Complete Works

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

  VISITOR: I don’t have an ordinary name for one of them, but I do have a name for the kind of discrimination that leaves what’s better and throws away what’s worse.

  THEAETETUS: What? Tell me.

  VISITOR: I think everyone says that that kind of discrimination is cleansing.

  THEAETETUS: Yes.

  VISITOR: Won’t everyone see that cleansing has two types? [e]

  THEAETETUS: Yes, maybe, if they had time, but I don’t see now.

  VISITOR: Many kinds of cleansing that have to do with the body can appropriately be included under a simple name.

  THEAETETUS: Which ones? What name?

  VISITOR: There’s the cleansing of the inside part of living bodies, which is done by gymnastics and medicine. And there’s the cleansing of the [227] insignificant outside part that’s done by bathing. And also there’s the cleansing of nonliving bodies, which fulling and all kinds of furbishing take care of and which have lots of specialized and ridiculous-seeming names.

  THEAETETUS: Very ridiculous.

  VISITOR: Of course, Theaetetus. But our method of dealing with words doesn’t care one way or the other whether cleansing by sponging or by taking medicine does a lot of good or only a little. The method aims at acquiring intelligence, so it tries to understand how all kinds of expertise [b] belong to the same kind or not. And so for that it values them all equally without thinking that some of them are more ridiculous than others, as far as their similarity is concerned. And it doesn’t consider a person more impressive because he exemplifies hunting by military expertise rather than by picking lice. Instead it usually considers him more vapid. Moreover you just asked about what name we call all the capacities that are assigned [c] to living or nonliving bodies. As far as that’s concerned, it doesn’t matter to our method which name would seem to be the most appropriate, just so long as it keeps the cleansing of the soul separate from the cleansing of everything else. For the time being, the method has only tried to distinguish the cleansing that concerns thinking from the other kinds—if, that is, we understand what its aim is.

  THEAETETUS: I do understand, and I agree that there are two types of cleansing, one dealing with the soul and a separate one dealing with the body.

  VISITOR: Fine. Next listen and try to cut the one we’ve mentioned in two.

  [d] THEAETETUS: I’ll try to follow your lead and cut it however you say.

  VISITOR: Do we say that wickedness in the soul is something different from virtue?

  THEAETETUS: Of course.

  VISITOR: And to cleanse something was to leave what’s good and throw out whatever’s inferior.

  THEAETETUS: Yes.

  VISITOR: So insofar as we can find some way to remove what’s bad in the soul, it will be suitable to call it cleansing.

  THEAETETUS: Of course.

  VISITOR: We have to say that there are two kinds of badness that affect the soul.

  THEAETETUS: What are they?

  [228] VISITOR: One is like bodily sickness, and the other is like ugliness.

  THEAETETUS: I don’t understand.

  VISITOR: Presumably you regard sickness and discord as the same thing, don’t you?

  THEAETETUS: I don’t know what I should say to that.

  VISITOR: Do you think that discord is just dissension among things that are naturally of the same kind, and arises out of some kind of corruption?

  THEAETETUS: Yes.

  VISITOR: And ugliness is precisely a consistently unattractive sort of disproportion?

  [b] THEAETETUS: Yes.

  VISITOR: Well then, don’t we see that there’s dissension in the souls of people in poor condition, between beliefs and desires, anger and pleasures, reason and pains, and all of those things with each other?

  THEAETETUS: Absolutely.

  VISITOR: But all of them do have to be akin to each other.

  THEAETETUS: Of course.

  VISITOR: So we’d be right if we said that wickedness is discord and sickness of the soul.

  THEAETETUS: Absolutely right.

  VISITOR: Well then, suppose something that’s in motion aims at a target [c] and tries to hit it, but on every try passes by it and misses. Are we going to say that it does this because it’s properly proportioned or because it’s out of proportion?

  THEAETETUS: Out of proportion, obviously.

  VISITOR: But we know that no soul is willingly ignorant of anything.

  THEAETETUS: Definitely.

