Complete Works

by Plato, Cooper, John M. , Hutchinson, D. S.

  CRATYLUS: That seems true to me.

  [439] SOCRATES: But wait a minute! Haven’t we often agreed that if names are well given, they are like the things they name and so are likenesses of them?

  CRATYLUS: Yes.

  SOCRATES: So if it’s really the case that one can learn about things through names and that one can also learn about them through themselves, which would be the better and clearer way to learn about them? Is it better to learn from the likeness both whether it itself is a good likeness and also the truth it is a likeness of? Or is it better to learn from the truth both the [b] truth itself and also whether the likeness of it is properly made?

  CRATYLUS: I think it is certainly better to learn from the truth.

  SOCRATES: How to learn and make discoveries about the things that are is probably too large a topic for you or me. But we should be content to have agreed that it is far better to investigate them and learn about them through themselves than to do so through their names.

  CRATYLUS: Evidently so, Socrates.

  SOCRATES: Still, let’s investigate one further issue so as to avoid being deceived by the fact that so many of these names seem to lean in the same [c] direction—as we will be if, as seems to me to be the case, the name-givers really did give them in the belief that everything is always moving and flowing, and as it happens things aren’t really that way at all, but the name-givers themselves have fallen into a kind of vortex and are whirled around in it, dragging us with them. Consider, Cratylus, a question that I for my part often dream about: Are we or aren’t we to say that there is a beautiful itself, and a good itself, and the same for each one of the things that are? [d]

  CRATYLUS: I think we are, Socrates.

  SOCRATES: Let’s not investigate whether a particular face or something of that sort is beautiful then, or whether all such things seem to be flowing, but let’s ask this instead: Are we to say that the beautiful itself is always such as it is?

  CRATYLUS: Absolutely.

  SOCRATES: But if it is always passing away, can we correctly say of it first that it is this, and then that it is such and such? Or, at the very instant we are speaking, isn’t it inevitably and immediately becoming a different thing and altering and no longer being as it was?

  CRATYLUS: It is.

  SOCRATES: Then if it never stays the same, how can it be something? After [e] all, if it ever stays the same, it clearly isn’t changing—at least, not during that time; and if it always stays the same and is always the same thing, so that it never departs from its own form, how can it ever change or move?

  CRATYLUS: There’s no way.

  SOCRATES: Then again it can’t even be known by anyone. For at the very instant the knower-to-be approaches, what he is approaching is becoming a different thing, of a different character, so that he can’t yet come to know [440] either what sort of thing it is or what it is like—surely, no kind of knowledge is knowledge of what isn’t in any way.

  CRATYLUS: That’s right.

  SOCRATES: Indeed, it isn’t even reasonable to say that there is such a thing as knowledge, Cratylus, if all things are passing on and none remain. For if that thing itself, knowledge, did not pass on from being knowledge, then knowledge would always remain, and there would be such a thing as knowledge. On the other hand, if the very form of knowledge passed on from being knowledge, the instant it passed on into a different form [b] than that of knowledge, there would be no knowledge. And if it were always passing on, there would always be no knowledge. Hence, on this account, no one could know anything and nothing could be known either. But if there is always that which knows and that which is known, if there are such things as the beautiful, the good, and each one of the things that are, it doesn’t appear to me that these things can be at all like flowings or motions, as we were saying just now they were. So whether I’m right about these things or whether the truth lies with Heraclitus and many [c] others64 isn’t an easy matter to investigate. But surely no one with any understanding will commit himself or the cultivation of his soul to names, or trust them and their givers to the point of firmly stating that he knows something—condemning both himself and the things that are to be totally unsound like leaky sinks—or believe that things are exactly like people [440d] with runny noses, or that all things are afflicted with colds and drip over everything. It’s certainly possible that things are that way, Cratylus, but it is also possible that they are not. So you must investigate them courageously and thoroughly and not accept anything easily—you are still young and in your prime, after all. Then after you’ve investigated them, if you happen to discover the truth, you can share it with me.

  CRATYLUS: I’ll do that. But I assure you, Socrates, that I have already investigated them and have taken a lot of trouble over the matter, and [e] things seem to me to be very much more as Heraclitus says they are.

  SOCRATES: Instruct me about it another time, Cratylus, after you get back. But now go off into the country, as you were planning to do, and Hermogenes here will see you on your way.65

  CRATYLUS: I’ll do that, Socrates, but I hope that you will also continue to think about these matters yourself.

