Gonzalez 1998 Nonpropositional Knowledge

Nonpropositional Knowledge in Plato
Francisco J. Gonzalez
For a long time the orthodox view was that Plato recognized the exist-
ence of nonpropositional knowledge and considered it indispensable for
attaining the goal of philosophical inquiry. In recent years, however, this
view has been both explicitly attacked and implicitly discarded, to the
extent that the opposite view appears to have become the one most often
taken for granted today.1 Richard Sorabji has dismissed as a myth the
1 A clear indication of this is the fact that the few scholars today who defend the
existence of nonpropositional knowledge in Plato see themselves as going against
the tide. For example, Terry Penner, in arguing that what Socrates seeks in the Luches
is not knowledge of true propositions about courage but rather some sort of
nonpropositional knowledge of what courage is ('What Laches and Nicias Miss —
And Whether Socrates Thinks Courage Merely a Part of Virtue', Ancient Philosophy
12 [1992] 1-27,23), sees his interpretation as representing 'a quite radical attack on
the widespread modern preoccupation with prepositional knowledge' (25). Even
more symptomatic is the way in which Penner's 'radical attack' in the end conforms.
Penner's argument is that what Socrates seeks to know is not the meaning of courage,
but rather its reference (24). But for Penner the reference of courage is determined by
the sum total of true propositions about courage, so that, while the knowledge of
this reference is distinct from knowing one or a few true propositions about courage,
it is equivalent to knowing all true propositions about courage. But in this case, what
is the point of calling it 'nonpropositional?' Elsewhere Penner admits that his point
'can be translated into a point using propositions' ('Socrates and the Early dia-
logues', in Richard Kraut, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Plato [Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press 1992] 121-69,143). Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas
D. Smith comment on 'how inappropriate it is to attempt to understand Socrates's
epistemology in terms of the conception of knowledge which has received the most
philosophical attention in modern times: "propositional knowledge", or knowledge
that such and such is the case' (Plato's Socrates [New York: Oxford University Press
1994], 43). As shown below, however, they too cannot quite escape this conception.
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236 Francisco J. Gonzalez
idea that either Plato or Aristotle or even Plotinus (!) believed that there
could be such a thing as knowledge which is nonpropositional.2 More
focused and thorough, however, has been Gail Fine's attempt in a num-
ber of articles to show that for Plato One knows a thing through or by
knowing certain propositions to be true of it' and that 'even if Plato's
primary concern is knowledge of objects, this concern can readily be
phrased in the modern idiom as knowledge that a particular proposition
is true.'3 For example, Fine has argued that in Republic V belief and
knowledge are not assigned to different kinds of objects (as has often
been thought) but to different sets of propositions.4 There have also been
other 'revisionists.'5
More successful attempts to break away from 'the widespread modern preoccupa-
tion with prepositional knowledge' in the interpretation of Plato can be found in:
Drew A. Hyland, Finitude and Transcendence in the Platonic Dialogues (Albany, NY:
SUNY Press 1995), 179-95; Gerald A. Press, 'Knowledge as Vision in Plato's Dia-
logues', The Journal of Neoplatonic Studies 3 (1995) 61-89; Kenneth Sayre, 'Plato's
Dialogues in the Light of the Seventh Letter' and 'Reply to Jon Moline', in Charles L.
Griswold, Jr., ed., Platonic Writings, Platonic Readings (New York: Routledge, Chap-
man & Hall 1988) 93-109 & 240-46, respectively; Plato's Literary Garden (Notre Dame,
IN: Notre Dame University Press 1995); 'Why Plato Never Had a Theory of Forms',
in John J. Cleary and William Wians, eds., Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium
in Ancient Philosophy (1993), vol. 9 (Lanham, MD: University Press of America 1995)
167-99; Christiane Schildknecht, 'Knowledge that the Mind Seeks: The Episternic
Impact of Plato's Form of Discourse', Philosophy and Rhetoric 29 (1996) 225-43;
Wolfgang Wieland, Platan und die Formen des Wissens (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht 1982); 'La Critica de Platon a la Escritura y los Limites de la Communica-
bilidad', Methexis 4 (1991) 19-37.
2 'Myths About Non-Propositional thought', in Malcolm Scholfield and Martha
Craven Nussbaum, eds., Language and Logos (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press 1982) 295-314. Sorabji's thesis as it applies to Plotinus has been challenged by
A.C. Lloyd, 'Non-propositional Thought in Plotinus', Phronesis 33 (1986) 258-65, and
Mark Richard Alfino, 'Plotinus and the Possibility of Non-Propositional Thought',
Ancient Philosophy 8 (1989) 273-84.
3 'Knowledge and Logos in the Theaetetus', Philosophical Review 88 (1979) 366-7
4 'Knowledge and Belief in Republic V, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 60 (1978)
121-39; 'Knowledge and Belief in Republic V-VIF, in Stephen Everson, ed., Epistemol-
ogy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1990) 85-115. This interpretation is
also accepted by Terence Irwin, Plato's Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press
1995), 266-8. For a similar view see R.C. Cross and A.D. Woozley, Plato's Republic:
A Philosophical Commentary (London: Macmillan & Co. Ltd. 1964), 173-5. I argue
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Nonpropositional Knowledge in Plato 237
This reaction to the once orthodox view appears motivated by two

factors, one philological and one philosophical. The first is simply the
weakness of the textual evidence usually cited in support of this view:
the use of visual and tactile metaphors. These metaphors are assumed
to indicate that knowledge, like sight and touch, is in direct contact with
its objects, the word 'direct' meaning here: 'without the mediation of
propositions.' Yet this assumption appears unwarranted, since we com-
monly apply these metaphors to thoroughly prepositional knowledge:
we 'see' the truth of a proposition or 'grasp' a proposition. Therefore, to
read a whole theory of knowledge into Plato's use of such metaphors is
a mistake.6
The second factor is that nonpropositional knowledge has become
philosophically disreputable. The very notion of knowledge that lacks
prepositional content is considered so incomprehensible and so ground-
less that it does not even figure in most contemporary theories of
knowledge. Even A.C. Lloyd, who nearly three decades ago published
one of the few papers that have addressed the nature of nonpropositional
knowledge in Greek philosophy, called this knowledge an 'enigma' and
argued that it is incoherent.7 Michael Dummett seems to have correctly
identified the following presupposition shared by all analytical philoso-
phers: 'It is of the essence of thought, not merely to be communicable,
but to be communicable without residue, by means of language.'8 The
elsewhere that this interpretation is incompatible with the text: 'Propositions or

Objects? A Critique of Gail Fine on Knowledge and Belief in Republic V, Phronesis
41 (1996) 245-75.
5 E.g., Norman Gully (Plato's Theory of Knowledge [London: Methuen & Co. Ltd. 1962],
65), whose view anticipates Fine's in some important respects, and R.C. Cross
('Logos and Forms in Plato', Mind 63 [1954] 433-50), on whom more below.
6 For a similar critique of this interpretation, see Peter Stemmer, Platans Dialektik: Die
Frühen und Mittleren Dialoge (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter 1992), 75-9. For a defense,
see Jens Halfwassen's review of Stemmer's book in Archiv für Geschichte der Philoso-
phie 76 (1994) 221-2.
7 'Non-Discursive Thought — An Enigma of Greek Philosophy', Aristotelian Society
Proceedings 70 (1969-70) 261-74
8 'Can Analytical Philosophy be Systematic, and Ought It to Be?', in Kenneth Baynes,
James Bohman, and Thomas McCarthy, eds., After Philosophy: End or Transformation ?
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1987) 189-215,195, my emphasis; see also 215.

238 Francisco ]. Gonzalez
currency of this view9 is not surprising since it must be assumed if the

analysis of language is to have the wide-ranging application that it is
today thought to have.10
If indeed both textual evidence and philosophical justification are
thus lacking, then why not be grateful for the new orthodoxy defended
by Sorabji and Fine? The aim of the present paper, however, is to provide
more solid evidence for Plato's commitment to the existence and impor-
tance of nonpropositional knowledge and, much more importantly, to
show that he had good philosophical reasons for this commitment. I
begin with a detailed analysis of the Seventh Letter. Though the authen-
ticity of this work is still in doubt, and probably always will be,11 it is
invaluable for two reasons independent of authorship: it contains a
sustained argument for the view that philosophical knowledge must be
nonpropositional12 and it dispels some of the misconceptions that sur-
round this view today. As for authenticity, the most important question,
and the only one that appears answerable, is the following: is the teach-
ing of the letter consistent with, as well as capable of explaining, what is
said in the dialogues? It is of course impossible to show here that the
dialogues as a whole are compatible with the letter.13 However, I focus
on the Meno and the Republic because they present perhaps the strongest
9 This is not to say, of course, that this view has not been challenged by philosophers
within the analytical tradition. A good example of such a challenge is Romane Clark,
'Not Every Act of Thought Has a Matching Proposition', Midwest Studies in Philoso-
phy 5 (1980) 509-24.
10 For an excellent explanation and critique of analytical philosophy's rejection or
marginalization of nonpropositional knowledge see Wieland, 'Limites de la Com-
municabilidad', 33-6.
11 For the status quaestionis, see Sayre, Plato's Literary Garden, xviii-xxiii, and my own
Dialectic and Dialogue: Plato's Practice of Philosophical Inquiry (Evanston, IL: North-
western University Press 1998), ch. 9.
12 The Seventh Letter has been interpreted as providing such an argument by Wieland,
Formen des Wissens, 35-8, and Sayre, 'Plato's Dialogues'; Plato's Literary Garden, 10-17;
"Theory of Forms'.
13 A more general defense of the compatibility of the Seventh Letter with the dialogues
(including the Parmenides, Phaedrus and Statesman) is to be found in Sayre, 'Plato's
Dialogues', 97-108; Plato's Literary Garden; "Theory of Forms', 186-93. Sayre, how-
ever, does not address the apparent contradictions, to be discussed below, between
the letter and the Meno.

prima facie cases against compatibility. I conclude that nevertheless

these two works are not only consistent with the Seventh Letter's teaching,
but are also plausibly interpreted as assuming and further explicating it.
Though this conclusion does not definitively prove authenticity, it is as
convincing a proof as we are likely to have and it supports something
even more important than authorship, namely, that Plato, whether or
not he wrote the letter, could accept its argument that philosophical
knowledge must be nonpropositional.
1 What is Nonpropositional Knowledge?
First we need an explanation of 'nonpropositional knowledge' to serve

as the framework within which to understand the letter's argument. For
this purpose the following remarks should suffice. In some cases, to
know a thing is equivalent to knowing that certain predicates are true of
it. For example, to know water is to know that it is composed of hydrogen
and oxygen atoms, that it becomes solid at 0 degrees Celsius, etc. This
kind of knowledge can be fully expressed in a proposition since it is the
very structure of a proposition to assert certain predicates of a thing in
stating what it is. However, let us imagine a case in which knowledge of
some χ is not identical with, or not exhausted by, knowledge of what can
truly be asserted of it, i.e., knowledge that χ is y.14 In this case, though we
can still formulate propositions concerning the thing in question and
though these propositions may be in some respect true, knowledge of
the thing itself is nonpropositional.
More positively, to say that there is such a thing as nonpropositional
knowledge is to say that something can be manifest without being
describable. This means, not that we cannot describe it at all, but rather
that all of our descriptions will necessarily fail to do justice to how it
manifests itself. This characterization of nonpropositional knowledge as
14 What is denied in this case is precisely the reduction that Fine makes in attributing
to Plato the view that knowledge is completely prepositional: 'Knowledge of things,
for Plato, is description-dependent, not description independent. Second, Plato
tends to speak interchangeably of knowing-* and knowing what χ is ... Thus a
sentence of the form "a knows x" can always be transformed into a sentence of the
form "a knows what χ is"; and the latter, in turn, is readily transformed into "a knows
that χ is F" ('Knowledge and Logos', 366-7).

knowledge for which something is manifest without being describable

makes visual metaphors appropriate to it.
Another related characteristic of nonpropositional knowledge is that
it falls outside the true/false alternative.15 A meaningful description
predicates y of χ either correctly or incorrectly; therefore, it must be either
true or false. In the case of nonpropositional knowledge, on the other
hand, what is known is not some proposition that can be either true or
false of x, but rather χ itself. And this χ itself cannot be true or false: it
instead is either manifest or not. Yet this does not imply that nonpropo-
sitional knowledge is an all-or-nothing affair. On the contrary, its lack of
a truth-value is what enables it, unlike prepositional knowledge, to
admit degrees.16 A thing can be more or less manifest and nonpropositional
knowledge can accordingly be dimmer or clearer. A proposition about this
thing, on the other hand, is either true or false, is either known or not
known.
But specifically what sorts of knowledge are nonpropositional in this
sense? Three possible candidates can be identified: 1) Practical knowl-
edge.17 It could be argued that knowledge of how to ski is not identical
15 See Wieland, Formen des Wissens, 229-30,233 & 292; Sch dknecht, 227-8.
16 For a defense of the view that prepositional knowledge does not admit degrees, see
N.D. Smith, 'Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowing What in Plato's Republic',
Dialogue 18 (1979) 281-8,285. Smith also argues that 'acquaintance' does not admit
degrees, but that argument is not convincing. I can say that I am Tjetter acquainted'
with my wife than with my neighbor without meaning simply that I know more
true propositions about her.
17 Wieland's characterization of nonpropositional knowledge in Plato focuses on
practical knowledge in the broadest sense of the word. He assigns to this class 1)
experience (Erfahrung), 2) abilities and skills (F higkeiten und Fertigkeiten), 3) judg-
ment (Urteilskraft), and 4) knowledge of use (Gebrauchswissen). His detailed account
of 'experience', understood as in the phrase 'an experienced doctor', merits being
outlined here. Wieland (Formen des Wissens, 230-3) claims that such 'experience' is
nonpropositional because: 1) it is a disposition that as such cannot be represented in
any statements; 2) its correlate is afield (Wissensfeld) rather than individual objects;
3) its presence is indicated by a person's ability to speak well about the objects within
his field, but it is not constituted by such speech; 4) it cannot be itself objectified, not
being separable even in thought from the person who has it; 5) it is not transferable,
but one must acquire it for oneself; 6) it falls outside the true/false bivalence: even
when an experienced doctor makes mistakes, we do not say that his experience is
false. Wieland claims that these characteristics are analogously true of the other
forms of nonpropositional knowledge he identifies.

