Przelecki, Marian. 1981. "On What there Is Not." Dialectics and Humanism no. 8:123–129.

"It is my contention (which I shall try to defend in what follows) that the text of the dialogue contains thoughts and ideas that closely correspond to those characteristic of modern logical semantics. The difficulties which Plato is coping with and the solutions proposed by him find their explicit counterparts in the discussions of contemporary logicians and semanticists.

This statement, however, needs some qualification. The text of the dialogue is comprehensive and indefinite enough to allow for different readings and interpretations. It is only some interpretation of some of its fragments that may be said to yield that version of its problems which is suggested below. I would, however, contend that the interpretation advanced is a warranted one and the fragments so interpreted essential for the author's standpoint. One more point should be explicitly stated beforehand. Referring to what I call modern logical semantics, I mean by this a definite semantic theory: model theoretic semantics in its standard version, which might be regarded as a "classical" form of contemporary logical semantics. Some deviations from this use will be indicated in what follows.

The most important philosophical content of the dialogue is contained in its second part (esp. in the paragraphs 237-264). The main problem concerns the semantic characteristic of falsehood and, involved in it, notion of not-being." (p. 123)
Quandahl, Ellen. 1989. "What is Plato? Inference and Allusion in Plato's Sophist." Rhetoric Review no. 7:338–348.

"In this essay I will suggest that when rhetoricians consider the Sophist, they will find the opposition of Plato to Sophists disturbed. My argument is not particularly new; for several decades scholars like E. A. Havelock, Mario Untersteiner, and G. B. Kerferd have been reevaluating, and indeed revaluing, Sophistic thought, and noticing similarities, rather than contradictions, between the Sophists and Plato's Socrates. And yet I think that for many rhetoricians "Plato" means Phaedrus, Gorgias and perhaps portions of the Republic and Symposium, dialogues that are all striking in their "literary" qualities and in their discussion of the "Forms," Plato's version of the "foundations" around which the recurrent foundational/antifoundational debate centers. But the Sophist, rather than disproving sophistic relativism, provides philosophical underpinnings for the view that meaning is contextual and not absolute. At the level of inference—and the Sophist has often been seen as prototypically "logical"—we see in this dialogue how logical categories are in fact metaphorical. And if we read it with "literary" or "rhetorical" eyes, although it lacks the "poetic" quality of other dialogues, we find an extended illustration of ways in which words are allusive, replete with covert histories which, fully as much as "logical" inference, contribute to conclusions." (pp. 338-339)

(...)

"Whether Plato abandoned the theory of Forms or loyalty to his character Socrates in the late dialogues is not, at last, my concern. Rather, I want to question ways in which Plato has been appropriated and summarized, and the tradition in which the Plato of rhetoricians did not write the same texts as did the Plato of, say, logicians or ethicists. When rhetoricians add the Sophist to their Plato, Plato is no longer "Platonic," but a writer whose text acknowledges, both theoretically and by example, the power of contextual and contingent elements in rhetoric." (p. 347)
Ray, A. Chadwick. 1984. For Images. An Interpretation of Plato's Sophist. Lanham: University Press of America.

"Our dialogue is apparently an inquiry into the nature of the sophist. Theaetetus and Theodorus have kept their appointment with Socrates from the day before, when the Theaetetus is supposed to have transpired, (1) and after which Socrates was to go to the portico of the King Archon to meet the indictment of Meletus against him. (Theaet. 210d) Socrates, the lover of wisdom, has been indicted by Meletus on charges of "criminal meddling," inquiring into natural phenomena, making the weaker argument defeat the stronger, (Apol. 19b-c) and embracing atheism (Apol. 26c). The philosopher seems to have been mistaken in the popular mind for a sophist. His defense, the Apology, may be read largely as an attempt, adumbrated from the first sentence, to distinguish between appearance and reality; Socrates is not what his accusers make him appear to be. After Socrates has met the King Archon, it should not be surprising in the dramatic context if he shows a keen interest in the difference between the Philosopher and the Sophist. Thus the nature of the Sophist is to be today's topic.

A further reason for Socrates to bring the discussion to the nature of the Sophist is that Theodorus and Theaetetus have brought with them a guest from Elea, a student of the school of Parmenides and Zeno. Briefly, the "Eleatic School", as will become clearer, affirms the reality of being and denies the reality of any non-being, the upshot being (so the Stranger will suggest) that there could be no such thing as mere appearance or any falsehood, such as might seem to be real without being so. If the Apology presents a personal defense against false images propagated about Socrates, the Sophist can be seen in large part as a philosophical defense of the logical possibility of images at all. In fact, this will be the perspective of the present interpretation. As Socrates at the end of his life must give an account of himself to answer his critics, so perhaps must Plato toward the end of his career answer some of his most astute critics.

The concept of an image is central to Plato's metaphysics because he explains how many things may be called by one name by appeal to that concept. Where a number of individuals are all called F, this is possible because of F-ness itself, a Form which is different from the individuals but of which these are called images. The Form is said to make the many things F (Phaedo 100d) as these come to mirror that Form, to resemble it to one degree or another. The relationship of "the many" to the Form, which accounts for their somehow having its character, is called participation or sharing, but the nature of this relationship is somewhat problematic. Plato's diffidence on the subject is evident in the middle dialogues both in his refusal to let any explanatory terms harden into technical vocabulary and from his own explicit tentativeness, as Socrates expresses it at Phaedo 100d. That the uncertainty remains in Plato’s later thought, including the Sophist, will be evident in the present discussion. But the reality of images cannot be open to question.

Now Plato in the Sophist will identify certain Eleatically inspired challenges to his theory of participation and images, challenges which he will be able to answer in part from the resources of his own "classical theory" as developed in middle dialogues like the Phaedo and the Republic. To the extent that those resources are sufficient, the Sophist is essentially a "conservative" dialogue upholding the adequacy of the classical theory to handle particular objections. On the other hand, new developments in Plato's thought are apparent in the dialogue, (the upgraded status of sensible objects, for instance), developments for which Plato probably would have found no need had he not taken seriously the problems of deceptive appearance and falsehood." (pp. 1-2)

(1) Clearly Plato is using these details as a literary device. The historical Socrates never addressed the issues treated here.
Reagan, James T. 1965. "Being and nonbeing in Plato's Sophist." The Modern Schoolman no. 42:305–314.

"I take it that the principal problem of the dialogue concerns the ontological status of the Forms, or true being: to discern a real differentiated plurality in being which will at once ground a true dialectic or science and repudiate the false dialectic of the Sophist. Plato is wholly lacking in any conception of what will later be called metaphysical analogy, which might permit an essentially differentiated plurality of being. The famous Hypotheses of the latter part of the Parmenides have established the controlling limits within which Plato must solve the problem of the metaphysical status of the Forms. In fact, he concludes to a plurality which is differentiated not in terms of essence but in terms of relations which remain outside the essence of the Forms. This in turn will require that he posit a new metaphysical factor, relative nonbeing. Finally, he will accept as the epitome of science or true knowledge the true but nonessential dialectic which this view of being will support." (p. 305)
Reeve, C. D. C. . 1985. "Motion, Rest, and Dialectic in the Sophist." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 67:47–64.

"If discourse is to be possible at all, some Kinds (γενε) (1) must blend (μετέχειν) with one another (251d5ff.).(2) To follow the 'late learners' (251b5-6) in refusing to allow one thing to share in another is 'to make short work of all theories' (252a5-6). But nor can it be that all Kinds blend (252d2ff.), otherwise Motion itself would rest, and Rest itself would move, and both are impossible (252d6-11).(3) We need some science then 'to be our guide on the voyage of discourse' (253d10) and to tell us 'which Kinds are consonant, which incompatible' (253b10-c1). The science in question is dialectic (253d1-3).

My present topic is one rather stormy section of that voyage, namely the Eleatic Stranger's dialectical remarks about Rest and Motion and their proper interpretation. However what I have to say bears directly on the larger issues of Dialectic and the Theory of Forms." (p. 47)

(...)

Conclusion

If the foregoing discussion is cogent, the Sophist contains a cleverly constructed trap, and many of the Eleatic Stranger's remarks about Rest and Motion cozen us into it. If we take his bait, and fail to learn the lessons he teaches us in his discussion of Not-being, the Sophist presents us with paradoxes and contradictions of the sort I have been addressing. These lead us to believe that Plato was himself confused and urge us to import solutions from elsewhere. (49) If, on the other hand, we detect the trap, and learn the lesson the Stranger has to teach, we solve his puzzles about Being and being known, and the paradoxes and contradictions disappear.

