Socrates' Disavowal of Knowledge

Abstract

In Plato's earliest dialogues, when Socrates says he has no knowledge, does he or does he not mean what he says? The standard view has been that he does not. What can be said for this interpretation is well said in Gulley, 1968: Socrates' profession of ignorance is “an expedient to encourage his interlocutor to seek out the truth, to make him think that he is joining with Socrates in a voyage of discovery” (p. 69). More recently the opposite interpretation has found a clear-headed advocate. Terence Irwin in his Plato's Moral Theory holds that when Socrates disclaims knowledge he should be taken at his word: he has renounced knowledge and is content to claim no more than true belief (Irwin, 1977: 39–40). I shall argue that when each of these views is confronted with the textual evidence each is proved false: there are texts which falsify the first, and others which falsify the second. How could this be? These views are proper contradictories: if either is false, must not the other be true? Not necessarily. If Socrates is making appropriately variable use of his words for “knowing” both views could be false. I shall argue that this is in fact the case, proposing a hypothesis which explains why Socrates should wish to do just this. I shall review the relevant evidence (section I), develop the hypothesis (section II), and exhibit its explanatory power (section III). The first interpretation is virtually ubiquitous. It has even captured the dictionaries. Webster's gives this entry under “irony”: