2 Plato 5 · 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.
5.1Theaetetus, we have talked all day.
5.2What we asked was: what is knowing.
5.3You said it is perception. We looked at it, and it would not stand.
5.4You said it is having a true sentence in the mind. We looked at it, and that would not stand either.
5.5You said it is a true sentence together with being able to give the reason. We looked at it, and it still would not stand.
5.6It has grown dark. We have no answer.
5.7You say: then we have wasted the day.
5.8I say: no.
5.9When you left your house this morning you believed you knew what knowing was.
5.10Now you know that you do not.
5.11These two are not the same, and they are very far apart.
5.12A man holding a false answer will not look again. His door is shut.
5.13A man with empty hands has his door open.
5.14I cannot give you an answer. What I can do is take the false one out of your hands.
5.15You will feel that I have taken something and given nothing.
5.16Yes. That is what a midwife does: she does not give you the child. She only stops you carrying a dead one home as a living one.