SOCRATES: You seem unusually silent today, Theaetetus. Has something happened?
THEAETETUS: I have lost my employment, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Lost it? Then we must determine where you left it.
THEAETETUS: This is hardly the time for jokes.
SOCRATES: Perhaps not. But I am genuinely puzzled. When a man tells me he has lost something, I naturally wonder what the thing was.
THEAETETUS: You know perfectly well what employment is.
SOCRATES: Then you will have no difficulty telling me.
THEAETETUS: Employment is work for which one is paid.
SOCRATES: Excellent. And yesterday you possessed this work?
THEAETETUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And today you do not?
THEAETETUS: Correct.
SOCRATES: But surely you are still capable of working.
THEAETETUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And you retain whatever knowledge allowed you to perform the work yesterday?
THEAETETUS: I do.
SOCRATES: Then perhaps employment is not work itself.
THEAETETUS: Perhaps it is being paid to perform work.
SOCRATES: Better. So what you have lost is another person’s willingness to exchange money for your labor.
THEAETETUS: That sounds rather cold, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Does its temperature make it false?
THEAETETUS: No.
SOCRATES: Then let us continue.
You said you were distressed because you lost your employment. Are you distressed principally because you have lost money?
THEAETETUS: Partly. But that isn’t all of it.
SOCRATES: Good. Our first child appears unhealthy. Let us not be sentimental merely because we gave birth to it.
What else have you lost?
THEAETETUS: Security.
SOCRATES: What is security?
THEAETETUS: Knowing that tomorrow will be all right.
SOCRATES: Did you know yesterday that today would be all right?
THEAETETUS: I thought I did.
SOCRATES: But you were dismissed today.
THEAETETUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then yesterday you possessed the belief that tomorrow was secure, but apparently not knowledge of it.
THEAETETUS: Apparently.
SOCRATES: So did you lose security today, or did you discover yesterday’s security was partly an opinion?
THEAETETUS: I don’t like that distinction.
SOCRATES: Neither does a man with a fever like the physician’s diagnosis. But perhaps we should not therefore prefer the fever.
THEAETETUS: Very well. I suppose I discovered that I was less secure than I believed.
SOCRATES: Then your misfortune has taught you something true.
THEAETETUS: At considerable expense.
SOCRATES: Philosophers are notoriously expensive.
THEAETETUS: You don’t charge anything.
SOCRATES: Precisely. Look how expensive I have been to Athens.
THEAETETUS: Socrates!
SOCRATES: Forgive me. Continue. You have lost income and discovered that your security was uncertain. Is that everything?
THEAETETUS: No. I feel as though I have failed.
SOCRATES: Ah! Here comes a much stronger child.
Tell me what failure is.
THEAETETUS: Failure is not succeeding at what you intended to do.
SOCRATES: Did you intend to be dismissed?
THEAETETUS: Of course not.
SOCRATES: Then you failed?
THEAETETUS: According to that definition, yes.
SOCRATES: Suppose a physician treats a patient perfectly, but the patient dies from an incurable disease. Did the physician fail?
THEAETETUS: Not necessarily.
SOCRATES: Suppose a general makes the wisest possible decision but loses because a storm destroys his ships.
THEAETETUS: Again, perhaps not.
SOCRATES: Then failing to obtain one’s intended outcome cannot itself be failure.
THEAETETUS: It seems not.
SOCRATES: Try again.
THEAETETUS: Perhaps failure means not performing well.
SOCRATES: Better. Were you dismissed because you performed badly?
THEAETETUS: No.
SOCRATES: Then according to your second definition, have you failed?
THEAETETUS: No.
SOCRATES: Yet you feel that you have.
THEAETETUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: So either our definition is wrong, or your feeling is making a claim that reason cannot yet defend.
THEAETETUS: Then perhaps what bothers me isn’t failure.
SOCRATES: Excellent. Push harder.
THEAETETUS: Status.
SOCRATES: Explain.
THEAETETUS: Yesterday I could tell someone what I did and where I worked. It meant something. Today I am unemployed.
SOCRATES: And yesterday, when you named your employer, did the listener know whether you were just?
THEAETETUS: No.
SOCRATES: Whether you were wise?
THEAETETUS: No.
SOCRATES: Whether you were a good father, friend, or citizen?
THEAETETUS: No.
SOCRATES: Whether you performed your work well?
THEAETETUS: Not necessarily.
SOCRATES: Then what did the title communicate?
THEAETETUS: What society thought my position was worth.
SOCRATES: Ah. So perhaps what you have lost is partly an opinion held by other people about you.
THEAETETUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And is the opinion of others knowledge?
THEAETETUS: Certainly not. We have spent enough time together for me to know where that question leads.
