Complete Works

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

  THEAETETUS: All right. [c]

  VISITOR: Next, consider the whole type that has to do with learning, recognition, commerce, combat, and hunting. None of these creates anything. They take things that are or have come into being, and they take possession of some of them with words and actions, and they keep other things from being taken possession of. For that reason it would be appropriate to call all the parts of this type acquisition.

  THEAETETUS: Yes, that would be appropriate.

  VISITOR: If every expertise falls under acquisition or production, Theaetetus [d], which one shall we put angling in?

  THEAETETUS: Acquisition, obviously.

  VISITOR: Aren’t there two types of expertise in acquisition? Is one type mutually willing exchange, through gifts and wages and purchase? And would the other type, which brings things into one’s possession by actions or words, be expertise in taking possession?

  THEAETETUS: It seems so, anyway, given what we’ve said.

  VISITOR: Well then, shouldn’t we cut possession-taking in two?

  THEAETETUS: How?

  [e] VISITOR: The part that’s done openly we label combat, and the part that’s secret we call hunting.

  THEAETETUS: Yes.

  VISITOR: And furthermore it would be unreasonable not to cut hunting in two.

  THEAETETUS: How?

  VISITOR: We divide it into the hunting of living things and the hunting of lifeless things.

  THEAETETUS: Yes, if there are both kinds.

  [220] VISITOR: How could there not be? But we should let the part involving lifeless things go. It doesn’t have a name, except for some kinds of diving and other trivial things like that. The other part—namely the hunting of living animals—we should call animal-hunting.

  THEAETETUS: All right.

  VISITOR: And isn’t it right to say that animal-hunting has two types? One is land-hunting, the hunting of things with feet, which is divided into many types with many names. The other is aquatic hunting, which hunts animals that swim.

  THEAETETUS: Of course.

  [b] VISITOR: And things that swim, we see, fall into things with wings and things living underwater.

  THEAETETUS: Of course.

  VISITOR: And all hunting of things that have wings, I suppose, is called bird-catching.

  THEAETETUS: Yes.

  VISITOR: And all hunting of underwater things is fishing.

  THEAETETUS: Yes.

  VISITOR: Well then, this kind of hunting might be divided into two main parts.

  THEAETETUS: What are they?

  VISITOR: One of them does its hunting with stationary nets and the other one does it by striking.

  THEAETETUS: What do you mean? How are you dividing them?

  [c] VISITOR: The first one is whatever involves surrounding something and enclosing it to prevent it from escaping, so it’s reasonable to call it enclosure.

  THEAETETUS: Of course.

  VISITOR: Shouldn’t baskets, nets, slipknots, creels, and so forth be called enclosures?

  THEAETETUS: Yes.

  VISITOR: So we’ll call this part of hunting enclosure-hunting or something like that.

  THEAETETUS: Yes.

  VISITOR: But the kind that’s done by striking with hooks or three-pronged spears is different, and we should call it by one word, strike-hunting. Or [d] what term would be better?

  THEAETETUS: Let’s not worry about the name. That one will do.

  VISITOR: Then there’s a part of striking that’s done at night by firelight, and as it happens is called torch-hunting by the people who do it.

  THEAETETUS: Of course.

  VISITOR: But the whole daytime part is called hooking, since even the three-pronged spears have hooks on their points.

  THEAETETUS: Yes, that’s what it’s called. [e]

  VISITOR: Then one part of the hooking part of striking is done by striking downward from above. And since you usually use a three-pronged spear that way, I think it’s called spearing.

  THEAETETUS: Some people do call it that.

  VISITOR: And I suppose there’s only one type left.

  THEAETETUS: What?

  VISITOR: It’s the type of striking contrary to the previous one. It’s done with a hook, not to just any part of the fish’s body but always to the prey’s [221] head and mouth, and pulls it upward from below with rods or reeds. What are we going to say its name should be, Theaetetus?

  THEAETETUS: I think we’ve now found what we said we aimed to find.

