THEAETETUS: Well, the name, Socrates, I suppose is judgment.
SOCRATES: Your opinion, my dear lad, is correct. Now look back to the beginning. Wipe out all that we have said hitherto, and see if you can see [b] any better from where you have now progressed to. Tell me again, what is knowledge?
THEAETETUS: Well, Socrates, one can’t say that it is judgment in general, because there is also false judgment—but true judgment may well be knowledge. So let that be my answer. If the same thing happens again, and we find, as we go on, that it turns out not to be so, we’ll try something else.
SOCRATES: And even so, Theaetetus, you have answered me in the way one ought—with a good will, and not reluctantly, as you did at first. If [c] we continue like this, one of two things will happen. Either we shall find what we are going out after; or we shall be less inclined to think we know things which we don’t know at all—and even that would be a reward we could not fairly be dissatisfied with. Now what is this that you say? There are two forms of judgment, true and false; and your definition is that true judgment is knowledge?
THEAETETUS: Yes. That is how it looks to me now.
SOCRATES: Now I wonder if it’s worth while, at this stage, to go back to an old point about judgment—
THEAETETUS: What point do you mean?
SOCRATES: I have something on my mind which has often bothered me [d] before, and got me into great difficulty, both in my own thought and in discussion with other people—I mean, I can’t say what it is, this experience we have, and how it arises in us.
THEAETETUS: What experience?
SOCRATES: Judging what is false. Even now, you know, I’m still considering; I’m in two minds whether to let it go or whether to look into it in a different manner from a short while ago.
THEAETETUS: Why not, Socrates, if this appears for any reason to be the right thing to do? As you and Theodorus were saying just now, and quite rightly, when you were talking about leisure, we are not pressed for time in talk of this kind.
SOCRATES: A very proper reminder. Perhaps it would not be a bad moment [e] to go back upon our tracks. It is better to accomplish a little well than a great deal unsatisfactorily.
THEAETETUS: Yes, it certainly is.
SOCRATES: Now how are we to proceed? And actually what is it that we are saying? We claim, don’t we, that false judgment repeatedly occurs and one of us judges falsely, the other truly, as if it was in the nature of things for this to happen?
THEAETETUS: That is what we claim.
[188] SOCRATES: Now isn’t it true about all things, together or individually, that we must either know them or not know them? I am ignoring for the moment the intermediate conditions of learning and forgetting, as they don’t affect the argument here.
THEAETETUS: Of course, Socrates, in that case there is no alternative. With each thing we either know it or we do not.
SOCRATES: Then when a man judges, the objects of his judgment are necessarily either things which he knows or things which he doesn’t know?
THEAETETUS: Yes, that must be so.
SOCRATES: Yet if he knows a thing, it is impossible that he should not [b] know it; or if he does not know it, he cannot know it.
THEAETETUS: Yes, of course.
SOCRATES: Now take the man who judges what is false. Is he thinking that things which he knows are not these things but some other things which he knows—so that knowing both he is ignorant of both?
THEAETETUS: But that would be impossible, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Then is he imagining that things which he doesn’t know are other things which he doesn’t know? Is it possible that a man who knows neither Theaetetus nor Socrates should take it into his head that Socrates is Theaetetus or Theaetetus Socrates?
[c] THEAETETUS: I don’t see how that could happen.
SOCRATES: But a man certainly doesn’t think that things he knows are things he does not know, or again that things he doesn’t know are things he knows.
THEAETETUS: No, that would be a very odd thing.
SOCRATES: Then in what way is false judgment still possible? There is evidently no possibility of judgment outside the cases we have mentioned, since everything is either a thing we know or a thing we don’t know; and within these limits there appears to be no place for false judgment to be possible.
THEAETETUS: That’s perfectly true.
SOCRATES: Then perhaps we had better take up a different line of inquiry; [d] perhaps we should proceed not by way of knowing and not-knowing, but by way of being and not-being?