with, nor exhausted by, knowledge of what can be truly asserted of

skiing; in other words, that knowledge of how to ski is not reducible to
any description of skiing.18 An ability to ski also apparently cannot be
either true or false, though it can be better or worse. 2) Self-knowledge. It
could also be argued that self-knowledge is not identical with, nor
exhausted by, knowledge of what can be truly asserted of one's self, since
the latter type of knowledge cannot avoid objectifying the self. Self-
knowledge is reflexive in a way that propositional knowledge appar-
ently is not. Specifically, propositional knowledge is by definition
transferable and communicable, while your self-knowledge is appar-
ently something that only you can have. Self-knowledge, in short, may
not be reducible to a description of the self.19 In this case it also cannot be
true or false as a description is, though it can be better or worse. Both of
the mentioned possible forms of nonpropositional knowledge can be
classified as nonobjectifying forms of knowledge. However, perhaps
knowledge of a certain sort of object is also nonpropositional, namely, 3)
Knowledge of unanatyzable objects. Because such objects cannot be broken
down into anything else, they can be at most named, but not described.
They therefore also cannot be spoken of either truly or falsely, but are
either manifest or not (though nothing rules out degrees of manifestation
here). Russellian 'acquaintance' is one example of this kind of knowl-
edge, but only one. Differences are possible in what is considered pri-
mary and therefore unanalyzable: sense data (Russell), simple objects
(early Wittgenstein), or εί'&η (Plato; see below).20
18 This is of course the point behind Gilbert Ryle's distinction between 'knowledge
how' and 'knowledge that' (The Concept of Mind [London: Hutchinson & Hutchinson
1949], 25-61). For a critique of attempts to reduce 'knowledge how' to propositional
knowledge, see Wieland, Formen des Wissens, 253.
19 For a defense of the thesis that self-knowledge is nonpropositional, see Wieland,
Formen des Wissens, 309-10. While Wieland uses self-knowledge as an example to
illustrate the reflexive structure he finds in all forms of practical nonpropositional
knowledge (241; on this reflexive structure see 236-52 & 309-22), he denies that Plato
acknowledged the existence of self-knowledge in the modern sense, i.e., in the sense
of a type of knowledge that is purely reflexive and not o/something else (241,310-11,
319).
20 Wieland admits the possibility of this third type of nonpropositional knowledge
that is object-oriented: 'das intuitive, nicht-diskursive und vorpr dikative Erfassen
einer Sache' (Formen des Wissens, 301). However, he is not convinced that Plato

The purpose of this brief account of possible forms of nonproposi-

tional knowledge is simply to keep the word 'nonpropositional' from
being a mere cipher in the present paper. A positive demonstration of
the existence of these forms of nonpropositional knowledge would
require a great deal of philosophical argumentation,21 while showing
that their existence is recognized in particular dialogues would require
a detailed and comprehensive reading of those dialogues.22 The aim of
the present paper is more limited and negative (though not for that
reason, I hope, unimportant): to encourage and clear the way for such
work by showing that the discussed dialogues are not committed to a
propositional conception of knowledge and that some of the texts that
have been taken to presuppose such a commitment instead point in the
opposite direction.
believes the forms can actually be known in this way (302-3). Wieland's discussion
of Russellian 'acquaintance' admits that this acquaintance may be a necessary
component or precondition of knowledge, but denies that it is itself a distinct and
separable type of knowledge (303-4). As a result, Wieland's account of nonpropo-
sitional knowledge in Plato essentially ignores the 'intuitive' type.
Schildknecht's account (228-32), on the other hand, identifies both practical and
intuitive types of nonpropositional knowledge in Plato. While she does not include
self-knowledge, she does recognize, along with Wieland, that nonpropositional
knowledge 'lacks objectifiability' (227). She also sees practical knowledge and
intuitive knowledge as both components of dialectical knowledge (232-4). For my
own account of the reflexive, practical and intuitive character of dialectical knowl-
edge, see my 'Self-Knowledge, Practical Knowledge, and Insight: Plato's Dialectic
and the Dialogue Form', in Francisco J. Gonzalez, ed., The Third Way: New Directions
in Platonic Studies (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield 1995) 155-87.
21 The failure even to consider the possibility that not all knowledge is propositional
is sometimes justified with the excuse that nonpropositional knowledge could not
be described or even talked about. The fallacy in this excuse is pointed out by
Schildknecht: description of this kind of nonpropositional knowledge [i.e.,
practical knowledge] can, of course, be given in propositions, but this makes
nonpropositional knowledge the object of propositions and thus of propositional
knowledge, and does not render it propositional' (232). See also Wieland, Die Formen
des Wissens, 227,230,234 & 304. Wieland rightly warns against the unfounded and
misleading assumption that 'weil man über jedes Wissen mit Sätzen reden kann,
auch der Inhalt jedes Wissens in Gestalt von Sätzen müßte formulieren und mit-
teilen lassen' (235).
22 I pursue the latter project in my Dialectic and Dialogue.

II The 'Philosophical Digression' of the Seventh Letter
The 'philosophical digression' of the Seventh Letter is best known for the
claim that the subject matter of philosophy cannot be expressed in words
as other studies can. What concerns us here, however, is the reason
behind this claim. Why is it that the subject matter of philosophy cannot
be expressed in words? The letter's answer is clear: because of the
weakness inherent in λόγος.23 In order, then, to understand the limits of
language in philosophy we need to understand what exactly this weak-
ness is.
There are in fact, according to the letter, three things that are indis-
pensable for the attainment of knowledge: 1) the name of a thing (δνομα),
2) its definition (λόγος), and 3) its image (εϊδωλον). 4) The knowledge
itself is listed as a fourth thing distinct from these three. 5) The object of
knowledge (what 'is truly being,' αληθώς εστίν v, 342bl: apparently the
είδος) is a fifth thing. Each of the three means of attaining knowledge is
described as having its peculiar weakness: 1) a name is unstable because
its application is determined entirely by convention (343a9-b3), 2) a
definition shares the instability of the words that comprise it (343b4-6),
and 3) a sensible image is full of what is opposite to that of which it is
the image (the image of a circle, e.g., a circle drawn or turned on a lathe,
everywhere touches upon a straight line, 343a5-9). The letter claims,
however, that there is a weakness greater than these specific ones, a
weakness it attributes to λόγος. Λόγος here must have a wider meaning
than it does when it is simply one of the means of attaining knowledge:
in the latter case it means 'definition,' but when the weakness of οι λόγοι
is described as the greatest reason for the unclarity of 'the four,' i.e., the
three means and 'knowledge,' λόγοι must refer more generally to 'lan-
guage' as a whole or to 'propositions.'24 But what then is this weakness
that afflicts propositions or language?
23 That the argument of the letter is directed against oral as well as written discourse,
contrary to the view of those who wish to ascribe to Plato Oral doctrines', has been
shown conclusively by, among others, Sayre, 'Plato's Dialogues', 95-7; Review of
Plato and the Foundation of Metaphysics, by HJ. Kr mer, Ancient Philosophy 13 (1993)
167-84; 'Theory of Forms', 180-1.
24 This is also noted by Andreas Graeser, Philosophische Erkenntnis und begriffliche
Darstellung: Bemerkungen zum Erkenntnistheoretischen Exkurs des VII Briefs (Mainz:
Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur 1989), 15.

The weakness is briefly described in the following two passages:
Furthermore, the four make manifest no less the qualities of a thing (το
ποιόν τι) than its being (το δν) due to the weakness of language (το των
λόγων ασθενές). (342e2-343al, my translation)
Many more reasons can be given to show how each of the four is
unclear, but the greatest is the one we mentioned a little before: given
that the being of an object and its qualities are two different things and
that what the soul seeks to know is not the qualities (το ποιόν τι) but the
"what" (το τί), each of the four offers the soul, both in words and in
deeds, what it does not seek, so that what is said or shown by each of
the four is easily refuted by the senses. As a result they fill practically
everyone with perplexity (απορία) and confusion. (343b6-c5, my trans-
lation)
Two points need to be made here if these passages are to be properly

interpreted: 1) While the first passage leaves open the possibility that the
four make manifest both a thing's qualities and its being, the second
passage rules this out, since the claim that the four offer the soul what it
does not seek implies that they offer it the qualities instead o/the being
of a thing.25 Therefore, the first passage must be taken to be an under-
25 Nicholas White in Plato on Knowledge and Reality (Indianapolis: Hackett 1976), 202-3,
takes the weakness of language to be the lack of a guaranteed correspondence
between words and the forms to which they refer. White can defend this interpre-
tation only by taking the brief mention of the instability of words and logoi out of
context and ignoring (i.e., not even mentioning) what the letter cites as the principal
source of the weakness of language and the cause of the specific defects in the four
means: that they can express only how a thing is qualified and not its being. It is
ironic that elsewhere White criticizes Gadamer for disregarding the connection in
the letter between the point about language and the τι/ποΐόν τι distinction (Obser-
vations and Questions about Hans-Georg Gadamer's Interpretation of Plato', in
Charles L. Griswold, Jr., ed., Platonic Writings, Platonic Readings, 299 no). In this later
piece, White does mention the distinction, but he assumes (wrongly, as I argue
below) that it is a distinction between essential and accidental properties (253).
Furthermore, he paraphrases the letter as claiming that the four means 'encourag[e]
the confusion of fi and poion' (252), when in fact the letter makes the much stronger
claim (at least at 343b6-c5) that the four means offer us το ποιόν τι instead of what
we seek, i.e., το τί.

statement.26 2) The phrase 'the weakness of language/ presented as it is

with no qualifications, appears to rule out the interpretation that the
weakness in question is a temporary or accidental one that could be
remedied within language. The reference is not to the weakness of a
certain type of language, but to the weakness of language tout court?7
Of course, we cannot understand why language has this weakness
until we determine the meaning of the distinction between how a thing
is qualified (its 'qualities') and what it is (its true being). Unfortunately,
the letter does not attempt to explain or justify this distinction. However,
the criteria that a correct interpretation must meet are clear: 1) it must
make sense of the claim that language offers us the 'qualities' of a thing
rather than the 'true being' we seek; 2) it must explain why 'what is said
or shown by each of the four is easily refuted by the senses' (343c3-4) and
3) it must also provide some justification for the view that the whole
present argument is meant to defend: that the subject matter of philoso-
phy cannot be expressed in words as other studies can and that 'no one
with intelligence would dare to fix his thoughts in [language], especially
if [this language is] unalterable as is the case with written words'
(343al-4).
Under the influence of Aristotle, many scholars have, with little or no
argument, interpreted this distinction between how a thing is qualified
and what it is, as it occurs both here and elsewhere throughout the
dialogues, as equivalent to the distinction between a thing's accidental
26 As it is by W.K.C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 5 (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press 1978), 408 n2, and Hermann Gundert, 'Zum Philoso-
phischen Exkurs im 7. Breif, in Platonstudien (Amsterdam: Verlag B.R. Grüner 1977)
99-119,109 n22. Graeser sees the first passage as making a weaker claim than the
second, but concludes that the former must be interpreted in the light of the latter,
rather than vice versa (13,37).
27 David Ross (Plato's Theory of Ideas [Oxford: Clarendon Press 1951], 141) can claim
that the final outcome of the dialectical process is 'a precise definition' only by
restricting the letter's critique to 'conventional' definitions; J.N. Findlay asserts that
'Plato in these passages does not hold philosophical insight to be ineffable and
private, only that it cannot be shared while words are used in a routine manner based
on examples culled from the commerce of the senses' (Plato: The Written and
Unwritten Doctrines [London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1974], 301; my emphasis).
The qualifications Ross and Findlay read into the text are simply not there, either
explicitly or implicitly.

and essential properties.28 However, that this cannot be the correct inter-
pretation of the distinction as it occurs in the Seventh Letter is made
immediately evident by its failure to satisfy the three criteria. The claim
that language and 'the four' offer us a thing's accidental properties and
not the essential properties that we seek to know seems entirely unrea-
sonable and unfounded. If w and χ are the accidental properties of t and
y and z are its essential properties, why could we not correctly express
t's essential properties in the proposition't is y and z'? Likewise, it is hard
to see how such a proposition could be 'easily refuted by the senses.'
Finally, there appears to be no reason why we could not express in lang-
uage, oral or written, the essential properties of the objects of philosophy.
But if this interpretation of the distinction is rejected, what is the alter-
native?
Perhaps a thing's 'qualities' are all of its properties (accidental and
so-called 'essential'), while its Ijeing' or 'whatness' is what underlies these
properties but cannot be reduced to any or all of them. It is not hard to
see that this interpretation satisfies the criteria. It is reasonable to say that
language can express only the properties of a thing: any proposition
attempting to state what χ is will only be able to predicate properties y
and ζ of it. What the nature of the subject itself is beyond its having
properties y and ζ is something that the proposition cannot articulate or
describe: it can only name it.29 Of course, if the nature of a thing is simply
identical to certain essential properties that can be predicated of it, a
proposition can fully express this nature. If, however, the 'true being' we
28 E.g., see White, Observations', 253, and Gerhard M ller, 'Die Philosophie im
pseudoplatonischen Brief, in Andreas Graeser and Dieter Maue, eds., Platonische
Studien (Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universit tsverlag 1986) 146-71, 151. This inter-
pretation is rightly rejected by Graeser (17) and Margherita Isnardi-Parente, 'Per
L'Interpretazione dell' Excursus Filosofico della VTI Epistola Platonica', Parola del
Passato 19 (1964) 241-90, 281-2. However, Isnardi-Parente seems in the end to
identify the ποίον τι with accidental properties understood as sensible properties
(286), as Sayre also seems to do (Plato's Literary Garden, 15; 'Theory of Forms', 182).
This identification, however, is ruled out by the text: the kind of knowledge called
the 'fourth' in the letter is described as suffering, like the three means, from the
weakness of expressing το ποιόν τι rather than το τί (342e2-3al), even though it is
said to exist only 'in the soul' and not in 'articulate voice' nor in 'the shapes of
physical bodies' (342c4-dl).
29 The early Wittgenstein appears to have a similar distinction in mind when he writes:
'Ein Satz kann nur sagen, wie ein Ding ist, nicht was es isf (Tractatus 3.221).

