Knowledge and Forms in Plato's Theaetetus

Author(s): Winifred F. Hicken

Source: The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 77, Part 1 (1957), pp. 48-53
Published by: The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies
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 KNOWLEDGE AND FORMS IN PLATO'S THEAETETUS
IN the last pages of the Theaetetus'Socrates is made to present fourz versions of a final attempt
to define knowledge, as true opinion accompanied by logos, and to reject them all; yet in earlier
dialogues 'ability to give account', Aohyov 'XEw or Ao'yov&6Udva8VvaaOac, is closely associated with
knowledge, not always,3 or not necessarily,4 knowledge of Forms, and in the Republic it is said
to be the essential mark of the dialectician.5 These facts are exceedingly hard to interpret.
In recent years the passage has been read as an indirect defence of the earlier theory of Forms,
as the statement of a problem answered in the Sophist by a revision of that theory and as a
piece of radical self-criticism. No one of these interpretations seems to me without difficulty,
and in this article I shall attempt to argue for yet another solution which owes something to
all three.
Professor Cornford,6 pressing the fact that Socrates draws all his illustrations from the world
of concrete things,7 believes that Plato intended by criticism of the different versions to point the
way to an old and invulnerable sense of Ao'yov&6'dva which implies that the proper objects of
knowledge are Forms. This is the statement or understanding of grounds for judgments which
in the Meno8 is said to turn true opinion into knowledge. A rather similar line has been taken by
Professor Cherniss.9 Professor Stenzel'o thinks that the earlier theory of Forms is vulnerable to
Socrates' criticism of what I call 'the first version', the 'dream', but he believes that all three of
the later versions 'recover their meaning' when the problem of definition has been solved in the
Sophist with the help of the method of diaeresis; and so restated they can be shown to apply to
particulars as well as to Forms. Mr. R. Robinson" argues that in the passage to be discussed, as
everywhere else in the dialogue, Forms are left out of account for the very good reason that to limit
the objects of knowledge will not help to find out what knowledge is, but he believes that when
Socrates refutes the version of the 'dream' he makes a direct attack on the view that knowledge
implies ability to give account, whatever sense be given to the words, and that his criticism of the
last two versions tells against two of the most familiar forms of Socratic definition.
I have not room here to do more than indicate why these interpretations seem to me unsatis-
factory. The definitions of knowledge attributed to Plato by Cornford and Stenzel seem in different
ways too limited to satisfy Socrates' original demand for a general definition, covering a number of
different kinds of knowledge, including, or so we are given to expect, both the science of the mathe-
matician and the skill of the craftsman.12 Cornford supposes that the only objects of knowledge
are supra-sensible Forms, while Stenzel limits the relations grasped in an act of knowing to those
between genera and species. Cornford's interpretation, if I understand it, gives no explanation at
all of the infallibility of knowledge, while Stenzel's answer to this problem13 supposes that Plato
believed that the content of any given species could be deduced by division from the one above it,
and ultimately from the highest genus, Being itself, though in the passage of the Sophist'4 which
Stenzel believes contains an answer to the problem of the TheaetetusPlato appears to recognise a
symmetrical relationship between Being and Difference,'5 and indeed between others of the 'great
kinds', which forbids us to treat them as species and genus. On the other hand Robinson's solution
leaves unexplained a difficulty inherent in the passage itself: the puzzling fact that Plato chooses
to make Socrates and Theaetetus meet with final defeat when they have failed to defend any of a
number of definitions of knowledge not one of which, if allowed to stand, seems capable of covering
mathematical science or the skill of the craftsman, or indeed that case of knowledge which Robinson
finds specially interesting,'6 the knowledge which in one place Plato admits is possessed by

I Tht. 201C8-end. 5 Rep. VI, 5IOC6 f. ; VII, 53IE4 if.; 533B8 f.;
2 Ibid. 201C8-2o6BII; 206DI-E2; 206E5-208BI2; 534B3 ff.
208CI -2 oA7. Unlike others who have written on this 6 Plato's Theory of Knowledge (1935), p. 141 f.
passage, e.g. Cornford and Stenzel, I am proposing to 7 Tht. 2o01EI f.; 2o7A3 f.; 208DI-3.
count the 'dream' (20IC8-2o6Bii) as a version in its 8 Men. loc. cit.
own right, the first of the expansions of Theaetetus' 9 'The Philosophical Economy of the Theory of Forms',
formula (Tht. 201 C8-D I). Of the three senses mentioned American Journal of Philology, LVII (1936), PP. 445
later (Tht. 2o6C8), the first seems to me to be introduced ff.
