Sophist
class is characterized by the absence rather than the presence of a
particular quality.
Nor is it easy to see how Not-being any more than Sameness or Otherness
is one of the classes of Being. They are aspects rather than classes of
Being. Not-being can only be included in Being, as the denial of some
particular class of Being. If we attempt to pursue such airy phantoms
at all, the Hegelian identity of Being and Not-being is a more apt and
intelligible expression of the same mental phenomenon. For Plato has
not distinguished between the Being which is prior to Not-being, and the
Being which is the negation of Not-being (compare Parm.).
But he is not thinking of this when he says that Being comprehends
Not-being. Again, we should probably go back for the true explanation
to the influence which the Eleatic philosophy exercised over him. Under
'Not-being' the Eleatic had included all the realities of the sensible
world. Led by this association and by the common use of language, which
has been already noticed, we cannot be much surprised that Plato should
have made classes of Not-being. It is observable that he does not
absolutely deny that there is an opposite of Being. He is inclined to
leave the question, merely remarking that the opposition, if admissible
at all, is not expressed by the term 'Not-being.'
On the whole, we must allow that the great service rendered by Plato
to metaphysics in the Sophist, is not his explanation of 'Not-being' as
difference. With this he certainly laid the ghost of 'Not-being'; and we
may attribute to him in a measure the credit of anticipating Spinoza
and Hegel. But his conception is not clear or consistent; he does not
recognize the different senses of the negative, and he confuses
the different classes of Not-being with the abstract notion. As the
Pre-Socratic philosopher failed to distinguish between the universal and
the true, while he placed the particulars of sense under the false and
apparent, so Plato appears to identify negation with falsehood, or is
unable to distinguish them. The greatest service rendered by him to
mental science is the recognition of the communion of classes, which,
although based by him on his account of 'Not-being,' is independent
of it. He clearly saw that the isolation of ideas or classes is the
annihilation of reasoning. Thus, after wandering in many diverging
paths, we return to common sense. And for this reason we may be inclined
to do less than justice to Plato,--because the truth which he attains
by a real effort of thought is to us a familiar and unconscious truism,
which no one would any longer think either of doubting or examining.
IV. The later dialogues of Plato contain many references to contemporary
philosophy. Both in the Theaetetus and in the Sophist he recognizes
that he is in the midst of a fray; a huge irregular battle everywhere
surrounds him (Theaet.). First, there are the two great philosophies
going back into cosmogony and poetry: the philosophy of Heracleitus,
supposed to have a poetical origin in Homer, and that of the Eleatics,
which in a similar spirit he conceives to be even older than Xenophanes
(compare Protag.). Still older were theories of two and three
principles, hot and cold, moist and dry, which were ever marrying and
being given in marriage: in speaking of these, he is probably referring
to Pherecydes and the early Ionians. In the philosophy of motion there
were different accounts of the relation of plurality and unity,
which were supposed to be joined and severed by love and hate,
some maintaining that this process was perpetually going on (e.g.
Heracleitus); others (e.g. Empedocles) that there was an alternation of
them. Of the Pythagoreans or of Anaxagoras he makes no distinct mention.
His chief opponents are, first, Eristics or Megarians; secondly, the
Materialists.
The picture which he gives of both these latter schools is indistinct;
and he appears reluctant to mention the names of their teachers. Nor can
we easily determine how much is to be assigned to the Cynics, how much
to the Megarians, or whether the 'repellent Materialists' (Theaet.)
are Cynics or Atomists, or represent some unknown phase of opinion at
Athens. To the Cynics and Antisthenes is commonly attributed, on the
authority of Aristotle, the denial of predication, while the Megarians
are said to have been Nominalists, asserting the One Good under many
names to be the true Being of Zeno and the Eleatics, and, like Zeno,
employing their negative dialectic in the refutation of opponents. But
the later Megarians also denied predication; and this tenet, which is
attributed to all of them by Simplicius, is certainly in accordance with
their over-refining philosophy. The 'tyros young and old,' of whom
Plato speaks, probably include both. At any rate, we shall be safer in
accepting the general description of them which he has given, and in not
attempting to draw a precise line between them.
Of these Eristics, whether Cynics or Megarians, several characteristics
are found in Plato:--
1. They pursue verbal oppositions; 2. they make reasoning impossible by
their over-accuracy in the use of language; 3. they deny predication;
4. they go from unity to plurality, without passing through the
intermediate stages; 5. they refuse to attribute motion or power to
Being; 6. they are the enemies of sense;--whether they are the 'friends
of ideas,' who carry on the polemic against sense, is uncertain;
probably under this remarkable expression Plato designates those who
more nearly approached himself, and may be criticizing an earlier form
of his own doctrines. We may observe (1) that he professes only to give
us a few opinions out of many which were at that time current in
Greece; (2) that he nowhere alludes to the ethical teaching of the
Cynics--unless the argument in the Protagoras, that the virtues are one
and not many, may be supposed to contain a reference to their views, as
well as to those of Socrates; and unless they are the school alluded to
in the Philebus, which is described as 'being very skilful in physics,
and as maintaining pleasure to be the absence of pain.' That Antisthenes
wrote a book called 'Physicus,' is hardly a sufficient reason for
describing them as skilful in physics, which appear to have been very
alien to the tendency of the Cynics.
