ABSTRACT
IN the last pages of the Theaetetus 1 Socrates is made to present four 2 versions of a final attempt to define knowledge as true opinion accompanied by logos, and to reject them all; yet in earlier dialogues ‘ability to give account’, λόγον ἔχζειν or λόγον διδόναι δύνασθαι is closely associated with knowledge, not always, 3 or not necessarily, 4 knowledge of Forms, and in the Republic it is said to be the essential mark of the dialectician. 5 These facts are exceedingly hard to interpret. In recent years the passage has been read as an indirect defence of the earlier theory of Forms, as the statement of a problem answered in the Sophist by a revision of that theory and as a piece of radical self-criticism. No one of these interpretations seems to me without difficulty, and in this article I shall attempt to argue for yet another solution which owes something to all three.
