The Midwife of Platonism: Text and Subtext in Plato's Theaetetus
David Sedley
Abstract
Plato’s Theaetetus is thought to have been written after his main middle-period dialogues, in which he expounded his celebrated metaphysical doctrine of Forms. Yet, it is an open-ended Socratic dialogue and investigates the question ‘What is knowledge?’ without positive result, and with an unexpected restraint about invoking the metaphysical theory. Why? This book develops a new solution to the old question. Plato wants to demonstrate the continuity of his mature work with that of his master Socrates and does so by invoking the now famous image, unique to this dialogue, of Socrates as the barr ... More
Plato’s Theaetetus is thought to have been written after his main middle-period dialogues, in which he expounded his celebrated metaphysical doctrine of Forms. Yet, it is an open-ended Socratic dialogue and investigates the question ‘What is knowledge?’ without positive result, and with an unexpected restraint about invoking the metaphysical theory. Why? This book develops a new solution to the old question. Plato wants to demonstrate the continuity of his mature work with that of his master Socrates and does so by invoking the now famous image, unique to this dialogue, of Socrates as the barren midwife of others’ brainchildren. The message is that Socrates, although not himself a Platonist, was the midwife of Platonism. This is brought out by portraying a Socrates who, rather than Plato’s current spokesman, is a throwback to the semi-historical figure immortalized in the early dialogues. We see this Socrates, in the course of his characteristic dialectical investigations, pointing us to recognizably Platonic solutions, but himself unable to articulate them that way because of his lack of a Platonic metaphysics. In addition to linking Plato’s Socratic past to his Platonic present, the same device also points forward to Plato’s future work in such dialogues as Sophist and Timaeus.
Keywords:
Forms,
knowledge,
metaphysics,
midwife,
Plato,
Platonism,
Socrates,
Theaetetus
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2004 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780199267033 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2005 |
DOI:10.1093/0199267030.001.0001 |
