he offers negative objections to the denial of falsity which are strongly mimicked in the Theaetetus' criticisms of Protagoras.89
One of Socrates' questions to Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, who propound the falsity paradox, is how, if no one is ever wrong either in speech or in thought, these two sophists can present themselves as experts who have something to teach (287a1–b1)—a clear forerunner to the main point developed in the Theaetetus' first critique of Protagoras(pp. 54–6 above). And the same passage contains almost equally clear antecedents of the self-refutation argument deployed in the second critique of Protagoras. At 287e4–288a1 we find Socrates subjecting the thesis which denies falsity to a dilemma strongly reminiscent of the first movement (170c2–8) of the Theaetetus' self-refutation argument. ‘Do you say that I was wrong, or not? For if I was not wrong not even you will refute me, for all your wisdom… But if I was wrong, what you are saying is still incorrect, when you claim that it is impossible to be wrong.’90 These links to the Euthydemus should be enough to confirm that the refutation of broad Protagoreanism in the Theaetetus ismeant to be read asdisplaying to usan authentic Socratic legacy. Generically, thislegacy isto be located in the skill of exposing intrinsic incoherence—or, in the idiom of the midwife model, in the skill of testing which pregnanciesare authentic and viable and which not. More specifically, it manifests itself in one of Socrates' characteristic devices for exposing the incoherence of sophistic positions.
asthe key to virtue, wasconstantly echoed by Platonists, becoming the official formulation of their moral goal.91 In modern times some other themes from it, especially the anecdote of Thales—so busy looking at the stars that he fell down a well—have drawn close scholarly scrutiny;92 but no one hasmade much progresswith integrating the Digression, taken as a whole, into the dialogue in which it is found. Most general discussions of the dialogue—whether explicitly or implicitly—have taken its self-description as a ‘digression’ at face value and largely excluded it from consideration.93
The context within the Theaetetus is Socrates' critique of the relativism embodied in Protagoras' dictum ‘Man isthe measure of all things’. Down to this point, as we have seen, Socrates has succeeded in arguing that in at least two cases the Measure Doctrine fails. First, it cannot be applied to matters involving expertise: the popular consensus that the layman hasmore tendency to be wrong than the expert hasbeen vindicated by the dilemmatic argument in favour of the existence of false beliefs at 169d3–170c9 (pp. 57–91 above). Secondly, the Measure Doctrine cannot be applied to itself, because if everyone were equally a measure of truth then Protagoras would have to concede that the vast majority of people, who believe the Measure Doctrine to be false, are right (170e7–171c7; pp. 59–61 above).
That partial victory, however, doesnot yet altogether eliminate the threat that relativism poses. For, Socratesremarks as the Digression opens, there are plenty of people who are selective relativists, applying their relativism particularly to a set of key ‘political’
91 The fullest survey of this tradition remains Merki (1952). See also Passmore (1970), Roloff (1970), Annas (1999, ch. 3: ‘Becoming Like God: Human Nature and the Divine’), and Reuter (2001). I have myself examined it as a theme in Plato's dialogues, including Theaetetus, in Sedley (1999). In the present chapter I have thought the Theaetetus Digression out again from scratch; in doing so I have benefited from discussions with Alice van Harten in particular.
92 Esp. Blumenberg (1976).
93 Ryle (1966: 158), ‘philosophically quite pointless’; according to McDowell (1973: 174) the Digression has the function of a modern footnote or appendix. There are more substantial discussions by Barker (1976), Polansky (1992: 134–48), Rue (1993), Bradshaw (1998), Butti de Lima (2002), Spinelli (2002), and Blondell (2002: 289–303), among others. Burnyeat (1990: 31–9) remains the most serious attempt with which I am familiar to integrate the Digression into the dialogue as a whole. Ioppolo (1999a, pp. xxxvii–xli) has the merit of emphasizing the Socratic nature of the Digression. There are also valuable remarks on the subject in Caizzi (2002, esp. 86). I have sketched my own interpretation in Sedley (1999: 311–14).
