Abstract

The dissertation is a close commentary on Plato's Sophist which attempts to clarify, without oversimplifying, the meaning of the text and the issues it raises. Its method is close analysis of the text on three levels: grammatical, logical and rhetorical, taking into account the history of conflicting interpretations of the dialogue. ;Chapter one explores the dramatic and rhetorical context of the ensuing conversation, arguing that the Stranger represents neither Plato's advance beyond Socrates nor a misguided critique of Socrates, but rather helps to depict the difficulty of communication between philosophers in the presence of non-philosophers. ;Chapter two follows the course of the divisions accomplished by the Stranger and Theaetetus, arguing that they represent neither a profound new philosophic method nor a mistaken trust in method as such, but rather a heuristic and pedagogical device for raising and articulating questions. Chapter three explores the identification of the sophist as an image-maker which has emerged from the other divisions. ;Chapters four through seven examine the perplexities about not-being and being, and argue that neither a predicative nor an existential sense of 'to be' can be understood throughout their presentation, but that they are at least in part generated by a lack of clarity about the meaning of being, as the Stranger shows. ;Chapters eight through eleven examine the Stranger's analysis leading to the ostensible clarification of the meaning of not-being. Several senses of not-being are distinguished, and the Stranger's unacknowledged shifts among them are pointed out. It is suggested that this shifting may be self-conscious and deliberate on the part of the Stranger, and that he may have pedagogical reasons for it. ;Chapter twelve explores the Stranger's account of logos and false logos and argues that no one sense of not-being is sufficient to make his account of false logos intelligible. An account is given of how various senses of not-being might be combined to explain false logos. ;Chapter thirteen investigates the peculiarities of the final division, paying special attention to the ways in which they remind us of the questions which have been evaded or left unresolved by the dialogue