Plato’s Theaetetus end logos of the digital humanities

Abstract

The specifics of the humanities are the study of the human and its offspring, already recalled by Socrates in the “Theaetetus”. The dialogue marks a substantial shift in Plato — the discovery to be attributed to Wincenty Lutosławski, the author of the chronology of Plato’s works — that is, from pre-existent and transcendental ideas to the categories of reason, from philosophy as the “love of wisdom” to the “love of knowledge”. Thus, contrary to the widely held view of the so-called lack of the definition of knowledge in the “Theaetetus”, I argue that the quest for knowledge refers to the logic of thinking — the theme related to Charles S. Peirce’s logic of discovery and still distinct from “technology” — and provides the constitution of the humanities of the information and communication age as the digital humanities.