The Sophist

Sophist, The (Sophistēs), dialogue by Plato, a sequel to Theaetetus; Plato once more applies himself to problems raised by the Eleatics. The main speaker is an Eleatic philosopher, left unnamed; Socrates and Theodorus have scarcely anything to say. The dialogue starts with the definition of a sophist, at the end of which the question arises whether what the sophist produces is false, and whether there can be a ‘false’ or ‘unreal’ thing, since the Eleatics believe that ‘what is not’, and therefore falsehood, cannot exist (see PARMENIDES). The dialogue finds a solution in the doctrine that all things partake of ‘difference’; in making a denial we are not making an antithesis between something and nothing, but an opposition between something and something else different from it: ‘what is not’ is in fact ‘what is different’. Plato is thus able to demonstrate the existence of falsehood and error.