Do Those Who Learn Learn What They Know or What They Do Not Know?

(E2)

Trigger question : Do those who learn learn what they know ( ) or what they do not know ( )?

Thesis : Those who learn learn what they do not know.

Antithesis : Those who learn learn what they know.

What about this? Euthydemus said. Do you know letters

?

Yes, he said.

All?

He agreed.

Now whenever someone dictates anything, does he dictate letters?

He agreed.

Then does he dictate something that you know, he said, if you know all?

On this point too he agreed.

What about this? he said. Do you learn whatever someone dictates, or does he who doesn't know letters learn (

)?

No, he said, I learn.

Well then, you learn

what you know

, he said, if you know all your letters.

He agreed.

Therefore, you did not answer correctly, he said.
     (277 A 1-B 2)

Euthydemus triggers (E2) with another disjunctive question. This time, however, he shifts the emphasis of the attack from the subjects to the objects of learning. At once we should notice the vagueness of the "what" is learned. In (E1) the objects of learning were "things,"

and in (D1) they became "what was being dictated." Now in (E2) the sophist offers only a relative pronoun with a suppressed antecedent. We may, therefore, already anticipate that, regardless of which alternative Kleinias selects, Euthydemus will concretize the "what" learners learn with objects of knowledge in such a way as to undermine the boy's thesis. Again, with his answer "Those who learn learn what they do not know" (276 E 9), Kleinias becomes the defender of a thesis that Euthydemus immediately attacks. For his first question he fills in the relative pronoun with letters and asks Kleinias whether he knows them. He can, of course, expect an affirmative answer. All Greek children who have come under the tutelage of a grammar teacher have learned, and so know, their letters. Already, then, Euthydemus' eristic challenge is clearly established. If he can induce Kleinias to admit that, in addition to knowing, he also "learns" his letters, then he has successfully bounced the boy back to the antithesis he wants to establish.

The eristic fondness for brevity is well illustrated by Euthydemus' second question, which concerns the boy's knowledge of letters in a quantitative sense.^[24] And when Kleinias affirms to know "all" letters, he has unawares trapped himself within an inclusive body of knowledge. For if there were some letters he did not yet know, then he could still learn something in the looser sense of gathering knowledge, and the distinction between learning and knowing would not be effaced. But, as it is, Euthydemus has succeeded in laying a trap from which the boy will not escape. In his third and fourth questions the sophist continues to construct the context in which Kleinias will learn what he already knows. Bringing back the activity of recitation introduced by his brother in (D1), Euthydemus slips in letters for the objects of dictation and forces Kleinias to admit that he knows that part; after all, it cannot be denied that letters are part of what is recited. Then, in his fifth question, the key one for this refutation, Euthydemus introduces two uses of the pivotal term learn into an environment that on this occasion prevents the verb from taking on its weaker sense of "gathering knowledge." For when Kleinias reflects upon his own situation, he must admit that he "learns" in the strong sense of "understands," because the objects of his learning, namely, dictated letters, are already known. On the other hand, when he considers the case of his opposite, "he who doesn't know letters," Kleinias must deny that this individual can learn in any sense at all, for without

a knowledge of letters he cannot even begin to come upon the first thing learned. So the very gap between learning and knowing that provided the lever for overthrowing the thesis of (E1) has now been collapsed by the sophist for the purpose of toppling the thesis of (E2). Here too, we should note, Euthydemus has unwittingly stumbled over a real problem, that of the first thing known and its relation to the rest of our body of knowledge. (E2) has come very close to the eristic argument of the Meno .^[25]