Of course no analytic philosopher would play tricks of this sort - we like our philosophy transparent not tricky. Thus we tend to mistrust, often rightly, readings of the great philosophers which exhibit them as other than plain. We all know, of course, that Plato was a great literary artist and a great teacher as well as a great thinker. And we know that art is artful and that teachers often leave dangling puzzles to test their pupils' acumen. But we often read Plato as if his art and pedagogical purposes were extraneous to his thought. The result is that we often get the thought wrong." (p. 62)

(1) 1 The Eleatic Stranger calls the five μεγιστα γενε, Being, Rest, Motion, Identity, and Difference, both γενε (254d4) and ειδε (255c5). He applies both appellations to λόγος and δόξα (260a5, 260d7-8). At 255c12-d7 τὸ καθ᾽ αὑτό ανδ τὸ προς άλλο αρε ψαλλεδ ειδε. 'The question is thus unavoidably raised, Are all of these to be reckoned as Platonic Forms?', Peck (1962: 62). To postpone it for treatment on another occasion I adopt the following convention: I call all the items referred to either as γενε or as ειδε 'Kinds', and I leave open the question of whether or not Kinds are Forms.

(2) 2 Line references are to Burnet (1900). References are fully explained in the Bibliography.

(3) I have followed Vlastos (1970: 272n5) in using 'Motion' and 'Rest' as dummies for the Greek words κινεσις and στασις (and their cognates). I remind you that κινεσις covers all kinds of variation and that στασις stands for invariance in its most general sense.

Bibliography

Burnet (1900). John Burnet, Platonis Opera: Recognovit Brevique Adnotatione Critica Instruxit, Oxford.

Vlastos (1970). Gregory Vlastos, "An Ambiguity in the Sophist", in Vlastos (1973: 270-322).

Vlastos (1973). Gregory Vlastos, Platonic Studies (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1973).
Rickless, Samuel C. 2010. "Plato's Definition(s) of Sophistry." Ancient Philosophy no. 30:289–298.

Abstract: "Plato’s Sophist is puzzling inasmuch as it presents us with seven completely different definitions of sophistry. Though not all seven definitions could be accurate, Plato never explicitly indicates which of the definitions is mistaken. Recently, Kenneth Sayre and Mary Louise Gill have proposed a clever solution to this puzzle. In this paper I explain why the Sayre-Gill solution is mistaken, and suggest a better solution."

"There is something about the Sophist that has always bothered me. Why are there so many definitions of sophistry in the dialogue? Here is the problem: either all the definitions are right, or all of them are wrong, or some of them are right and some of them are wrong. But it can't be that all the definitions are right, because, after all, they are all different.

(...)

In this paper, I want to consider one influential answer to what we might call “the puzzle of the many definitions”, criticize it, and then provide an answer of my own. The answer I am going to criticize appears most clearly in the work of Kenneth Sayre, and also perhaps in the work of Mary Louise Gill. It is, I think, a very clever and compelling answer, but, as I will argue, it is mistaken." (p. 289)

References

Gill, Mary Louise. 2006. “Models in Plato’s Sophist and Statesman.” Journal of the International Plato Society 6.

Sayre, Kenneth M. 2007. Method and Metaphysics in Plato’s Statesman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rijk, Lambertus Marie de. 1981. "On Ancient and Mediaeval Semantics and Metaphysics. Part V. Plato's Semantics in His Critical Period (Second part)." Vivarium no. 19:81–125.

"In concluding the previous section I argued (1980: nr. 4.9, p. 62) that Aristotle's Categories may be viewed as dealing with the several ways in which an individual man can be named without destroying his concrete unity. A well-known passage of Plato's Sophist (251 A 8ff.) was referred to in which Plato deals with the puzzle of one man with many names. It is true, Plato labels the puzzle as just 'a magnificent entertainment for the young and the late-learners' (251 B), and is more interested in the related question of how 'things' like Rest and Change (presently called Kinds) can also have several attributes (attributive names) and the general problem of attribution as implying the 'Communion' of Kinds. But it is obvious at the same time that in this shape too the puzzle is mainly concerned with the notions of naming, asserting and predication. So Plato's Sophist unavoidably has to be part of our discussion. A further argument for taking the Sophist into consideration may be found in Ammonios' commentary to Aristotle's De interpretatione. He remarks {ad 17 a 26ff. : Comm. in Aristot. graeca IV 5, p. 83, 8-13, ed. Busse) that the analysis of the apophantikos logos as given by Aristotle is to be found scattered all over Plato's Sophist (261 Cff.) right after that master's excellent expositions about Non-being mixed with Being (peri tou synkekramenou toi onti mê ontos). For that matter, on more than one item of Aristotle's Categories and De interpretatione the Ancient commentators refer to related questions and discussions in Plato's later dialogues, especially the Sophist. I hope to show in sections (5) and (6) that the views found in the Categories and De interpretatione are most profitably compared with what Plato argues in the related discussions of the Sophist." (p. 81)

[* Parts (1), (2), (3) and (4) are found in this Journal 15 (1977), 81-110; 16 (1978), 81-107, 18 (1980), 1-62; 19 (1981), 1-46.]
———. 1982. "On Ancient and Mediaeval Semantics and Metaphysics. Part VI. Plato's Semantics in His Critical Period (Third part)." Vivarium no. 20:97–127.

"5. 8 Conclusion. From our analysis of Soph., 216 A-259 D it may be concluded that Plato did certainly not abandon his theory of Forms. We may try to answer, now, the main questions scholarship is so sharply divided about (see Guthrie [A History of Greek Philosophy] V, 143ff.). They are, in Guthrie's formulation: (1) does Plato mean to attribute Change to the Forms themselves, or simply to enlarge the realm of Being to include life and intelligence which are not Forms?, and (2) is he going even further in dissent from the friends of Forms and admitting what they called Becoming --changing and perishable objects of the physical world -- as part of the realm of True Being?

The first question should be answered in the negative. Indeed, Plato is defending a certain Communion of Forms, but this regards their immanent status and, accordingly, the physical world primarily, rather than the 'Forms themselves' (or: 'in their exalted status' as Guthrie has it, p. 159). As to the second question, to Guthrie's mind Plato's language makes it almost if not quite insoluble. I think that if one pays Plato's expositions the patient attention he asks for 'at 259 C-D and follows his analysis stage by stage, the exact sense and the precise respect in which he makes his statements (cf. 259 D 1-2: ekeinêi kai kat' ekeino ho physi) about Being and Not-being, Sameness and Otherness, and so on will appear. It will be easily seen, then, that there is no recantation at all in Plato's development. He still maintains, as he will maintain in his later works (e.g. Philebus, 14 D ff.) the Transcendent Forms as what in the last analysis are the only True Being. But Plato succeeds in giving a fuller sense to the old notions of 'sharing' and 'presence in' without detracting the 'paradigm' function of the Forms in any respect. Matter, Change and Becoming is given a better position in the Theory of Forms in that their immanent status has been brought into the focus of Plato's interest. From his Parmenides onwards Plato has been searching for the solution of his metaphysical problems and has actually found it in the Sophist in a new view of participation. Forms in their exalted status are just a too eminent cause for the existence of the world of Becoming. But their being shared in, i.e. their immanent status, make them so to speak 'operable' and yet preserve their dignity of being paradeigmatic standards. What makes something to be a horse is, no doubt, the Transcendent Form, HORSENESS, but it only can partake of that Form and possess it as an immanent form. So the Highness of the Form and the unworthy matter can come together as matter 'informed', that is, affected by an immanent form.

Plato never was unfaithful to his original view about Forms as the only True Being. In our dialogue, too, he brings the eminence of True Being (taken, of course, as a Transcendent Form) into relief by saying (254 A) that the true philosopher, through his devotion to the Form, 'What is' ('Being'), dwells in the brightness of the divine, and the task of Dialectic, accordingly, is described from that very perspective (see Part (5), 96ff.). Focussing on the immanence of the Forms does not detract anything from their 'exalted status', since immanent forms are nothing else but the Transcendent Forms as partaken of by particulars.

(...)

In his critical period Plato never ceased to believe in the Transcendent World. The important development occurring there consists in his taking more seriously than before their presence in matter and their activities as immanent forms. In the Sophist he uses all his ingenuity to show that a correct understanding of the Forms may safeguard us from all extremist views on being and not-being and zealous exaggerations of the Friends of Forms as well." (pp. 125-127)
———. 1986. Plato's Sophist. A Philosophical Commentary. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

Contents. Preface 9; Preliminary: Plato's Sophist to be reconsidered? 11; Introduction 13; Chapter 1. The dispute about interpreting Plato 22; Chapter 2. The evolution of the doctrine of Eidos 30; Reconsidering Plato's Sophist 69; Chapter 3. The dialogue's main theme and procedure 71; Chapter 4. On current views about 'what is not' 82; Chapter 5. On current views about 'what is' 93; Chapter 6. Plato's novel metaphysical position 103; Chapter 7. The variety of names and the communion of kinds 110; Chapter 8. An important digression on dialectic 126; Chapter 9. The communion of kinds; Chapter 10. How the five kinds combine 159; Chapter 11. The reinstatement of 'what is not' (256d-259d) 164; Chapter 12. On philosophic and sophistic discourse 186; The framework: semantics and philosophy in Plato; Chapter 13. Plato's semantics in the Cratylus 217; Chapter 14. Naming and representing 254; Chapter 15. Language and knowing 277; Chapter 16. Semantics and metaphysics 327; Bibliography 355; Index of passages quoted or referred to 365; Index of proper names 377; Index of terms and topics 383-394.

