O'Brien, Denis. 1993. "Non-Being in Parmenides, Plato and Plotinus: a Prospectus for the Study of Ancient Greek Philosophy." In Modern Thinkers and Ancient Thinkers, edited by Sharples, Robert W., 1–26. London: University College London Press.

English version of "Le non-être dans la philosophie grecque: Parménide, Platon, Plotin", in Pierre Aubenque (ed.), Études sur le Sophiste de Platon, Napoli: Bibliopolis 1991, pp. 317-364.

"Negation and contrariety. In the Sophist, a Stranger from Elea sets out to refute Parmenides. Or so at least he does in most modern studies of that deceptively simple dialogue. But because Parmenides has been misunderstood, so too, inevitably, has been the Eleatic Stranger's criticism of Parmenides. For although the Eleatic Stranger does warn of the dangers of parricide (he may have to murder Parmenides, the father of Greek philosophy), in fact he starts off by agreeing with Parmenides, and that agreement, contrary to what most modern scholars will tell you, is never withdrawn or cancelled in the course of the argument.

Let me explain. The Eleatic Stranger distinguishes between two uses of the negation in the expression to me on, "what is not".

The negation may be used to mean "what is not in any way at all" (to medamos on, 237b7-8). "What is not in any way at all" is what would be, impossibly, the contrary of being (d. 258e6-7).

Impossibly: for there is no contrary of being, since there is nothing entirely without participation in being. What is entirely without participation in being is what you might expect it to be - just plain nothing. There isn't any." (p. 5)
———. 2000. "Parmenides and Plato on What is Not." In The Winged Chariot: Collected Essays on Plato and Platonism in Honour of L.M. de Rijk, edited by Kardaun, Maria and Spruyt, Joke, 19–104. Leiden: Brill.

"Understanding of Plato's Sophist cannot therefore be dissociated from our understanding of the poem of Parmenides, and vice versa.

To understand the poem of Parmenides we need to appreciate that the goddess is working with a single conception of non-being, an appreciation which we can best arrive at by seizing the distinction between the two uses of non-being that are established in Plato's Sophist and yet, at the same time, refusing to read back that distinction into the poem of Parmenides.

Understanding the Sophist requires us, on the contrary, to appreciate that the Stranger arrives at his new definition of 'what is not' by consciously distancing himself from the way in which Parmenides had thought of nonbeing, nearly one hundred years before.

The distinction between the two 'kinds' of non-being is, in both cases, the same. But where the Stranger consciously and deliberately marshals his arguments in the light of that distinction, Parmenides, on the contrary, produces the arguments he does because the Stranger's distinction forms no part of his conscious self. (298)" (p. 90)

(298) Some of the implications of this style of conclusion for how I understand the history of philosophy are spelt out in O'Brien (1993).

References

O'Brien, D. (1993) 'Non-being in Parmenides, Plato and Plotinus: A Prospectus for the Study of Ancient Greek Philosophy', in Modem Thinkers and Ancient Thinkers, The Stanley Victor Keeling Memorial Lectures at University College London, 1981-1991, ed. R. W. Sharples (London) 1-26.
———. 2011. "The Stranger's "Farewell" (Sophist 258e6-259a1)." In Plato's Sophist: Proceedings of the Seventh Symposium Platonicum Pragense, edited by Havlíček, Aleš and Karfík, Filip, 199–220. Praha: Oikoymenh.

"‘Don’t let anyone try and tell us that we dare say of the contrary of being that it is. We have long ago said farewell to any contrary of being, to the question of whether it is or of whether it isn’t…’ Those are the first words spoken by the Stranger after Theaetetus’ enthusiastic reaction (258 E 4-5: ‘absolutely so’, ‘most true’) to the Stranger’s declaration (258 D 5-E 3) that he and Theaetetus have ‘dared’ speak of ‘the form that there turns out to be, of what is not’.

A ‘contrary of being’. A ‘form that there turns out to be, of what is not’. The meaning of those two expressions, together with their difference of meaning, lies at the very heart of Plato’s dialogue, of what the Sophist is all about. If the meaning, with the difference in meaning, of those two expressions has not been understood, then the dialogue itself has not been understood." (p. 199)
———. 2013. "A Form that 'Is' of What 'Is Not' . Existential Einai in Plato's Sophist " In The Platonic Art of Philosophy, edited by Boys-Stones, George, El Murr, Dimitri and Gill, Christopher, 221–248. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

"Motivated by an otherwise very understandable desire to study ancient philosophical texts philosophically, recent commentators have taken to weeding out from Plato’s dialogues any existential use of the verb einai, seemingly in deference to the supposedly philosophical principle that existence cannot be a predicate. The result is disastrous. This is not only because Plato very clearly does use the verb as a predicate complete in itself, with a meaning that can properly be described as ‘existential’, notably in his account of being and non-being in the Sophist, but also because the principle itself is not what it is all too often thought to be." (p. 221)

(...)

"Veer to one side or another of that narrow line and you end up in one or other of the errors portrayed in the concluding pages of this essay. Identify the form of non-being with a straightforward negation of the existential meaning of the verb, and the Stranger will end up asserting, of ‘what is not in any way at all’, that it ‘is’ (Notomi’s error). Identify the form of non-being with a negation of the copulative use of the verb joined to any and every complement, so that ‘non-being’ is so because it is ‘other than’ and therefore ‘is not’ any one of all the vast variety of different forms that participate in being, and you will end up asserting, of ‘being itself ’, that it is ‘non-being’ (Owen’s error). Start from Plato’s own assumption that an existential use of einai has to be subjected to the same analysis as ‘is the same’ or ‘is beautiful’, with one specific part of otherness, and only one, opposed to ‘being’, whether to the form or to the instantiation of the form, while at the same time taking into account the different extension of forms that are, and forms that are not, participated universally, and you will, if you pay close attention to both syntax and argument, avoid both errors. You may even come within shouting distance of the essentials of Plato’s reply to Parmenides." (p. 248)
———. 2013. "Does Plato refute Parmenides?" In Plato's Sophist Revisited, edited by Bossi, Beatriz and Robinson, Thomas M., 117–155. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"I have a couple of times ventured to suggest that in the Sophist Plato does not refute Parmenides.(2) The reaction has been, to say the least, hostile.(3) Hostile, with more than a touch of disapproval. You might have thought I had suggested that the Queen of England was a man. The suggestion was not only false, but foolish. A mere eye-catcher. Absurd, and unseemly." (p. 117)

(...)

"Not only is it obvious why Plato should want to refute Parmenides; it also seems clear enough, to many readers of Plato’s Sophist, that he no less obviously claims to do so. When the Stranger of Plato’s dialogue introduces Parmenides (237a3 – b3), he quotes a pair of verses giving voice to what are called elsewhere in the poem the ‘opinions of mortals’ (fr. 1.30 and 8.51 –52), summarised in the pithy sentence ‘things that are not, are’ (237a8 = fr. 7.1: εἶναι μὴ ἐόντα)." (p. 119)

(...)

"Pinned down to their context, the places where the Stranger supposedly speaks of successfully ‘refuting’ Parmenides vanish like the morning dew on a summer’s day. But if the Stranger doesn't claim to have ‘refuted’ Parmenides, does he then leave it to be understood that he therefore agrees with him?

Not at all. But at the crucial moment when he prepares to trumpet his discovery of ‘the form that there turns out to be, of what is not’, the language he uses is not the language of ‘refutation’.

The Stranger: ‘So do you think we’ve been unfaithful to Parmenides, in taking up a position too far removed from his prohibition?’ (258c6 – 7: οἶσθ᾽ οὖν ὅτι Παρμενίδῃ μακροτέρως τῆς ἀπορρήσεως ἠπιστήκαμεν) Theaetetus: ‘What do you mean?’ (258c8: τί δή;)

The Stranger: ‘By pushing on ahead with the search, what we’ve shown him goes beyond the point where he told us to stop looking’ (cf. 258c9 –10: πλεῖον ἢ 'κεῖνος ἀπεῖπε σκοπεῖν, ἡμεῖς εἰς τὸ πρόσθεν ἔτι ζητήσαντες ἀπεδείξαμεν αὐτῷ.).

Just so. The metaphor of distance, of uncharted and forbidden territories, hits off the situation very neatly. The Stranger and Theaetetus have entered a new world, far removed from the world of Parmenides, and have survived to tell the tale. But that does not mean that they claim to have ‘refuted’ him in any simple sense. How could they have done?

Refutation implies contradiction. No-one in his right mind would think to contradict Parmenides’ denial that ‘things that are not, are’, in so far as those words are taken as meaning, or even as implying, that ‘things that do not exist, do exist’." (pp. 151-152, note omitted)

(2) O’Brien (1995) 87 – 88, (2000) 94 –98.

(3) Dixsaut (2000) 269 n. 2. Notomi (2007) 167 – 187.

References

Dixsaut, M., Platon et la question de la pensée, Paris 2000 = Dixsaut (2000).

Notomi, N., ‘Plato against Parmenides: Sophist 236D-242B’, in S. Stern-Gillet and K.Corrigan (eds.), Reading Ancient Texts, vol. I: Presocratics and Plato. Essays in Honour of Denis O’Brien, Leiden-Boston 2007, 167 – 187 = Notomi (2007).

O’Brien, D., Le Non-être. Deux études sur le ‘Sophiste’ de Platon, Sankt Augustin 1995 = O’Brien (1995).

