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Chapter 1 HOW to READ the SOPHIST 1.1 the Many Cambridge University Press 0521632595 - The Unity of Plato’s Sophist: Between the Sophist and the Philosopher Noburu Notomi Excerpt More information chapter 1 HOW TO READ THE SOPHIST 1.1 The many appearances of the Sophist What is the Sophist, usually deemed one of the greatest philosophical works of Plato? What philosophical problem does Plato propose and investigate in this dialogue? The Sophist has many faces, each of which has attracted philosophers for two millennia. The issues discussed in the dialogue are all known to be so problematic and so important in the history of philosophy that philosophers have hardly ever asked what problem the Sophist really confronts, or what these issues are to be examined for. They have taken the `problems' for granted. The variety of the philosophical issues it raises, however, makes us fail to see the dialogue as a whole. Each philosopher has taken up only a piece of the dialogue, so that the faces of the Sophist remain fragmentary; the Sophist has not shown us the whole ®gure nor its essence. Let us begin our examination by considering how we can approach the dialogue, through a survey of the many faces it has shown its past readers. With its traditional subtitle `On what is' ( peri tou ontos, de ente),1 the dialogue was treated, from antiquity to the Renais- sance, primarily as a masterpiece of Plato's ontological thinking. First, Plato tackles in Sophist 236d±242b the problem of 1 Cf. DL 3.58. Diogenes attributes the use of the double title, the one from the name of the interlocutor and the other from the subject, to Thrasyllus (®rst century ad) (DL 3.57; cf. Grote 1875, Vol.I, 160, note), but the subtitles to the Platonic dialogues must have re¯ected the long tradition of the Academy and Alexandrian scholarship. Hoerber 1957 argues that the second titles originated in the fourth century bc (possibly in Plato himself), and were only used by Thrasyllus in incorporating them into his canon (see also Philip 1970, 301±302); Tarrant 1993, 16±17, argues that it must be the systematic compiler of the corpus, i.e. Thrasyllus, who attached descriptive titles to every dialogue. 1 © Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 0521632595 - The Unity of Plato’s Sophist: Between the Sophist and the Philosopher Noburu Notomi Excerpt More information how to read the sophist `what is not' (to meÅ on), which has proved one of the most important issues in Greek philosophy since Parmenides ori- ginally raised the issue. Parmenides, in his verse, strongly opposed `what is not is', and his successors had to prove the possibility of the being of what is not, in order to secure change and plurality in our world. In spite of Aristotle's criticism,2 Plato's treatment of `what is not' as difference (257b±259b) became a standard view for his successors, and the Neoplatonists usually assume Plato's distinction between `relative not-being' and `absolute not-being'.3 Following Plotinus, they also assume a third sense of `what is not', namely, `matter'.4 The ontological status of `what is not' continues to be one of the important issues in Western philosophy. Plato's full investigation into `what is' (to on) in 242b± 259d, on the other hand, reveals to his followers the essence of Platonic ontology, and each particular portion of the discussion greatly in¯uenced later philosophers. Interestingly enough, the criticism levelled against materi- alists and idealists (the friends of Forms) attracted both the materialists of the Hellenistic period and the idealists of Neoplatonism. In the criticism of the materialists, the capa- city of acting and being acted upon is proposed as a hallmark (horos) of `being' (247d±248a).5 Zeno the Stoic is said to reverse this proposal and use it as the hall-mark of 2 Cf. Meta. N 2 (esp. 1088b35±1089a6, b16±20), Z 4 1030a25±27; cf. Phys. A 3 187a1±10 (the reference may be to the Platonists, not to Plato himself; cf. Ross 1936, 479±481, and Cherniss 1944, 84±101). 3 Proclus, In Parm. 999±1000, 1184±1185, and 46K. Cf. Gersh 1978, 62. 4 Plotinus distinguishes three senses of `what is not': absolute not-being; something different from being; and Matter (cf. O'Brien 1995, Etude I (=O'Brien 1991), and Gerson 1994, 285, n.39). The last sense can be traced back to the Unwritten Doctrine, reported in Aristotle, since he identi®es `what is not' for Plato with matter, space, or `inde®nite dyad' (see Cherniss 1944, 86, 92±96). Proclus, In Parm. 999±1000, also distinguishes these three senses (cf. Platonic Theology II 5; Saffrey & Westerink 1974, 38±39, 99±100). On the other hand, the scholion to Proclus' Commentaryon Plato's Republic (F. 148v ad p. 265. 26) distinguishes four senses of `what is not': the ®rst principle which is beyond being; difference or not being something; the sensible in contrast to the intelligible (or matter, as being nothing actual); and absolute not-being (Kroll 1901, 375). 