Complete Works (57 page)

In defining the sophist, the visitor employs the ‘method of division’—or,
more accurately, of ‘collection and division’—described in
Phaedrus
265d ff.
and early on in
Philebus
; this also underlies the latter’s discussion of the varieties
of pleasure and knowledge. He first offers six distinct routes for understanding
the sophist, by systematically demarcating specific classes within successively
smaller, nested, more inclusive classes of practitioners; these specific
subclasses are then identified as the sophists. Apparently ‘sophistry’ is a somewhat
loosely associated set of distinct capacities—it hunts rich, prominent
young men so as to receive a wage for speaking persuasively to them about virtue,
it sells (in several different circumstances) items of alleged knowledge on
this same subject, it is expert at winning private debates about right and
wrong, it cleanses people’s souls by refuting their false or poorly supported
ideas. Yet in a final accounting—whose long-delayed completion is reached
only at the very end of the dialogue—the sophist is ‘penned in’ as one who,
though aware that he does not know anything, produces in words totally inadequate
‘copies’ of the truth on important subjects, ones he makes appear to others
to
be
the truth, even though, being false, they are hardly even like it. The
relation of this final definition to the six first ones is not fully explored. The visitor
may be intimating the general principle that sometimes a ‘nature’ or real
‘kind’ has no single place in a systematic division; it unifies a set of differently
located functions, each with its own differences from its more immediate intellectual
neighbors. In any case, the essential idea of the ‘method of collection
and division’ is that each thing is to be understood through a full, lively awareness
of its similarities and differences in relation to other things—the sort of
awareness that the varied divisions encourage us to reach. Much other general
instruction on how to make proper use of the ‘method’ is given in
Statesman.

The visitor delays completing his final accounting because he sees the need
first to show how it is even possible for anyone to do what he wants to say the
sophist does do—speak words that appear to be true but in fact are false. The
trouble is that he understands speaking falsely as saying ‘what is not’, while
his teacher Parmenides famously maintained that that is impossible: so he is required
to engage in ‘parricide’—in showing how Parmenides was wrong. There
ensues an elaborate discussion of the meaning of ‘what is’ as well as of ‘what
is not’, in which we can see Plato working out a new theory of the nature of
the Form of being, and its relations to other ‘greatest’ or most comprehensive
Forms: such a theory is needed to make saying ‘what is not’—speaking
falsely—intelligible after all. Much of the interest of the dialogue has always
been found in this metaphysical excursion into the topic of being—and not being—
in general.

J.M.C.

[216]
T
HEODORUS
: We’ve come at the proper time by yesterday’s agreement, Socrates. We’re also bringing this man who’s visiting us. He’s from Elea and he’s a member of the group who gather around Parmenides and Zeno. And he’s very much a philosopher.

S
OCRATES
: Are you bringing a visitor, Theodorus? Or are you bringing a god without realizing it instead, like the ones Homer mentions? He says [b] gods accompany people who are respectful and just.
¹
He also says the god of visitors—who’s at least as much a god as any other—is a companion who keeps an eye on people’s actions, both the criminal and the lawful ones. So your visitor might be a greater power following along with you, a sort of god of refutation to keep watch on us and show how bad we are at speaking—and to refute us.

T
HEODORUS
: That’s not our visitor’s style, Socrates. He’s more moderate than the enthusiasts for debating are. And he doesn’t seem to me to be a god at all. He
is
divine—but then I call all philosophers that. [c]

S
OCRATES
: And that’s the right thing for you to do, my friend. But probably it’s no easier, I imagine, to distinguish that kind of person than it is to distinguish gods. Certainly the genuine philosophers who “haunt our cities”
²
—by contrast to the fake ones—take on all sorts of different appearances just because of other people’s ignorance. As philosophers look down from above at the lives of those below them, some people think they’re worthless and others think they’re worth everything in the world. Sometimes they take on the appearance of statesmen, and sometimes of sophists. [d] Sometimes, too, they might give the impression that they’re completely insane. But if it’s all right with our visitor I’d be glad to have him tell us what the people where he comes from used to apply the following names to, and what they thought about these things?
[217]

T
HEODORUS
: What things?

S
OCRATES
:
Sophist
,
statesman
, and
philosopher
.

T
HEODORUS
: What, or what kind of thing, especially makes you consider asking that question? What special problem about them do you have in mind?

S
OCRATES
: This: did they think that sophists, statesmen, and philosophers make up one kind of thing or two? Or did they divide them up into three kinds corresponding to the three names and attach one name to each of them?

T
HEODORUS
: I don’t think it would offend him to tell us about it. Or would it, sir?

V
ISITOR
: No, Theodorus, it wouldn’t offend me. I don’t have any objection. [b] And the answer is easy: they think there are three kinds. Distinguishing clearly what each of them is, though, isn’t a small or easy job.

T
HEODORUS
: Luckily, Socrates, you’ve gotten hold of words that are very much like the ones we happened to be asking him about. And he made the same excuse to us that he made to you just now—since he’s heard a lot about the issue, after all, and hasn’t forgotten it.

S
OCRATES
: In that case, sir, don’t refuse our very first request. Tell us [c] this. When you want to explain something to somebody, do you usually prefer to explain it by yourself in a long speech, or to do it with questions? That’s the way Parmenides did it one time, when he was very old and I was young.
³
He used questions to generate a very fine discussion.

[d] V
ISITOR
: It’s easier to do it the second way, Socrates, if you’re talking with someone who’s easy to handle and isn’t a trouble-maker. Otherwise it’s easier to do it alone.

