Thesauros Literature Philosophy Θεαίτητος

Θεαίτητος

Θεαίτητος Plato
182 THEO. How can it be possible, Socrates, or to give a name to anything else of this sort, if while we are speaking it always evades us, being, as it is, in flux?
182 SOC. But what shall we say of any of the perceptions, such as seeing or hearing? Does it perhaps remain fixed in the condition of seeing or hearing?
182 THEO. It must be impossible, if all things are in motion.
182 SOC. Then we must not speak of seeing more than not seeing, or of any other perception more than of non-perception, if all things are in all kinds of motion.
182 THEO. No, we must not.
182 SOC. And yet perception is knowledge, as Theaetetus and I said.
182 THEO. Yes, you did say that.
182 SOC. Then when we were asked what is knowledge? we answered no more what knowledge is than what not-knowledge is.
183 THEO. So it seems.
183 SOC. This would be a fine result of the correction of our answer, when we were so eager to show that all things are in motion, just for the purpose of making that answer prove to be correct. But this, I think, did prove to be true, that if all things are in motion, every answer to any question whatsoever is equally correct, and we may say it is thus or not thus—or, if you prefer, becomes thus, to avoid giving them fixity by using the word is.
183 THEO. You are right.
183 SOC. Except, Theodorus, that I said thus, and not thus; but we ought not even to say thus; for thus would no longer be in motion; nor, again, not thus. For there is no motion in this either; but some other expression must be supplied for those who maintain this doctrine, since now they have, according to their own hypothesis, no words, unless it be perhaps the word nohow. That might be most fitting for them, since it is indefinite.
183 THEO. At any rate that is the most appropriate form of speech for them.

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