Theaetetus (dialogue)

Table of Contents

• 1 Selected secondary literature
• 2 External links

The Theaetetus belongs to a trilogy of dialogues referred to as " The Being of the Beautiful ," the others being the Sophist and the Statesman . The conversation among Socrates, Theaetetus, and Theodorus occurs immediately before the action of the Euthyphro .

Although the dialogue never succeeds in giving a clearcut answer to the question "What is knowledge?", it shows the reader some failed and some more fruitful approaches to the question. The fact that Socrates' interlocutors are mathematicians, and that the conversation was recorded by a Megarian, has been suggested as one cause of the dialogue's failure to settle upon an answer. Approaches not very different from those taken in the dialogue are still discussed in modern epistemology .

The dialogue is split into roughly three sections: 1) Knowledge is perception ; 2) Knowledge is true belief , and 3) Knowledge is justified true belief . It is preceded by a brief exchange between Euclides and Terpsion.

• The full text is available from Project Gutenberg or the Perseus Project in both Greek and English .
• Chappell, Timothy. Plato on Knowledge in the Theaetetus , The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2005 Edition)