"The way in which Plato announces (Sophist, 249C-D) his novel metaphysics has been puzzling modern scholars for a long time: 'What is and the All consist of what is changeless and what is in change, both together'. Did Plato really introduce Change into the Transcendent World and thus abandon his theory of Unchangeable Forms?

Many of Plato's commentators have claimed that the use of modern techniques of logico-semantical analysis can be a valuable aid in unraveling this problem and other difficulties Plato raised and attempted to solve. However, not all modern distinctions and tools can be applied without reservation; for many of these are entirely alien to Plato's thought. Interpreters of Plato must also resist the temptation of applying methods as disjointing the dialogue and selecting specific passages only, in their eagerness to prove that Plato was explicitly interested in (their own favourite) problems of 'identity and predication' (not to mention such oddities as the 'self-predication of Forms'), or the distinctions between different senses (or applications) of 'is'.

The present author has tried to understand Plato by a close reading of the complete dialogue and to relate the doctrinal outcome of the Sophist to Plato's general development. Close reading Plato involves following him in his own logico-semantical approach to the metaphysical problems, an approach which shows his deep interest in the manifold ways to 'name' (or to 'introduce into the universe of discourse') 'what is' (or the 'things there are').

The reader may be sure that my indebtedness to other authors on this subject is far greater than it may appear from my text. Also many of those who have gone in quite different directions than mine have been of great importance to me in sharpening my own views and formulations. Two authors should be mentioned nominatim: Gerold Prauss and the late Richard Bluck; two scholars, whose invaluable works deserve far more attention than they have received so far.

I owe my translations of the Greek to predecessors. Where I have not followed them, my rendering is no doubt often painfully (and perhaps barbariously) literal: I do not wish to incur the suspicion of trying to improve Plato by modernising him." (from the Preface)
Ringbom, Sixten. 1965. "Plato on Images." Theoria no. 31:86–109.

The purpose of the present paper is to discuss Plato’s use of the concept of picture in three different contexts. First, his use of the picture as a metaphysical model; secondly, the picture-object relation as a semantic explanation; and, thirdly this same relation as an argument of value.

(...)

In his metaphysical model Plato regards the objects of our experience as pictures of the Ideas (1). But he also discusses the relationship between the visible things and the pictures of these things-for instance, the relation between a bed and a painting of a bed, or the name “bed”.

(...)

The obvious procedure in approaching Plato’s theory of pictures is to discuss each aspect in turn. But this must not mean that we isolate the three functions from each other; the purpose of the following discussion is, on the contrary, to show that Plato’s line of thought in all three cases adheres to the same pattern, and that it is actually based on an analogy between the three aspects." (pp. 86-87)

(1) D. Ross, Plato’s Theory of Ideas, Oxford 1953, p. 12 f.
Roberts, Jean. 1986. "The Problem about Being in the Sophist." History of Philosophy Quarterly no. 3:229–243.

Reprinted in: Nicholas D. Smith (ed.), Plato. Critical Assessments, Vol. IV: Plato's Later Works, London: Routledge 1998, pp. 142-157.

"It is by now a matter of firmly entrenched orthodoxy that Plato's discussion of being in the Sophist serves to distinguish different meanings or uses of "esti." This claim has taken different forms in different hands.

Nevertheless, almost everyone seems agreed that a large part of what Plato needs (and gets) in order to rescue negation and falsity from sophistic attacks is either a distinction between the existential "is" and one or more incomplete uses of "is," a distinction between the so-called "is" of identity and the copula, or some more subtle distinction between incomplete uses of the word which amounts to a distinction in kinds of predication.

I shall argue that what Plato says about being in the Sophist is in no useful way described as a distinguishing of different senses or uses of the word "is."(1) The Eleatic puzzles Plato is out to solve here are solved, in large part, by demonstrating that being is something distinct from any or all of the things that might normally be described as being." (p. 229)

(...)

"There is, moreover, reason for suspicion of any interpretation which reduces the discussions of being and not-being to discussions of positive and negative statement in general. The commentators have failed to notice how careful Plato is to separate questions about the nature of being and not-being and the bearing of alternative answers on the status of negative and false statement. When he first sets out the problem he begins by describing the Eleatic position on not-being (237b10-239a12) and then showing, in a separate argument (240c7-241b3), that this makes false statement and negative statement impossible. The pattern is repeated later. After he has shown that not-being is he goes on (260a5-264b8) to explain how statements in general are put together and how false statement is to be explicated. That the blending of not-being and logos is still taken as, at least in principle, an open question after the discussion of not-being is completed suggests that that discussion could not have been intended as an account of negative statement. Nor is there any reason to take the previous account of being as an account of positive statement. They are, just what they claim to be, and all that they need to be, purely metaphysical accounts of being and not-being." (p. 239)

(1) I do not mean to deny that there is something to be learned from looking at Plato's use of esti, only that this is not his own object in the Sophist. For the record, I think that there is a complete use of "is" to be found in the Sophist for reasons I will not go into here. Much of what I would say in defense of this has been said by Robert Heinaman in "Being in the Sophist," Archiv fur Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. 65 (1983), pp. 1-17.
Robinson, David B. 1999. "Textual notes on Plato's « Sophist »." The Classical Quarterly no. 49:139–160.

"In editing Plato's Sophist for the new OCT [Oxford Classical Texts] vol. I, ed. E. A. Duke, W. F. Hicken, W. S. M. Nicoll, D. B. Robinson, and J. C. G. Strachan (Oxford, 1995), there was less chance of giving novel information about W = Vind. Supp. Gr. 7 for this dialogue than for others in the volume, since Apelt's edition of 1897 was used by Burnet in 1900 and was based on Apelt's own collation of W."

(...)

"A reviewer counts 66 changes in our text of the Sophist, which may perhaps be a slight over-estimate. Classification of changes as substantive or as falling into different groups is sometimes difficult, but I think plausible figures are as follows. We (myself aided in the earlier sections by Nicoll) have in 25 places made a different choice of readings from the primary mss. and testimonia. We have printed conjectures where Burnet kept a ms. reading in 17 places, but conversely we have reverted to a ms. reading where Burnet had a conjecture in 8 places. We have printed alternative conjectures to conjectures adopted by Burnet in 6 places. So we have actually departed from the primary sources on at most 9 more occasions overall than Burnet. What must be noted is that Burnet had already printed conjectures (including readings from secondary mss.) on something like 87 occasions (12 from secondary mss., 75 from modern conjectures from Stephanus onwards), so our percentage addition to Burnet's departures from the primary sources is modest. Moreover Burnet printed about 25 readings from testimonia; we have followed him in 20 or so of these cases, and this in turn implies that the primary mss. are in error at these further 20 places." (p. 139)
———. 2001. "The Phantom of the Sophist: τo oυκ oντως oυκ oν (240a–c)." The Classical Quarterly no. 51:435–457.

"A spurious phantom, Platonistic but non-Platonic, a non-entity by the name of ουκ όντως ουκ ον, made spectral appearances in manuscripts and printed texts of Plato’s Sophist over a long period. It perhaps first manifested itself a little earlier than Proclus and Damascius; but there seems to be no evidence of its appearing to Plotinus. It was rather strongly present in the primary MSS (give or take a little blurring). It still appeared in the Teubner edition by Hermann in 1852. But it was attacked by Bonitz in 1864, and on most views was successfully exorcized when Badham’s conjecture of 1865 was added to an earlier conjecture of Baiter’s, each removing an unwanted ουκ. Campbell’s edition of 1867 shows no awareness of Badham’s conjecture, but on an overall view, since then it might seem that the phantom had been left for dead by most interpreters. Apelt in 1897 said ‘locus . . . sanitati suae est redditus’. Burnet, as we have seen, banished the phantom from his 1900–5 OCT." (p. 436)

(...)

"The cruel deception practised by both phantoms turns upon readers making the erroneous assumption that we have exposition of doctrine in this passage, where in fact we have what is at least primarily intended as a reductio ad absurdum. This is not a situation where the Visitor is stating a Platonic view of ειδωλα; what is happening is that the supposed Sophist attempts to reduce the concept of ειδωλον to absurdity.