seek is not reducible to any set of 'predicates' (which is what the letter's
distinction, on this interpretation, maintains), then clearly propositions
must be incapable of offering it to us. Language in this case is weak
indeed.
Furthermore, this interpretation can explain the consequence that
'what is said or shown by each of the four is easily refuted by the senses.'
If no property or set of properties predicated of a thing in a proposition
can exhaust or capture its true being, then any attempt to say what this
thing is can be refuted by means of a counter-example from sense
experience, i.e., something that we call χ but that does not have the
properties by which we attempt to define the nature of x. The view that
no essential definition is immune to refutation leads the author not to
the Wittgensteinian rejection of 'essences' in favor of 'family resem-
blances,'30 but rather to the conclusion that there is a weakness in
language that makes it incapable of expressing such essences.
Finally, the suggested interpretation satisfies the third criterion: if
language in expressing a thing's properties must fail to express its 'true
being,' and if philosophy has as its subject matter precisely the 'true
being' of things (or their φύσις, 341d7), then it follows that the subject
matter of philosophy 'cannot be expressed in words as others studies
can.' Someone who tried to express the nature of things in words,
especially in unretractable and unqualifiable written words, would be a
fool indeed.
While this interpretation of the letter's distinction clearly satisfies the
three criteria, what might appear more difficult is explaining and de-
fending it philosophically. Yet the following reflections may help: from
the fact that our language can express a thing's nature only by predicat-
ing properties of it, it does not follow that this nature is nothing but a
bundle' of properties; in fact, the view that a thing has one nature (one
'true being') may be considered incompatible with the view that this
nature is reducible to a plurality of properties. Of course, this view leaves
30 Philosophical Investigations, sections 65ff. See Garth Hallett, A Companion to Wittgen-

stein's 'Philosophical Investigations,' (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 1977), 50.
In a manuscript from approximately 1932-3, Wittgenstein observes: Ί cannot char-
acterize my standpoint better than by saying that it is opposed to that which Socrates
represents in the Platonic dialogues. For if asked what knowledge is I would list
examples of knowledge, and add the words "and the like". No common element is
to be found in them all' (cited and translated in Hallett, 33).

open the Wittgensteinian option of denying that a thing has an 'essence'

or 'true being.' However, if one rejects this option, and there is no
question that the letter does, then the present view is reasonable. Because
the unity of a thing's essence is not reducible to a plurality of properties,
and because propositions about a thing can express no more than that
certain properties belong to it (that it is qualified in a certain way; ποι- ν
τι), propositions have the weakness of not being able to express the true
essence of a thing (το τί). There are good philosophical reasons for con-
testing this view,31 but there is nothing absurd in it (its truth is a larger
issue that cannot be dealt with here).
A passage from the Phaedo can help us both to understand more
concretely the weakness of language as thus interpreted and to see its
relation to the specific weaknesses of 'the four' mentioned above. Socra-
tes in explaining his 'hypothetical' theory of explanation says the follow-
ing of beauty:
I no longer understand nor can I recognize those other clever reasons;

but if anyone gives me as the reason why a given thing is beautiful
either its having a blooming colour, or its shape, or something else like
that, I dismiss those other things — because all others confuse me —
but in a plain, artless, and possibly simple-minded way, 1 hold this close
to myself: nothing else makes it beautiful except that beautiful itself,
whether by its presence or communion or whatever the manner and
nature of the relation may be; as I don't go so far as to affirm that, but
only that it is by the beautiful that all beautiful things are beautiful.
(100clO-d8; Gallop trans.)
Socrates implies here that beauty is not reducible to color, shape or any-
thing like that. This claim is often seen as restricted to sensible properties;
in this case, what Socrates recommends is that beauty be denned in terms
of non-sensible properties. Yet Socrates's 'safe' reply to the question of
31 For example, one might ask: why should we believe that anything remains once we
have abstracted from a thing's properties? This is the kind of objection that has been
made against attempts, e.g., that of John Locke, to find a 'substance' underlying
properties. There is, however, an important difference between the two positions:
while substance is for Locke unknowable, the letter, as seen below, takes the 'true
being' of a thing to be knowable, though inexpressible. The question then is: why
assume the existence of such inexpressible knowledge? The Meno will be seen to
provide some reasons.

why something is beautiful is that beauty makes it so, not that it possesses
certain non-sensible properties in terms of which beauty is defined.
Gregory Vlastos has indeed maintained that the word Tjeauty' is here
only a place-holder for a definition.32 This is only an assertion, however,
and finds no support in the text: not only does Socrates define neither
beauty nor the εϊδη involved in his proof of the soul's immortality, but
he never gives the slightest indication that such a definition plays any
role, not to mention the central role, in his method of explanation.
Furthermore, Vlastos's interpretation renders incomprehensible Socra-
tes's description of his explanations as artless, plain and safe: a definition
of beauty would be anything but that. Finally, when Socrates himself
later offers a 'more sophisticated' type of explanation (105b-c), it too has
nothing to do with defining εϊδη. There is another possible, and I believe
more plausible, interpretation: what Socrates claims to be dangerous is
reducing beauty to any properties, sensible or non-sensible, and then
explaining a thing's beauty as due to those properties. Socrates's auto-
biographical account of his own difficulties with explanation makes
clear what the danger is: if we claim that a thing is beautiful because it
possesses properties A and B, someone will refute us by pointing either
to something else we call beautiful that has properties not-A and not-B
or to something that has properties A and Β but is not beautiful; what
we say will thus, in the words of the Seventh Letter, be 'easily refuted by
the senses.' If the view in the Phaedo thus parallels the view in the letter,
the reason behind both may be the same: that the true nature of a thing
(in this case, beauty) is not reducible to properties that can be asserted
of it. In this case, the 'plainness' and 'simple-mindedness' of Socrates's
theory of explanation is simply a result of the weakness of language: if
language is incapable of expressing the true nature of a thing, then no
definition of beauty is safe from refutation. Consequently, there is only
one safe explanation of why a thing is beautiful: "Through Beauty'.
32 'Reasons and Causes in the Phaedo', in Gregory Vlastos, ed., Plato: A Collection of
Critical Essays. I: Metaphysics and Epistemology (New York: Anchor Books 1971)
132-66; see especially 146,148,154-6. On p. 146 Vlastos gives the following example
of Socrates's aitia: 'Why is this figure a square? Because it has four equal sides and
four equal angles.' Yet this example does not correspond to any of the ones Socrates
himself provides, all of which are of the form: 'Why is this figure a square? Because
it participates in Squareness'.

Anything we say beyond this will, by substituting the 'qualities' of a

thing for its Toeing', lead us and others astray.
What Socrates says in the Phaedo also shows how this weakness of
language is related to the specific weaknesses of 'the four': a sensible
image of beauty will present us only with certain sensible properties
(such as shape and color) and therefore not with the true nature of
beauty; the analysis of the word 'beauty' will not reveal any stable nature
but only a plurality of contradictory properties to which the word has
been assigned by convention; a definition, by focusing on certain prop-
erties to which the word refers, will fail to express the true nature of the
thing defined and thus will be vulnerable to refutation by appeal to
sensible instances that contradict it.
The suggested interpretation of the distinction between a thing's
qualities and its true being explains the Seventh Letter's major claims and
provides its author with a philosophically tenable position. I am not
aware of any other interpretation that can do this. Assuming that this
interpretation is therefore correct and assuming the general description
of nonpropositional knowledge given above, we can conclude, not only
that according to the letter philosophical knowledge is nonpropositional,
but also why. A proposition, by simply predicating y of x, expresses only
how χ is qualified and not what it is; therefore, knowledge of what χ is, of
the 'true being' that is the subject matter of philosophy, could not be a
knowledge of propositions.33
This view, however, leaves unanswered an important question: is this
nonpropositional knowledge possible or, as some have thought,34 does
the letter's argument conclude that knowledge of the true nature of
things is beyond human powers? Are we completely confined to our
means of inquiry and to λόγοι? The letter might be seen as suggesting
this view when it refers to the weakness of 'the four' (rather than 'the
three') and thereby apparently attributes this weakness to knowledge
itself ('the fourth'). Since names, definitions and images are our only
33 Cf. Graeser, 33.

34 E.g., Rafael Ferber, Die Unwissenheit des Philosophen oder Warum hat Plato die
'ungeschriebene Lehre' nicht geschrieben? [Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag 1991],
especially 41-5, 51; 'Hat Plato in der "Ungeschriebene Lehre" eine "Dogmatische
Metaphysik und Systematik" Vertreten? Einige Bemerkungen zum Status Quaes-
tionis', Methexis 6 (1993) 37-54,44-9.

means of attaining knowledge, this knowledge must apparently be as

incapable of expressing the true being of a thing as they are. Yet the
following conclusion of the letter indicates that we can come to possess
a type of knowledge35 that, while requiring the three means for its
attainment, is yet able, with great difficulty and partially, to transcend
them:
Only barely (μόγις), when the [three], i.e., names, definitions, as well as
appearances and perceptions, are rubbed against each other (τριβόμενα
προς άλληλα), each of them being refuted through well-meaning [non-
adversarial] refutations (εν εΰμενέσιν έλέγχοις ελεγχόμενα) in a process
35 White (Observations/ 253-4) has seen a distinction in the letter between two kinds
of knowledge: one that suffers from the weakness of the three means by being
discursive and representational and one that transcends this weakness by being
some form of direct intuition. Something like this distinction is also recognized by
Isnardi-Parente (279 & 286) and Graeser (10, 30-1). However, White appears to
believe that the non-defective type of knowledge can altogether transcend the
words, definitions and images to which the defective type is completely confined
(something explicitly denied at 342d8-e2). H-G. Gadamer rightly criticizes this error
('Reply to Nicholas P. White', in Charles L. Griswold, Jr., ed., Platonic Writings,
Platonic Readings, 258-66, 261). However, Gadamer and Ferber (Unwissenheit des
Philosophen, 41-2 and 76 nlOl, though he allows that the word επιστήμη has both a
narrower and a broader meaning) fall into the opposite error of recognizing in the
letter nothing but the defective kind of knowledge that is one of 'the four'. The
passage that most clearly rules this out is 343el-3: 'Yet the process of dealing with
all four [πάντων αυτών must refer to the four], moving up and down to each one,
barely gives birth to knowledge of the ideal nature [i.e., "the fifth" or "true being"]
in someone with an ideal nature.' The knowledge that is one of the four means
cannot be the same as the knowledge that results from movement through these
means. Furthermore, this resulting knowledge is of 'the fifth', while the knowledge
that is one of the 'four' has the weakness of offering το ποιόν τι in place of 'the fifth'.
The text therefore demands that we find a middle ground between the interpretation
of White and that of Gadamer and Ferber. While there are, contra Gadamer and
Ferber, two kinds of knowledge here, propositional and nonpropositional, they are
not, contra White, independent of each other, but instead are united in the dialectical
process. Nonpropositional knowledge of the fifth can be attained and maintained
only through the constant mediation of our defective propositional knowledge (the
fourth), and even then just barely (μόγις). While there is the possibility of direct
intuition here, this intuition is not something that is possessed fully, once and for
all, but rather something that we must constantly toil to capture and recapture by
defective means of knowledge that are never adequate to the task (see Luigi
Stefanini, Platane [Padova: CEDAM 1932], xxxiii).

252 Francisco }. Gonzalez
of questioning and answering without envy, will wisdom (φρόνησις)

along with insight (νους) commence to cast its light in an effort at the
very limits of human possibility. (344b3-cl)
This knowledge cannot be prepositional because: 1) given the context,
its object must be the 'true being' which propositions, owing to their
weakness, cannot express; 2) the passage clearly contrasts this knowl-
edge with the 'means' that are 'rubbed together' and refuted. What this
passage is claiming, then, is that the very process of comparing names,
definitions and sensible appearances and proving their inadequacies
against each other ('rubbing together' and 'refuting') can spark, just
barely and with great difficulty, nonpropositional knowledge of true
being that as such transcends these means.
This passage dispels a couple of common myths about nonproposi-
tional knowledge. The first is that such knowledge is necessarily a
complete and final illumination that provides absolute certainty and
thus renders all further inquiry unnecessary.36 This view is contradicted
by the qualifications 'at the very limits of human possibility' and 'barely'
(μόγις, emphasized by its position at the beginning of the sentence),
qualifications also found in the myth of the Phaedrus where Socrates
appears to be describing nonpropositional knowledge of the είδη ,37 Such
passages show that nonpropositional knowledge, unlike the Cartesian
'light of nature' that provides certainty by making ideas perfectly 'clear
and distinct,' can in varying degrees be partial and dim. As Nicholas
White has noted, the terms 'certain' and 'infallible' can have meaning
only as applied to propositional knowledge.38 Furthermore, as noted
above, only propositions can be true or false. Therefore, the charac-
terization of nonpropositional knowledge as infallibly true is a category
36 The mistake I am criticizing is especially evident in Stemmer's argument that the

possibility of nonpropositional knowledge would render the elenctic and hypotheti-
cal methods unnecessary (150-1).
37 The qualification κατά δύναμιν occurs at 249c5 while at 248a4-5 the best soul is
described as μόγις καθορωσα τα δντα.
38 'But since directly cognizing in our present sense means having in one's mind no
representation, and therefore no propositional representation, involved in one's
cognition, it is clear that direct cognition cannot in and of itself contain anything
that could be called infallible.' (White, Observations', 255)

mistake. One can say of such knowledge only whether it is present and
in what degree.
The other myth is that nonpropositional knowledge is completely
incompatible with any kind of discursive thought. On the contrary,
according to the passage cited above, while the knowledge attained is
nonpropositional, the process by which it is attained, the 'rubbing to-
gether/ is completely discursive. In short, the view that nonproposi-
tional knowledge must be some form of mystical rapture that completely
dispenses with discursive reasoning and provides a total revelation of
the truth is a caricature.
Even once these two myths are dispelled, important questions remain.
What exactly is the process of 'rubbing together'? And, more impor-
tantly, how can the 'rubbing together' of discursive and defective means
of knowledge produce knowledge that transcends these defects and is
nondiscursive?39 The Seventh Letter does not provide answers to these
questions. It is therefore necessary to turn at this point to the dialogues
in order to see if they suggest a similar characterization of knowledge as
nonpropositional and if they can shed more light on the mysterious
process whereby this knowledge is attained.
Ill Apparent Contradictions Between the Seventh Letter

and the Meno and the Republic
The dialogues can of course be of little help in understanding the teach-
ing of the Seventh Letter if they in fact contradict it. Yet there is reason to
believe that the letter is contradicted precisely by those dialogues that
might otherwise appear most akin to it: the Meno and the Republic. The
Meno agrees with the Seventh Letter in distinguishing between the ques-
tions 'τί εστίν' and 'όποιον τι': however, it appears to treat the τι as
something definable and thus as identical with the essential properties
expressed in a definition.40 The distinction between the τι and the ποιόν
τι is also found in the Republic, but this dialogue appears to define what
each virtue is (τί εστίν) and explicitly identifies the dialectician with
someone who can give a λόγος of the ουσία of each thing.41 In short, both
39 This question is raised by M ller as an objection to the letter's authenticity (153).