  VISITOR: But ignorance occurs precisely when a soul tries for the truth, [d] but swerves aside from understanding and so is beside itself.

  THEAETETUS: Of course.

  VISITOR: So we have to take it that an ignorant soul is ugly and out of proportion.

  THEAETETUS: It seems so.

  VISITOR: Then there are, it appears, these two kinds of badness in the soul. Most people call one of them wickedness, but it’s obviously a disease of the soul.

  THEAETETUS: Yes.

  VISITOR: They call the other one ignorance, but if it occurs only in a person’s soul they aren’t willing to agree that it’s a form of badness.

  THEAETETUS: One thing absolutely must be granted—the point I was in [e] doubt about when you made it just now—that there are two kinds of deficiency in the soul. We need to say that cowardice, licentiousness, and injustice are a disease in us, and that to be extremely ignorant of all sorts of things is a kind of ugliness.

  VISITOR: In the case of the body, weren’t there two kinds of expertise dealing with those two conditions?

  THEAETETUS: What were they?

  VISITOR: Gymnastics for ugliness and medicine for sickness. [229]

  THEAETETUS: Apparently.

  VISITOR: And isn’t correction the most appropriate of all kinds of expertise for treating insolence, injustice, and cowardice?7

  THEAETETUS: So it seems, to judge by what people think.

  VISITOR: Well then, for all kinds of ignorance wouldn’t teaching be the right treatment to mention?

  THEAETETUS: Yes.

  VISITOR: Now should we say that there’s only one kind of expertise in [b] teaching or more than one, with two of them being the most important ones? Think about it.

  THEAETETUS: I am.

  VISITOR: I think we’ll find it quickest this way.

  THEAETETUS: How?

  VISITOR: By seeing whether ignorance has a cut down the middle of it. If it has two parts, that will force teaching to have two parts too, one for each of the parts of ignorance.

  THEAETETUS: Well, do you see what we’re looking for?

  [c] VISITOR: I think I see a large, difficult type of ignorance marked off from the others and overshadowing all of them.

  THEAETETUS: What’s it like?

  VISITOR: Not knowing, but thinking that you know. That’s what probably causes all the mistakes we make when we think.

  THEAETETUS: That’s true.

  VISITOR: And furthermore it’s the only kind of ignorance that’s called lack of learning.

  THEAETETUS: Certainly.

  VISITOR: Well then, what should we call the part of teaching that gets rid of it?

  [d] THEAETETUS: The other part consists in the teaching of crafts, I think, but here in Athens we call this one education.

  VISITOR: And just about all other Greeks do too, Theaetetus. But we still have to think about whether education is indivisible or has divisions that are worth mentioning.

  THEAETETUS: We do have to think about that.

  VISITOR: I think it can be cut somehow.

  THEAETETUS: How?

  [e] VISITOR: One part of the kind of teaching that’s done in words is a rough road, and the other part is smoother.

  THEAETETUS: What do you mean by these two parts?

  VISITOR: One of them is our forefathers’ time-honored method of scolding or gently encouraging. They used to employ it especially on their sons, [230] and many still use it on them nowadays when they do something wrong. Admonition would be the right thing to call all of this
.

  THEAETETUS: Yes.

  VISITOR: As for the other part, some people seem to have an argument to give to themselves that lack of learning is always involuntary, and that if someone thinks he’s wise, he’ll never be willing to learn anything about what he thinks he’s clever at. These people think that though admonition is a lot of work, it doesn’t do much good.

  THEAETETUS: They’re right about that.

  [b] VISITOR: So they set out to get rid of the belief in one’s own wisdom in another way.

  THEAETETUS: How?

