The first of 13 days of the _Statesman_! Today we got Cooper's introduction, some dramatic preliminaries, and a bit of discussion of knowledge and categorization.
1. At 258d-e we get a quick distinction between practical and theoretical knowledge, and the distinction appears implicitly also at 259c. Note that the distinction is put in somewhat different terms: at 258, between simply providing knowledge vs. also being naturally bound up with practical actions; at 259, the king's knowledge counts as theoretical because it involves much more "understanding and force of mind" than "use of the hands or body in general."
2. Arithmetic shows up twice in these first few pages of the dialogue, once as an example of theoretical knowledge, and once in the strange opening lines, when Socrates says that the sophist, statesman, and philosopher "differ in value by more than can be expressed in terms of mathematical proportion."
Happy reading!
Nate: I agree; this distinction(s) here between practical and theoretical knowledge are fascinating. For one thing, they leave totally ambiguous the classification of knowledge of the Good, the Just, the Courageous, etc., which we might think have some practical import. For another, actions and productions are not sharply distinguished: practical knowledge seems to be a kind of techne or productive knowledge. And for another, theoretical knowledge is *not* primarily characterized by knowledge of the Forms, but knowledge of mathematicals (which itself is a bit puzzling, because Plato elsewhere acknowledges that arithmetic can be applied as when, e.g., a general counts his own or his enemy's soldiers). What a neat opening for the dialogue!
ReplyDeleteHappy reading, everyone!