Protagoras and Gorgias are the most significant of the early sophists. Although philosophy as we understand it was not their chief business, they taught views and methods of argument that have fascinated subsequent philosophers. In their own context they exhibit the spirit of the new learning, the cultural and intellectual revolution of the fifth century B.C. in Greece. This revolution - or, rather, the reaction against it - is illustrated in Aristophanes' comic play, The Clouds, by a character enrolling in a sophistic school in order to learn the “unjust argument.” This, he has heard, can win a jury's favour for the worst of offenders. The syllabus, he finds, involves science as well as rhetoric, both laughable in this satire. What is not laughable is the popular animosity against the school that leads to its incineration (at least one student included), a grim sign of the strong feelings that would later contribute to the death of the man whose name Aristophanes uses for the leader of his imaginary school - Socrates.

INTRODUCTION

Justice was a major topic of debate at Athens during the period that extends from Aeschylus' Eumenides (456 B.C.), with its celebration of the inauguration of the court of the Areopagus, down to the trial and death of Socrates (399 B.C.), memorialized in Plato's Apology. Historians, dramatists, orators, and philosophers provide a range of perspectives and evidence on one of the crucial issues of the age. In the earliest Greek literature human justice had been very closely linked to divine justice and power, but in the fifth century, the time of tribunals and popular assemblies, what chiefly attracts attention is justice purely in the human sphere. Questions are raised about its origin, its connection with nature and truth, its performance, the conditions that can guarantee its development, and the forces that generate its opposite - coercive power, violence, and injustice.

In order to acquire a general idea of the terms in which these issues were explored at the end of the fifth century, it is enough to read the speeches Plato puts into the mouths of Glaucon and Adeimantus at the beginning of book two of his Republic. These speeches provide the best introduction to our theme because they exemplify the cultural background against which Plato develops his great project in this dialogue. Before turning to details, a few words are necessary on some of the questions that emerge in the preceding book.

INTRODUCTION

Ancient Greek philosophy arose in a culture whose world had always teemed with divinities. “Everything is full of gods, ”said Thales (Aristotle De an. 1.5, 411a8), and the earliest “theories of everything” were mythological panoramas such as Hesiod's Theogony, in which the genealogy of the gods is also a story about the evolution of the universe. Hence when certain Greeks began to think about the physical world in a philosophical way, they were concerning themselves with matters which it was still quite natural to term “divine, ” even in the context of their new scientific approach. Because of this, it is not entirely obvious where one should draw the line between the theology of the early Greek philosophers and their other achievements. But clarity is not served by classifying as “theological” every statement or view of theirs that features concepts of divinity. To theologize is not simply to theorize using such concepts in a non-incidental way. Rather, it is, for instance, to reflect upon the divine nature, or to rest an argument or explanation on the idea of divinity as such, or to discuss the question of the existence of gods, and to speculate on the grounds or causes of theistic belief.

Defining the sophist

I have shown in the first two chapters that the basic philosophical problem in the Sophist is how to distinguish the sophist from the philosopher. Now let us begin to discuss how the Sophist investigates the basic problem.

The Eleatic visitor sets out to define the sophist by pointing out an indeterminacy in our understanding of the sophist. The dialogue starts the inquiry with an agreement that people share a common name:

In order to understand the meaning and the procedure of defining the sophist, we should look, to begin with, at the three methods employed in the dialogue: definition, use of models, and division.

The aim of definition is stated in Passage 2: that a definition (logos) should fix our understanding of an object to which a certain name (onoma) refers. Let us consider what role the three elements, that is, name (or word), object, and definition, play when we inquire into a definition of something.

Introduction of the concept of an image

In the previous two chapters, we saw how inquiry focused on the concept of appearance in the course of defining the sophist. Through the New Attempt the sophist is characterised as one who appears to be wise but is not (cf. Passage 9: 233c1–11). In examining the sophist's appearing, we have also found out the significant role that appearance plays in philosophical inquiry. The inquirers have received many appearances of the sophist in the earlier inquiry; that, on the one hand, signifies their failure to define the sophist, but on the other, provides a clue to further investigation in the New Attempt. Facing this double role of appearance, it is necessary to distinguish between two ways of dealing with appearances: the sophist's use of appearance for deceiving others, and the inquirers' use of appearance in their philosophical inquiry (cf. 3.3 and 3.4).