  1. Hermes is the god of profit and ‘Hermogenes’ means ‘son of Hermes.’ A different account of the name is given at 407e–408b.

  2. Reading ho ean thēi kalein in a2.

  3. Following Schofield, Classical Quarterly 22 (1972), we transfer 385b2–d1 to follow 387c5.

  4. Plato is making a pun on the title of Protagoras’ book.

  5. Here we insert 385b2–d1; see note to 385b above.

  6. The Greek here is ho nomos: law or customary usage—itself established, as Socrates immediately goes on to say, by a nomothetēs, usually a legislator or law-giver, but here someone who establishes the rules of usage that give significance to names, a ‘rule-setter.’

  7. Reading agnoein in e1.

  8. Iliad xxi.332–80 and xx.74.

  9. Iliad xiv.291.

  10. Iliad ii.813 ff.

  11. Iliad vi.402–3.

  12. Iliad xxii.506.

  13. Iliad xxii.507, referring to Hector.

  14. The names ‘epsilon’, ‘upsilon’, ‘omicron’ (short o), and ‘omega’ (long o) were not used in Plato’s time; one simply pronounced the sound.

  15. ‘Zeus’ (nominative) has two declensions, one of which (a poetical one) has ‘Zēna’ in the accusative, the other (the ordinary one) ‘Dia’.

  16. Socrates is treating Cronus’ name as deriving not from ‘koros’ but from ‘korein’ (‘to sweep’). Cronus’ character is spotless and his intelligence clear because both have been well swept.

  17. This is probably the Euthyphro who appears in the dialogue of that name, where he is described as claiming authority on Uranus, Cronus, and Zeus (Euthyphro 4e–5a, 5e–6a).

  18. Daemons are gods or children of the gods (Apology 27d–e) or messengers from the gods (Symposium 202e).

  19. Reading ē dēlon dē hoti daimonas te kai hērōas kai anthrōpous? in d9–e1, attributing these words to Socrates.

  20. Attributing daimonas in e1 to Hermogenes.

  21. Works and Days, 121–23, with minor variations.

  22. Hestia, the goddess of the hearth, usually received the first part of a sacrifice and was named first in prayers and (often) in oaths.

  23. Frg. 91 (Diels-Kranz).

  24. ‘Rhea’ sounds a lot like ‘rheuma’ (‘stream’); apparently Socrates expects Hermogenes to hear ‘Cronus’ as connected with ‘krounos’ (‘spring’).

  25. Iliad xiv.201, 302.

  26. Frg. 15 (Kern).

  27. Cronus, the father of Posidon and Zeus, was dethroned by the latter and chained by him in Tartarus, the deepest part of Hades. See Iliad xiv.203–4.

  28. Presumably because they see it as meaning ‘who brings carnage’ (pherein phonon).

  29. They connect ‘Apollo’ with ‘apolluōn’ (‘who destroys’).

  30. Removing the brackets in c7.

  31. ‘Apolōn’ mea
ns ‘destroying utterly’, ‘killing’, ‘slaying’.

  32. Theogony 195–97.

  33. I.e., ‘ha theonoa’ or ‘Athena’ is derived thus: delete ‘sis’ from ‘theou noēsis’, yielding a single word ‘theounoē’; add the feminine article in its non-Attic style and change ‘ē’ to ‘a’ to get ‘ha theounoa’. Since at this time there was not the distinction we now make between ‘o’ and ‘ou’, we get ‘ha theonoa’.

  34. Iliad v.221–22. For Euthyphro, see 396d.

  35. See 398d.

  36. A dithyramb is a choral song to the god Dionysus, noted for its complex and pompous language.

  37. Removing the brackets in b5–6.

  38. See 395e ff.

  39. The skin of the Nemean lion worn by Heracles.

  40. Frg. 12 (Diels-Kranz).

  41. Resulting in ‘echonoē’.

  42. Because it interrupts the sequence ‘opto’, suggesting a verb for seeing.

  43. Hesiod uses the latter form of the name at Theogony 326. Popular etymology inappropriately connects ‘Sphinx’ with a verb meaning ‘to torture’. ‘Phix’, the Boeotian form of the word, connects it more appropriately with Mount Phikion in Boeotia, because of the special association of the Sphinx with Thebes.

  44. See 390b ff.

  45. Iliad vi.265.

  46. See 409d.

  47. See 412a ff.

  48. See 409d, 416a.

  49. A proverbial expression. See Laws 751d.

  50. See 412b–c.

  51. See 401a.

  52. Works and Days, 361.

  53. Iliad ix.644–45.

  54. Iliad i.343.

  55. See 388d ff.

  56. See 393d–e.

  57. See 432a.

  58. At 414c.

  59. See 411c.

  60. As was suggested at 412a, yielding something to do with “following” things.

  61. To get ‘epihistēmē’, revealing more clearly the derivation from ‘epi’ and ‘histēsi’.

  62. ‘Hamartia’ is like ‘homartein’ (‘to accompany’), and ‘sumphora’ is like ‘sumpheresthai’ (‘to move together with’).

  63. At 435d.

  64. See 402a.

  65. ‘See on your way’ (propempsei): as a good son of Hermes pompaios (who conducts souls of the dead to Hades) would do. Hermogenes is thus correctly named after all. See 384c, 408b.

  THEAETETUS

  Translated by M. J. Levett, revised by Myles Burnyeat.

  Plato has much to say in other dialogues about knowledge, but this is his only sustained inquiry into the question ‘What is knowledge?’ As such, it is the founding document of what has come to be known as ‘epistemology’, as one of the branches of philosophy; its influence on Greek epistemology—in Aristotle and the Stoics particularly—is strongly marked. Theaetetus was a famous mathematician, Plato’s associate for many years in the Academy; the dialogue’s prologue seems to announce the work as published in his memory, shortly after his early death on military service in 369 B.C. We can therefore date the publication of Theaetetus fairly precisely, to the few years immediately following Theaetetus’ death. Plato was then about sixty years of age, and another famous longtime associate, Aristotle, was just joining the Academy as a student (367).

  Though it is not counted as a ‘Socratic’ dialogue—one depicting Socrates inquiring into moral questions by examining and refuting the opinions of his fellow discussants—Theaetetus depicts a Socrates who makes much of his own ignorance and his subordinate position as questioner, and the dialogue concludes inconclusively. Socrates now describes his role, however, as he does not in the ‘Socratic’ dialogues, as that of a ‘midwife’: he brings to expression ideas of clever young men like Theaetetus, extensively develops their presuppositions and consequences so as to see clearly what the ideas amount to, and then establishes them as sound or defective by independent arguments of his own. The first of Theaetetus’ three successive definitions of knowledge—that knowledge is ‘perception’—is not finally ‘brought to birth’ until Socrates has linked it to Protagoras’ famous ‘man is the measure’ doctrine of relativistic truth, and also to the theory that ‘all is motion and change’ that Socrates finds most Greek thinkers of the past had accepted, and until he has fitted it out with an elaborate and ingenious theory of perception and how it works. He then examines separately the truth of these linked doctrines—introduced into the discussion by him, not Theaetetus—and, in finally rejecting Theaetetus’ idea as unsound, he advances his own positive analysis of perception and its role in knowledge. This emphasis on the systematic exploration of ideas before finally committing oneself to them or rejecting them as unsound is found in a different guise in Parmenides, with its systematic exploration of hypotheses about unity as a means of working hard toward an acceptable theory of Forms. Socrates establishes a clear link between the two dialogues when, at 183e, he drags in a reference back to the conversation reported in Parmenides.

  Theaetetus has a unique format among Plato’s dialogues. The prologue gives a brief conversation between Euclides and Terpsion, Socratics from nearby Megara (they are among those present for the discussion on Socrates’ last day in Phaedo). For the remainder, a slave reads out a book composed by Euclides containing a conversation of Socrates, Theodorus, and Theaetetus that took place many years previously. Since ancient sources tell us of Socratic dialogues actually published by Euclides, it is as if, except for the prologue, Plato is giving us under his own name one of Euclides’ dialogues! The last line of the work establishes it as the first of a series, with Sophist and Statesman to follow—as noted above, Parmenides precedes. In Theaetetus Socrates tests Theaetetus’ mettle with the geometer Theodorus’ aid and in the presence of his namesake Socrates, another associate of Plato’s in the Academy; in the other two works, first Theaetetus, then young Socrates will be discussion partners with an unnamed visitor from Elea, in Southern Italy, home to Parmenides and Zeno—a very different type of partner. Socrates and his midwifery are superseded.

