in intuited and so are turds and flies and so, Plato is a realist.No , the cave works like this : just as in the cave when I look at the dog's shadow on the wall which is a reflection of the dog but dont actually see the real dog so in the waking experience of the world I see things that are contingent, impermanent and transient . When I see a dog I see the reflection of the dog but not the Form of the universal dog. Roughly, Plato wants to say this because he thinks that ordinary scientific and everyday knowledge is too insecure and too revisable to be certain and to the extent to which Plato wants. His model of knowledge is logic and maths and he has doubts about empirical knowledge ; we have two categories ar two classes of knowledge with maths being the better one . This is not that controversial because Plato is distinguishing analytic a priori knowledge from empirical knowledge , the distinction we continue to make . What is unusual is his denigration of the empirical.
    • 3/5
      Challenging
    • 5/5
      A very fine translation that makes the arguments as clear as I think they can be and brings out the characters of the participants. It's the same Levett / Burnyeat text that you get in Cooper's Complete Works, but this edition has a thoughtful and thorough introduction and sensible notes.
    • 4/5
      Strangely contemporary discussion, dialogue, on the essence of knowledge. What is knowledge? In what ways does knowledge present itself in the world of man? No easy read, more like a really tough workout for your brain. After reading I felt somehow enlightened. But to be honest; I´m not really sure in what way? Maybe just of the recurring insight of the complex ways our human mind works. And that in thinking, and tracing, defining the paths of our knowledge Plato is putting down the groundstone of the mental, philosophical building we in the western world somehow still live in.

    Book preview

    Theaetetus - Plato

    Theaetetus

    Plato

    Booklassic

    2015

    ISBN 978-963-527-095-8

    Persons of the dialogue: Socrates; Theodorus; Theaetetus

    Scene: Euclid and Terpsion meet in front of Euclid's house in Megara; they enter the house, and the dialogue is read to them by a servant.

    Euclid. Have you only just arrived from the country, Terpsion?

    Terpsion. No, I came some time ago: and I have been in the Agora looking for you, and wondering that I could not find you.

    Euc. But I was not in the city.

    Terp. Where then?

    Euc. As I was going down to the harbour, I met Theaetetus-he was being carried up to Athens from the army at Corinth.

    Terp. Was he alive or dead?

    Euc. He was scarcely alive, for he has been badly wounded; but he was suffering even more from the sickness which has broken out in the army.

    Terp. The dysentery, you mean?

    Euc. Yes.

    Terp. Alas! what a loss he will be!

    Euc. Yes, Terpsion, he is a noble fellow; only to-day I heard some people highly praising his behaviour in this very battle.

    Terp. No wonder; I should rather be surprised at hearing anything else of him. But why did he go on, instead of stopping at Megara?

    Euc. He wanted to get home: although I entreated and advised him to remain he would not listen to me; so I set him on his way, and turned back, and then I remembered what Socrates had said of him, and thought how remarkably this, like all his predictions, had been fulfilled. I believe that he had seen him a little before his own death, when Theaetetus was a youth, and he had a memorable conversation with him, which he repeated to me when I came to Athens; he was full of admiration of his genius, and said that he would most certainly be a great man, if he lived.

    Terp. The prophecy has certainly been fulfilled; but what was the conversation? can you tell me?

    Euc. No, indeed, not offhand; but I took notes of it as soon as I got home; these I filled up from memory, writing them out at leisure; and whenever I went to Athens, I asked Socrates about any point which I had forgotten, and on my return I made corrections; thus I have nearly the whole conversation written down.

    Terp. I remember-you told me; and I have always been intending to ask you to show me the writing, but have put off doing so; and now, why should we not read it through?-having just come from the country, I should greatly like to rest.

    Euc. I too shall be very glad of a rest, for I went with Theaetetus as far as Erineum. Let us go in, then, and, while we are reposing, the servant shall read to us.

    Terp. Very good.

    Euc. Here is the roll, Terpsion; I may observe that I have introduced Socrates, not as narrating to me, but as actually conversing with the persons whom he mentioned-these were, Theodorus the geometrician (of Cyrene), and Theaetetus. I have omitted, for the sake of convenience, the interlocutory words I said, I remarked, which he used when he spoke of himself, and again, he agreed, or disagreed, in the answer, lest the repetition of them should be troublesome.

    Terp. Quite right, Euclid.

    Euc. And now, boy, you may take the roll and read.

    (Euclid's servant reads.)

