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SOPHIST
SOPHIST PLATO 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 he probably means to
imply that he is making a closer approach to the schools of Elea and
Megara. He had much in common with them but he must first submit their
ideas to criticism and revision. He had once thought as he says speaking
by the mouth of the Eleatic that he understood their doctrine of Not-
being; but now he does not even comprehend the nature of Being. The
friends of ideas (Soph.) are alluded to by him as distant acquaintances
whom he criticizes ab extra; we do not recognize at first sight that he is
criticizing himself. The character of the Eleatic stranger is colourless;
he is to a certain extent the reflection of his father and master
Parmenides who is the protagonist in the dialogue which is called by his
name. Theaetetus himself is not distinguished by the remarkable traits
which are attributed to him in the preceding dialogue. He is no longer
under the spell of Socrates or subject to the operation of his midwifery
though the fiction of question and answer is still maintained and the
necessity of taking Theaetetus along with him is several times insisted
upon by his partner in the discussion. There is a reminiscence of the old
Theaetetus in his remark that he will not tire of the argument and in his
conviction which the Eleatic thinks likely to be permanent that the
course of events is governed by the will of God. Throughout the two
dialogues Socrates continues a silent auditor in the Statesman just
reminding us of his presence at the commencement by a characteristic jest
about the statesman and the philosopher and by an allusion to his
namesake with whom on that ground he claims relationship as he had
already claimed an affinity with Theaetetus grounded on the likeness of
his ugly face. But in neither dialogue any more than in the Timaeus does
he offer any criticism on the views which are propounded by another.
The style though wanting in dramatic power--in this respect resembling
the Philebus and the Laws--is very clear and accurate and has several
touches of humour and satire. The language is less fanciful and
imaginative than that of the earlier dialogues; and there is more of
bitterness as in the Laws though traces of a similar temper may also be
observed in the description of the 'great brute' in the Republic and in
the contrast of the lawyer and philosopher in the Theaetetus. The
following are characteristic passages: 'The ancient philosophers of whom
we may say without offence that they went on their way rather regardless
of whether we understood them or not;' the picture of the materialists or
earth-born giants 'who grasped oaks and rocks in their hands' and who
must be improved before they can be reasoned with; and the equally
humourous delineation of the friends of ideas who defend themselves from a
fastness in the invisible world; or the comparison of the Sophist to a
painter or maker (compare Republic) and the hunt after him in the rich
meadow-lands of youth and wealth; or again the light and graceful touch
with which the older philosophies are painted ('Ionian and Sicilian
muses') the comparison of them to mythological tales and the fear of the
Eleatic that he will be counted a parricide if he ventures to lay hands on
his father Parmenides; or once more the likening of the Eleatic stranger
to a god from heaven.--All these passages notwithstanding the decline of
the style retain the impress of the great master of language. But the
equably diffused grace is gone; instead of the endless variety of the early
dialogues traces of the rhythmical monotonous cadence of the Laws begin to
appear; and already an approach is made to the technical language of
Aristotle in the frequent use of the words 'essence' 'power'
'generation' 'motion' 'rest' 'action' 'passion' and the like.
The Sophist like the Phaedrus has a double character and unites two
enquirers which are only in a somewhat forced manner connected with each
other. The first is the search after the Sophist the second is the
enquiry into the nature of Not-being which occupies the middle part of the
work. For 'Not-being' is the hole or division of the dialectical net in
which the Sophist has hidden himself. He is the imaginary impersonation of
false opinion. Yet he denies the possibility of false opinion; for
falsehood is that which is not and therefore has no existence. At length
the difficulty is solved; the answer in the language of the Republic
appears 'tumbling out at our feet.' Acknowledging that there is a
communion of kinds with kinds and not merely one Being or Good having
different names or several isolated ideas or classes incapable of
communion we discover 'Not-being' to be the other of 'Being.'
Transferring this to language and thought we have no difficulty in
apprehending that a proposition may be false as well as true. The Sophist
drawn out of the shelter which Cynic and Megarian paradoxes have
temporarily afforded him is proved to be a dissembler and juggler with
words.
The chief points of interest in the dialogue are: (I) the character
attributed to the Sophist: (II) the dialectical method: (III) the nature
of the puzzle about 'Not-being:' (IV) the battle of the philosophers: (V)
the relation of the Sophist to other dialogues.