  VISITOR: They cross-examine someone when he thinks he’s saying something though he’s saying nothing. Then, since his opinions will vary inconsistently, these people will easily scrutinize them. They collect his opinions together during the discussion, put them side by side, and show that they conflict with each other at the same time on the same subjects in relation to the same things and in the same respects. The people who are being examined see this, get angry at themselves, and become calmer toward others. They lose their inflated and rigid beliefs about themselves that [c] way, and no loss is pleasanter to hear or has a more lasting effect on them. Doctors who work on the body think it can’t benefit from any food that’s offered to it until what’s interfering with it from inside is removed. The people who cleanse the soul, my young friend, likewise think the soul, too, won’t get any advantage from any learning that’s offered to it until [d] someone shames it by refuting it, removes the opinions that interfere with learning, and exhibits it cleansed, believing that it knows only those things that it does know, and nothing more.

  THEAETETUS: That’s the best and most healthy-minded way to be.

  VISITOR: For all these reasons, Theaetetus, we have to say that refutation is the principal and most important kind of cleansing. Conversely we have to think that even the king of Persia, if he remains unrefuted, is uncleansed [e] in the most important respect. He’s also uneducated and ugly, in just the ways that anyone who is going to be really happy has to be completely clean and beautiful.

  THEAETETUS: Absolutely.

  VISITOR: Well then, who are we going to say the people who apply this form of expertise are? I’m afraid to call them sophists. [231]

  THEAETETUS: Why?

  VISITOR: So we don’t pay sophists too high an honor.

  THEAETETUS: But there’s a similarity between a sophist and what we’ve been talking about.

  VISITOR: And between a wolf and a dog, the wildest thing there is and the gentlest. If you’re going to be safe, you have to be especially careful about similarities, since the type we’re talking about is very slippery. Anyway, let that description of them stand. I certainly don’t think that when the sophists are enough on their guard the dispute will be about an unimportant distinction. [b]

  THEAETETUS: That seems right.

  VISITOR: So let it be the cleansing part of the expertise of discriminating things; and let it be marked off as the part of that which concerns souls; and within that it’s teaching; and within teaching it’s education. And let’s say that within education, according to the way the discussion has turned now, the refutation of the empty belief in one’s own wisdom is nothing other than our noble sophistry.

  THEAETETUS: Let’s say that. But the sophist has appeared in lots of different ways. So I’m confused about what expression or assertion could convey [c] the truth about what he really is.

  VISITOR: You’re right to be confused. But we have to think that he’s extremely confused, too, about where he can go to escape from our account of him. The saying that you can’t escape all your pursuers is right. So now we really have to go after him.

  THEAETETUS: Right.

  VISITOR: But let’s stop first and catch our breath, so to speak. And while [d] we’re resting let’s ask ourselves, “Now, how many different appearances has the sophist presented to us?” I think we first discovered him as a hired hunter of rich young men.

  THEAETETUS: Yes.

  VISITOR: Second, as a wholesaler of learning about the soul.

  THEAETETUS: Right.

  VISITOR: Third, didn’t he appear as a retailer of the same things?

  THEAETETUS: Yes, and fourth as a seller of his own learning?

  VISITOR: Your memory’s correct. I’ll try to recall the fifth way: he was [e] an athlete in verbal combat, distinguished by his expertise in debating.

  THEAETETUS: Yes.

  VISITOR: The sixth appearance was disputed, but still we made a concession to him and took it that he cleanses the soul of beliefs that interfere with learning.

  THEAETETUS: Definitely.

  [232] VISITOR: Well then, suppose people apply the name of a single sort of expertise to someone, but he appears to have expert knowledge of lots of things. In a case like that don’t you notice that something’s wrong with the way he appears? Isn’t it obvious that if somebody takes him to be an expert at many things, then that observer can’t be seeing clearly what it is in his expertise that all of those many pieces of learning focus on—which is why he calls him by many names instead of one?

  THEAETETUS: That definitely does seem to be the nature of the case.

  [b] VISITOR: So let’s not let laziness make that happen to us. First let’s take up one of the things we said about the sophist before, which seemed to me to exhibit him especially clearly.

  THEAETETUS: What is it?

  VISITOR: We said that he engages in disputes, didn’t we?

  THEAETETUS: Yes.

  VISITOR: And also that he teaches other people to do the same thing too?

  THEAETETUS: Of course.

