'The common reproach against me is that I am always asking questions of other people but never express my own views about anything, because there is no wisdom in me; and that is true enough.' So says Socrates at 150c of Plato's Theaetetus, presenting himself as the barren midwife who can help deliver others of beliefs - in this case about knowledge - and test them by argument, but who does so ad hominem, uncommitted to a philosophical view of his own. An anonymous commentator on the dialogue, writing probably in the late first century BC, notes of this passage: 'Some say, as a result of passages like these, that Plato belongs in the sceptical Academy, since he holds no beliefs.' Socrates perhaps, but Plato holds no beliefs? And, especially, no beliefs about knowledge?

LRB 22 November 1990 | PDF Download