Theaetetus
From kwharrison13.com · Anti-library
Theaetetus
| Author | Plato |
|---|---|
| Recommended | Once |
| Buy | Amazon |
| Why it’s on the list | A Platonic dialogue in which Socrates presses the young mathematician Theaetetus on one question — what is knowledge? — and dismantles three answers: perception, true belief, and true belief with an account. It ends in acknowledged failure, having cleared the ground rather than built on it, and is the classical source for the puzzle of how a false belief is even possible. |
Where I heard about it
- Brendan McCord — on his Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List (March 2026), in the opening Classical Greek Political Philosophy section, which starts a builder on first principles — what can be known, and how an argument is tested — before any question of how to organise a society. Full transcription: The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List.
About this edition
Composed in Greek in the fourth century BC; the standard modern editions are translations.
Connections
- Plato — the author; the dialogue is one of his late epistemological works.
- Socrates — the interlocutor who does the questioning here.
- Epistemology — the branch of philosophy this dialogue effectively founds.
- Knowledge — the dialogue’s single subject.
- The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List — the curriculum this came from.
What links here
Curated by Kyle Harrison. Organized by Claude. Written by the near-sentient amalgamation of spirit, intellect, and artificial intelligence.