O’Brien, D., ‘Parmenides and Plato on What is Not’, in M. Kardaun and J. Spruyt (eds.), The Winged Chariot. Collected essays on Plato and Platonism in honour of L. M. de Rijk, Leiden, Boston, Köln 2000, 19 – 104 = O’Brien (2000).
———. 2019. "To Be and Not To Be in Plato's Sophist." In Passionate Mind: Essays in Honor of John M. Rist, edited by David, Barry, 93–136. Baden-Baden: Academia Verlag.

"Surely you can no more say of something that it both is and is not (as do Parmenides’ mortals) than you can say of it that, at one and the same time, it is non-being and being (as does the Stranger of Plato’s Sophist)?

3. Words and their meaning

The solution to the puzzle, if there is one, will have to depend on the precise meaning of the words in Greek. Dictionaries and grammars will take you only so far. The ultimate test has to be Plato’s use of the common idiom of his time, modified, when necessary, by the context—by the meaning, however idiosyncratic, that he has given his words in the course of an argument.

Those are the two criteria adopted in the course of this article. To steer your way through the Greek text of the Sophist, you will need to recognise a distinction that Plato has taken over from the common parlance of the day, while at the same time adapting it to his own purposes.

The distinction lies between two uses of einai, its common-or-garden use as a copula, joining a subject to an attribute, the verb and its attribute making up the predicate (x ‘is so-and-so’), and a less common, but still well authenticated, use as a predicate complete in itself (x ‘is’), traditionally called, for convenience, an ‘existential’ use of the verb, simply because such a use may easily lend itself, in modern English, to translation by ‘exist’." (p. 95 a note omitted)
O'Leary-Hawthorne, Diane. 1996. "Not-Being and Linguistic Deception." Apeiron no. 29:165–198.

"Though it is certainly clear that Plato spends a great deal of time in this dialogue [the Sophist] grappling with problems that we now place squarely in the domain of philosophy of language, we should think carefully about the context of these pursuits. As Owen, Wiggins, Pelletier and countless others would have it, Plato is concerned with the nature of language, with the structure of sentences, with negation, with truth and with falsity simply because these problems are important and Plato was aware of their importance. Reluctant as I am to place any obstacles in the way of Plato's unstable popularity, I submit that we must think again about the relevance that these problems had for Plato." (p. 167)

(...)

"At the very least, even if we are skeptical about attributing a mistrust of language to Plato, there are certainly grounds here for caution. If indeed Plato has devoted himself in the Sophist to repairing 'the naive semantics of natural language' or some similar project, it is unlikely that he will have done so without some hint as to how these issues might fit into his broad scheme of philosophical knowledge. At best Plato is concerned with linguistic matters in the Sophist precisely because he wants to examine and explain what underlies the linguistic skepticism that runs through the dialogues. In what follows I shall argue that beneath the glistening surface of debate about reference and truth in the Sophist there does lie a beautifully simple, though highly rigorous, account of the disparity between language and the world it purports to represent. Embedded within the Stranger's most technical linguistic pursuits is something we should have been missing in the Platonic corpus, that is, an explanation of Plato's persistent suggestion that language is not a good place to turn for philosophical insight." (p. 168)
O'Rourke, Fran. 2003. "Plato's Approach to Being in the Theaetetus and Sophist, and Heidegger's Attribution of Aristotelian Influence." Diotima.Revue de recherche philosophique no. 31:47–58.

"Olympiodorus reports the last dream of Plato: «Shortly before he died, Plato dreamt that he had become a swan which flew from tree to tree, thereby causing the utmost trouble to the archers who wanted to shoot him down.

Simmias the Socratic interpreted the dream as meaning that Plato would elude all the pains of his interpreters. For to archers may be likened those interpreters who try to hunt out the hidden meanings of the ancients, but Plato is elusive because his writings, like those of Homer, must be understood in many senses, both physically, and ethically, and theologically, and literally»(1)" (p. 47)

"It is significant to note that in the three dialogues we have examined, the Phaedrus, Theaetetus and Sophist, Plato brings the reciprocal, dynamic, distinction and relation «to act and act upon» to bear in his reflections, respectively, on φύσις, κίνησις, and είναι: these themes are inseparable; they refer to the intrinsic principles of every reality in its constitution, operation and foundation. The distinction and relation are clearly for Plato of central and lasting importance. In further support of Plato's own discovery of δύναμις it is worth noting that for Plato in the Republic, the Good which is the principle of all things, the source of their Being and intelligibility, is not itself Being, but «lies beyond Being, surpassing it in dignity and power» (509 b: ἐπέκεινα τῆς οὐσίας πρεσβείᾳ καὶ δυνάμει ὑπερέχοντος.). This is to place power at the heart of being, suggesting that for Plato the dignity or value of being is its power to act or be acted upon! Επέκεινα is indeed an unresolved dilemma.

Despite the criticisms offered earlier, we must conclude that Plato contributed immeasurably to the early development of the philosophy of being. His self-reproach, that the discussion in the Sophist concerning nonbeing was lengthy and irrelevant, is not only harsh but untrue. To quote Solon, as he does himself: x.χαλεπὰ τὰ καλά [beautiful/goods things are difficult]. The Sophist is a worthy contribution to this most difficult and rewarding of questions. It offers rich insights and distinctive signposts on a path of far reaching discovery. To refer again to Olympiodorus (32): whereas Aristotle wrote that all men seek wisdom, he suggests that all philosophers seek Plato as a source which overflows with wisdom and inspiration. Plato deserves our praise and, in words which he placed in the mouth of Socrates, in Athens it is easy to praise an Athenian." (pp. 57-58)

(1) Olympiodorus, Commentary on the First Alcibiades of Plato, ed. L. G. Westerink, Amsterdam, North-Holland Publishing Company, 1956, p. 6.

(32) Loc. cit., cf. supra and n. 1.
Oberhammer, Arnold. 2021. "Dialectic in Plato’s Sophist and Derrida’s ‘Law of the Supplement of Copula’ " In Platonism: Ficino to Foucault, edited by Rees, Valery, Corrias, Anna, Crasta, Francesca M., Follesa, Laura and Giglioni, Guido, 314–324. Leiden: Brill.

"Derrida [*] refers to Sophist 253d, where the Eleatic Stranger determines being to be the ability (δύναμις) to connect. He sees being (ὄν), in addition to motion and rest, as the third ‘in the soul’ (ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ).(12) The progress of the Eleatic Stranger, as opposed to the older aporetic ontologies where either motion or rest were considered to be, is based on the concept of ‘otherness’, ἕτερον. Being is different (ἕτερον) to motion and rest with the result that, ‘according to its own nature’ (κατὰ τὴν αὑτοῦ φύσιν), it is neither one nor the other.(13) Plato’s definition of being as disposition (δύναμις) or commonality (κοινωνία) takes place with reference to ‘the most general classes’ (μεγίστα γένη), which are connected because they are different to each other. In line with the critique of some ‘old men who came by learning late in life,’ it is impossible for one to be many.

Here the relationship between λόγος and ὄν takes centre stage.(14)" (pp. 316-317)

(12) Plato, Sophist, 250b7–10: ‘τρίτον ἄρα τι παρὰ ταῦτα τὸ ὂν ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ τιθείς, ὡς ὑπ᾽ ἐκείνου τήν τε στάσιν καὶ τὴν κίνησιν περιεχομένην, συλλαβὼν καὶ ἀπιδὼν αὐτῶν πρὸς τὴν τῆς οὐσίας κοινωνίαν, οὕτως εἶναι προσεῖπας ἀμφότερα.’

(13) 13 Ibid., c3–7: ‘οὐκ ἄρα κίνησις καὶ στάσις ἐστὶ συναμφότερον τὸ ὂν ἀλλ᾽ ἕτερον δή τι τούτων. […] κατὰ τὴν αὑτοῦ φύσιν ἄρα τὸ ὂν οὔτε ἕστηκεν οὔτε κινεῖται.’

(14) Ibid., 251b6: ‘τῶν γερόντων τοῖς ὀψιμαθέσι.’

[*] Derrida, Jacques. ‘Le supplément de copule: La philosophie devant la linguistique,’ in

J. Derrida, Marges de la philosophie. Paris: Les Éditiones de Minuit, 1972, 209–46.
Oscanyan, Frederick S. 1973. "On Six definitions of the Sophist: Sophist 221c-231e." Philosophical Forum no. 4:241–259.

Abstract: "The paper shows that the definitions of the Sophist on 221c-231e refer to specific contemporaries of Socrates: Gorgias, Protagoras, Hippias, Prodicus, Euthydemus and Thrasymachus. Produced by the method of divisions, each definition consists of a nesting class of attributes. An examination of the Platonic corpus reveals that these same characteristics are used to satirically describe the sophists listed above. As the final definition equally describes Thrasymachus and Socrates, it is shown why Plato viewed the method of divisions as inadequate for obtaining the proper definition of sophistry: a good Platonic definition must have ostensive truth as well as essential validity."
Owen, Gwilym Ellis Lane. 1966. "Plato and Parmenides on the Timeless Present." Monist:317–340.

Reprinted in: Alexander Mourelatos (ed.), The Pre-Socratics: A Collection of Critical Essays, Garden City: Anchor Press, 1974 and in: G. E. L. Owen, Logic, Science, and Dialectic. Collected Papers in Greek Philosophy, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986 pp. 27-44.

