I first read the Sophist almost exactly two years ago when I was working on the first big Plato section in D&R. As you might imagine, reading so much more Plato in the interim has given me a different perspective on it. Not that what I wrote earlier seems totally wrong or anything (and I particularly enjoyed the concluding contrast with W.V.O. Quine). But now I see the way this dialog fits tightly together with Theaetetus and Parmenides. These four (including the Statesman, which is next on our list) seem to constitute a new phase in Plato's philosophy, one that begins to rethink the classic theory of Forms as it was presented in the earlier quartet (Phaedo, Symposium, Phaedrus, Republic).
Just how to summarize this shift is something I'm still struggling with. It's clear that Plato isn't ready to just abandon the theory of Forms. Perhaps he's modifying it to avoid the accusation that his supreme One-Good in the Republic is really no different than Parmenides' conception of the unchanging and undivided One? Or perhaps he's simply adding more complexity to the theory by following up on his suggestion in Phaedo that some forms can blend with others, and that our knowledge must encompass not merely the individual forms but their various combinations? Or perhaps he's struggling with something much deeper, something akin to the later problem of evil -- if the virtuous Forms are all that really has being, if they are the only "things that are", then why are there so many appearances and opinions to confuse our knowledge of them? Having created a sharp appearance-reality distinction between Forms and their incarnation, it seems difficult to avoid a new question: if the Forms alone are the sum total of reality, then what is the ontological status of an appearance? What exactly are these "things that are not"? After all, up to now, it has seemed that the overarching theme in Plato's philosophy has been an attempt to teach us to purify the mixtures we find in the world into their component Forms. This purification serves a moral purpose by allowing us to recognize and select what's good for us. But where did this mess come from to begin with!? If the Forms are so pure, how did we get this mixed up world? This last interpretation of the shift in Plato's philosophy is probably the most interesting. Because perhaps, in struggling with this problem, Plato began to understand that the two sides of his philosophy -- reality and appearance, models and copies, Forms and world -- were at risk of becoming indistinguishable (or if distinct, entirely relative and interchangeable). Perhaps, as Deleuze puts it, Plato began to overturn himself.
Was it not inevitable that Plato should be the first to overturn Platonism, or at least to show the direction such an overturning should take? We are reminded of the grand finale of the Sophist: difference is displaced, division turns back against itself and begins to function in reverse, and, as a result of being applied to simulacra themselves (dreams, shadows, reflections, paintings), shows the impossibility of distinguishing them from originals or from models. The Eleatic Stranger gives a definition of the sophist such that he can no longer be distinguished from Socrates himself: the ironic imitator who proceeds by brief arguments (questions and problems). (D&R 68)
After that long intro, you may not be surprised to hear that, as with Theaetetus, I'm a little unsure how much detail to go into here. I think the Sophist may be even more complex than Theaetetus, and it also starts to cast Parmenides in a new light. It practically needs a blog of its own. The simplest summary would be that an "Eleatic Stranger" shows up to take on the role usually played by Socrates and tries to come up with a definition of the sophist that would distinguish him from the philosopher. He proceeds to employ something he calls "the method of division" (apparently Plato's new name for the dialectic, which we saw in the Republic lacked a precise method), which keeps subdividing descriptions in a sort of genealogical tree until it reaches one that will completely and uniquely describe whatever we want to talk about. Along the way, some strange stuff happens. The Sophist starts to appear at many different points along the tree of division that the Visitor sets up. That fucks up our plan. Hoping to fix this problem, the Visitor suggests that the sophist must be defined by some sort of expertise in making himself appear to be expert in all sorts of things, which is why his location on the tree is hard to pin down. This turns out to create an even bigger problem because it implies that there is something like a knowledge of appearances, things which, in the Platonic world, are just illusions that are not even supposed to really be. Fully half the dialog is then taken up with trying to figure out what an appearance is, if it's something that theoretically is not. This is obviously very related to the question of false judgement that was posed in Theaetetus. Through this long digression, the Visitor reaches the conclusion that things that are not still, in some sense, are, and vice versa. In other words, non-being is not the opposite of being (a concept which makes no sense) but something different from being, a form which blends with being in certain ways. Now that he's established that there is a being of mere appearances, the Visitor creates a new genealogical tree and defines the sophist's exact location on it.
