OF PSYCHIC MAIEUTICS AND DIALOGICAL BONDAGE IN PLATO’S
THEAETETUSyeat has argued, there is no reason to think that this is the case. “It
must, then, be the power of the image, its striking one as so absolutely
the ‘right’ representation of what Socrates does, that blinds people to
Plato’s explicit sign-posting” to the contrary.^10 Again, it is primarily on
the basis of the Platonic corpus that the image of Socrates as a midwife
of the soul appears so familiar to us. I emphasize the ease with which
Socrates is recognizable in that image because it seems that in the The-
aetetus Plato deliberately engages with a caricature of Socrates.^11
Although I focus almost exclusively on the Theaetetus in this essay,
it is worth keeping in mind that in the Sophist and Statesman, too—which
along with the Theaetetus constitute a sort of trilogy—Plato can be seen
to draw on a picture of Socrates that Plato himself helped to create.^12 I
refer to the Eleatic Stranger’s defi nition of the noble-born sophist (Soph-
ist 230b4– 231b8), and his discussion of how the city cannot tolerate any
transgression of its laws (Statesman 297d3– e6; 299b2– 300c3).^13 The for-
mer reads like an entry on Socrates in an encyclopedia of philosophy,
and the latter like a summary of Socrates’ trial and execution. I can-
not fully defend this claim here, but arguably the trilogy as a whole is
informed by a concern both with the way in which Socrates appears to
others and with the problem of accounting for knowledge in the face
of confl icting appearances. Insofar as the trilogy is dramatically set on
the day of and the day following Socrates’ indictment, those concerns
take shape in light of Socrates’ trial and death.^14 That is, it seems that
these images of Socrates both allow Plato to show how easy it is for the
Athenians to recognize Socrates in the charges brought against him,
and how the more explicitly epistemological and ontological problems
at stake in these dialogues are intimately related to the more explicitly
political problems surrounding them.^15
***
Psychic maieutics appears unprecedented. The Theaetetus is the only
Platonic text in which Socrates is explicitly linked with the fi gure of a
midwife, and there seems to be no precedent for such an account within
the Theaetetus itself.^16 When Socrates introduces psychic maieutics into
the conversation his primary aim is to reassure and encourage Theaete-
tus, who is ready to abandon the attempt to say what knowledge itself is.
The explanation of psychic maieutics does achieve this end. Theaetetus
agrees that it would be shameful not to exert himself in every possible
way, and says, “As it now appears, knowledge is nothing other than per-
ception” (151e2– 3). This is one sense in which Socrates’ account of psy-
chic maieutics makes possible the discussion of knowledge recounted in
the Theaetetus—without it, it seems, the conversation would have miscar-