Sophist | Page 3

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This etext was prepared by Sue Asscher

SOPHIST
by
Plato
Translated by Benjamin Jowett
INTRODUCTION AND ANALYSIS.
The dramatic power of the dialogues of Plato appears to diminish as the
metaphysical interest of them increases (compare Introd. to the
Philebus). There are no descriptions of time, place or persons, in the
Sophist and Statesman, but we are plunged at once into philosophical
discussions; the poetical charm has disappeared, and those who have no
taste for abstruse metaphysics will greatly prefer the earlier dialogues
to the later ones. Plato is conscious of the change, and in the Statesman
expressly accuses himself of a tediousness in the two dialogues, which
he ascribes to his desire of developing the dialectical method. On the
other hand, the kindred spirit of Hegel seemed to find in the Sophist the
crown and summit of the Platonic philosophy--here is the place at
which Plato most nearly approaches to the Hegelian identity of Being
and Not-being. Nor will the great importance of the two dialogues be
doubted by any one who forms a conception of the state of mind and
opinion which they are intended to meet. The sophisms of the day were
undermining philosophy; the denial of the existence of Not-being, and
of the connexion of ideas, was making truth and falsehood equally
impossible. It has been said that Plato would have written differently, if
he had been acquainted with the Organon of Aristotle. But could the
Organon of Aristotle ever have been written unless the Sophist and
Statesman had preceded? The swarm of fallacies which arose in the
infancy of mental science, and which was born and bred in the decay of
the pre-Socratic philosophies, was not dispelled by Aristotle, but by
Socrates and Plato. The summa genera of thought, the nature of the

proposition, of definition, of generalization, of synthesis and analysis,
of division and cross-division, are clearly described, and the processes
of induction and deduction are constantly employed in the dialogues of
Plato. The 'slippery' nature of comparison, the danger of putting words
in the place of things, the fallacy of arguing 'a dicto secundum,' and in a
circle, are frequently indicated by him. To all these processes of truth
and error, Aristotle, in the next generation, gave distinctness; he
brought them together in a separate science. But he is not to be
regarded as the original inventor of any of the great logical forms, with
the exception of the syllogism.
There is little worthy of remark in the characters of the Sophist. The
most noticeable point is the final retirement of Socrates from the field
of argument, and the substitution for him of an Eleatic stranger, who is
described as a pupil of Parmenides and Zeno, and is supposed to have
descended from a higher world in order to convict the Socratic circle of
error. As in the Timaeus, Plato seems to intimate by the withdrawal of
Socrates that he is passing beyond the limits of his teaching; and in the
Sophist and Statesman, as well as in the Parmenides,