0o Plato's Method of Dialectic, translated and edited by
only to get out of the way an obvious but unhelpful D. J. Allan (1940), pp. 71 f.
sense of Ad'yov&6d'vat, so that by 'the three main versions' 'Forms and Error in Plato's Theaetetus', Philosophical
I shall mean the 'dream' and those stated and discussed IX
Review, LIX (1950), pp. 3 ff-
in 206E5-208B12 and 12
Tht. 146E7-I48B7.
3 Grg. 465A2 ff. 208CI-2o0A7.
13 Op. cit. pp. 90-3.
4 Men. 97E6 ff., if
64aat atriag AoytaLro is a variant '4 Sph. 252E6-259E6.
for Ao•yov Phd. 76B4 ff.; Smp. 202A5
6t6dvat; if. I5 E.g. ibid. 257A4-6; 258A7-9. i6Op. cit. p. 5.

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 KNOWLEDGE AND FORMS IN PLATO'S THEAETETUS 49
eyewitnesses to a crime ;7 and this although it is possible to collect from earlier dialogues's other
senses of AdyovS66dvacwhich we might have expected Plato to have taken into account.
The view for which I shall argue is that the final discussion may be interpreted as a rearguard
engagement in a moment of defeat. The dialogue reflects a genuine state of dropta: Plato has
no answer to Socrates' question. For while still confident that the most illuminating kind of know-
ledge is dialectical knowledge of Forms,'9 so that no general account can be satisfactory which
does not cover this, he no longer finds it possible to distinguish this kind of knowledge from true
opinion. He is, and remains, convinced that dialectical knowledge, perhaps also by analogy the
knowledge of the mathematician and of the 'Socratic' craftsman, who can teach the principles of
his craft, implies ability to give account,2o which means to him ability to justify a position, whether
statement or definition, by reasoned argument;2, and as long as he thinks in terms of argument,
he finds no difficulty in distinguishing knowledge from unjustified, and so fallible, opinion. But
he is also convinced, and continues to be convinced,22 that in itself knowledge is direct intuition of
reality, and he can find no way of translating the truths discovered by dialectic into descriptions of
objects which will enable him to distinguish an act of knowing from one of no less immediate
opinion.
He now finds himself baffled by a problem which once seemed to him merely eristic,23 to
explain how it is possible for a man to have an object before his mind without instantly knowing it.
This is a problem which he once hoped to solve with the help of the doctrine of and
dvdjakvcw-s.,24
in the Republic it presented no difficulty because the only fallible judgments in which Plato was
then interested could be traced back to ambiguous sense impressions and so directly contrasted
with knowledge of determinate and unvarying Forms. But in the apparent digression on the
possibility of false opinion25 it has been presented in a new and more deadly form. Error, it seems,
is possible at a purely intellectual level,26 where there is no question of being misled by imperfect
recollection of objects once fully known. This problem Plato solves neither elsewhere nor indeed
in the Sophist,27 which deals only with the other of the two difficulties raised in the digression, the one
about rdt1rkqv.28 His logic has outrun his metaphysics, and he now has things to say about Forms
and relations between Forms which make it virtually impossible for him to describe them, except
in general terms, as objects at all. He can continue to call them 'divine', 'eternal' and the like,
but he cannot show what is 'seen' when a man is said to have knowledge of individual Forms.
What he can do is to show that this is a generalproblem, and that those who tacitly limit know-
ledge to the particular are still further from solving it than those who find it necessary to posit
Forms. The three main versions examined, which are all attempts to distinguish knowledge of
concrete things from true opinion about them, are not merely refuted but refuted by objections
which, in their specific form, it seems possible to meet with the help of the theory of Forms. In
each case we find a temporary resting-place from our difficulties in the theory, though the last
two of Socrates' criticisms could be restated, and it seems to me likely that Plato realised that
they
could be restated, in forms dangerous to the theory itself, and all that is secured for the
theory
by the analysis of the 'dream' is sheer immunity from attack but no definition of knowledge.