40 See Graeser, 18.
41 See Graeser, 21-2. See also Sorabji.

dialogues appear to treat as definable and prepositional what the Seventh

Letter argues must be indefinable and nonpropositional.
There are, of course, two easy ways of explaining this apparent contra-
diction, short of denying the letter's authenticity: one can claim either
that Plato changed his views on the matter between the writing of the
dialogues and the writing of the letter or that the views espoused by the
character Socrates in the two dialogues do not represent the views of
Plato.42 In what follows, however, I try to show that neither of these
options is necessary because the two dialogues, like the passage from the
Phaedo discussed above, do not in fact contradict, but even support, what
is said in the Seventh Letter.
IV The Meno: Can the Question 'What is Virtue?' be Answered?
In turning to the Meno, an obvious, but surprisingly often overlooked

point first needs to be made if the question is not to be begged: from the
premisses that PI) Socrates's 'What is xT question asks for a definition,
and that P2) Socrates assumes that his interlocutors cannot have the
knowledge of χ they claim to have unless they can define x, it does not
follow that OK) according to Socrates knowledge of χ is definitional.43
There are at least two possible motives that would make the truth of PI
and P2 compatible with the falsity of OK: Socrates could demand defi-
nitions ΜΪ) because he wishes to undermine the conceit of interlocutors
who themselves claim to know χ so well and so completely that they can
say exactly what it is,44 and/or M2) because he believes that the process
itself of examining and refuting definitions of χ can lead to a knowledge
42 The latter strategy is briefly pursued by Charles L. Griswold, 'Commentary on

Sayre/ in John J. Cleary and William Wians, eds., Proceedings of the Boston Area
Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy (1993), vol. 9,200-11,207-9.
43 This inference is explicit in Irwin: 'If failure in an elenchos is Socrates' evidence of
other people's lack of knowledge, then he must take the ability to give a definition
to be necessary for knowledge' (27).
44 Meno says that it is Όύ χαλεπόν ειπείν' (71el) and Όύκ απορία ειπείν' (72al-2) what
virtue is. Laches likewise believes that it is Όύ χαλεπόν ειπείν' what courage is
(190e4). Hippias claims that the question 'What is beauty?' is no big question (ου
μέγα εστί το ερώτημα, 287a8-bl). Euthyphro claims to know precisely (ακριβώς
έπίστασθαι, 4e6) what piety and impiety are.

of χ that transcends all definitions. In short, Socrates's behavior as de-

scribed in PI and P2 is perfectly compatible with a commitment to the
principles of the Seventh Letter: in particular, the view that whoever
thinks he can state in words (written or oral) the true being of a thing is
a fool and that nevertheless the 'rubbing together' of propositions can
spark nonpropositional insight.
Yet one might try to justify DK by revising and strengthening the
premises as follows: P1R) Socrates sets very strict conditions for an
adequate definition of χ (and why would he do so if he did not think that
χ could be defined?); P2R) Socrates appears to infer from the discussion
not only that the interlocutor lacks the kind of knowledge he claims to
have (i.e., one that can be 'easily said'), but also that he lacks any true
knowledge (and what basis would Socrates have for this inference if he
did not believe that knowledge depends on possessing the definition the
interlocutor fails to provide?). Yet the truth of even these premises can
be accepted and explained without any recourse to DK. Concerning P1R:
As the Seventh Letter shows, the belief that the knowledge of virtue is
nonpropositional is not only consistent with, but depends on, the belief
that there is one single είδος or nature of x. If this view is Socrates's own,
we must expect him to demand that any definition that pretends to
provide a knowledge of virtue, for example, express this one είδος, in-
stead of simply listing examples or properties of virtuous actions. This
demand, however, is consistent with the belief that no definition can in
fact meet it and that therefore no definition can provide a knowledge of
virtue. Concerning P2R: What demonstrates Meno's ignorance is not his
failure to find an adequate definition, but rather his confident belief at
the beginning of the dialogue that he has a clear, complete and unprob-
lematic knowledge of virtue that can be easily articulated. This confi-
dence is characteristic of most of the interlocutors and is by itself suf-
ficient to betray their ignorance. Socrates's view in this case parallels the
claim in the Seventh Letter that anyone who presumes to be able to express
in words (especially in writing) the subject matter of philosophy is
thereby shown to have no knowledge of this subject matter (341b7-c4). In
conclusion, contrary to the assumption of so many interpreters,45 Socra-
45 According to Brickhouse and Smith, Socrates 'believes, of course, that if one is to be

morally virtuous, one must know what virtue is, and that if one truly knows what
virtue is, one can correctly express its definition' (21). Yet they argue, against many
other scholars, that Socrates does not consider a definition of virtue to be necessary

tes's demand for a definition of virtue in the Meno is compatible with a

complete rejection of the view that the knowledge of virtue is defini-
tional, and thus with an acceptance of the argument of the Seventh Letter.
But is there any positive evidence either for or against the view that
the knowledge Socrates seeks in this dialogue is not definitional, that he
accepts the claim of the Seventh Letter that a definition cannot express τί
εστίν, and that therefore his motive in demanding a definition is either
MI or M2? This is the important question and in seeking to answer it we
must first look at the way in which the Meno introduces a distinction
similar to that found in the letter.
The dialogue begins with Meno's abrupt question: can virtue be
taught or is it acquired through practice or by nature or in some other
way? Socrates professes to be unable to answer this question for two
reasons: he does not know altogether what virtue itself is (ότι ποτ' εστί
το παράπαν, 71a6) and without first knowing what it is (τί εστίν) he cannot
possibly know how it is qualified (όποιον τι) (71b3-4; I will refer to this
as the 'priority principle')· Thus Socrates appeals to a distinction that at
least shares the language of the distinction made in the Seventh Letter.
Furthermore, that the distinction plays an important role in the dialogue,
and is not simply an ad hoc device to lure Meno into answering the 'What
is xT question, is shown by its restatement at the end of the dialogue:
for any knowledge about what is or is not virtuous (and thus is not committed to
the 'Socratic fallacy')/ but only for 'moral wisdom' understood as the knowledge
required to make correct judgments about all instances of virtue (45-60). Yet it is
consistent with the texts to go further than Brickhouse and Smith by claiming that
for Socrates 1) such moral expertise based on definitions is in principle unattainable
and 2) the knowledge of virtue we are capable of possessing has instead the
character of nonpropositional insight. Brickhouse and Smith grant that the only
method of questioning that Socrates practices and urges others to practice, i.e., the
elenchos, is not likely to lead to 'wisdom' (42). How far is this admission from claim
1)? Furthermore they recognize the inappropriateness of characterizing Socrates's
epistemology in terms of prepositional knowledge (43). But 2) is not an option for
them because they are committed to the invalid inference I criticize. Among the few
who do not make this inference is Sarah L. Rappe, who correctly argues that the
goal of the Socratic elenchus is not to provide definitions but to promote self-knowl-
edge, where this self-knowledge involves the 'aporetic realization that virtue cannot
be defined but only lived' ('Socrates and Self-Knowledge,' Apeiron 28 [1995] 1-24,
17). However, even Rappe slips into assuming, even at the cost of inconsistency,
that Socrates wants good definitions (4).

'But we will have clear knowledge about this matter when before asking
in what way virtue comes to be in humans we attempt to search for what
virtue is in itself and by itself (αυτό καθ' αυτό ζητεΐν τί ποτ' εστίν αρετή,
lOObo). But how are we to understand this distinction in the Meno be-
tween what a thing is and how it is qualified? Is it, like the one attributed
to the letter above, a distinction between all of a thing's properties (which
can be defined) and what the thing itself is (which cannot be defined)?
An affirmative answer appears to be suggested by the analogy Socra-
tes uses to illustrate the distinction: one cannot know, he claims, whether
Meno is handsome, rich and well-born or the opposite if one does not
know altogether who Meno is (μη γιγνώσκει το παράπαν όστις εστίν,
71b5-6). Some interpreters46 have understood this analogy between the
knowledge of virtue and the knowledge of Meno as showing that the
former, like the latter, is a knowledge by acquaintance and thus nonpropo-
sitional. These interpreters have been justly criticized for jumping the
gun.47 After all, not everything that is true of one term of an analogy need
be true of the other term.
However, the analogy of 'knowing who Meno is' also cannot be com-
pletely disanalogous. Let us consider the view of those who want to
maintain that the knowledge of virtue is here completely propositional
and has nothing to do with any kind of direct acquaintance. Presumably,
on this view Socrates's distinction is one between propositional knowl-
edge of the essential properties of virtue (τί εστίν) and propositional
knowledge of its accidental properties (όποιον τι).48 Socrates's 'priority
principle' would then be equivalent to the Aristotelian view that one
46 See R.S. Bluck, Plato's Meno (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1961), 213-4,
and J.T. Bedu-Addo, 'Sense Experience and Recollection in Plato's Meno', American
Journal ofPMology 104 (1983) 228-48,230-3.
47 For the criticisms see Alexander Nehamas, 'Meno's Paradox and Socrates as
Teacher', in Hugh H. Benson, ed., Essays on the Philosophy of Socrates (New York;
Oxford University Press 1992) 298-316, 300; Gail Fine, 'Inquiry in the Meno', in
Richard Kraut, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Plato (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press 1992) 200-26, 225-6 n42; R.W. Sharpies, Plato: Meno (Chicago:
Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers 1985), 125.
48 E. Seymer Thompson's uncommonly detailed discussion of the distinction inter-
prets it in this way (The Meno of Plato [London: Macmillan & Co. 1901; reprinted
New York: Garland Publishing, Inc. 1980], 63-5). This interpretation is assumed by
Fine, 'Inquiry in the Meno', 216 n6.

must know a thing's essential properties before one can truly know its
nonessential properties.49 But on this interpretation, either the priority of
'knowing who Meno is' is not analogous to the priority of knowing what
virtue is or we must believe that we cannot know any of Meno's 'acci-
dental' properties, e.g., that he is from Thessaly, is beautiful and is
wealthy, before we know his 'essential' properties, whatever those might
be. Yet even if this latter view is defensible, it could hardly be advanced
by Socrates, and accepted by Meno, as something self-evident. On the
other hand, if Socrates's distinction is, like the one in the Seventh Letter,
a distinction between prepositional knowledge of all of a thing's prop-
erties and nonpropositional knowledge of the thing itself, and if the
'priority principle' therefore maintains that knowledge of a thing's prop-
erties presupposes nonpropositional acquaintance with the thing itself,
then the priority of 'knowing who Meno is' is both analogous and self-
evident: before truly knowing any of Meno's properties, accidental or
essential, we must be acquainted with who Meno is. For example, we
cannot truly know that Meno is from Thessaly, unless we are acquainted
with the person to whom the name 'Meno' refers. One could of course
counter that we know who Meno is by reading about him in the dia-
logues.50 Yet Socrates's point could be precisely that such book-knowl-
edge is not, strictly speaking, knowledge of who Meno is. Reading about
Meno can be the basis of true beliefs about Meno's properties, but this
may not constitute knowing who Meno is.51 Similarly you can acquire
through the medium of words true beliefs about the properties of virtue,
but such beliefs perhaps cannot take the place of direct acquaintance
with what virtue is (τί εστίν).
There is no indication here of what the exact nature of this nonpropo-
sitional acquaintance would be and the aim of the present discussion is
only to determine whether or not the dialogue recognizes the existence
of such a thing. Yet the above sketch of possible candidates for nonpro-
positional knowledge defines the options. If we stress the personal and
practical dimension of acquaintance with Meno, then the suggestion
might be that the knowledge of virtue is a form of acquaintance by reason
49 Fine appeals to Aristotle's Posterior Analytics 11-10 as a text in which this view is
defended ('Inquiry in the Meno', 207 n!3). See also II10,93b29-94al9.
50 This is Fine's objection ('Inquiry in the Meno', 226 n42).
51 See Bedu-Addo, 231.

of being similarly nonobjectifiable, either because it is a practical know-

how or because it is a form of self-knowledge or because it is both.52 If
instead what we see in the case of 'knowing Meno' is acquaintance with
a unique individual, then the suggestion might be that the knowledge of
virtue is a form of acquaintance by reason of having as its object a nature
that is not reducible to a plurality of properties and that therefore cannot
be described.53 It is beyond the scope of mis paper to defend one of these
options against the others; before they can even be debated, it is neces-
sary to bring into question the prevalent view that the knowledge of
virtue is for Socrates definitional.
What can be concluded at this point is 1) that there is so far no positive
evidence of a contradiction between Socrates's τι/ποΐόν τι distinction in
the Meno and the distinction in the Seventh Letter and 2) that there is some
evidence, though admittedly slight, for identifying the two, namely, that
such an identification is best able to make sense of the 'knowing who
Meno is' analogy. But we must now turn to the passage that appears to
contradict most directly this identification.
After Meno's initial attempts to define virtue have proven unsatisfac-
tory, Socrates provides an example of the kind of definition he seeks:
figure (σχήμα) is 'the only thing that always accompanies color' (ο μόνον
των όντων τυγχάνει χρώματι άει έπόμενον, 75blO-ll). When Meno ex-
52 Kenneth Dorter's reason for claiming that '[t]he wisdom of the good person is not
prepositional' ('Levels of Knowledge in the Theaetetus', Review of Metaphysics 44
[1990] 343-73,373) is that in this wisdom 'what we know and what we are coincide'
(372). Dorter also explains that for Plato 'knowledge of the highest things requires
an inner recognition that is inseparable from our devotion to those things' (373).
53 The notion of 'knowledge by acquaintance' is most often associated with Bertrand
Russell, who defines it as follows: 1 say that I am acquainted with an object when I
have a direct cognitive relation to that object, i.e., when I am directly aware of the
object' ('Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description', in Mysticism
and Logic [London: Unwin Books 1963] 152-67,152). However, as should be clear
from what is said above, my use of the word 'acquaintance' in this paper is broader
in recognizing the practical and personal dimensions this notion has in ordinary
discourse.
It is apparently the narrower, Russellian sense of 'acquaintance' that is operative
in Smith's attempt to show that knowledge for Plato is 'a blend of knowledge by
acquaintance and knowing what' (283), where 'knowing what' is the knowledge of
propositions stating truths essential to the nature of the object. A richer sense of
'acquaintance' may have made a true blend possible here; as it is, Smith's Tjlend'
seems more a juxtaposition of disparate elements.