"In sum, it is part of the originality of Plato to have grasped, or half-grasped, an important fact about certain kinds of statement, namely that they are tenseless whereas others are tensed. But he tries to bring this contrast under his familiar distinction between the changeless and the changing. So he saddles the familiar distinction with a piece of conceptual apparatus taken from Parmenides, a tense-form which retains enough of a present sense to be coupled with expressions for permanence and stability, yet which has severed its links with the future and the past. Armed with this device Plato is able to turn the distinction between tensed and tenseless statements into a more congenial distinction between timebound and timeless, changing and immutable, objects.

But at a price. The concept of stability has been stretched so that stability is no longer a function of time. And the interesting propositions, so far from staying tenseless, are restated in an artificial and degenerate tense-form. The theory for which we are asked to tolerate these anomalies will need to hold firm against scrutiny. But on scrutiny there seems to be something wrong at its roots.

What is wrong, I think, can be put very shortly. It is that to be tensed or tenseless is a property of statements and not of things, and that paradoxes come from confusing this distinction; just as they come from trying to manufacture necessary beings out of the logical necessity that attaches to certain statements. But how is the distinction to be recognized? One way, a good way, is to notice that tenseless statements are not proprietary to one sort of subject and tensed statements to another. And there seems to be evidence in another work of Plato that he did notice this, and brought the point home by a valid argument.

I want to end by discussing that evidence. It occurs in the Sophist, in the criticism that the chief speaker brings against the so-called "friends of the Forms.(15)" (pp. 335-336)

(15) My account of this argument lies close to that given by J. M. E. Moravcsik [Being and Meaning in the Sophist] in Acta Philosophica Fennica, 14 (1962), 35-40, which should be consulted for its criticism of alternative views.
———. 1971. "Plato on Not-Being." In Plato. A Collection of Critical Essays. I: Metaphysics and Epistemology, edited by Vlastos, Gregory, 104–137. Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press.

Reprinted in: G. E. L. Owen, Logic, Science and Dialectic. Collected Papers in Ancient Greek Philosophy, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986, pp. 104-137 and in: Gail Fine (ed.), Plato 1: Metaphysics and Epistemology, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 416-454.

"Platonists who doubt that they are Spectators of Being must settle for the knowledge that they are investigators of the verb 'to be'. Their investigations make them familiar with certain commonplaces of the subject for which, among Plato's dialogues, the Sophist is held to contain the chief evidence. But the evidence is not there, and the attempt to find it has obstructed the interpretation of that hard and powerful dialogue. The commonplaces that I mean are these: In Greek, but only vestigially in English, the verb 'to be' has two syntactically distinct uses, a complete or substantive use in which it determines a one-place predicate ('X is', 'X is not Y') and an incomplete use in which it determines a two-place predicate ('X is Y' , 'X is not Y'). To this difference there answers a semantic distinction. The verb in its first use signifies 'to exist' (for which Greek in Plato's day had no separate word) or else, in Greek but only in translators' English, 'to be real' or 'to be the case' or 'to be true', these senses being all reducible to the notion of the existence of some object or state of affairs; while in its second use it is demoted to a subject-predicate copula (under which we can here include the verbal auxiliary) or to an identity sign. Plato's major explorations of being and not-being are exercises in the complete or 'existential' use of the verb. And, lest his arguments should seem liable to confusion by this versatile word, in the Sophist he marks off the first use from the verb's other use or uses and draws a corresponding distinction within the negative constructions represented by to me on, 'not-being' or 'what is not'. For the problems which dominate the central argument of the Sophist are existence problems, so disentangling the different functions of the verb 'to be' is a proper step to identifying and resolving them." (pp. 104-105, notes omitted)
———. 1973. "Plato on the Undepictable." In Exegesis and Argument. Studies in Greek philosophy presented to Gregory Vlastos, edited by Lee, Edward N., Mourelatos, Alexander and Rorty, Richard, 349–361. Assen: Van Gorcum.

Reprinted in: G. E. L. Owen, Logic, Science and Dialectic. Collected Papers in Ancient Greek Philosophy, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986, pp. 138-147.
Pacitti, Domenico. 1991. The Nature of the Negative. Towards an Understanding of Negation and Negativity. Pisa: Giardini editori.

Contents: Preface IX-X; On the nature of the Negative 1; Epilogue 77; Notes 79; Bibliographical references 103; Index nominum 115-118.

On Plato's Sophist see in particular pp. 63-75.

"The immensity of the 'tours de force' necessary in the Parmenides and Sophist for the admission of nonbeing on a par with being reflects the enormous hold that Parmenides must have exerted over the Greeks. His writing in verse, like the monotheist Xenophanes, reflects divine inspiration and the transcendent powers of thought. Thus it is not he but the goddess who speaks throughout.

The style of Parmenides fr. B8, 12-21 is strikingly reminiscent of the Vedic hymn and may easily be read as a solution to the anonymous poet's riddle. But his answer that there is only 'is' and no 'is not' cannot, I think, be understood as meaning that Parmenides wished to reject negative predication out, as Anscombe (Parmenides, Mystery and Contradiction, 1969) would have in the first place, Parmenides himself consistently uses negatives, which would be highly implausible if that was what he wished to outlaw, and secondly, his position on the illusory nature of 'opinion' and the nonexistence of what is not is quite compatible with the use of the negative.

For in Parmenides (fr. B2, B6, 1-2, & B8 34-36) thought and reality are probably even more closely bound together than in Plato, in that reality - or at least true reality - can be thought, and if 'opinion' is part of what is not, then the result of thinking that is what he calls a non-thought, which must be taken to mean something that is not a true or authentic thought. We find Aristotle (Posterior Analytics 89a) still pondering over this problem of how true knowledge and mere opinion could have the same object of reference.

Similarly, Parmenides' convincing rebuttal (fr. 3) of what is having been produced out of what is not, which would then mean what is being in some sense what is not, led Aristotle (De Anima 417a and Metaphysics 1051b) to his theory of potentiality in order to bridge the gap somehow between nonbeing and being.

And this is a radical challenge to the common concept of time: the unreality of past and future which are illusory, the present which is all there is, timeless and eternal.

For Parmenides, then, reason, namely the correct use of thought in contact with reality - not the world of appearance but the real world - will alone lead to truth." (pp. 73-74)
Painter, Corinne. 2005. "In Defense of Socrates." Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy no. 9:317–333.

bstract "In this essay I argue that the Stranger’s interest in keeping the philosopher and the sophist distinct is connected, primarily, to his assessment of the charges of sophistry advanced against Socrates, which compels him to defend Socrates from these unduly advanced accusations. On this basis, I establish that the Stranger’s task in the Sophist, namely to keep philosophy distinct from sophistry, is intimately tied to the project of securing justice and is therefore not merely of theoretical importance but is also—and essentially—of political and ethical significance."
———. 2014. "The Stranger as a Socratic Philosopher: The Socratic Nature of the Stranger’s Investigation of the Sophist." The St. John's Review no. 56:65–73.

"Much of the secondary literature on Plato’s Sophist considers the Stranger to be a non-Socratic philosopher, and regards his appearance in the dialogues as a sign that Plato had moved on from his fascination with Socrates to develop a more “mature” way of philosophizing.(2) This essay will argue, on the contrary, that the investigation led by the Stranger in the Sophist demonstrates an essentially Socratic philosophical stance. In order to do this, I will consider carefully some dramatic evidence in the Sophist that allows us to notice a philosophical “transformation” in the Stranger.

My consideration focuses upon the Stranger’s rejection of the Parmenidean way of philosophizing followed by his acceptance of the Socratic way of practicing philosophy. This is revealed most decisively by the Stranger’s willingness to pursue truth and justice at the expense of overturning the practices of his philosophical training, and, secondarily, by his genuine concern with showing that Socrates is not guilty of sophistry."

(2) There are far too many accounts to list here; but see, for example, Stanley Rosen, Plato’s Sophist: The Drama of the Original and Image (South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine’s Press, 1999). Just as Rosen argues in his text, most of the accounts in the literature that treat this issue view the Stranger as non-Socratic and advance the position that he represents at least a change, or perhaps even a progression, in Plato’s thinking away from, for instance, emphasis on the Socratic elenchus, to a more developed, mature philosophical practice that emphasizes dialectic."
Painter, Corinne Michelle. 2005. "In Defense of Socrates: The Stranger's Role in Plato's Sophist." Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy no. 9:317–333.

Abstract: "In this essay I argue that the Stranger's interest in keeping the Philosopher and the Sophist distinct is connected, primarily, to his assessment of the charges of Sophistry advanced against Socrates, which compels him to defend Socrates from these unduly advanced accusations. On this basis, I establish that the Stranger's task in the Sophist, namely to keep philosophy distinct from sophistry, is intimately tied to the project of securing justice and is therefore not merely of theoretical importance but is also -- and essentially - of political and ethical significance."
Palmer, John. 1999. Plato's Reception of Parmenides. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

"The Gorgianic perspective on Parmenides' philosophy also figures crucially in the First Deduction of the subsequent exercise in which Parmenides undertakes an examination of his own theory. Plato has Parmenides reject this reductive perspective, thereby providing us with a crucially important instance of how Plato is concerned with combating certain sophistic appropriations of Parmenides so as to recover him for the uses he himself wants to make. This dynamic of reappropriation becomes increasingly important as we continue to examine Plato's later period reception.