The passage does not set out to show that Plato or his Visitor, or even his Sophist, thought that ειδωλα have some degree of phantom being, but that an enterprising Sophist could argue that they have no being at all. Plato will later refute his own imaginary Sophist (not by introducing intermediates); but here the Sophist must be allowed to make his challenging manoeuvre." (p. 437)
Robinson, Jim. 1993. "A Change in Plato's Conception of the Good." Journal of Philosophical Research no. 18:231–241.

Abstract: "One of the most interesting passages in the Republic is the comparison of the Form of the Good with the Sun. Although this depiction of the Good was never repeated, many hold that the Good retained its privileged place in Plato’s metaphysics. I shall argue that there are good reasons for thinking that Plato, when writing the Sophist, no longer held his earlier view of the Good. Specifically, I shall contend that he ceased to believe that as the Sun makes its objects visible, so the Good makes the Forms knowable. This being the case, it cannot also be said to illuminate either the Forms or the order they exhibit. My procedure will be first to consider briefly how, in the Republic, the Good can be said to illuminate the Forms. I shall then determine the extent to which, in the Sophist, this function can still be credited to the Good. "
Robinson, Thomas M. 2013. "Protagoras and the Definition of ‘Sophist’ in the Sophist." In Plato's Sophist Revisited, edited by Bossi, Beatriz and Robinson, Thomas M., 3–13. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"I should like to begin by setting out as clearly as I can what seem to be the main things that can be said about Protagoras, and offer an evaluation of them. This will be in large part without reference to the final definition of ‘sophist’ in the Sophist. I shall then turn to the definition, and see where if anywhere it appears to fit into the picture, and what can be said about the definition as a definition." (p. 3)

(...)

"As the dialogue draws to a close an intense, and uncompromisingly negative definition of the sophist is finally offered, and this one undoubtedly excludes what had earlier been called the sophist of noble lineage.

The sophist (268c) is now described as a mimetes who operates on the basis of belief not knowledge, by contrast with mimetai who operate on the basis of knowledge not belief. More precisely the mimesis characterizing a sophist is said to be a) mimesis of that which is ‘insincere’, of that which is productive of ‘contradictions’, and of that which is non-knowing; b) mimesis of that specific form of copy–making that constitutes appearance-making; and c) mimesis of that species of production which is marked off as human not divine." (pp. 10-11)
Rodriguez, Evan. 2020. "‘Pushing Through’ in Plato’s Sophist: A New Reading of the Parity Assumption." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 102:159–188.

Abstract: "At a crucial juncture in Plato’s Sophist, when the interlocutors have reached their deepest confusion about being and not-being, the Eleatic Visitor proclaims that there is yet hope. Insofar as they clarify one, he maintains, they will equally clarify the other. But what justifies the Visitor’s seemingly oracular prediction? A new interpretation explains how the Visitor’s hope is in fact warranted by the peculiar aporia they find themselves in. The passage describes a broader pattern of ‘exploring both sides’ that lends insight into Plato’s aporetic method."
———. 2023. "A Homeric lesson in Plato’s « Sophist »." The Classical Quarterly no. 73:593–601.

Abstract: "Plato's closing reference to the Iliad in the Sophist has been largely overlooked in contemporary scholarship. The reference, a quotation from the confrontation between Glaucus and Diomedes in Book 6, forms part of a broader frame to the dialogue. The frame, with its recurring themes of identification and misidentification, helps us make better sense of the dialogue's final description of the sophist and its central concerns about the relationship between philosophy and sophistry. It also provides a revealing case study of Plato's use of Homer as part of a broader strategy for undermining simple appeals to authority."
Rosen, Stanley. 1983. Plato's Sophist: The Drama of the Original and Image. New Haven: Yale University Press.

"I said previously that I prefer the dramatic to the ontological approach to the Sophist. It should now be clear that this does not require a suppression of the narrowly technical themes in the dialogue.

On the contrary, it requires their meticulous analysis, both in themselves and as elements in a comprehensive dramatic structure.

In this section, I should like to clarify this view from a somewhat different angle and to introduce a term to describe my reading of the Sophist. The term in question is dramatic phenomenology.

Whereas a dialogue is not a "drama" in the sense of a poetic play written to be performed in the theater, it has a manifestly dramatic form. A dialogue is a poetic production in which mortals speak neither to gods nor to heroes, but to each other. At the same time, there is a hierarchy of mortals within a Platonic dialogue that is rooted, not in the contingencies of birth but in the natures of diverse human souls. Similarly, a dialogue is not a phenomenological description, but an interpretation of human life. As a poetic production, it so orders its scenes of human life as to provide an indirect commentary on the significance of the speeches delivered within those scenes.

Adapting a distinction of the Stranger's to our own purposes, we may say that a dialogue is centrally concerned with the better and the worse, the noble and the base." (p. 12)
Roupa, Vichy. 2020. Articulations of Nature and Politics in Plato and Hegel. Cham (Switzerland): Palgrave Macmillan.

Chapter 3: Producing the Categories of Being: The Sophist

"The Cratylus’s aporetic ending inevitably raises the question whether this is Plato’s last word on names or whether the issue is explored further in another dialogue where a more positive outcome is reached. The aim of this chapter is to show that the dialogue where Plato carries forward the programme of the Cratylus is the Sophist.(1) Although it is sometimes argued that the Sophist breaks new ground completely unanticipated in the Cratylus, there is an area of shared concern between the two dialogues that warrants, I believe, reading the Sophist as a development of the Cratylus.(2) This area is marked, in the first instance, by the methodological approach adopted; the two interlocutors—it is set down early on in the dialogue—will strive to reach agreement not only as regards the name but, first and foremost, as regards the thing itself. Thus, the Eleatic Visitor, who leads the discussion in the Sophist, claims in 218c to have only the name (‘sophist’) in common with his discussant Theaetetus at this stage, but this is not enough because ‘in every case’ they ‘always’ need to be in agreement ‘about the thing itself [pragma auto] by means of verbal explanation [dia logon̄], rather than doing without any such explanation [choris logou] and merely agreeing about the name [tounoma]’. So, the aim of the dialogue is to achieve an understanding of the sophist that goes beyond the un-stated assumptions that each of the discussants has about the sophist. (p. 43)

(1) I thus follow the interpretative approach of Fine and Barney both of whom reject a sharp distinction between the analysis of the Cratylus (which is aimed at the level of the name) and that of the Sophist (which is aimed at the level of the statement or sentence). See Gail Fine, ‘Plato on Naming’, The Philosophical Quarterly 27, no. 109 (1977): 289–294; Rachel Barney, Names and Nature in Plato’s Cratylus (London: Routledge, 2001), 170–172. This view is reinforced by Kahn: ‘The contents of the Cratylus on the theory of naming, the problems of flux, Protagorean relativism and the paradox of false statement, all point ahead to discussion of these topics in the Theaetetus and Sophist’. Charles Kahn, Plato and the Socratic Dialogue: The Philosophical Use of a Literary Form (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 364. See also R.M. van den Berg, Proclus’ Commentary on the Cratylus in Context: Ancient Theories of Language and Naming (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 8–13.

(2) The proponents of this view see in the Sophist a radical break in Plato’s thinking because in it Plato offers an account of language at the level of the sentence or statement rather than that of the name. The distinction between name and statement is not made in the Cratylus, nor is there any recognition in the earlier dialogue of the importance of syntax for the truth value of a proposition. See Barney’s summary of this view (which she calls the ‘syntactical reading of the Sophist’) in Barney, Names and Nature in Plato’s Cratylus, 170.
Rowe, Christopher J. 1983. "Plato on the sophists as teachers of virtue." History of Political Thought no. 4:409–427.

Abstract: "When he came to try to find a formal definition of the sophist, Plato found him an elusive creature; and with good reason. But there are two features which regularly recur in his references to them: the sophist is a professional teacher, and what he professes to teach is ἀρετή. Sophists are people who claim παιδεύειν ἀνθρώπους εἰς ἀρετήν;(1) they set themselves up as παιδεύσεως καὶ ἀρετῆς διδάσκαλον (2) The only apparent exception is Gorgias, who though classified as a sophist in other dialogues, is represented in the Meno as laughing at other sophists for claiming to teach ἀρετή;(3) and it may well be that Plato regarded this disclaimer as disingenuous. (4) But there is a difficulty here, in that on the face of it different sophists claimed to teach different things under the title of ἀρετή. Hippias, for example, is portrayed in the Hippias Major as professing to encourage a 'devotion to honourable and beautiful practices', (5) whereas in the Euthydemus the ἀρετή which the two brothers Euthydemus and Dionysodorus claim to impart is apparently coextensive with skill in eristic debate.(6) In that case, 'teacher of ἀρετή appears to be a highly ambiguous description, and therefore incapable of serving, even informally, to define the class. In general, historians of philosophy tend to suggest that behind the apparent differences between individual sophists in this respect lies a single shared purpose: the teaching of 'the art of success'."

