NOTES ON PLATO'S THEAETETUS

BY

R. HACKFORTH +

145 D 7 -E 9. What is the point of this indirect approach, by way of aorptac to the definiendum Aristotle (EN Izq.I A 9) tells us that in ordinary usage often connoted skill or expertise. A man is aocp6ç if he is an expert craftsman like Phidias or Polyclitus, or skilful at solving mathematical problems, like Theaetetus himself. It is not 'wisdom' that Socrates is here speaking of, though Jowett, Fowler and Cornford all so translate aocpia, nor yet 'sagesse' (Dies). But what does this skill spring from, or consist in? Plainly in knowledge whatever that may be. Hence the subject of the dialogue is introduced, with Plato's customary art, and doubtless with faithfulness to the practice of Socrates, as arising naturally out of the experience and personal interests of Socrates's interlocutor; and an apparently abstract speculation is brought into relation with practical life. 147 D 6. Cornford, Dies and Fowler all take to mean stopped. LSJ s.v. II 4 quote this passage alone for the meaning 'came to a standstill'. But surely it is exactly like Hdt. I igo, quoted under II 2, K6poq &:7tOpL'(¡aLVevelzero 'was entangled in dif- ficulties'. It is as easy to say 'entangled by X' as to say 'entangled by the difficulty of X'. The editors confuse ÈV?XEa6/XLwith Cf. the similar use of the simple verb £xeJ0«1 at 100 C Èv ' èv GJ 149 A ff. Midwifery and Anamnesis. Cornford, following the Anon. Commentator, speaks of the "equivalence of these two conceptions" (PTK, 28). He seems to imply that the account of Midwifery is what the account of Anamnesis would have to be if all reference to its objects (the Forms) were suppressed. It has to be suppressed, owing to C's general principle of interpretation of the dialogue (with which I agree). I think, this is mistaken. For one thing, an aspect of Midwifery which Soc. stresses (15o B ?,?yc6TOV cf. 157 CD) is the exercise 129 of discyimination between offspring which are false and those which are true, or between wind-eggs and products 6§ia (210 B). Now could not give rise to products at all events not according to Phaedo and Phaedrus, where the doctrine is firmly anchored to the Theory of Forms, so that nothing can be 'recollected' except Forms and (I think we must add) relations between Forms, and therefore all that is recollected is necessarily true. All the attempts at defining knowledge in our dialogue are found to be wind-eggs (210 B), and the theory of cannot account for them. It is true that in the Meno experiment the slave begins by 're- collecting' what is false: and that twice over (82 E, 83 E) ; but this is because the process of £xeyzoq or reducing the respondent to 'per- plexity and numbness' (84 B) is counted as part of the reason for this being that Soc. wants to convince Meno that all the slave's answers come 'out of himself' no matter whether they be true or false. We can hardly suppose that Plato is asking us to believe that -V8 = 4 or = 3 is a proposition known by the slave before his birth in the body. As soon as the objects of have come to be recognised as Forms (as they are not in the l'Vleno) this loose use of the term has perforce to be dropped. No doubt there may be fuller or less full recollection (so Phaedrus 248 A, 25o A) ; but no false products, no phantoms, no wind-eggs, nothing 't'p 0 cpT, c:;. I suggest that this Midwifery section is a graphic account of what Plato conceived the characteristic method of the real Socrates to be. What it has in common with passages of Symp. (e.g. 209 B) and Phaedrus (e.g. 2.76 E) is simply the notion of spiritual begetting (or bearing); the erotic-mystical side of Plato's conception of philo- sophical education is wholly absent. Socrates the midwife is not the philosopher-lover, and his method has no mystical or supra-rational features; it is perfectly prosaic; and Plato has carefully related it to events (real or fictitious) in Soc's own life (as in the mention of Aristides at 151 A and of the passing-on of unpromising pupils to Prodicus at 151 B). Note that being «-yovoS is an aspect of the midwife which is peculiarly appropriate to our dialogue: it indicates in advance that