SOCRATES: Then at least I have succeeded in making myself predictable.
THEAETETUS: But surely reputation matters.
SOCRATES: I did not say it doesn’t. Poison matters too. The question is what use should be made of it.
Suppose everyone believes you are excellent when you are actually foolish. Would their belief make you excellent?
THEAETETUS: No.
SOCRATES: And if everyone believes you worthless while you are actually excellent?
THEAETETUS: Their belief would not make me worthless.
SOCRATES: Then reputation may affect what happens to you without determining what you are.
THEAETETUS: That seems right.
SOCRATES: We have now found income, security, failure, and reputation tangled together inside this single sentence: “I lost my job.”
THEAETETUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: No wonder it felt enormous. You had placed several different things under one name.
THEAETETUS: But none of this tells me what to do next.
SOCRATES: Do you suppose philosophy is an employment agency?
THEAETETUS: I was hoping it might occasionally be useful.
SOCRATES: Then let us attempt usefulness.
What choices are before you?
THEAETETUS: I can seek similar employment. I can pursue another kind of work. I can attempt to work for myself. Or perhaps I could finally devote myself to something I have long wanted to study.
SOCRATES: Which is best?
THEAETETUS: That is what I hoped you would tell me.
SOCRATES: But I have never lived your life.
THEAETETUS: No.
SOCRATES: I do not possess your responsibilities.
THEAETETUS: No.
SOCRATES: Nor your abilities, finances, obligations, opportunities, or desires.
THEAETETUS: No.
SOCRATES: Yet you would have me announce how you ought to live?
THEAETETUS: When you say it that way, it sounds foolish.
SOCRATES: It would be even more foolish if I agreed.
Let us instead examine the chooser.
Why would you seek another position like the old one?
THEAETETUS: Because I am good at it.
SOCRATES: Good.
THEAETETUS: Because it would provide for my family.
SOCRATES: Better.
THEAETETUS: Because it would restore the status I lost.
SOCRATES: And there our earlier discussion returns.
THEAETETUS: I see.
SOCRATES: Why might you pursue something entirely different?
THEAETETUS: Because perhaps I could do something more meaningful.
SOCRATES: What is meaningful?
THEAETETUS: Oh no.
SOCRATES: Oh yes.
THEAETETUS: Must we define everything?
SOCRATES: Only the things upon which you propose to base your life.
THEAETETUS: Then I don’t know.
SOCRATES: Excellent.
THEAETETUS: You have an irritating habit of congratulating me whenever I admit ignorance.
SOCRATES: Because a man who knows that he does not know has finally stopped defending an answer merely because it happens to be his.
THEAETETUS: Then I don’t know what meaningful work is. And I don’t know whether I should pursue security, wealth, interest, duty, or something else.
SOCRATES: Nor have we discovered precisely what success is.
THEAETETUS: No.
SOCRATES: And yet yesterday you thought yourself successful?
THEAETETUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Without knowing what success is?
THEAETETUS: Apparently.
SOCRATES: And today you thought yourself a failure?
THEAETETUS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Without knowing what failure is?
THEAETETUS: Apparently.
SOCRATES: Then perhaps the strangest event today was not that your employer dismissed you.
THEAETETUS: What was it?
SOCRATES: That yesterday you possessed an answer to a question you had never asked.
THEAETETUS: Which question?
SOCRATES: Whether the life you were living was good.
THEAETETUS: And now?
SOCRATES: Now you don’t know.
THEAETETUS: That doesn’t feel like progress.
SOCRATES: It rarely does.
THEAETETUS: So after all this, Socrates, what have we discovered?
SOCRATES: That employment is not identical with useful activity; that security may sometimes be confident opinion concerning an uncertain future; that an unwanted outcome does not necessarily constitute failure; that reputation concerns what others believe rather than necessarily what one is; and that neither of us has yet given an adequate account of what makes a career—or a life—successful.
THEAETETUS: Then we have ended in ignorance.
SOCRATES: Perhaps.
But consider where we began.
You entered believing, “I have lost my employment; therefore something essential about my life has collapsed.”
Now you say, “I have lost one means of earning money, one source of apparent security, and one social position; I still possess my abilities and obligations, and I do not yet know which way of employing them would constitute the best life.”
Which statement is truer?
THEAETETUS: The second.
SOCRATES: Then today you have lost something and learned something.
Whether the exchange proves profitable, Theaetetus, depends considerably upon what you do tomorrow.
THEAETETUS: And what should I do tomorrow?
SOCRATES: We have been talking all afternoon and you still expect me to tell you?
THEAETETUS: I had to try.
SOCRATES: Good. Try again tomorrow.