This theme in fact guides my discussion of the complex representation of Parmenides in the Sophist, where I argue that Plato's efforts to define the Sophist so as to discriminate between this figure and the Philosopher are accompanied by an attempt to recover Parmenides from sophistic appropriations that challenge certain of the key distinctions of Plato's middle period metaphysics. I therefore take issue with the common view that Plato in the Sophist is determined to 'refute' Parmenides. The Sophist's denial of the viability of the distinctions between truth and falsehood and between reality and appearance employ the logic of Parmenides in ways Plato himself finds unacceptable. Plato's own view of Parmenides in this dialogue emerges in the ontological doxography in which Parmenides is significantly associated with Xenophanes and in the subsequent interrogation of this doxography's first two groups. The interrogation of the Eleatics in particular has important connections with various deductions in the Parmenides's dialectical exercise. These connections make it possible to see where in each dialogue Plato is concerned with sophistic appropriations of Parmenides and where he is engaging with him in ways that reflect his own understanding. This understanding is reflected to some extent in portions of the Timaeus but most directly and importantly in the Parmenides's Second Deduction. I therefore conclude this study by describing how Plato will have understood Parmenides' account of the attributes of Being in B8 and the relation of this account to the cosmology he presented alongside it, and I explain how this understanding is reflected in the Second Deduction." (p. 16)
———. 2024. "What completely is, what in no way is, and what is and is not in Plato’s Sophist and Republic." In Plato’s Sophist: Selected Papers of the Thirteenth Symposium Platonicum, edited by Luc, Brisson, Edward, Halper and Richard, Perry, 325–331.

Abstract: "Plato’s treatment of what in no way is at Sophist 236d-239c has important connections with the arguments directed toward the lovers of sights and sounds in Republic V. Understanding these connections is crucial to understanding the Sophist’s articulation of the agenda for its main discussion that follows at 239c-242c, where Plato effectively indicates the need to reconsider the Parmenidean legacy of those arguments."
Palumbo, Lidia. 2013. "Mimesis in the Sophist." In Plato's Sophist Revisited, edited by Bossi, Beatriz and Robinson, Thomas M., 269–278. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"Mimesis is the production of images (Soph. 265b1 – 3). These cover a very wide semantic field, including the meanings of “opinion” and “viewpoint”. A false image is a wrong opinion that says the things that are not: in believing, we imagine; in thinking, we represent what we think. The false belief is therefore a mental scene, an image that possesses neither a corresponding reality nor a model, although it is perceived as a real scene. The virtue of an image (the arete eikonos) lies in its being similar to what is true, whereas the similarity between false and true can produce a deception similar to that caused by a dream or by poetry.

The aim of this paper is to show that in the Sophist falsity is closely linked to mimesis. This is not because every mimesis is false, but because all falsity is mimetic. That not every mimesis is false is shown at 235c – 236c. The crucial distinction between eikastike and phantastike must be understood as the distinction between true and false mimesis. That every falsity is mimetic is a far more complex issue, which I shall be discussing in this paper. I shall claim that falsity does not consist in confusing something for something else, but, more specifically, in confusing an image for its model." (p. 269)
Panagiotou, Spiro. 1981. "The 'Parmenides' and the 'Communion of Kinds' in the 'Sophist'." Hermes no. 109:167–171.

"The section on the Communion of Kinds in the 'Sophist' is prefaced with an outline of the view that in calling the same thing by many names we make it 'many', and are thus guilty of contradiction: we make what is 'one' to be 'many' and vice versa (251 A - C). The language here leaves no doubt that this aspect of the 'one and many' problem ought to be regarded as specious (cf. 251 B 5 - 6; C 4), although the Stranger does not explain why it should be so regarded. After making some derogatory remarks on those who are impressed by this aspect of the problem, the Stranger abruptly turns to the section on the Communion of Kinds. Though we are not told so, we may be certain that the two sections are related and that the Communion of Kinds has something to do with problems of the 'one and many' variety. We may, furthermore, fill in some of the missing details by considering what Plato has to say on the same topic in the 'Philebus'." (p. 168)
Pappas, Nickolas. 2013. "Introduction." The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy:277–282.

Abstract: "Plato’s Sophist is part of the most striking change that occurs within the chronology of his dialogues. Their dramatic presentation changes, the main speaker Socrates replaced by the Eleatic stranger. The dialogues still seek to define terms, but now use the method of division and collection and succeed where earlier attempts used to fail. They transform Platonic metaphysics to include the great kind heteron “other,” which points the way to a new enterprise of understanding the reality of appearance rather than opposing appearance to reality. The seven papers collected in this part explore metaphysical, methodological, and pedagogical topics explored in or arising from the Sophist. Their subjects include the other, number (arithmos), power (dunamis), mixture, appearance, and myth."
———. 2013. "The Story that Philosophers Will Be Telling of the Sophist." The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy no. 13:338–352.

Abstract: "Plato’s stranger exemplifies the impulse to move beyond myth into logos, anticipating the later author Palaephatus. The stranger wishes earlier philosophers had not mythologized being to their students; he works to define the sophist so as to escape myths about that figure. Yet reading the Sophist alongside Palaephatus illuminates how far myth continues to permeate this work. The sophist’s moneymaking is mythologized into his wildness. The stranger’s closing words about announcing the meaning of the sophist hark back to a dense mythic passage from the Iliad. If philosophy begins by bidding good-bye to myth, it has not left home yet."
Partenie, Catalin. 2004. "Imprint: Heidegger Interpretation of Platonic Dialectic in the Sophist lectures (1924-25)." In Heidegger and Plato: Toward Dialogue, edited by Partenie, Catalin and Rockmore, Tom, 42–71. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

"My essay will follow one episode of this Platonico-Heideggerian interplay. The episode has at its core four theses centered upon the Platonic dialectic that Heidegger advances in his lectures on Plato’s Sophist. I shall argue that these theses, although they reveal a biased reading of Plato, manage to draw our attention to a genuine and important Platonic distinction, usually overlooked, between authentic and inauthentic human existence, and that this distinction also lies at the core of the fundamental ontology expounded in Being and Time. At the close of the essay I shall address, but only in a preliminary way, the question of why Heidegger did not acknowledge this Platonic imprint on his Being and Time.

The lectures on Plato’s Sophist were delivered at the University of Marburg during the winter semester 1924–25. They contain a running commentary of the Sophist completed by extensive analyses of book Z of the Nicomachean Ethics, book A (chapters 1 and 2) of the Metaphysics, and the Phaedrus.

Of the many theses Heidegger advances in these lectures (whose published text counts 653 pages), I shall focus here on four, centered upon the Platonic dialectic." (pp. 42-43)
———. 2016. "Heidegger: Sophist and Philosopher." In Sophistes: Plato's Dialogue and Heidegger's Lectures in Marburg (1924-25), edited by De Brasi, Diego and Fuchs, Marko J., 61–74. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

"Heidegger's Lectures on Plato's Sophist are a long and complex affair. In their opening section, entitled "Preliminary Considerations", Heidegger claims that a double preparation is required for an interpretation of Plato's late dialogues: one philosophical-phenomenological, the other historiographical-hermeneutical." (p. 61)

(...)

"Usually, scholars go "from Socrates and the Presocratics to Plato"; Heidegger, however, will go from "Aristotle back to Plato" (11). Why? Because "what Aristotle said is what Plato placed at his disposal, only it is said more radically and developed more scientifically" (11-12)." (p. 62)

(...)

"So, we know how to grasp in the right way the past we encounter in Plato: through Aristotle. But how are we to grasp in the right way the past we encounter in Aristotle? In other words, if Aristotle is going to be the guiding line for our interpretation of Plato, what will be our guiding line for the interpretation of Aristotle? Who said more radically, and developed more scientifically, what Aristotle placed at our disposal? Nobody, Heidegger claims. Aristotle "was not followed by anyone greater", so "we are forced to leap into his own philosophical work in order to gain an orientation" (12), or guiding line. In what follows I shall argue that Heidegger's actual guiding line throughout the lectures was not Aristotle, but his own thinking at the time, which he brought to its fullest development in the fundamental ontology of Being and Time." (p. 62)
Pasqualoni, Anthony. 2023. "Thought, Memory, and Being in Plato’s Sophist." Archai. The Origins of Western Thought no. 33:1–26.

Abstract: "Thinking as described in Plato’s Sophist undergoes two basic changes: it progresses by shifting from one to many and it regresses by shifting from many to one. The change from one to many is generative; the change from many to one is reductive. These opposing changes provide a tension for thinking, and like Heraclitus’ bow string, this tension gives thinking its efficacy. Thinking would wander and accumulate endlessly unless it regresses from many to one. Yet, thinking would stagnate if it could not progress from one to many. Both changes are essential characteristics of thinking, and both rest on memory. Memory constitutes the foundation of thought."
Pavani, Anna. 2025. "The Dialectical Function of Names in the 'Sophist'." Apeiron no. 58 (2):165–180.

Abstract: "Language plays a pivotal role in Plato’s Sophist. Scholarly attention has focused primarily on verbs, especially the verb “to be,” and on statements. In this paper, I take a step back and focus on names (onomata) to argue that the very act of attributing a name (onomazein) plays a crucial role in the dialectical enterprise.

