In Which Sense is the Theaetetus an Aporetic Dialogue; or, What is Knowledge?

Vojtěch Hladký

The article attempts to demonstrate the unique aporetic structure of Plato’s Theaetetus and the complex composition of the human knowledge according to the Theaetetus and the Sophist. The development of the argumentation in the Theaetetus gradually examines more and more abstract levels of human knowledge and cognitive faculties and finally even leads to the conception of knowledge that has its parallels in other Plato’s dialogues (notably the Meno and the Statesman). However such definition of the knowledge can be accepted only when it is reshaped in the framework of the dialectic method that is developed in the “dramatically” following Sophist and that enables us to distinguish, situate and connect correctly the whole—the knowledge in toto—and its integral parts—the aspects of knowledge examined thoroughly in the Theaetetus.