It is at this point that Plato introduces the concept of ‘image’ (eidōlon). Just after the New Attempt, making images is introduced as a model for the sophist's appearing. This introduction of the concept of image has two main purposes. One is to illustrate and clarify some basic features of the concept of appearance. We shall examine in what respects the concept of image illustrates the concept of appearance. The other purpose is to show how the two ways of dealing with appearances can be distinguished.

The many appearances of the Sophist

What is the Sophist, usually deemed one of the greatest philosophical works of Plato? What philosophical problem does Plato propose and investigate in this dialogue?

The Sophist has many faces, each of which has attracted philosophers for two millennia. The issues discussed in the dialogue are all known to be so problematic and so important in the history of philosophy that philosophers have hardly ever asked what problem the Sophist really confronts, or what these issues are to be examined for. They have taken the ‘problems’ for granted. The variety of the philosophical issues it raises, however, makes us fail to see the dialogue as a whole. Each philosopher has taken up only a piece of the dialogue, so that the faces of the Sophist remain fragmentary; the Sophist has not shown us the whole figure nor its essence.

Let us begin our examination by considering how we can approach the dialogue, through a survey of the many faces it has shown its past readers.

With its traditional subtitle ‘On what is’ (peri tou ontos, de ente), the dialogue was treated, from antiquity to the Renaissance, primarily as a masterpiece of Plato's ontological thinking.

First, Plato tackles in Sophist 236d–242b the problem of ‘what is not’ (to mē on), which has proved one of the most important issues in Greek philosophy since Parmenides originally raised the issue. Parmenides, in his verse, strongly opposed ‘what is not is’, and his successors had to prove the possibility of the being of what is not, in order to secure change and plurality in our world.

The question of what the sophist is

Chapter 1 has suggested that the basic problem of the Sophist, taken as a whole, is to define what the sophist is, and has examined the structure of the dialogue to get rid of one great obstacle to interpretation. Next, we must ask why the question about the sophist matters for philosophy. What did the question ‘What is a sophist?’ mean to Plato, and what does it mean to us?

In Plato's day, the influence of the professional intellectuals or teachers called ‘sophists’ was so great on his society that it seems reasonable for Plato to examine the nature of the sophists. We modern readers, on the other hand, might think that this question is merely of historical importance, since the ‘sophists’ are historical figures that no longer exist. We tend, furthermore, to imagine that, even if the historical situation of his day forced Plato to examine the sophists, he could never have taken such a trivial issue as criticism of the sophists seriously, or at any rate more seriously than many other important philosophical issues. To this view, I respond in the following way. What Plato saw in the essence of the sophists is not so much a historical problem only for his time as a philosophical problem which is of great significance for establishing philosophy itself. Since the sophist is without doubt a historical figure for us, we must first examine the meaning of the ‘sophist’ in the historical context.

The art of apparition-making

Now we reach the final attempt to define the sophist, in the second Outer Part of the dialogue (264b9–268d5). Between the two points where the definitional inquiry into the sophist is suspended and resumed, there lies the long digression of the Middle Part (236d9–264b8), which deals with the difficulties concerning what is not and what is (236d9–251a4), the combination of the greatest kinds (251a5-259d8), and the explanation of falsehood (259d9-264b8). We have just clarified how that long argument is constructed with a view to providing solutions to the issues of appearance without being, of image, and of falsehood. In this chapter we shall determine what the final definition of the sophist is, and also illuminate in retrospect what has been done in the Middle Part. Of course, the argument in the Middle Part has much richer philosophical meaning than we discussed in the previous chapter and shall reflect here, but it is only when we examine the whole dialogue, particularly the final definition of the sophist, and assess the significance of the whole scheme, that we can properly understand the meaning of the Middle Part. I shall point out several important results of that argument which contribute to the final definition. Those who concentrate solely on the Middle Part usually dismiss them. This chapter examines the final definition step by step. Particular attention should be paid to its relation to the argument of the Middle Part and to the earlier divisions.

