4 - Knowledge

Summary

Our discussion of the Forms has already shown that knowledge plays a central role in Plato's thought. It is important to him that they are suitable objects for knowledge, and he sees knowledge of them as something to aspire to. In this chapter we shall look more closely at this aspect of his philosophy. I shall begin with a brief look at the one work, the Theaetetus, where Plato confronts the topic of knowledge, as it were, head on, asking what knowledge is. After this I shall look at a number of other aspects of Plato's view of knowledge, and in particular of the relation between knowledge and Forms.

The Theaetetus: Plato on knowledge

Although the Theaetetus is generally thought to have been written relatively late in Plato's career, in many ways it seeks to recapture the style and method of the “Socratic” dialogues. It presents Socrates, as he appeared in many of those dialogues and as he may have been in real life, examining a number of proposals rather than stating a worked-out view, and reaching no definite conclusion. Near the beginning of the dialogue Socrates introduces the famous image (which may go back to the historical Socrates) of himself as a midwife, trying to help his interlocutors to give birth to ideas (Tht. 150b ff.). In the course of the work he enables the young mathematician Theaetetus to come up with three proposals for the definition of knowledge, but in the end all are rejected.