THEAETETUS: How do you mean?
SOCRATES: Perhaps the simple fact is this: it is when a man judges about anything things which are not, that he is inevitably judging falsely, no matter what may be the nature of his thought in other respects.
THEAETETUS: That again is very plausible, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Now how will that be? What are we going to say, Theaetetus, if somebody sets about examining us, and we are asked, ‘Is what these words express possible for anyone? Can a man judge what is not, either [e] about one of the things which are, or just by itself?’ I suppose we shall reply, ‘Yes, when he is thinking, but thinking what is not true.’ Or how shall we answer?
THEAETETUS: That’s our answer.
SOCRATES: Now does this kind of thing happen elsewhere?
THEAETETUS: What kind of thing?
SOCRATES: Well, for instance, that a man sees something, yet sees nothing.
THEAETETUS: How could he?
SOCRATES: On the contrary, in fact, if he is seeing any one thing, he must be seeing a thing which is. Or do you think that a ‘one’ can be found among the things which are not?
THEAETETUS: I certainly don’t.
SOCRATES: Then a man who is seeing any one thing is seeing something which is?
THEAETETUS: Apparently.
SOCRATES: It also follows that a man who is hearing anything is hearing [189] some one thing and something which is.
THEAETETUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And a man who is touching anything is touching some one thing, and a thing which is, if it is one?
THEAETETUS: Yes, that also follows.
SOCRATES: And a man who is judging is judging some one thing, is he not?
THEAETETUS: Necessarily.
SOCRATES: And a man who is judging some one thing is judging something which is?
THEAETETUS: I grant that.
SOCRATES: Then that means that a man who is judging something which is not is judging nothing?
THEAETETUS: So it appears.
SOCRATES: But a man who is judging nothing is not judging at all.
THEAETETUS: That seems clear.
SOCRATES: And so it is not possible to judge what is not, either about [b] the things which are or just by itself.
THEAETETUS: Apparently not.
SOCRATES: False judgment, then, is something different from judging things which are not?
THEAETETUS: It looks as if it were.
SOCRATES: Then neither on this approach nor on the one we followed just now does false judgment exist in us.
THEAETETUS: No, indeed.
SOCRATES: Then is it in this way that the thing we call by that name arises?
THEAETETUS: How?
SOCRATES: We say that there is false judgment, a kind of ‘other-judging’, [c] when a man, in place of one of the things that are, has substituted in his thought another of the things that are and asserts that it is.32 In this way, he is always judging something which is, but judges one thing in place of another; and having missed the thing which was the object of his consideration, he might fairly be called one who judges falsely.
THEAETETUS: Now you seem to me to have got it quite right. When a man judges ‘ugly’ instead of ‘beautiful’, or ‘beautiful’ instead of ‘ugly’, then he is truly judging what is false.
SOCRATES: Evidently, Theaetetus, you have not much opinion of me; you don’t find me at all alarming.
THEAETETUS: What in particular makes
you say that?
[d] SOCRATES: Well, I suppose you don’t think me capable of taking up your ‘truly false’, and asking you whether it is possible that a thing should be slowly swift, or heavily light, or whether anything else can possibly occur in a way not in accordance with its own nature but in accordance with that of its opposite and contrary to itself. But let that pass; I don’t want your boldness to go unrewarded. You like the suggestion, you say, that false judgment is ‘other-judging’?
THEAETETUS: Yes, I do.
SOCRATES: Then, according to your judgment, it is possible to set down a thing in one’s thought as another thing and not itself?
THEAETETUS: Surely it is.
[e] SOCRATES: Now when a man’s thought is accomplishing this, isn’t it essential that he should be thinking of either one or both of these two things?
THEAETETUS: It is essential; either both together, or each in turn.
SOCRATES: Very good. Now by ‘thinking’ do you mean the same as I do?
THEAETETUS: What do you mean by it?