Euthydemus announces his victory with a clear statement of the antithesis: "Well then, you learn what you know , if you know all your letters." But now the importance of the context cannot be more clearly indicated. For the antithesis of (E2) is expressed with two verbs in the second person singular ( and ), whereas the original disjunctive question and thesis statement assumed an air of universality. Again, that the failure in the argumentation is to be found in Kleinias and Kleinias alone, Euthydemus emphasizes in his concluding remark: "Therefore, you did not answer correctly." With the completion of this argument, we see that Kleinias is no longer in need of that grammar master whom Euthydemus and his brother introduced in (E1) and (D1). For now he is no longer a learner , but a knower of letters . In fact, if we turn back to (E1), we find that Euthydemus has contradicted his first argument. If we fill in those "things" of (E1), which the boys were attempting to learn, with the concrete letters of (E2), then we can see that Kleinias and his fellow students were in fact "wise" when they were learning letters that they already knew.^[26] So after only his second argument, we observe that Euthydemus has remained verbally infallible, but not verbally consistent. This verbal inconsistency, so characteristic of eristic activity, will later provide Socrates with the basis for establishing the verbal fallibility of the brothers.^[27]

As should now be clear, (E2) expands and elaborates (D1), only Euthydemus has shifted to the object-side of learning and argued the case more concretely. Yet both arguments are similar in that the sophists have toyed with the strict sense of learning , "to understand," in such a way that the verb has become hardly, if at all, distinguishable from know . Even the conclusion of (E2) extends what is implicit in (D1). Both "Kleinias" as knower of letters and "he who doesn't know letters" can now be seen for what they are, as concrete realizations of "the wise" and "the ignorant" of (D1). Here, in (E2) and (D1), the

brother-pair have joined their argumentative forces and are in agreement.

(D2)

Thesis : Those who learn learn what they know

Antithesis : Those who learn learn what they do not know (

Tell me, isn't learning to be gathering knowledge of what (

) one is learning?

Kleinias agreed.

And knowing, he said, isn't it to have knowledge already (

)?

Yes.

Then isn't not-knowing not yet to have knowledge (

)?

He agreed with him.
     (277 B 6-C 1)

The conclusion of (E2) triggers the next argument. After assuring Kleinias that he has been utterly deceived by Euthydemus, Dionysodorus reasserts the distinction between learning and knowing that was blurred in (E2). His strategy for achieving this trick is to set forth what might appear to be definitions, but which are really nothing more than verbal paraphrases of those terms that Euthydemus has featured throughout his questioning: first, Kleinias agrees that learning is to be gathering knowledge of what one is learning; then that knowing is to possess knowledge already, whereas not-knowing is not yet to possess knowledge. Significantly, by using an indeterminate object for what is learned, Dionysodorus moves away from the concrete letters of (E2) and returns to the vagueness of the "things" of (E1). The infinitives, linked by the verb to be , create an almost abstract atmosphere, far different from the concrete context of (E2). Armed with these new levers, the sophist can set his latest verbal trap:

Are those who are gathering something those who already have it or those who don't have it ?

Those who don't have it.

Well then, have you agreed that those who don't know () belong to this group, to those who don't have it, and not to those who do?

He nodded.

Then, do those who learn belong to those who are gathering something, and not to those who have it?

He granted it.

Therefore, those who do not know

learn, Kleinias, and not those who know

.
     (277 C 1-C 7)

The key to understanding this fourth argument is to observe how synonyms and antonyms are used for a contentious purpose. Compare, for example, Dionysodorus' first question with the one that Euthydemus used to trigger (E1). The expression "those who are gathering" is a synonym for Euthydemus' "those who learn ." Likewise, "those who already have it" and "those who don't have it" gloss "the wise " and "the ignorant ," respectively. With these "new" terms, Dionysodorus can repeat (E1) in a fresh way. Consequently, when Kleinias answers this first question with "those who don't have it," he affirms in effect the view that the ignorant are those who learn, and thus restates both the antithesis of (E1) and the thesis of (D1). Now if we fix our attention upon that indefinite "something ," which our learners are attempting to gather but do not yet have, then we may also observe that Kleinias has both undone the thesis of (D2) and already granted its antithesis. For "those who don't have it" are uninformed learners in the very process of gathering knowledge about "something" that they do not yet have, that is, about what they do not know . Contrarily, "those who already have it" or "the wise" cannot learn what they know , as Kleinias himself did in (E2), for they already "have" the object in question. So once again Kleinias has fallen into an eristic trap that Dionysodorus has expertly tailored to fit the specifications of this refutation. Now the sophist is free to complete his line of questioning as he sees fit. But he does not polish off (D2) mechanically by a formal statement of the rejected thesis and established antithesis; that would be too easy.