S
OCRATES
: You can pick anyone here you want. They’ll all answer you politely. But if you take my advice you’ll choose one of the young ones—Theaetetus here or for that matter any of the others you prefer.

V
ISITOR
: As long as I’m here with you for the first time, Socrates, I’d be [e] embarrassed not to make our meeting a conversational give-and-take, but instead to stretch things out and give a long continuous speech by myself or even to someone else, as if I were delivering an oration. A person wouldn’t expect the issue you just mentioned to be as small as your question suggests. In fact it needs a very long discussion. On the other hand, it certainly seems rude and uncivilized for a visitor not to oblige you and these people here, especially when you’ve spoken the way you
[218]
have. So I’ll accept Theaetetus as the person to talk with, on the basis of your urging, and because I’ve talked with him myself before.

T
HEAETETUS
: Then please do that, sir, and you’ll be doing us all a favor, just as Socrates said.

V
ISITOR
: We probably don’t need to say anything more about that, then, Theaetetus. From now on you’re the one I should have the rest of our talk with. But if you’re annoyed at how long the job takes, you should blame your friends here instead of me.

[b] T
HEAETETUS
: I don’t think I’ll give out now, but if anything like that does happen we’ll have to use this other Socrates over here as a substitute. He’s Socrates’ namesake, but he’s my age and exercises with me and he’s used to sharing lots of tasks with me.

V
ISITOR
: Good. As the talk goes along you’ll think about that on your own. But with me I think you need to begin the investigation from the [c] sophist—by searching for him and giving a clear account of what he is. Now in this case you and I only have the name in common, and maybe we’ve each used it for a different thing. In every case, though, we always need to be in agreement about the thing itself by means of a verbal explanation, rather than doing without any such explanation and merely agreeing about the name. But it isn’t the easiest thing in the world to grasp the tribe we’re planning to search for—I mean, the sophist—or say what it is. But if an important issue needs to be worked out well, then as everyone [d] has long thought, you need to practice on unimportant, easier issues first. So that’s my advice to us now, Theaetetus: since we think it’s hard to hunt down and deal with the kind,
sophist
, we ought to practice our method of hunting on something easier first—unless you can tell us about another way that’s somehow more promising.

T
HEAETETUS
: I can’t.

V
ISITOR
: Do you want us to focus on something trivial and try to use it as a model for the more important issue?

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes. [e]

V
ISITOR
: What might we propose that’s unimportant and easy to understand, but can have an account given of it just as much as more important things can? For example,
an angler
: isn’t that recognizable to everybody, but not worth being too serious about?

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes.

V
ISITOR
: That, I expect, will provide an appropriate method of hunting
[219]
and way of talking for what we want.

T
HEAETETUS
: That would be fine.

V
ISITOR
: Well then, let’s go after the angler from this starting point. Tell me, shall we take him to be an expert at something, or a nonexpert with another sort of capacity?

T
HEAETETUS
: He’s definitely not a nonexpert.

V
ISITOR
: But expertise as a whole falls pretty much into two types.

T
HEAETETUS
: How?

V
ISITOR
: There’s farming, or any sort of caring for any mortal body; and there’s also caring for things that are put together or fabricated, which we call equipment; and there’s imitation. The right thing would be to call all [b] those things by a single name.

T
HEAETETUS
: How? What name?

V
ISITOR
: When you bring anything into being that wasn’t in being before, we say you’re a producer and that the thing you’ve brought into being is produced.

T
HEAETETUS
: That’s right.

V
ISITOR
: And all the things we went through just now have their own capacity for that.

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes.

V
ISITOR
: Let’s put them under the heading of production.

T
HEAETETUS
: All right. [c]

V
ISITOR
: Next, consider the whole type that has to do with learning, recognition, commerce, combat, and hunting. None of these creates anything. They take things that are or have come into being, and they take possession of some of them with words and actions, and they keep other things from being taken possession of. For that reason it would be appropriate to call all the parts of this type acquisition.

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes, that would be appropriate.

V
ISITOR
: If every expertise falls under acquisition or production, Theaetetus [d], which one shall we put angling in?

T
HEAETETUS
: Acquisition, obviously.

V
ISITOR
: Aren’t there two types of expertise in acquisition? Is one type mutually willing exchange, through gifts and wages and purchase? And would the other type, which brings things into one’s possession by actions or words, be expertise in taking possession?

T
HEAETETUS
: It seems so, anyway, given what we’ve said.

V
ISITOR
: Well then, shouldn’t we cut possession-taking in two?

T
HEAETETUS
: How?

[e] V
ISITOR
: The part that’s done openly we label combat, and the part that’s secret we call hunting.

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes.

V
ISITOR
: And furthermore it would be unreasonable not to cut hunting in two.

T
HEAETETUS
: How?

V
ISITOR
: We divide it into the hunting of living things and the hunting of lifeless things.

T
HEAETETUS
: Yes, if there are both kinds.

[220]
V
ISITOR
: How could there not be? But we should let the part involving lifeless things go. It doesn’t have a name, except for some kinds of diving and other trivial things like that. The other part—namely the hunting of living animals—we should call animal-hunting.

T
HEAETETUS
: All right.

V
ISITOR
: And isn’t it right to say that animal-hunting has two types? One is land-hunting, the hunting of things with feet, which is divided into many types with many names. The other is aquatic hunting, which hunts animals that swim.