In the first version29 it seems to be suggested that whereas true opinion is an
unanalysed
impression of a complex particular,30 knowledge implies ability to analyse such a complex into
absolutely simple parts. These elements or 'letters' are sensible but can be made the subject of no
judgments whatever, not even of the judgments of opinion. They can only be named, for to make
any statement about them involves the use of terms like 'is' and 'each' which are applicable to other
things and so cannot describe their peculiar nature. But of the 'syllable' formed from these it is
possible to give account, for it is of the nature of a 'logos' to be a complex, UvpwTAOKq,Of names,
and such a logos is the expression of knowledge.
This version Socrates refutes first3' by inducing Theaetetus to admit that the syllable is either
all its letters or a single indivisible nature, distinct from the letters, which comes into being when
they combine. But if we take the first course, we are guilty of the absurdity of supposing that
while each of the letters is unknowable, we still know them all; if we take the second, we find our-
selves faced by yet another 'simple' of which no account can be given.
This first criticism has been read in two ways, both of which have been thought to tell against
17 Tht. 201Aio-C2. '9 Cf. e.g. Phlb. 58AI ff.
I8
Grg. 465A2-6, where Ao'yov eXet seems to mean 'is 2o Cf. Phlb. 62A2-5-
able to justify a set of actions by an appeal to general 2, Cf. e.g. Tht. 175C8-D2.
principles'. 22
Cf. e.g. Sph. 254A8 f.
Men. 97E6-98A5, where d6aat aiziag Aoytoqzd seems 23 Men. 8oEI fif.
to mean 'to give general grounds for the truth of a 24 Ibid. 81A5 f. Tht. 187DI-200C5.
25
statement'. 26 Ibid. 195C6 ff. I.e. Sph. 26oBIO-264B3.
27
Rep. VII, 534B3-DI, where by gYewtv Adyov d60dvat Plato 2s Tht. I88C9-I89B8. Tht. 20oIC8-202C.
29
seems to mean not 'ability to define' but 'ability to justify 30 So Cornford suggests, I think rightly.
a definition by argument'. Op. cit. p. 145-
31 Tht. 203D8-205E7.

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50 WINIFRED F. HICKEN
Plato's earlier theories. Robinson32 is, I believe, alone in thinking that it is an attack on the whole
notion that knowledge implies giving account, and tends to show that there may be knowledge
of what is dAoyov. The orthodox view is that Socrates refutes only the notion that there may be
knowledge of complexes whose elements are simple and so unknowable, but it has been suggested
by Stenzel33 and Ryle34 that the Forms of the earlier dialogues were simples of just this kind.
Robinson's view seems to me untenable. Plato presents the doctrine of simples in such a
way that we expect him to show that it is inadmissible. He uses the device with which in the
Sophist35he attacks the theorists who believe that only statements of sheer identity are logically
sound: he describes the simples with the help of words which he later rejects as inapplicable.36 If
we take him seriously, we make nonsense of the whole business of giving things names, which, as
Plato assumes in the Cratylus,37is an act of discrimination, and as soon as we discriminate, we set things
in relation to each other and cease to regard them as absolutely simple. It seems to me significant
that when in the Parmenides38the philosopher attempts to separate off such a simple in his first
hypothesis d 'v E-Trw,he concludes: 03o' ipa ovoLa o~v'
awtry ovE oyohdo erts-
~atrujnp ovt8
a'-qeclts o'3S •8da. Moreover, it does not seem to me true O'rw'v
that the argument tends to show that 'if ele-
ments are unknowable because they have no logos, everything is unknowable'.39 Everything is un-
knowable only if everything is a complex of simples. But the attempt to construct complexes of
such simples breaks down. We find ourselves confronted either by a mere aggregate or by an I Ea
itself unrelated to letters, that is by something utterly unlike a syllable. The argument
dlp•P-rros,
seems rather to imply that if there is to be knowledge of complexes, there must be a sense, neces-
sarily a second sense, in which it is possible to give account of their elements.