Specifically, I argue that in the so-called Outer Part of the Sophist, names (onomata) contribute (i) to determining the project of the Sophist, (ii) to understanding how the interlocutors aim to track down the sophist, and (iii) to making sense of the whole development of the search for the sophist. (i) I shall defend the claim that the Sophist and Statesman are to be understood as one answer to Socrates’ opening question as to whether each of the three terms “sophist,” “statesman,” and “philosopher” picks out a distinct genos (217a7–9). (ii) In order to distinguish each of the three terms from the others, the interlocutors employ the Method of Collection and Division, which has been variously interpreted in the secondary literature. By means of a close reading of a largely overlooked passage (i.e., Sph. 227a7–c6), I shall show that the act of naming has a unifying function and that Collection and Division aim to apprehend what is akin and what is not by considering all possible objects under scrutiny as equally worthy of investigation. I shall further show that we can rightly speak of Division and Collection, since there is Collection in the Outer Part of the Sophist. (iii) Finally, I shall show that the pattern that develops through the sequence of the Divisions moves backwards, making us go back to what has been said to be the only common ground of the joint inquiry, namely the name “sophist,” and to the very first assumption this name reveals, namely that the sophist must possess a technê because of his name."
Peck, Arthur Leslie. 1952. "Plato and the ΜΕΓΙΣΤΑ ΓΕΝΗ of the Sophist. A Reinterpretation." The Classical Quarterly no. 2:32–56.

"It is important to recognize that the problem dealt with by Plato in the central part of the Sophist (232 b-264 d) is one which arises from the use of certain Greek phrases, and has no necessary or direct connexion with metaphysics (although the solution of it which Plato offers has an important bearing on the defence of his own metaphysical theory against one particular kind of attack).

We tend to obscure this fact if we use English terms such as 'Being', 'Reality', 'Existence', etc., in discussing the dialogue, and indeed make it almost impossible to understand what Plato is trying to do. It is the way in which the Greek terms ὄν and μή ὄν and other such terms are used by the 'sophists' which gives rise to the problem." (32)

(...)

"It is not easy to suppose that Plato thought the business of the true philosopher, as described at Sophist 253 d-e, consisted in spending his time on such verbal futilities as saying that Rest is not Motion, Motion is the same as itself, Motion is other than Being, etc. (Indeed, even in the discussion in the Sophist, the Eleatic Visitor and Theaetetus require no 'high art' to see that Rest and Motion cannot 'mix'.) The difficulties caused by sophistic verbal conjuring must, of course, be overcome by the philosopher; but once they are overcome, the philosopher can go forward with his own proper work. It is indeed surprising that the view has ever been entertained that the business of the true philosopher, as described in Sophist 253 d-e, is illustrated by the argument about the μέγιστα γένη. The philosopher's work, as epitomized in the phrases κατὰ γένη διαιρεῖσθαι (253 d) and διακρίνειν κατὰ γένος ἐπίστασθαι (253 e), is surely much more closely represented by the making of 'Divisions', of which semi-serious examples are given in the earlier part of the dialogue, than by the discussion about the μέγιστα γένη. It is, of course, true that any such work of Division would be blocked at the outset so long as the τό μη όν ουκ έστιν objection held the field; but once that objection is cleared away the course is open for the true dialectical philosopher to proceed with his work." (p. 56)
———. 1962. "Plato's "Sophist": The συμπλοϰὴ τῶν εἰδῶν." Phronesis.A Journal for Ancient Philosophy no. 7:46–66.

In Plato's Sophist, at 259 E 4 ff., we read the following sentence:

τελεωτάτη πάντων λόγων ἐστὶν ἀφάνισις τὸ διαλύειν ἕκαστον ἀπὸ πάντων: διὰ γὰρ τὴν ἀλλήλων τῶν εἰδῶν συμπλοκὴν ὁ λόγος γέγονεν ἡμῖν [The complete separation of each thing from all is the utterly final obliteration of all discourse. For our power of discourse is derived from the interweaving of the classes or ideas with one another (translation added)].

A few pages later, at 263 A2 and 8, we find these examples of λόγος:

‘Θεαίτητος κάθηται, [Theaetetus sits] Θεαίτητος πέτεται [Theaetetus flies].

The difficulty which seems to present itself is that these examples of λόγος do not illustrate what is said in the second part of the sentence quoted." (p. 46)

(...)

"The amount of effort expended by Plato in combating the activities of 'sophists' and αντιλογικοι is itself an indication of the prevalence and (as he felt it) the danger to philosophy of the kind of talk which was in vogue. The danger of this attitude, as Plato saw it, was its superficiality, its undue preoccupation with words instead of realities."

(...)

"Plato's attack, then, is against those who confine their attention to terminology, who fail to consider whether their terminology is a correct representation of the facts, or who believe it is a reliable index to truth and reality - or think they can floor Plato by specious verbal manipulations.

It will, I believe, be found that μετέχειν and all the various verbs and nouns used to denote 'combining' and 'mixing' in the Sophist imply no more than that two terms can be used together in the same sentence without self-contradiction." (p. 66)
Pelletier, Francis Jeffry. 1975. "'Incompatibility' in Plato's Sophist." Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review no. 14:143–146.

"I want to consider a much-disputed reading of a certain critical area of Plato's Sophist. It is widely agreed by most commentators that in this text, between 255E and 259E there occurs a refutation of Parmenides' dictum that "one cannot say that which is not", and that this is followed by an application of the foregoing discussion to the problems of sentential falsity. (For a partial list of commentators, see bibliography.) It is also generally agreed that Plato uses the Form, The Different, for this purpose. What is not generally agreed upon is how Plato uses The Different." (p. 143)

Bibliography

Ackrill, J. L. (1955) "Symplokê eidôn", Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies of the University of London (reprinted in Vlastos).

Frede, Michael ( 1967) Prädication und Existenzaussage, Hypomnemata 18.

Keyt, David ( 1973) "The Falsity of 'Theaetetus Flies' (Sophist 263B)" in Exegesis and Argument: Studies in Greek Philosophy Presented to Gregory Vlastos (ed.) E. N. Lee, A.P.D. Mourelatos. and R. Rorty; Phronesis Supplementary Volume I.

Lee, E, N. (1972) "Plato on Negation and Not-Being in the Sophist" Phil. Rev.

Lorenz, K. and Mittelstrauss, J, (1966) "Theaitetos Fliegt", Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie.

Owen, G. E. L. (1970) "Plato on Not-Being" (in Vlastos).

Philip, J, A. (1968) "False Statement in the Sophist's", Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Society.

Vlastos, Gregory (1970) Plato: A Collection of Critical Essays Vol. I.

Wiggins, David (1970) "Sentence Meaning, Negation, and Plato's Problem of Not-Being" (in Vlastos).
———. 1983. "Plato on Not-Being: Some Interpretations of the συμπλοκή εἶδον (259e) and Their Relation to Parmenides Problem." In Midwest Studies in Philosophy VIII, edited by French, Peter A., Uehling Jr., Theodore E. and Wettstein, Howard K., 35–65.

"We have witnessed," says Mourelatos (1979: p. 3), "in the 'sixties and 'seventies, in English language scholarship, that rarest of phenomena in the study of ancient philosophy, the emergence of a consensus." This interpretation is so agreed upon that "one may even speak of a standard Anglo-American interpretation of Parmenides." One of the presentations counted by Mourelatos as standard, indeed one of the paradigms, is that of Furth (1968). According to this interpretation, Parmenides' infamous ontological views follow as corollaries from his implicit views about language and meaning. I will briefly present this Parmenidean view about language, but I will not here try to justify the attribution (for these sorts of arguments see Furth, 1968; Mourelatos, 1979; and Pelletier, forthcoming [1990]).

In this paper, I am interested in the Platonic response to Parmenides, especially the response that occurs in the middle portion of the Sophist (249-265). Since I am going to evaluate this as a response to the "standard interpretation" of Parmenides, it is clear that I owe a justification for my belief that Plato understood his opponent to be our "standard Parmenides." This issue, too, I will avoid here (further discussion can be found in Pelletier [1990], which discusses the "Parmenidean" arguments of Sophist 237-241, Theaetetus, 188-189, and Cratylus 429-430, with an eye toward showing that Plato was aware of these types of argument.)" (p. 35)

"It seems that one way to clarify the details of the interpretation of Parmenides is to investigate the symplokê eidôn of the Sophist. Unfortunately, Plato's position is also open to a variety of interpretations and cannot be convincingly elucidated in the absence of a precise account of what Parmenides' argument was. One, therefore, wishes to set up all the possible interpretations of Parmenides and all the interpretations of the symplokê eidôn and then to inspect these lists to discover which pairs of Parmenidean/Platonic interpretations mesh the best. This, it seems to me, would provide the best evidence possible that one had finally gotten both Plato and Parmenides right. I will not attempt that Herculean task. Rather, I will state one interpretation of Parmenides, Furth 's, and ask which of the many ways to understand Plato's position best accords with that interpretation of Parmenides. (p. 36)

References

Furth, Montgomery, “Elements of Eleatic Ontology.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 6 (1968): 111-32.