presses dissatisfaction with this definition, Socrates provides another

definition of figure and a definition of color. This passage has been taken
by R.C. Cross to show conclusively that the knowledge Socrates seeks is
prepositional rather than some sort of 'acquaintance':
Now let us go right back to the Meno and take the very simple example
there which we discussed in detail, when Plato asks what is figure, i.e.,
asks for the είδος of figure. How does he think the request should be
met? Not, it is clear, by, as it were, holding up a substantial entity and
saying: now look at this, this is named "figure", have a good look at it,
get thoroughly acquainted with it, and then you will know figure. Not
at all. The move in giving the είδος of figure, in answering the question
"what is figure", is to make a statement—"figure is the limit of a solid",
and this is regarded as a satisfactory answer. The είδος of figure has
been displayed in the logos, and displayed in the predicate of the logos.
('Logos and Forms in Plato', 446-7)
Yet Cross's implied inference is faulty. It is obviously true that Socrates

wants Meno to give a definition of virtue; yet, as was seen above, it does
not follow from this that Socrates believes the knowledge of virtue to be
definitional. Socrates may be making an impossible demand for an
adequate definition in order to undermine Meno's self-conceit and/or
he may believe that the attempt to define virtue is an important and even
indispensable means of arriving at a knowledge of virtue that is not itself
definitional. The latter possibility has been well stated by R.S. Bluck:
But this "What is x?" question, which admittedly occurs in later dia-
logues also, need mean no more than that Plato believed a search for
definitions to facilitate the attainment of knowledge of the Forms. If the
Platonic εϊδε were truly knowable only by "acquaintance," there might
still be occasion to employ definition as an aid to Recollection and the
practice of Dialectic. Although the nature of any such reality could not
be adequately grasped or conveyed by language, human thinking is
conditioned by the words we use.54
54 'Logos and Forms in Plato: A Reply to Professor Cross', Mind 65 (1956) 522-9,525.
I refer here to the Cross/Bluck debate because it was the last serious debate in
Anglo-American scholarship on the subject of nonpropositional versus preposi-
tional knowledge in Plato.

In this way Bluck shows that Cross is wrong in believing that the present
passage rules out nonpropositional knowledge.
Yet another objection can be made to Cross's reading. In order to count
as any kind of evidence against the view that the knowledge of virtue is
for Socrates nonpropositional, the present passage must be taken as a
straightforward presentation of Socrates's views. The irony of the pas-
sage is, however, so pronounced that it rather counts against the 'prepo-
sitional' interpretation. This irony is betrayed by the following:
1) Given Socrates's demand that Meno state what virtue is (τί έστνν),
it is hard to imagine a worse example than the one he gives. How can
the definition of figure as 'the only thing that always accompanies color'
be construed as a statement of what figure is (τί εστίν)? This definition
may state something true about figure, but it tells us nothing about what
figure is 'in itself and by itself.'55 'Always accompanying color' is no more
intrinsic to what figure is than Tjeing teachable' is to what virtue is.
Therefore, while other philosophers might find the present definition
acceptable, Socrates cannot because it undermines his own distinction
between how a thing is qualified (ποιόν τι) and what it is (τί εστίν). The
example is especially disastrous if, counter to what is argued above,
Socrates sees this distinction as one between accidental and essential
properties: anyone who wanted to state the essential versus the acciden-
tal properties of figure would hardly choose the property of 'always
accompanying color.'
2) It is true that Socrates proceeds to give an apparently more satis-
factory definition of figure as 'the limit of a solid' (στέρεου πέρας, 76a7).
However, he provides this definition only because Meno absurdly ob-
jects (75c2-7) that the first definition leaves color undefined (as if all the
terms of every definition could be defined without an infinite regress
and as if the terms 'limit' and 'solid' were in any less need of definition
than the term 'color'!) If Socrates is seeking a statement of essential
properties, then not only should he not have proposed the first defini-
tion, but, having made this mistake, he should now at least recognize its
great inferiority to the second definition. Instead, Socrates insists that the
first definition is true (75c8) and gives no indication that the second one
55 For a similar objection, see Jane M. Day's introduction to Plato's Meno in Focus (New
York: Routledge 1994), 20. See also I.M. Crombie, 'Socratic Definition', in the same
collection 172-207,188.

is any better.56 Indeed, there may even be evidence that he prefers the
first one, though this point is disputed among interpreters.57
3) What is not in dispute is that Socrates has nothing but contempt for
the third example of a definition he provides in order to please Meno,
the follower of Gorgias: color is 'an effluence of figures commensurate
with sight and perceptible by it' (απορροή οχημάτων όψει σύμμετρος και
αισθητός, 76d4-5). While Meno likes this definition best (it is the sort he
is used to, Socrates explains at 76d8), Socrates expresses his conviction
that the definition of figure is better (76e7). But why does Socrates think
this? In form (and the truth of the content appears not to be at issue in
these examples) the definition of color appears by far the best: rather than
defining the definiendum in terms of its relation to something else (color
in the case of the first definition, a solid in the case of the second), the
definition of color attempts to state exactly what color itself is by first
telling us that it is an effluence and then specifying what kind: an
effluence of figures commensurate with sight and perceptible by it. This
definition therefore appears to be the example that Meno should be
56 In Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 1991),
Gregory Vlastos is so determined to use the second definition of figure as evidence
for Plato's new interest in geometry that he does not even acknowledge the existence
of the first definition (120-2) and instead concludes that 'with the geometrical
definition... he [Socrates] has no fault to find' (122). It is of course true that Socrates
does not explicitly criticize the second definition, but his failure to express any
preference for it over the first definition is sufficiently damaging for Vlastos's view.
For a definitive critique of Vlastos's use of the present passage see Kenneth Seeskin,
'Vlastos on Elenchus and Mathematics', Ancient Philosophy 13 (1993) 37-53, 40-42.
For the many problems with the second definition and the argument that it is not
the model definition many take it to be, see Crombie, 194, and especially G.E.R.
Lloyd, 'The Meno and the Mysteries of Mathematics', Phronesis 37 (1992) 166-83,
175-6.
57 At 74e4 Socrates refers to the definition of figure and then claims at 74e7 that it is
better than the definition of color. Which definition of figure is Socrates referring to
here? W.K.C. Guthrie thinks that he is referring to the second one (A History of Greek
Philosophy, vol. 4 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1975], 249 nl), but Jacob
Klein thinks he is referring to the first (A Commentary on Plato's Meno [Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press 1965], 70). The text itself cannot decide this
dispute. However, Klein's interpretation receives a good deal of support from the
simple fact that Socrates offers the second definition to satisfy Meno's desire for
technical-sounding terms, while he offers the first one entirely of his own volition
and claims to be perfectly satisfied with it.

following, not the definition of figure in terms of something completely

extrinsic to figure. And yet Socrates considers the definition of color to
be the worst one! The view that what Socrates seeks is a definition stating
a thing's essential properties must explain Socrates's behavior here, and
I do not see how it could.
4) But things get even worse if we compare Socrates's definition of
color with his first definition of figure: Socrates defines figure as 'the only
thing that always accompanies color,' but then defines color as 'an efflu-
ence of figures'! The definitions therefore suffer from a vicious circularity.
Not even the second definition of figure escapes this flaw: Socrates de-
fines figure in terms of a solid, but would not a definition of 'solid' itself
presuppose a definition of figure (which is why Euclid defines σχήμα before
he defines στερεόν)?58 In short, Socrates's definitions are vulnerable to the
same criticism he makes of Meno's attempt, after the present digression
on definition, to define virtue as 'desiring fine things and being able to
acquire them' (77b4-5). When Meno admits that only the/usf acquisition
of fine things can count as virtue, Socrates protests: 'You say that virtue
is every activity that is done with a part of virtue [i.e., justice], as if you
had already said what virtue is as a whole and as if I already knew ... '
(79b9-c2). We can make the same protest against Socrates's definitions:
'You define figure as that which always accompanies an effluence of
figures, i.e., color, as if you had already told us what figure is as a whole.
You also define figure as the limit of a solid, even though in order to know
what a solid is we must apparently already know what figure is.'59
Unless there is some way of explaining away all of the above problems
in Socrates's discussion of definition, we are left with only two alterna-
58 The same point is made by Seeskin, 41.

59 Irwin sees Socrates in the Meno as committed to the view that for any definition of
G in terms of F, F must be definable independently of G (153). What Irwin fails to
recognize is that Socrates's own examples of an adequate definition fail to meet this
criterion. Should we then read into the Meno the view that Irwin attributes only to
Plato in later dialogues, specifically the Republic: i.e., that circularity in defining
moral properties is not only inevitable, but acceptable (167,263,272-3,279-80)? Not
only does Socrates in the Meno give no sign of accepting this view, as Irwin
recognizes, but the circularity of his examples is vicious according to Irwin's own
standard: 'Circularity is open to objection if the circle of terms and definitions is too
small' (167); what circle could be smaller than defining color as an effluence of
figures and figure as the only thing that always accompanies color?

tives: either I) Socrates is seeking definitional knowledge of virtue, but

is such an inept bungler that he cannot even give an example of a good
definition or 2) the whole passage is to be understood ironically as a
parody meant to show that virtue cannot be defined. Given the difficulty,
if not impossibility, of believing that the problems are simply a result of
Socrates's (not to mention Plato's) incompetence, it is at least worth
considering if the second alternative is viable. I believe it is. If Socrates
thinks that what virtue is cannot be defined, that a definition could never
state more than how virtue is qualified, and if he wishes to hint at this view
without explicitly affirming it, then we should expect him to do exactly
what he does: to dismiss as sophistical a definition that attempts to state
what a thing is (the definition of color) and to express satisfaction with
one that confines itself to asserting of a thing some extrinsic quality
('following color'). As for why Socrates is not willing to make his critique
of definitions explicit, the answer should already be clear from what was
said above: to do so would be to give up the only means he has for
undermining Meno's conceit and preparing him for the spark of genuine
insight. The realization that virtue cannot be defined would be for Meno
at this point, and even for some readers, not an incentive to a life of
inquiry, but an excuse for mental laziness.
But why is Socrates made to introduce definitions that suffer from
circularity? Plato could intend this circularity to show the careful reader
a consequence of the 'priority principle,' understood as holding that
knowledge of a thing's properties presupposes nonpropositional knowl-
edge of what the thing itself is. In this case, the attempt to define what a
thing is through an analysis of its properties is circular in the sense that
this very analysis presupposes knowledge (nondefinitional, nonpropo-
sitional) of what the thing is. To use Socrates's own example, the attempt
to define who Meno is through an analysis of his properties presupposes
'acquaintance' with who Meno is. To fail to recognize that the knowledge
of το τί is presupposed by any analysis of properties in a definition (and
thus is not prepositional), to think that this knowledge is a result of such
analysis (and thus prepositional), is to be threatened with Meno's de-
mand that every term in a definition be itself defined and, given the
impossibility of such an infinite regress, to fall into the circularity of
defining χ in terms of y and y in terms of x.60
60 As Sayre observes in commenting on this passage, 'Meaningful language thus

Something similar to Socrates's 'priority principle' as interpreted here

has been defended by Stanley Rosen. Rosen distinguishes between a
form's 'identity' and its 'unity'. A form's identity is that structure of
properties (or 'subeidetic elements') that can be articulated and that thus
allows the form to be distinguished from other forms. The form's 'unity',
on the other hand, is that which grants the properties that constitute the
form's identity their coherence as 'this identity here, and none other'.
The form's unity, therefore, cannot be reduced to its properties or
identity: "The unity underlies the identity; it is visible in the coherence
of features as this one identity.'61 Rosen's distinction clearly parallels that
of the Seventh Letter between what a thing is in itself (its 'true being') and
the properties that qualify it. Rosen also recognizes the two consequences
of such a distinction: not only that the thing's unity cannot be defined or
analyzed, as the Seventh Letter recognizes, but also that an intuition of
this unity is presupposed by any analysis or definition of the thing's
identity, as the present passage of the Meno suggests.
As analysts, we attempt to establish "scientifically" or "rigorously" the

unity of an entity by establishing its identity via the entity's predicates.
However, we require a pre-analytical intuition of the unity of an entity
in order to recognize that such-and-such predicates belong to it. It
follows that a whole is not the same as the sum of its parts. We cannot
arrive at the unity of a whole by listing the set of its predicates, even
upon the very rash assumption that the list is complete.62
If interpreted along these lines, Socrates's 'priority principle' not only

is consistent with the teaching of the Seventh Letter, but also receives
strong support from the discussion of definition in the Meno. If, on the
other hand, the principle is interpreted as affirming the priority of
definition, then Socrates's examples not only contradict such priority (by
asserting that figure always accompanies color before telling us what
figure z's), but also render it absurd by pointing to the inescapability of
appears to be held hostage between circularity and regress, and with it the possibil-
ity of discursive knowledge that depends upon language for its acquisition' (Plato's
Literary Garden, 50).
61 'Is Metaphysics Possible?' The Review of Metaphysics 45 (1991) 235-57,251
62 The Limits of Analysis (New York: Basic Books 1980), 107

infinite regress or circularity. In short, the discussion of definition in the

Meno demonstrates either Socrates's incompetence in defending the
priority of definitional knowledge or his commitment to a view like that
espoused in the Seventh Letter. The latter alternative seems preferable.
Yet the discussion of definition is not Socrates's only attempt to
indicate what his question, 'What is virtue?', is seeking. Socrates must
explain his question again after Meno makes the failed attempt to define
virtue mentioned above. As already noted, Meno's definition falls prey
to the same circularity that characterizes Socrates's own examples of
definitions. Therefore, Meno's definition fails, not because it does not
follow these examples, but because it does. But then we need to ask if
the failure of the definition is not necessary. Is there really any way of
defining virtue that does not presuppose an understanding of virtue, that
can itself provide such an understanding? Will any definition of virtue in
terms of specific actions or specific character traits be able to avoid
assuming the virtue of these actions or traits? Can there, in short, be a
definition of virtue that does not include in its terms any reference to a
part or instance of virtue, that defines virtue completely in non-moral
terms? As already argued above, Socrates's choice of examples in the
discussion of definition suggests a negative answer to these questions.
It is therefore with some justification that the frustrated Meno pro-
nounces Socrates's 'What is xT question unanswerable. How can we
even look for something when we do not in the least know what it is?
And even if we find it, how will we recognize it to be the same thing
which we were looking for at the beginning of the inquiry (80d5-8)?
Socrates's response is well known: by means of a discussion with one of
Meno's slaves, he attempts to show that learning is 'recollection'. What
is often not recognized is that Socrates's discussion with the slave, rather
than showing that the 'What is xT question is answerable (in which case
this discussion would contradict the teaching of the Seventh Letter),
shows instead that it can be a means to the recollection of knowledge
while yet being unanswerable.
To see this, we need only review the problem that Socrates challenges
the slave to solve. He first asks the slave to imagine a square each of
whose sides has a length of two feet. When asked the area of this square,
the slave himself figures out that it is two times two or four. Now Socrates
asks the slave to imagine a square with twice the area of the previous
square (i.e., eight) and asks him to state the length of each of its sides
(πηλίκη τις εσται, 82d8). The slave at first reasons that since the present
square has twice the area of the previous square, each of its sides must
be twice as long as a side of the previous square, therefore, four feet.