The suggestion of Stenzel and Ryle seems to me more plausible. Two quite different issues
seem to be raised: (i) are the Forms of the earlier dialogues indivisible? (2) are they intuited
in vacuoas if unrelated to each other or to anything else? Only if both questions can be answered
affirmatively do we seem justified in believing that they were supposed to be simples in the dangerous
sense. For Plato takes special pains to show that the 18,a is unknowable not simply
J'u'pcr•os
because it is indivisible but because it is a single isolated object.4o
The evidence, such as it is, seems to be all indirect. Prima facie the first question might seem
to be settled by the fact that the epithet which in other contexts Plato uses to mean
'without parts',4I and in the Theaetetus is tLovo3EE's,
treated as a synonym for is in the earlier
tkdp-pcrrov,42
dialogues applied to Forms.43 But the term is found in contexts to which the notion that Forms
are indivisible seems entirely irrelevant. In the Symposium44it is used to contrast the Form of
beauty with what is beautiful in some contexts and ugly in others; and in the Phaedo45it is closely
associated with the immunity of Forms from change. It seems to mean not 'without parts' but
'uniform', 'invariable', 'without ambiguity', something which comes close in meaning to e1~KptvE'
and KaGap'v,46 'without trace of its opposite'. If so, it tells us nothing about the simplicity of Forms
in the first sense, though it might tell us something about their simplicity in the second, for nothing
would seem more surely to guarantee their uniformity than a complete absence of 'context'.
There is indeed one passage in the Parmenideswhich has been thought to show that Plato once
held that there was no communication between Forms,47 ParmenidesI29A6-E3. But in this passage
Socrates does not suggest that he expects Forms to be incapable of 'mingling' but of 'mingling and
separation',48 and by 'mingling and separation' he seems to mean something very like that swing
between opposite characters described in the Symposium. He is in no way surprised that particulars
should be shown to admit of opposites like one and many, but he would be shocked to find Unity
and Plurality behaving in that way.49
In the Sophist,sohowever, in a passage designed to show how there is communication between
just the 'kinds' cited as Forms in the Parmenides,5 Plato suggests that there is a sense in which they
do admit of their opposites. Movement is the same as itself and different from any other 'kind',2sz
and it is easy to develop the argument to show that Unity is a many in that it admits of predicates
like Being and Difference, and Plurality a one in that it is one Form. Such relationships present
no difficulty once we have been enabled with the help of the notions of radz;dv and 7d 7Epov to dis-
tinguish the 'is' of identity from the 'is' of predication, and in the Philebus53problems about the unity
32 Op. cit. p. I5.
'Apept~pov, according to Ast, is used only in later dia-
33 Op. cit. p. 73. and 1sovoset~U are two logues, unless we are justified in giving an earlier date to
of the honourable titles"A!cptorov
of the Ideas in earlier days.' the Timaeus.
34 Mind, XL VIII
(939), P. 319. 'Now although Plato 44 Smp.
21oE2-211B5-
does not make the application, substantial Forms were 45 Phd. 78DI-7.
supposed to be just such simple nameables.' 46 Cf. Smp. 21 ID8 ff.
35 Sph. 252C2 ff. 36 Tht. 2oIE2-2o2A8. 47 Cf. e.g. Robinson, Classical Philology, XXXVI (1942),
37 Cra. 388BI3 f. 38 Parm. 142A3 ff. p. 66.
39 Robinson, op. cit. p. 15. 40 Tht. 205C4-E4. 48 Parm. 49 Ibid. 129A6-B6.
4' E.g. Rep. X, I29E2-3.
612A3 if.- 42 Tht.
205DI f. o50Sph. 254B7 ff. 5' Parm. 129D8-E I.
43 Smp.
2IIBI and E4; Phd. 78D5; 8oB2; 83E2. 52 Sph. 256AIo
ff. 53 Phlb. I4D4-8.

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 KNOWLEDGE AND FORMS IN PLATO'S THEAETETUS 51
and plurality of concrete things are described as 'childish and easy and a serious hindrance to
discussion'. It is plausible to suppose that in the Sophist Plato corrects an earlier view that
Forms are unrelated simples, and shows that the difficulty from which their supposed simplicity
was to set them free is unreal.
But it seems unlikely that this is a fair inference from the two passages. For in a dialogue
generally thought to be later than the Sophist, the Philebus, Plato is still prepared to describe Forms
as a/LEtKTOTaT EXov7a,54 where again, to judge from the context and Socrates' earlier use of the
metaphor, he seems to mean 'having unvarying character', 'without trace of an opposite', and so
surpassing concrete things in A-4~0hea,truth to type, as a small quantity of what is pure white
surpasses /iE/LEvy/LEVovrOAAOV'o AvKOV.55 It looks as if Plato did not suppose that the 'multiformity'
of perceptibles could be explained away and with it the need to posit entities which were
11ovoO~E6.
The confusion between universals and perfect types which made it possible for him to compare
Forms with particulars in this way is still evident in the Sophist,56where he illustrates the point that no
Form can stand in a relation of sheer identity with its opposite by saying that Movement does not rest.
