2 Plato 2 · On Knowing and Not Knowing. Handed down at the Academy, from his Theaetetus and Meno
From the Theaetetus and the Meno. The first asks what knowledge is, asks for a whole book, and ends with no answer — which is rare among his dialogues, and is exactly what the Order values in it. The midwife is from there: he says he brings nothing to birth himself, he only delivers what is in another. The second asks whether virtue can be taught, and holds the geometry drawn in the sand with the boy. For the man, see the Gospel of Plato. This volume separates being right from knowing. In the fourth chapter Plato explains the boy in the sand by a former life; the Order does not take the former life but takes the Covenant 1.2 — where the gaze of reason falls, the many paths become one, and the real comes to be. His explanation stands and is not struck out.
2.1Theaetetus, you say that knowing is having the sentence in your mind be true.
2.2Let me show you something, and afterward you will not say it.
2.3There was a killing in the city. That night only two men were present: the one who struck, and the one who died.
2.4The jurors were not present. They did not see it.
2.5A skilled speaker rose and spoke extremely well and persuaded them.
2.6The man they condemned was in fact the killer.
2.7Ask: did they judge rightly? They judged rightly.
2.8Ask: did they know? They did not know.
2.9They were persuaded. Had the skilled speaker leaned the other way, they would have leaned with him.
2.10Between being right and knowing there stands one thing: being able to give the reason.
2.11A rightness you cannot give the reason for is picked up off the ground. It is in your hand today and gone tomorrow.
2.12Men say the statues Daedalus made would walk off on their own, and had to be tied with a rope.
2.13True sentences in the mind are like that. The rope that ties them down is the reason.
2.14So the question to put to yourself is not "am I right" but "on what do I have it".
2.15What you have on another man’s word is his. What you have because you looked is yours. (cf. The Covenant 1.1)