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| 304 | Beautiful things must be different from beauty itself, but beauty itself must be present in each of them |
| Full Idea: Are fine things different from or identical to fineness? They are different from fineness itself, but fineness itself is in a sense present in each of them. | |||
| From: Plato (Euthydemus [c.379 BCE], 301a) |
| 16120 | Knowing how to achieve immortality is pointless without the knowledge how to use immortality |
| Full Idea: If there exists the knowledge of how to make men immortal, but without the knowledge of how to use this immortality, there seems to be no value in it. | |||
| From: Plato (Euthydemus [c.379 BCE], 289b) | |||
| A reaction: I take this to be not a gormless utilitarianism about knowledge, but a plea for holism, that knowledge only has value as part of some larger picture. The big view is the important view. He's wrong, though. Work out the use later. |
| 303 | Say how many teeth the other has, then count them. If you are right, we will trust your other claims |
| Full Idea: If each of you says how many teeth the other has, and when they are counted we find you do know, we will believe your other claims as well. | |||
| From: Plato (Euthydemus [c.379 BCE], 294c) | |||
| A reaction: This is the clairvoyant problem for reliabilism, if truth is delivered for no apparent reason. Useful, but hardly knowledge. HOW did you know the number of teeth? |
| 302 | What knowledge is required to live well? |
| Full Idea: What knowledge would enable us to live finely for the rest of our lives? | |||
| From: Plato (Euthydemus [c.379 BCE], 293a) | |||
| A reaction: A successful grasp of other people's points of view might lead to respect for them. Also a realisation that we are not isolated individuals. We really are all in it together. |
| 301 | Only knowledge of some sort is good |
| Full Idea: Nothing is good except knowledge of some sort. | |||
| From: Plato (Euthydemus [c.379 BCE], 292b) | |||
| A reaction: I've heard it suggested that truth is the only value. This is the Socratic idea that moral goodness is a matter of successful rational judgement. Not convinced, but interesting. |
| 305 | Something which lies midway between two evils is better than either of them |
| Full Idea: Something which is composed of two factors which are bad for different purposes and lies midway between them is better than either of the factors. | |||
| From: Plato (Euthydemus [c.379 BCE], 306a) |