【英文原著类】THEAETETUS(西阿提塔斯).pdf

THEAETETUS
THEAETETUS
by Plato
Translated by Benjamin Jowett
1
THEAETETUS
INTRODUCTION AND
ANALYSIS.
Some dialogues of Plato are of so various a character that their relation
to the other dialogues cannot be determined with any degree of certainty.
The Theaetetus, like the Parmenides, has points of similarity both with his
earlier and his later writings. The perfection of style, the humour, the
dramatic interest, plexity of structure, the fertility of illustration,
the shifting of the points of view, are characteristic of his best period of
authorship. The vain search, the negative conclusion, the figure of the
midwives, the constant profession of ignorance on the part of Socrates,
also bear the stamp of the early dialogues, in which the original Socrates is
not yet Platonized. Had we no other indications, we should be disposed
to range the Theaetetus with the Apology and the Phaedrus, and perhaps
even with the Protagoras and the Laches.
But when we pass from the style to an examination of the subject, we
trace a connection with the later rather than with the earlier dialogues. In
the first place there is the connexion, indicated by Plato himself at the end
of the dialogue, with the Sophist, to which in many respects the Theaetetus
is so little akin. (1) The same persons reappear, including the younger
Socrates, whose name is just mentioned in the Theaetetus; (2) the theory
of rest, which Socrates has declined to consider, is resumed by the Eleatic
Stranger; (3) there is a similar allusion in both dialogues to the meeting of
Parmenides and Socrates (Theaet., Soph.); and (4) the inquiry into not-
being in the Sophist supplements the question of false opinion which is
raised in the Theaetetus. (Compare also Theaet. and Soph. for parallel
turns of thought.) Secondly, the later date of the dialogue is confirmed
by the absence of the doctrine of recollection and of any doctrine of ideas
except that which derives them from generaliz