The indirect evidence for the indivisibility of Forms seems to me strong. I can find in the
earlier dialogues no trace of a distinction between simple and complex Forms, and yet any defini-
tion of a Form which named its parts would imply that it was composed of simpler Forms, for
although the number and nature of Forms explicitly mentioned are limited, Plato seems sufficiently
aware of their universal character to posit in theory a Form for every general term.57 Stenzel
seems to be right in saying that we have no evidence in the earlier dialogues that he divided individual
Forms into genus and species,58 if indeed he ever did. He is in a sense aware of the relation between
genus and species when in the Phaedo5s9he points out that 47"r3v -po18r'a carries with it 7) TEpvr-'
C/op' ; but it looks as if he thought of them as distinct Forms with an interesting relationship. He
may be feeling after the notion of a complex Form in the Politicus,6o where he compares the Form
of the Statesman to a syllable, but in the Sophist6' he still seems to have the idea that genera and
species are interconnected Forms.
On the other hand the indirect evidence seems to tell against the view that in the earlier
dialogues Plato believed that single Forms could be intuited in vacuo. The only passage which
suggests this is the account of beauty in the Symposium,6zwhich contains a description of an act of
knowing as sheer intuition of a single object63 and makes no reference to reasoning which might
have set it in relation to other Forms. But in this respect it is to be contrasted with the accounts
of knowledge of Forms in the Republic,64and they seem to me right who have argued that Diotima
is describing contemplation rather than a typical case of knowledge.65 Not all Forms seem
capable
of being 'known' in this way, and in the Phaedrus66we find a similar account of the vision of
single
Forms, although when Plato wrote this dialogue he had a lively interest in diaeresis,which seems
to imply that some Forms at least are related to each other and known only in their interrelation.
I can find no passage in the Republic which carries similar implications. For while Plato
often speaks of single Forms as standards of conduct,67 intuition of which enables us to discriminate
intelligently between particular cases, he nowhere describes such intuition as knowledge, though
he does of course imply that we have knowledge of Forms intuited as standards.68 If
knowledge
is intuition of single Forms, it is hard to see what we are to make of Plato's insistence that dialectic
is essentially synoptic, that Forms are fully known only in relation to the Good, and that
knowledge
of this Form, as of every other, implies ability to give an account.69 It is unfortunate that Plato
tells us so little about this process, and in particular does not explain what he means
by saying
that the Good is to be abstracted from everything else.7o It seems unsafe to assume, as Cornford
does in his translation, that by 'everything else' Plato means 'all other Forms' so that
to distinguish
the Good is to set it in relation to all the rest, for he may be thinking primarily of inadequate con-
cepts like health or pleasure, and in the Symposiumbeauty is distinguished from concepts of a similar
kind only to be contemplated in itself. But he does suggest that the 'account' is to be defended
against criticism by argument,7'and we should expect it to contain some explanation of the way
in which the Good is causally related to truth and knowledge, since such is the conclusion we have
to make when we are finally confronted by the Good.7z We have no reason to believe that Plato
had at this time tried to work out any schema of relationships between the terms used in definitions,
which in the earlier dialogues reflect in their variety the many senses of the question 'What is X?'73
but that definition means setting one thing in relation to another it seems impossible to deny.
54 Phlb. 59C4. 55 Ibid. 52E6-53B6. 66 Phdr.
247D5
56 Sph.
255A0o. 57 Cf. e.g. Rep. 596A5-8. 67 E.g. Rep. VI, ff.484C6 ff.; VII,
58 Op. cit. pp. 79 ff. 59 Phd. Io4DI ff. 68 Ibid. VI, 484C6 f. 52o0C-6.
60o Plt. 278C3-EIo.
61
Sph. 253D5 ff. 69 Ibid. VII, 334B3 ff.
62 Smp. 209E5-212A7. 63 Ibid. 21IB7-DI. 70 Ibid. VII, 534B8 f.
64 E.g. Rep. VII, 7' Rep. VII, 554B8 ff.
532A5-B2. 72 Ibid. VII, 517CI ff.
65 E.g. R. C. Cross, Mind, LXIII
(I954), P- 442. 73 Cf. Robinson, Plato'sEarlierDialectic,2pp. 3 it.