Mourelatos, A. P. D., “Some Alternatives in Interpreting Parmenides,” The Monist 62 (1979):

Pelletier. Francis Jeffry, Parmenides, Plato, and the Semantics of Not-Being (forthcoming) [Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1990].
———. 1990. Parmenides, Plato, and the Semantics of Not-Being. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Contents: Acknowledgments IX; Introduction XI-XXI; 1. Methodological preliminaries 1; 2. Parmenides' problem 8; 3. Plato's problems 22; 4. Some interpretations of the symploke eidon 45; 5. The Philosopher's language 94, Works cited 149; Index locorum 155; Name Index 159; Subject index 163-166.
Peramatzis, Michail. 2020. "Conceptions of Truth in Plato’s Sophist." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie no. 102:333–378.

Abstract: "The paper seeks to specify how, according to Plato’s Sophist, true statements achieve their being about objects and their saying that ‘what is about such objects is’. Drawing on the 6th definition of the sophist, I argue for a normative-teleological conception of truth in which the best condition of our soul –in its making statements or having mental states– consists in its seeking to attain the telos of truth. Further, on the basis of Plato’s discussion of original and image, his distinction between correct and incorrect image, and the 7th definition, I argue that achieving the telos of truth involves preserving the original’s proportions and appropriate features. The view that Plato’s conception of truth takes statements or mental states to be certain types of image is not ground-breaking. The important contribution of my argument is that it offers a plausible way to understand two recalcitrant claims made by Plato: first, that falsity obtains not only in the region of incorrect images (appearances) but also within correct images (likenesses); second, that some incorrect images are based on knowledge and so could be true."
Perl, Eric D. 2014. "The Motion of Intellect On the Neoplatonic Reading of Sophist 248e-249d." The International Journal of the Platonic Tradition no. 8:138–160.

Abstract: "This paper defends Plotinus’ reading of Sophist 248e-249d as an expression of the togetherness or unity-in-duality of intellect and intelligible being. Throughout the dialogues Plato consistently presents knowledge as a togetherness of knower and known, expressing this through the myth of recollection and through metaphors of grasping, eating, and sexual union. He indicates that an intelligible paradigm is in the thought that apprehends it, and regularly regards the forms not as extrinsic “objects” but as the contents of living intelligence. A meticulous reading of Sophist 248e-249d shows that the “motion” attributed to intelligible being is not temporal change but the activity of intellectual apprehension. Aristotle’s doctrines of knowledge as identity of intellect and the intelligible, and of divine intellect as thinking itself, are therefore in continuity with Plato, and Plotinus’ doctrine of intellect and being is continuous with both Plato and Aristotle."
Petterson, Olof. 2018. "The Science of Philosophy: Discourse and Deception in Plato’s Sophist." Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy no. 22:221–237.

Abstract: "At 252e1 to 253c9 in Plato’s Sophist, the Eleatic Visitor explains why philosophy is a science. Like the art of grammar, philosophical knowledge corresponds to a generic structure of discrete kinds and is acquired by systematic analysis of how these kinds intermingle. In the literature, the Visitor’s science is either understood as an expression of a mature and authentic platonic metaphysics, or as a sophisticated illusion staged to illustrate the seductive lure of sophistic deception. By showing how the Visitor’s account of the science of philosophy is just as comprehensive, phantasmatic and self-concealing as the art of sophistry identified at the dialogue’s outset, this paper argues in favor of the latter view. "
Pfefferkorn, Julia, and Spinelli, Antonino, eds. 2021. Platonic Mimesis Revisited. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.

Contents: Julia Pfefferkorn, Antonino Spinelli: Revisiting Mimesis in Plato: An Introduction 7; Stephen Halliwell: The Shifting Problems of Mimesis in Plato 27; Michael Erler: Performanz und Analyse. Mimesis als Nachmachen – ein Element traditioneller Paideia in Platons früheren Dialogen und seine Analyse in den Nomoi 47; Andrea Capra: Imitatio Socratis from the Theatre of Dionysus to Plato’s Academy 63; Anna Pavani: The Essential Imitation of Names: On Cratylean Mimesis 81; Laura Candiotto: Mimesis and Recollection 103; Elenio Cicchini: Der mimische Charakter. Mimus und Mimesis in der Philosophie Platons 123; Justin Vlasits: Plato on Poetic and Musical Representation 147; Irmgard Männlein-Robert: Mit Blick auf das Göttliche oder Mimesis für Philosophen in Politeia und Nomoi 167; Lidia Palumbo: Mimêsis teorizzata e mimêsis realizzata nel Sofista platonico 193; Michele Abbate: Der Sophist als mimêtês tôn ontôn (Sph. 235a1 f.). Ontologische Implikationen 211; Alexandra V. Alván León: Wolf im Hundepelz: Mimesis als Täuschung in der Kunst des Sophisten 225; Benedikt Strobel: Bild und falsche Meinung in Platons Sophistes 249; Francesco Fronterotta: Generation as μίμησις and κόσμος as μίμημα: Cosmological Model, Productive Function and the Arrangement of the χώρα in Plato’s Timaeus 275; Antonino Spinelli: Mimoumenoi tas tou theou periphoras. Die Mimesis des Kosmos als menschliche Aufgabe im Timaios 291; José Antonio Giménez: Gesetz und Mimesis im Politikos 313; Julia Pfefferkorn: Plato’s Dancing City: Why is Mimetic Choral Dance so Prominent in the Laws? 335; Index Locorum 359–376.
Philip, James Allenby. 1961. "Mimesis in the Sophistes of Plato." Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association no. 92:453–468.

"If a generalized use of mimesis was current in Plato's time, it was current as an extension of a more specific use. We shall find in Plato instances of both the specific and the generalized use and instances in which, because Plato allowed them to co-exist, the meaning and connotations of the one overlap those of the other, and ambiguities arise. Already in the Republic these two senses of mimesis, the specific or dramatic sense and the generalized or metaphysical sense, are both present. They are exhibited again in the final division of the Sophistes as two classes related to one another as genus to species. When we have delimited the two senses in the Republic we will consider their relation in the Sophistes and its implications." (pp. 453-454)

(...)

"We must then ask ourselves: What enables us to know? and by what process of knowing do we make ourselves like the object of our knowledge?

(...)

So we affirm that in the wide spectrum of meaning given to mimesis in the Platonic dialogues we can distinguish two principal senses: a restricted or dramatic sense of making oneself like another, and a wider sense describing the creative processes in all the productive crafts; and further that in the final division of the Sophistes we find the latter related to the former as genus to species." (p. 468)
———. 1968. "False Statement in the Sophistes." Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association no. 99:315–327.

"I shall limit myself to showing what are the moves he makes, and how he reaches the conclusion he does reach.

The question whether Plato's doctrine is tenable, in whole or in part, in terms of modern logic is beyond the scope of this study.

The discussion of false statement falls into five parts, each part corresponding to a move in the development of the thesis. It will be convenient to conduct our discussion conforming to these divisions:

1. 256D11-258C7: Not-being and its two kinds.

2. 258C7-260A1: Summing up against Parmenides.

3. 260A1-261C6: The problem of statement (logos).

4. 261C7-263A1: Basic doctrine of meaning and statement.

5. 263A1-263D5 : Test case : "Theaetetus flies" etc.

It must be remembered throughout that Plato is single-mindedly pursuing his purpose, which is to show that false statement as τὸ μὴ ὄν λέγειν is possible; and further that this phrase means: (a) in the Parmenidean sense, (if anything) nothing relevant to our inquiry, (b) in a modified sense, to say what is not as what is other than (or different from) X, and (c) to make a false statement. This last sense is for Plato's purpose the important one. He will use it to differentiate between the activities of the sophist and the philosopher, and to justify his relegating the sophist to the class of purveyors of false statement.

It must also be remembered that, here as elsewhere, Plato for all his frequent prolixity excludes from his argument what he does not consider essential to it. In the present instance he attempts no general logical doctrine." (pp. 315-316)
———. 1968. "The apographa of Plato's Sophistes." Phoenix no. 22:289–298.

Since Burnet's edition of Plato it has been recognized that B, T, and W are primary sources for the first half of the Platonic corpus, and for most of those dialogues, including the Sophistes, the only primary sources. (In the Budé Sophistes, edited by Diès, Y is cited in the apparatus as a primary source; though this has been shown to be the case for other parts of Y it is not the case for the Sophistes, as will appear below.) All other manuscripts are conceded to be apographa of these, and their mutual relations have been in part explored. They have not been examined systematically, on the basis of collations, to discover precisely how they depend on one another and whether any of the manuscripts other than the principal three can be primary sources for our tradition in whole or in part." (p. 289)

Codices referred to by sigla are as follows: B = Clarkianus 39 of the Bodleian Library, Oxford; T = Ven.app.cl. 4.1 (542 in the new numbering of Mioni's catalogue) of the Marciana Library, Venice; W = Vind.supp.phil.gr.7, Oesterreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna; Y = Vind.phil.gr.21, Oesterreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna. All other codices are referred to by the abbreviation of their library designations; a list is given in Post [L. A. Post, The Vatican Plato and its Relations (Middletown 1934)];. I shall discuss the primary source manuscripts, B, T, and W, in a separate study.
———. 1969. "The Megista Gene of the Sophistes." Phoenix no. 23:89–103.