  VISITOR: So now we’re in agreement about the angler’s expertise, not [b] just as to its name; in addition we’ve also sufficiently grasped a verbal explanation concerning the thing itself. Within expertise as a whole one half was acquisitive; half of the acquisitive was taking possession; half of possession-taking was hunting; half of hunting was animal-hunting; half of animal-hunting was aquatic hunting; all of the lower portion of aquatic hunting was fishing; half of fishing was hunting by striking; and half of striking was hooking. And the part of hooking that involves a blow drawing a thing upward from underneath is called by a name that’s derived by its [c] similarity to the action itself, that is, it’s called draw-fishing or angling—which is what we’re searching for.

  THEAETETUS: We’ve got a completely adequate demonstration of that, anyway.

  VISITOR: Well then, let’s use that model to try and find the sophist, and see what he is.

  THEAETETUS: Fine.

  VISITOR: The first question, then, was whether we should suppose the angler is a nonexpert, or that he’s an expert at something?

  THEAETETUS: Yes.

  VISITOR: Well, shall we suppose the sophist is a layman, or completely [d] and truly an expert?

  THEAETETUS: He’s not a layman at all. I understand what you’re saying: he has to be the kind of person that the name sophist indicates.4

  VISITOR: So it seems we need to take him to have a kind of expertise.

  THEAETETUS: But what is it?

  VISITOR: For heaven’s sake, don’t we recognize that the one man belongs to the same kind as the other?

  THEAETETUS: Which men?

  VISITOR: The angler and the sophist.

  THEAETETUS: In what way?

  VISITOR: To me they both clearly appear to be hunters.

  [e] THEAETETUS: We said which kind of hunting the angler does. What kind does the sophist do?

  VISITOR: We divided all hunting into two parts, one for land animals and one for swimming animals.

  THEAETETUS: Yes.

  VISITOR: We went through one part, about the animals that swim underwater. But we left the land part undivided, though we noted that it contains many types.

  [222] THEAETETUS: Of course.

  VISITOR: Up till that point the sophist and the angler go the same way, beginning from expertise in acquisition.

  THEAETETUS: They seem to, anyway.

  VISITOR: Starting from animal hunting, though, they turn away from each other. One goes to ponds, rivers, and the sea, and hunts for the animals there.

  THEAETETUS: Of course.

  VISITOR: The other one goes to the land and to different kinds of rivers, which are like plentiful meadows of wealthy youths, to take possession of the things living there.

  [b] THEAETETUS: What do you mean?

  VISITOR: There are two main kinds of things to hunt on land.

  THEAETETUS: What are they?

  VISITOR: Tame things and wild ones.

  THEAETETUS: Is there any such thing as hunting tame animals?

  VISITOR: There is if human beings are tame animals, at any rate. Make whichever assumption you like: either there are no tame animals, or there are tame animals but humans are wild, or else, you’ll say, humans are tame but aren’t hunted. Specify whichever you prefer to say.

  [c] THEAETETUS: I think we’re tame animals and I’ll say that humans are in fact hunted.

  VISITOR: Then let’s say that the hunting of tame animals falls into two parts.

  THEAETETUS: How?

&nb
sp; VISITOR: Let’s take piracy, enslavement, tyranny, along with everything that has to do with war, and let’s define them all together as hunting by force.

  THEAETETUS: Fine.

  VISITOR: And we’ll also take legal oratory, political oratory, and conversation all together in one whole, and call them all one single sort of expertise, [d] expertise in persuasion.

  THEAETETUS: Right.

  VISITOR: Let’s say that there are two kinds of persuasion.

  THEAETETUS: What are they?

  VISITOR: One is done privately, and the other is done in public.

  THEAETETUS: Yes, each of those is one type.

  VISITOR: And doesn’t one part of private hunting earn wages, while the other part gives gifts?

  THEAETETUS: I don’t understand.

  VISITOR: It seems you aren’t paying attention to the way lovers hunt.

  THEAETETUS: In what connection?

  VISITOR: The fact that when they hunt people they give presents to [e] them too.

  THEAETETUS: Very true.