The Idealism of the fourth century before Christ in Greece, as in
other ages and countries, seems to have provoked a reaction towards
Materialism. The maintainers of this doctrine are described in the
Theaetetus as obstinate persons who will believe in nothing which they
cannot hold in their hands, and in the Sophist as incapable of argument.
They are probably the same who are said in the Tenth Book of the Laws
to attribute the course of events to nature, art, and chance. Who they
were, we have no means of determining except from Plato's description of
them. His silence respecting the Atomists might lead us to suppose that
here we have a trace of them. But the Atomists were not Materialists in
the grosser sense of the term, nor were they incapable of reasoning; and
Plato would hardly have described a great genius like Democritus in the
disdainful terms which he uses of the Materialists. Upon the whole, we
must infer that the persons here spoken of are unknown to us, like the
many other writers and talkers at Athens and elsewhere, of whose endless
activity of mind Aristotle in his Metaphysics has preserved an anonymous
memorial.
V. The Sophist is the sequel of the Theaetetus, and is connected with
the Parmenides by a direct allusion (compare Introductions to Theaetetus
and Parmenides). In the Theaetetus we sought to discover the nature
of knowledge and false opinion. But the nature of false opinion seemed
impenetrable; for we were unable to understand how there could be any
reality in Not-being. In the Sophist the question is taken up again; the
nature of Not-being is detected, and there is no longer any metaphysical
impediment in the way of admitting the possibility of falsehood. To
the Parmenides, the Sophist stands in a less defined and more remote
relation. There human thought is in process of disorganization; no
absurdity or inconsistency is too great to be elicited from the
analysis of the simple ideas of Unity or Being. In the Sophist the same
contradictions are pursued to a certain extent, but only with a view
to their resolution. The aim of the dialogue is to show how the few
elemental conceptions of the human mind admit of a natural connexion in
thought and speech, which Megarian or other sophistry vainly attempts to
deny.
...
True to the appointment of the previous day, Theodorus and Theaetetus
meet Socrates at the same spot, bringing with them an Eleatic Stranger,
whom Theodorus introduces as a true philosopher. Socrates, half in jest,
half in earnest, declares that he must be a god in disguise, who, as
Homer would say, has come to earth that he may visit the good and evil
among men, and detect the foolishness of Athenian wisdom. At any rate he
is a divine person, one of a class who are hardly recognized on earth;
who appear in divers forms--now as statesmen, now as sophists, and are
often deemed madmen. 'Philosopher, statesman, sophist,' says Socrates,
repeating the words--'I should like to ask our Eleatic friend what his
countrymen think of them; do they regard them as one, or three?'
The Stranger has been already asked the same question by Theodorus and
Theaetetus; and he at once replies that they are thought to be three;
but to explain the difference fully would take time. He is pressed
to give this fuller explanation, either in the form of a speech or
of question and answer. He prefers the latter, and chooses as his
respondent Theaetetus, whom he already knows, and who is recommended to
him by Socrates.
We are agreed, he says, about the name Sophist, but we may not be
equally agreed about his nature. Great subjects should be approached
through familiar examples, and, considering that he is a creature not
easily caught, I think that, before approaching him, we should try
our hand upon some more obvious animal, who may be made the subject of
logical experiment; shall we say an angler? 'Very good.'
In the first place, the angler is an artist; and there are two kinds
of art,--productive art, which includes husbandry, manufactures,
imitations; and acquisitive art, which includes learning, trading,
fighting, hunting. The angler's is an acquisitive art, and acquisition
may be effected either by exchange or by conquest; in the latter case,
either by force or craft. Conquest by craft is called hunting, and of
hunting there is one kind which pursues inanimate, and another which
pursues animate objects; and animate objects may be either land animals
or water animals, and water animals either fly over the water or live
in the water. The hunting of the last is called fishing; and of fishing,
one kind uses enclosures, catching the fish in nets and baskets, and
another kind strikes them either with spears by night or with barbed
spears or barbed hooks by day; the barbed spears are impelled from
above, the barbed hooks are jerked into the head and lips of the fish,
which are then drawn from below upwards. Thus, by a series of divisions,
we have arrived at the definition of the angler's art.
And now by the help of this example we may proceed to bring to light
the nature of the Sophist. Like the angler, he is an artist, and the
resemblance does not end here. For they are both hunters, and hunters
of animals; the one of water, and the other of land animals. But at this
point they diverge, the one going to the sea and the rivers, and the
other to the rivers of wealth and rich meadow-lands, in which generous