or ‘civic’ values.94These diminished relativists95 would concede to Socratesthat there isan absolute fact of the matter when it comesto determining what isbeneficial, as when we rightly entrust life-and-death decisions to doctors or navigatorsrather than rely on our own untutored preferences. But they believe that the core valuesby which society is governed are irreducibly relativized, to individualsand socio-political groups, depending entirely on local civic practices, laws, norms, and preferences. The specific values which are mentioned as succumbing to such relativism are initially threefold: (a) fair (kala) and foul (aischra), terms which in Greek usage span the aesthetic and the moral; (b) just and unjust; (c) piousand impious.96 It isthe first two pairs that most familiarly invite relativist analysis, since it can seem obvious—and had seemed obvious to some Greeks at least since Herodotus had catalogued the weird and wonderful practicesof neighbouring cultures—that local custom alone determines aesthetic, moral, and judicial norms. There was also a
94 The earliest known representative of this school of thought is Socrates' own teacher Archelaus (on whom cf. p. 161 below), said to have considered justice to be purely conventional (νόμῳ; D.L.II 16). Although the same relativist position is hard to pin on any named 5th-century sophists (cf. Bett 1989), it is one that Plato presents as widespread (not only here but also in LawsX 889e3–890a9), and we have no reason to disbelieve him: even today moral relativism has fairly few philosophical proponents but is nevertheless widely believed or assumed.
95 Thisnatural reading of 172b7–8, ὅσοι γε δὴ μὴ παντάπασι τὸν Πϱωταγόϱον λόγον λέγουσιν, as ‘those at any rate who do not absolutely propound Protagoras' thesis’ is supported by 177c6–d7. Caizzi (2002, esp. 83–4) arguesfor the rendering ‘those who do not at all propound the thesis of Protagoras’. But I am not convinced that she has found any unassailable parallel for a negated παντάπασι with thismeaning. Her two passageswhere παντάπασι indisputably sits within the negated clause, Rep. 540d1–2 and Laws 811c6, can both be, and frequently are, understood as matching the traditional rendering of the Theaetetus passage, i.e. ‘not absolutely’. At Eryx. 401c6 (and e3, which she compares) παντάπασι may easily be construed as external to the negated clause, and I suspect that that alone is why it permits the reading ‘absolutely not’, i.e. ‘not at all’.
The Theaetetus passage clearly matches the former type. If I am right, further evidence will be needed before it can be shown that her alternative rendering is linguistically possible.
96 Readers using the Levett translation (at least as printed down to 2003) should be warned that the references to piety in the Digression do not show up adequately in it. At 172a2 ‘the piousand impious’ isrendered ‘what issanctioned by religion and what isnot’, while at 176b2 ‘pious’ becomes ‘pure’. Most other translations likewise fail to keep a consistent translation between the two passages. McDowell's ‘in conformity with religion or not…religious’—is the least misleading among the English translations I have checked. In this respect the most accurate I have seen is Valgimigli, ‘santo…santità’, although she misconstrues the continuation of the latter, μετὰ φϱονῄσεως, on which see p. 75 below, and also uses a non-matching translation for ἀνόσια at 176d1. See also n. 32 below.
widespread if not prevalent perception among fifth- and fourth-century intellectuals that, at least so far as justice is concerned, the local provisions that structure it have been artificially imposed for the sake of social expediency, and do not reflect any antecedent principles of right and wrong given in nature. So it is no surprise that justice turns out to be the main focusasSocratesdevelopshisobjectionsto thisbrand of moral relativism. The fair and foul are not further considered in the Digression.97 Piety, on the other hand, continues to play a subtle role. I shall return in due course to the extremely important lessons about piety. But in order to reach that stage we must follow the order of events which Socrates dictates, with a strong initial focus on the paradigmatic case of justice.