The Project Gutenberg EBook of Sophist, by Plato

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Title: Sophist

Author: Plato

Translator: Benjamin Jowett

Posting Date: November 7, 2008 [EBook #1735]
Release Date: May, 1999

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by Sue Asscher

SOPHIST

By Plato

Translated by Benjamin Jowett

INTRODUCTION AND ANALYSIS.

The dramatic power of the dialogues of Plato appears to diminish as
the metaphysical interest of them increases (compare Introd. to the
Philebus). There are no descriptions of time, place or persons, in the
Sophist and Statesman, but we are plunged at once into philosophical
discussions; the poetical charm has disappeared, and those who have no
taste for abstruse metaphysics will greatly prefer the earlier dialogues
to the later ones. Plato is conscious of the change, and in the
Statesman expressly accuses himself of a tediousness in the two
dialogues, which he ascribes to his desire of developing the dialectical
method. On the other hand, the kindred spirit of Hegel seemed to find in
the Sophist the crown and summit of the Platonic philosophy--here is the
place at which Plato most nearly approaches to the Hegelian identity of
Being and Not-being. Nor will the great importance of the two dialogues
be doubted by any one who forms a conception of the state of mind and
opinion which they are intended to meet. The sophisms of the day were
undermining philosophy; the denial of the existence of Not-being, and
of the connexion of ideas, was making truth and falsehood equally
impossible. It has been said that Plato would have written differently,
if he had been acquainted with the Organon of Aristotle. But could
the Organon of Aristotle ever have been written unless the Sophist
and Statesman had preceded? The swarm of fallacies which arose in the
infancy of mental science, and which was born and bred in the decay of
the pre-Socratic philosophies, was not dispelled by Aristotle, but
by Socrates and Plato. The summa genera of thought, the nature of
the proposition, of definition, of generalization, of synthesis and
analysis, of division and cross-division, are