Enquête sur la doxographie platonicienne dans la première partie du Théétète

The Theaetetus asks what knowledge is, sets out three definitions, then refutes them all. Faced with this apparent aporia, commentators have asked whether Plato's intention was to abandon the Theory of Forms or rather to found it anew. This alternative, provoked in part by evolutionist approaches to Plato's dialogues, dominates the exegesis of the Theaetetus.
The author proposes a radically different approach: the Theaetetus is not an aporetic dialogue, but a doxographical one. Plato expounds the theses of his predecessors the better to refute them.

Focusing on the first section of the Theaetetus, the author shows that the way Plato binds together Protagoras' epistemology and mobilist physics is an integral part of a strategy of refutation. In so doing, she throws into question the validity of any interpretations that would consider the Theaetetus' mobilism to be an expression of Plato's physics.
In studying Platonic doxography throughout the first section of the Theaetetus, Anne Balansard pursues a line of inquiry initiated in her previous book on Plato and his predecessors.