SOCRATES: A talk which the soul has with itself about the objects under its consideration. Of course, I’m only telling you my idea in all ignorance; but this is the kind of picture I have of it. It seems to me that the soul [190] when it thinks is simply carrying on a discussion in which it asks itself questions and answers them itself, affirms and denies. And when it arrives at something definite, either by a gradual process or a sudden leap, when it affirms one thing consistently and without divided counsel, we call this its judgment. So, in my view, to judge is to make a statement, and a judgment is a statement which is not addressed to another person or spoken aloud, but silently addressed to oneself. And what do you think?
THEAETETUS: I agree with that.
SOCRATES: So that when a man judges one thing to be another, what he is doing, apparently, is to say to himself that the one thing is the other.
[b] THEAETETUS: Yes, of course.
SOCRATES: Now try to think if you have ever said to yourself ‘Surely the beautiful is ugly’,33 or ‘The unjust is certainly just’. Or—to put it in the most general terms—have you ever tried to persuade yourself that ‘Surely one thing is another’? Wouldn’t the very opposite of this be the truth? Wouldn’t the truth be that not even in your sleep have you ever gone so far as to say to yourself ‘No doubt the odd is even’, or anything of that kind?
THEAETETUS: Yes, that’s so.
SOCRATES: And do you think that anyone else, in his right mind or out [c] of it, ever ventured seriously to tell himself, with the hope of winning his own assent, that ‘A cow must be a horse’ or ‘Two must be one’?
THEAETETUS: No, indeed I don’t.
SOCRATES: Well, then, if to make a statement to oneself is to judge, no one who makes a statement, that is, a judgment, about both things, getting hold of both with his soul, can state, or judge, that one is the other. And you, in your turn, must let this form of words pass.34 What I mean by it is this: no one judges ‘The ugly is beautiful’ or makes any other such [d] judgment.
THEAETETUS: All right, Socrates, I pass it; and I think you’re right.
SOCRATES: Thus a man who has both things before his mind when he judges cannot possibly judge that one is the other.
THEAETETUS: So it seems.
SOCRATES: But if he has only one of them before his mind in judging, and the other is not present to him at all, he will never judge that one is the other.
THEAETETUS: That’s true. For he would have to have hold also of the one that is not present to his judgment.
SOCRATES: Then ‘other-judging’ is not possible for anyone either when he has both things present to him in judgment or when he has one only. [e] So, if anyone is going to define false judgment as ‘heterodoxy’,35 he will be saying nothing. The existence of false judgment in us cannot be shown in this way any more than by our previous approaches.
THEAETETUS: It seems not.
SOCRATES: And yet, Theaetetus, if it is not shown to exist, we shall be driven into admitting a number of absurdities.
THEAETETUS: And what would they be?
SOCRATES: I am not going to tell you until I have tried every possible way of looking at this matter. I should be ashamed to see us forced into [191] making the kind of admissions I mean while we are still in difficulties. If we find what we’re after, and become free men, then we will turn round and talk about how these things happen to other people—having secured our own persons against ridicule. While if we can’t find any way of extricating ourselves, then I suppose we shall be laid low, like seasick passengers, and give ourselves into the hands of the argument and let it trample all over us and do what it likes with us. And now let me tell you where I see a way still open to this inquiry.
THEAETETUS: Yes, do tell me.
SOCRATES: I am going to maintain that we were wrong to agree that it [b] is impossible for a man to be in error through judging that things he knows are things he doesn’t know. In a way, it is possible.
THEAETETUS: Now I wonder if you mean the same thing as I too suspected at the time when we suggested it was like that—I mean, that sometimes I, who know Socrates, have seen someone else in the distance whom I don’t know and thought it to be Socrates whom I do know. In a case like that, the sort of thing you are referring to does happen.
SOCRATES: But didn’t we recoil from this suggestion because it made us not know, when we do know, things which we know?
THEAETETUS: Yes, we certainly did.