Socrates, however, points out that the area of a square with sides of four
feet would be four times four or sixteen: four times, rather than twice, as
large as the previous square. Since the slave now realizes that the length
of the side of a square with an area of eight feet must be less than four
and yet more than two, he reasons that it is three feet. Socrates, however,
points out that a square with a side of three feet would have an area of
three times three or nine. At this point the slave is completely perplexed,
just like Meno, Socrates observes. And the slave's perplexity is under-
standable. He has been shown that the length of the side in question is
greater than two, less than four, and yet not three. What else could it be?
What numbers are left?
The slave's perplexity is justified indeed: the side for whose length
Socrates is asking him cannot be measured arithmetically as was the side
of the original square (two feet), since expressed numerically it would
be the square root of eight, or what moderns would call an 'irrational
number'. This side is incommensurable with the other. In the Laws, the
Athenian Stranger criticizes his fellow Greeks (including himself at an
earlier time) for believing that all lengths are commensurable (i.e., 'meas-
urable in terms of each other': μετρητά προς άλληλα, 819elO-ll) and
insists that some lengths cannot be thus measured, either approximately
or exactly (μήτε σφόδρα μήτε ήρεμα, SZOaS).63 Yet what the Athenian
Stranger claims to be impossible is precisely what Socrates initially
demands of the slave: that he 'count exactly' (ειπείν ακριβώς ... άριθμεΐν,
83ell) the length of an incommensurable side.64 'But,' it will be objected,
'the point of the whole episode is that the slave is not left in perplexity
but, with minimal guidance from Socrates, comes to see for himself what
the right side is.' This is of course true, but what is significant is the nature
of the knowledge (or, more precisely, opinion) that the slave attains at
the end of the discussion. It is not what Socrates originally demanded,
i.e., an exact arithmetical statement of the length of the side of a square
63 For a history of the discovery of incommensurability in Ancient Greece, see Thomas

Heath, A History of Greek Mathematics, vol. 1 (New York: Dover Publications 1981),
154-7. For a history of the difficulties encountered by attempts to deal with incom-
mensurability at the time the Meno was written, see M.S. Brown, 'Plato Disapproves
of the Slaveboy's Answer', Review of Metaphysics 21 (1967) 57-93,78-93. Theaetetus
is described as attempting to formulate a general theory of incommensurables at
Theaetetus 147d-148b.
64 Cf. Thompson, 136.

with an area of eight feet. The slave can no more state this length at the
end of the discussion than he could at the beginning. Faced with the
slave's aporia, Socrates offers him an alternative to the original demand:
the alternative of simply pointing to the sought side.65 By drawing this
side as part of a diagram (as the diagonal of a square with an area of four
feet) Socrates then gradually leads the slave to the recognition that this is
the side they are looking for. What is gained, then, is a certain insight or
recognition, not the impossible prepositional knowledge that Socrates's
initial question sought. One might want to argue that what is gained is
the belief that 'the side of a square with an area of eight feet is the diagonal
of a square with an area of four feet'. However, while the slave indeed
has this prepositional belief at the end of the discussion, it is only a
consequence of, and not identical to, the recognition Socrates awakens
in him. Socrates introduces the word 'diagonal' (διάμετρον), attributed
to 'the sophists',66 only after the slave has recognized and pointed to the
correct side (85b4). Furthermore, since Socrates must simply tell the slave
what this technical term is, it and the above proposition are not what is
recollected. Most importantly, this proposition, while expressing the re-
lation of the side of a square with an area of eight feet to a square with
an area of four feet, does not express what this side is in the sense of
Socrates's original demand, i.e., does not state its length. In other words,
even if we do have a proposition at the end, it is not a proposition that
answers the question that drove the slave into aporia. The closest the boy
comes to such an answer is not this proposition, which he could have
been taught while still believing that the side in question is three or four
feet long, but the recognition: 'That's the side whose length I am
strangely unable to state!'
65 Socrates asks, "Από ποίας γραμμής;' and the slave answers, "Από ταύτης' (85bl-2).
Klein describes very well how the solution sought is indefinable and yet compre-
hensible: The solution cannot be expressed numerically: the length of each of those
lines is "unspeakable", is an arreton. It can only be pointed at. But we comprehend,
as the slave does, that this inexpressible length is the length of the sides of the double
square' (185). Michel Narcy, in an extraordinarily perceptive discussion of this
episode, also emphasizes the indeterminable character of the knowledge sought (Le
Philosophe et son double: un commentaire de l'Euthydeme de Platan [Paris: J. Vrin 1984],
136).
66 See Brown, 71-3.

On the basis of this description of the episode, the following important

observations can be made:
1) the implied comparison between an incommensurable length
(which is what Socrates asks the slave to define) and virtue (which is
what Socrates asks Meno to define) is made perfectly apt by the 'nonpro-
positional' interpretation defended above of Socrates's distinction be-
tween 'what a thing is' and 'how it is qualified' and therefore supports
this interpretation. The aptness is shown by Plato's habit of calling an
incommensurable length not only 'irrational' (άλογος: Republic 534d5),
but also inexpressible (άρρητος: Hippias Major 303b7, cl; Republic 546c5).
If Plato in the Meno subscribes to the view of the Seventh Letter that the
true nature of virtue or anything else, as opposed to its qualities, is
inexpressible (ρητόν ουδαμώς), then the parallel he draws between the
search for an inexpressible length and the search for an understanding
of virtue is completely appropriate.67 Furthermore, in this case Socrates's
demand that the boy express the inexpressible would mirror his demand
that Meno define the indefinable. Finally, the abandonment of the at-
tempt to state precisely the length of the incommensurable side in favor
of characterizing it in terms of the diagonal of another square would
illustrate a proposition's ability to state only how a thing is qualified and
not what it is. If, on the other hand, virtue is taken to be precisely definable
in this dialogue, then the choice of an inexpressible length to stand in
analogy with it would seem careless, if not positively misleading.68
2) The description of the state of belief the slave attains lends support
to what the example of 'knowing who Meno is' gave us some reason to
believe: that the knowledge of 'what a thing is,' rather than being know-
67 Bedu-Addo recognizes this parallel between the impossibility of giving 'an abso-
lutely accurate, arithmetically correct answer to the problem of doubling the square
whose side is 2 feet' and the impossibility of 'express[ing] the ουσία of virtue in a
definition' (246). So do Paul Friedl nder (Plato, trans. Hans Meyerhoff, vol. 2 [New
York: Bollingen Foundation 1964], 283) and especially Narcy (136).
68 Sharpies proposes the explanation that Socrates needed a problem whose solution
'would be obvious once stated, but difficult enough for the slave boy to go astray
at first' (151). Yet as Brown points out (77), Socrates could have met this need with
the problem of quadrupling the square, in which case he could have led the slave to
see that the side of a square with four times the area would be not four nor three,
but two times as large as the side of the original square. This problem would be
'difficult enough,' but would altogether avoid incommensurable lengths.

ledge of some proposition about it, has the character of direct 'acquain-
tance.' The slave cannot state what the side is, but he can see it and
recognize it. The transformation of his belief into knowledge through
'further questioning' (85c-d), whatever greater insight it may provide,
will not make him better able to state the side's inexpressible length. The
suggestion, then, is that the knowledge of virtue is likewise not knowl-
edge of propositions reducing virtue to a plurality of properties, but
rather some sort of 'acquaintance' with the nature of virtue as a whole,
in itself and by itself. As to the exact nature of this acquaintance, some
possibilities have been suggested above. What is important for the
purposes of this paper, however, is the negative claim: that the knowl-
edge of virtue is not knowledge of a proposition.
3) If the above interpretation is correct and if Socrates's discussion
with the slave can be seen as a schematic illustration of what occurs in
all of the 'aporetic' dialogues, then what these dialogues seek can no
more be stated in words than the square root of eight can be given exact
numerical expression. Socrates's 'What is xT question is never answered
for the simple reason that it is unanswerable: a result that is also implied
by the argument of the Seventh Letter.® The other implication is that the
knowledge actually sought in these dialogues (and perhaps attained?) is
not prepositional or definitional, but instead has the character of direct
'acquaintance' or insight.
4) The claim that Socrates, both in the Meno and in the 'aporetic'
dialogues, is not in fact seeking definitional knowledge confronts the
inevitable question: Why, then, did he ask for definitions? Two possible
answers have been offered above: Socrates uses the demand for defini-
tions as a means of undermining the self-conceit of his interlocutors
and/or he believes that the attempt to answer the 'What is xT question
is an indispensable means of arriving at the nonpropositional knowledge
he seeks. The present episode illustrates both motives. The slave is open
to the insight and recognition he attains at the end of the discussion only
because the failure to answer Socrates's initial question has disabused
him of the view that the side has an expressible length. The question
'What is virtue?' works in the same way. Meno is the one, and not
Socrates, who thinks he has a completely adequate and easily expressible
knowledge of virtue (he even lectures on virtue all the time! 80b2-3).
69 This implication has been noted by Ferber, Unwissenheit des Philosophen, 47.

Nonpropos ional Knowledge in Plato 271
Socrates uses his unanswerable 'What is xT question to disabuse Meno

of this pretence, to show him that virtue cannot be grasped in this way.
Socrates's hope is that Meno will realize that virtue must be known in a
very different way, but this hope is not fulfilled: Meno wants clear
answers and definite formulas that he can store in his memory for future
debates or lectures. In conclusion, Socrates's request for a completely adequate
definition of virtue no more implies that he believes virtue to be definable than
his request for a numerical measurement of an incommensurable length implies
that he believes it to be commensurable. To understand Socrates's purpose
we need to look at what he does with his question, rather than make
invalid inferences about what he thinks.
5) This last point shows that though the knowledge arrived at is
nonpropositional, discursive activity is indispensable to its attainment.
To borrow from Cross, Socrates does not simply draw a square with an
area of eight feet and then tell the slave, 'Look well at its side and become
thoroughly acquainted with it!' Instead he leads him through the purely
discursive process of examining and refuting the different lengths that
the slave proposes. Though the slave's final recognition of the correct
side is not propositional — he still cannot state the length of this side he
otherwise recognizes —, the 'rubbing together' of propositions through
which he has been led is essential to this recognition. This is why
'recollection' is characterized later in the dialogue as occurring through
an αιτίας λογισμός (98a3-4). Contrary to the assumption of many schol-
ars, λογισμός can be essential to the process of recollecting without it
being the case that what is recollected is a knowledge of propositions.
What we see in the present episode is what is described in the Seventh
Letter: discursive thought that just barely sparks nondiscursive insight.
Socrates's demonstration of his method thus not only brings the Meno
very close to the description of philosophical method in the Seventh
Letter, but also sheds light on what the letter left obscure: the nature of
that 'rubbing together' which results in philosophical insight. The dis-
cussion with the slave shows us that the search for, and refutation of,
definitions and propositional hypotheses can awaken a knowledge that
is not itself definitional or propositional (call it 'acquaintance' or 'recog-
nition' or what you will). Yet the ambiguous word 'awaken' should
remind us that we still do not know exactly how such an elenctic method
can give rise to such knowledge. It seems that this knowledge would
already have to be in us in order for Socrates's elenchus to be able to
'awaken' it. But this is exactly what Socrates has sought to show in his
discussion with the slave: that the knowledge of το τί is already within
us and need only be 'recollected.'