Now, there are a few things we immediately notice about this summary. First, since the dialog in Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman is explicitly described as three parts of one epic day of conversation, we cannot fail to notice that this procedure is exactly how the conclusion of Theaetetus would try to define knowledge of the sophist. The Stranger provides true judgement of who the sophist is, together with an account of what makes him different from the philosopher. But whereas Socrates' inquiry in Theaetetus ended in a sort of aporia -- defining knowledge as true judgement together with a knowledgeable account of what makes each thing different is circular -- the Visitor's inquiry in the Sophist seems to be totally successful. Both these conclusions, however, seem strangely designed to undercut themselves. We saw that actually Theaetetus defined the form of knowledge quite successfully -- as representational -- but stumbled on whether we could determine if a particular bit of knowledge was true or not. By contrast, while the Stranger delivers a clear cut, neatly packaged definition of the sophist, as Deleuze pointed out above, this definition is exactly how you would describe Socrates. And this is not the only point in the dialog at which the sophist and the philosopher seem to be doubles of one another (see 226b-232 and 253c-254b below). It's hard to be sure what's going on here, but particularly with the Sophist, I suspect that Plato is drawing our attention to the problem discussed above. If, as the dialog explicitly argues, being and non-being (difference) are not opposites, then how can we maintain that the sophist is the opposite of the philosopher? We know that there is some sort of distinction between them, in fact no distinction could be more important. But when it comes to identifying a particular case, it seems we'll never be able to say which is which.
Far from being a merely inconvenient problem, this threatens to entirely unravel the central distinction between appearance and reality, sophist and philosopher. It's truly a weird moment in the Platonic corpus. Recall that the Forms are meant to solve a moral problem. We will find out what's good for us by purifying the world into its Forms. Eventually we even come to see the Form of the Good itself. Surely, this should let us completely solve our moral problem and purify all possible actions into good and bad ones, right? But a strange twist seems to have occurred since the conclusion of the Republic. Plato mentioned there that the Good was beyond even being. This left open the question taken up in Parmenides about whether the One-Good is, or is not. Now though, we might read Parmenides as a prelude to the Sophist, or at least in light of it. Because now we're told clearly that non-being is not the opposite of being. In which case, the question in Parmenides could not have been either/or. Instead, as Deleuze suggested, we are using the two separate hypotheses -- that the One-Good is, and that the One-Good is not -- to reach beyond all hypotheses to some necessary apodictic truth. While the conclusion of Parmenides is still obscure, it seems that perhaps the truth revealed there is that relations of opposition or contradiction cannot be sufficient or exhaustive.
... whether one is or is not, it and the others both are and are not, and both appear and do not appear all things in all ways, both in relation to themselves and in relation to each other. (Parmenides 166c)
Perhaps this says that, yes, there is both being and non-being, there is both appearance and reality, and, by implication, there is both good and bad, but that these oppositions co-exist in everything. Which is to say that they cannot be logically binary oppositions that follow the law of the excluded middle. We could then read the problems we've encountered in Theaetetus, and now the Sophist as continuing the same line of thought. These dialogs presume that both appearance and reality exist and are distinct (which I claim is the apodictic conclusion of Parmenides that the Republic (511b) claimed was the highest form of understanding), but deal with the consequences of the fact that this distinction is not an absolute and binary logical cleavage in the world. In fact, contrary to all our attempts at purification, it seems that these two sides are constantly intermixing and getting confused, to the point where we risk not being able to distinguish true knowledge from false or the philosopher from his evil twin the sophist. What this is supposed to do to our original moral question is now a huge dilemma. Perhaps, as the final dialog in this series, the Statesman will take up this question more directly. Or perhaps it will render my whole line of thinking here irrelevant.
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For reference, here is a longer outline of the dialog:
218a-d -- going beyond a verbal explanation of the sophist by the method of division. An explanation of the exact difference between things (259d) is what constitutes knowledge (conclusion of Theaetetus)
218e-221c -- what is the angler?
221d-232 -- what is the sophist?
