Knowledge of knowledge

Use in the book

Critias introduces the proposal to resist Socrates' demand for an object outside temperance. Ordinary knowledges concern something other than themselves; temperance alone, he says, knows both the others and itself (166b–c). After an exchange about the purpose of refutation he repeats the definition (166e). Socrates then adds knowledge of ignorance and obtains agreement to an extensive practical interpretation: the temperate person knows himself, can determine what he knows and does not know, and can similarly assess other people's true and merely apparent expertise (167a). This is the proposed package, not an achieved result.

The first test asks whether such a capacity can exist. Socrates constructs analogies of sight seeing sights but no colours, hearing hearing hearings but no sounds, and affective attitudes directed at themselves while excluding their normal objects (167c–168a2). He then considers genuinely relational predicates. Something greater than itself would also be smaller than itself; a capacity acting upon itself must possess the character appropriate to its own object. These examples expose difficulties but do not prove a universal prohibition on self-relation. Socrates explicitly distinguishes impossible cases from disputed ones and says he cannot decide the classification required for knowledge (168e–169b2).

Accordingly, 169d grants possibility for the sake of progress. Critias argues that possessing self-knowing knowledge makes its possessor self-knowing, just as beauty makes its possessor beautiful (169e). Socrates provisionally leaves that bridge unchallenged and attacks the further inference to identifying one's epistemic contents. On the agreed separation of fields, a knowledge concerned only with knowledge could at most identify that there is knowledge. It could not identify whether it is medicine, music or house-building without knowing those subject matters (170a–d2). Its diagnostic promise therefore fails: distinguishing a real doctor from a pretender requires medical evaluation (170e–171c2).

The result is conditional and has a precise target. The dialogue does not show that reflective awareness in combination with medical training could never assess a doctor. At 171c the temperate person can judge a fellow practitioner of the stipulated second-order expertise; at 172b Socrates even proposes improved learning and examination within an acquired subject as a possible modest benefit. What has failed is the expansive power initially extracted from a domain-independent, exclusively second-order expertise.

Socrates next grants more than the argument has earned (172c–d): restore both the existence of reflective knowledge and the original ability to discriminate what people know. The dream of 173a–d2 depicts reliable assignment of tasks to genuine experts, excluding impostors and perhaps admitting genuine prophecy. It establishes knowledgeable living under these assumptions, not yet happiness. Asked which knowledge matters, Critias names knowledge of good and bad (174b). This has a different object from knowledge of knowledge.

Critias' final rescue is managerial: temperance rules all knowledge and therefore also the knowledge that benefits us (174d–e2). Socrates answers by returning to the division of labour among expertises. Knowing about medicine does not produce health; knowing about knowledge of good does not automatically produce benefit. Whether this answer improperly neglects indirect or coordinating benefit is an important interpretive question. The dialogue raises it rather than supplying a developed theory of coordination. In particular, the earlier concession that not every knowledge produces a separate object makes the final appeal to productive function worth scrutinizing.

At 175b–d2 Socrates recounts both excessive concessions and the failure of the resulting construction. That retrospect is stronger in rhetoric than the earlier suspension of judgment: “the argument did not allow” knowledge of knowledge to exist is not the same as a completed proof that every reflexive knowledge is impossible. Finally he maintains that temperance itself is a great good (175e). The failure belongs to the tested account and the inquiry, and cannot simply be converted into Plato's denial of self-knowledge.

Interpretive alternatives remain open. One reading sees Critias' absolute supervisory expertise as a distortion of Socratic recognition of limits; another takes the dialogue to test the adequacy of Socrates' own epistemic self-description. Both must explain why Socrates' professed aim at 166c–d resembles the powers promised at 167a, and why that resemblance does not by itself establish identity between his practice and Critias' theory.

Places to read

1. 166b–167a2Definition, addition of ignorance, and extensive diagnostic promise
2. 167b–169d2345Possibility tested but not finally decided; provisional concession
3. 169e–171c23Possession analogy and limits of domain-independent diagnosis
4. 172b–dModest possible benefit followed by a stronger concession
5. 173a–175a234Dream, knowledge of good and bad, and failed supervisory rescue
6. 175b–e2Retrospective criticism and retained confidence in temperance

Translation in this edition

“Of itself” translates a feminine reflexive referring to epistēmē; “of oneself” earlier refers to the person. Burnet deletes πλὴν ἐπιστήμης, “except knowledge”, at 169a, preventing a prematurely assumed exception. The addition at 167b and the conjectural case forms at 170a–b deserve separate attention; the edition is a particular critical text, not an unmediated transcript.

ἀποδίδωμι

Attested: ἀπέδομεν (apedomen). Assign or attribute: cognition of knowledge is assigned to temperance at 170e, whereas benefit is assigned to another expertise at 175a. References: 170e, 175a. Lexical identification: lemma: ἀποδίδωμι. See Knowledge of knowledge.

ἑαυτοῦ ἐπιστήμη

Attested: ἑαυτοῦ ἐπιστήμην (heautou epistēmēn). Knowledge of oneself as a person; must be distinguished from knowledge whose object is knowledge itself. References: 165d. Lexical identification: expression / normalized lookup: ἑαυτοῦ ἐπιστήμη. See Knowledge of knowledge.

ἐπιστήμη ἐπιστήμης

Attested: ἐπιστήμην ἐπιστήμης (epistēmēn epistēmēs). Knowledge of knowledge; the genitive identifies knowledge itself as the object of a proposed knowledge. References: 169d. Lexical identification: expression / normalized lookup: ἐπιστήμη ἐπιστήμης. See Knowledge of knowledge.

ἐπιστήμη ἐπιστημῶν

Attested: ἐπιστημῶν ἐπιστήμη (epistēmōn epistēmē). Knowledge of knowledges; the reversed printed word order expresses the proposed oversight of other expertises. References: 166c. Lexical identification: expression / normalized lookup: ἐπιστήμη ἐπιστημῶν. See Knowledge of knowledge.

ἀπέδομεν (apedomen)

We assigned or attributed; knowing knowledge itself was allocated exclusively to temperance. References: 170e. Lemma: ἀποδίδωμι. See Knowledge of knowledge.

γένος (genos)

The human race or kind; the dream describes humanity organized under the proposed knowledge. References: 173c. Lemma: γένος. See Knowledge of knowledge.

διεμαρτυρόμεθα (diemartyrometha)

We expressly maintained or insisted; recalls the agreed restriction of temperance to knowledge of knowledge. References: 174e. Lemma: διαμαρτύρομαι. See Knowledge of knowledge.

προσκαθορῶντι (proskathorōnti)

Seeing in addition; noticing the relevant knowledge alongside the subject being learned. References: 172b. Lemma: προσκαθοράω. See Knowledge of knowledge.