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 52 WINIFRED F. HICKEN
It seems to me, then, that so far from being vulnerable to Socrates' criticism of the first version
a case might be made for holding that it is just the virtue of the earlier theory of Forms that it
provides us with ultimate units of analysis which are comparable with true parts of wholes. For
as Plato recognises elsewhere, most clearly perhaps in the Phaedrus,74it is of the nature of parts of
wholes not to be absolutely simple but to possess a character appropriate to each other and to the
wholes in which they combine. That Plato intended us to draw such a conclusion from his examina-
tion of the first version it is not possible to prove, but Socrates' very uncompromising treatment of
the distinction between r ;'Aovand -rd~&ravrawas surely meant to disturb us, as it did Theaetetus;75
and in Parmenides,76in an apparently straight bit of reasoning, he argues for a distinction between
'all' and 'whole' in words which directly recall those of the Theaetetus,and in Theaetetus203B2 ff. he
makes Theaetetus unconsciously admit that after all it is possible to give some kind of a definition
of letters.
Moreover, in his second criticism77 of the first version Socrates makes a point which invites us
to apply the analogy of letters to Forms and in a familiar way. When we learn to read, our crucial
task is not to recognise syllables but to recognise our letters without being misled by their arrange-
ment in spoken and written syllables. It seems to be just Plato's contention in the Republic78that
dialectic frees a man from the danger of being misled about justice and beauty by the different
contexts in which they are presented in sense experience. He looks beyond the manifold of experi-
ence in which beauty is variously associated with actions and bodies and Forms to the single nature
by which the concepts drawn from experience are judged. We might express this as ability to
recognise letters in spoken or written syllables, except that in the middle books of the Republic he
will not allow that Forms are really exemplifiedby particulars, which are therefore not strictly com-
parable with letters. This seems to have been one of the points on which Plato has changed his
mind.79 He may have returned to the position which seems to be reflected in the Third Book
of the Republicsoin which he explicitly compares knowledge of Forms with the recognition of letters
and represents particulars by words.
The point seems to be further developed in Socrates' criticism of the second of the three main
versions,8' in which he tries to distinguish between 'knowing' something and merely 'opining' it
by suggesting that whereas in opinion we give a rough description by enumerating the obvious
but still complex parts of which something consists, in knowledge we 'give account' of it in the
sense that we analyse it into parts which are no longer absolutely simple but still incapable of
further division. In opinion at the best we spell a word by syllables, in knowledge we give its
letters. This version Socrates shows will not do by reminding Theaetetus that there is a stage in
learning to read and write when we get a letter right in one word and wrong in another. In such
cases we 'give an account of' the word in the way suggested, but no one will allow that we have
knowledge. This argument seems to lead directly to the conclusion that knowledge of universals
is prior to and implied by knowledge of instances. When we say that, if we are to read and write,
we must know our letters, we mean by 'letters' not the sounds we hear or the marks on a particular
page but the abstract symbols. Once again it seems to be the virtue of Socrates' analogy that it
provides us with means whereby we may show that the dialectician more nearly satisfies the con-
ditions of knowledge than one who tries to identify it with any kind of analysis of particulars. For
although to equate Forms with universals is to oversimplify in view of the tacit limitation Plato
sets to Forms, there seems to be no evidence that he ever consciously distinguished between them.
Socrates' treatment of the last version,82 that to give an account is to state the mark whereby
a thing may be distinguished from everything else, is rather different. No positive point is made
which tells in favour of the theory of Forms, but his specific criticism seems relevant only to par-
ticulars. For his argument is that if we are to have no more than true opinion about X, say
Theaetetus, we must already have distinguished him from everything else or we shall be thinking
not of him but of men in general or at the best of men of a certain physical type. But it is nonsense
to suggest that the addition of true opinion about the differentia can turn true opinion into know-
ledge, and if we say that we must know the differentia, we argue in a circle. There seems to be no
way in which we might select from Forms elements of greater or less generality, unless indeed we
suppose that they are complexes made up of genera and species. If, as I believe, this passage does
contain tacit criticism of the theory of Forms, it is not to be found in the first part of Socrates'
criticism.
Examination of the three main versions reveals some of the virtues of the theory of Forms and
74 Phdr. 264C2 ff. 77 Tht.
2o6AI-BII.
75 Tht. 204AII-B3 and 78 Rep. V, 476A4-7;
204EII-I3. VII, 519C2-6.
76 Parm. 157D7 ff.: O•K i'pa
G (tv v 79 Cf. e.g. Tht. i86Bii iff.
oZ3v
7roAA(O iTvov
rW
Td uodptov uodptov,dAAod ia
xtv 16~tvo' KaG xtvo0 8 80oRep. III, 402A7 ff.
tudt 8' Tht.