V Recollection in the Meno and the Seventh Letter
What makes explaining how the knowledge of το τί is attained particu-

larly problematic is Socrates's 'priority principle' as interpreted above.
If we can know nothing about the qualities of virtue before we know
what virtue itself is (where virtue itself is not reducible to any of these
qualities), then how can we come to possess this latter knowledge? This
is essentially the dilemma introduced by Meno's question.
The solution is that the mind is not a blank slate into which a
knowledge of virtue as a whole must somehow be introduced; instead,
this knowledge is already possessed by every human mind (αεί ή
αλήθεια ήμϊν των όντων εστίν εν τη ψυχή, 86bl-2), though in such a way
that it normally remains implicit, unarticulated, wavering and obscure.
Yet even this imperfect awareness enables us, if we are questioned
properly, to recognize certain properties of virtue and thus to state
some true propositions about it. It thus prevents us from being utterly
blind at the start of inquiry and provides our inquiry with some di-
rection.
This is, of course, a very controversial interpretation of the solution.
Why something like it is necessary must therefore, to the extent possible
here, be explained. This explanation will shed further light on the role
that nonpropositional knowledge plays in recollection. The interpreta-
tion is controversial because some scholars, Gregory Vlastos among
them,70 have denied that the theory of recollection presupposes the
existence of latent or implicit knowledge. Though the details of their
interpretations cannot be discussed here,71 it is possible to describe the
general problem that the proponents of this view cannot, in my view,
surmount. If we abandon any notion of latent or implicit knowledge,
we must interpret the theory of recollection as solving Meno's paradox
by maintaining that we begin an inquiry with either explicit true beliefs
or explicit knowledge: the problem is that neither interpretation can
explain, or is even consistent with, the text. Socrates's point cannot be
70 'Anamnesis in the Meno', Dialogue 4 (1965) 143-67, 153 n!4. For another, related
critique of Vlastos, see James Blachowicz, 'Platonic "True Belief" and the Paradox
of Inquiry', The Southern Journal of Philosophy 33 (1995) 403-29,425-6 nn. 11 & 16.
71 For such a discussion see my Dialectic and Dialogue, ch. 6.

that we begin an inquiry into virtue with explicit knowledge about

virtue, since he claims emphatically that we know nothing about virtue
until we know what virtue itself is. But Socrates's point also cannot be
that we begin with explicit true beliefs about virtue; as one of the
defenders of this interpretation, Gail Fine, admits, these beliefs would
not be known by us to be true and therefore would not be distinguish-
able from false beliefs ('Inquiry in the Meno', 212). But then how could
such beliefs provide any more guidance than a blank slate of ignorance?
The same problem faces Terence Irwin's defence of this view: 'However
conjectural and tentative our belief about F might be, it might still serve
to identify F as an object of inquiry. To resolve Meno's Paradox,
Socrates needs to say that inquiry requires initial belief, not initial
knowledge, about the object of inquiry' (132). But if all of my beliefs
about a specific object of inquiry are false, as they might well be for
all I know, or even if there are some false beliefs mixed in with my
true beliefs, how can these beliefs identify the object? Consider a simple
example. I am searching for an elephant and all I have to go on are
the following beliefs: Bl) elephants have four legs, B2) elephants have
very long necks and B3) elephants have two long curved ivory tusks.
It turns out that I find an animal Al with the characteristics stated in
Bl and B2, and an animal A2 with the characteristics stated in Bl and
B3, but no animal A3 with characteristics corresponding to all three
beliefs. I am looking, of course, for A2, but my beliefs provide me with
no way of recognizing this: they give me equal reason to think that Al
is the animal I am looking for and even more reason to believe that
A3 is the one, though I have not yet found it and never will.72
Unless one allows the existence of a tacit and obscure intuition that
falls short of explicit true belief or knowledge, there appears to be no way
of making sense of Socrates's characterization of learning as recollection.
The knowledge that we will recollect through inquiry must in some way,
even if only obscurely, already affect us and be present to us so that it can
guide our inquiry and be recognized when recollected; otherwise, this
'recollection' would not at all differ from coming to know something for
72 Unlike Fine and Irwin, Blachowicz recognizes that the true belief presupposed by
recollection must be a preconceptual, nondiscursive acquaintance that is reliable
independently of any subsequent account that could be given of it (413-6,421).

the first time and thus would not solve Meno's paradox.73 This fact is the
rock upon which all attempts to explain recollection with a conception
of knowledge as fully explicit and propositional must shatter.74
If recollection is understood in the way suggested, then the possibility
of philosophical inquiry can be defended as follows: 1) Already contain-
ing 'within' ourselves a knowledge of virtue, we begin the inquiry with
a tacit and obscure awareness of what virtue is; 2) this awareness enables
us, under questioning, to distinguish between true and false statements
about virtue and, more importantly, to recognize that and how a pro-
posed definition fails to express adequately the nature of virtue; 3)
73 White states the problem succinctly and forcefully: 'So it must be claimed possible
to recognize the previously known and unrecollected in a way in which it is not
possible to recognize the previously unknown' (Plato on Knowledge, 50). White
apparently does not see any way of distinguishing the 'known and unrecollected'
from the simply 'unknown' and therefore considers Plato's solution unsuccessful.
Irwin appears oblivious to this problem when he writes: 'For if we actually knew
moral truths before we were born, it is reasonable to expect that we will have true
moral beliefs when we begin inquiry and that we will be able to elicit more in the
course of inquiry' (136). But if this knowledge is completely forgotten and does not
continue to be in us implicitly or tacitly, how can it have any effect on our present
beliefs? What is Irwin's 'reasonable expectation' based on?
74 As Marjorie Grene has rightly observed, 'If we insist that all cognitive acts are wholly
explicit, that we can know only what is plainly, or even verbally, at the centre of our
attention, then, indeed, we can not escape the puzzlement of Meno's question' (The
Knower and the Known [London: Faber & Faber 1966], 23). Michael L. Morgan has
rightly criticized other scholars for failing to recognize that the solution of Meno's
paradox depends on the existence of truths in the soul that are not grasped or
affirmed ('How does Plato Solve the Paradox of Inquiry in the MenoT, in J.P. Anton
and A. Preus, eds., Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy 3: Plato [Albany: SUNY Press
1989] 169-82, 177). Morgan can explain the existence of such ungrasped truths,
however, only by characterizing them as 'internal sentences,' by which I take him
to mean implicit propositions. The problem with this characterization is that Socrates's
solution requires not only that knowledge be already 'in us,' but also that it be, if
only partially and dimly, available to us in such a way as to affect the judgments
we make and the opinions we have. A proposition, however, is either explicitly
known or is not known at all: propositional knowledge does not admit degrees
('explicitly known' includes here propositions stored in one's memory after being
explicitly known). What then would it mean to 'possess' propositions without
explicitly grasping them? A helpful attempt to come to terms with Plato's belief in
the existence of latent knowledge is Kelly Ross, 'Non-Intuitive Immediate Knowl-
edge', Ratio 29 (1987) 163-79.

through this process of examining and refuting proposed definitions,

that awareness of virtue we already have is rendered more explicit and
clear (is 'recollected'), first becoming 'true belief and then 'knowledge.'
What the above interpretation of the Meno suggests is that, while the
process described as step 2) clearly involves propositions, not only is the
awareness at step 1) unarticulated in propositions, but as made explicit
in the knowledge at step 3), this awareness is, as some form of acquain-
tance, unarticulable or nonpropositional.75 It is important to note that the
account of recollection in the Phaedo (74a9-76c5) describes a similar 3-step
process: 1) we are born already in possession of knowledge of 'the equal
itself which, though in some sense 'forgotten' at birth, 2) nevertheless is
available to the extent of enabling us, in perceiving two approximately
equal sticks, to recognize that they strive to be like, but fall short of, the
equal itself;76 3) this perception in turn enables us to 'recollect' our
knowledge of the equal itself, i.e., to render it explicit to the extent that
we can λόγον διδόναι. (For why this last phrase does not necessitate the
conclusion that the knowledge recollected is propositional, see below.)
In suggesting this process of recollection as the solution to Meno's
dilemma, Socrates is not retracting his 'priority principle'. He simply
argues that the prior knowledge already exists in us implicitly and is
thus what enables us to have whatever vague and uncertain secondary
awareness of the properties of virtue we might have (an awareness
without which an inquiry could not even begin).
When the solution offered by 'recollection' is sketched out in this way,
it proves to be compatible with what is said in the Seventh Letter. My
interpretation of the letter found in it steps two and three above: 2) we
'rub together' and refute definitions that can only state how the thing in
question is qualified and 3) in the process spark within ourselves a
knowledge of what this thing is. What was not found is any explicit
reference to the possession of latent knowledge (step 1). However, the
Seventh Letter not only does not rule this out, but its claim that the
75 See R.S. Bluck's claim that even δόξα is nonpropositional ('Knowledge by Acquain-
tance in Plato's Theaetetus', Mind 72 [1963] 259-63,259).
76 Theodor Ebert finds the account of recollection in the Phaedo incoherent (Sokrates als
Pythagoreer und die Anamnesis in Platans Phaidon. [Stuttgart: Franz Steiner 1994],
51-85) only because he fails to see that this second step presupposes some sort of
tacit awareness: see my review in Journal of the History of Philosophy 34 (1996) 452-4.

attainment of knowledge presupposes kinship (συγγένεια) between the

nature of the object known and the nature of the knower's soul (343e2-
344bl) can, though need not, be seen as suggesting that this knowledge
already in some sense belongs to the soul.77 Furthermore, the teaching of
the letter would be greatly strengthened (if not even saved from incoher-
ence) by the assumption that the knowledge eventually sparked within
us was already there in a latent and obscure state. Without this assump-
tion, how could knowledge of a thing's true nature be said to arise 'sud-
denly' from the examination and refutation of defective means of inquiry
that can only express the thing's qualities? The emergence of this knowl-
edge seems inexplicable unless it was already there waiting to be
brought to light.
We can conclude, not only that the Meno is compatible with the
teaching of the Seventh Letter, but that the analogy of 'knowing who
Meno is,' the discussion of definition, and the demonstration that learn-
ing is recollection, appear to be best understood in the light of this
teaching, while in turn further illustrating and explicating it. Yet the
hurdle of the Republic remains. It is necessary to turn next to the claims
in this dialogue that have been thought to contradict the view that
philosophical knowledge is nonpropositional, in order to show that they
in fact do not do so.
VI Definition and Logos in the Republic
We have seen that in both the Seventh Letter and the Meno a distinction
is made between what a thing is (τί εστίν) and how it is qualified (ποιόν
τι). At the end of Book I of the Republic Socrates makes a similar distinc-
tion and asserts the same priority maintained in the Meno. How, he asks,
can we possibly know something about justice (περί αύτοΰ, i.e., whether
it is knowledge and a virtue or the opposite, 354b5-6), if we do not first
know what it is (8 τί ποτ' εστίν, 354b4-6, cl-3)? This distinction between
what justice is and what is true about it appears even less amenable than
that of the Meno or the Seventh Letter to being identified with a distinction
77 At Phaedo 75e5-6, άναμιμνήσκεσθαν is equated with οίκείαν έπιστημην άναλαμ-

βάνειν. Of course, the word οικείος is close in meaning to the word συγγενής.

between essential and accidental properties, respectively. In claiming

that the statements 'justice is knowledge' and 'justice is a virtue' do not
provide a knowledge of what justice is, but presuppose such knowledge,
Socrates cannot plausibly mean that 'knowledge' and 'virtue' are acci-
dental, as opposed to essential, properties of justice. If being knowledge
and being a virtue are not of the essence of justice, then what is? In being
distinguished from knowledge that justice is knowledge and a virtue, the
knowledge of justice is being distinguished from a knowledge of propo-
sitions stating essential properties. What then can it be except some sort
of nonpropositional insight?
However, this interpretation is harder to defend in the case of the
Republic than in the case of the Meno for one simple reason: while virtue
is never defined in the Meno, justice is eventually defined in the Republic.
The latter dialogue therefore appears to be a refutation in deed of the
Seventh Letter's argument that the true being of a thing cannot be ex-
pressed in propositions. According to this argument, the inquiry of the
Republic should have ended in aporia, which is clearly not the case.
Yet this contradiction becomes less palpable when we recognize that
the Republic is not as conclusive as is often thought. Specifically, while
the Republic does indeed provide a definition of justice, the following
points show that this definition is not understood by Socrates as provid-
ing a knowledge of what justice is (its true being) as opposed to how
justice is qualified:
1) What Socrates seeks to understand in this dialogue is how justice
occurs in states and, by analogy, how it occurs in the human soul. Thus,
he tells his interlocutors that they must first seek to know what kind of
a thing justice is in cities (εν ταΐς πόλεσι ζητήσομεν ποιόν τί εστίν, 368e8-
9al) in order then to examine its likeness (ομοιότητα) in the individual.
This does not appear to be the kind of unconditional knowledge of what
justice is demanded by Socrates's 'What is xT question.78 Even the
78 'Socrates offers a definition of the just city and the just man; he never even asks for
a definition of Justice itself. Can Plato have abandoned the view that to know the
meaning of "justice" is to know the Form of Justice? Or does he have a motive for
leaving this doctrine more or less in the background?' (Charles Kahn, "The Meaning
of "Justice" and the Theory of Forms', Journal of Philosophy 69 [1972] 567-79, 570).
Kahn himself assumes that a definition of 'justice itself is possible, claiming that it
has only been deferred on account of Plato's wish to keep his moral argument and
his political scheme for a good society maximally independent of his metaphysics.

languageofthepresentpassagesuggeststhatSocratesisaddressingonly
the kind of question that the Meno and the Seventh Letter distinguish
from the 'What is xT question: 'What kind of a thing is xT or 'What
can be said about x?' or 'What are some of the properties of xl'
2) At several points in the dialogue Socrates makes a distinction
between philosophical virtue and 'demotic' virtue or the virtue of the
ordinary citizen (e.g., 500d4-8, 619c7-dl).79 Given this distinction, we
must ask if Socrates's definitions define distinctly 'philosophical' virtue
and thereby provide us with a philosophical knowledge of virtue. We do
not need to speculate, since Socrates is explicit about the answer. When
Glaucon agrees to accept Socrates's definition of courage, Socrates
replies: 'Do so and you will be right in accepting it, with the reservation
(γε) that it is the courage of a citizen (πολιτικήν) [which is being
defined]. Some other time, if you wish, we will discuss it more properly
(έτι κάλλιον δύμεν).' (430c3-5) Socrates does not repeat this reservation
in defining the other virtues, but he gives us no indication that these
other definitions are markedly superior to that of courage. Indeed, the
definition of justice itself is surprisingly qualified and tentative: "This
doing one's own work, then, when it occurs in a certain way (τρόπον τινά
γιγνόμενον), is probably (κινδυνεύει) justice' (433b3-4). This is not an
unimportant qualification. To understand the true nature of justice one
presumably must know the specific way in which one should do one's
own work (which requires knowing what is the good way, which in
turn requires knowing what the good is). But this is precisely what the
definition leaves unstated. It should be recalled that the problem with
Meno's definition of virtue as 'desiring fine things and being able to
acquire them' is that it does not specify how fine things are to be
acquired, even though it is in this 'how' that virtue is to be found.
Socrates's definition of justice describes a characteristic or quality true
of anything that is just, but his own qualification reveals an important
sense in which the definition does not tell us what justice is. In
conclusion, Socrates does not appear to see any of his definitions in
What I aim to show below is that Kahn's assumption is just that, rather than a
conclusion necessitated by anything in the text.
79 This distinction is also made in the Phaedo 82alO-b3.

the Republic as providing a distinctly philosophical understanding of

the virtues.
3) According to what Socrates himself says in Book VI, the account of
the virtues in Book IV is only a sketch or outline (υπογραφή, 504d6-7). As
the context reveals, what is needed to 'fill in' this sketch is a knowledge
of the good. This knowledge must also be what is needed to turn civic
virtue into philosophical virtue. In the absence of a knowledge of the
good, Socrates's definitions tell us how the different virtues are qualified,
they provide a sketch or description of these virtues, but they can not tell
us what each virtue in essence z's.80
But is not the needed knowledge of the good itself prepositional and
definitional? Some passages in the Republic have been taken to show that
this is the case. One is the following, seen by Richard Sorabji as incom-
patible with the view that the dialectician's knowledge is nonproposi-
tional:
And do you not call the person who is able to exact an account of the
essence of each thing (τον λόγον εκάστου λαμβάνοντα της ουσίας) a
dialectician? And when someone cannot do this, to the extent that he
cannot render an account to himself and others (λόγον αΰτω τε και άλλφ
διδόναι), you will not say that he possesses full insight (νους) into the
matter? (534b3-6)
80 Irwin claims that the definitions of virtue in the Republic do not satisfy the demands
of the Socratic dialogues, since they do not succeed in defining the virtues in
non-moral terms (263). If Irwin is correct, then each of these definitions is vulnerable
to Socrates's criticism of Meno's final definition of virtue, i.e., that it includes among
its terms a part of the virtue to be defined and is thus circular (see note 59 for criticism
of Irwin's view that Socrates believed this circularity to be avoidable). According to
Irwin, however, this circularity was acceptable to Plato in the Republic who believed
both that the virtues could be understood only in terms of the good and that the good
could be understood only in terms of the connexions between the virtues (273). On
this view, the good is not 'something independent of the virtues and other specific
goods, but ... the appropriate combination and arrangement of them' (273). But
what evidence is there for this interpretation? It appears to rest on two assumptions:
that knowledge of the good must be prepositional and that the good cannot be
defined independently of the virtues. I accept the latter assumption, but argue below
that nothing in the text requires the former.