SOCRATES: Then don’t let us put the case in that way; let‘s try another [c] way. It may prove amenable or it may be obstinate; but the fact is we are in such an extremity that we need to turn every argument over and over and test it from all sides. Now see if there is anything in this. Is it possible to learn something you didn’t know before?
THEAETETUS: Surely it is.
SOCRATES: And again another and yet another thing?
THEAETETUS: Well, why not?
SOCRATES: Now I want you to suppose, for the sake of the argument, that we have in our souls a block of wax, larger in one person, smaller in [d] another, and of purer wax in one case, dirtier in another; in some men rather hard, in others rather soft, while in some it is of the proper consistency.
THEAETETUS: All right, I’m supposing that.
SOCRATES: We may look upon it, then, as a gift of Memory, the mother of the Muses. We make impressions upon this of everything we wish to remember among the things we have seen or heard or thought of ourselves; we hold the wax under our perceptions and thoughts and take a stamp from them, in the way in which we take the imprints of signet rings. Whatever is impressed upon the wax we remember and know so long as [e] the image remains in the wax; whatever is obliterated or cannot be impressed, we forget and do not know.
THEAETETUS: Let that be our supposition.
SOCRATES: Then take the case of a man who knows these things, but is also considering something he is seeing or hearing; and see if he might judge falsely in this way.
THEAETETUS: In what kind of way?
SOCRATES: In thinking, of things which he knows, sometimes that they are things which he knows and sometimes that they are things which he doesn’t know—these cases being what at an earlier stage we wrongly admitted to be impossible.
THEAETETUS: And what do you say now?
SOCRATES: We must begin this discussion by making certain distinctions. [192] We must make it clear that it is impossible to think (1) that a thing you know, because you possess the record of it in your soul, but which you are not perceiving, is another thing which you know—you have its imprint too—but are not perceiving, (2) that a thing you know is something you do not know and do not have the seal of, (3) that a thing you don’t know is another thing you don’t know, (4) that a thing you don’t know is a thing you know.
Again, it is impossible to think (1) that a thing you are perceiving is another thing that you are perceiving, (2) that a thing you are perceiving is a thing which you are not perceivi
ng, (3) that a thing you are not [b] perceiving is another thing you are not perceiving, (4) that a thing you are not perceiving is a thing you are perceiving.
Yet again, it is impossible to think (1) that a thing you both know and are perceiving, when you are holding its imprint in line with your perception of it, is another thing which you know and are perceiving, and whose imprint you keep in line with the perception (this indeed is even more impossible than the former cases, if that can be), (2) that a thing which you both know and are perceiving, and the record of which you are keeping in its true line, is another thing you know, (3) that a thing you both know and are perceiving and of which you have the record correctly in line as before, is another thing you are perceiving, (4) that a thing you neither know nor [c] are perceiving is another thing you neither know nor perceive, (5) that a thing you neither know nor perceive is another thing you don’t know, (6) that a thing you neither know nor perceive is another thing you are not perceiving.
In all these cases, it is a sheer impossibility that there should be false judgment. It remains that it arises, if anywhere, in the cases I am just going to tell you.
THEAETETUS: What are they? Perhaps I may understand a little better from them; at present, I don’t follow.
SOCRATES: In these cases of things you know: when you think (1) that they are other things you know and are perceiving, (2) that they are things you don’t know but are perceiving, (3) that things you both know and are [d] perceiving are other things you both know and are perceiving.
THEAETETUS: Well, now you have left me further behind than ever.
SOCRATES: I’ll go over it again in another way. I know Theodorus and remember within myself what he is like; and in the same way I know Theaetetus. But sometimes I am seeing them and sometimes not; sometimes I am touching them, and sometimes not; or I may hear them or perceive them through some other sense, while at other times I have no perception about you two at all, but remember you none the less, and know you within myself—isn’t that so?
THEAETETUS: Yes, certainly. [e]
SOCRATES: Now please take this first point that I want to make clear to you—that we sometimes perceive and sometimes do not perceive the things that we know.
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