Plato's Sophist (Session 2 of 2)

The Sophist is set the day after the events of The Theaetetus, and belongs to a loose trilogy in which Plato works out his conception of philosophy — the third installment being The Statesman, which we'll read next month.

The dialogue tackles some of Plato's thorniest metaphysical territory: being and non-being, appearance versus reality, and how it's even possible to say something false. It approaches these problems somewhat sideways, through an inquiry into the nature of the sophist — the pretender to wisdom — and how he differs from the true philosopher. Along the way, the Stranger introduces his method of division and collection (diairesis) — repeatedly splitting a concept in two to narrow in on a definition. The dialogue is also famous for staging the "Battle of Gods and Giants," a clash between hard-nosed materialists who think only bodies are real and idealists who argue that invisible, incorporeal things (like justice or wisdom) are just as real — a debate that still echoes in philosophy of mind today.

The dialogue's central figure is a Stranger from Elea, a disciple of Parmenides and Zeno, who serves as the true philosopher of the piece (and largely takes over Socrates' usual role as questioner).

Last week we tracked the sophist through a series of definitions by division, ending on a cliffhanger: to call the sophist's images "false," we need an account of how falsehood is even possible — and that means confronting the ancient taboo, inherited from Parmenides, against saying "what is not, is." This session picks up that challenge and follows it all the way to the dialogue's final, precise definition of the sophist.

Session 2 reading: Stephanus 236d–268d
The Stranger opens by staging what he calls a "Battle of Gods and Giants" — a clash between hard-nosed materialists who insist only tangible bodies are real, and idealists who argue that invisible, incorporeal things (justice, wisdom, being itself) are just as real as anything you can touch. Out of this confrontation comes one of Plato's boldest philosophical moves: the introduction of the megista genē, the "greatest kinds" — Being, Sameness, Difference, Rest, and Motion — and the striking claim that not-being isn't the opposite of being at all, but simply a form of difference. Something "is not" some other thing, without therefore being nothing.

This solution does real work: it lets the Stranger explain, for the first time in Greek philosophy, how a false statement can say something about something — rather than referring to nothing at all, which is what had made falsehood seem paradoxical or even impossible. With that puzzle solved, the Stranger returns to the method of division from Session 1 and drives it to its conclusion, arriving at last at a full, precise definition of the sophist: a deliberate producer of false appearances who knows, on some level, that he's faking it.

We'll close by returning to the question that shadowed Session 1 — is the sophist just a corrupted double of the philosopher, distinguished only by intent? Having now watched the philosopher's method (division, argument about being) do the work of unmasking him, does the dialogue actually answer that question, or does it leave the boundary more unsettled than we'd like?

Text: https://www.platonicfoundation.org/translation/sophist/
Audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyJmGkq2c1c&t=2543s

Please read in advance — we'll discuss together.