221d-226b -- 5 money based definitions -- hunter of rich young men, wholesale, retail, OEM, expert in debate
232-236d -- how can the sophist be an expert in everything? Sophist as imitator. Imitation divides into making likenesses and appearances.226b-232 -- a sixth definition as discriminator, purifier of ignorance, educator, philosopher. Context: This makes the sophist indistinguishable from Socrates and even the Visitor.
236d-260d -- the being of Non-being -- how can the sophist make things that are not appear to be? The thesis seems to be that non-being is not the opposite or negation of being but is different from being. This difference is the source of appearance, error, falsity. Some Forms blend with others and not everything can be neatly separated.
236b-239b -- how can we even talk about non-being? It can't be one or many. It can't ever be referred to as some thing.
239c-241d -- if we can't define falsity as saying non-being, then how can we claim the sophist makes copies of things. The logic of model and copy doesn't seem to apply if being and non-being are interwoven (240b-c). Non-being is confusing.
241d-243c -- all Presocratics (including Parmenides) talk about what the world is. But they don't explain what being is, so we may not be any clearer about it than about non-being. So what is being?
241d-246 -- Parmenides' equation of being and the One has many problems. Are these two names for the same thing? But isn't a name a thing too? Is the one a whole made of unified parts? Some of this is hard to follow in the same way as Parmenides.
246b-249e -- battle of materialists and idealists.
246e-248 -- materialists always end up admitting that something without a body has power/capacity (ability to affect or be affected)
248-249d -- idealists think that true beings are the changeless forms. But then how can we know being, since knowledge seems to be an affection? If we can know being, then it cannot be completely static. But if everything is moving and changing how would there ever be enough stability for knowledge? Ergo, being cannot be one, nor can it be many forms, nor can it change in every way, but it has to be both changing and unchanging.
249e-250e -- but being is still a third thing in addition to both rest and change. So we are still confused about what it is. Maybe the confusion about being and the confusion about non-being are related.
251b-254b -- a critique of the purity of the Forms. Forms mix. The philosopher is an expert in how Forms mix
251e-253c -- some forms mix. If no forms mixed we couldn't even talk about anything being. If all forms mixed there would be no distinctions at all. So only some forms mix with some others, just like with the letters.
253c-254b -- the philosopher is an expert in how the forms mix. That is exactly how the dialectic, and the method of division works, by gathering and splitting. The philosopher is confusing because the realm of being is so bright. The sophist is confusing because the realm of non-being is so dark. Context: given the confusion around being and non-being how would we ever distinguish these two, especially since we're about to prove they aren't even opposites?
254c-260d -- Which Forms mix and which do not?
254d-255e -- starting with motion, rest, and being but being forced to add same and different
256-256e -- change is the same as and is different from: rest, same, different, being
256e-260d -- Since the different blends with all of them, it gives everything a share of non-being. Non-being shows up as indefinitely many differences between being and the other forms. Non-being is difference, not the opposite of being, non-being is itself a form. The things that are different from every form (not beautiful, not just) also are. So non-being is chopped up into the relations between forms and thus scattered over all of being.
259 -- Context: the conclusion seems close to Parmenides, and might be a proof that both reality and appearances are (but also are not).
259d -- Context: another puzzling passage. The being of difference means that the not large also is, but it's important to specify in exactly what way something is different from a form, and not to just to make it appear different with just verbal tricks. But how are we ever going to separate these two?
260 -- now that we know what non-being is, we can ask whether it blends with speech and belief to generate falsity and deception
264c-END -- now that we know that appearances exist, we can go back to 236d and continue the method of division to define the sophist.
265c-d -- a twist in the method of division has us keep a division on the discarded side. Divine and human production both contain the making of things themselves and copies of things.
268b -- Context: the final description of the sophist is again very similar to Socrates. It also takes us back to the disputed 6th definition of the sophist as the educator who purifies you by refuting your belief that you know. But the discussion of the mixing of the forms has put purification into question.Context: The dialog does not conclude with aporia or a myth, but everything is wrapped up in a neat package. Irony? Since production divides into human and divine (265b) the implication is that there are also divine sophists.
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