(1) Gorgias, 519e7.

(2) Protagoras, 349a2. Cf. also Meno, 95b; Apology, 20b; Euthydemus, 273d; Hippias Major,

283c ff.

(3) Meno, 95c.

(4) cf. E.L. Harrison, 'Was Gorgias a Sophist?', Phoenix, 18 (1964) (hereafter Harrison),

pp. 183-92.

5) Hippias Major, 286a f.

(6) See below, pp. 423-6; and Harrison, p. 189, note 34.
———. 2015. "Plato, Socrates, and the genei gennaia sophistike of Sophist 231b." In Second Sailing: Alternative Perspectives on Plato, edited by Nails, Debra and Tarrant, Harold, 149–167. Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica.
———. 2015. "Plato versus Protagoras: The Statesman, the Theaetetus, and the Sophist." Diálogos no. 98:143–165.

Abstract: "The Statesman is nowadays generally read either on its own, or with Republic and Laws. But more attention needs to be given to the fact that it is designed as part of a trilogy, alongside Theaetetus and Sophist. Reinstating the dialogue in this context gives a fuller perspective on its purposes. The Statesman (1) identifies existing so-called «statesmen», for whom the Protagoras of Theaetetus is chief apologist, as the greatest exemplars of sophistry as defined in Sophist: mere «imitators» and dealers in falsehood; (2) offers the Platonic alternative to the Protagorean vision of human life and organization sketched in the first part of Theaetetus; and (3), in common with Sophist, illustrates –after the apparent failures of Theaetetus– both what knowledge is and how it can be acquired. Finally, and controversially, the Statesman emerges, along with Theaetetus and Sophist, as part of one and the same project as the Republic."
Rowett, Catherine. 2024. "“It Seems to Me That Our Soul Is a Bit Like a Book”: Inner Language and Erroneous Thoughts in Plato’s Philebus, Sophist, and Theaetetus." In Platonism: Proceedings of the 43rd International Wittgenstein Symposium, edited by Hrachovec, Herbert and Mácha, Jakub, 31–50. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Abstract: "In Plato’s Philebus, Socrates proposes that one makes a silent utterance when deciding what something is. The utterance is inscribed in the soul as if written and can be accompanied by an illustration. This illustrated book can contain falsehoods and truths, which explains how one’s doxa can be true or false. Either the words or the pictures may be false. I compare that passage with similar ideas in the Theaetetus and Sophist. I argue that in the Theaetetus, Plato devises a deliberately unworkable attempt at explaining the same phenomenon that is clearly and successfully explained in the Philebus but that the judgement under discussion in the Sophist is of a different kind, since it involves not one but two terms (a label plus a predicate). In these cases, falsity in judgement may arise due to just one of the two items being false."
Rudebusch, George. 1990. "Does Plato Think False Speech is Speech?" Noûs no. 24:599–609.

"Before Plato came along, there was no satisfactory account of the nature of false speech. This is not to say that no one had yet figured out how to tell a lie; the Greeks were notorious, even in their own literature, as skillful liars. What I mean is that there was a pair of puzzles floating around unanswered. These puzzles were expressed as arguments that false speech was impossible. One puzzle went like this: to say what is false is to say what does not exist, but to say what does not exist is to say nothing at all, and to say nothing at all is not to speak. Thus there can be no such thing as false speech. The other puzzle went like this: to say what is false is to say what is other than the things that are. Nonetheless (in view of the first puzzle), to say what is other is to say something that is. But to say what is is to speak the truth. Thus there can be no such thing as false speech.(1)" (p. 599)

(...)

"In what follows, I shall look at (I) the problem of false speech which Plato faces, (II) the solution he gives in the Sophist, and (III) how that very solution is undermined by the argument of the Theaetetus. It will then be clear (IV) what sort of reconciliation is ruled out and what sort remains to be investigated, if we are to avoid paradox." (p. 600)

(1) The distinction between these two puzzles is not always recognized. But the puzzles are two, and Plato presents them as a pair: Eud. 283e7-284a8 and 284bl-b7; Crat. 429d4-6 and 429e3-9; and Tht. 167a7-8 and 167a8-b1.
———. 1991. "Sophist 237-239." Southern Journal of Philosophy no. 29:521–531.

"The text of the Sophist at 237-239 is aporetic: it leads any talk of non-being into perplexity. This passage shares with many other of Plato’s dialogues the following structure. A question is asked and an answer, given in a single sentence, is reached and accepted by the interlocutor. Then the interlocutor is examined further, his assent to that answer is undermined, and the interchange ends. After giving the details of this passage (in section I), I shall argue (section 11) that the Stranger does not share Theaetetus’s perplexity and continues to hold the rejected answer. Such an interpretation needs an explanation: why should the Stranger behave this way? Sufficient reasons can be found in the Stranger’s pedagogy. What those pedagogical reasons are, and how good they are, I consider in section 111." (p. 521)
Runciman, Walter. 1962. Plato's Later Epistemology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Contents: Preface VII-VIII; 1. Introduction 1; 2. The 'Theaetetus': logic and knowledge 6; 3. The 'Sophist': ontology and logic 59; 4. Conclusion 127; Selected bibliography 134; Index 137.
Ryle, Gilbert. 1939. "Plato's Parmenides." Mind no. 48:129–151.

Second part: Mind, 48, PP. 302-325.

Reprinted in: R. E. Allen, Studies in Plato's Metaphysics, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965 pp. 97-147; G. Ryle, Collected Papers. Volume I. Critical Essays, London: Hutchinson 1971 (reprint: New York, Routledge, 2009), Essay I pp. 1-44.

On The Sophist see in particular pp. 42-46.

"However, there is a pair of concepts which are forced upon our notice in the course of the operations which turn out to require a very different sort of elucidation, namely those of non-existence and existence. For a Sophist is a pretender who either thinks or says that what is not so is so.

The puzzle which arose in the Theaetetus arises again here. How can what does not exist be named, described or thought of? And if it cannot, how can we or Sophists talk or think of it, falsely, as existing? So the question is squarely put: What does it mean to assert or deny existence of something?

(...)

"Now the interesting thing is that it is true that existence and nonexistence are what we should call ‘formal concepts’, and further that if modern logicians were asked to describe the way in which formal concepts differ from proper or material or content-concepts, their method of exhibiting the role of formal concepts would be similar to that adopted here by Plato. But we need not go further than to say that Plato was becoming aware of some important differences of type between concepts.

There is no evidence of his anticipating Aristotle’s enquiry into the principles of inference, which enquiry it is which first renders the antithesis of formal and other concepts the dominant consideration.

There is, consequently, in Plato, no essay at abstracting the formal from the contentual features of propositions, and so no code-symbolisation for the formal in abstraction from the material features of propositions." (pp. 44-46 of the reprint)
———. 1960. "Letters and Syllables in Plato." The Philosophical Review no. 69:431–451.

Reprinted in G. Ryle, Collected Papers. Volume I. Critical Essays, London: Hutchinson 1971 (reprint: New York, Routledge, 2009), Essay III pp. 57-75.

"In his later dialogues Plato makes a lot of use of the notions of letters of the alphabet and the spelling of syllables out of these letters. He frequently uses these notions for the sake of analogies which help him to expound some more abstract matters.

There is one of his uses of the letter-syllable model which is not of special interest to me, namely, for the exposition of some merely chemical theories about the combinations of a few material elements into multifarious compounds.

Plato employs this model in this way in the Timaeus (48B–C), though he says that the analogy is not a good one. Here he is stating what is essentially an Empedoclean theory. Sextus Empiricus says that stoicheion, used thus to denote an ultimate material element, was a Pythagorean term.

My interest is in Plato’s use of the alphabet model in expounding his logical or semantic views, namely his views about the composition of the thoughts, that is, the truths and falsehoods that we express or can express in sentences (logoi)." (p. 57 of the reprint)

(...)

"Conclusion. Plato in his late dialogues was concerned with some of the same cardinal problems as those which exercised Frege and the young Russell, problems, namely, about the relations between naming and saying; between the meanings of words and the sense of sentences; about the composition of truths and falsehoods; about the role of ‘not’; about the difference between contradictories and opposites; and in the end, I think, about what is expressed by ‘if ’ and ‘therefore’. His admirable model, which Frege lacked, of the phonetic elements in syllables enabled Plato to explain more lucidly than Frege the notion of the independent-variability-without separability of the meanings of the parts of sentences. On the other hand, lacking the apparatus of algebra, he was nowhere near abreast of Frege’s and Russell’s symbolisation of substitution-places. Plato could not extract implications from their particular contexts or therefore codify implication patterns. A blackboard would have been of no use to him.