Socrates proceeds to claim that someone who is unable to mark off the
good from other things through an account (διορίσασθαι τω λόγφ) cannot
be said to know the good (534b8-dl). Is it not thereby made perfectly
clear that the dialectician's knowledge is prepositional, i.e., knowledge
of an account or definition?
That this conclusion does not in fact follow has been noted by, among
others, Kenneth Sayre. Sayre rightly points out that the claim that the
dialectician must be able to give a λόγος of a thing's ουσία does not entail
that the dialectician's knowledge of a thing's ουσία consists in having
such a λόγος and is therefore prepositional.81 In other words, the cited
passage does not claim that the dialectician knows the essence of a thing
precisely in exacting an account of it. The knowledge that allows the
dialectician to give an account and to separate the good from other εϊδη
can itself be nonpropositional, where this means that it does not consist
of, nor is exhausted by, any such 'accounts.'
But even if one accepts Sayre's reading, does not this passage of the
Republic at least suggest, in contradiction to the Seventh Letter, that a
thing's 'true being' can be defined in a proposition? This is the case only
if expressions such as 'exacting an account' (λόγον λαμβάνειν) and
'giving an account' (λόγον διδόναι) are taken to refer to the act of
presenting a perfectly adequate definition.82 However, such an interpre-
tation is not demanded by the text and indeed appears unwarranted. The
ability to 'give a λόγος' is usually coupled, in the Republic as well as in
other dialogues,83 with the ability to 'receive a λόγος': Socrates charac-
81 See Sayre, 'Reply to Moline', 245; Plato's Literary Garden, 195; "Theory of Forms', 188,
196-7. This interpretation has also been defended by Alfino, 273; Bluck, 'Logos and
Forms', 528; and H. Cherniss, 'Lafrance on Doxa', Dialogue 22 (1983) 137-62,156.
82 This is how these expressions are understood by, among many others, Stemmer,
198-9 n30 and David Gallop, Plato's Phaedo (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1975), 132-3.
83 See Theaetetus 202c2-5 and Statesman 286a4-5. In the Sophist, we are said to reach
consensus by 'giving each other λόγος' (λόγον έαυτοΐς δόντες, 230a5), which of
course implies receiving λόγος from each other. The Statesman passage is indeed
followed by an explanation that suggests, in apparent contradiction to the Seventh
Letter, that nonbodily things are made manifest only by means of λόγος· λόγφ μόνον
αλλω δε ούδενΐ σαφώς δείκνυται (286a6-7). Sayre ("Theory of Forms', 188-9), seeing
the apparent contradiction, attempts to avoid it with the arbitrary suggestion that
the Statesman passage refers only to 'imperceptible discourse' and the erroneous
suggestion that the Seventh Letter criticizes only perceptible discourse (see note 28

terizes dialecticians as those who are able to give and receive a λόγος
(δούναι τε καν άποδέξασθαν λόγον, 531e4) and suggests that someone
lacking such an ability does not know the things that must be known.
This giving and receiving of λόγος clearly refers, not to a swapping of
definitions, but more generally to the process of mutual explanation and
clarification that characterizes an intelligent discussion. Understood
within this context, the ability to give a λόγος of a thing's nature or είδος
is the ability to carry on a discussion about this nature by making per-
ceptive statements about it, examining the statements others make about
it, explaining and defending one's own views on it. What a person with
this ability says will presumably not be fina 1 and unchanging, but instead
will be responsive to differences in the context of the discussion and the
characters of the interlocutors. The process of giving and receiving a
λόγος is furthermore not only interpersonal and ad hominem, but also
reflexive: the interlocutors who participate in this process are also giving
accounts of'themselves..M
As the above should already suggest, the ability to give and receive a
λόγος does not essentially differ from the question-and-answer method
that Socrates himself practices and in which he attempts to engage
others: the Republic makes this identification explicit in proceeding to
characterize the discursive ability required for knowledge as έρωταν τε
και άποκρίνεσθαι έπιστημονέστατα (534d9-10). Similarly, in the Pro-
tagoras, knowing how to give and receive a λόγος (έπίστασθαι λόγον τε
δούναι και δέξασθαι) is seen as going along with that ability to engage
in dialectic (οίος τ' είναι διαλέγεσθαι, 336b9-c2) that Socrates has, but
above). However, this subterfuge is unnecessary. What the passage from the
Statesman explicitly claims is that the forms are made manifest only by means of
λόγος, not that the forms are made manifest in a λόγος, nor that they can be adequately
expressed in a λόγος, nor that knowledge of the forms is knowledge of α λόγος. Recall
that according to the letter itself, if One does not in some way lay hold of the four
[all of which are immediately associated with λόγος in the broad sense of "lan-
guage"], one will never fully partake of knowledge of the fifth' (342d8-el). Thus the
letter holds λόγος to be indispensable to the attainment of knowledge. How, then,
does it contradict the claim that the forms can be made manifest only by means of
λόγος? A contradiction arises only if one fails to recognize what the letter appears
to assume: that the process by which knowledge is reached can be discursive
without this knowledge itself being prepositional.
84 See Wieland, Formen des Wissens, 248.

282 Francisco f. Gonzalez
Protagoras lacks. And Socrates possesses this ability even though he

proves no more able than Protagoras to provide a satisfactory definition
of virtue or even a definitive answer to the question, 'Can virtue be
taught?'85
Therefore, this give-and-take of λόγος at which the dialectician must be
adept does not require the knowledge of an absolutely adequate and
irrefutable definition.86 On the other hand, it appears to require nonpro-
positional knowledge. As the account of recollection in the Meno was seen
to suggest, even our ability to identify, if only provisionally, examples
of virtue and to spot the weaknesses of proposed definitions of virtue
presupposes a knowledge of virtue which, while tacit and obscure, is
nevertheless somehow available to us. But then as this knowledge
becomes more explicit and clear, our ability to give and receive λόγοι will
improve (and therefore we will not fail or grow faint-hearted in the
discussion; see 534cl-3). All genuine discussion presupposes that the
thing under discussion be somehow 'in view.' The most successful
discussion will be that which brings the thing most into view. Therefore,
dialectic in the Republic can be interpreted as a discursive ability that both
promotes and is promoted by nonpropositional knowledge.87 The point
that must be emphasized, against Sorabji and others, is that there is no
contradiction between the discursive activity associated with dialectic in
the Republic and the view that the knowledge at which this activity aims
85 At Phaedo 76b5-6 we find a claim identical to that made in the Republic: whoever has
knowledge will be able δούναι λόγον concerning what he knows. But when Simmias
suggests that only Socrates has this ability concerning the forms (76blO-12), he
cannot mean that Socrates is able to give adequate definitions of theforms, since Socrates
everywhere in the dialogues proves and admits his inability to do this.
86 For another defense of the view that the knowledge that exhibits itself in the ability
to give and receive λόγος is itself nonpropositional, see Wieland, Formen des Wissens,
247-9 & 297-8.
87 Hyland makes an important distinction between an 'archaic noesis' and a 'telic noesis'
(182). The former is the originating insight that 'is the ground of the speaking; it is
not spoken itself. We rather speak in the light o/that insight.' The latter is 'the final
or culminating insight toward which the speech hopefully leads us, but which again
is not reducible to the speech itself.' Press characterizes knowledge in Plato as a
vision 'that lies behind, provides the co-ordinates or dimensions or categories for
particular statements but is not itself expressible or communicable in particular
statements' (80).

is nonpropositional.88 As has been seen, even in the Seventh Letter this

discursive activity — there described as a refutative 'rubbing together'
of names, definitions, and images — is claimed to be indispensable to
the attainment of that knowledge that cannot itself be 'said.' Therefore,
the importance given λόγος-centered activity in the Republic's descrip-
tion of dialectic does not contradict the argument of the Seventh Letter;
instead, the Republic only further clarifies the nature of the discursive
process that the letter itself considers central to doing philosophy.
These comments of course do not prove that the Republic characterizes
knowledge of the εϊδη as nonpropositional. Such a demonstration would
require at least an analysis of the three analogies in Books VI and VII and
of the distinction between belief and knowledge at the end of Book V.
However, it is a significant and important result that those passages in
which Plato has been thought to commit himself explicitly to the prepo-
sitional character of philosophical knowledge are in fact perfectly com-
patible with a conception of knowledge as nonpropositional. In this way
the opponents of nonpropositional knowledge lose perhaps their most
important piece of evidence.
VII Conclusion
Whoever wrote the Seventh Letter meant it to correct alleged misinterpre-

tations of Plato's thought current at the time among some of his follow-
ers. What I hope the present paper has shown is that the letter can still
play this corrective role. Since the view that philosophical knowledge is
prepositional is widely accepted today, especially among analytical
interpreters, there is a natural tendency to read such a view into Plato's
dialogues. A reading of the Meno and the Republic in the light of the
Seventh Letter can check such a tendency by showing that neither in fact
requires this view and that the Meno is at least hard to reconcile with it.
Though its relation to these two dialogues is perhaps the strongest proof
of its authenticity we can have, the letter can of course serve its corrective
See Yvonne Lafrance's excellent account of the role of λόγος in dialectic in La theorie
platonicienne de la Doxa (Montreal: Bellarmin; Paris: Les Belles Lettres 1981), 47. After
claiming that Socratic λόγος does not aim at providing definitions or deducing
propositions, Lafrance comments: 'Le savoir authentique ne saurait s'enfermer dans
les mots qui le suggerent, mais jamais ne le remplacent' (47).

284 Francisco }. Gonzalez
purpose even if it is not genuine. Whoever wrote it challenges us to put

aside our preconceptions and look in the dialogues for a conception of
philosophical knowledge perhaps radically different from our own. The
aim of this paper is not to define nonpropositional knowledge in Plato,
nor even to prove once and for all its existence, but rather to make it once
again a live issue.*9
Department of Philosophy and Religion

Skidmore College
Saratoga Springs, NY 12866-1632
fgonzale@skidmore.edu
89 I wish to acknowledge with gratitude my debt to both the Executive Editor's helpful
suggestions and the extraordinarily detailed and rigorous comments of two anony-
mous readers. They have helped me clarify the paper's argument and correct some


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Nonpropositional Knowledge in Plato

APEIRON a journal for ancient philosophy

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This reaction to the once orthodox view appears motivated by two

elsewhere that this interpretation is incompatible with the text: 'Propositions or

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currency of this view9 is not surprising since it must be assumed if the

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prima facie cases against compatibility. I conclude that nevertheless

1 What is Nonpropositional Knowledge?

First we need an explanation of 'nonpropositional knowledge' to serve

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knowledge for which something is manifest without being describable

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with, nor exhausted by, knowledge of what can be truly asserted of

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The purpose of this brief account of possible forms of nonproposi-

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II The 'Philosophical Digression' of the Seventh Letter

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The weakness is briefly described in the following two passages:

Two points need to be made here if these passages are to be properly

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statement.26 2) The phrase 'the weakness of language/ presented as it is

26 As it is by W.K.C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 5 (Cambridge:

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30 Philosophical Investigations, sections 65ff. See Garth Hallett, A Companion to Wittgen-

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open the Wittgensteinian option of denying that a thing has an 'essence'

I no longer understand nor can I recognize those other clever reasons;

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Anything we say beyond this will, by substituting the 'qualities' of a

33 Cf. Graeser, 33.

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means of attaining knowledge, this knowledge must apparently be as

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of questioning and answering without envy, will wisdom (φρόνησις)

36 The mistake I am criticizing is especially evident in Stemmer's argument that the

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Ill Apparent Contradictions Between the Seventh Letter

39 This question is raised by M ller as an objection to the letter's authenticity (153).

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dialogues appear to treat as definable and prepositional what the Seventh

IV The Meno: Can the Question 'What is Virtue?' be Answered?

In turning to the Meno, an obvious, but surprisingly often overlooked

42 The latter strategy is briefly pursued by Charles L. Griswold, 'Commentary on

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of χ that transcends all definitions. In short, Socrates's behavior as de-

45 According to Brickhouse and Smith, Socrates 'believes, of course, that if one is to be

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tes's demand for a definition of virtue in the Meno is compatible with a

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of being similarly nonobjectifiable, either because it is a practical know-

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presses dissatisfaction with this definition, Socrates provides another

Yet Cross's implied inference is faulty. It is obviously true that Socrates

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following, not the definition of figure in terms of something completely