In his second question Dionysodorus continues the course of the argument on the basis of Kleinias' earlier concessions, asking him whether he has also agreed that "those who don't know" belong to the class of "those who don't have it" and so are among those still gathering something. And when Kleinias agrees, it becomes obvious that the

boy has reversed what he just said at 277 A 8. Now "he who doesn't know letters" can in fact come to know them by simply gathering knowledge about what he doesn't know or have. With the introduction of the subject "those who don't know," we can at last match up the synonyms of these argument-pairs with their corresponding antonyms: the wise, those who already have, those who know, and those who learn, in the sense of "those who already understand" correspond to the ignorant, those who don't have, those who don't know, and those who learn , in the sense of "those who are gathering knowledge" (). Both senses of the verb learn fluctuate back and forth between the polar terms on the subject-side of learning. On the object-side, this oscillation is effected by corresponding shifts in the terms used to designate what is learned: things, what was being dictated, letters, and something.

In his final question Dionysodorus adds nothing significantly new. He merely links the weak sense of learn with its synonym "those who are gathering," a connection that he already implied at 277 B 6-7. As we can expect, the sophist caps his conclusion with the vocative address, but let us look more closely at the precise wording of his final statement. Since the two expressions for the subjects, "those who don't know" and "those who know," are synonyms for "the ignorant" and "the wise," the conclusion of (D2) can also read: "Therefore, the ignorant learn, Kleinias, and not the wise."^[28] Thus, not only has Dionysodorus ended this argument precisely where his brother did (E1); but he has also reversed the conclusion that he himself established in (D1). So again, just as (E2) contradicted (El), (D2) has now refuted (D1).^[29] Like his brother, then, Dionysodorus is victorious but inconsistent. Obviously (D2) does not adhere as closely to the schema that we have provided as some might like, for Dionysodorus has shifted back to the subject-side of learning and so does not offer an exact statement of the antithesis.^[30] But there really is no problem here. Plato's design is simply to have (D2) turn back upon and dovetail with (E1), and thereby to complete the links between the twofold argument-pairs.^[31]

Throughout this performance the brothers have operated on the unstated assumption that learning does in fact exist; that is, they have

acted as if they answered affirmatively to the bare Eleatic dilemma, whether learning is or is not. On this assumption, they first offered Kleinias two possibilities for its subjects, the wise or the ignorant. Then they reduced both alternatives to absurdity by showing that either answer led not only to a contradiction (that was easy to accomplish), but even to its opposite. In the second argument-pair, they performed a similar operation, only this time toying with the objects of learning, and again demonstrated that either horn of this dilemma could also lead to a contradiction. These contrasting arguments display the final form such antinomies can take, as well as the consummate skill by which they can be delivered. They constitute, in sum, an advertisement for eristic wisdom, and we may well doubt whether Hippias or Gorgias or even Protagoras himself could have staged a performance to surpass this one. The brothers are not to be denied their due kudos. They have successfully demonstrated their ability both to produce and to use arguments for the purpose of punching out a boy. We are presumably to imagine a development in which arguments pro and contra on the topic of learning have undergone a progressive crystallization until finally, here in the Euthydemus , they have achieved their ultimate expression. Certainly the fifth antinomy of the (1-10), which features "the wise" and "the ignorant," can be cited as evidence to support the view that such a development was in fact occurring at the close of the fifth century.