Plato's Sophist: The Drama of Original and Image (review)

Book Reviews Stanley Rosen. Plato's Sophist: The Drama of Original and Image. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983. Pp. x + 341. This book discusses Plato's Sophist somewhat differently from most treatments published in the last few decades, and challenges them in thought-provoking and sometimes illuminating ways. The main theme is that the Eleatic Stranger's account of to me on, falsity of statement and belief, and images, is not Plato's own line of thought, but is rather, as Plato intends us to see, inadequate to show the difference between the philosopher and the sophist, and a failure on its own terms. One idea suggested by the book is the even if the ES were completely successful in turning back the challenge raised by the sophist against the possibility of falsity (236e sqq.), he still would not have made clear the distinction that Plato claims to see between truth and falsity and thus between the philosopher and the sophist. For the distinction that Plato believes in is strongly "realist" (my word, not Professor Rosen's). It is realist, for example, in involving the possibility of our (or someone's) having some sort of "direct" intuition or "intellectual perception" (321, 77, 87, 134, x97, 261-62) of reality, such as Putnam and others have recently argued that strong forms of realism must invoke.' The ES's argument, on the other hand, falls short of defending that sort of distinction, since it aims merely at turning back the sophist's challenge, which can--arguably--be done without taking up a strongly realist position . I think that this general idea is importantly right. Plato, I think, did advocate some such notion of truth, and it is not at all clear that the ES goes so far as that. It is crucial to be aware of this difference, or possible difference at least, between their respective projects. But the idea that I have just described is not, after all, quite the idea that Rosen intends to advocate. Here I have to say that I have most of the time found him extremely difficult to follow, and so my report of his view may not be entirely correct. At any rate, he holds that the ES's account fails "by its own.., standards" (326, cf. 283, 3o7). First, the ES's hopes not withstanding, falsity simply cannot be explained in terms of "otherness" nor, therefore, in terms of any sense of"not to be" that is itself explicable in terms of "otherness" (31o, 293 ). Rosen thinks that Plato ' SeeHilaryPutnam,"RealismandReason",MeaningandtheMoralSciences(LondonandNew York, x978), 123-4o, esp. 127. Rosen realizes that G6del believed in a kind of mathematical intuition , but because of a tendency to assume that "analytical"philosophersmust be hostileto this idea, he neglects such "analytical" believers in various types of intuition as Moore and Russell. [419] 4~o JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 23:3 JULY 1985 realizes this. Second, according to Rosen, the ES's account of a statement of the type, "form F is not form G" makes it mean nothing more than "that form F is the same;.., that it combines with the form sameness with respect to itself" (282), or, "[t]o be accurate, 'F is not G' can mean either 'F is F' or 'G is G' " (283). Rosen also has a number of other objections to the ES's account, for which I do not have space. On the first point I am inclined to agree, though I doubt that Plato did realize it, and in any case a recent suggestion by McDowell arguably strengthens the ES's position? On the second point, I must say that I have not been able to make any sense of Rosen's argument for this criticism of the ES. I find it difficult to tell whether Rosen regards the ES's efforts as, on the one hand, a necessary but incomplete preliminary to what Plato thinks of as a full understanding of the matter that concerns him, or, on the other hand, as merely a sample of the way not to understand falsity and the like. Rosen's criticisms of the ES's efforts often make...