THE ESSENCE OF TRUTH
leaving aside; it does not belong to the matter that is now being treated. We agree upon the unambiguous thesis: everything is either known or not known.2 This perspective is completely appropriate and therefore justified. For from the outset it is necessary (ἤδη ἀνάγκη) that when someone has a view, whether distorted or correct, he in any case has a view on [über] something - thus something he knows or does not know. Thus, when someone has a view on something, he in some sense has knowledge of something. To have a view on something is to have knowledge of something or a representation of something in the broadest sense. Knowledge stands under the guiding principle that it excludes not-knowing (and vice versa). This principle immediately implies, as Socrates says (188 a 10 f.):
καὶ μὴν εἰδότα γε μὴ εἰδέναι τὸ αὐτὸ ἢ μὴ εἰδότα εἰδέναι ἀδύνατον.
'That one who knows a thing does not know it, or that one who does not know it knows it, is surely impossible.'
Naturally, for we either know something, or we do not know it.
Why is Socrates not content with this general principle? Why is the implication of the principle actually quoted here? Because it brings to expression the possibility or impossibility of a phenomenon that becomes a problem under the heading of ψευδὴς δόξα. Only now is the perspective for apprehending the ψευδὴς δόξα made sufficiently precise.
For what is the situation when someone has a distorted view? They do not simply know something, have knowledge of ..., but since it is distorted, they at the same time do not know it. A distorted view is still a view; it is not simply that they know nothing at all, for something is indeed represented. They thus know something, but it is a distorted view, such that what is known is not known. It is therefore a view and at the same time not. So in the fact of the ψευδὴς δόξα there is already a phenomenon that contradicts the guiding principle of the entire discussion. Nevertheless, this guiding principle is for the moment still maintained. To be noted is that this guiding principle is apparently maintained as self-evident, against the fact of a ψευδὴς δόξα. To the Greeks of the time, and for the moment also to Plato, this is absolutely self-evident. That there is something between the two is precisely the great discovery of Plato. The discussion of the ψευδὴς δόξα is the only path to this.
Thus a distorted view, to which it now pertains that (as Socrates says, 188 b 3):