Publisher's Synopsis
From the PREFACE.
MORE fully than any other of Plato's dialogues the Theaetetus shows how Plato seeks to bring the ordinary mind to a knowledge of its own limitations. It has, therefore, in the hands of a sympathetic teacher, special value for the one who is about to embark on the study of philosophy. With the able translations of Jowett, Kennedy, and Paley in existence, it is impossible to regard the present translation as meeting a need; but it at least makes more useful the accompanying Introduction. Wherever, in the course of the dialogue, occur philosophical terms or phrases, the translator has supplied in brackets the original Greek, and in translating these terms has particularly sought to avoid any allusion to modern metaphysics.
The Introduction has a twofold object. It seeks to give Plato's portrait, account, and criticism of Protagoras and his followers, and at the same time it serves" as an outline of one large and important section of Plato's own philosophy. Indeed, owing to Plato's peculiar method, if it succeeds in the first it does the second also. In the closing pages of the Introduction reference is made to the final form of Plato's thought, with the view of indicating how far it was moulded by his long and arduous encounter with Sophistry.
In preparing this little work the translator has always had before him Jowett's monumental translation of the dialogues, and has frequently made use of it without special acknowledgement. Professor Campbell's sound and scholarly books, The Theaetetus of Plato and The Sophistes and Politicas of Plato have been of great service.
Aristotle's treatment of the topics discussed in the Introduction has been found uniformly to repay the closest study.
