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PlatoTheaetetus
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Themes
Lawyers and Democracy Are Flawed
Of all the people criticized in Theaetetus, lawyers stand out. Plato reserves for them some of his harshest personal rebukes and his most damning analysis. In the digression on philosophy and rhetoric in Chapter 17, Socrates presents lawyers as the epitome of the unleisured man, as slaves to “the clock” and to authority. With their art in sophistry, “they think they have become clever and wise” (51). In fact, they have become “small and crooked in their minds […] deprived of growth, straightness and freedom” (50-51). Like the sophists, with whom lawyers are associated, their commitment to self-advancement rather than the truth has stunted them. Their intellect has been bent into a narrow, mercenary “cleverness” that serves whichever master pays the highest price.
It is not just that lawyers prostitute their knowledge but that the very nature of their profession demands its sacrifice and mutilation. As Socrates rhetorically asks Theaetetus, “do you think there are people who are so clever as teachers that, in the short time allowed by the clock, they can teach the truth, to people who weren’t there” (94). In a trial there simply is not the time, nor the intellectual level, to establish the real truth through argument. Instead, to win a case, lawyers must employ rhetoric. They must use language in a deceitful way, appealing to emotions, eliding or ignoring facts, manipulating the ignorance and prejudices of the jury. Conversely, this is why philosophers “look ridiculous when they go into the law-courts to make speeches” (50). They lack the ability to willfully deceive in this way.
However, Plato’s criticism on this point is not limited to lawyers. They are culpable for swaying the jurors, for convincing the jurors, to agree with what is untrue, half-true, or unjust. But the jurors are, of course, also culpable for allowing themselves to be swayed. Thus, Socrates’s critique of lawyers ties into a broader criticism of Athenian democracy, one linked to his death. Verdicts in the Athenian judicial system were delivered by a majority vote from the dikasts, around 500 male jurors chosen by lot. In Socrates’s trial a majority found Socrates guilty of the accusations against him and ordered that his punishment should be death.
In this context it is not difficult to see why Plato came to regard democracy and majoritarian rule as flawed. Just because a policy or decision is popular does not make it right. This is why Plato mocks the relativism of Protagoras’s theory and its implications. If everyone’s opinion is true, he says, “but the masses don’t share his view, then, in the first place, it’s more the case that it isn’t the truth than that it is” (47). In other words, relativism about truth cedes practical authority on what is true to the rule of the majority. Protagoras’s declaration that “man is the measure of all things” becomes “the masses are the measure of all things.” Additionally, majorities are easily swayed. Clever lawyers and politicians can manipulate the masses’ ignorance to serve their own interests. Indeed, they can manipulate the masses to persecute those who criticize their authority, which is precisely what Plato believed happened to Socrates.
Skepticism and the Problem of Positive Knowledge
Most philosophical texts have a positive thesis. They tend to evaluate and criticize other works and views, but end by asserting and defending a specific position or idea. For example, in Being and Nothingness (1943) philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre assesses various views on “being-for others,” examining the philosophies of Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger before espousing his own idea that human relations are essentially conflictual. Plato appears to do no such thing in Theaetetus. He does not provide any positive position on the nature of knowledge, and instead seems to question the very idea of having one at all. This fact is problematized by two other details. First, it is the character of Socrates, not explicitly Plato, whose views are represented in the text. Second, Plato did develop more substantive philosophical positions using Socrates’s voice in other texts, such as Republic and Phaedrus.
As such, some scholars have adopted an esoteric reading of the text. To resolve the contradiction between works in which Plato provides a positive philosophy and the absence of one in Theaetetus, they argue that this absence is only apparent. In this view, which renders Theaetetus as a more conventional philosophic work, there is a positive philosophical position. The rejection of the various theories of knowledge—that it is perception, that it is true judgment, that it is judgment with an account—does not represent a terminus. Rather, it is the necessary groundwork that enables the informed reader to infer that “[t]rue knowledge has for its objects things of a different order—not sensible things but intelligible Forms and truths about them,” according to F. M. Cornford. (Cornford, F. M. Plato’s Theory of Knowledge. Routledge, 1935, pp. 162). This is Plato’s theory of “The Forms,” espoused in Republic, applied to epistemology, the study of knowledge. It is the idea that fundamental truth lies not in perceivable or empirical reality but in a priori ideas about universal forms that are only accessible through reason.
