Theaetetus (200)

SOC. It is not easy, Theaetetus, to refrain from praising you. However, examine your suggestion once more. Let it be as you say: the man who catches the ignorance will, you say, have false opinion. Is that it?

THEAET. Yes.

SOC. But surely he will not also think that he has false opinion.

THEAET. Certainly not.

SOC. No, but true opinion, and will have the attitude of knowing that about which he is deceived.

THEAET. Of course.

SOC. Hence he will fancy that he has caught, and has, knowledge, not ignorance.

THEAET. Evidently.

SOC. Then, after our long wanderings, we have come round again to our first difficulty. For the real reasoner will laugh and say, Most excellent Sirs, does a man who knows both knowledge and ignorance think that one of them, which he knows, is another thing which he knows; or, knowing neither of them, is he of opinion that one, which he does not know, is another thing which he does not know; or, knowing one and not the other, does he think that the one he does not know is the one he knows; or that the one he knows is the one he does not know? Or will you go on and tell me that there are kinds of knowledge of the kinds of knowledge and of ignorance, and that he who possesses these kinds of knowledge and has enclosed them in some sort of other ridiculous aviaries or waxen figments, knows them, so long as he possesses them, even if he has them not at hand in his soul? And in this fashion are you going to be compelled to trot about endlessly in the same circle without making any progress? What shall we reply to this, Theaetetus?

THEAET. By Zeus, Socrates, I don’t know what to say.

SOC. Then, my boy, is the argument right in rebuking us and in pointing out that we were wrong to abandon knowledge and seek first for false opinion? It is impossible to know the latter until we have adequately comprehended the nature of knowledge.

THEAET. As the case now stands, Socrates, we cannot help thinking as you say.

SOC. To begin, then, at the beginning once more, what shall we say knowledge is? For surely we are not going to give it up yet, are we?

THEAET. Not by any means, unless, that is, you give it up.

SOC. Tell us, then, what definition will make us contradict ourselves least.

THEAET. The one we tried before, Socrates; at any rate, I have nothing else to offer.

SOC. What one?

THEAET. That knowledge is true opinion; for true opinion is surely free from error and all its results are fine and good.