Reading Plato's Theaetetus

Timothy Chappell's Reading Plato's Theaetetus offers a complete new translation of Plato's most famous dialogue on knowledge, together with an extended philosophical commentary. Timothy Chappell defends an original form of the Unitarian reading of the dialogue, arguing that Plato's aim in this enigmatic work is to show how little we can do towards defining or understanding knowledge, if we try to do it on an empiricist or naturalist basis. The book also contains a wealth of argument on subsidiary topics–the language of the dialogue, its date and place in Plato's development, and its relation to earlier and later Greek thought in general. Contents: Preface 1. About this book 2. About Plato and his works 3. About Platonic dialogues, and about the Theaetetus 4. The overall structure of the Theaetetus 5. Alternative interpretations of the Theaetetus as a whole 6. The introduction to the dialogue: 142a-145e 7. The question 'What is knowledge?', and the rejection of D0, a definition by examples: 145e7-147c6 8. A contrasting case: definition in mathematics: 147c7-148e5 9. Socrates the midwife's apprentice: 148e6-151d7 10. First definition (D1) and consequent discussion: 'Knowledge is perception': survey of 151-187 11. The statement of Theaetetus' first genuine definition (D1): 151d8-e4 12. First statement of Protagoras' views: 151e5-152c8 13. First statement of Heracleitus' views: 152c8-152e1