  Despite its lively and intellectually playful Socrates, reminiscent of the ‘Socratic’ dialogues, Theaetetus is a difficult work of abstract philosophical theory. The American logician and philosopher C. S. Peirce counted it, along with Parmenides, as Plato’s greatest work, and more recently it has attracted favorable attention from such major philosophers as Ludwig Wittgenstein and Gilbert Ryle.

  J.M.C.

  [142] EUCLIDES: Are you only just in from the country, Terpsion? Or have you been here some time?

  TERPSION: I’ve been here a good while. In fact, I have been looking for you in the market-place and wondering that I couldn’t find you.

  EUCLIDES: Well, you couldn’t, because I was not in the city.

  TERPSION: Where have you been, then?

  EUCLIDES: I went down to the harbor; and as I was going, I met Theaetetus, being taken to Athens from the camp at Corinth.

  TERPSION: Alive or dead?

  [b] EUCLIDES: Alive; but that’s about all one could say. Badly wounded for one thing; but the real trouble is this sickness that has broken out in the army.

  TERPSION: Dysentery?

  EUCLIDES: Yes.

  TERPSION: What a man to lose!

  EUCLIDES: Yes. A fine man, Terpsion. Only just now I was listening to some people singing his praises for the way he behaved in the battle.

  TERPSION: Well, there’s nothing extraordinary about that. Much more to [c] be wondered at if he hadn’t distinguished himself. But why didn’t he put up here at Megara?

  EUCLIDES: He was in a hurry to get home. I kept asking him myself, and advising him; but he wouldn’t. So I saw him on his way. And as I was coming back, I thought of Socrates and what a remarkably good prophet he was—as usual—about Theaetetus. It was not long before his death, if I remember rightly, that he came across Theaetetus, who was a boy at the time. Socrates met him and had a talk with him, and was very much struck with his natural ability; and when I went to Athens, he repeated to me the discussion
they had had, which was well worth listening to. And he [d] said to me then that we should inevitably hear more of Theaetetus, if he lived to grow up.

  TERPSION: Well, he appears to have been right enough.—But what was this discussion? Could you tell it to me?

  EUCLIDES: Good Lord, no. Not from memory, anyway. But I made some [143] notes of it at the time, as soon as I got home; then afterwards I recalled it at my leisure and wrote it out, and whenever I went to Athens, I used to ask Socrates about the points I couldn’t remember, and correct my version when I got home. The result is that I have got pretty well the whole discussion in writing.

  TERPSION: Yes, of course. I have heard you say that before, and I have always been meaning to ask you to show it to me, though I have been so long about it. But is there any reason why we shouldn’t go through it now? I want a rest, in any case, after my journey in from the country.

  EUCLIDES: Well, I shouldn’t mind sitting down either. I saw Theaetetus as [b] far as Erineum. Come along. We will get the slave to read it to us while we rest.

  TERPSION: Right.

  EUCLIDES: This is the book, Terpsion. You see, I have written it out like this: I have not made Socrates relate the conversation as he related it to me, but I represent him as speaking directly to the persons with whom he said he had this conversation. (These were, he told me, Theodorus the geometer and Theaetetus.) I wanted, in the written version, to avoid the [c] bother of having the bits of narrative in between the speeches—I mean, when Socrates, whenever he mentions his own part in the discussion, says ‘And I maintained’ or ‘I said,’ or, of the person answering, ‘He agreed’ or ‘He would not admit this.’ That is why I have made him talk directly to them and have left out these formulae.

  TERPSION: Well, that’s quite in order, Euclides.

  EUCLIDES: Now, boy, let us have it.

  SOCRATES: If Cyrene were first in my affections, Theodorus, I should be [d] asking you how things are there, and whether any of your young people are taking up geometry or any other branch of philosophy. But, as it is, I love Athens better than Cyrene, and so I’m more anxious to know which of our young men show signs of turning out well. That, of course, is what I am always trying to find out myself, as best I can; and I keep asking other people too—anyone round whom I see the young men are inclined to gather. Now you, of course, are very much sought after, and with good [e] reason; your geometry alone entitles you to it, and that is not your only claim. So if you have come across anyone worth mentioning, I should be glad to hear.