Theaetetus

About the book

Socrates meets Theaetetus and encourages him to say what knowledge is, rather than merely naming different subjects that people know. Their investigation tests accounts involving perception, true judgment, and the possibility of adding an explanation to a correct belief. Images of mental activity help make the problems vivid, but each proposed model introduces difficulties of its own. Socrates describes his role through the analogy of midwifery, presenting inquiry as assistance in bringing thoughts forward and testing their worth. The conversation is interested in error as much as success: an adequate account of knowing must also explain how mistakes can occur. Plato makes the young participant's willingness to reconsider part of the philosophical drama, allowing an unresolved question to become evidence of intellectual work rather than a reason to abandon it.

• Knowledge
• Perception and error
• Inquiry

Why read it

For a patient examination of what knowing might require, conducted through successive proposals whose failures become philosophically productive.

English translation by Benjamin Jowett