Plato says nothing about the bearings of the alphabet model on the Theory of Forms, or of the Theory of Forms on the alphabet model. So I shall not say much. If the Theory of Forms had maintained or entailed that Forms are just subject-terms of a superior sort, that is, just eminent namables, then this theory could contribute nothing to Plato’s new question, What does a sentence convey besides what its subject name mentions?

But if the theory of Forms had been meant or half-meant to explain the contributions of live predicates, including tensed verbs, to truths and falsehoods about mentioned subjects, then in his operations with the model of letters and syllables, Plato has raised to maturity things which, in his Theory of Forms, had been only embryonic. To his terminal questions about the composition of logoi and, therewith, about the roles of live, tensed verbs, the Theory of Forms was either quite irrelevant or else quite inadequate." (pp. 74-75 of the reprint)
Saati, Alireza. 2015. "Plato’s Theory of the Intercommunion of Forms (Συμπλοκή Εἰδῶν): the Sophist 259, e4-6." Philosophy Study no. 5:35–43.

"Plato’s lifelong confrontation with Parmenides and his metaphysical mire of believing that nothing (το μὴ ὂν) does not actually exist, gradually in the Sophist comes into finish, insofar as the philosopher after facing the foe and having the last laugh simmers down. In this paper after giving an interpretation of what Parmenides says, I shall present an analysis of Plato’s drastic answer to him (Sophist, 259 e4-6) to see how Plato opens the impasse way created by the Eleatic philosopher. Here the intercommunion of Forms is regarded as the final answer by which Plato devastates Parmenides infamous thesis. Since hitherto no in-depth analysis is given by the scholars who are puzzled with the subject, I have tried to analyze the intercommunion of Forms philosophically. Plato’s Eleatic challenge has always been crucial in Plato himself and philosophical development after him. As while as Parmenides thesis (Sph., 238 a8-9) provides the sophists opportunity to reject the falsehood, Plato’s theory of Forms in contrast in order to cross off the extremely sly sophists tries to make Parmenides come down. In my opinion, the intercommunion of Forms, as the last step of the theory of Forms, basically determines Plato’s late ontology tightly knitted with logic. Vindicating this proposal depends on true understanding of the intercommunion of Forms. Since Plato’s late ontology, in my opinion, is closed to Frege’s ontology and discussion of language, we are armed to interpret the intercommunion of Forms with recent recent logico-philosophicus achievements, I think.

In this respect, this is what I have done in my paper: analyzing sentence from Plato’s logico-metaphysical point of view. Ultimately, I have tried to show how the aim of the intercommunion of Forms, which Plato himself states, is demonstrating the possibility of dialogue and discourse. This statement explicitly sets forward that the discussion is bound up with several logical approaches, according to which finally full bright light is shed on different implications of the subject such as universals." (p. 35)
Sabrier, Pauline. 2019. "Parts, Forms, and Participation in the Parmenides and Sophist: A Comparison." Etudes platoniciennes no. 15:1–9.

Abstract: "This paper addresses the vexed question of the outcome of the second horn of the dilemma of participation in Plato’s Parmenides bringing in Sophist 257c7-d5 where the Eleatic Stranger accepts what he seems to reject in the Parmenides, namely that a Form can have parts and nevertheless remain one. Comparing Plato’s treatment of parts of Forms in both passages, and in particular the relation among Being, Change and Rest at Sophist 250a8-c8, I argue that unlike in the Parmenides, in the Sophist, parts and wholes are seen as offering a structure that can explain how things that may, at first, appear unrelated nevertheless belong together."
———. 2020. "Plato’s Master Argument for a Two-Kind Ontology in the Sophist: A New Reading of the Final Argument of the Gigantomachia Passage (249b5–249c9)." Apeiron:1–20.

Abstract: "In this paper I defend a new reading of the final argument of the Gigantomachia passage of Plato’s Sophist (249b5–249c9), according to which it is an argument for a two-kind ontology, based on the distinction between the changing beings and the unchanging beings. This argument, I urge, is addressed not only to Platonists but to all philosophers – with one exception. My reading is based on the claim that this argument does not rely on the view that nous requires unchangeable objects – what I call the traditional reading – but on the view that nous itself is unchanging. The difference between the traditional reading and my reading is that on the former, Plato’s argument relies on a distinctive epistemological assumption, whereas on the latter, Plato’s argument is free from any such commitments. If the argument of this paper is along the right lines, then this implies that this argument has a much more far-reaching scope than critics have usually assumed. It also invites us to reconsider Plato’s

approach to the question of being in the Sophist."
Sallis, John. 1975. Being and Logos. The Way of Platonic Dialogue. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press International.

Second edition with a new preface 1986; Third edition titled: Being and Logos. Reading the Platonic dialogues, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996.

Chapter VI. The Way of Logos: Sophist, pp. 456-532.
———. 2013. "Plato’s Sophist: A Different Look." The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy no. 13:283–291.

Reprinted in: Hallvard Fossheim, Vigdis Songe-Møller, Knut Ågotnes, Knut (eds.), Philosophy as Drama: Plato’s Thinking through Dialogue, New York: Bloomsbury Academic 2019, pp. 231-240.

Abstract: "This paper deals with the question of difference in the Sophist. It begins with the difference that sets this dialogue apart from its dramatic predecessor, the Theaetetus, and with the task posed at the outset of determining the difference between the sophist, the statesman, and the philosopher. An account is then given of the critical engagements through which the question of being and of its intertwining with nonbeing is taken up. Outlining the discussion of the five kinds, it concludes with a close examination of the genos difference as “chopped into bits” and hence as a different “look”."
Sampson, Kristin. 2013. "A Third Possibility: Mixture and Musicality." The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy no. 13:328–338.

Abstract: "This paper considers two small textual places within Plato’s Sophist, namely 252d–253c and 259d–260b. First it turns to what is called a third possibility and looks at how this is described by examples related to the letters of the alphabet and the notes of music. Three words that are used to describe the mixing that these two examples display are συμμίγνυμι, κοινωνία, and μίξις. What is common for these three words is that they are shrouded in a similar kind of ambiguity of meaning, related to sexuality.

This paper argues the relevance of taking this ambiguity seriously, something which has not, to my knowledge, previously been done. Next it considers how the exposition of this third possibility results in the emergence of the philosopher. At this point also a view of language and thinking (logos) related to the philosopher is developed, and used in order to distinguish between the philosopher and the sophist. At the end of the paper, in the last textual fragment mentioned (259d–260b), it is indicated how this is a place where an echo of the musical and the philosophical resound, where these two elements are linked to each other, to logos, and to the necessity of mixture."
Sayre, Kenneth M. 1970. "Falsehood, Forms and Participation in the Sophist." Noûs no. 4:81–91.

"The Sophist is one of Plato's most constructive dialogues, and one of the most cleverly constructed. Feigning pursuit of the essential sophist, Plato analyzes in turn (a) δύναμις as the mark of what is, (b) collection and division as the source of "the free man's knowledge," (c) the modes of combination among the forms, (d) Difference as the nature of "that which is not" and, in culmination, (e) the distinction between false and true judgment which separates the sophist from the philosopher. These results surpass in their solidity any positive contribution of the Phaedo or the Republic.

Yet they are achieved with a more austere conception of the forms than any found in these earlier dialogues. The structure of this more mature conception, I believe, is best illustrated in Plato's analysis of true and false discourse. My purpose in this paper is (1) to recapitulate what I take to be Plato's analysis of truth and falsehood in the Sophist, (2) to contrast the theory of forms presupposed by this analysis with the theory of the Phaedo and the Republic, and (3) to sketch against this background the theory of participation which seems to be implicit in the Sophist and other late dialogues. My contention, in preview, is that a form in this later context is a kind definable in terms of criteria for membership, and that participation is the relationship by which individuals qualify for membership in a kind." (pp. 81-82)
———. 1976. "Sophist 263b Revisited." Mind no. 85:581–586.

"This passage [Sophist 263b: "Theaetetus sits' and 'Theaetetus flies'] has posed problems for sympathetic commentators. One is the problem of mere intelligibility. (1) A more basic problem has been that of reconstructing from the passage a credible account of true and false judgment. In Plato's Analytic Method (Chicago, 1969) I offered an interpretation which, although I believe accurately directed, is potentially flawed in an important respect.(2) The difficulty with this interpretation stems from a mistaken assumption, which most commentators share, about the nature of not-Being in the Sophist account. Correcting this mistake yields an interpretation which is more fully Platonic both in content and elegance, and which is considerably more faithful to the text of the dialogue."

(1) A sensitive discussion of syntactical ambiguities in these sentences may be found in David Keyt's 'Plato on Falsity: Sophist 263B,' in E. N. Lee, A. P. D. Mourelatos, and R. M. Rorty (eds.), Exegesis and Argument: Studies in Greek Philosophy Presented to Gregory Vlastos (Humanities Press, New York: 1973), to which I am indebted in the translation above.