"Five common concepts or megista gene -- being, identity, difference, motion and rest-play a key role in the Sophistes.(1) They are not an innovation. Allusion is made to them, and to similar concepts, in earlier dialogues. Already in the Phaedo (103E-105C) certain ideas having a mathematical character-equality, oddness, evenness-are recognized not as a special category but as functioning in special ways and having peculiar problems. It is in the Parmenides that we first encounter them as a grouping.(2) There Parmenides introduces them as similar ideas specially suited to the training of neophytes in dialectic. The ideas mentioned are (136A-B): unity/plurality, similarity/dissimilarity, motion/rest, being/non-being, coming-to-be/passing away. To these are later added identity/difference (139B) and equality/inequality (140B)." (pp. 89-90, note 1 partly omitted)

(...)

"Let us now turn to the Sophistes. If we are to understand the role of the megista gene we must observe how and in what context they are introduced. The critical issue of the whole dialogue is approached by an episode to which Plato has given the name Gigantomachia, or Battle of the Giants. In this episode idealists and empiricists are pitted against one another in bitter conflict. Their ideological quarrel is about οὐσία.

The giants maintain that only what has physical body and is perceptible to touch or contact may be said to be real, or to exist. The idealists maintain that the only genuine reality/substance is to be found in incorporeal, intelligible kinds or ideas, physical body being merely genesis or change and process.

In the thesis of the idealists we have in its most uncompromising form Plato's chorismos of intelligibles and sensibles. But we find Plato not, as we might expect, championing the cause of the Friends of the Ideas, as he calls his idealists. Instead he attempts to mediate. Let us observe how he does so, remembering always that he develops only such aspects of his metaphysical assumptions as seems to him necessary for the theme he is treating." (p. 92)

(1) I use for megista gene "common concepts." That equivalent is suggested by Tht. 185c 4, and Ryle has pointed out in Studies in Plato's Metaphysics, ed. R. E. Allen (London 1965) 146 that it is used also by Aristotle. So it may have had some currency in the Academy. To translate by "greatest," "highest," "very important," is to suggest that they occupy a place in some hierarchy of concepts or ideas, whereas their importance derives from the fact that they are topic-neutral and of almost universal application. Their logical importance has been pointed out by Ryle, loc. cit., and in New Essays on Plato and Aristotle, ed. R. Bambrough (London 1965) 64-65. My debt to those discussions will be obvious.

(2) By "first" I mean first in the order Plato assigned to the dialogues -- Parmenides, Theaetetus, Sophistes, Politicus. I shall treat the Timaeus as subsequent to these. I shall not attempt to discuss again the actual date of writing of any dialogue or part of a dialogue. Relative dating does not affect my thesis here. It ceases to be of major importance if we accept even in part the Krämer/Gaiser theory of agrapha dogmata.
Pippin, Robert B. 1979. "Negation and Not-Being in Wittgenstein's Tractatus and Plato's Sophist." Kant Studien no. 70:179–196.

"The origins of our contemporary fascination with language are, of course, quite complex and go to the very heart of that persistent twentieth-century attempt to see philosophy as a "critique of language". But, in investigating those origins, it does no one an injustice to insist upon the importance of Ludwig Wittgenstein and especially his little book, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, in bringing the issue to the prominence it enjoys today."

(...)

"In fact, [Wittgenstein] seems to return quite explicitly to Plato's account of language as an eidolon in a dialogue like the Sophist. In a certain sense, one could claim that the central problem of dialogues like the Theaetetus and the Sophist was Wittgenstein's major concern in his early work."

(...)

"Further, in the opinion of some commentators, the Eleatic Stranger and Wittgenstein not only begin with very similar problems, they seem to arrive at very similar solutions.

The picture theory's representational model of language's relation to the world, the ontology taken by some to be supported by the picture theory (Wittgenstein's infamous "simples"), the doctrines of logical space and the "form" of objects, and perhaps more than any other issue, Wittgenstein's "derivative" explanation of negation (the claim that any not-X depends on X for its intension and the claim that it has no negative extension, that there are no negative facts), all count as evidence for Platonic shadows stretching across the Tractatus. This seems especially true when we consider that Wittgenstein regarded as a major consequence of the picture theory its ability to account for meaningful, false propositions, that it could explain how "Thought can be of what is not the case".

Plato's discussion of images is clearly and directly concerned with much the same problem in "capturing" the elusive sophist.

In the following, I will consider two such comparable issues- the general theory of language involved in both accounts, and their specific solution to the problem of negation and false propositions. What I hope to accomplish by this contrast is to illuminate two very different kinds of analyses appropriate to the topic of "not-being", differences one could roughly characterize as "semantic" versus "ontological". Further, this difference in orientation and in emphasis will involve differences within each mode; specifically it will involve a "picture" versus an "image" theory of language, and atomistic versus nonatomistic ontologies." (pp. 179-180, notes omitted)
Pirocacos, Elly. 1998. False Belief and the Meno Paradox. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Abstract: "The Sophist is a dialogue that may be addressed as a sequel to the Theaetetus. It also finds Socrates suspended of his capacity as director of inquiry, and replaced by an Eleatic Stranger. The difficulty of the task is located in the form of refutative argumentation adopted by each, and therefore involves the evaluation of the justifying epistemological systems supporting each. The stage setting of the Sophist is even more involved than the three phased report of the dialogue in the Theaetetus. The philosophical persuasion of the Stranger deserves special attention, especially given that he has been assigned the role to designate the criteria of philosophical inquiry by way of establishing the true relations between the tripartite subjects of inquiry. Both Theaetetus and the Eleatic Stranger are agreed that being and not-being are equally puzzling terms; but Theaetetus seems to have understood the objective of the present dialogue in a slightly different way."
Pitteloud, Luca. 2014. "Is the Sensible an Illusion? The Revisited Ontology of the Sophist." Aufklärung no. 1:33–57.

"I want to argue in this paper that, in the Sophist, behind the discussion about the nature of non-being, Plato provides the reader some elements about a revision of his ontology. First, the analysis of the notion of image gives some indications concerning the nature of the sensible, which is usually described as an image of the intelligible (Republic 509a9 and 509e1-2, Timaeus 52c).

Second, since the dialogue seems to assume that not only Forms are part of the realm of being, but what is in motion too, it will appear that sensible objects must somehow belong to being. The focus of this paper is the revision of the nature of the sensible." (p. 33)

(...)

"Conclusion: A new realm of being

The Friends of the Forms have to admit that Forms are acted upon but not that they change. In this way, they could easily defend the idea that for a Form, to be known, does not imply any alteration or change. Nevertheless, they seem to accept another different thesis, namely that some objects that are in motion belong to the realm of being. The Eleatic Stranger asks the question of the pantelôs on (248e7): this does not refer to what is really being (ontôs on), but to the total family of being. To this realm of being belong motion (κίνησις), life (ψυχήν) and intelligence (φρόνησιν). In this way, the Sophist does not only assert that an image cannot be reduced to non-being, but also that what is in motion is part of the realm of being. Those two elements seem to plead for a revaluation of the nature of the sensible, which has to be part of the set of being. We face an ontology with two degrees of being: the intelligible and its image, namely the sensible. The sensible is not reducible to an illusion or to falsehood (and nothingness), but is somehow a being. As the Timaeus will explain it, it is the image of the intelligible appearing into a milieu (the Receptacle), which guaranties to it some degree of existence (Timaeus, 52b3-d1)." (pp. 52-53)
Planinc, Zdravko. 2015. "Socrates and the Cyclops: Plato’s Critique of ‘Platonism’ in the Sophist and Statesman." Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy no. 31:159–217.

Abstract: "The Eleatic Stranger plays a central role in all reconstructions of Plato’s “Platonism.”

This paper is a study of the literary form of the Sophist and Statesman and its significance for interpreting the Eleatic’s account of the nature of philosophy. I argue that the Eleatic dialogues are best understood through a comparison with the source-texts in the Odyssey that Plato used in their composition. I show that the literary form of the Sophist is a straightforward reworking of the encounter of Odysseus and his crewmen with Polyphemus the Cyclops; and that the form of the Statesman is a somewhat more complex reworking of the narrative in which Odysseus and those loyal to him oppose Antinoös, leader of the Ithacan suitors. The comparison reveals that the Eleatic Stranger is no way Plato’s spokesman. On the contrary: by casting the Stranger in the role of Polyphemus and the Cyclopean Antinoös, Plato intends the Sophist and Statesman to be read as an explicit critique of the metaphysical and political doctrines that have since come to be identified as Platonism. In Plato’s characterization, the Eleatic Stranger is neither a philosopher nor a sophist. He is an intellectual—the sort of person who professes to be a philosopher and is often mistaken for one."
Politis, Vasilis. 2006. "The Argument for the Reality of Change and Changelessness in Plato's Sophist (248e7-249d5)." In New Essays on Plato: Language and Thought in Fourth-Century Greek Philosophy, edited by Herrmann, Fritz-Gregor, 149–175. Swansea: The Classical Press of Wales.

"Plato’s metaphysics, from beginning to end, is tiered rather than tier-less.(1) This is because Plato’s general account of reality is characterized by a fundamental distinction between certain things, especially the changeless forms, which he argues are perfect beings,(2) and certain other things, the changing objects of sense-perception, which he argues are something, as opposed to being nothing at all, only in virtue of being appropriately related to and dependent on those perfect beings.(3) However, in a dialogue addressed to the very question, ‘What is there?’ – and to the related question, ‘What is being?’ – he defends an answer which, so it appears, makes no reference to two tiers of reality and indicates rather a tier-insensitive ontology. This is the argument in the Sophist (248e7–249d5) which, together with the arguments that precede it in the dialogue, is summed up in the conclusion that any changing thing (κινούμενον), and likewise any changeless thing (ἀκίνητον, στάσιμον), is something that is.(4) There can be no doubt that this conclusion is about any changing thing and any changeless thing, and there is no suggestion, moreover, that the things referred to must occupy one or the other of two tiers of reality.