I. The Sophist in Plato is the master of the art of illusion; the
charlatan the foreigner the prince of esprits-faux the hireling who is
not a teacher and who from whatever point of view he is regarded is the
opposite of the true teacher. He is the 'evil one' the ideal
representative of all that Plato most disliked in the moral and
intellectual tendencies of his own age; the adversary of the almost equally
ideal Socrates. He seems to be always growing in the fancy of Plato now
boastful now eristic now clothing himself in rags of philosophy now more
akin to the rhetorician or lawyer now haranguing now questioning until
the final appearance in the Politicus of his departing shadow in the
disguise of a statesman. We are not to suppose that Plato intended by such
a description to depict Protagoras or Gorgias or even Thrasymachus who
all turn out to be 'very good sort of people when we know them' and all of
them part on good terms with Socrates. But he is speaking of a being as
imaginary as the wise man of the Stoics and whose character varies in
different dialogues. Like mythology Greek philosophy has a tendency to
personify ideas. And the Sophist is not merely a teacher of rhetoric for a
fee of one or fifty drachmae (Crat.) but an ideal of Plato's in which the
falsehood of all mankind is reflected.
A milder tone is adopted towards the Sophists in a well-known passage of
the Republic where they are described as the followers rather than the
leaders of the rest of mankind. Plato ridicules the notion that any
individuals can corrupt youth to a degree worth speaking of in comparison
with the greater influence of public opinion. But there is no real
inconsistency between this and other descriptions of the Sophist which
occur in the Platonic writings. For Plato is not justifying the Sophists
in the passage just quoted but only representing their power to be
contemptible; they are to be despised rather than feared and are no worse
than the rest of mankind. But a teacher or statesman may be justly
condemned who is on a level with mankind when he ought to be above them.
There is another point of view in which this passage should also be
considered. The great enemy of Plato is the world not exactly in the
theological sense yet in one not wholly different--the world as the hater
of truth and lover of appearance occupied in the pursuit of gain and
pleasure rather than of knowledge banded together against the few good and
wise men and devoid of true education. This creature has many heads:
rhetoricians lawyers statesmen poets sophists. But the Sophist is the
Proteus who takes the likeness of all of them; all other deceivers have a
piece of him in them. And sometimes he is represented as the corrupter of
the world; and sometimes the world as the corrupter of him and of itself.
Of late years the Sophists have found an enthusiastic defender in the
distinguished historian of Greece. He appears to maintain (1) that the
term 'Sophist' is not the name of a particular class and would have been
applied indifferently to Socrates and Plato as well as to Gorgias and
Protagoras; (2) that the bad sense was imprinted on the word by the genius
of Plato; (3) that the principal Sophists were not the corrupters of youth
(for the Athenian youth were no more corrupted in the age of Demosthenes
than in the age of Pericles) but honourable and estimable persons who
supplied a training in literature which was generally wanted at the time.
We will briefly consider how far these statements appear to be justified by
facts: and 1 about the meaning of the word there arises an interesting
question:--
Many words are used both in a general and a specific sense and the two
senses are not always clearly distinguished. Sometimes the generic meaning
has been narrowed to the specific while in other cases the specific
meaning has been enlarged or altered. Examples of the former class are
furnished by some ecclesiastical terms: apostles prophets bishops
elders catholics. Examples of the latter class may also be found in a
similar field: jesuits puritans methodists and the like. Sometimes the
meaning is both narrowed and enlarged; and a good or bad sense will subsist
side by side with a neutral one. A curious effect is produced on the
meaning of a word when the very term which is stigmatized by the world
(e.g. Methodists) is adopted by the obnoxious or derided class; this tends
to define the meaning. Or again the opposite result is produced when
the world refuses to allow some sect or body of men the possession of an
honourable name which they have assumed or applies it to them only in
mockery or irony.
The term 'Sophist' is one of those words of which the meaning has been both
contracted and enlarged. Passages may be quoted from Herodotus and the
tragedians in which the word is used in a neutral sense for a contriver or
deviser or inventor without including any ethical idea of goodness or
badness. Poets as well as philosophers were called Sophists in the fifth
century before Christ. In Plato himself the term is applied in the sense
of a 'master in art' without any bad meaning attaching to it (Symp.;
Meno). In the later Greek again 'sophist' and 'philosopher' became
almost indistinguishable. There was no reproach conveyed by the word; the
additional association if any was only that of rhetorician or teacher.
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