  VISITOR: Let’s call this type expertise in love.

  THEAETETUS: All right.

  VISITOR: One part of the wage-earning type approaches people by being agreeable, uses only pleasure as its bait, and earns only its own room and board. I think we’d all call it flattery, or expertise in pleasing people. [223]

  THEAETETUS: Of course.

  VISITOR: But doesn’t the kind of wage-earning that actually earns money, though it claims to deal with people for the sake of virtue, deserve to be called by a different name?

  THEAETETUS: Of course.

  VISITOR: What name? Try and tell me.

  THEAETETUS: It’s obvious. I think we’ve found the sophist. I think that’s the name that would be suitable for him.

  VISITOR: So according to our account now, Theaetetus, it seems that this [b] sort of expertise belongs to appropriation, taking possession, hunting, animal-hunting, hunting on land, human hunting, hunting by persuasion, hunting privately, and money-earning.5 It’s the hunting of rich, prominent young men. And according to the way our account has turned out, it’s what should be called the expertise of the sophist.

  THEAETETUS: Absolutely.

  [c] VISITOR: Still, let’s look at it this way too, since what we’re looking for isn’t a trivial sort of expertise but quite a diverse one. And even in what we’ve just said earlier it actually presents the appearance of being not what we’re now saying, but a different type.

  THEAETETUS: How?

  VISITOR: Expertise in acquisition had two parts, hunting and exchanging.

  THEAETETUS: Yes.

  VISITOR: And let’s say there are two types of exchanging, giving and selling.

  THEAETETUS: All right.

  VISITOR: And we’re also going to say that selling divides in two.

  [d] THEAETETUS: How?

  VISITOR: One part is the sale of things that the seller himself makes. The other is purveying, that is, the purveying of things other people make.

  THEAETETUS: Of course.

  VISITOR: Then what? Isn’t the part of purveying that’s done within the city—about half of it—called retailing?

  THEAETETUS: Yes.

  VISITOR: And isn’t wholesaling the part that buys and sells things for exchange between one city and another?

  THEAETETUS: Of course.

  [e] VISITOR: And can’t we see that one part of wholesaling sells things for the nourishment and use of the body in exchange for cash, and the other sells things for the soul?

  THEAETETUS: What do you mean by that?

  VISITOR: Maybe we don’t understand the one for the soul—since certainly we understand the other kind.

  THEAETETUS: Yes.

  [224] VISITOR: Let’s consider every kind of music that’s carried from one city to another and bought here and sold there, as well as painting and shows and other things for the soul. Some of them are transported and sold for amusement and others for serious purposes. We can use the word wholesaler for the transporter and seller of these things just as well as for someone who sells food and beverages.

  THEAETETUS: That’s absolutely true.

  [b] VISITOR: Wouldn’t you use the same name for somebody who bought and exchanged items of knowledge for money from city to city?

  THEAETETUS: Definitely.

  VISITOR: Wouldn’t the right thing to say be that the art of display is one part of that soul-wholesaling? And don’t we have to call the other part of it, the part that consists in selling knowledge, by a name that’s similar and also equally ridiculous?

  THEAETETUS: Definitely.

  VISITOR: And one name should be used for the part of this knowledge-selling that deals with knowledge of virtue, and another name for the part [c] that deals with knowledge of other things?

  THEAETETUS: Of course.

  VISITOR: “Expertise-selling” would fit the second one. You try and tell me the name of the first one.

  THEAETETUS: What other name could you mention that would fit, except for the kind, sophist, which we’re looking for right now?

  VISITOR: I couldn’t mention any other one. Come on now and let’s collect it all together. We’ll say that the expertise of the part of acquisition, exchange, selling, wholesaling, and soul-wholesaling, dealing in words and learning [d] that have to do with virtue—that’s sophistry in its second appearance.

  THEAETETUS: Definitely.

  VISITOR: In the third place I think you’d call somebody just the same thing if he settled here in the city and undertook to make his living selling those same things, both ones that he’d bought and ones that he’d made himself.

  THEAETETUS: Yes, I would.