Robert Vacca also is to be thanked for advice on Plato's use of ὄν ἔστῐν .

(2) I say 'potentially flawed' because, although the interpretation in the book is literally compatible with what I now believe to be the correct account, its further elucidation in my 'Falsehood, Forms and Participation in the Sophist,' Noûs, iv (1970), 81-91, brought the flaw to the surface. I am indebted to Alvin Plantinga for drawing the problem to my attention.

This interpretation was developed originally in response to difficulties with other accounts of false judgment in the Sophist, which need not be reviewed for present purposes.
———. 1983. Plato's Late Ontology: A Riddle Resolved. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Second edition: Parmenides Publishing, 2005 with a new introduction and the essay "Excess and Deficiency at Statesman 283C-285C".
———. 1992. "A maieutic view of five late dialogues." In Methods of Interpreting Plato and His Dialogues, edited by Klagge, James C. and Smith, Nicholas D., 221–243. New York: Oxford University Press.

Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy. Supplementary volume.

"There are five dialogues of Plato's late period, each consisting of a conversation with a master philosopher, in which the conversation is organized by methodological principles explicitly proposed by the philosopher himself. In the case of the Theaetetus, the method was stated by Socrates in earlier dialogues, notably the Phaedo and book 6 of the Republic. In each of the remaining four, however, the method is expounded and applied within the same conversation-by the Stranger from Elea in the Sophist and the Statesman, by Parmenides himself in his namesake dialogue, and by a renovated Socrates in the late Philebus. I shall refer to these five as the methodological dialogues." (p. 221)

(...)

"I have made two claims concerning the methodological dialogues.

The first is that the conversational format of these dialogues is intended to serve the maieutic function described by Socrates in the Theaetetus, and characterized in the Seventh Letter as the only path to the flame-like revelation of philosophic knowledge. The second is that the respective methods of these conversations provide the structure by which they are enabled to lead the reader to that state of fulfilment.

The first claim is supported by the texts involved, the second by the experience of the attentive reader. Neither claim by itself, perhaps, is particularly adventuresome. I have suggested further, however, that together these claims answer the question posed at the beginning of this discussion: namely, how the conversational format of these five late dialogues relates to the methods they severally illustrate. The answer, in summary, is that the method in each case provides the discipline by which the reader is enabled to follow the path of the conversation, to the state of wisdom that can be found at its end." (p. 243)
———. 2006. Metaphysics and Method in Plato’s Statesman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chapter 2. Collection in the Phaedrus and the Sophist 36; Chapter 3. Division in the Phaedrus and the Sophist 52-72.

"The Statesman is third in a sequence of dialogues employing the method of dialectical division. In both the Phaedrus and the Sophist, division is paired with a companion procedure of collection. To evaluate the absence of collection in the Statesman, it is helpful to look carefully at how it functions in these two previous dialogues. This is the purpose of Chapter 2. Also discussed in this chapter is the language of collection that appears in the Philebus, despite the absence of the corresponding methodological procedure.

In similar fashion, Chapter 3 addresses the use of division in those two earlier dialogues. A notable feature of division in the Phaedrus is its use of nondichotomous distinctions, a feature which is absent in the Sophist but reappears in the Statesman. The Sophist contains eight fully developed lines of division in all, each of which is examined in the course of this chapter." (p. 5)
———. 2008. "Dialectic by Negation in Three Late Dialogues." In Reading Ancient Texts: Vol. I: Presocratics and Plato. Essays in Honour of Denis O'Brien, edited by Suzanne, Stern-Gillet and Corrigan, Kevin, 189–212. Leiden: Brill.

"While little is beyond dispute in Platonic commentary, it seems clear that there are three distinct methods of dialectical inquiry to be found in the middle and late dialogues. One is the method of hypothesis featured in the final arguments of the Phaedo and implicated in the Divided Line of the Republic. Another is the method of collection and division, introduced in the Phaedrus and employed extensively in the Sophist before collection is phased out in the course of the Statesman. And third is the method introduced by Parmenides in his namesake dialogue and meticulously illustrated in the ensuing arguments on Unity.(1) I shall refer to this latter as “Parmenides’ method.” (p. 189)

(...)

But what are we to say in this regard about Parmenides’ method?

Unlike the other two, the dialectical procedure employed by Parmenides is confined to a single dialogue. On initial consideration, at least, it appears that we lack evidence for earlier versions in Plato’s thought.(4)

While the dialectical approach in question is said (at Parmenides 135D) to be essential for achieving the truth, and while it produces some of the most substantial results in the entire Platonic corpus, (5) we encounter it here in full-blown form with no indication of prior development. Or so at least it appears.

The purpose of the present paper is to dispel this appearance. Parmenides’ method is distinguished from the other two primarily by its use of negative hypotheses. As we shall see, there are sections of both the Sophist and the Statesman where negation figures in the explication of important topics. While these passages are familiar in their own right, I am not aware of any previous attempt to connect them with the distinctive method of the Parmenides. If the attempt of the present paper is successful, we will have reason to believe that Parmenides’ method was anticipated in dialectical manoeuvers employed (appropriately enough) by the Eleatic Stranger." (p. 190)

(1) While any of these three methods might be accompanied by elenchus in a particular rhetorical setting, it should be noted that Socratic refutation by itself is not a dialectical method.

(4) Although one part of the procedure is said at 135D8 to trace back to Zeno, there is no reason to think that the method overall is not due to Plato himself.

(5) This claim is supported in K. Sayre, Parmenides’ Lesson: Translation and Explication of Plato’s Parmenides (University of Notre Dame Press, 1996).
Schipper, Edith Watson. 1964. "The Meaning of Existence in Plato's Sophist." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 9:38–44.

"In this paper, I should like to give arguments for the following points: (1) that, for the later Plato, what exists must be defined by forms interrelated in logos; (2) that the particular things of experience exist, and also are defined by the interrelated forms. Their existence is not that of substantial subjects beyond their predicative forms, but is comprised by the forms, which formulate them and bring them out of the matrix of experience. Thus, Plato is sketching a profoundly original approach to the perennial problems of philosophy." (p. 38)
———. 1965. "Souls, Forms, and False Statements in the Sophist." The Philosophical Quarterly no. 15:240–242.

"In a provocative and ingeniously worked out article, Robert Turnbull has presented his view of the Sophist's account of false statements.(1) I should like to bring out some passages which raise questions about his position, and briefly suggest an alternative view to which I think they point.

The argument, as I understand it, rests upon Mr. Turnbull's interpretation of the Platonic ontology as consisting of " forms, souls, and immanent characters "(2) Immanent characters or actions, " the stuff of Becoming ", exist in the souls, and participate in the forms for which the souls strive.

A false statement about a soul ascribes to it a possible action participating in a form which is not (is different from or contrary to) the form for which the soul strives. For " the contrariety of forms is reflected in references to actions "(3) Thus, a false statement rests on the difference of some forms from others, though it is about the possible actions which illustrate the contrary forms and are somehow in the souls." (p. 240)

(1) "The Argument of the Sophist", The Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 14, Jan. 1964, pp. 23-34.

(2) op. cit., p. 24.

(3) op. cit., p. 34.
———. 1965. Forms in Plato's Later Dialogues. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Chapter IV: Forms in the Sophist, pp. 31-42.

"This little book is concerned with one problem, that of whether and in what respects Plato continued to hold his earlier theory of forms of the Phaedo and Republic in his later dialogues. The earlier theory is first considered; since those who deny that Plato continued to hold his theory base their contention on an interpretation of it which is inadequate to explain even the arguments of the earlier dialogues. The later dialogues are then examined, in an attempt to show that the earlier theory is continually assumed, in all its essentials; although it is developed and modified to make it more consistent and adequate to experience.

Special attention is given to Plato's treatment of the problem of the relation of the forms to the perceived things, left unexplained in the earlier dialogues, but clearly recognized and wrestled with in the later ones. This problem is the perennial one of how the objects of intellectual argument and explanation are related to the things of experience. A solution to that problem is brought out in Plato's reconsideration of his theory of forms." (Preface, P. VII)

"The Sophist by common consensus, is placed sometime after the Parmenides and Theaetetus, and before the Politicus. Its place in the dialogues is thought to follow their literary order; and it starts with an appointment made at the end of the Theaetetus, while the Politicus refers to the immediately preceding discussion of the Sophist.

The Sophist could be subtitled: On Being and Not Being.

