Rep. bk. vii. It is in conversation with Theodorus that Socrates impressively contrasts the lives of the lawyer and the philosopher. The Theaetetus marks a great advance in clearness of metaphysical and psychological expression. See for example the passage (184-186) in which the independent function of the mind is asserted, and ideas are shown to be the truth of experience. There is also a distinct approach towards a critical and historical method in philosophy, while the perfection of style continues unimpaired, and the person of Socrates is as vividly represented as in any dialogue.
Notwithstanding the persistence of an indirect and negative method, the spirit of this dialogue also is the reverse of sceptical. “Socrates must assume the reality of knowledge or deny himself” (197 A). Perhaps in no metaphysical writing is the balance more firmly held between experience, imagination and reflection. Plato would seem to have made a compact with himself to abstain rigidly from snatching at the golden fruit that has so often eluded his grasp, and to content himself with laboriously “cutting steps” towards the summit that was still unsealed.
With Plato, as with other inventive writers, a time seems to have arrived when he desired to connect successive works in a series.Sophist. Thus in planning the Sophistes he linked it to the Theaetetus (which had been written without any such intention), and projected a whole tetralogy of dialectical dialogues, Theaetetus, Sophistes, Politicus, Philosophus, of which the last piece seems never to have been written.
After an interval, of which our only measure is a change of style, the philosopher returns to the great central question of knowledge and being. The obstacle in his path, on which he has often played with light satire, dramatic portraiture and indirect allusion, is now to be made the object of a seriously planned attack. He has made his approaches, and the enemy's fortress is to be forthwith sapped and overthrown. This hostile position is not merely the “Sophistik” which, as some tell us, is an invention of the Germans, and as Plato himself declares is only the reflection or embodiment of the average mind,[1] but the fallacy of fallacies, the prime falsehood (πρῶτον ψεῦδος) of all contemporary thought. This is nothing else than the crude absoluteness of affirmation and negation which was ridiculed in the Euthydemus, and has been elsewhere mentioned as the first principle of the art of controversy.[2] For dramatic purposes this general error is personified. And the word “sophist,” which had somehow become the bête noire of the Platonic school, thus for the first time fixedly acquires the significance which has since clung to the name. That Plato himself would not adhere pedantically to the connotation here implied is shown by the admission, at the opening of the dialogue, that amongst other disguises under which the philosopher walks the earth the sophist is one.
In the Sophistes, as in the Parmenides, a new method is introduced, and again by an Eleatic teacher. This method is repeated with improvements in the Politicus, and once more referred to in the Philebus. It bears a strong resemblance to the “synagogē” and “diaeresis” of the Phaedrus, but is applied by the “friend from Elea” with a degree of pedantry which Socrates nowhere betrays. And the two methods, although kindred, have probably come through different channels—the classifications of the Phaedrus being Plato's own generalization of the Socratic process, while the dichotomies of the Sophistes and Politicus are a caricature of Socrates cast in the Megarian mould. Plato seems to have regarded this method as an implement which might be used with advantage only when the cardinal principles on which it turned had been fully criticized.
1. After various attempts to “catch the sophist,” he is defined as the maker of an unreal likeness of truth. Here the difficulty begins—for the definition implies the existence of the unreal, i.e. of not-being. In our extremity it is necessary to “lay hands on our father Parmenides.”
2. The contradictions attendant on the notion of “being,” whether as held by Parmenides or his opponents or by the “less exact” thinkers who came after them, are then examined, and in an extremely subtle and suggestive passage (246-249) an attempt is made to mediate between idealism and materialism. The result is that while consummate being is exempt from change it cannot be devoid of life and motion. “Like children, ‘Give us both,’ say we.”
3. This leads up to the main question: (a) are different notions incommunicable, or (b) are all ideas indiscriminately communicable, or (c) is there communion of some kinds and not of others? The last view is alone tenable, and is confirmed by experience. And of the true combination and separation of kinds the philosopher is judge.
4. Then it is asked (in order to “bind the sophist”) whether being is predicable of not-being.
Five chief kinds (or categories) are now examined, viz. being, rest, motion, sameness, difference. Rest and motion are mutually incommunicable, but difference is no less universal than being itself. For everything is “other” than the rest, i.e. is not. Thus positive and negative not only coexist but are coextensive.
5. And, in spite of Parmenides, we have discovered the existence, and also the nature, of not-being. It follows that the mere pursuit of contradictions is childish and useless and wholly incompatible with a philosophic spirit.
Negation, falsity, contradiction, are three notions which Plato from his height of abstraction does not hold apart. This position is the converse of the Spinozistic saying, “Omnis determinatio est negatio.” According to him, every negative implies an affirmative. And his main point is that true negation is correlative to true affirmation, much as he has said in the Phaedrus that the dialectician separates kinds according to the “lines and veins of nature.” The Sophistes is a standing protest against the error of marring the finely-graduated lineaments of truth, and so destroying the vitality of thought.
The idealists whom the Eleatic stranger treats so gently have been identified with the Megarians. But may not Plato be reflecting on a Megarian influence operating within the Academy?
Here, as partly already in the Parmenides and Theaetetus, the ideas assume the nature of categories, and being is the sum of positive attributes, while negation, as the shadow of affirmation, is likewise finally comprehended in the totality of being.
The remark made incidentally, but with intense emphasis, that the universe lives and moves “according to God,”[3] is an indication of the religious tone which reappears increasingly in the Politicus, Philebus, Timaeus and Laws.
In passing on to consider the statesman, true and false, the Eleatic stranger does not forget the lesson which has just been learned. While continuing his methodPoliticus (Statesman). of dichotomies, he is careful to look on both sides of each alternative, and he no longer insists on dividing between this and not-this when another mode of classification is more natural. A rule not hitherto applied is now brought forward, the rule of proportion or right measure (τὸ μέτριον), as distinguished from arbitrary limitations. Nor is formal logical treatment any longer felt to be adequate to the subject in hand, but an elaborate myth is introduced. On the ethico-political side also a change has come over Plato. As he has stripped his ideas of transcendental imagery, so in reconsidering his philosopher-king he turns away from the smiling optimism of the Republic and looks for a scientific statesmanship that shall lay a strong grasp upon the actual world. He also feels more bitterly towards the demagogues and other rulers of Hellas. The author of the Politicus must have had some great quarrel with mankind. But so far as they will receive it he is still intent on doing them good.
1. The king is first defined as a herdsman of men, who as “slow bipeds” are distinguished from the pig and the ape. But the king is not all in all to his charges, as the herdsman is. The above definition confuses human with divine rule.
2. Now the universe is like a top, which God first winds in one direction and then leaves to spin the other way. In the former or divine cycle all was spontaneous, and mankind who had all things in common, were under the immediate care of gods. They were happy, if they used their leisure in interrogating nature. But in this reign of Zeus it is far otherwise. Men have to order their own ways and try to imitate in some far-off manner the all-but forgotten divine rule.
3. Therefore in our-present definition the term “superintendent” must be substituted for “herdsman.”
What special kind of superintendence is true statesmanship?
