Product and object of knowledge

Use in the book

Socrates initially asks what temperance accomplishes: medicine produces health, house-building produces houses, so what fine work worthy of its name does temperance produce (165c–e)? Critias challenges the uniform demand. Calculation and geometry do not offer a work of the same sort as a house or cloak. Socrates accepts the objection (166a), making the ensuing change of question explicit: even these knowledges have objects distinct from themselves. Calculation concerns the even and odd; weighing the heavier and lighter. Lack of a tangible product therefore does not entail lack of an object.

Critias then denies that temperance must share this latter structure. Its object is knowledge itself and the other knowledges (166b–c). He does not answer by giving a new ordinary field. The uniqueness he claims exposes the account to the later analogies of powers and objects.

At 170b–171a23 the object criterion individuates expertise. Knowing the healthy identifies medicine; knowing what concerns building identifies house-building. Knowledge that only recognizes knowledge does not inherit those fields. To ascertain which expertise a claimant possesses, the examiner must assess the appropriate objects in speech or practice. This is the central function of the field restriction, rather than a general denial that an expertise can ever discuss its own methods.

At 174c–175a2 the language of work and production returns. Ordinary crafts continue to make their characteristic contributions without knowledge of good and bad, but the beneficial quality of those contributions is lost. Critias says temperance benefits indirectly by ruling this knowledge too; Socrates responds that the work of benefit belongs to the other expertise. An interpretive problem arises: if nonproductive knowledge was admitted earlier, why must temperance now be a producer of benefit? One answer distinguishes needing a tangible external product from needing some beneficial function. A further question remains whether supervision could supply such a function indirectly. The text gives the objection and reply but no general account of indirect epistemic benefit.

The distinctions must therefore be kept threefold: what a knowledge is about, what it characteristically does, and whether what it does benefits us. Equating any two of these erases a principal engine of the argument.

Places to read

1. 165c–eMedicine’s health and building’s houses as works
2. 165e–166b2Mathematical objection and shift from product to object
3. 166b–cCritias claims a unique reflexive object
4. 170b–171b23Objects distinguish one knowledge from another
5. 174c–175a2Technical work, benefit, and the supervisory rescue

Translation in this edition

The edition maintains “the healthy” for to hygieinon and “health” for hygieia. Its “works of the other kinds of knowledge” at 175b follows erga and should not be silently changed to “the other kinds of knowledge themselves”.

ἀπεργάζομαι

Attested: ἀπεργάζεται / ἀπεργάζοιτο (apergazetai / apergazoito). Accomplish or produce; used of an action’s result, a craft’s work, and the good that temperance is supposed to bring about. References: 160e, 165c, 173a, 160d. Lexical identification: lemma: ἀπεργάζομαι. See Product and object of knowledge.

τινός

Attested: τινός (tinos). ‘Of something’: the indefinite genitive marks a knowledge’s object without yet identifying its field. References: 165c. Lexical identification: lemma: τις (indefinite pronoun); genitive τινός. See Product and object of knowledge.

ὑφαντική

Attested: ὑφαντικῆς (hyphantikēs). The weaving craft; its cloak is a determinate product used as a comparison with mathematical expertise. References: 165e. Lexical identification: lemma: ὑφαντική. See Product and object of knowledge.