Ostensibly, it is a laboriously worked out definition of the sophist by means of diaeresis, carried on by the Eleatic Stranger. Again, Theaetetus responds. Yet the defining of the sophist seems to serve primarily as a means of introducing discussions of the nature of existence and as an illustration of the interconnecting of the forms, the συμπλοκη ειδων, the central conception of the dialogue and the most important addition to Plato's later metaphysics." (p. 31)
Schoener, Abraham. 2000. "Not the Sophist." In Retracing the Platonic Text, edited by Russon, John Edward and Sallis, John, 41–54. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

"We must pause for a moment to recall just what Penelope is weaving. It is a burial shroud for Laertes, the father of Odysseus-the father of the image of the philosopher-who is not yet dead. This is a sign that, for Plato, the writing of the dialogues is not a supplement or marker for the dead, defunct Philosopher, but that the writing precedes and even announces his death. Plato's Socratic dialogues are Socrates' Penelopean burial shroud, tolling the death of conversational, "living," philosophy.

This brings us to our last question. This is a very vexed one and seems to be addressed with the greatest seriousness in all of the literature on the Sophist. The question is: Who is the (real) Philosopher?

Our answer must now be "Nobody in particular." Stop worrying about the question. It is a question left over from the pretextual era of philosophy. Once philosophy becomes and recognizes itself to be textual, the question for now and all time is: What is being? This displacement is the deepest form of the patricide of Socrates by Plato." (p. 53)
Sedley, David. 2019. "Etymology in Plato’s Sophist." Hyperboreus. Studia Classica no. 25:290–301.

Abstract: "The etymological method displayed at considerable length in the Cratylus is widely assumed to be intended by Plato as an object of ridicule. In my 2003 monograph Plato’s Cratylus I resisted this assumption. In the present paper I seek to strengthen my case by arguing that in Plato’s major work on philosophical logic, the Sophist, the same method is re-employed twice, at 221 a–c and 228 b–e, for entirely serious purposes."
Seligman, Paul. 1974. Being and Not-Being. An Introduction to Plato's Sophist. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

"The present study has been undertaken with the ontological perspective in mind. In addition the historical roots of Plato's thinking will be emphasized. His struggle with the Eleatic legacy permeates this dialogue in a deeper sense and to a greater degree than has generally been admitted. On the other hand, the value of logically and linguistically oriented exegeses of the Sophist, such as have appeared during the last thirty years, is readily acknowledged. Still, they have not given us the whole story; they have neglected a significant dimension of Plato's thinking, and therefore need supplementing, and it only speaks for the richness of his work that it can be approached in more than one way.

My discussion will concentrate on the middle sections of the dialogue and follow the order of its argument, which develops organically and with greater cohesion than its dramatic form and artistic presentation might suggest. There can be no doubt about the seriousness of Plato's concern (contra Peck, 1952, cp. Runciman, 1962, p. 59), but there is also present a tinge of poetic playfulness which can have a baffling effect on readers seeking straightforward, unequivocal answers. At times it looks as though Plato lived up to the Heraclitean word that nature likes to conceal itself. It seems though that on some issues raised in the Sophist Plato himself was wavering, that there are others on which he had not made up his mind. In any case, he was never prone to produce a closed and final system, and each dialogue right to the end of his life meant a fresh start. But certain positions he never surrendered, and some of these permeate the Sophist as well. One of them is his belief in a rational and intrinsically knowable order of reality. That order is apprehended by the intuitive intellect and capable of being set out, indeed needing to be set out, in reasoned discourse; i.e., it is apprehended by noesis, accompanied by logoi. As Plato matured, the emphasis shifted from the former to the latter mode. And while the latter takes the stage in the Sophist, there is no evidence that the former was abandoned by him even then." (pp. 2-3)

References

Peck, A. L. (1962). "Plato's Sophist: The Symploke ton Eidon," Phronesis, VII, I.

Runciman, W. G. (1962). Plato's Later Epistemology. Cambridge, U.P.
Sellars, John. 2010. "Stoic Ontology and Plato’s Sophist." Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies:185–203.

"It has been suggested that Stoic ontology should be conceived as a reaction against Platonism thus understood. It has also been suggested that Stoic ontology be conceived as a ‘reversal’ of Platonism,(4) inverting the order of priority between bodies and incorporeals, or particulars and universals, depending how one views it. The most significant attempt to analyse the relationship between Stoic ontology and the work of Plato, however, must be Jacques Brunschwig’s article ‘The Stoic theory of the supreme genus and Platonic ontology" in which he argues that Stoic ontology was in effect a philosophical response to material the early Stoics found in Plato’s Sophist.(5) It was through reading Plato, Brunschwig claims, that the early Stoics developed their own distinctive position.

The aim of what follows is to assess this claim and to ask whether Stoic ontology can be read as the product of a critical engagement with Plato’s Sophist. I shall begin in the first section with a brief overview of Stoic ontology along with a closer look at some of the differences between the principal recent interpretations. I shall focus my attention not only on Brunschwig’s account of Stoic ontology but also those of David Sedley (which came before) and Victor Caston (which came after).(6) In the second section I shall move on to consider the Sophist, giving a brief overview of those sections of the dialogue that Brunschwig claims already contain the central features of Stoic ontology. In the third and final section I shall consider to what extent, if any, Stoic ontology can be said to be the product of a critical reading of the Sophist." (pp. 183-184)

(4) This is a claim made by G. Deleuze, Logique du sens (Paris 1969), where he says that the Stoics were the first to reverse Platonism. However he doesn’t specify how he thinks they achieved this and his account of Stoic ontology is eccentric to say the least (on which see J. Sellars, ‘Aiôn and Chronos: Deleuze and the Stoic theory of time’, Collapse 3 (2007) 177-205 (178 n. 4)). Elsewhere, in Différence et répétition (Paris 1968), he claims that Plato himself was the first to reverse Platonism.

(5) First published as J. Brunschwig, ‘La théorie stoïcienne du genre suprême et l’ontologie platonicienne’, in Matter and metaphysics, ed. J. Barnes and M. Mignucci (Naples 1988) 19-127 and translated in Brunschwig’s Papers in Hellenistic philosophy (Cambridge 1994) 92-157. All subsequent references are to the English version.

(6) It goes without saying that I have learned an enormous amount from the work of each of these authors and what I offer here is merely by way of a footnote to their contributions to our understanding of Stoic ontology. I shall not discuss directly earlier accounts of Stoic ontology as they are dealt with and taken into consideration in the works I shall consider, but I note the earlier discussion in J. M. Rist, Stoic philosophy (Cambridge 1969) 152-72.
Shorey, Paul. 1930. "Plato Sophist 255c and το δισσόν." Classical Philology no. 88:80.
———. 1931. "Plato Sophist 236 C and Laws 668 A ff." Classical Philology no. 81:323–324.

"To sum up the common sense of the matter, in the Sophist and in order to disparage the sophist, Plato says that we may distinguish two kinds of imitation in all the mimetic arts, that which produces a likeness and that which produces an illusion. He employs a similar if not precisely identical distinction in Republic 380 D for another purpose. Elsewhere, when he has no such purpose in mind and is merely speaking of the general theory of art, he amplifies "imitation" by the addition of the virtual synonym "representation," and says art is imitation and representation. This, as the passage of Aristotle quoted shows [*], is a perfectly natural mode of expression, and it is the height of hypercriticism to read into it a contradiction or withdrawal of the special point that there are tricky arts for which illusion is a better name than representation or the production of an objective likeness." (p. 324)

[*] Aristotle, Poetics, 11447 a 19: πολλὰ μιμοῦνταί τινες ἀπεικάζοντες.
Shukhoshvili, Maia. 2009. "Terms of Ontological Structure, 'Image-Making Art' and Human Activities in Platos's Sophist." Phasis no. 12:262–267.

"Our goal is to do some kind of analyses of several terms of Plato’s Sophist, their ancient Greek meaning and their equivalents in Georgian.

The subject of our interest is analyses of the terms which we can divide in three groups according to their semantics. These groups are: 1. terms related to the ontological structure of the dialogue Sophist; 2. terms related to the ‘image-making art’ of Plato’s Sophist; 3. terms designated various human activities. The analyses of these terms will demonstrate how innovative Plato is in derivation of words and in use of these words." (p. 262)
———. 2016. "Tékhnē in Plato's Sophist (Discussing Heidegger's Opinion)." In Sophistes: Plato's Dialogue and Heidegger's Lectures in Marburg (1924-25), edited by De Brasi, Diego and Fuchs, Marko J., 131–142. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

"The aim of this chapter is a discussion of the concept of tékhnē in Plato's Sophist, since this dialogue distinguishes and defines many different tékhnai. But what is tékhnē for Plato? Very often tékhnē is translated by 'art', but this is not the case for Plato and especially not in the Sophist.

The chapter is divided into four main parts. First of all I would like to propose Heidegger's definition and interpretation of tékhnē. Then I will examine the etymology and precise meaning of tékhnē in Ancient Greek.

The third part is concerned with the meaning and use of tékhnē in Plato's dialogues, and finally, in the last part of the chapter I will try to reach the meaning of tékhnē in Plato's Sophist." (p. 131)

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