  VISITOR: So apparently you’ll still say that sophistry falls under acquisition, [e] exchange, and selling, either by retailing things that others make or by selling things that he makes himself. It’s the retail sale of any learning that has to do with the sorts of things we mentioned.

  THEAETETUS: It has to be, since we need to stay consistent with what we said before.

  VISITOR: Now let’s see whether the type we’re chasing is something like the following.

  THEAETETUS: What? [225]

  VISITOR: Combat was one part of acquisition.

  THEAETETUS: Yes.

  VISITOR: And it makes sense to divide it in two.

  THEAETETUS: How?

  VISITOR: We’ll take one part to be competition and the other part to be fighting.

  THEAETETUS: Yes.

  VISITOR: And it would be fitting and proper to give a name like violence to the part of fighting in which one body fights against another.

  THEAETETUS: Yes.

  VISITOR: And as for the part that pits words against words, what else would you call it other than controversy? [b]

  THEAETETUS: Nothing else.

  VISITOR: But we have to have two types of controversy.

  THEAETETUS: In what way?

  VISITOR: So far as it involves one long public speech directed against another and deals with justice and injustice, it’s forensic.

  THEAETETUS: Yes.

  VISITOR: But if it goes on in private discussions and is chopped up into questions and answers, don’t we usually call it disputation?

  THEAETETUS: Yes.

  VISITOR: One part of disputation involves controversy about contracts [c] and isn’t carried on in any systematic or expert way. We should take that to be a type of disputation, since we can express what makes it different. But it hasn’t been given a name before and it doesn’t deserve to get one from us.

  THEAETETUS: That’s true. Its subtypes are too small and varied.

  VISITOR: But what about disputation that’s done expertly and involves controversy about general issues, including what’s just and what’s unjust? Don’t we normally call that debating?6

  THEAETETUS: Of course.

  [d] VISITOR: Part of debating, it turns out, wastes money and the other part makes money.

  THEAETETUS: Absolutely.


  VISITOR: Let’s try and say what each of them ought to be called.

  THEAETETUS: We have to.

  VISITOR: I think one type of debating is a result of the pleasure a person gets from the activity, and involves neglecting his own livelihood. But its style is unpleasant to most people who hear it, and in my view it’s right to call it chatter.

  THEAETETUS: That’s pretty much what people do call it.

  [e] VISITOR: You take a turn now. Say what its contrary is, which makes money from debates between individuals.

  THEAETETUS: How could anyone go wrong in saying that the amazing sophist we’ve been after has turned up once again for the fourth time.

  [226] VISITOR: It seems his type is precisely the money-making branch of expertise in debating, disputation, controversy, fighting, combat, and acquisition. According to what our account shows us now, that’s the sophist.

  THEAETETUS: Absolutely.

  VISITOR: So you see how true it is that the beast is complex and can’t be caught with one hand, as they say.

  THEAETETUS: It does take both hands.

  [b] VISITOR: Yes, and you need all your capacity to follow his tracks in what’s to come. Tell me: don’t we call some things by names that houseservants use?

  THEAETETUS: A lot of things. But what are you asking about?

  VISITOR: For example things like filtering, straining, winnowing.

  THEAETETUS: Of course.

  VISITOR: And also we know about carding, spinning, weaving, and a million other things like that which are involved in experts’ crafts. Is that right?

  THEAETETUS: What general point are you trying to make with these examples? [c]

  VISITOR: All the things I’ve mentioned are kinds of dividing.

  THEAETETUS: Yes.

  VISITOR: Since there’s a single kind of expertise involved in all of them, then according to what I’ve said we’ll expect it to have a single name.

  THEAETETUS: What shall we call it?

  VISITOR: Discrimination.

  THEAETETUS: All right.

  VISITOR: Think about whether we can see two types in it.

  THEAETETUS: You’re asking me to do some quick thinking.

  VISITOR: In fact in what we’ve called discriminations one kind separates [d] what’s worse from what’s better and the other separates like from like.

  THEAETETUS: That’s obvious—now that you’ve said it.