  VISITOR: Then let’s think: what subject do people like him claim to make others able to engage in disputes about? Let’s start with something like [c] this: do sophists make people competent to dispute about issues about the gods, which are opaque to most people?

  THEAETETUS: Well, people say they do.

  VISITOR: And also things that are open to view, on the earth and in the sky, and related matters?

  THEAETETUS: Of course.

  VISITOR: And when people make general statements in private discussions about being and coming-to-be, we know that sophists are clever at contradicting them and they also make other people able to do the same thing?

  THEAETETUS: Absolutely.

  VISITOR: And what about laws and all kinds of political issues? Don’t [d] sophists promise to make people capable of engaging in controversies about them?

  THEAETETUS: If they didn’t promise that, practically no one would bother to discuss anything with them.

  VISITOR: As a matter of fact you can find anything you need to say to contradict any expert himself, both in general and within each particular field, laid out published and written down for anybody who wants to learn it.

  THEAETETUS: Apparently you’re talking about Protagoras’ writings on wrestling and other fields of expertise. [e]

  VISITOR: And on many other things, too, my friend. In fact, take expertise in disputation as a whole. Doesn’t it seem like a capacity that’s sufficient for carrying on controversies about absolutely everything?

  THEAETETUS: It doesn’t seem to leave much of anything out, anyway.

  VISITOR: But for heaven’s sake, my boy, do you think that’s possible? Or maybe you young people see into this issue more keenly than we do.

  THEAETETUS: Into what? What are you getting at? I don’t fully understand [233] what you’re asking.

  VISITOR: Whether it’s possible for any human being to know everything.

  THEAETETUS: If it were, sir, we’d be very well off.

  VISITOR: But how could someone who didn’t know about a subject make a sound objection against someone who knew about it?

  THEAETETUS: He couldn’t.

  VISITOR: Then what is it in the sophist’s capacity that’s so amazing?

  THEAETETUS: About what?

  VISITOR: How the sophists can ever make young people believe they’re [b] wiser than everyone else about everything. It’s obvious that th
ey didn’t make correct objections against anyone, or didn’t appear so to young people. Or if they did appear to make correct objections, but their controversies didn’t make them look any the wiser for it, then—just as you say—people would hardly be willing to pay them money to become their students.

  THEAETETUS: Right.

  VISITOR: But people are willing to?

  THEAETETUS: They certainly are.

  VISITOR: Since sophists do seem, I think, to know about the things they [c] dispute about.

  THEAETETUS: Of course.

  VISITOR: And they do it, we say, about every subject?

  THEAETETUS: Yes.

  VISITOR: So to their students they appear wise about everything?

  THEAETETUS: Of course.

  VISITOR: But without actually being wise—since that appeared impossible.

  THEAETETUS: Of course it’s impossible.

  VISITOR: So the sophist has now appeared as having a kind of belief knowledge about everything, but not truth.

  [d] THEAETETUS: Absolutely. What you’ve said about them is probably just right.

  VISITOR: But let’s consider a pattern that will exhibit them more clearly.

  THEAETETUS: What pattern is that?

  VISITOR: This one. Pay attention to me, and try to do a good job of answering my questions.

  THEAETETUS: Which questions?

  VISITOR: If someone claimed that by a single kind of expertise he could know, not just how to say things or to contradict people, but how to make and do everything, then …

  [e] THEAETETUS: What do you mean, everything?

  VISITOR: You don’t understand the first thing I say! Seemingly you don’t understand everything!

  THEAETETUS: No, I don’t.

  VISITOR: Well, I mean everything to include you and me and also the other animals and plants …

  THEAETETUS: What are you talking about?

  VISITOR: If someone claimed that he’d make you and me and all the other living things …

  [234] THEAETETUS: What kind of making are you talking about? You’re not talking about some kind of gardener—after all, you did say he made animals.

  VISITOR: Yes, and also I mean the sea and earth and heaven and gods and everything else. And furthermore he makes them each quickly and sells them at a low price.

  THEAETETUS: You’re talking about some kind of game for schoolchildren.