5 This hallmark seems popular in the Academy; see Aristotle, Top. V 9 139a4±8, VI 7 146a21±32. 2 © Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 0521632595 - The Unity of Plato’s Sophist: Between the Sophist and the Philosopher Noburu Notomi Excerpt More information the many appearances of the sophist `body',6 and Epicurus uses the same de®nition for some- thing's being `body'.7 Both of the materialist parties, the Stoics and Epicureans, are directly or indirectly in¯uenced by the Sophist passage, which originally intended to refute materialism. Another short, but dif®cult, passage in the refutation of the friends of Forms (248e±249d) fascinated Plotinus and his successors: life and intelligence, as well as the Forms, must possess true being. This claim, exceptional in Plato's corpus, is evoked as a support for the Neoplatonic triad of powers in Intelligence (nous): being, life, and intelligence.8 According to some testimony, the major Platonists, in- cluding Porphyry, Iamblichus, Proclus, and Olympiodorus, may have written commentaries on the Sophist.9 Their com- mentaries have not survived, but we can imagine the dia- logue's in¯uence from some important treatises of Plotinus and scattered comments on it in Proclus' surviving works.10 We must remember that the discussion on `what is' has 6 The main source of testimony about Zeno is Cicero, Academica I 39 (LS 45A). For the in¯uence of the Sophist passage on the Stoics, see Hicks 1910, 60, Sandbach 1975, 91±92, Long 1986, 153, Long & Sedley 1987, Vol.1, 270 and 273±274 (cf. Vol.2, 269), and Dancy 1991, 72±76, 151±152, n.51. Brunschwig 1994 (esp. 115±126) fully examines the importance of the Sophist for the Stoics. 7 Letter to Herodotus 67 (DL 10.67; LS 14A(7)). Plato's in¯uence on Epicurus is not as obvious as on the Stoics; but similarity to the Stoic argument (especially, Cleanthes in LS 45C) is pointed out by Long & Sedley 1987, Vol.1, 71. In this regard, Hicks 1910, 60, and Dancy 1991, 71±72, treat Epicurus and the Stoics in a parallel way. 8 This triad is seen in Plotinus (e.g. Enn. I 6.7, V 4.2, V 6.6), but their order in his system is not ®xed (cf. Wallis 1972, 67, 92). It is the later Neoplatonists, such as Proclus, who establish the triad (the Elements of Theology §§101±103; cf. Dodds 1963, 252±254; Wallis 1972, 125); see also Hadot 1960, Merlan 1967, 20, Allen 1989, 56±59, A. C. Lloyd 1990, 113, Heiser 1991, 51±52, and Gerson 1994, 249, n.51. 9 Porphyry's commentary on the Sophist is mentioned in the preface of Boethius' On Division. A summary of Iamblichus' view is preserved in the scholia (cf. Dillon 1973, 15, 22; we shall examine it later). Proclus refers to his commentary in In Parm. 774 (cf. Morrow & Dillon 1987, 139, n.43), and Olympiodorus refers to his in In Alc. 1, 110.8. However, these indirect comments are far from decisive in proving that they wrote full commentaries (cf. Sodano 1966, 195, Dillon 1973, 245, and Steel 1992, 53, n.11). On the other hand, there was no medieval Latin translation of this dialogue or commentary on it, before Ficino translated it between 1464 and 1466, and wrote a brief commentary between 1494 and 1496 (cf. Allen 1989, 16, 31±34). 10 Cf. Charles-Saget 1991, Steel 1992, and the citations listed in GueÂrard 1991. 3 © Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 0521632595 - The Unity of Plato’s Sophist: Between the Sophist and the Philosopher Noburu Notomi Excerpt More information how to read the sophist traditionally been treated as a main source of the theory of Forms, in contrast to the cautious or sceptical attitude of modern scholars toward the `Forms' in this dialogue.11 Regarding the Sophist as an exponent of the full-blown theory of Forms, Plotinus devotes Ennead VI 2 to an examination of the ®ve greatest kinds presented in Sophist 254b±257a, namely, being, change, rest, sameness, and differ- ence; he discusses Plato's greatest kinds as the categories of the intelligible world, which are superior to the Aristotelian or the Stoic categories.12 The Neoplatonists, following Plotinus, saw in the Sophist (244b±245e and other passages) hints as to the relation between the One (the highest principle) and Being. In accor- dance with the crucial passage in the simile of the Sun in the Republic (VI 509b), they supposed the One and Good to be beyond Being.13 They placed the Sophist next only to the Parmenides, which is the main text for Neoplatonism, and expected the Sophist to provide some supplementary but crucial arguments for elucidating that relation.14 Proclus believes that in the Sophist Plato does not merely refute Parmenides, but demonstrates in a dialectical way that the Lloyd 1967, 323, points out the Sophist's in¯uence on Proclus and Proclus' in¯uence on Hegel; for Hegel's interpretation of the Sophist, see Hegel 1971, 67±77, Apelt 1895, 443±445, Gray 1941, 80±81, and Gadamer 1976, ch.
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