KaAoiLuev'Aov,s$ ev TsAELtov yeyovd, TovOov udiptov 207C6-208B9.
av zT odptov iErl. d7Trdv•wv 82 Tht. 2o8C6-20IoB2.

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 KNOWLEDGE AND FORMS IN PLATO'S THEAETETUS 53
goes some way to suggest that knowledge cannot be explained without their help, but it has provided
us with no 'fourth sense' of Advov 8t8dvac; we cannot identify knowledge with understanding of
'intelligible Forms and truths about them'.83 For the analysis of particulars into constituent
Forms has been shown by the criticism of the second version to be less than knowledge,84 and if
we try to restate the first version in terms of Forms and nothing but Forms, and suppose that dialectic
gives an account of complexes of Forms in universal propositions, we find that Socrates' criticism
of the second version tells against this too. It seems perfectly possible for us to relate a Form
correctly in one proposition and wrongly in another. We may correctly affirm that Rest and
Movement differ from Being while still aware that there are an indefinite number of puzzles about
Being to which we have no answer.85 In the Politicus86 at least Plato seems to recognise this.
For he points out, though for quite another purpose, that we may recognise Combination and
Separation in the complex notion of Weaving and yet fail to perceive its presence in the more
difficult syllable, Statesmanship.
In some sense, then, the object of knowledge seems to be the 'letter' and not the 'syllable', the
Form and not the complex of Forms. We have to find a set of relations, other than those which
obtain between parts and whole, which are the permanent possession of Forms, and may be used
to distinguish them securely in every one of the complexes in which they may be found. But at once
we are confronted by the difficulty raised in the last part of Socrates' criticism of the final version.87
If we are to make no more than true statements about Forms, we must be already thinking of them
as distinct natures, and so be already in some sense aware of the relations which distinguish them
from other Forms.
Plato does seem to have provided some sort of answer to the problem of 'knowing' such letters
in the Sophist,88 but not in a form which can be reconciled with belief that knowledge is direct
intuition of objects. For there Plato compares dialectic with the art of the grammarian, who, as
Theaetetus earlier recognised,89 knows his letters in a specially satisfactory way. The dialectician
secures himself against the danger of mistaking the same Form for a different one or a different
Form for the same one by working out the general rules for the combination of Forms just as the
grammarian works out the rules for the combination of letters. But knowledge of such purely
potential relationships cannot without absurdity be treated as a form of direct intuition of permanent
relations between objects. As long as the philosopher thinks in terms of propositions, he can work
out the relations of compatibility and entailment which govern the combination of Forms in general
statements or definitions, and enable him to give reasons for accepting or rejecting them; but if he
tries to translate rules for combination into descriptions of actual relations between metaphysical
objects, he has to meet the difficulty raised in Parmenides13IA4 ff. and others worse. It is not merely
that all Forms are shown to 'partake' of Forms like Difference and Being,90 but that these Forms
partake of each other,9I and on the Stranger's principles Difference itself can be distinguished
from other Forms only if we suppose that in some sense it partakes of itself.
Plato's use of such metaphors in the Sophist, which seems almost light-hearted after the struggles
of the Parmenides,would have been inexplicable if the theory of Forms had ever been merely, or
even primarily, a metaphysical theory and not a weapon for the clarification of thought. He still
finds that he has important things to say with the help of the theory, though he cannot meet his own
criticisms, and his failure to justify his earlier view that knowledge is some kind of direct acquain-
tance with stable and determinate objects is reflected in the way in which in his later dialogues he
keeps in the background, when speaking of Forms, the imagery of vision which characterised the
Phaedo and Republic,and explores instead the analogy of .92
ypacqlar'tK
WINIFRED F. HICKEN.
Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.
83 Cornford, op. cit. p. I62. 88 Sph. 252EI ff.
84 Tht. 207C6-208BI2. 89 Tht. I63BI-C3.
85 Cf. Sph. 250C3-Io. 90 Cf. Sph. 255E3-6; 256DI -E3-
86 Plt. 278C8-279B5. 9' Ibid. 256DI -257A6; 258A7-9.
87 Tht. 209DI-210oA9. 92 E.g. Sph. 252E9 ff.; Plt. 277E2 ff.; Phlb. I7A8 ff.

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