    Socrates. If I cared enough about the Cyrenians, Theodorus, I would ask you whether there are any rising geometricians or philosophers in that part of the world. But I am more interested in our own Athenian youth, and I would rather know who among them are likely to do well. I observe them as far as I can myself, and I enquire of any one whom they follow, and I see that a great many of them follow you, in which they are quite right, considering your eminence in geometry and in other ways. Tell me then, if you have met with any one who is good for anything.

    Theodorus. Yes, Socrates, I have become acquainted with one very remarkable Athenian youth, whom I commend to you as well worthy of your attention. If he had been a beauty I should have been afraid to praise him, lest you should suppose that I was in love with him; but he is no beauty, and you must not be offended if I say that he is very like you; for he has a snub nose and projecting eyes, although these features are less marked in him than in you. Seeing, then, that he has no personal attractions, I may freely say, that in all my acquaintance, which is very large, I never knew anyone who was his equal in natural gifts: for he has a quickness of apprehension which is almost unrivalled, and he is exceedingly gentle, and also the most courageous of men; there is a union of qualities in him such as I have never seen in any other, and should scarcely have thought possible; for those who, like him, have quick and ready and retentive wits, have generally also quick tempers; they are ships without ballast, and go darting about, and are mad rather than courageous; and the steadier sort, when they have to face study, prove stupid and cannot remember. Whereas he moves surely and smoothly and successfully in the path of knowledge and enquiry; and he is full of gentleness, flowing on silently like a river of oil; at his age, it is wonderful.

    Soc. That is good news; whose son is he?

    Theod. The name of his father I have forgotten, but the youth himself is the middle one of those who are approaching us; he and his companions have been anointing themselves in the outer court, and now they seem to have finished, and are towards us. Look and see whether you know him.

    Soc. I know the youth, but I do not know his name; he is the son of Euphronius the Sunian, who was himself an eminent man, and such another as his son is, according to your account of him; I believe that he left a considerable fortune.

    Theod. Theaetetus, Socrates, is his name; but I rather think that the property disappeared in the hands of trustees; notwithstanding which he is wonderfully liberal.

    Soc. He must be a fine fellow; tell him to come and sit by me.

    Theod. I will. Come hither, Theaetetus, and sit by Socrates.

    Soc. By all means, Theaetetus, in order that I may see the reflection of myself in your face, for Theodorus says that we are alike; and yet if each of us held in his hands a lyre, and he said that they were, tuned alike, should we at once take his word, or should we ask whether he who said so was or was not a musician?

    Theaetetus. We should ask.

    Soc. And if we found that he was, we should take his word; and if not, not?

    Theaet. True.

    Soc. And if this supposed, likeness of our faces is a matter of any interest to us we should enquire whether he who says that we are alike is a painter or not?

    Theaet. Certainly we should.

    Soc. And is Theodorus a painter?

    Theaet. I never heard that he was.

    Soc. Is he a geometrician?

    Theaet. Of course he is, Socrates.

    Soc. And is he an astronomer and calculator and musician, and in general an educated man?

    Theaet. I think so.

    Soc. If, then, he remarks on a similarity in our persons, either by way of praise or blame, there is no particular reason why we should attend to him.

    Theaet. I should say not.

    Soc. But if he praises the virtue or wisdom which are the mental endowments of either of us, then he who hears the praises will naturally desire to examine him who is praised: and he again should be willing to exhibit himself.

    Theaet. Very true, Socrates.

    Soc. Then now is the time, my dear Theaetetus, for me to examine, and for you to exhibit; since although Theodorus has praised many a citizen and stranger in my hearing, never did I hear him praise any one as he has been praising you.

    Theaet. I am glad to hear it, Socrates; but what if he was only in jest?

    Soc. Nay, Theodorus is not given to jesting; and I cannot allow you to retract your consent on any such pretence as that. If you do, he will have to swear to his words; and we are perfectly sure that no one will be found to impugn him. Do not be shy then, but stand to your word.

    Theaet. I suppose I must, if you wish it.

    Soc. In the first place, I should like to ask what you learn of Theodorus: something of geometry, perhaps?

    Theaet. Yes.

    Soc. And astronomy and harmony and calculation?

    Theaet. I do my best.

    Soc. Yes, my boy, and so do I: and my desire is to learn of him, or of anybody who seems to understand these things. And I get on pretty well in general; but there is a little difficulty which I want you and the company to aid

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1