The sophistic counter-attack in the Middle Part

In the first two chapters I proposed and showed that the basic problem of the Sophist is how to distinguish the sophist from the philosopher; a sophist appears in various guises, so does a philosopher, but to secure the possibility of philosophy, it is necessary to determine what a sophist really is. The third and fourth chapters picked up one key concept of the sophist's art, namely, appearing; appearing to be wise is regarded as the core of the sophist's art. The fifth chapter then continued to examine this concept of appearance in relation to the concept of image. In searching for the sophist, we have thus narrowed down the inquiry and focused on the concept of appearance in accordance with Plato's argument in the first Outer Part of the Sophist. Concerning this characterisation of the sophist, however, difficulties emerge and force the inquirers to suspend definitional inquiry during the Middle Part (236d9–264b8). The difficulties are concerned with appearance, image, falsehood and what is not, and they are raised as if the sophist makes a counter-attack on philosophical inquiry.

In this chapter we shall first see what the counter-attack by the sophist means, and then examine what the difficulties raised in the Middle Part are and how they relate to each other, particularly in relation to the basic problem of defining the sophist.

The philosophic defence in the Middle Part

The previous chapter has shown how the four kinds of difficulty are advanced in the Middle Part by the sophist's counter-attack on the inquirers' attempt to define him. It aims at sweeping away the distinction between the sophist and the philosopher, and so endangers the possibility of philosophy itself. This chapter will in turn show that the argument in the Middle Part as a whole is the inquirers' philosophic defence against the sophistic counter-attack. Its overarching aim is to demonstrate the vital distinction between the philosopher and the sophist, so as to show and secure the possibility of philosophy.

As we have observed in the last chapter, the ‘fighting’ image of the sophist is prevalent in the Middle Part. The sophist counter-attacks the inquirers' statements about appearance without being, image and falsehood, and forces them (anankazein) to contradict themselves. The sophist fights (machesthai, diamachesthai) by putting forward obstacles or problems (problēmata) one after another to the inquirers (260d5–e3, 261a6–b4). The way he fights against the inquirers is to deny the possibility of appearance without being, image, and falsehood altogether, by appealing to the Parmenidean thesis, and consequently to make the distinction between the sophist and the philosopher impossible. Confronting these difficulties, Theaetetus doubts any possibility of capturing the sophist (241c2–3, 261a4–b4), but in response to his doubt, the Eleatic visitor urges him not to give up the investigation (241c4–9, 261b5–c4).

Analysing the appearance of the sophist

Now that appearing to be wise proves to be the essential feature of the sophist's art, our next task should be to analyse and explicate, philosophically and systematically, the appearance with which the sophist is concerned. The question is what makes his appearing possible. Since the appearance is at once what the sophist displays by his art and what the inquiry has revealed, to analyse the mechanism of the appearing of the sophist and to reveal the secret of his power, which lies between being an art and non-art, will indicate how the inquiry can deal with the appearance. The inquiry in the first Outer Part has two stages of analysis. First, the New Attempt (232b1–233d2), in the course of focusing on the sophist's appearing, reveals some central features of appearing; second, the division of image-making (233d3–236d8), which follows the New Attempt, illustrates how the two ways of dealing with appearances are to be distinguished. This chapter examines the first stage and the next chapter will discuss the second.

To interpret the conclusion of the New Attempt (Passage 9), we must elucidate the complex phenomenon of the sophist's appearing to be wise. To grasp its exact meaning, we shall consider three distinctions, which the inquiry has illuminated through the New Attempt.

First, so far we have been focusing on the speaking activity of the sophist, but in order to observe his art precisely, the complex nature of controverting (antilegein) should be examined instead of the simple activity of speaking (legein).