There are several justifications for this reading. The first is that Theaetetus is a late text in Plato’s oeuvre. Unlike earlier texts, like Symposium (385 BCEE), which takes a more skeptical or agnostic perspective, Theaetetus was written after Phaedrus and Republic, which provide a clearer positive philosophy. It would be odd for Plato to revert back to skepticism so soon. Second, there is Socratic irony. Socrates continually alludes to his own ignorance and lack of wisdom, saying that he and Theaetetus are “not clever people” (87). And at the end he claims, “I don’t know any of the things which others know” (110). If there is a positive theory of knowledge implicit in the text, this could be Plato’s way of signaling that to his readers. In these exaggeratedly self-deprecating comments, Socrates could be hinting that he knows and believes more than he is letting on. He could be encouraging the reader to draw the inference regarding a positive theory of knowledge on their own, much as the Socratic method uses pointed questioning—as opposed to direct instruction—to help students refine their ideas on their own.
Then again, this irony could just be a rhetorical means for Socrates to more easily gain the reader’s assent for his arguments. He might also merely be stating that he is at least aware of his ignorance, unlike others. Likewise, Plato may simply have changed his view. This is potentially more plausible than there being a hidden or implicit Platonic message in the text. But there is an even more plausible explanation for the lack of a positive thesis: Plato aims to provoke aporia, to make readers question long-held beliefs regarding knowledge and other truths that are taken for granted. As Socrates says, with aporia “we’ll be less inclined to think we know what we don’t in fact know at all,” and “such a reward wouldn’t be anything to complain about” (72). In other words, the dialogue has merit regardless of whether Socrates and Theaetetus successfully define knowledge. Either they will succeed, or they will discover the depths of their ignorance, becoming humbler for it, armed with “the sense not to think [they] know things which in fact [they] don’t know” (109).
Eroticism and Platonic Love in Theaetetus
One of the things that will strike modern readers about Theaetetus is its eroticism, especially if they are unfamiliar with Plato. When Socrates is about to meet Theaetetus, Theodorus tells him that, “Just now he and those friends of his were rubbing themselves with oil in the track outside” (6). Similarly, Theodorus makes a point of describing Theaetetus as unattractive, saying, “If he’d been handsome, I’d have been afraid to speak with emphasis, in case anyone thought I was in love with him” (5). Similar examples occur throughout the text. There is a discussion about how Spartans insist on guests taking their clothes off (44) and naked wrestling (34). Even Socrates’s metaphor of being a midwife to men with ideas can be seen to have erotic connotations in this context.
Yet how does this narrative characteristic actually impact the philosophy? Certainly, it will seem strange to a reader who associates philosophy with dry and technical treatises. It will also surprise those familiar with the professional and avowedly nonsexual world of contemporary philosophical academia. Still, it could be read simply as a reflection of social mores. Since Plato was trying to present his dialogues in a naturalistic fashion, it follows that he would reference how philosophical inquiry was conducted at the time. It was typically outdoors, between an older man as teacher and a younger one as student. However, a more nuanced reading paints a different picture. Socrates expressly asks for a young man to converse with, not the older Theodorus, even though Theodorus is renowned for wisdom. The need for an erotic, though not sexual, teacher-student connection seems more integral to Plato’s conception of philosophical practice than mere cultural description.
The libidinal attachment present was not seen then, as it is today, as antithetical to philosophy. Rather, it is precisely the thing that, in its sublimation, provides philosophies lifeblood. This can be observed in the way the presentation of Theaetetus changes throughout the text. He starts out as supposedly ugly. As the dialogue progresses, Socrates says that he becomes handsome, and he does so “because someone who speaks handsomely is handsome” (69). As the text develops, there is a movement away from desire for the body and toward love for the mind. This is reflected in the teacher-student relationship between Socrates and Theaetetus and in the philosophical theses offered in the text. From perceptions and sensations, as the loci of knowledge, Plato moves to reason and intellect. Likewise, from the apparent beauty of the bodies in the gymnasium at the start, we progress toward the true beauty of the mind. This is what Socrates praises at the very end of the text, when he lauds his best students as “young and noble men who are all beautiful” (110). And it is this movement from the physical to the intellectual that represents the true meaning of Platonic love. It is also the explanation for the erotic undercurrents that occur throughout the text.
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