OF PSYCHIC MAIEUTICS AND DIALOGICAL BONDAGE IN PLATO’S
THEAETETUS
- The relationship between psychic maieutics and recollection has been
debated at least since the oldest extant commentary on the Theaetetus, an anony-
mous commentary most likely dating from the second half of the fi rst century
b.c.e. See H. Diels and W. Schubart, eds., Anonymer Kommentar zu Platons Theaetet
(Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1905). On the issue of dating the com-
mentary, see David Sedley, “Three Platonist Interpretations of the Theaetetus,”
in Form and Argument in Late Plato, ed. C. Gill and M. M. McCabe (Oxford: Ox-
ford University Press, 1996), 79– 103. Two issues appear to be at the heart of the
controversy. One concerns the relationship between psychic maieutics as what
appears to be a method and recollection as what appears to be a theory or doc-
trine. The other concerns the relationship between the possibility of false off-
spring in the Theaetetus and the way in which the notion of recollection implies
that knowledge is in the soul and available for recollection. See, for example,
Myles F. Burnyeat, “Socratic Midwifery, Platonic Inspiration,” Bulletin of the In-
stitute of Classical Studies 24 (1977): 7– 16; reprinted in Essays on the Philosophy of
Socrates, ed. Hugh H. Benson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 53– 65;
F. M. C or n ford, Plato’s Theory of Knowledge (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1935); and Plato, Theaetetus, trans. John McDowell (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1973). For the purposes of the present discussion, there is no need to
claim or seek any stronger connection between maieutics and recollection—it
is enough that the echoes of or allusions to the notion of recollection add to
the apparent familiarity of the picture of Socrates, psychic maieute. What I will
have to show, however, is that that picture is presented as it is for the sake of
appearing familiar.
- See, for example, Burnyeat, “Socratic Midwifery,” 55; Scott R. Hemmen-
way, “Philosophical Apology in the Theaetetus,” Interpretation 17, no. 3 (1990):
329; Ronald Polansky, Philosophy and Knowledge: A Commentary on Plato’s The-
aetetus (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1992), 60; McDowell, trans.,
Theaetetus, 116 – 17; Cornford, Plato’s Theory of Knowledge, 27ff. See also Sophist
230b4– 231b8. For a recent reappraisal of the elenchus and the question of So-
cratic method, see Gary Alan Scott, ed., Does Socrates Have a Method? Rethinking
the Elenchus in Plato’s Dialogues and Beyond (University Park: Pennsylvania State
University Press, 2002).
- R. G. Wengert, “The Paradox of the Midwife,” History of Philosophy Quar-
terly 5, no. 1 (1988): 3.
- Burnyeat, “Socratic Midwifery,” 54. Burnyeat offers a list of exemplary
studies at p. 62n4. Drawing on Kenneth Dover’s study of Aristophanes (K. J.
Dover, Aristophanes’ Clouds [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968]), Burnyeat
questions the viability of inferring from an otherwise unprecedented one-word
reference in the Clouds to a historically accurate and common image associated
with the fi gure of Socrates. See also Dover’s Aristophanic Comedy (Berkeley and
Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972), 119: “If, however, this con-
cept [sc. midwifery] was used by the real Socrates, it is surprising that it should
not appear in Plato until a fairly late work, and certain other images with which
the Aristophanic Socrates mystifi es Strepsiades, ‘bring machines to bear on