Following Julius Moravcsik and Gwil Owen, Lesley Brown has recently defended a tier-insensitive interpretation of this argument, such that the ‘upshot is an all-inclusive ontology’.(5) On the other hand, a number of critics, including David Ross, Harold Cherniss, and Michael Frede, have defended a tiered interpretation.(6) It seems to me, however, that the choice between these two interpretations – which evidently is of central importance for the understanding of Plato – has not been properly characterized, much less settled. My aim in this paper is to show, first, that the choice between these two fundamentally different and opposed interpretations of this argument, the tier-insensitive and the tiered interpretation, depends on how we read the single phrase, τὸ παντελῶς ὄν, at 248e8–249a1; and second, that the correct reading of this phrase commits us to a tiered interpretation beyond reasonable doubt, and that Plato’s formulation of the conclusion (249c10–d4), which sums up both this and the previous arguments in the dialogue, does not state a commitment to a tier-insensitive ontology." (pp. 149-150)

(1) See for example Phaedo 74 (esp. 74d5–8), 78–9 (esp. 79a6–7), 100b1–e7; Republic 475e9 ff.; Symposium 210e6–211b5; Timaeus 27d6–28a4, 51d3–52a7 (I am assuming that the Timaeus is a late dialogue); Philebus 58e4–59a9, 61d10–e3.

(2) παντελῶς ὄντα (Republic 477a3 and Sophist 248e8–249a1; see below). Also εἰλικρινῶς ὄντα (e.g. Republic 477a7, 478d6), ἀληθινὴ οὐσία (e.g. Sophist 246b8), ὄντως ὄν / οὐσία (e.g. Timaeus 28a3–4, 52c5 and Sophist 248a11), and sometimes simply οὐσία (e.g. Phaedo 78d1 and Sophist 246c2). Plato’s terminology is not fixed, indeed reconciling, or otherwise, his terms is an inquiry of long standing.

(3) i.e. the relation of one-way dependence which Plato sometimes refers to as ‘participation’ and ‘communion’ (μέθεξις, κοινωνία).

(4) The conclusion is stated at 249c10–d4. It is important to observe (as we will see in section 6) that this conclusion sums up not only the immediately preceding argument (248e7–249c9), i.e. the argument against the friends of the forms (which is our present concern), but also the earlier argument against the materialists (246e5–247c8, which is not our main concern at present).

(5) Brown 1998, 204. Moravcsik (1962, 31 and 35–41) argues that Plato defends an ‘all-inclusive’ and ‘tier-insensitive’ answer to the question ‘What exists?’ So too Owen 1986b [originally 1966], 41–4 [336–40]. A tier-insensitive interpretation is also defended by Teloh 1981, 194–5 and Bordt 1991, 514, 520, 528.

(6) see Ross 1951, 110–11; Cherniss 1965, 352; Frank 1986; Frede, 1996, 196; and Silverman 2002.

References

Bordt, M. 1991 ‘Der Seinsbegriff in Platons “Sophistes” ’, Theologie und Philosophie 66, 493–529.

Brown, L. 1998 ‘Innovation and continuity. The battle of gods and giants, Sophist 245–249’, in J. Gentzler (ed.) Method in Ancient Philosophy, Oxford, 181–207.

Cherniss, H. 1965 ‘The relation of the Timaeus to Plato’s later dialogues’, in R.E. Allen (ed.) Studies in Plato’s Metaphysics, London, 339–78.

Frank, D.H. 1986 ‘On what there is: Plato’s later thoughts’, Elenchos 6, 5–18.

Frede, M. 1996 ‘Die Frage nach dem Seienden: Sophistes’, in T. Kobusch und B. Mojsisch (eds.) Platon. Seine Dialoge in der Sicht neuer Forschungen, Darmstadt, 181–99.

Keyt, D. 1969 ‘Plato’s paradox that the immutable is unknowable’, Philosophical Quarterly 19, 1–14.

Moravcsik, J. 1962 ‘Being and meaning in the Sophist’, Acta Philosophica Fennica, vol. 14, 23–78.

Owen, G.E.L. 1986b ‘Plato and Parmenides on the timeless present’, in Owen, Logic, Science and Dialectic, London, 27–44.

Ross, D. 1951 Plato’s Theory of Ideas, Oxford.

Silverman, A. 2002 The Dialectic of Essence. A study of Plato’s metaphysics, Princeton.

Teloh, H. 1981 The Development of Plato’s Metaphysics, Pennsylvania.
Priest, Graham. 2014. One: Being an Investigation into the Unity of Reality and of its Parts, including the Singular Object which is Nothingness. New York: Oxford University Press.

Part II. Chapter 9: In Search of Falsity, 140-153.
Prior, William J. 1980. "Plato's Analysis of Being and Not-Being in the Sophist." Southern Journal of Philosophy no. 18:199–211.

"In this paper I offer an account of Plato’s analysis of Being and Not-Being in the Sophist. This account differs from those current in several important respects. First, although I take it that Plato distinguishes in the Sophist among existential statements, statements that are predicative in grammatical structure, and statements of identity, I do not believe that he distinguishes corresponding senses or uses of the verb “to be.” Second, I do not take Plato’s analysis to be linguistic or logical in nature, but rather metaphysical or ontological. In my view, the Greek verb “esti” is analyzed in terms of a metaphysical theory, the Theory of Forms, and specifically in terms of the metaphysical concept of participation. This indicates a third difference between my view and that of commentators who believe that Plato’s late dialogues show a trend away from transcendent metaphysics and toward a more neutral sort of conceptual analysis. As I shall hold that the genuine conceptual breakthrough of the Sophist is made with metaphysical apparatus not much changed from the Phaedo, I deny that this passage, at least, can be taken as evidence for such a trend.

The passage in which Plato makes his analysis is Soph. 251a-257c. I shall examine briefly the entire passage, but concentrate on 255e-256e, from which I draw the bulk of the material for my account." (p. 199)
———. 1985. Unity and Development in Plato's Metaphysics. London: Croom Helm.

Contents: Acknowledgments; Introduction: The problem of Plato's development 1; The metaphysics of the early and middle Platonic dialogues 9; 2. The challenge of the Parmenides 51; 3. The response of the Timaeus 87; 4. The Sophist 127; Appendix: The doctrinal maturity and chronological position of the Timaeus 168; Bibliography 194; Index 199-201.
Priou, Alex. 2013. "The Philosopher in Plato’s Sophist." Hermathena no. 195:5–29.

"The above observations suggest that only by situating the arc of the Sophist between the Theaetetus and Statesman does the larger significance of its issues emerge. Obvious though this may sound, scholars who treat the Sophist’s place in the trilogy as a whole don't approach it from the perspective of Socrates’ failure to define false opinion in the Theaetetus. As we have seen, Plato presents the Stranger’s inquiry into being and non-being as a response to Socrates’ shortcomings in the Theaetetus; and, as I hope to show, his response anticipates the specific inquiry taken up in the Statesman. Toward this end, I will walk the arc of the Sophist’s argument from the Theaetetus to the Statesman as follows. First, I will consider how the initial definitions of the sophist frame the dialogue’s famous digression on images, being, and non-being (Section II). I will then consider how this frame necessitates the distinction of ‘spoken images’ (εἴδωλα λεγόμενα) into φαντάσματα and εἰκόνες, i.e. those that respectively distort and preserve the proportions of the beings, the very distinction that eventually allows the Stranger to distinguish between true and false opinions (Section III).

Thereafter, I will discuss how this distinction in spoken images necessitates the acquisition of a ‘dialectical science’ (διαλεκτική ἐπιστήμη), which very acquisition appears intractably problematic (Section IV). I will then conclude with some general reflections on the stance of the dialogue as a whole, the possibility of defining false opinion, and how the interpretation advanced informs the search for the statesman in the Statesman (Section V). My basic aim throughout will be to show that, in so situating the Sophist between its prequel Theaetetus and sequel Statesman, we come to see the place of the philosopher in Plato’s Sophist." (pp. 7-8, noted omitted)
Proios, John D. 2023. "Plato, Sophist 259 c7–d7: contrary predication and genuine refutation." The Classical Quarterly no. 73:66–77.

Abstract: "This paper defends an interpretation of Plato, Soph. 259c7–d7, which describes a distinction between genuine and pretender forms of ‘examination’ or ‘refutation’ (ἔλεγχος). The passage speaks to a need, throughout the dialogue, to differentiate the truly philosophical method from the merely eristic method. But its contribution has been obscured by the appearance of a textual problem at 259c7–8. As a result, scholars have largely not recognized that the Eleatic Stranger recommends accepting contrary predication as a condition of genuine refutation. After reviewing various proposals to change the text, the paper defends this reading. Finally, the paper turns to the methodological significance of accepting contrary predication. The dialogue depicts contrary predication as an instance of a class of statements that compel the soul’s disbelief. Soph. 259c7–d7 suggests that these kinds of statements are a crossroad: one can either reject them and turn to eristic discourse or accept them and practise genuine refutation. The paper reflects on what this indicates about Plato’s meditations on contradiction and philosophy."

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