Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to Plato
- Other Volumes in the Series of Cambridge Companions
- The Cambridge Companion to Plato
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Chronology
- Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction to the Study of Plato
- 2 Plato in his Context
- 3 Stylometry and Chronology
- 4 Plato’s Socrates and his Conception of Philosophy
- 5 Being Good at Being Bad: Plato’s Hippias Minor
- 6 Inquiry in the Meno
- 7 Why Erōs?
- 8 Plato on Philosophy and the Mysteries
- 9 The Unfolding Account of Forms in the Phaedo
- 10 The Defense of Justice in Plato’s Republic
- 11 Plato on Poetic Creativity: A Revision
- 12 Betwixt and Between: Plato and the Objects of Mathematics
- 13 Another Goodbye to the Third Man
- 14 Plato’s Sophist on False Statements
- 15 Cosmology and Human Nature in the Timaeus
- 16. The Fourfold Classification and Socrates’ Craft Analogy in the Philebus
- 17 Law in Plato’s Late Politics
- Bibliography
- Index Locorum
- General Index
- Other Volumes in the Series of Cambridge Companions (continued from page iii)
14 - Plato’s Sophist on False Statements
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 July 2022
- The Cambridge Companion to Plato
- Other Volumes in the Series of Cambridge Companions
- The Cambridge Companion to Plato
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Chronology
- Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction to the Study of Plato
- 2 Plato in his Context
- 3 Stylometry and Chronology
- 4 Plato’s Socrates and his Conception of Philosophy
- 5 Being Good at Being Bad: Plato’s Hippias Minor
- 6 Inquiry in the Meno
- 7 Why Erōs?
- 8 Plato on Philosophy and the Mysteries
- 9 The Unfolding Account of Forms in the Phaedo
- 10 The Defense of Justice in Plato’s Republic
- 11 Plato on Poetic Creativity: A Revision
- 12 Betwixt and Between: Plato and the Objects of Mathematics
- 13 Another Goodbye to the Third Man
- 14 Plato’s Sophist on False Statements
- 15 Cosmology and Human Nature in the Timaeus
- 16. The Fourfold Classification and Socrates’ Craft Analogy in the Philebus
- 17 Law in Plato’s Late Politics
- Bibliography
- Index Locorum
- General Index
- Other Volumes in the Series of Cambridge Companions (continued from page iii)
Summary
In the Sophist, Plato asks how there can be false statements. A false statement (logos) says what is not. But a statement cannot say nothing – there must be something that it says. Plato tries to solve the puzzle by investigating the notion of not-being and the notion of a logos. To understand not-being, we must first understand being. That in turn requires understanding how something can be called by many different names. Plato’s solution to these problems rests on the distinction between what something is of itself and what it is because it is related to other things. It also rests on an understanding of the notion of difference. The class of not-beautiful things, for example, is a real group: they are different from the beautiful things. Similarly, not-beings are a real group. The upshot is this: “Theaetetus is flying” is false, in that flying is different from what is with reference to Theaetetus. Theaetetus has being. Flying has being. But “Theaetetus is flying” says with reference to him what is not.
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- The Cambridge Companion to Plato , pp. 433 - 463Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022
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