Note 147 — Chapter XXVIII · THEÆTETUS. (continued 2)

Plato, Republic, v. pp. 478-479.

The Theætêtus is more in harmony (in reference to δόξα and ἐπιστήμη) with the Republic, than with the Sophistês and Politikus. In the Politikus (p. 309 C) ἀληθὴς δόξα μετὰ βεβαιώσεως is placed very nearly on a par with knowledge: in the Menon also, the difference between the two, though clearly declared, is softened in degree, pp. 97-98.

The Alexandrine physician Herophilus attempted to draw, between πρόῤῥησις and πρόγνωσις, the same distinction as that which Plato draws between δόξα and ἐπιστήμη — The Fallible as contrasted with the Infallible. Galen shows that the distinction is untenable (Prim. Commentat. in Hippokratis Prorrhetica, Tom. xvi. p. 487. ed. Kühn).

Bonitz, in his Platonische Studien (pp. 41-78), has given an instructive analysis and discussion of the Theætêtus. I find more to concur with in his views, than in those of Schleiermacher or Steinhart. He disputes altogether the assumption of other Platonic critics, that a purely negative result is unworthy of Plato; and that the negative apparatus is an artifice to recommend, and a veil to conceal, some great affirmative truth, which acute expositors can detect and enunciate plainly (Schleiermacher, Einleit. zum Theætêt. p. 124 seq.) Bonitz recognises the result of the Theætêtus as purely negative, and vindicates the worth of it as such. Moreover, instead of denouncing the opinions which Plato combats, as if they were perverse heresies of dishonest pretenders, he adverts to the great difficulty of those problems which both Plato and Plato’s opponents undertook to elucidate: and he remarks that, in those early days, the first attempts to explain psychological phenomena were even more liable to error than the first attempts to explain physical phenomena (pp. 75-77). Such recognition, of the real difficulty of a problem, is rare among the Platonic critics.