previous next

[164c]

Socrates
Then what can knowledge be? We must, apparently, begin our discussion all over again. And yet, Theaetetus, what are we on the point of doing?

Theaetetus
About what?

Socrates
It seems to me that we are behaving like a worthless game-cock; before winning the victory we have leapt away from our argument and begun to crow.

Theaetetus
How so?

Socrates
We seem to be acting like professional debaters; we have based our agreements on the mere similarity of words and are satisfied to have got the better of the argument in such a way, and we do not see that we, who claim to be, not contestants for a prize, but lovers of wisdom,


Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 12 translated by Harold N. Fowler. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921.

The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.

Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

load focus Greek (1903)
hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide References (10 total)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: