Sophist is one of the few Platonic dialogues which don’t have Socrates as the main character (all are from the late period). This seems to offer Plato some advantages, especially for this book’s purposes. Using the Eleatic Visitor as the main speaker allows Plato to make sustained arguments consisting of series of positive statements as opposed to the Socratic character’s standard approach, claiming to know nothing and play the midwife of others’ thoughts – asking questions, testing answers, usually showing their inadequacy, and typically ending inconclusively. Arguably Plato could have used Socrates the same way he used the Visitor, but that would have been odd as Socrates is the main speaker in the Theaetetus, Sophist’s predecessor in a trilogy, in which Socrates is true to his old form. Sophist is an attack on Plato’s adversaries, the sophists, and on some of their most important (and to Plato, very dangerous) word or logic puzzles. His animus towards sophists, and towards poets, might seem excessive, but we should remember that he saw both as educators offering falsehoods, in some cases in the guise of truth and in others with a relativistic view of truth. And this was at a time when disinterested, rational investigation into truth was new and insecure. For some it was seen as impious, probably for others a potential threat to society and the state. Another danger that seems to have been quite real was the conflating of philosophy and sophistry (as we see in Aristophanes’ Clouds, and as Plato’s Apology seems to suggest, though in reality they were perhaps less distinct than Plato might have us believe). Regarding at least some sophists, the main issue was the reality and importance of truth and the importance of pursuing truth regardless of outcome as opposed to developing and teaching skill in persuasion regardless of truth. The sophists’ puzzles posed serious problems for Plato, causing fundamental aspects of existence (being and non-being, rest and motion, one and many, etc.) to appear hopelessly mired in contradictions and confusions, leading among other things to relativism about truth and morality.

Primary among these problems was confusion about being (i.e. the word “is”) and manipulation of the confusion of “is” as denoting existence with its denoting a thing’s having particular qualities. With this difference long clear to us, it’s hard to understand how the brightest minds in ancient Greece were stumped by it, but it was a major problem that Plato seems to have effectively clarified in Sophist. Another main problem in sophistical arguments was the equation of “not being x” with “being the opposite of x.” Plato pretty effectively clarifies that “not” indicates difference but not necessarily contrariety. He also, very importantly, believes he establishes that we can talk about things that don’t exist without necessarily contradicting ourselves. I’m not sure he established this in a way that would decisively undermine the sophists, but this issue was central to Plato’s problem with them. Some sophists claimed there couldn’t be false belief or speech because no one could think or say “that which is not” since “that which is not” has no share in “being” (this picks up an issue from the Theaetetus, while Sophist in general is largely directed against Parmenides, with some mostly indirect connection to the dialogue named after him). We might say that Plato demonstrated, or believed he demonstrated, that at least some things which don’t exist (e.g. things that are false) are nevertheless available to thought and speech.

Another main issue Plato tackles, also without the greatest clarity, is that qualities (possibly the Forms or Ideas from his earlier works) can blend with each other (this revisits a central problem from the Parmenides, at least if we take it as dealing with the Forms). He doesn’t provide much of an account of how this works, but in a proto-Aristotelian manner he doesn’t seem to need to so he doesn’t bother; he gives some examples which appear to adequately demonstrate that this “blending” happens in at least some situations and then forgoes further proof as he’s achieved his primary objectives: demonstrating that things can either “be” in the sense that they exist or they can “be” possessors of qualities; they can “not be” in possession of quality x but this doesn’t mean they have (or are) its opposite; they can “not be” something without meaning they don’t exist; we can discuss things that “are not” without contradicting ourselves or saying nothing; and things can possess a multiplicity of differing qualities, “blending with each other,” without this being inherently contradictory or problematic. At least this is my understanding of what I take to be the main points of the dialogue. (The first third of the book is an entertaining search for a definition of “sophist,” in which we also meet the Eleatic Visitor and are introduced to his “method of division.”)

The Visitor seems to speak for Plato much more clearly than the character Socrates elsewhere, and it’s hard to imagine Plato taking on the tasks of this dialogue with the usual Socratic limitations and dialectical method. Decisively refuting the sophists on the points addressed was critical to Plato’s project (there is truth, it’s absolute and unchanging, and it very possibly can be discovered and understood by man; there also must be falsehood – both deceit and misunderstanding or ignorance; similarly, justice and knowledge are real, and attempting to pursue and understand them is not necessarily destined to be fruitless). But we also find the Visitor as the main speaker in Statesman, while Parmenides had been the main speaker in that dialogue (with a young Socrates largely on the defensive), and Socrates doesn’t even appear in The Laws. Timaeus and Critias are essentially monologues by those characters, and even in Philebus, with Socrates as the main speaker, he asserts positive doctrine rather than questioning others and demolishing their definitions and arguments. It seems Plato in his late period needed something his earlier Socratic character and method could no longer provide him (with the exception of the Theaetetus, perhaps acting as a coda for the old Socrates and an introduction to the trilogy which apparently was to include Sophist, Statesman, and the unwritten Philosopher).

I mentioned a proto-Aristotelian aspect in this dialogue; it seems there are several of these in the Parmenides and Theaetetus-Sophist-Statesman trilogy: The logic puzzles in Parmenides almost demand an analysis and categorization of logical fallacies, for which a formal logic would be a prerequisite. The Eleatic Visitor’s method of division (used in Sophist and Statesman) is a step away from Socratic dialectic and a step towards Aristotelian logic. The Visitor also insists on differentiation between general and specific, and seems to be moving towards something like Aristotle’s genus and species. The unmoved mover makes a very brief appearance in Statesman’s cosmological myth, which also includes something like an initial abstract of Aristotle’s Politics (i.e. a survey and critique of existing political systems). And there’s also something similar to Aristotle’s beloved doctrine of the mean in Statesman. To be fair to Aristotle, no one else in the Academy took these hints or produced the remarkable body of work he did, and there are plenty of things in Aristotle, e.g. his causality, which don’t seem to have any obvious precedents in Plato. Certainly Aristotle’s formal logic was one of history’s great intellectual achievements, regardless of the extent of the foundation Plato provided. And of course the mindsets of the two men were very different, not least in the place (or lack thereof) of empiricism in their respective worlds of thought.

Perhaps it should be noted that our view of the sophists may be excessively negative and otherwise unbalanced largely due to Plato’s well-preserved and brilliant dialogues which so often savage the group. It’s unlikely we’ll ever have adequate knowledge of them to be able to independently assess Plato’s characterizations. But perhaps it’s worth keeping in mind Plato’s harsh view of the poets, who we do know, when considering his even harsher view of the sophists. ( )

Yet another one of Plato's below par dialogues-- in my opinion. ( )

184 PLA