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False Statement in Plato's Sophist
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Extract
Plato's examination of False Statement (Sophist 259 D–263 D) is, like many of his discussions in the later dialogues, a mixture of complete lucidity with extreme obscurity. Any English student who seeks to understand it will of course turn first to Professor Cornford's translation and commentary; and if he next reads what M. Diès has to say in the Introduction to his Budé edition of the Sophist he will, I think, have sufficient acquaintance with the views of modern Platonic scholars on the subject. For myself, at least, I have not gained any further understanding from other writers than these two.
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References
page 56 note 1 Plato's Theory of Knowledge, pp. 298–317.
page 56 note 2 PTK, p. 317.
page 56 note 3 By μθεξις here I mean the participation of a particular in its own Form, as of τοτο τ καλν in the εἶδος το καλο, or of the seated posture of Theaetetus in the εἶδος το καθσθαι, the universal ‘Sitting’. No doubt μθεξις in another sense, viz. that in which all Forms, and therewith their particulars, participate in the all-pervading εἴδη or γνη of ν, ταὐτν, and θτερον, is involved.
page 56 note 4 PTK, p. 315.
page 57 note 1 It has, however, been indicated earlier (240 c–241 B) that this problem will have to be dealt with; it is there left hanging.
page 57 note 2 δι γρ τν λλλων τν εδν συμπλοκν λγος γγονεν μῖν, 259 E. If we compare this with the use of συμπλοκ at 262 c, and with συμπλκων τ ῥματα τοῖς νμασι at 262 D, I think that εἰδν must mean what we call ‘parts of speech’. The weaving together of the εἴδη that constitutes a λγος cannot be the same as the κοινωνα εἰδν or γενν which has been hitherto discussed, and it is by what almost amounts to a play upon words that the Stranger effects the transition from the ‘blending’ or ‘communion’ of kinds to the weaving of ῥματα with νματα.
page 58 note 1 Comford's translation of the last speech is ‘Yes, but things that exist, different from things that exist in your case. For we said that in the case of everything there are many things that are and also many that are not.’
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